2 Years of Yoga Everyday!

On June 29, 2020June 30, 2020 By lex270In Fitness, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Two years ago on the 20th June 2018, I started doing yoga every morning. If you didn’t catch it, you can read all about my 365 Days of Yoga and all the benefits I found from practicing my new morning routine.

I’m happy to say that after I completed my year of yoga, I continued on. I have now completed my second year of yoga with only missing a few days.

Until Lockdown.

With the kids school closed, it meant that I had more time flexibility in the mornings because I wasn’t doing with the school run.

It started with getting up a little later for morning yoga and fitting in workouts during the afternoons. After a week or so it shifted to working out in the mornings while using yoga as my cool down. However, with the endorphins flying round my body, I was purely focussing on the stretches and not giving any thought to the mindfulness and breathing side of yoga.

A year into morning yoga, my plan was to fit in a 20mins hiit/cycle/run before hand, but I only managed this a few times. Why? Because I find it hard to get up early in the winter. You would think that years of getting up at 6:30am for school and 5:30am for the London commute, would have programmed me into a early morning machine… but no. I hugely dislike getting up in the dark. This is also why I needed to implement morning yoga into my life in the summer months, and why I’ve now started the early morning workouts… I just can’t start something like this in the winter, I find it far too difficult.

The Lockdown and the lighter mornings have massively helped with getting up earlier and so I have managed to get myself into our home gym (the garage), early most days. I have an espresso and a homemade flapjack before working out to get me going, and I’m really into it! Now one of my children has returned to school, I have to get in the gym earlier to be finished and ready for the school run.

My goal is to carry on these morning workouts even when school has completely returned and the sunrise gets later and later. I know some people have to throw everything into starting a new habit / lifestyle change, but I am not one of those people. I have to take small steps to make them stick. If my goal was to get up an hour earlier every morning to do yoga, it would have lasted days. Instead, I made myself get up just 10-20mins earlier which was far more achievable for me and has become a daily habit.

I have put the yoga in place, which took me a few years to commit to. I have put the morning workouts in place, which has taken me nearly a year to accomplish. Now, how long will it take me to implement workouts followed by yoga, and not just using it to stretch?

In my 365 Day of Yoga blog post, I talk about how much morning yoga changes my mood and sets me up in a positive way for the day ahead. I get different result from working out because I’ve been far more active, I’m fired up and motivated for the day ahead. I don’t prefer either vibe, I’m just happy to not be grumpy first thing in the morning when parenting anymore, which has been a HUGE help when practicing patience when homeschooling my kids through a global pandemic!

Have you been more or less active during lockdown and why? Have you taken up a new fitness routine or hobby and what is it? Who has drank more wine than normal? I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to!

Wearing Active Wear by Island Feather

Learn to Wakeboard UK 2020

On January 31, 2020 By lex270In Fitness, Uncategorized, WakeboardingLeave a comment

Over winter I tend to hunker down and give myself a rest from wake work, which is due to a few of reasons… one: its cold, dark, gloomy and the lakes around me close down, two: I need a rest/break from the season and focus on other things, and three: I have a family who are in school, and leaving them for a few months to go to the souther hemisphere to wakeboard would be frowned upon I feel?

As you know I’m a Wakeboard Coach and I run Wake Daze, which are wakeboard camps for women, usually combined with some lakeside yoga, and you’re fed and watered too.

So I digress, but this is the time of year when the cogs start turning and I plan my season ahead. So here we are.. I’ve got some of the dates confirmed for Wake Daze 2020 and they are: 16th May, 20th June, 25th July & 5th September. These will be held at the lil wake haven that is Xtreme Wake.

Interested? Want to learn how to wakeboard? Want to improve your riding? Then read on…

Beginner: Beginners are welcome with open arms as its a great way to give the sport a go for the first time. You’ll be on a straight line cable and so you are the only person wakeboarding at that time, so all the attention from the coach (yours truly) is on you, and also the speed can be tailored for your ability, which means we can start off super slow.

Intermediate: Been riding a couple of seasons? Got your own kit? Stuck on what to do next or a certain trick? Then sign up as there is loads for you to learn from your first wedge/kicker or rail hit, to kicker grabs and 180s, to pressing on rails and of course, we can’t forget about the good old basics of some surface tricks to get those board skills up.

Advanced: You’re ready for air tricks and bigger kicker spins or flips? Or you want to try that air trick that is just a little too daunting to try on the 5-tower cable? Then come on down and lets work on them together so you can progress with your wakeboarding career.

