Yoga Chick

I have been so excited about my new commitment to my yoga practice that I've been dragging, or wanting to drag, everyone of my friends to class! I remember when I was just considering yoga...it was that, or back to Tae Kwon Do, and Mark thought yoga would be a better fit, given my age, to add the elements of stretch, stability, flexiblity and balance to my fitness program of KB's and walking.

It took alot of courage for me to go to a 90 minute 104 degree class, after less than a year from weighing over 250 lbs. I was afraid of all the "skinny chicks" in their cute yoga clothes, (I wore a t-shirt and long pants to my first class), judging me because of my size (still 145lbs.), or because I didn't know what I was doing...yet. But everyone has to start somewhere, and if I want to do something, I want to do it well, and I'll show up every stinkin' day to make that happen! And as Mark always says, " The only way to not get it, (what you want), is to quit.", and I wasn't going to quit.

You have to show up! And whatever talent you may not have you can make up for in discipline and willpower...another one of Mark's core training philosophies. But the fitness level I was able to build up, with my style of high volume swing combinations, gave me more strength on some of the poses than most of the students that had been coming for years! Really the hardest pose for me in the first months was simply dropping my head all the way back....I couldn't believe how painful that was, or how I could get past it.

And the muscle tone I got from swinging KB's, in my opinion, was much more noticeable too! I wouldn't have chosen to trade bodies with anyone else in class! Can you imagine being able to say that after just coming off of a 100lbs weight loss and being 43 years old?

My yoga practice was much harder to get back, after 8 weeks time off for post op recovery, than my KB practice. In fact, the intense backward bends still feel weird, but not painful, on my abdominal muscles. But probably the hardest poses to get back were the ones where you have to keep your arms up over your head for minutes at a time, those are the poses I credit for some of my shoulder muscularity....that's hard stuff...try it, lol! Yoga forces me to stretch on a regular basis, something that is so important for my shoulder health. Yoga has definitely made me stronger and more flexible, but now I can wear those cute yoga clothes too!


Swing squat ladder 1-4 for demo.


Friday snatches
10/10 x 5 w/12kg x 2 sets = 200 points
8/8, 8/8, 9/9 w/16kg x 2 sets = 200 points
10/10 w/16kg x 5 sets = 200 points
Total 600 points

Saturday snatches
60 R, 40 L, 20 R, 20 L, 20 R, 20 L, 10/10 (x 5) w/12kg = 280
5/5 x 6 w/16kg x 3 sets = 360 points
Total 640 +20 = 660

The first snatch set was supposed to be 15 minutes long. I started out with my R snatching 60 continuous reps for 3 minutes, switching L, snatching for, what I thought was 3 minutes, but after finishing and looking at the Gym Boss I was short by 1 minute, I concluded the missing minute was at that point, so I add the 20 snatches L at the end of the workout.

So the first long continuous set w/12kg was for 14 minutes long. 3 min. R, 2 min. L, 1 min. R, 1 min. L, 1 min. R, 1 min. L, 30/30 sec. for 5 minutes.

Snatch point total to date (if my math is right, lol)
7168 + 1260 = 8428