Monthly Archives: October 2017

Uncategorized

Sculpting Your Body

Leave a comment

discusa3

A calorie is a measure in thermodynamics of the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water through 1 °C, equal to one thousand small calories (kilocalorie) and often used to measure the energy value of foods. We burn these units of energy in our body by breaking the chemical bonds between molecules and converting them into usable forms. The resulting energy expenditure often produces heat as a by-product.

I’ve been dieting for a little while to get my weight down. I’m not really out of shape, but I know that a lower weight will allow me to function better in yoga teaching and other endeavors. And, I also know I’ll be in a better place to stave off diabetes and heart disease if I am at a lower weight.

I was just thinking the other day as I was watching the show Naked and Afraid. The couple that was on the show was in very good shape. I would have to commend their preparation for the show. However, for a survival challenge, it doesn’t help one bit to be anywhere below 10-15% bodyfat for a man or 20-25% for a woman. The “reserve” energy that is in fat is useful when surviving on very little food, hot day-time temperatures, and cold (for naked) night-time temperatures. If anything, I’d be cramming down the calories in preparation to give myself some reserve energy.

In the reverse situation, if a person who is very fit and active happens to have an injury or long-term illness, the transition to a sedentary life could result in unwanted weight gain. So the better starting point for this situation would be to have a lot of muscle and very low bodyfat. Then they have the potential to recover more quickly and get back to their functional body composition.

The problem I see is when we age. What should our body composition be as we get into our later years? And it may not even be as old as you think. Many active men can eat what they want into their 20’s, but by their 30’s, their metabolism slows down and they tend to gain weight. Women follow the same pattern, but it is accelerated if they go through pregnancy. Regardless, you want to set yourself up for success as you go into the next age.

Where a car’s engine is what burns the fuel that we put into the gas tank, so are the muscles to the human body. The more muscles we have, the faster we burn. On average, men have more muscle mass than women and tend to lose weight faster. However, a man who is without much muscle mass will suffer the same inability to lose weight. So the first step is to build muscle. And I’m not only talking about skeletal muscle. Your heart is a muscle too and it needs to get stronger as well. A stronger pump and stronger engine leads to a better ability to burn fuel. And this is entirely true for women too. Muscle-to-weight ratio is a relative game.

The uphill climb is testosterone and other growth factors. Both men and women have them, and they decline in both as we age. So as we get older, weaker, and vigor declines, reacting to conditions becomes much more difficult. That’s why we have to set ourselves up for success earlier in life. The earlier the better. It is much easier to maintain a functional weight than to try to fix the problem at a later date.

Here are a few steps to success:

  1. Build muscle first. Eat to perform. You can’t work out and build muscle if you are restricting your diet. Work on getting stronger first. And work your heart as well. Make the strongest engine you can before proceeding. Make strength goals for yourself.
  2. Burn your engine. Once you reach your strength goals and heart stamina, then start to burn more fuel than you take in. When you are in calorie deficit, you’ll start to lose weight (if the goal is weight loss). But don’t go so much into deficit that you can’t perform.
  3. Maintain your ideal weight. At first, this may mean tracking calorie intake and expenditure (I use the Fat Secret app). If you learn to hold your weight, then you’ll be in a better position to react to changes. This is key to longevity. It gets more difficult every year of life. So get there now and stay there.

Note: I am very against BMI (body mass index). For sedentary people, the BMI may be useful. But for anybody who lives an active life, the BMI goes out the window. This is especially true if you carry any appreciable amount of muscle mass. Muscle is much more dense and heavy than fat. So for a given height, the weight classification is erroneous. Most bodybuilders and strength athletes are considered obese or morbidly obese by BMI standards. Likewise, endurance athletes would be considered underweight by BMI standards. Whereas both groups are very healthy. A better measure is bodyfat percentage. You can get tested hydrostatically (most accurate) or there are fancy bioimpedance weight scales that gives you a rough estimate. Generally, men are considered very athletic if they fall somewhere at or below 10% bodyfat and women about 18%. To survive in most scenarios, it is best to not go too far below these standards for best health.

 

 

ashtanga, teacher training, yoga, yoga teaching

Make the Shapes

Leave a comment

DSC_0016

When we get to a certain point in Rocket Yoga where we attempt Eka Pada Bakasana (one-legged crow pose), I give specific instructions. I tell them to place their front foot on the ground with the knee up. Place the knee on the same side upper arm. Plant your hands and start to raise your back leg straight off the ground. That’s the shape!! We don’t need to go further. But maybe, just maybe, we can begin to pull the front toes off the ground and balance fully on our hands.

To be honest, only a select few can do the pose in my classes. And even for those who CAN usually don’t hold it for the full 3 breaths. But none of that matters. What matters is making the shape. Then, the intention for the pose is fulfilled. You still engage the same muscles whether you are in the full variation or not.

