Racing Hearts, Tangled Limbs, and Sweat Drenched Bodies

I'm about to tell you about an amazing experience I had recently. This experience involved me and 12 young and pretty fit women I had never met before. It started with me getting undressed and ended with me feeling better than I have in a long time while taking a cold shower. I even had to stop in the middle of it to rehydrate myself, fearing I would cramp up and have to stop.

Last Wednesday I took a leap of faith and tried hot yoga for the first time. If you haven't tried hot yoga, you are missing out. It has all the tranquility of combining movement with intentional breath-work and all the shear discomfort and panic of sweating your ass off in a 95 degree room.

Now I'm not a small guy. When I sweat I pour. When I stepped into the 95 degree room for the first time, it didn't take long. I was about 5 minutes early for class. I laid out my mat and began to sweat while I waited for class to start. I looked around and noticed that I was the only guy in the room. I started to get a bit self conscious about these women undressing me with their eyes. I quickly realized that my clothes would be heavy with sweat and therefore far too heavy for their eyes to peel off of my sweat drenched body.

As I began to do the poses I felt even more self conscious. I'm not good at yoga. Some of the students were doing things I had only seen Gumby do. On top of that as I stretched to pull off some of the poses I realized my shirt was sticking to my body and revealing my white passenger (Dexter's dark passenger is an urge that drives him to kill serial killers, my white passenger is my Jim Gaffigan-esque pale skin).

I wasn't thrilled that my pail skin was on display for all to view. That's when it hit me. I was surrounded by young women wearing skin tight yoga pants and I was so focused on not falling/puking/fainting/dying to really notice. I no longer cared about me or them and focused on the yoga. That's the beauty of yoga, it takes all your concentration to not fall on your face so you don't get to focus on all the stresses from life.

Several skipped poses and water breaks later, I had survived my first hot yoga experience. Oddly enough, the combination works well. I feel so much better after a session of sweating with several strangers.

So you might be asking, like I once did, why the hell would someone choose, let alone pay to go through that? I know several people that would describe this exact scenario as their own personal hell. After looking into it I realized this could be one way to get several key benefits out of one workout.

Heat Tolerance
I am awful in the heat. My body can't cope with it and I end up slowing down and eventually shutting down. I may have finished my super hot marathon in Texas, but I sure didn't enjoy it. I'm hoping my body learns to sweat to cool myself down without depleting my body's salt levels.

Flexibility
I have never been flexible. I got hit by a Harley Davidson motorcycle while riding my bike to the gym when I was 14. My doctor put a 13 inch titanium bar in my tibia and screwed my fibula to my tibia and the bar. I was laid up for 3 months and my flexibility declined severely and I never worked very hard to gain it back.

If most people at 50% legs and 50% torso, I'd say I am about 40% legs 60% torso. I'm 5'10 but step on pants with a 29" inseam. If I can gain some flexibility the hope is that I can increase my stride length and help my speed out a bit.

Weight Loss
I've lost 30 lbs. since my heaviest weigh in that started my journey to living a healthier lifestyle. Burning calories is a key factor to the "eat less, move more" equation. Working out in hot temps burns more calories than working out in milder temps. And the lighter you are the faster you can move.

Core Strength
I hate ab workouts. They make me feel hungry. If I lost 100 lbs. I'm convinced I still wouldn't have a six pack because the muscles never get any attention. Did I mention I hate ab workouts? I do. I hate them. Like Itchy hates Scratchy, like the Coyote hates the Roadrunner, like my H.S. English teacher hated me. I don't know if core strength does diddly squat for running but people always act like it does. So why not.

Cross Training
I may be a runner but after my first yoga class it was clear how much more strength I could have in my legs. This will help me stay injury free and can allow me to run more often without risking an overuse injury.

Only time will tell. In the 4 days I have been in town since I got the unlimited monthly pass, I've gone 3 times. I can even squeeze my class in at lunch time and shower after and head back to making the world a more delicious place.