The journey

The Journey

Catch Fitness 20 Week Challenge 2018

My journey to better balance and flexibility involves many yoga classes along with gym programmes to improve strength to assist in both these areas.

The yoga classes are hard for me - I feel very rickety even after 2 years of going to classes. Everyone else seems so fluid and flexible. The flow sequences in the class challenge me - high plank, low plank, upward facing dog, downward facing dog. Half moon and Twisting triangle poses are very hard as they include balance and flexibility. Same with dancer pose - it took me quite a while to even work out how to step my feet into the band with this pose let alone reach my feet to the sky!!

I was listening to the radio and a listener had rung up to talk about pilates - she said it wasn't easy like yoga - pilates is really hard! I wanted to ring up and ask if she had ever been to a power yoga class!

Margo, one of the owners, says they often have people come and ask which are the beginners classes and she tells them there are none, they are all a challenge!

Rachel tells me not to worry about what other people are doing, that the practice is for me but it is quite intimidating when the people around you are twisting themselves in knots and bending over backwards. Rach came to one of the classes I was going to regularly - the instructor would say to me, "That's great Stephanie, now just twist a bit further and a bit higher." I told Rach that's what the instructor said to me every class so I heard her giggle when the instructor said the exact thing to me at that class!

One teacher told us a story of when she first strted doing yoga. Her teacher could fold herself over of the floor. Our teacher was envious of it - but the teacher said it had taken her 18 years to be able to achieve it!!

Start of Challenge

Blair has given me challenging programmes with lots of strength based activities along with balance - balancing on the bosu ball, paddle pulls on the upside down bosu ball, press ups on the bosu ball and side to side on the bosu ball. Yes, the bosu ball features significantly in my programmes!! Also many, many walking aeroplane/superman walking lunges to complete!

So gym workouts, yoga classes, running, aqua fitness and hockey.

My Challenge is different to the last two years when I put my heart and soul into completing everything offered to me. I thoroughly enjoyed it - all the little challenges and adventures - but this year I had other challenges...

I shifted out of my house of 20 years - this was a mission! We also had to completely clear our housing co-op ready for demolition - no rubblish left on site they told us!! Having to find a new place to live with three cats was stressful but we achieved that. The cats settled in together relatively easily and apart from Tabby Tabster giving us a scare one day, climbing a very high fence and leaving for 12 hours before returning hungry, they love their new digs! 

I am a trustee for our housing co-op and the four of us have attended so many meetings working towards rebuilding Peterborough Housing Co-op. There have been planning set backs, money issues and consultant frustrations. I am the contact person and have taken over the accounts so this involves a lot of hours decision making and stress.

While I was able to include Pete in many of the previous Challenge activities, it still involved me spending a lot of time at the gym, yoga and pool along with everything else. So he was happy that I did my main categories but didn't spend as much time with the other challenges and spent more time with him.