Rainy again, but not too bad, and very warm for the season!
Warmup
- Turn wrists, turn elbows, turn shoulders, use full range of motion
- Go on all fours, put little weight on the hands, push body up with the wrists. Stretch lower arms in several directions. Carefully feel into your wrists, what feels good and what not.
- Swing whole body, feel the blood pouring into your fingertips.
- Swing even more until knees touch the ground.
- Make circles with knees (around hips).
- Make circles with feet (around knees).
- Turn your ankles.
Exercises
- Balance walk: just walk on the bars or beams.
- Balance lunges: walk on the beams. Make a lunge on every third step.
- Balance squats: walk on the beams. On every third step, turn to the side and make a squat, alternating left and right.
- Catwalk: Go on all fours on the beams. Try to balance on all fours.
- Climb around bridge: Climb around the playground rope bridge in both directions.
- Get over wall. In your own technique: Jump, climb or try combinations. Be careful, it is wet!
- Kettlebell swings: A classic! Focus on good technique, find a rhythm.
- Circuit: Kettlebell snatches (or clean-jerk)), rope climbing and L-pushups. 4 times
- Kettlebell Swings again 😉
- One arm hanging. First on a bar, then on the rope. Control your body tension. See what limits you. If necessary, the other arm helps a bit (especially on the rope).
- Eccentric stretching. Get your muscles into stretched positions while under medium tension (either gravity or a resistance band).
Tools used
- Balance: This is a very important one! Balancing makes it difficult to be half-assed, because this usually means falling down all the time, which is frustrating. And doing something half-assed is not joyful, so why should we do it ;)?
Moreover, in balancing the physical/outer happenings (reconfiguring your limbs to reestablish equilibrium in changing positions, slightly oscillating around equilibrium, less effort if you stay near equilibrium,…) are very similar to the inner happenings. Reconfiguring your focus to different demands, slightly oscillating around an optimal state, less effort if you manage to stay near,…). - Start slow, keep going. Technique training is harder in uncomfortable conditions. Is is more difficult to enter “playing” mode. You feel clumsy, things don’t work like they used to. What can help is to start slow, with “safe” techniques, repeating them with variations. And gradually enlarge this cloud of possible movements. Important here is not to stop and think for too long. If you doubt and don’t dare what you wanted to do, do something easier. After a while you will sweat a bit, forget about the rain, have a feeling of what works and what not and just play with that.
- Climbing: Ever changing equilibrium, ever changing tension, stretch and contraction. Climbing makes you feel your body. It is for a reason children love it.
- Circuit: What can circuit training have to do with joy? Actually, if done right, the frequent change of exercise, the not-all-out, the change of effort and relaxation (while other parts of the body are under strain), the repetition, the intensity, the focus on technique .. can lead to doing a lot of workout without having to push much.
Its all a question of finding into the rhythm and dosing the effort right.
It is important to focus on “grooving in” more than on “working out”, especially in the first round. Once you are grooved in, you can go to the max, and it is much more joyful then! And if it is one of these days, where you struggle with grooving in, you are training that, and going to the max does not make much sense anyway. - Stretching and tension: Disclaimer: I’m definitely not an expert here, this part should be written by somebody having more experience with Yoga!
Alternating tension and stretching, Stretching while under tension. Contract while in stretched positions. All this gets you a better feel how your body moves, what it can do and how, and whats inside.
Train Joy 