Tri-pod Headstand

1) Begin with your hands and knees on the mat. Lower the top of your head to the floor so it's in front of your hands. You'll know your head is in the right position because your elbows will be directly over your wrists and you'll be able to see your hands. Your head and both palms will form the points of an equilateral triangle.

2) Once your head and hands feel stable, straighten both legs and walk your feet towards your face as far as you can.

3) Shift your hips over your shoulders, and keep your hands planted firmly on the mat. Practice doing Tripod Balance, by resting your knees on your triceps. Stay here or work on lifting both legs up into the air coming into Tripod Headstand. Keep your legs together and point your toes.

4) Hold this pose for a few breaths. Then slowly lower your feet to the floor.

You're not too good to warm-up!

You might think you’re too advanced to dedicate 10 minutes of your session to warming your muscles and stimulating the central nervous system, but I guarantee you that your body is thinking that you’re not too advanced for injury. Stepping into the gym and immediately hitting the iron /or starting on the muscle-ups is not the ideal way to go. You run with the increased risk of injury and decreased performance. Spend a few minutes performing a low-intensity mobility and soft tissue warm-up followed by a specific warm-up before even
thinking about doing the WOD.

Balance Running with Training

Most people think they only need running to be fast. They think they just need a strong heart and powerful lungs. They never do core exercises, rarely do drills, and avoided the weight room entirely. That's a huge mistake. Being athletically well-rounded and coordinated helps you prevent injuries and run more efficiently, which corresponds to long-term consistent training.

T-Town Yoga Schedule

Monday 6:30pm Mia
Tuesday 9:00am Jahan
Wednesday 6:30pm Mia
Thursday 9:00am Jahan
Saturday 7:00am Jahan
Sunday 12:30pm Chad

T-Town Yoga

Yoga will compliment your CrossFit workouts and help you move into and out of lifts with greater ease and mobility. Balance of the two is essential for our health as we age and allows us to continue to do functional training in the gym. This also applies to balancing our workout days with our active rest days. It's about finding a meeting point between stretching and strengthening our muscles.

Monday 6:30pm Mia
Tuesday 9:00am Jahan
Wednesday 6:30pm Mia
Thursday 9:00am Jahan
Saturday 7:00am Jahan
Sunday 12:30pm Chad

Mid-Line Stability

A basic Yoga pose is a cross-legged seated position that begins many yoga classes. For me, it is difficult to maintain a neutral spine in this position, as this is the case for many men. From my own perspective, I have logically decided why I have trouble maintaining this position. A probable reason why I can't hold this position properly is because my hip muscles are tight, particularly the hip rotators. I perform so many different explosive lifts on a daily basis. They are preventing my pelvis from rotating in neutral position, so my lower back muscles have to overwork to stabilize. So, holding the easy cross-legged pose is kind of like a workout for me because my muscles are working against me, rather than for me. This can be a good thing since this is a form of active-stretching. In other words, the weakened and lengthened muscles are working to overcome the stronger shorter muscles, and overtime, my body posture will improve as will my muscle flexibility.

T-Town Yoga

Why take a T-Town Yoga class?
Balance, Variety, Body Awareness, Flexibility, Accuracy, all important to your CrossFit training – all trained in a Yoga class. Yoga will develop the shoulder stability necessary for a developed snatch lift as well as the hamstring flexibility for strong deadlift set-up. We talk about developing body awareness with our lifts and movements to feel when your elbows are high and outside, or your overhead position is strong and locked out. Yoga will help with that too. Yoga helps calm your mind, reduce stress, and stretch your body. Practicing yoga helps create a strong, flexible back, improves posture, firms your backside, stimulates abdominal organs, and can help with asthma. Increasing flexibility in your chest and shoulders (overhead work), improving wrist and grip strength, and improved breathing – you’d be crazy NOT to add T-Town Yoga into your training!
Mia on Monday & Wednesday Nights @ 6:30pm
Chad on Sundays @ 12:30pm
See you on the mat!

Core Strength

Yoga uses your own body as the weight you lift and hold. Sounds like gymnatics and bodyweight exercises.  Many yoga postures require major and minor muscle groups to be used simultaneously. Some people feel like every muscle in their body is being used! This is different than traditional weight lifting. The strengthening in yoga requires your entire body to be working as one unit. The strengthening of one muscle group is connected to that of another muscle group. This improves your overall core strength from a centered and connected place. You will find it much easier to move quickly and effortlessly in sports when your whole body feels strong as a unit.

Yoga can help in many ways

Despite the fact that flexibility is one of the ten CrossFit pillars of complete, well-balanced fitness. Increasing flexibility potential remains the downfall of most athletes training program. According to the ten general physical skills list, flexibility is allegedly as important as power or strength. So why don’t we take it more seriously? Stretching(Yoga)without a doubt, is all focused on increasing performance.

Yoga + Weight Training

I get emails all the time from different people asking great questions. Here is one about weight training and Yoga.

I am 29 yr old fairly fit guy who has recently taken up Ashtanga Yoga. Previous to doing Yoga I lifted weights three times a week (not huge amounts of weight I'm a fairly slim athletic build). I find now that the weight lifting interferes with my Yoga as my muscles haven't recovered enough so I stopped lifting a few weeks ago. Do you have this problem?