So, if you’ve been thinking about trying wakeboarding, or you want to improve your riding, come and join me this summer! Get in touch here for more infomation or to book on.

See you on the water xx

365 days of yoga

On June 20, 2019June 20, 2019 By lex270In Fitness, Parenthood, Uncategorized2 Comments

It was on the 20th June 2018 that I started doing yoga everyday.

Why? Yoga is something that I’ve always turned to in times of need. That sounds a bit dramatic, when I say need.. I mean, I couldn’t do any other sport.

So quickly, the three main times I’ve used it is when I was 19 and I’d had knee surgery. I was prepped to have a couple of days on crutches but once the surgeon had got in there, it turned out I’d done loads of damage, which led to being non-weight baring for TWO MONTHS. What the hell. They were a dark two months. I even turned to art to let out some emotion. Good lord. So after learning how to walk again, I turned to yoga to get my body moving.

Then I used yoga after having both babies, as you can’t just pop out a kid and hit the water two weeks later. And I don’t do very well when I can’t move my body, its how I think, brainstorm, plan, let anger out, grieve.. you get the picture. So yoga allowed me to start moving again.

I’d wanted to start doing yoga everyday for a long time, like a year, but NEVER made any effort to actually do it. Then it was my husbands birthday (and it was a big birthday) and I had a mid life crises. Not him. Me. What? I freaked out. Like, shit, we’re not getting any younger. Our bodies are only going downhill from here, I don’t want that to be it, I’m going to die!…. all of that.

That evening I did yoga.

I felt calmer.

That night I said to my husband, ‘I’m going to do yoga before you and the kids get up.’ I set my alarm for 6:30 (the household comes downstairs at 7am). The alarm went off the following morning, I got up and did a morning yoga routine on you-tube.

I felt amazing. Number one because I’d just woken my body up with yoga, but secondly because I had actually done it! And then I did it the next day, and the next… before I knew it, I’d done a week of yoga every morning. My days were better, I was eating better (you know me, I’m always over-hauling my diet, I love learning about different foods and what health benefits they have), and my mood considerably improved.

Noticing my mood with the kids was the real eye opener. Whether you have kids or not, sometimes you’re not in the best mood first thing in the morning. So for me, being thrown 101 questions and demands before I’d had my breakfast was a shit way to start my day. Everyday… until the end of time. Amen.

So, now with the yoga kick starting my day, I have limbered up, I’ve oxygenated my blood, got the blood moving around my body and gone through my checklist of three things to be grateful for in my life. (And I do between 10 – 20mins of yoga in the morning, not loads, but just enough). When the kids come down at 7am, I’m ready for them with a smile on my face, open arms for a morning cuddle and down to make breakfast, (I’m on hot water with lemon, porridge with walnuts, almonds, raisins and coconut, with full fat cows milk, maybe I’ll switch to a nut milk one day but I like dairy for now).

I honestly don’t think there were any more than 10 days in the last 365 days where I haven’t done yoga.

What have I noticed from doing yoga nearly everyday for a year?

1. I sleep better

2. I’m happier

3. I deal with things in a much calmer way

4. I’m stronger physically

5. I recover from workouts faster than I used to (yoga is stretching everyone, shhhhh)

6. I haven’t had any injury (touch wood!)

7. I feel agile, which I bloody love!

8. I feel 25 (I am not 25).

9. I want to eat better because I’ve started the day with movement

10. I can’t think of a single negative. Honestly. None. Nothing. Nada.

Doing yoga nearly everyday for a year wasn’t an experiment for me, I wanted to make a lifestyle change, a manageable one which I feel I’ve achieved. I wanted to be able to do the things I used to do in gymnastics, I want to push my body past what I could do as a kid, and stay active and agile for the rest of my life. I really didn’t expect it to have the effect it did on my daily mood that it did.

And now I’ve achieved one goal… its onto the next…

What I would love to do is get up a little earlier to get a 20min run/bike/hiit session in, and then yoga. We shall see… I’d need to get up at like 6am to fit all that in and then I’d need extra time to make a huge breakfast after that kind of activity! Mmmm fruit and banana pancakes…

I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog, maybe it’ll inspire one person out there to start integrating yoga, movement & mindfulness into their daily routine! 🙂 Do you do yoga often? What are your thoughts on it? Let me know if you’d like me to send you a few links to the morning yoga you tube videos that I followed!