Isn't it hard to make the throw to second if you are squatting with your heals on the ground?
Huh. I can't keep my heals on the ground while I squat. I never noticed until I tried just now.
A few years ago, I noticed I couldn't stand on one foot and raise the other without holding on to something. Took a long time to get to where I could do that.
Garland pose! Boy did that pose feel good when I was pregnant.
The internet claims that the name garland pose is a mistranslation of the Sanskrit, and it should actually be the excretion pose. (Mala, garland, vs. maala, excretion).
I hadn't thought to put my legs that far apart. It's much easier to get my heels down that way.
Proper form is essentially "be as unladylike as possible".
Do you have a cardboard cutout of Robin Thicke to twerk on?
I loved Garland pose while pregnant, too. It's one that's always been easier for me, and doing it while 40 weeks pregnant made me feel like a badass. I did squats and deadlifts with minimal amounts of weight until about week 24, and while I don't know whether it helped with anything (heebie's back to exercising and I'm not, whine) it made me feel better. Squats are such great exercise.
You had a pretty brutal labor, didn't you? And probably just now getting into the swing of a new semester? I probably sound like LB, but do give yourself a break.
8: No semester due to well-timed baby -- my maternity leave started Monday, technically. I think I'm mostly recovered from labor but I still feel like all my joints are unstable and my core strength is shot.
Also, I don't know if this is a general rule, but I found recovery from my first kid much slower than from my second. I remember really having to recover after Sally; after Newt, I was probably wrecked for a week or so, but nothing serious to recall.
What is a sit-and-reach, and why does it have an overhanging shelf?
1, 2: If you keep your heals on the ground, they'll never heel properly.
Fitness test, I've only seen it in grade school, that measures how close you can reach to your toes when your legs are stretched out ahead of you. The shelf is to make a scale to measure against.
We have goniometers around the office, but not sit and reach box.
I still feel like all my joints are unstable and my core strength is shot.
I somehow still have my core strength. I have no idea how this happened. (I had a 2.5 day labor ending in a c-section.) I was at a meetup of women from my prenatal yoga class the other day and they were all talking about having lost their abs and I had to say, Um, well, my abs are fine. They're under a layer of that weird post-partum loose skin and fat, but they're just fine under there.
It's one that's always been easier for me, and doing it while 40 weeks pregnant made me feel like a badass.
Yes, this exactly. (Er, at 39 weeks. I didn't make it to 40.) The instructor is coaching the class on how to gently lower yourself down onto about three blocks - "But stop if it's too intense for you!" - and you can just plop right down into it and hang out there.
I find squatting quite comfortable, but I also find it nearly impossible to do with my heels down unless in a really exaggerated Garland pose.
I, too, failed my sit-and-reach test. (Did you all have to do the President's fitness thing to pass PE? We were allowed to fail one thing. For most women, it was the pull up category, but I was the only girl who could do the pull up in my class (not like, the entire 500 students, just the 60 or so in my PE class), and it was a good thing, too, because there was no way I was ever going to pass sit-and-reach.)
This thread joins one of about 100 others wherein I'm convinced I need to start doing yoga. (Unfogged: promoting yoga at least since 2007.)
19 reminded me of the importance of cross-thread continuity.
Yes, Moby, we know you're pooping.
Squatting with heels on the floor is easy. The limit to how deep I can go is that I'm weak-as-shit, so once my arse is almost touching the floor I can feel it getting quite uncomfortable in the knees and quads.
Whenever a see a physio, which I've done a few times due to being physically quite shit in many ways, they always start with their canned 'flexibility' spiel, and give me things like the toe-reaching type of tests.
'So, you'll probably find this quite difficult, but once you stretch ... '
..
'Oh ...'
Doing it cold I can reach about 4 or 5 inches past my toes, maybe. Warmed-up, a fair bit more.
17: Sorry about the section, but glad you're recovering okay. My core still feels stretched out but oddly strong. So I can do planks and things now, but when I get tired the deep muscles just sign out for the day unless I'm concentrating on them.
Sit-and-reach was always easy for me, but I have long arms and a tendency to move from my joints. If I focus on trying to stabilize the joints it turns out I'm not nearly as flexible. So, flexibility is a bit overrated without good form.
