Lessons learnt over the Weekend

1. Kenny’s definition of 15km = 99% hill training and pure torture!

A.k.a = Bukit Aman > Double Hills Bukit Tunku > Carcosa > Deer Park > Bird Park

It’s do-able but be prepared for a slower pace and soreness the next day (or in my case, the entire Saturday night!). Ah…nothing like a difficult run to toughen up the body. Thank goodness, Kei Ming opted out else 100% guaranteed that he won’t be able to run the Pacesetters Track Meet 2011 yesterday!. I was floored…up to the point of being awake for most of Saturday night – lats (from Friday’s chin-ups) and hamstrings were uber sore and screaming at me!

2. Recovery measures after a weight training session (especially if it involves pull-ups or chin-ups) and a 15km hill training:

• Yoga

• Recovery run – I could not believe how effective this was until after my 5km run around the neighbourhood. The glutes and hamstrings were noticeably better and I could actually nap in the afternoon and sleep last night.

• Deep tissue or sports massage – I missed this one because of Mandy’s birthday dinner.

3. I am officially entered into Mel from Tall Mom on the Run 1000 Miles Club. Mel sent me the spreadsheet on Saturday – initially I was skeptical about her accepting overseas runners since their experience and environment is so different but the spreadsheet with my name on it is proof positive. Since 2011 is about ramping up the training and (fingers crossed) improving on some of my run times, the 1000 Miles Club would keep me accountable. Of course, there’s always Kenny and Kei Ming to nudge me along the way.

4. Mandy’s birthday dinner – order more vegan dishes! I ended up with rice, spinach soup and stir-fried romaine lettuce! The Toy Story 3 birthday cake (chocolate indulgence with the cartoon frame lasered on top) from Secret Recipe was passable; it was mainly cream and chocolate cream and air-filled sponge cake. Crowne Plaza Mutiara’s cakes (all kinds!) beats them hands down! See photo log!

5. I am thinking of quitting pole dancing – I was losing interest towards the end of last year and I was more convinced of it when the class broke for the holidays in December. Nary a miss of the session. I could use the time for a session with Richard or just chill.

6. Monday’s (ok, technically it’s a weekday but bear with me) back-and-chest workout – another tough dish handed out by the veritable Michael:

Supersets of:

a) BB deadlift

b) BB reverse pull-ups

Supersets of:

c) LF cable rear delt/upper back row with the iron bar

d) BB bendover back row

Supersets of:

e) Smith machine bench chest press

f) DB chest press

Supersets of:

g) BB decline press

h) LF cable chest fly

Supersets of:

i) LF cable pull-over/press-down with the iron bar

j) Abs crunches on medicine ball

The soreness should kick in tonight or tomorrow morning. No, that’s not anticipation in glee, just an observation.

Friday's Surprise

I was surprised I did not collapse during this morning’s session – I was anticipating this all week since I know Thursday’s pole practice would end late and I would finish dinner even later. I had some crackers with peanut butter last night and once I was done (I even skipped washing up the dish and butter knife!) quickly tuck myself into bed. Even then, it was past midnight. So was it the did-not-happen-dreaded-anticipation, adrenaline or the coyote mojo bag that carried me though this morning’s session? Or could it be just plain light training session?

This morning’s strength training:

Supersets of:

a) Smith machine chest press

b) Single arm DB back row

c) Single arm DB lateral raise

Supersets of:

d) Hack squat

e) Precor angled back row

f) Combo of BB deadlift and clean-and-jerk

Supersets of:

g) LF cable chest fly

h) LF cable low row

i) DB reverse fly

j) BB squats

And rounding up with reverse abs crunches.

The weekend past and Monday’s cable workout

I had a fabulous weekend that started with a traffic-free Friday evening which continued until this morning. Oh, minus the spot of inconvenience at Jalan TAR yesterday morning (think Sogo and the upcoming Raya celebs and you get the idea).

Saturday was spent with another 6.9km (Garmin: 6.88km) run at Lake Gardens with the Bikila. One good thing came out of the run – I was not paralyzed (remember last weekend’s incident?) and could even attend a 90-minute Vinyasa Yoga class at Richard’s. I am planning to stick to between two and three laps around Lake Gardens until the end of September before upping the ante.

Yiu Ming and I caught up on Saturday night at Pappa Rich. It seems like quite a few developments have taken place – he has joined Fitness First and gotten himself a personal trainer (for reasons he refused to let on) and he is thinking of quitting his current position to venture into a business selling/marketing fruits in the US (?). Looks like 2010 is the year of moves – Viv moved to Huntington Beach/California in January, Lien to London earlier this month and Yiu Ming to California soon (?).

Things toned down a tad on Sunday and it was a humdrum of a recovery run, cardio and pole dancing. After such a fun-and-event-filled weekend, I went to bed at 10:30 pm; actually, I wanted to stay up but since Michael and I had a session this morning, I thought I‘d be good.

