Stack your sh*t

So I’m doing Yoga Ninja Bootcamp at Yogi Flight School this week in an attempt to learn how to “stack my shit” (their phrase, not mine, but I kind of love it.

Now - I’m thinking maybe it’s worth a minute to unpack that sentence ;).  This is not flight school in the learn to fly a plane sense but more in the learn to balance without your feet sense.  When I first decided to learn handstands there were two online programs that quickly came to the top of my possible options - Karin Dimitrovova and, shortly after, Yogi Flight School.   For a large number of reasons, I chose Karin’s program and am SO glad I did because for me it was, and is, exactly what I need and nothing I don’t AND a fixed price (forever access).  I’ve since also acquired her flexibility program which is equally awesome.

However, targeted advertising being what it is, I still get many Many MANY ads for every possible competitor out there.  Consistently though the one that has caught my attention was the flight school.  So when they offered a free week, sure, why not.   Not even a credit card sign up and cancel later situation.  What I didn’t realize was it’s live sessions (thankfully recorded) AND 1-1 coaching if you’re willing to send them a video of you trying stuff (either post on FB or email).  

Hmmm interesting.  The live was never going to work - esp once I realize it’s TWO HOUR sessions that start at 11am MWF in my timezone this week.  Right.   I’m doing well if I can cram all my work into a 10h work day; I’m not taking 2h out for misc fitness.   

So I missed Monday but that night I figured I’d sign in and see how useful, if at all, the sessions would be.  Now at this point I’d already seen a lot of very excited posts from people on FB about learnings from the session so maybe?   They’d already released a half hour session before that was not my cup of tea but prob a lot of other people’s (ditch the “story” - aka excuses, any body type possible, basically barring a medical reason if you’re willing to put in the work, you sb able to do “it”.  Note “it” is not fully defined.  One of my original hesitations was their focus is yoga, not handstands.  And, well, I’m not a yoga-y type person ;).  I agree there are great benefits, but I get SO aggravated by the mindset lectures that it defeats said benefits.  Mindset is one of this team’s top things, but they also do a whole lot of swearing and practical reality so I figured I could go along with it.  Interesting take on ensuring the warmup targets exactly the muscles that will be used for the target exercise in the same way it’ll be used (eg “core” isn’t enough - side crunches aren’t the best choice if your target is a super-straight handstand).

So the first hour of the video was all theory that I paid partial attention to on high speed and skipped all the mindset stuff cause really - self doubt and lack of motivation aren’t really my thing ;)

The second hour though was an actual coaching session, which I did on Tuesday, and also at high speed but DID the exercises.  Alas, handstands aren’t till Fri but today was crow, which I have tried - not well - before so figured worth a go.   AND, at the end it said if you’d send vídeo they’d help.  I guess the next two sessions they’re doing breakout groups for actual live coaching.  We’ll see.   And you know what?  It made a big difference.  Although I definitely have gotten so used to my arms being straight that I neglected to bend my elbows and was having a very challenging time 🤣.  Apparently that’s a quite advanced move and they don’t recommend doing it often because of the strain on your wrists (remember the ones that less than a year ago I couldn’t even have flat hands in a plank?  Yeah - those wrists ;)).

    

May last year vs Now w zero practice in-between other than this course

So once I actually did it properly it was 100x better than when I learned it before handstands while trying to build wrist strength.   So now I’m actually fairly excited for Friday’s.  Tomorrow is headstands which I actually actively don’t want to do.  So I will watch the video to get any learnings / building blocks / etc, but I’ve done too many scrunchy things to my neck over decades of horseback riding to be willing to actually balance on my head.

Friday might make for an interesting blog post though ;)