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.
Video Demo of Logging a Workout via Quick Entry Tool
FiVi.com launches new Quick Entry Logging Tool for Tracking Workouts and Activities
FiVi.com just launched the latest logging application in its line of tools for active people and athletes who want to track their active lifestyle. The Quick Entry tool is a welcome compliment to the existing FiVi Maps application (see How Create a FiVi Route and Logging an Activity on FiVi Maps) by allowing people to track their involvement in the widest range of activities. The tool is free and does not require a profile on FiVi.com to try. It is available on the homepage in the lower left hand corner, just click on the link “log an activity” under FiVi Quick Log Tool. Types of activities available include but are not limited to:
- Conditioning
- Yoga
- Calesthenics
- Cardio Machines (e.g. treadmills)
- Weight / Resistance Training
- Various Classes (e.g. bootcamps)
- Dancing
- Various Sports
- Hiking
- Water Activities
- Walking
(see a Quick Visual Guide on Using Quick Entry)
The Quick Entry tool has built in logic to determine the right input parameters for each logged activity or exercise depending on the activity type. Users can now track their workouts from start to finish in one journal entry online at fivi.com. The Quick Entry tool can track activities that are:
(examples of tracking capabilities)
- soley a function of time (e.g. stretching)
- time and distance (running, cycling, swimming)
- reps and weight (lifting weights or doing pull ups)
select from a growing list of activity types
each type of activity has a suggested set of activities or exercises
The Quick Entry tool even has optional fields like resting period to allow users to keep track of the time interval between sets.
If an exercise is not available in the drop down menu, the user can still log the activity or exercise by just manually typing it in and selecting the most similar exercise from a suggested list. This allows the user to track any time of physical activity and the system will still generate an estimate caloric expenditure.
if an activity or exercise is not available still log it and select the most similar
The versatility of the tool allows people of all levels to begin tracking their workouts for free with real analytics. Some suggested users:
- body builders
- personal trainers trying to calculate optimal workouts for clients
- cross trainers (e.g. CrossFit)
- dance instructors who want to position dance classes for fitness
- yoga instructors
- athletes who want to log interval training
- runners who want to track gym workouts when they cannot workout outside
- coaches
The tool is free and does not require a profile on FiVi.com to try. It is available on the homepage in the lower left hand corner, just click on the link “log an activity” under FiVi Quick Log Tool. Do please keep in mind that this tool is still beta and that we would greatly appreciate feedback and also any bug reports. We will be making a lot of enhancements in the coming months so user input is very important.
