Health & Exercise: Yoga Update

So, after a week of doing yoga, I thought I would give a brief update.

I am already finding my flexibility improving.  Aside from missing a couple of sessions, I have been pretty good about staying consistent and I am already noticing an improvement.  Now, obviously, it hasn't been miraculous and the splits are still totally out of the question, but I can already feel myself being able to reach farther and stretch more.  I am also at a point of having both the Sun Salutation and Moon Salutation completely memorized.  Last week, I did 2 Sun Salutations and 1 Moon Salutation daily.  This week, I will do 3 Sun Salutations and 2 Moon Salutations daily and see how that goes.

After more work with my Parker, my massage therapist who does my trigger point massage, she says that my muscles are much shorter than they should be in some places.  That happens after lactic acid builds up (from improper stretching after exercise) and then calcifies.  This pushes muscles fibers out of the way and causes them to shorten from the tension.  As those muscles shorten and pull, it is going to pull on the opposite muscles too.  So, for instance, likely my issues started in my pectorals (the muscles in your chest).  As they shortened, they pulled my shoulders forward causing my aforementioned shoulder pain.  My shoulders no being properly aligned pulled on my back muscles and my back muscles pulled on my hips and neck.  

Thus, part of my therapy needs to be not only breaking up the lactic acid and increase circulation, but also stretching and lengthening my muscles.  This is going to make it so that my recovery lasts longer and my body heals properly.  There are many forms of exercise that increase flexibility and give a good stretch but I chose yoga for one reason. It's all stretching! I work out to build muscle and increase endurance but what I really needed was a good stretch and so that is what I am going to focus on.  And so far... so good!

Health & Exercise: A Journey to St. Mary's Falls

Today, Kevin and I decided to hike St. Mary's Falls.  Originally, we wanted to do Mt. Rosa which is about 11,500ft and a 12 mile total hike.  Unfortunately, dehydration and a lack of sleep last night had me waking with an unfortunate headache.  (I have noticed that it is more likely for me to have a headache with this combination of dehydration and not enough sleep.)  I went back to bed and when I woke up my headache was much more subdued.  It wasn't as bad as some of my headaches have been, but it was definitely enough to give us a later start and change our plans.



We decided to take the same route but only go half way up.  One of the reasons we chose to hike this mountain is that at the halfway mark you will find yourself in a beautiful canyon with a very peaceful waterfall.  Today, it was where we stopped for lunch and took a nice break.  We were still debating at that point if we would try to keep going up, but we decided that we were already tired from rushing the first three miles and we really didn't have time to climb up three more and then go 6 back down.

So I guess it just means we will have to make some adjustments to our plans.  Next week we will probably try Mt. Rosa again and then Pikes Peak in the next couple of weeks.  You never know when the weather on Pikes Peak is going to turn on you, so we need to try to hike it before October.  The high at the peak this time of year is in the low 50's.  So they really aren't too far from some serious snows.  After we hike Pikes Peak, we will probably go back to hiking the canyons while the leaves start turning pretty colors until the snow becomes really thick and then we will starting skiing again! I love Colorado!