My First Yoga Experience
After years of perching on my personal wish list of cool things to try out – I finally was fortunate enough to try yoga this weekend. The experience prompted me to do a little research into the history of this fairly recent national fitness phenomenon.
Yoga (Sanskrit, Pāli: योग yóga) refers to traditional physical and mental disciplines originating in India.[1] The word is associated with meditative practices in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.[2][3][4] In Hinduism, it also refers to one of the six orthodox (āstika) schools of Hindu philosophy, and to the goal toward which that school directs its practices.[5][6] In Jainism it refers to the sum total of all activities—mental, verbal and physical.
Major branches of yoga in Hindu philosophy include Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, and Hatha Yoga.[7][8][9] Raja Yoga, compiled in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, and known simply as yoga in the context of Hindu philosophy, is part of the Samkhya tradition.[10] Many other Hindu texts discuss aspects of yoga, including Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, the Shiva Samhita and variousTantras.
The Sanskrit word yoga has many meanings,[11] and is derived from the Sanskrit root yuj, meaning “to control”, “to yoke” or “to unite”.[12] Translations include “joining”, “uniting”, “union”, “conjunction”, and “means”.[13][14][15] Outside India, the term yoga is typically associated with Hatha Yoga and its asanas (postures) or as a form of exercise. Someone who practices yoga or follows the yoga philosophy is called aYogi.[16]
(source Wikipedia)
My instructor was Sammi Nguyen from Stop Drop and Yoga in Boston, MA. The name of the class was power yoga and there is no sarcasm when I say there was a heavy emphasis on the power part. The class spanned about 90 minutes and under the guidance of Sammi maintained an extremely well choreographed structure with a warm up period, build up of difficulty, peak, and a denouement that culminated into the venerated ohm.
As a first timer, I found the class incredibly challenging. I’m a generally fit guy who’s workout regimen typically entails a weekly ritual of 2-3 runs and intermittent sessions with free weights. What I found with this yoga class is that it challenged me in ways I hadn’t seen in years.
First and foremost, the poses challenge your sense of balance. So many of the moves narrowed your center of gravity to the point where you had to exert extreme concentration to stay abreast. Simply put, the reason why these tests of balance are a great fitness challenge is that they require a heightened interplay of the muscles across your body. Case in point, when we were doing the reverse warrior pose, I felt it in my lower leg muscles even down to my toes. And I mean, I really felt it. As a runner with chronic shin splints, this seemingly awkward pose is a great way to help develop the strength you need around your shin and calves to help address this runner’s blight. I’m a big proponent of heavy lifting exercises to jump start metabolism, to build strength and skeletal alignment. But I do believe that the balancing challenge yoga presents is the perfect companion to really get those secondary muscles that are really tasked with keeping your joints limber and aligned.
Second thing I noticed was almost all of my previous sports injuries from the wrestling, martial arts, and rugby – decided to rear their ugly heads during the class. I have this one knee that loves to talk back to me especially on cold damp nights. I can tell you exactly when and how I injured myself but in my normal day activities I for the most part have been able to compensate to continue in my weekly workout routine. What’s interesting is that when we tried to do some of the more challenging poses, I hit my limitations in perfect tandem with my wicked sports past. My instructor was great at keeping a tab on this (talk about multi-tasking) and made suggestions during the class to help me accommodate a little extra rigidity from some old scar tissue. But I can definitely see why so many people profess the healing aspect of yoga. The stretching (make sure you are warm!) and slow motion really increases blood flow and draws circulation to those areas most in need, much more so than my normal workout would.
The power aspect of this class came from the heavy reliance on iso-kinetic excercise. I’m not a feather weight and many of the poses entailed hold positions that really focused on core development and shoulder strength. I was drenched in sweat and it wasn’t because of the class heat. I was truly working out. When I typed in how long I did the yoga in the Quick Entry tool on fivi.com, it is estimated that I burned almost 500 calories.
All in all, I have no doubt that I will be incorporating yoga as part of my normal physical and mental maintenance routine. I am especially thankful to Sammi for introducing me to this wonderful experience and would encourage anyone to try yoga from the most stalwart gym dungeon rat to the forever couch potato. I have years of improvement ahead of me to really get the benefits yoga can offer, but in just one class I can say I was able to see it’s worth.
Cheat Sheet for Shin Splints (in Layman’s English)
Shin splints are the bane of so many a runner’s (or any athlete that runs) existence. It’s one of those nagging injuries that will not force you to stop right away but if left untreated can get serious and not to mention is a very popular excuse for so many of us not to workout or be active. There are some serious names out there that most of us would not recognize like periostitus and medial tibial stress syndrome but basically shin splints is the term all of us have come to be the most familiar with.
