Photo Courtesy of Mark Gail/THE WASHINGTON POST
Two unlikely fitness classes have been paired together. Well, actually, maybe they aren’t that different after all. One gets your cardio fired up and the other slows your internal rhythm down and helps you stretch away the tension. Maybe it’s more like a match made in heaven?! I’ve actually tried one of these classes and LOVED it! (She reminds me of one of those Russian brides, lol)
It seems as if we are always struggling for balance in our lives. Work or play? Spend or save? Eat that doughnut or save those calories?
The same is true for our fitness regimens. Everyone from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to your physician wants you to mix cardiovascular workouts with strength training, stretching and balance drills. How do you fit it all in?
In truth, many of us fall short. We work too long, spend too much and I need not elaborate on doughnut consumption. When we exercise, we tend to find that workout we love — running, cycling, Zumba, martial arts — and do it more than anything else.As anyone who has tried to lose weight will attest, our bodies adapt when we challenge them in only one way. They become efficient and limit our progress.Gyms and experts have recognized this problem and are working to offer options that incorporate more than one type of exercise per session. CrossFit may be the best known of these efforts; it mixes high-intensity cardio with strength training. But you can also find bike and barre hybrids, or workouts that combine spinning with jumping off the bike every few minutes to lift weights.A saner alternative, especially for men of a certain age like me, is Gabriella Boston’s new Revolution/Yoga class at the Results Gym on Capitol Hill,which follows 45 minutes of high-intensity spinning with 45 minutes of elementary yoga.“I was teaching them separately, and I realized that I liked to do them together,” Boston, a former Washington Times reporter, told me. “This is a really, really good fit. It’s a full-body workout . . . [and] you’re getting the whole mind-body thing together.”The class I took was at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday, a time when my mind and body agree they’d rather be drinking coffee and reading the paper. But there I was, trying to keep up, as Boston, wearing a microphone, repeatedly took about 30 of us to the edge of myocardial infarction and back. We kept time with the heavy, percussive beat of a soundtrack as we stood to ride hills and sprinted as fast as our legs would turn.Mostly I sweated. Rivers of sweat. Waterfalls of sweat. On the handlebars, on the bike frame, on the rubber matted floor. It felt great. But the best was yet to come.
Hearts still pounding, shirts soaked, most of us adjourned to the yoga studio next door, rolled out mats and within a minute or two began a series of yoga poses designed to slowly cool us down as we gently relaxed and stretched the muscles we had just taxed. I became dizzy as we bent at the waist to begin easing the strain on our lower backs. But once that passed and my heart rate returned to near normal, the slow, controlled yoga stretches were the ideal balm for the strain of spin class.
“In cycling you tighten, and in yoga you stretch,” 67-year-old Jackie Eiting told me after the yoga class. She took up spinning after the pounding of running had taken its toll on her knees. Then she realized that, like most of us, she usually shortchanged herself on post-workout stretching. That “motivated me to do a full class instead of just doing stretches,” she said.
A bonus of Boston’s class is a bit of upper-body work she includes to complement the lower-body emphasis of spinning. We held plank poses, front and side, to work abdominal muscles and obliques. To develop balance, we stood on one foot and leaned into various positions.
As I’ve written before, flexibility and balance are not my strengths. I like to trudge forward on foot, mile after mile. I like the solitude, the rhythm. This is when my mind and body come together. I know I should do other forms of exercise, and from time to time, I feel guilty enough that I’ll lift weights for a few months and do some plyometrics. But inevitably I grow bored.
Boston’s class and other workouts like it will help you do better.
At the end of the yoga session, we lay quietly for a few minutes and settled our minds. On Monday, I awoke with just a bit of stiffness in the muscles I had awakened, instead of that beaten-up feeling that follows a long run.
“Yoga keeps my muscles from feeling rusty afterwards,” Lisa Branscomb, who also injured her knees running, told me after the class. “I can now walk upstairs without making noises.”? [source]
What I liked most about this style of class was the warm up and cool down effect it had on my body. I get all worked up and sweaty during the spin class and then slow it down and stretch out my muscles during yoga, which leaves me relaxed and ready to take on the day. It’s a wonderful class and if you can find one in your area, I would definitely recommend trying it.
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