Lightning Feet

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Tag Archives: kathryn morgan

Fiiiinally…!

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by Catrine S in Dance, workout

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ballet, dance, dance technique, health, irish dance, irish dancing, kathryn morgan, update

It’s been weeks of almost no exercise, combined with far too much food/snacks. As a result, the blog has been sorely neglected – I’m not good at dealing with things not going exactly according to plan, far less actually writing about it. I’ve had headaches for nearly two months, which of course meant that there was very little I had the energy to do, and being a comfort eater, I lost most of my self-restraint in the food department. And being that I didn’t know what it was, I guess I didn’t really dare to work out a lot either. It turned out to be related to my vision, and after a couple of weeks of adjusting to new glasses and de-stressing (it’s been quite stressful at work these past few months), things are improving.

I haven’t really gotten my bad eating habits quite under control yet. However, I am turning over a new leaf and doing one thing at a time instead of doing absolutely everything at once. It would perhaps be more sensible to adjust my diet first and THEN start exercising, but I know from before that if I don’t exercise, my mind won’t be in the right place to be able to keep up good eating habits. I’ve got a plan and everything:

1. Get into the habit of exercising again, but without overdoing it (it will be a new experience!)

2. Start tracking everything I eat, no matter if I go over my limit or not. Aim for a calorie amount that will keep my weight where it is, at least not gain weight.

3. Adjust the calorie limit down a bit, but not too much at a time.

I’m already working on step one. I went to both dance classes last week, plus the weekend class with our instructor from London (she comes over about six times per year to have classes with us). I almost did not go, but it turned out to be a good experience. I’ve hardly danced since the last competition in November, and for quite a few weeks I didn’t exercise at all. I can’t really keep up an entire dance class at the moment, but the teacher said I hadn’t really lost that much. I got good feedback on my first few dances as well, before my lack of stamina made my technique worsen.

I think doing ballet, even if it’s only via videos and rather sporadically these past two months, has helped a lot. My extensions and pointing are better, and I’m working on improving them further. I tend to forget to point here and there (still a vast improvement from the super-flexed back foot I used to have), particularly during changes and skips.

I’ve followed Kathryn Morgan’s beginner video classes, which are really helpful. I’ve never done ballet before, and I’ve never really consciously worked on my technique – since I’ve been absent from a lot of dance classes over the years, because of various illnesses, most of the time has been spent learning and practicing steps, not technique in general. I really like her ballet classes, and they’re a really great substitute for actual classes (which are faaaar to expensive for me). While Irish dancing and ballet is quite different in the way it looks, a lot of ballet technique is extremely useful.

Yesterday I tried one of her strength and stretch for dancers videos. Ouch! I don’t think my ankles/calves/feet have gotten such a workout in a long time, at least not when not actually dancing. I have problems keeping my heels off the floor, particularly when dancing in hard shoes (which have heels on them), and it seems these classes will really help. I think my running will benefit from it, too. I wish she had more stretching though – I’m not very flexible and find that even 10-15 minutes after class isn’t really enough. I could easily have stretched more on my own, of course, it’s not that I don’t know the necessary stretches. But I have very little patience for things like stretching when not actually following along with a video. It’s not really any excuse, I should stretch far more.

I’m thinking of doing the strength and stretch videos once a week, at least nowadays. Perhaps the Les Mills Combat workouts will have to be put on hold for a while, because I simply don’t have time. Or perhaps I can do them as warmup before the strength and stretch – I do love doing them. But with a half marathon coming up (why couldn’t my health have cooperated so I was at least somewhat prepared?) I have to focus on running in addition to dancing. I really, really, really want to move at least one or two of my dances from primary to intermediate this year, and for that I really need to improve my technique and fitness. I won’t really be in shape for the half marathon anyway, so I might as well focus on dance first.

The art of… overdoing it.

27 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by Catrine S in Update, workout

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

ballet, beachbody, combat, dancing, exercise, kathryn morgan, les mills combat, overreaching, overtraining, running, training update, workout

Recently I’ve begun working out again. The plan was to take it nice and easy – not to hold back while exercising, but to work out in reasonable amounts and keep the duration somewhat reasonable too. I love making plans, but have some… challenges in following them up. Mainly I get carried away and forget that there ever was a plan. Guess what? It happened again.

On Saturday, I had postponed working out enough, and found my trusty Les Mills Combat videos. 45 minutes, about half with weighted gloves, 630 kcal. Aaaand then I found ballet videos by Kathryn Morgan which I just had to try. She’s a former ballerina at the New York City Ballet, and has really good beginner’s classes. Not very expensive either. But the lesson lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes (626 kcal), so it was a bit more than I had planned.

On Sunday, I did the 30 minute program of Les Mills Combat, at 357 kcal. But then I had forgotten to buy something I needed for dinner, so I walked for an hour (460 kcal) to get to the gas station, which was the only thing open. By the time I had come home, I had realised that another beginner’s ballet class had been posted, so I went ahead and did that too (414 kcal).

Since I worked out so much on Saturday and Sunday I had intended to take it easy yesterday. Just getting out of bed had been hard, and I couldn’t make it to dance class anyway. But by the time it had nearly become too late in the evening to exercise, my energy level was through the roof, and I realised that I had to get it out or I would never be able to sleep. I had also eaten FAR too much snacks and needed to burn at least a little. Didn’t have any hopes of exercising it all away.

So I did the 60-minute combat program (Where’s the logic in that, by the way? In danger of overreaching and the first thing I do is that? It was very, very fun though, so even if I was sweating buckets I didn’t have any problems getting through it. After years of Irish dancing I love any workouts with lots of kicks in them, simply because I’m good at them. Ended up at 713 kcal, which I’m very pleased with. And that should have been that, but of course I also had to (as if) do one of the ballet classes again (586 kcal). I was doing the same one that I did on Saturday, but I didn’t feel nearly as tired as when I did it on Sunday. Strange.

Today I am definitely not working out. Usually the problem is getting up and doing the exercise you need to do, but if I find something fun that is also part of a skill I want to learn (such as dancing or combat) I find it hard not to overdo it. Once you overreach it’s hard to get back on track, and it might take a long time before you are able to (not to mention that your weight loss often stagnates), so I try not to overdo things – but I’m very bad at it. I always use my heart rate monitor and polarpersonaltrainer.com, so that I can see when I get closer to overreaching, but so far it seems okay. Barely.

I haven’t really started training for the half marathon in April, but it’s too slippery and rainy outside to be able to run somewhat comfortably. So I am hoping that other types of exercise also helps, particularly since I’ve worked out for two hours or more every day. Time will tell. It’s not the end of the world if I’m not able to finish the race, though it would be great.

Saturday will be my first official run of the year, and the day when I will find out just how much my fitness, or at least my running, has detoriorated over Christmas. More importantly, how much worse my shape is than my running buddy’s. She’s lost quite a bit of weight too. We will see! 🙂

Who am I?

30-year old bookworm, recently addicted to running, not-so-recently addicted to Irish dancing and with 15 kg left to lose. I prefer to spend as little time as possible in the real world, and am in love with most things related to words, images and music.

Currently I'm working towards becoming a better runner and dancer, and to be able to live a healthy, comfortable life that is NOT dictated by chronic illness.

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