Alright, now this is bad! Real bad! I missed writing for three consecutive days! And I missed a single day of Yoga practice making it three Yoga losses for this challenge!
I missed practicing last Saturday as I was planning on doing Yoga after lifting weights, turns out the mats in the gym where I workout isn’t clean and when I got back home I had to go to Cubao with my wife to buy some things.
As for Sunday and Monday I cleared them all, along with today’s practice.
I was supposed to go to the gym too but then there was a really strong storm earlier that flooded a mall in Cubao (Farmers Market) yes, it’s that strong that it was able to flood an inside of a mall!
A freak storm if you ask me!
Anyway, here are some thoughts on my Yoga practice and how it is affecting my everyday life.
Suffice to say Intermittent Fasting and Yoga is creating wonders for my health. I can feel it as I can almost sit with my knee on top of another knee, whereas before I can only sit in a figure four now I can almost sit comfortably with my knee on top.
The last time I was able to do this was perhaps a few years ago when I was still weighing 170lbs! And you know what’s curious about all this? I still weigh around 192 lbs (actually I fluctuate between 190-194) strange isn’t it?
I am also slowly trying out the intermediate practice little by little and preparing myself in practicing it, perhaps by next week hehehe.
Anyway, what I want to talk about today is the idea of discipline.
How does one instill discipline to one’s self?
How is it learned?
How do you teach it?
And how do you practice it?
I will be a hypocrite if I don’t tell you how much I hated the idea of working out when my entire body feels sore.
Indeed, your body will feel pain and it will scream stop when you try to workout. There will be times when you just can’t do the things you normally do after every workout.
How I deal with it is not as simple as it may sound and it requires a level of bargaining with myself.
“If you do this now, you will not be in pain for a longer period of time, don’t you want that?”
“Remember why you started when you feel like quitting or if you feel that you can’t practice.”
Also one of my favorite reminders is the adage used by U.S. Marines: “Pain is weakness leaving the body”.
Still, there are many forms of pain, and sometimes that small pain will try to stop you from doing what you need to do despite the fact that it isn’t really as painful as what you think it really is. (I meant not an injury style form of pain)
You see there are many ways to workout your body, there are smart ways to train and there are dumb ways to train.
I learned it the hard way when I say that, back in the day I trained to exhaustion and forsake my body’s need to recover.
You should also be mindful of that truth.
Rest is part of training too. And it doesn’t mean that when you are doing more reps, you are getting stronger faster.
Your body is like a plant, you don’t just pour all the water on it in a single day. You need to take care of it one day at a time.
It also applies in the way you add more weights on your lifts. Some people want to lift weights even if it’s very obvious that they really can’t lift it.
They don’t realize that they are destroying their body faster than they could imagine.
That’s why I really appreciate incremental lifts, adding a little bit of weight and resting for a while after a few weeks (that is removing some weights in some lifts).
It allows your body to recover and catch up with the stress of lifting.
But as for Yoga, it’s different, you get stronger regardless of the weight you are in and you also incrementally develop your power by the forms you try to perfect.
Balance. Precision. Adaptability. Recovery.
These are what I think should compose a good day’s training!
With that, I leave you with a really great video on discipline