• On Life and Love

    A Hellacious Tabata

    A tabata is a particular kind of high intensity interval training, in which you work a pair of exercises for 20 seconds at a time, with a 10 second rest between them, for a total of 4 minutes. One slice of a tabata workout might look like: 00:00 – 00:20: Pushups 00:20 – 00:30: Rest 00:30 – 00:50: Squats 00:50 – 01:00: Rest You’d repeat that four times, for a total of 8 units of hard work. If you can get the intensity right (which is difficult), it’s one hell of a workout. The way I’ve done them as part of SexyShred has been three sets of the 4 minute…

  • On Life and Love

    Wuut? Aerial Yoga

    If you’d asked me three months ago if I’d try aerial yoga, I’d’ve said, “Um, no.” Bunch of reasons: I don’t like heights, I don’t like being inverted from high places, and I don’t like exacerbating my already always-there shoulder pain (sez the weightlifter *eye roll*). Also, I’m sometimes scared to try new things. Ask me two weeks ago? Fuck yeah, I’ll try it! So tonight, I went to Lucy’s beautiful and friendly studio and tried it. And then I spent most of the 75 minute class swallowing tears. Not due to any one thing in particular. It wasn’t just the physical pain or emotional pain and frustration, but the…

  • On Life and Love

    Dense Belly Dance

    Shortly after H and I did the West African dance class last month, we decided to try a belly dance class down in the Ballantyne area of Charlotte, where I work and they live. We’ve gone every week since. This is a different instructor than the one I went to from 2010 thru (sporadically) 2012, and there are some fascinating differences. This instructor is more inclined to talk “technical” about the dance moves from the first class–the muscles involved, what should be contracting and relaxing during a move. That’s great for me in relearning properly, and H has done other formal dance training before and finds that immensely helpful. We…

  • On Life and Love

    So Out of My Comfort Zone

    One (of a thousand) things I’ve let slide in the last year of struggles is one of my most favoritest: dance. I haven’t been to belly dance class since at least last summer, haven’t learned any new moves or choreographies, and have barely practiced on my own. I told myself that “when everything was more under control”, that I’d go back. Well, that “everything” got under some sort of “control”, but then recovering from that was exhausting, and then healing stuff that’s been askew in my life forever is too all over the place. The thing is I know not to wait for life to get to back to “normal”…

  • On Life and Love

    Full-on Sprain

    So remember when I hurt my ankle the other Sunday? It stopped getting better and started getting worse. Guess I shouldn’t have done those other two runs and the two yoga sessions that week. Out of fear that I might have a small fracture situation, I went to urgent care yesterday. The initial read of the X-ray didn’t show a fracture, so we’re assuming it’s “just” a sprain at this point. Ligaments are creepy. Unfortunately, that means no running, no lower-body weight-lifting, no yoga for at least two weeks. Which is pants. I’m in an aircast at the moment, and that feels so much better. It requires a bit of…