We got off to a cable workout on the Freemotion bars with:

Supersets of:

a) Combo of squats and overhead shoulder press

b) Chest low-to-high pull up

c) Combo of lunges and lateral raise

This was followed by supersets of:

d) Assisted chin-ups

e) Technogym leg extension

f) Cable back low row

Supersets of:

g) Cybex Eagle chest press

h) DB bicep hammer curl

Supersets of:

i) Cable iron bar tricep press down

j) LF abs crunches

And gingerly we did it...

My right pectoral muscles is still hurting bad and it’s been a week since my pole practice!!! Any pushing, pulling or lifting motion triggers excruciating pain (ok, this is probably dramatizing it) across my right chest. Not forgetting the impact of each step I take when running. Dr Ling did cautioned that it could take a long time to heal, a fact confirmed by Michael this morning. Sigh.

With this, today’s workout was limited to lower limbs, back and shoulders. It wasn’t much of a relief since lifting the dumbbells or doing the lat pulldown was awfully difficult and painful. Hopefully we can restart the chest workouts next week. I wonder if Diane (I’m having a session with her on Sunday) can work magic.

Supersets of:
a) Hack squat
b) Plate loaded leg press
c) Alternating static lunges and walking lunges with a squat at the end; walking lunges on return journey
d) Calf raises

Supersets of:
e) Close grip lat pulldown
f) 45 degree back pull back
g) Cable standing low row

Supersets of:
h) DB shoulder press
i) DB lateral raise
j) Abs – decline with weight ball on chest

Pole Dance Video!

We finally recorded the video for the assessment but I feel like doing it again! I missed out many of the moves in the second section – the head roll and the back reach into a B-hook. I also did not have the chance to do the hand stand-legs apart – too much of a spin on the helicopter resulting in lack of hand room after hooking into Scorpio. Sigh.

All in, it was still good fun and I do not mind doing a few more videos!

Pole dance assessment and Pole access

Sam emailed us the assessment guideline on Sunday night and I guess most (if not all) of us are probably cracking our heads to come up with two routines for the video. I spent most of this week sweating out about the routines.

Truth be told…most of the spins, climbs, inverts and holds are not that difficult, statically. The snag lies in choreographing them together into a continuous dance move with a track.

My preliminary thoughts for the two routines:

Routine 1

• One hand sunwheel
• Combo of one hand chair and fireman
• Stripper climb
• At the top of the pole – alternate full bracket hold of carousel and boomerang
• Aerial invert
• Descent
• Side spin
• Reverse grab back spin
• Alternate invert of Scorpio and Gemini
• Handstand variation
• Descent plank
• Superman

Routine 2

• Combo of forearm chair and fireman
• Forearm back hook
• Classic climb
• Straight leg release
• Alternate forearm grip hold of carousel and boomerang
• Descent
• Corkscrew
• Invert Gemini into butterfly
• Descent turning or plank into Superman

I wish pole access hours were extended to 2200 hours instead of the current 2130 hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. At the current hours, I would need to leave at 1800 hours in order to shower and complete my Buteyko and make it to Casablanca at 2030 hours to get at least an hour of practice. And this is based on the perfect assumption of not having to search for a parking space and no traffic holdups.

The alternative would be to head straight for practice before going home – something I don’t favour since I’ll probably be constantly thinking about the yet unfinished Buteyko.

Upping the ante

We found out from Sam yesterday that we are required to present a video of our choreography for our Intermediate 1 assessment! Else we can’t move on to the next level – Intermediate 2. Dang! Since when did hobbies turn out to be so difficult and stressful???!!!

This is going to be a major problem for people with two feet and music tone deaf a.k.a me. I foresee a super mechanical person trying to do “something” on the pole; perhaps even worse than Lien and his salsa moves. Actually it won’t be all too bad if I can follow my own timing and beat rather move according to the music – most times the moves etc isn’t too bad or difficult; perhaps the solution would be to put on a slower beat music.

Let’s try to guess the minimum requirement (Sam promised to email it to us later): spins, reach, climbs, inversions…what else?

Superman & Straight Leg Release

I finally managed to do the “Superman” and “Straight Leg Release” during pole dance class over the weekend. I’ve never managed to do either simply because the poles used at Talent Hub were of the smaller diameter (i.e. thinner). Anyway, I muscled up the courage with loads of encouragement from Sam to try out both routines during class and it worked beautifully! It’s not exactly the actual pose as we had to modify it to cater to my less-than-fleshy thighs i.e. I had to “over cross” my thigh grip instead of clipping it at the ankles. The pain and the bruises on the inner thighs bear testimony to the amount of effort required to keep up.

With the “Superman” (albeit at the floor level and going in from the reverse crucifix) and “Straight Leg Release” conquered (more or less), we’ll probably move into doing it in the air or higher up the pole and moving onto the “Handstand” variation and “Arrow & Bow” soon.