25.2 reminds me that I'm basically a T. rex with a really long torso, which doesn't help. Maybe I'm more flexible than I think I am - I'm working against a stacked deck.
re: 25
Yeah. I have to concentrate on good form. I have a very flexible lower back [which isn't good] so I can cheat on sit and reach type tests, and also sometimes compensate for tight hamstrings [if I haven't warmed up enough] on head-heigh kicks with lower back flexibility. These days if I'm doing hamstring stretches I have to try hard to use strict form to avoid cheating a bit. If I hinge very strictly at the waist, and keep the back very straight, I can still comfortably go past the toes, but I can't get my head anywhere near as close to the knees/shins.
I find this position quite comfortable. I'm tempted to become a squatting desk pioneer at work. It's only marginally less dignified than my current practice of sitting on a yoga ball.
23: Ha, I messed up my shoulder a couple of years ago, and during rehab the therapist called her colleague over, "wanna see what 125 degrees of external rotation looks like?" Not actually a good thing, but I felt like I got an A+ in shoulder.
I am pretty sure that I messed up my knees by squatting too deep under relatively heavy weights. That is what the physical therapist thinks anyway.
Unfogged: promoting yoga at least since 2007.
If I were some sort of hippie, I'd say that yoga has really helped my core strength, relieved incipient back pain and improved my posture, but, things being otherwise, I'll merely ask whoever happens to be handy to punch me in the face for even thinking such un-American nonsense.
I am pretty sure that I messed up my knees by squatting too deep under relatively heavy weights. ,
Drive those knees OUT!
I've never been able to touch my toes. Even as a small child I had problems sitting in the ground in cross legged position, and by my teens I wasn't able to do it at all. Squatting with my heels on the ground isn't a problem.
And while we're at it you guys all know that yoga is a form of Satanism and if you practice it you should find yourself a priest-exorcist. Or so the publications of the mainstream Polish right say. Also drumming circles. And the Beatles and Rhianna and Hello Kitty. But not Madonna.
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Sorry for the OT request, but does anyone know how long reasonable vs. unreasonable delays are for a private party shipping an item sold on eBay? Let's stipulate that this item is a musical instrument that is delicate and cost real money, and that the buyer paid within like 124 seconds of winning the auction and sent extensive advice on shipping by email to the seller, who claims not to sell stuff on eBay very often. Current count is 5 days of radio silence, i.e. no notice that item has been shipped.
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I got a B in high school PE because I failed the sit-and-reach. I've been doing yoga everyday for 4 months now, and while I'm way better than before, I'm at about the same level most people are when they start, provided they're not that flexible to begin with. On a good day, I can maybe touch my toes.
I, too, failed my sit-and-reach test. (Did you all have to do the President's fitness thing to pass PE? We were allowed to fail one thing. For most women, it was the pull up category, but I was the only girl who could do the pull up in my class (not like, the entire 500 students, just the 60 or so in my PE class), and it was a good thing, too, because there was no way I was ever going to pass sit-and-reach.)
Yes! And we weren't allowed to fail any of them. Though girls did flexed arm hang instead of pull ups, or I probably would have failed that as well. I was the fastest girl in the class. I got an A in the mile, a B on the flexed arm hang and crunches, and an F in the sit-and-reach. It pulled my President's Test grade down to a C, and my total PE grade from an A to a B+. When students complained that we were graded on more than effort, the teacher would respond that math was graded on more than effort as well, so why shouldn't physical fitness? I couldn't decide if her response was reasonable or sadistic.
Also, twice a year they would make us line up in the girls' locker room in our underwear and measure our fat content with calipers. The teacher would just kind of announce it out loud so everyone else in the line could hear, and then make comments depending on how fat you were. Talking to other people, it appears this isn't that normal for HS PE?
God, I hated the pull up test. Year after year of humiliation, that.
Above was me.
25.2 reminds me that I'm basically a T. rex with a really long torso, which doesn't help. Maybe I'm more flexible than I think I am - I'm working against a stacked deck.