Courtesy of Mayo Clinic
What are Shin Splints?
Basically, shin splints is an inflammation of the tissue between the muscle that runs down the front of your shin (also called the tibia). It can hurt in a number of different places but usually the pain is in the area between your ankle and below your knee. The pain can be acute and sharp like to the touch or each time you step. It can also be dull and continuous during the workout and after the workout. There can be in some extreme cases mild swelling on the inner most side of the shin as well redness (but not always evident).
What Causes Shin Splints?
Unfortunately, shin splints can be brought on by a number of different things. Fortunately, almost all of them are pretty straightforward to fix and can be done with some proper self adjustment in how you do things. I won’t claim to list everything but I will try and list the most common ones.
- sudden increase in training or working out – this means that all of sudden you drastically do more running or a higher intensity workout. Do you just increase your distance? Try interval training for the first time? Slack off during the winter and punish yourself out of guilt during the spring? All are examples of a sudden spike.
- poor running form – running is a very complicated thing as we talk about in Running 101 and it’s important we pay very special attention to our form and how it pertains to our bio mechanics. There are some tips on how to figure out what your tendencies are when it comes to running in the article Mythbusters: Is Running Really Bad for your Knees. Just remember that you can start subconsciously altering how you run to accommodate a slight pain and this can aggravate the problem.
- running on a hard surface – pavement is no joke and it has no give. Simply put, that translates into impact. Without getting into physics that a lot of force each time you hit the ground and with each strike of the ground, you are pulling the muscle off the bone and that puts stress on your connective tissue.
- old or bad shoes – it cannot be overstated the importance of a good pair of running shoes designed for the type of running you do and for how you run. Finding a good pair of shoes is a process and if you don’t know what suits you – go to your local running store or work with a coach (a lot of running clubs have them on a part time basis). Logging them is a good idea. We built a shoe tracker to log mileage on www.fivi.com just for that. Replacement schedules for sneakers should be anywhere between 300-500 miles.
- weak or unbalanced muscle conditioning – muscles do more than just make your frame move and do things, they also keep you aligned and the original blueprint for how we were built called for some pretty tight specs things like flexibility, tension, strength, etc. We have muscles in the front of the shin and we have calf muscles (there’s more but for the most part, those are the easy ones to recognize) – now these muscle groups work together. If there is any kind of imbalance between the major muscles, that also can bring on shin splints.
- being overweight – a few pounds extra, never mind the 10-20% a lot of us carry can also bring on shin splints. Namely because the excess weight will throw off your running as well as increase the impact factor (even worse on hard surfaces).
What’s the Impact of Shin Splints?
The impact can range from mildly annoying to pretty serious (on the order of surgery). But the major ways it can affect you are as follows:
- ruin a good workout and make it unenjoyable
- delay your schedule in preparation for a very important
- force you to run in a sub-optimal way that will throw off bio-mechanics and create an injury somewhere else (like your knees or your back)
- shin splints can turn into a very real problem the most severe being an actual stress fracture of the Tibia (or shin bone). Yes, let them get bad enough and you can cause a break in the bone!
What to Do About Shin Splints?
First and foremost, DO NOT IGNORE THEM. Be reasonable with your body. Think about what may have brought on your shin splints and try and rectify the situation. When was the last time you replaced your shoes? How are you running? Does it feel right? Where are you running? Did you warm up properly? Did you change your training? Did you increase your distance? It is your body and it is your responsibility to take good care of it. Think about your habits and what it can be. Keeping a log is one of the best ways to figure these out. That’s why we put the Fit Blog right on your profile in www.fivi.com. Try something new or change up and enter it into your fit blog. Log your mileage and see if the problem gets better or worse when you change your routine. It’s like an online journal you can access from anywhere and you don’t have to worry about losing it.
Some suggestions to remedy the problem:
- first thing is take some time off – usually on the order of 2-4 weeks. You can do other cardio workouts (swim, stationary bike, etc) in the meantime.
- icing the sore shins and taking some ibuprofen to reduce swelling
- taping the shins is an option (it keeps connective tissue in place to counter the impact of the foot striking the ground)
- trying warming up slowly first (brisk walking) and then do a thorough but gentle stretch before and after the workout
- lose a little weight
- try incorporating some lower body strength training (this means light squats, calf raises, and what I call toe curls where you sit down and pull an exercise band in with your toes to flex that shin muscle)
- if the problem does not get better and definitely if the pain gets worse, go see a specialist. There is no glory in causing damage!
Here is some additional information on shin splints:
