Coordination highs and lows

Oh the highs and lows of this functional stuff. Yesterday's goal- work on form, so that one day we will be able to do the elusive handstand pushup. It started off nice and innocent: feet on a box, hands on the floor, ass in the air. Next stop, hands on the floor, feet crawling up the wall with buttocks flying high in the air again. Final stop...climbing into a rubber band contraption, hanging from a bar. Once you are fully strapped in, locked and loaded, it was a matter of placing both hands on the floor, then kicking your feet up. Fortunately, there is assistance from your friendly neighborhood trainer/coach to help get you into that full on vertical position. So we did this several times, and it went well. I actually liked being strapped into this rubber band concoction and flipping myself upside down for a bit. Sounds a bit funky in a perverse kind of way, but, there ya are!

Tonight was not so successful in the functional arena. Started off okay, doing some "knees to elbows". For anyone who doesn't know, knees to elbows in this new world of mine is not that happy little dance where you lift your knees and touch your elbow to it alternating.....no, no, no - that is far too wimpy of a move. Knees to Elbows is basically, kind of doing a sit up from a hanging position. In other words, imagine yourself in a dead hang from a bar - then hoist your knees up until they touch (or in my case, come semi-reasonably close to touching) your elbows. No wimpy-ass dance move there! Then we did the same thing from some rings. After that we hit the wall with this "sticking point" thing. Remember, oh so many years ago, as a mere chitlin, when you would play on the bars at the playground, hang upside down, do flips, like they were nothing?? Yeah - now try that in your 40's - not quite so limber anymore,huh? The main goal of tonight was to hang from the rings in curled up in a ball and mostly upside down. Could I do that?? HECK NO!!! I was bouncin' all over the place. This was definitely not my forte. I knew I lost some of the abilities of my youth - but holy crap..it was apparent with this one! So, for me - this was the end of my excellent coordination week.

Now - despite the night ending on a bitter note for me (it's quite odd - I'm getting to the point that I don't like failure on these workout challenge things - who'da thunk?), on the plus side, I did manage to conquer the 20 inch box. Yes, that is right, I actually jumped onto a monsterly huge, high box, and didn't kill myself - and I did it more than once! Tonight, this is a good thing - the next time we have to do 30 box jumps - I'll probably have a change of mind.