The wall-sit, chair-sits, and yoga squat burn

At the start of September, I envisioned a month of bike rides outdoors, runs outdoors, and swims, sadly indoors, all designed to help me enjoy the full warmth and loveliness of this beautiful transition from summer-to-fall month. I got off to a good start up through Labor Day. Then someone decided to steal the wheels off my bicycle, essentially putting the bicycle dream out of question.

Along with that came the adoption of five new birds: a rooster named ‘Aina (word for land in Hawaiian and in honor of our beautiful late cat ‘Aina who was born in Hawai’i and we used to also call jokingly the “town crier” because he had such a melodic and constant meow); and four new girls: Vera, Angie, Gina, and Irene. 

Sadly, the new birds came to us mistreated. Our first sign was a rather rank smell in the car on the way home. The second sign was the poor quality of poop that at least one of the birds was producing, and the third — the clincher — was the taste of one of their eggs. No good.

So, against advice to shoot them, axe them, wring their necks, we consulted web sites and a local vet, and $400 later, learned that integrating two flocks is no easy or inexpensive task. One bird — Vera — brought a bacterial infection that may or may not have spread to the entire flock. What this meant was: dump all eggs laid by the hens for at least two weeks, isolate any hens who seem to have been overly pecked (in this case, that was Angie and Gina), and medicate the entire group twice a day — which, for birds, pretty much has to be at least an hour before sunrise and at least an hour after sunset.

For Moving Your Body, what this translated into was 5-6 hours of sleep for about 8 days straight. I knew that my body could take that kind of sleep deprivation for one day but not for a consistent period. So, no more hard cardio, until the hens recovered. I needed to take care of them, my husband who was tending to them much more closely than I could or would, and myself, and I should mention the cats who are part of the family but often don’t understand why human vagaries result in a neglect of their immediate needs.

So, in that time frame, some amazing things occurred:

* Two hens (Vera and Penny, from the original flock, died), which was sad.

* ‘Aina the rooster turned out to be the greatest rooster in the world and integrated the flock and got everyone to play, eat, sand bath, and sleep together, and heal.

* I went for very long walks early in the morning, and kept up with Dave’s September challenge of wall-sits. 

So today was the first day of fall. It began with me awakening a little before 6 a.m. I fed the cats, petted each one of them, and settled onto the couch for a little more sleep. By 6:25 a.m, ‘Aina was crowing me awake. I thought of jogging my husband awake but decided I could open the door for the flock myself. 

By 7 a.m., coffee was made, dishes from last night’s dinner were washed, and I was deep into writing. The fall equinox kicked in at 10:49 a.m. I celebrated with the wall sit (220 seconds = 3 minutes, 40 second), and the yoga squat. The 220 chair sits occurred in the afternoon in my office (40), at the Y later (60 without weights and 120 with weight). In between the market and going to my office to write, I walked some 2.5 miles. My weigh-in this week is the lowest I’ve been since my last juice fast in Hawai’i. I’m happy to say that it got there without a fast, that it might stick and that more pounds might continue to fall off.

 

Small steps

Fall approaches. After a rather frantic summer of writing and harvesting all sorts of garden goods, the regular routine seems to be settling in. I feel like maybe I have left the 130-pound barrier behind, with regular weigh-ins in the 127-129 range. September and October have been good weight-loss months for me in years past, so I’m hoping and working for the trend to hold. My current goal for September: less alcohol, two bike rides each week, two runs each week, two swims each week. The weather demands this routine.

Team David, led by Stephanie Galuppo, seems to be advocating a different approach, which I also am trying. For the 30 days of September, our task is to do a squat against a wall every day, starting with 10 seconds on September 1 and building up to 300 seconds (five minutes) by September 30. My tai chi instructor, Patricia Lao Shih Leong in Honolulu challenged me in a similar way years ago, so I’ve taken it up — and, because I’m maybe a type A personality, I’m going into overdrive: daily squat against the wall, adding 10 seconds a day (and I will say that this one is the hardest one); chair sits — sit down and get up and sit back down x 10 with 10 more added each day; and adding 10 seconds a day to a yoga squat, where there is no wall support but my heels get to rise from the floor.

And so … this daily ritual, at its most extreme, will take me about 12 minutes to complete by Sept. 30. It’s kind of cool to imaging giving up 12 minutes of your life every day to strengthen your lower back, quads, thighs, gluteus, and achilles tendons. It follows the philosophy of Team David’s du-decathlon challenge in August, in the heat of the Olympics: daily — walk 1 mile, climb 50 stair steps, 100 jumping jacks or jump rope, 30 squats, 25 lunges on each leg, 10 Turkish get ups (easily the hardest of the pack), 7 miles run over a week, 1000 yards sw doI did it all for the walk, though feel a little short on the cycling. Main issue, though, is do it as well as you can and good things will follow. I started moving my body by climbing stairs, and realized that at my office, there’s 48 of em. Could I just climb them once, along with front porch steps and some mild regular cardio? I could and so far I have. Tomorrow, 50 seconds of wall sit, 50 chair hits, and 50 seconds of a yoga squat. Less than three minutes. One day at a time.