Side note: One pet peeve of mine is when people call some other pose a boat pose (Navasana). You have to ask yourself, what is the intention of the pose? If I’m not mistaken, its to develop uddiyana bandha and the muscles of the psoas and frontal torso. Oh, and a side peeve, I don’t agree that yoga = fitness, so I don’t call it “core”. This isn’t a body pump class. The other poses that people call Navasana are Ubhaya Padanghustasana, Urdhva Mukha Paschimottanasana, and Upavistha Kapotasana B. They are not intended to be boat pose. If they are not strong enough for the full, straight-legged variation, then have them bend their knees. They may even lightly rest or hover their toes off the floor. Regardless, their anterior chain is engaged and working. You disengage if you grab toes or legs.

I just saw a picture of someone doing triangle pose (Trikonasana). Only the student had her front leg very bent. The intent of the pose is to lengthen hamstrings, glutes, and side body. So if the leg is bent, it is not meeting the intention of the pose. The adjustment I would make is to bring the student back up. Then take a block with their front hand from the long end; straighten both legs and make them straight and strong (straight meaning not hyperextending); hinge forward at the hip with legs straight; then place the block on either side of the leg directly beneath their shoulder onto the floor. The student doesn’t meet the intention if they don’t do this correctly.

When making adjustments as teachers, it is imperative that we know the intention for every pose. And it may not be the pose at all. You may be focused on a drishti or chakra or body part. Whatever it is, meet the intention. Always ask yourself “why” you are doing a pose. If a yogi cannot do the full expression of a pose, then modify to meet the intention. Usually it means making the same shape even if they are not flying or binding or whatever it is. Every BODY can do every pose.

ashtanga, teacher training, yoga, yoga teaching

Body Shape Matters

6 Comments

condor wingspan

When I was in Yoga Teacher Training, my teacher did an illustration that I think is completely valid. In Ashtanga, we do this jump-back and jump through maneuver. For the jump-back, imagine being seated with legs crossed. You press your hands down and lift your body off the ground and then rotate shooting your legs back into chaturanga (like a half-pushup). Then for the jump-through, you bend your knees in downward facing dog and jump your legs through your arms coming to seated without touching feet to the ground. So to show that everyone can do it and we don’t have T-Rex arms, you sit, lift legs crossed and pull them close to your body, and then push your hands forward beyond your legs to show you that are actually long enough for your legs to fit through. Hmmm?

I think there is more to it than that. As much as we want to say bodies don’t matter, they do. It goes beyond strength and flexibility. In Olympic weightlifting and Powerlifting, they study femur and humerus length and calculate ratios to evaluate bodies and the best variations for success. I attended a seminar by the former Olympic weightlifting team coach, Zygmunt Smalcerz. He was supposed to talk about how to get kids into Olympic weightlifting. But in former Communist Poland where he was raised, they did things differently. You measure kids proportions at an early age and then place them in the program where they would find the most success. Some kids started an intense career in Olympic weightlifting, while another kid started their career shoveling coal. He was very matter of fact about his ideas. We were there to hear about opportunities for kids, but ended up with measurement standards.

So, I’m sitting down watching mixed martial arts on TV. Fighters have to qualify at the same weight class, which are almost exactly the same. They may be very different in height. But what is weird is that height isn’t completely correlated with a fighter’s reach (how long his arms are). So I looked up how they measure reach. They extend arms wide like a condor from fingertip to fingertip. It is basically a measure of wingspan, which a condor’s is about 10 feet wide. Common measurements are 70-78 inches. If I did it correctly, mine is like 63 inches. What?!! I know when I buy suits, I sometimes buy a 44 short so that the sleeves don’t extend past my hands. There really is something to this wingspan thing in yoga.

I don’t want to make excuses for successes or failures in what we do. But bodies do matter. If a person is overweight, it can be much harder to do some twists and folds. If a person is very thin lacking muscle mass, poses like chaturanga and planks can be difficult. I wish I measured a colleague of mine in yoga teacher training. He had very long arms and legs. He could jump back & through like a BOSS! Whereas, I’m sure I could out bench press him easily, but I couldn’t do a jump back at the time one bit. Flexibility and strength in bandhas play a huge role too. But structure still matters.

So in all things yoga, we need to be happy where we are. There are some things we may never do. We may never bind in Marichyasana C, so that’s the furthest we’ll ever go in Ashtanga. We may never do jump throughs. And that’s completely OK. We walk our own journey and make it our own. We find contentment, santosha, with where we are. We live in the now and find our bliss wherever we are. Forget comparisons and judgments. We are where we are.

condor wingspan comparison

ashtanga, teacher training, yoga, yoga teaching

Yoga Teacher Education & Experience

Leave a comment

The E-RYT is a designation under Yoga Alliance for Registered Yoga Teachers to give Educational credit to others for various training. It is a nice credential since it can be attractive for workshops and courses where credit can be given to teachers who want to gather education credits. It also alludes to the fact that this is a teacher with a good number of hours of teaching under their belt with worthwhile experiences to share to others.