I find myself progressing and improving so much further under Sam’s tutelage plus looking forward to each class every week. Given the small class size at Bantus, Sam is able to devote a lot of time and attention to each student (hey, there are only 5 of us!). I also found that the space at Bantus very “liberating” and “free” which in turn fosters greater creativity in the dance chorography and is less inhibiting. But the most important aspect of the endless space in Bantus is the markedly reduced fear of crashing into someone else or “twang-ing” the pole next to yours.

I also discovered that rubbing on bruises, awfully painful as it may be in addition to producing a less than aesthetic picture (it looks angry, red and swells up), brings about faster healing times. I’ve noticed that the bruises disappear in 2 days or so vis-à-vis 5 days if I don’t do anything. The Chinese believes that rubbing on the bruise disperses the pooled blood underneath back into our blood system.

Weekend Reflexology

I went for my now-routine-weekly reflexology session on Sunday evening. To my surprise, a pleasant one albeit, Mr Soon answered my call and was the one to massage my feet. Apparently Mrs Soon was tired from her tutoring and had left for the day.

The upside:

• A more experienced masseur
• All kinks of and from the toe joint gets straightened out
• The bruises from the pole practice earlier that day gets a rub in order to get the blood flowing
• Very worth the price

The downside:

• Excruciating pain
• The ugly, angry and red coloured bruises

Now if only I could have Mr Soon do my feet every week. Then again, I don’t really mind his wife doing the reflex while he comes over at the end of the session to have a look over and massage the kinks. 2 for the price of 1!

I’m pretty glad to have discovered this place especially since Zaki from the Malaysian Association of the Blind (MAB) left the Mid Valley outlet to set up shop in Sri Petaling. Ok, maybe that was 3 years ago and I’ve yet to be able to find my way there.

I’ve yet to try the other places or centres that seem to have mushroomed in the droves in the last couple of years mainly because I’ve no idea if these are affront for more seedy activities or fly-by-night operations or any operator choosing to cash in on the latest fad. I did consider trying out Sifu Reflexology in Bangsar but never got around to it simply because I’m too lazy to head out once I’ve had my shower and dinner. This is probably one place that opens late – which suits me since I’m usually done roundabouts 9-930 pm. Plus when I put their RM50 charge next to the RM32 that Mr Soon charges me (although it’s only for 40 min), Mr Soon wins hands down. Perhaps in time I’ll get around to checking out Sifu. Or any of those places in Kota Damansara that YM has been telling me about.

Sifu and the places in Kota Damansara are staffed by Chinese nationals and I gathered the massage style is different from that practiced by Mr Soon or even Zaki. Mr Soon’s style is more of qi gong while Zaki’s a mish mash of those learnt from MAB and Chinese – now don’t ask me how these are so different.

Extended weekend

We had an extended weekend just past given that 31 August fell on Monday. A lot of city folks (including SW and YM and a couple of girlfriends from school) were out of town. I stayed home for the better part of the weekend, minus the usual routine – gym, yoga, pole dancing, reflexology.

Thought about doing a short run in Lake Gardens on Monday morning and had even set the alarm to go off at the god-forsaken-hour of 630 am. The plan was to finish 2 loops and head to gym for the usual cardio. Woke up at the appointed time and felt lazy and got distracted by Facebook. Long and short, I stayed in bed till it was time to head to the gym. On hindsight it was probably the right thing to do since this year’s Merdeka celebrations were held at Parliament and not Dataran Merdeka.

The rest of Monday was pretty much a blur – lunch, afternoon siesta, tea, dinner, TV.

Sunday was more or less the same as Monday but but but for the photo op during pole practice. My goodness, I do love them – we had shots of Scorpio, Gemini, Handstand variation, Butterfly. Hopefully we get a few more shots this coming weekend!

Bruises, sprains, etc

One of the (and the most significant!) perils of pole dancing, especially for beginners like me, is the multiple and ugly bruises you get. And it runs all the way from your thighs to your ankles. When you think you’re almost over them, it’s time for the week’s class or practice session and there you…again! Last weekend’s class coupled with a Monday practice session was particularly merciless for me, bruises wise as well as the inclusion of a maiden wrist sprain.
Think it was while executing “superman” – yeah they have terms like this too! – scale up the pole, clamp it with your thigh and bum muscles to hold you in place before you release your hands and move one of it under your bum. This serves as a seat cum additional support for staying up on the pole (though the clamping bit is supposed to be the ONE). To get to this stage, you’ll somehow need to rotate your shoulder and pull it back – a bit of like opening your chest or sternum and pulling your shoulder blades down and together.
Wait…this is the best part. You lean back till you’re almost horizontal and your other hand does whatever tricks or waves to the audience. Yeah right! Staying in place is already a mind boggling challenge!