The Yoga Escape

DDP Yoga Week 7

Monday: Fat Burner
Wednesday: Fat Burner and Red Hot Core

No workouts for the rest of the week

I had to cut Monday’s Fat Burner workout 5 minutes short thanks to the janitor of the bank job wandering around in the vacant building where I do my workouts. So I decided to do it again on Wednesday, and then do the Wednesday workout right afterwards.  This week I did the new workout called Red Hot Core, DDP Yoga’s abs workout. I found it to be okay, but it didn’t beat the fun of Beachbody Insanity’s abs workout. Beachbody’s was better because it wasn’t the standard “get on your back and start working those abs” kind of thing. It was me jumping around and working my abs in a fun way, while still feeling that oh-so-precious “abs burn” the morning after. Red Hot Core basically has me do about the same stuff that P90X made me do with the scissors kicks and bicycle stuff. I had to take breaks due to the pain I would feel, so I guess the bar of success is being able to do this workout without taking the breaks. I want to do all the exercises for just as long as they do it in the video. Once I do that, I can say I’ve conquered Red Hot Core.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that I don’t focus on my breathing nearly enough. Twisting lunges and all the challenging stretches are so much easier to do when I have the focus on my breaths rather than the exercise. I also didn’t eat as well as I wanted to, thanks again to the stress of the basement apartment. I had 4 cookies and 2 slices of pizza on Wednesday, 2 more cookies on Thursday, and I had to eat Hibachi food because I left the house too late yesterday. The line at Subway was too long, so I quickly bought three orders of brown rice and hibachi steak and chicken. The food was good, but I’m sure I fucked up my sodium intake. I also had a giant bag of Earth Balance popcorn at night. As far as body changes go, everything is about the same as last week. I am starting to notice that my legs are getting skinnier, and I’m not sure that’s such a good thing. My knees have been hurting due to the tiling and lack of sleep and the two jobs, and I need my legs at full strength if I’m gonna take all this on my shoulders. I’ll probably end up doing some leg strengthening exercises while I do my rounds at the bank job.

Last week was pretty stressful, and I used it as an excuse to skip DDP Yoga on Friday. I was supposed to do Fat Burner again, but I was just mentally exhausted. I just sat there in my car trying to work out all the things I need to do with the basement. Eventually, I would like to learn how to use these workouts as a mental escape. Many of the poses are both challenging and relaxing at the same time. If I can learn how to detach myself from whatever my brain is worrying about and focus on the workout, it would turn DDP Yoga from an interesting chore to an escape. I’ve heard people say that their exercise time is the only time of the day where they can shut everything out and focus on nothing. I’d like to train myself to do that. This week I have a lot of basement work to do, and I have Monday’s Energy, Wednesday’s Fat Burner and Red Hot Core, and Friday’s Below The Belt workouts to do. Being able to start those mornings with an escape rather than a task will be important to the success I hope to achieve during the day. Not to mention, escaping with exercises is a much better alternative to escaping with bad foods.