On the other hand, some credentials just represent a badge that means you had a course or class or training, but haven’t really experienced much. In the Army, enlisted (non-commissioned officers) rip on 2nd Lieutenants (commissioned officers) who have Airborne jump wings on their chests. It means they went to a 2 week course and did their 5 parachute jumps and that’s it. It is an elective course in ROTC and OCS as part of their training. And I think it is a good thing to do and a worthy accomplishment. But it doesn’t mean they’ve spent time in an elite unit like the 82nd Airborne Division where they not only jump, but conduct missions upon deployment. And they definitely haven’t jumped into a real battlefield situation, which is an even more rare occurrence even for those who serve in Airborne units. I’ve had numerous courses in so many things. I am certified to teach Olympic Weightlifting through CrossFit. But to be honest, since then my style has completely changed and I would only teach half of what I learned there. In some ways, that credential has gone out the window. I am certified in Gymnastics Movement, but I was never a gymnast nor would I pretend to claim any expertise. Sometimes you have to weigh training and time on the mat with what you’ve actually experienced.

But what I have done is an accumulation of life events over my many years that adds to a wealth of knowledge. When I was a kid, there weren’t personal home computers. We found our information by doing. We experimented. We read magazines and watched what other people did. We did sports. I wrestled in high school along with any other sport I could do. But mostly I lifted weights and ran. I started running 10K races in the 2nd grade. I learned to stretch and to strengthen my body. Since then, I’ve been an Army Drill Instructor, certified Sports Diver, became a scientist having studied kinesiology, anatomy, and physiology, was deep into Ultra Marathon running (which is a science unto itself), long-distance backpacking & kayaking, and numerous martial arts. Human movement is something that I know a lot about. As a scientist, I study efficiency and productivity. We all have many experiences whether child birth, dealing with pain and disease, and life in general. All of this contributes to our personal bag of tricks.

In Sanskrit, the word is Santosha. It means contentment. I am very happy with where I am right now. I am focused on teaching Rocket (Ashtanga) Yoga and continue to develop my expertise. I came to realize the other night, there will be a time when I can’t demonstrate the poses anymore. If you look at Pattabhi Jois (Ashtanga) and BKS Iyengar, many of these greats taught late in life even though they didn’t participate fully in classes. Football coaches were once players themselves, but they effectively teach and lead teams to victory without putting on the pads. The same is true of Yoga. We find ways to demonstrate and use talented pupils to show how its done. In my mind, I can see the energy of how bodies should move. I can see where we can eek a few more millimeters of length. I can efficiently adjust a body because of training in human anatomy. We are sometimes taught “Only Teach what you Practice”. I see the value in this, but I totally disagree. If you look at Béla Károlyi who coached numerous Olympians to Gold in gymnastics. He never did balance beam or uneven bars, yet he taught so many athletes. He never practiced what he teaches. But he has a thorough knowledge of what it takes to be successful.

Since I started traditional yoga late in life and became a teacher 4 years ago, I am only a little over half way to the 1,000 hours of teaching required for the E-RYT. But I am not at all disheartened. I feel Santosha. I teach on the side with only a few hours a week. But I don’t ever take any class for granted since I only get to teach infrequently. I know teachers who become completely burned out of teaching yoga. They did intense trainings abroad and went to all the conferences. They LIVED yoga full time and then just walked away. It is quite possible that there can be too much of a good thing. It is like my feelings about immersive teacher training. Yes, you can do it all in a month of intense training. I liken it to deep REM sleep. It is in deep sleep when, not only our bodies grow and recover, but our minds as well. We organize, categorize, and analyze our thoughts when we sleep. That is why people with PTSD, anxiety, and others who lack quality sleep fall down a very slippery slope. Things that should be inconsequential begin to seem astronomically important. I find the same with teacher training. We need time to process and live out what we learn. If you hear something in training, then you can evaluate how other teachers are doing it. It comes down to experience. I know that I can teach others from a standpoint of experience. I can totally relate to almost any situation since I’ve actually been there. It is the value in living a long life.

There are reports of teenagers teaching yoga. I’m all for this endeavor and the idea of starting anything at an early age. However, what they lack is life experience. They can’t possibly understand a 40 or 50 year old body. They can’t possibly realize what effects pregnancy has. They don’t know what its like to be a powerlifter who now sees merit in muscle length for their quality of life. Nobody who teaches yoga can close their minds to all that is around us. We can’t only focus on one style and expect to fill our basket with knowledge. We need to experience and feel what our students feel. Maybe go for a run and understand what it feels like the day after. Do a CrossFit workout with heavy weight and know what its like to have a week of soreness. Spend a day with your grandparents or go to a retirement home and realize what it means to have limitations on movement. Then you can accurately define yoga from a pool of compassion and empathy. Experience yoga!