I've realized that I have pretty normal length legs but short arms. I always thought I had a really long torso, since you're supposed to figure torso length out based on your arms. I decided to actually measure and it turns out my torso is pretty proportionate to the rest of me, but my arms are really short. It does help explain why I suck so much at touching my toes, even after months of yoga. It also explains why I have always disliked my arms so much.
Just hanging there, in front of the whole class. Gah!
You guys had _tests_ in gym class? And grades? For us it was pass/fail and you could only fail for poor attendance.
Poor attendance, and wardrobe malfunctions.
re: 43
Us, too, I think. I don't remember any testing that had grades, anyway. We had a swimming test, and a gymnastics thing where we had to complete various tasks which was marked, but the marks didn't go anywhere outside of the class.
Compulsory public measurement of body fat content sounds pretty screwed-up.
Yeah, we never had gym tests either. I mean, there was a PE section on your end of term report, but it didn't have a grade or anything as far as I can remember. I don't even think it was possible to fail. (If there had been a test or any kind of quantification I would probably have enjoyed it more; it would have made it more motivating. As it was, PE was just a pointless shuffle of humiliation.)
As it was, PE was just a pointless shuffle of humiliation.
So imagine it with a congenital disability. How do the maniacs who grade PE deal with that?
47: with gleeful cruelty
46.1: we had that too, though they weren't announcing the results super loudly, and that only happened in 3rd and 5th grade.
The USian PE classes of my youth (lo these many years gone) were a grinding misery to those who developed more slowly and to those who just weren't interested.
Fortunately at about 9 years old a switch flipped for me and I became atheletic, and was always a competitive bastard. I wasn't a sadist though, so I didn't go in for the wallflower-bashing during dodgeball.
Last night I thought the 30 day squat challenge sounded like something I could do. Because I can squat easily. So I got up, had a cup of tea, did 33 and then felt ill for an hour. Hmmmm. I should probably eat first and break it into smaller chunks, it says you can spread them out throughout the day.
I should try the 100 push-ups thing again. I don't think I've even gotten past week three.
We never had any sort of fat measurement in PE, thank god.
I'm quite sure that in my school any sort of congenital disability would have been dealt with in a manner that did not result in failure. The rest of us, however, were expected to meet the standards if we wanted to pass with a high grade (I'm pretty sure failing more than one just resulted in, say, a B or C, but I was a grade whore and wasn't about to let that happen), along with the basics of showing up and not just standing around. They did really make us work hard, but generally not in a cruel manner. I was terrible at most sports, but they rewarded trying in every area outside of the damn presidential fitness thing. I also enjoyed that we were constantly rotating through sports, so you knew if you sucked at say, gymnastics, at least in a week or two there might be something slightly more interesting.
We also had to pass our swimming test in order to graduate. I told this once to an acquaintance, and her utterly shocking response was, "What about the black people in your school? Surely they didn't expect them to swim?" I had never heard that stereotype and really didn't know how to respond.
I can't remember how often we rotated sports. We maybe did one or two sports a term. We didn't do a massive range, though. Roughly in order of how much we did them, with the first four or five done often:
Football
Rugby
Swimming
Cross-country running
Athletics [tracks and field stuff]
Basketball
Volleyball
Badminton
Field hockey
Softball
Basic gymnastics
Olympic lifting [only remember doing that for one term in 5 years]
Archery [ditto]
That's a pretty massive range compared to what we had.
Cross-country running, rugby, and football were reserved for the autumn and winter, obviously. As those are the best times to be throwing oneself on the frozen/muddy ground.
We had PE in the gym nearly all the time, regardless of season. We didn't have any grassy field.
Or rather, the grassy field was for football (football-football) practice, not PE. It was also five blocks away.
51.last: "non-swimmer" is actually army slang for black people. And all but one of the non-swimmers we trained - people who failed the military swim test of treading water for two minutes and swimming 100m - were indeed black.
53 is an impressive selection.
Sports that people did at my school:
Compulsory:
Football (until you were considered heavy and resilient enough for rugby)
Rugby
Cricket (in summer)
Cross-country running (when the ground was frozen too hard for rugby)
Athletic stuff generally, mainly track
And hillwalking/navigation/rock-climbing/survival, if that counts as a sport.
