The Wheelsucker Will Stop at Nothing

In his never-ending quest to somehow improve his mediocre power the Wheelsucker will try anything (legal). For most of the year what he tries involves a bicycle, but during the "off season" the Wheelsucker gets to try some different things.

An earlier post was about riding Powercranks. While technically done on a bicycle, the Wheelsucker would assure you that riding Powercranks does not feel like riding a conventional bike; it is actually much harder.

Off season is a time to try to make structural improvements and to let the body recover from a hard season of cycling, and prepare for the next. The Wheelsucker has had lower back issues and suspects his core strength is not as good as it could be. While seeing a chiropractor for lower back issues, some issues leading to the lower back pain were discovered; these included: core strength could be better, tight hip flexors, poor balance.

So during his off season, the Wheelsucker is focusing on weight lifting (currently doing the Anatomical Adaptation (AA) workouts in the Joe Friel Training Bible), riding the Powercranks as mentioned above, and

drum roll

is doing yoga classes to help with core strength, flexibility and balance.

The Wheelsucker has approached yoga in a very typical-for-the-Wheelsucker way, after doing the first introductory class he jumped in with both feet, trying to take as many classes as he could, hoping to maximize the benefit. So the Wheelsucker has being doing several yoga classes a week, and occasionally doing two a day. Since the Wheelsucker is a member of the Annapolis Athletic Club, he takes some classes there. But he also jumped on a LivingSocial offer for unlimited yoga classes for one month, at the Prana studio in Annapolis.

The ACC yoga schedule seems to cater to people who do not have "9-5" jobs and has classes during the day. Classes starting at 9:00am or later in the morning do not work for the Wheelsucker; unfortunately he has to work five days a week (and sometimes more).

AAC does have after work classes starting at 5:00pm, 5:30pm or 6:30pm; sometimes the Wheelsucker can make those. But Prana studio has 6:30am classes which should be easy for the Wheelsucker to do. Easy provided he can get his butt out of bed at 5:30am, not something the Wheelsucker is particularly good at.

But he has made it to several of these 6:30am classes. They are "hot" yoga classes, primarily "Hot Vinyasa Flow" which Prana studio's schedule describes as:

"An invigorating style of practice that combines a Vinyasa flow class with a heated room that is approximately 95 degrees. It is a wonderful way to rid your body of toxins and allow for a deeper more intense practice."

While the Wheelsucker agrees with the "more intense" text, he is not sure about the "invigorating style" portion of the description.

Here is the Wheelsucker’s perception of a Hot Vinyasa Flow class:

A sleep deprived Wheelsucker is woken abruptly by his iPhone alarm. He dresses in what he thinks passes for yoga wear, grabs a duffel bag of work clothes to change into after class, a large absorbent towel and a full bike water bottle, and drives to Prana Studio. By the time he arrives and signs in several others are already loosening up on their yoga mats in the studio.

The Wheelsucker finds an open space to unroll his mat, as far from the heat lamps as possible. It is never a large group for the 6:30 class, perhaps 6 or 7. Women outnumber men, but there has always been at least one other male in the class. The Wheelsucker has a strong feeling that everyone else in the class is far more experienced in yoga than he is.

Before the class starts the Wheelsucker tries to easily stretch out and relax, as others appear to be doing. The heat is bearable when lying down, and oppressive as soon as one starts to move. The women are wearing fairly minimal form fitting garb. The men quickly discard T-shirts and are left with just shorts.

The class starts. While each class has different instructors and the details of each class are different, they are very similar in having a lot of moves, and being fairly fast paced (at least to the Wheelsucker). The Wheelsucker has a hard time following, and is frequently glancing around to see exactly what the move the instructor is calling for looks like, and trying to copy it. The Wheelsucker's insecurities about his yoga skills start to grow. He is fairly certain he does not look as graceful, poised, or as flexible as others in the class. Some of the positions demand great flexibility; the Wheelsucker is flexible in some poses but not in others. Other positions demand considerable strength to hold. Very early into the class the Wheelsucker is breathing hard, muscles are trembling with the strain, and he is sweating hard. His sweat falls to his mat, which soon becomes slick

(Ewwww, too much information!)

and the positions and moves become harder to do on the slick mat. Every now and then, exhausted by his efforts, the Wheelsucker pauses for a moment and wipes down portions of his mat or his body with his towel. Soon the towel is soaked

(Ewwww, gross).

Eventually the towel is saturated and no longer capable of removing sweat from the mat. The Wheelsucker then spreads the towel across the front of the mat, hoping to find a little more traction for his hands.

The instructor continues to lead the class in move after move, stretch after stretch. The Wheelsucker strains to follow. The pauses for the towel or to drink some water become more frequent. Focused on the moment, trying to do the moves, the Wheelsucker does not fully notice the passage of time; there are no clocks in the room. But just about the time the Wheelsucker doubts he can continue any longer, the pace of the class slows down, and a little while later the Wheelsucker and other students are lying on their mats in the classic savasana (corpse) pose. This is supposed to be so easy a dead person could do it ;-) But instructors have made adjustments to the Wheelsucker’s savasana position so apparently the Wheeluscker is not good at it.

Lying on his mat the Wheelsucker is acutely aware that it is soaked in his sweat and there is a distinct ammonia odor wafting from it.

The class ends.

Moving slowly and carefully the Wheelsucker rolls up the mat (to be unrolled and wiped down later), returns the yoga blocks to the front of the studio, tries to dry himself off enough to put a T-shirt on, and slowly walks out of the heated room. Outside the morning cool feels like a life saver; light rain is even better. The Wheelsucker does not feel "invigorated", but he does feel looser and more relaxed. An enormous skim latte will provide some invigoration so he does not fall asleep at his desk.

After several weeks of yoga classes the Wheelsucker’s lower back is doing much better than this time last year. Last year he had to stop riding the Powercranks due to lower back issues; this year his Powercrank sessions continue to get longer and harder. The Wheelsucker is aware of his lower back, but it seems the yoga is limiting how sore the back gets. The profuse sweating is not that different from a hot day on the bicycle, though lying on a saturated slick mat is a little gross.

But better flexibility, core strength and balance is good for the Wheelsucker, and should be good for his cycling. And if he ever gets good enough at yoga to discretely look around more during class, checking out good looking women in tight clothing isn't hard to do.

Namaste ^