This post appears as part of our Healthier 2021 series, following three WebMD team members as they strive to improve their health this year. You can follow their travels here.
By Mark Spoor
If you have followed me through my fitness journey, you will know all about my flexibility issues. It’s a battle I’ve been fighting for years. One of the reasons I chose this series of blogs is because it would really force me to step up my flexibility efforts.
To this end, I’ve carefully expanded my workouts in my Peloton app to include short stretching classes both at the beginning and at the end. I also tried very hard to get up from my desk from time to time during the work day. I’ve always tried to do this, but since starting this blog, I’ve been doing it without picking up food on the way back to my desk. #Progress
While I’ve seen wins – like being able to almost touch my toes without bending my knees – I felt like I had to do more. So I ventured into yoga.
In fact, this is the second time I’ve tried yoga. A gym I used to belong to offered an introductory class on a Saturday morning. When I embarked on this experience almost 10 years ago, I figured it would be a nice, relaxing hour. After all, everyone I knew who did yoga at the time seemed pretty relaxed, and the little I knew about yoga was that it was some stretching and gently moving from one pose to another.
I honestly thought it would be a nice break from the bootcamp style workouts I did for a few months before class.
Pause what? Not so much there, Sparky.
I can honestly tell you that I sweat more this hour than I did in months of other workouts. It was while I was in this class that I first learned that I had a problem with flexibility. In a move of cowardice that I still regret, I ran back to the relative safety of deadlifts, boxing jumps, and kettlebell swings. Of course, this did absolutely nothing for my flexibility.
This time I came to yoga with a lot more respect – and a healthy dose of caution.
Like a true newbie, as I scrolled through the yoga section of the app, I looked for a class name that sounded like it wouldn’t break me. I landed on “Sun Salutation A.” It turned out to be a pretty good start. The movements were relatively gentle, but not easy. There were plank-like movements. There were routes. There were downward facing dogs. There were noises.
Sounds?
Yes, there were some pretty loud cracks and cracks from me when I was attending class. I actually started to sound a bit like Rice Krispies when you first poured the milk on it. While it felt like a really good attitude from a chiropractor, I was a bit worried about the sound. So I reached out to my friend Beth.
Beth is a member of our team here at WebMD and also teaches yoga. If something was wrong, she would let me know. Beth calmed me down immediately – and made me laugh.
“We can expose all kinds of crazy body reactions in yoga,” she wrote back. “Well done!”
By the way, “Crazy Body Responses” should be the name of a garage band. Your move, America!
Anyway, I tried some more yoga the next day and a little more the day after. Trust me, I’m still a long way from feeling comfortable with it, and I’m sure it will look like a fish out of Laura’s water bottle (a nod to her last post on hydration). But I know it does what I have to do for myself. And since I can do it on my own, it doesn’t matter what I look like. What’s more, it gives me one other thing to do on training days so bring it up.
Oh one more thing. Greetings to my blogger from Healthier 2021, Bill, who gave us some insights (and inspiration) this week to overcome the hurdle of comparison: You got that, buddy!
Mark Spoor is Senior Health Editor at WebMD. He has spent more than two decades in sports media, working with groups such as the NCAA, NASCAR, and the PGA TOUR. Most weekends, you can find him and his wife Chris cheering on their daughter’s softball team.
While Mark has spent a lot of time with athletes, he’s not, so fitness has always been a challenge. He hopes this endeavor will help him get one step closer to victory in this battle.
You can follow Mark on Twitter @markspoor.
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