Optional:
Hockey (field rather than ice)
Squash
Judo
Tae kwon do
Fencing
Badminton, I think?
The deal was that you had to do the compulsory ones until you were about 14, then you could switch to an optional one if you wanted.
Our school had 3 or 4 full-sized rugby/football pitches, plus a couple of basketball sized gyms, and a few smaller buildings with weights and things. A couple of years ago they built over one of the pitches, but looking on google maps they seem to have added an astroturf pitch, too.
51: If you watched enough TV you would be fully versed in all stereotypes.
Field hockey is pretty much exclusively a women's sport here. Also, I think it must be limited to the coasts mostly.
re: 58
My recollection [which might be slightly awry with time] is that we had four or five hours of PE a week. The core sports took up at least 3 of those hours, and then we'd have other sports in the rest of the time. Which would alternate once or twice a term. With the tail end of November and part of December devoted to country-dancing [which was taught in PE].
There were also a couple of hours a week set aside for 'minority time' [the actual name] where you could do other sports and recreational activities. So that included things like fencing, but also motorbike riding in the school grounds, crafts [knitting, or whatever]. That sort of thing.
re: 61
Mostly a girl's sport here, too, although we would sometimes play it indoors against the girls when the weather was too bad to play rugby or football. We'd occasionally play outside on a grass pitch, but that was less common.
59: Your school was about half the size of my town.
re: 64
A little under 2000 pupils, according to wiki. I think it was a fraction less when I was there. So yeah, not small.
Speaking of pitches and Scotland, I was walking through the park this spring when I saw a group (almost certainly university students) playing Quidditch. Running around with a broom between your legs looks really stupid.
"When a robed man is chasing a woman through an field with a broom that looks like a hard-on, I figure he isn't out collecting for the Red Cross."
My high school was close to 3000 students. I have a pet theory that really big high schools are better because it's hard for them to have the fucked up dynamics of every high school movie ever.
Everyone has known since the 1980s that the platonic ideal of high school is found in the Chicago suburbs. The rest are but imitations.
I was bad at PE, and have something like Teraz's natural flexibility, and thus always thought PE was horrible. I don't think was actually letter-graded at my school, but was certainly hierarchically evaluated on result, not just effort (and of course the two are linked) and used as an evaluative tool for coaches trying to fill out various teams. On the other hand parenthetical's coach's point that your math grades aren't just based on effort, either, has some validity to it.
Figuring out ways to get kids interested in and excited about things that they're not good at (but that benefit them in the long run) is really tough.
I like the approach that you do one sport for a term or two and then say "Right, that's it. Hockey is solved. What's next? Archery? Fine."
By this time ttaM's amla retam, having ticked off every European sport ever invented, is probably on to buzkashi and kosho.
High schools would need a version of buzhaski played on foot, possibly in the gym.
"And if you deliberately throw the goat into the rafters, you'll have to help the janitor get it down."
....and stay after school to do it."
Except for the President's Exam and public fat measuring every semester (quarter?), PE was actually not too bad, all things considered. We also had a large variety of sports and sometimes we were given a choice, so the jocks could pick the team sports and the rest of us could do archery or gymnastics or fencing or whatever. Most importantly there were enough kids in the class who didn't care all that much about athletics to make being bad at sports not that humiliating. It was quite refreshing after middle school, where PE truly did resemble bad 80s movies.
I have mentioned my gym travails in previous thread about high school sports facilities.
High schools would need a version of buzhaski played on foot, possibly in the gym.
And the smallest kid, rather than getting picked last for the team, would get to be the goat.
My school had a cat without ears. That might have also worked.
73 -- I was thinking of middle school, I guess. In (both my first and second) high school(s) we had either teams if you made one of the teams, or "club" sports that were basically rec-league basketball or whatever that you could pick, and were usually reasonably fun (I did fencing at one). But the hatred for junior high PE basically killed any interest I had in organized exercising for ... 20 years? Anyhow I guess people in areas where the thing to do is to go to the gym mostly do that anyway regardless of junior high education so maybe who cares.
re: 75
That just describes my memory of rugby. I didn't play for the school team, but when I played in PE, my abiding memory, as a kid who was small at age 12 or 13 was making a jinky run around maybe one or two slightly bigger kids, and then getting run over by one of the kids who has already had puberty, and is 5ft 10, 12 stone, and has a beard.