If you find weight training to inhibit your yoga practice it may simply be how you are weight training. Yoga should compliment your weight routine. Yoga can help with stretching and fluid movement. This is something that pro athletes have found to work wonders when used in combination with weights. Yoga and weight training offer a complete and balanced program for total fitness of body and mind. This will give you a better outlook on life and improved confidence in every aspect of living.

Yoga Can Help You Sleep

Don’t you hate it when you can't sleep at night? Who doesn’t love a good long sleep? Yoga can help you get that. The human body regularly needs exercise because it hasn’t evolved to a point where it can just rely on machines to do all the work for us. So, by taking the elevator instead of stairs or sitting in a car and driving to work, we are not getting enough exercise. Our body still expects to be fit enough to run away from lions, tigers and other dangerous creatures. By doing yoga, you will provide the body with this exercise and that will help you sleep better.

Forearm Stand w/ Snowboard

The benefit of Forearm Stand is that it offers more stability than Handstand due to the larger foundation of the forearms as opposed to the hands. However, finding the strength and openness in the shoulders can be challenging. Take your time playing with this one, and remember turning your world upside down can simply begin with flipping your ideas about what your body can or cannot do.

Yoga Relaxation

Because Yoga incorporates lots of deep breathing and stretching, there is a powerful element of distressing in your practice. If you are the type of guy who runs around all day worrying about everything or under pressure in your job, you need to get into a Yoga class. Deep breathing has proven to be a powerful way to reduce blood pressure and increase oxygen uptake; this lowers your cortisol levels (stress hormones) and boosts your endorphins (good hormones). And who doesn’t want that?

Yoga can help Strength

Many activities build strength and endurance, but they are not necessarily something that will give you the coordination and body awareness that Yoga can. It’s even easy to start small and move up gradually over time. But let’s be clear: it can be as difficult as you want it to be.
As an example, standing on one foot and doing the bow pulling pose challenges you on multiple levels and brings about a new perspective on your fitness. Let’s not forget that peak performance is not just based on strength or power, but a range of factors. A flexible muscle has an increased range of motion…therefore you have increased access to the actual muscle fiber in your movements. Increased access= more overall strength.

Benefits of Yoga

Stretching with your breath, in alignment and with awareness, is also known as yoga. The benefits are numerous and well documented.

Here are just some of the benefits of yoga:

• Increases circulation, supporting optimal health in many ways
• Balances strength and flexibility
• Increases lubrication of joints and connective tissue
• Increases breath capacity
• Detoxifies the body and de-stresses the mind
  

Forearm Stand

 

Beginner's Tip

Many beginners find it difficult to prevent their elbows from sliding away from each other in this pose. Buckle a strap and loop it over your upper arms, just above your elbows. Extend your arms straight out in front of you at shoulder width and adjust the strap so that it hugs your outer arms. Then use the strap in the pose, but think of pushing the arms slightly in, away from the strap, rather than letting them bulge out into the strap.

 

 

Downward-Facing Dog

Stretches feet, shoulders, hamstrings, and calves; strengthens arms, legs, and core

Start on your hands and knees with your feet and knees hip-width apart. Position your hands about shoulder-width apart, and spread your fingers wide. Pressing firmly through your hands, lift your knees off the floor and straighten your legs. (If you have tight hamstrings, a gentle bend in the knees is fine). Walk your hands forward a few inches, and walk your feet back a few inches to lengthen the pose. Squeeze your thighs as you press them toward the back wall. Press your heels back and down toward the floor (though they might not reach the floor). Relax your head and neck and let your shoulder blades slide down your back toward your feet. Set your gaze between your feet. Suck your stomach in and engage your core muscles. Breathe deeply. Hold for three minutes, rest, and repeat one more time.

Why it's good for you: We often experience back pain due to chronic tightness in the hamstrings and hips. It's also common for us to have very tight shoulders. Down Dog releases those areas, while building upper body strength. If you can do only one pose a day, start with Downward Dog.

Come get Balanced!

Mid-Line

A basic Yoga pose is a cross-legged seated position that begins many yoga classes. For me, it is difficult to maintain a neutral spine in this position, as this is the case for many men. From my own perspective, I have logically decided why I have trouble maintaining this position. A probable reason why I can't hold this position properly is because my hip muscles are tight, particularly the hip rotators. I perform so many different explosive lifts on a daily basis. They are preventing my pelvis from rotating in neutral position, so my lower back muscles have to overwork to stabilize. So, holding the easy cross-legged pose is kind of like a workout for me because my muscles are working against me, rather than for me. This can be a good thing since this is a form of active-stretching. In other words, the weakened and lengthened muscles are working to overcome the stronger shorter muscles, and overtime, my body posture will improve as will my muscle flexibility.

Downward-Facing Dog

1. Start on your hands and knees in table position. Your knees should be right below your hips, and your hands should be just above your shoulders with your fingers spread out. Curl your toes under.
2. When you exhale, lift your knees up off the floor. If your heels don’t naturally drop toward the floor, or if the pose feels tight, slowly heel toe press. Keep your feet still, but alternately bend and straighten each leg like you’re walking in place.
3. Push your thighs back and straighten your knees without locking them.
4. Let your head hang between your straight arms. Push your chest towards your thighs. It’s tempting to let your shoulders hunch up toward your ears, but the position is much more comfortable if you pull them down. Concentrate on maintaining a long neck. Also, rotating your upper arms out can help to release the tension in your shoulders.