Tag Archives: shadow boxing

Unfolding the bones

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Unfolding the bones

I’m at the age where missing a day at the gym, never mind a week or two really hurts.  This weekend was a case in point.  I had a paper due (today) and aside from a couple of walks in the cold and some crunches, I was pretty much attached to my laptop.  And yeah, it feels good to have completed the work, by my body is an aching, creaky mess from spending hours at a time curled up on the couch with bad posture.  For breaks, I cooked meals, helped by daughter with homework and talked over the points of my paper with my husband, but I was pretty much engaged with writing for two days.

And the reckoning?  Aside from an extra pound on the scale, I’m faced with that “starting-over” feeling!

Solution?  Sun salutations, lots of stretching, really gentle shadow boxing and a brisk walk!  Abs can come later.  This sort of unfold-the-bones workout can be really helpful whenever you’ve been through a period of shall we say intense cerebral activity, aka, lying in bed watching TV, after a brief illness, or as in my case, when you’ve been on a deadline in a work or other context and have needed to type on a computer for long periods of time.

The point is not to despair — but to work it out.  I always find that a couple of days of modest meals also helps.  Not to the point of hunger, but just enough to feel as if I’ve given my body a real shot at dropping that extra pound before it gets to happy hanging around with all those other extra pounds.

Finding inspiration

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Finding inspiration

Shadow Boxers

The great woman’s boxer, Lucia Rijker is quite the warrior.  The following clips are from the film “Shadow Boxers” by Katya Bankowski.  I watched them this morning doing crunches.

 

 

Google video has a streaming version of the film here.

Dark at 6:00 AM

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Dark at 6:00 AM

Not that I want to complain or anything, but if you live in Brooklyn, NY and wake-up at 6:00 AM, you’re waking up in the dark.  Okay, true, most northern cities around the planet experience this as a regular feature of the winter months, but it doesn’t make it any more palatable.

So why am I up?  Well work for one, but more so to find the time for sit-ups and crunches, shadowing boxing, sun salutations, and in general gaining some moments before the rush of the day.  That it’s all in the dark gives this time a bit of mystery.  As if I were an acolyte of Nyx, the Greek Goddess of Night, reveling in the time before Helios makes his way across the sky in his golden chariot.

Waking up in the dark also seems to push one’s sense of purpose; as if in wrenching oneself from what otherwise feels so natural, one has made a bold statement of the importance of the time before morning.  Sure, it is morning by the clock, but the body remains in revolt, at least mine does.  And even as I make my moves around the living room, I keep looking out the window in the hopes of connecting myself with the first rays of morning light — recognizing that I will only find myself tune with the a natural order of things at that moment when I spy Homer’s “rosy fingered dawn.”

New beginnings

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New beginnings.

Mondays afford the possibility of new beginnings.  A bit like a new year, Mondays begin the week and hence offer the chance to take a stab at starting over.   This mini-New Year also offers the start of new resolutions such as getting back to the gym, beginning a diet, or waking up an hour earlier to start that novel that keeps beckoning from the keyboard.

The point is that we have that opportunity to take a stab at new things all the time; whether an adventure in cuisine, creative endeavors, physical prowess, or something as simple as drinking one less cup of coffee.

And sure, Thursday can come when cake is the overriding motivation of the day, but you do have Monday or any other day you choose as your start day to look forward to.    That’s the day when you have the opportunity to move yourself along to where ever it is you want to go as a fresh beginning, whether its shadow boxing in the dark as your morning sun salutation or greeting your gym mates at the end of the day having missed their company for a while.

Shadow boxing in the dark

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Shadow boxing in the dark

I’m up really early this morning with a full day in front of me and no likelihood of getting to the gym this afternoon.   So here I am, ready to do at least a little something at home.  The hard part is figuring out how to get started when all I really want to do is get back to bed.

This morning I’m shadowboxing to “Payback,” by James Brown.  The thing about the song is I can move to it and imagine that I’m hitting a giant double-ended bag as I shadowbox in the living room.

Mostly what I love about this song is the sway.  And somewhere around the lyric, “gotta deal with it, gotta deal with it” I’m into the groove.  Jab, jab, right, left hook, right upper cut, left upper cut, left hook, left.

After the song finishes, I have an instance of “what now,” panic.  Playing it again feels right and with muscles starting to wake-up it does feel good to prance around the room.