I like the approach that you do one sport for a term or two and then say "Right, that's it. Hockey is solved. What's next? Archery? Fine."
That is the exact approach my school took. We went from square dancing to wrestling to American football to weightlifting to archery to gymnastics to softball to hand ball to badminton to basketball to soccer to athletics to field hockey to self-defense to volleyball to swimming to tennis and on and on. It certainly meant that you got to try out nearly all the sports. I find out that I was unequivocally bad at them all. Except for weight lifting, I guess. I did ok at that.
so I didn't go in for the wallflower-bashing during dodgeball.
Do you remember? Do you remember the games we played in the rose garden? All those games! We were young! We didn't mean any harm! Not really. We were always sorry when someone got hurt. We were only playing. Do you remember Benedict? Do you remember how the starlings took flight from the trees and everyone would stop playing and stared up into the sky above the meadow. That was when you could really slam the ball into someone's head. Do you remember our beautiful rose garden in bloom?
My school had a cat without ears. That might have also worked.
When it comes to playing buzhaski with a cat, I'm thinking you want one without claws or teeth, really, before you worry at all about the ears.
78, 79: Part of what I have come to call The Tyranny of Precocity. It is most obvious in physical endeavors, but arguably more pernicious in others.
re: 80
Yeah. I was mostly crap at all sports except cross-country running and middle-distance, where I was pretty good. And volleyball, where I played in the school team. However, I wasn't in our 'A' team, so I couldn't make the top 6, even in a minority sport like that.
Anything that involved a ball, or team work, I was hopeless. Although, ironically, [as per previous conversations] a couple of decades of atrophy in our youth's footballing skills, mean that when I've played more recently against kids, I can fake being pretty good.
When we did Olympic lifting, there was one skinny and unsporting kid in the class who could clean and jerk a good bit more than his own bodyweight. I think the teacher was shocked.
Volleyball involves a ball and team work.
re: 81
Pretty good at that these days. In Frenchy-boxing, anyway, where booting people in the shins is favoured.
Ironically, tried to find a video demonstrating it now, and the first one I found is by a Mitty-like character who teaches historical Western martial arts, and who professes to teach old school Frenchy-boxing techniques after a whole 6 weeks of training ... from me.
re: 86
Yeah, but that would be why I was something like 10th best player in a squad that only had about 13 people in it.
I've mentioned before that my school had its own sport, right? Sort of a mash-up of rugby, football and Aussie rules. A great game, but baffling to outsiders, mainly because of its arcane offside rule. It's also the reason we didn't play rugby and were shit at inter-school football. Well, that and being an academically inclined school of mainly posh kids.
re: 89
Bloody hell, at the rules.
Though I quite like:
"The winner is the team with the most points."
Thanks for that, wikipedia.
89: Oh, are we bragging about unique school-specific sports? We had Spartan Madball.
The linked article is mostly accurate (though the players are in fact limited to current undergrads I think), but technically the game can also end if either team scores three points, I think. I think "no deliberate beating" is a recent addition to the rules, after my time - either that or at least no strikes to the head.
And while players can't go much beyond the goals in either direction, you can go sideways as much as you like, so technically the in-bounds playing field is a band that circles the globe.
Being explicit doesn't hurt. I once thought I was winning at golf because of a similar misunderstanding.
Bloody hell, at the rules.
As with most sports, it's not as complicated as it sounds when you're actually playing. Though, to be fair, the main reason College were any good while I was playing was that we were better at "Rules", ie not giving away penalties, than the other teams.
In 15's all 8 men must be bound in the hots in the middle.
This was made up by J.K.Rowling, wasn't it?
Elementary school featured lots of playing Kill the Guy with the Ball. The only game I know of where the name of the game and the rules are the same. Playing it in 6th grade once after a pileup I got a good look at a classmate's protruding ulna. I didn't play it much more after that.
