This report is crazy overdue.
After announcing in June my intention to actually try to train for flexibility, a dream I had never imagined possible…
I diverted your attention.
I wrote about swimming. I told you about fish and dinosaurs and chupacabras. I shared about scary career decisions. All avoiding the challenging athletic goal. Which is crazy because when I’m training for a big triathlon race it completely dominates my blog posts. It’s because it’s been painfully boring. A slog of repetition and patience with no promise of progress. Compared to flexibility training, triathlon training seems wildly entertaining.
WhileI haven’t been writing about it, trust me I’ve been plugging away at it. The last month has been suddenly exciting and I wish I had been sharing about it all along.
In addition to my personal stretching routine I started taking the “Fiercely Flexy” class at ExperTease Fitness. It was the only non-yoga adult stretching class I could find in Minneapolis. I’ve been training several areas of flexibility but it’s the pike that I’ve been most focused on and using as a benchmark.
Flat back:
Rounded back: I finally got my palms to the floor!
Of course it’s not just that I want to be flexible. It’s the feats of strength that being more flexible will make possible that are the ultimate goal. So I’m also training handstands:
December 2016:
Then the amazing acro Katie came in to my life and spent 14 hours over 6 sessions in 2 weeks specifically training handstands with me. It was a blast to get schooled so hard. My muscles were sore but even more importantly my brain worked hard. Every time it was a monumental effort for neuromuscular control. It was just like all the times my clients have struggled to engage muscles or coordinate their movements in a new way.
I learned 28 new exercises and drills. These are just two of them:
I have nine core form focus points. It has completely changed how I do handstands.
Progress. Yay!
Midwest With Zest 
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