We used to sometimes play 5-a-side football [i.e. soccer] at the karate class I went to. At the end of the class, if numbers were low and everyone was into it, we'd get a ball out and play. The rules on scoring and playing the ball were the same, but you were allowed to viciously assault the person on the ball in a number of ways,
We used to play a canoe water polo game at school, too, in which you could capsize the person who had the ball. Less fun that one, as I was crap at capsize drills.
Less fun that one, as I was crap at capsize drills.
I was able to capsize a canoe without any practice at all.
99: We were allowed to play it, but we had to call it "Tackle the man" in front of the teachers.
I've mentioned before that my school had its own sport, right? Sort of a mash-up of rugby, football and Aussie rules.
We played Gatorball in school, which sounds oddly similar.
I would love for Gatorball to be Florida's answer to buzhaski.
I grew up calling it "Jim Brown all the way" since that's what my Dad's friends called it as kids. (Though of course I was aware of the other name, though I'm not sure if I was aware at the time what queer meant.) Maybe it was slightly different though, in that it was setup more like a kickoff and if the guy with the ball got all the way to the other side he won and it started over rather than just going until he gets smeared.
I would love for Gatorball to be Florida's answer to buzhaski.
It would be exactly as weird as a Hiaasen novel if they literally played buzhaski in Florida with an actual gator.
I once surprised a friend and myself by declaring with spooky vehemence that I would sell my soul to be able to watch my offspring play the wall game at Eton, because I am, apparently, both insane and weird.
What do you guys mean by 'compulsory sports'? We had one two or three hour gym class per week, and it could include general exercise (situps, pushups etc), gymnastics, soccer, basketball, running (track or cross country) ping pong, badminton, rope climbing, dodgeball, and maybe something else I'm forgetting.
The only organized competitive sports were basketball, track, and skiing and they were completely optional with little interest from people who weren't involved or their closest friends. The school also organized weekly ski trips. The only sport I didn't suck at was skiing and even there I didn't get really good until my freshman year of college. The funny thing is that I was in pretty good shape, doing tons of biking and hiking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hailes_%28ball_game%29
...which is far more in the spirit of original football in that it basically has No Rules. Unfortunately for the Edinburgh dental profession, it's now played only once a year.
109. Compulsory sports is exactly what it says on the tin. A couple of afternoons in the week given over to playing an organised sport. If you go to a posh private school there may be some choice, if not there isn't. The default in England is football/s0ccer (winter) and cricket (summer) - god knows what they do in Scotland, and if you're fuck all use at anything you still have to turn out and go through the motions.
Oh, and if the pitch is frozen or waterlogged they make you run instead.
re: 111
Same in Scotland, with other sports replacing cricket. Chibbing, classes in how you cup your hand just so while smoking a fag, Ned-walking*, etc.
* the recent Christopher Brookmyre novel described someone as 'walking like the Pink Panther needing a shite' which still makes me laugh just thinking of the mental image.
113 reminded me of
"He doesn't even have proper climbing gear!"
"This is Govan climbing gear, boy! Pair of trainers, ten fags and a sarcastic expression!"
Same in Scotland, with other sports replacing cricket. Chibbing, classes in how you cup your hand just so while smoking a fag, Ned-walking*
Even at the posh schools.
SPORTS
"Carmichael House has held the Inter-House Chibbing Cup for the fifth year running. JME Forsyth again led his team out to a well-deserved victory against Stephenson House, with two arteries severed (DP Balfour-Blaikie, 12 minutes, and JDA Erskine-Connell, 79 minutes) and a well-delivered Kelvinside Kiss from the wing pairing of Douglas-Hamilton and Gordon. Stephenson retaliated in the second chukka, with Carmichael House's APR Melville being ruled out of order after a non-approved glassing (Matron reports that PJT Runciman-Usher is recovering well). The Old Boys vs. Prefects match was postponed after the visiting team's captain (Maj-Gen JFG Mackintosh, 1967) was unavoidably detained (by Det Insp RT MacNeill, 1983)."
re: 114.last
Heh. My Dad went through a regular hillwalking phase maybe 10 or 15 years ago. He and a biker mate of his used to jump on his mate's bike and bag a munro, then hit the pub.
He used to get scornful looks for his gear. Which consisted of a pair of scabby Hi-Tec Silver Shadow trainers, jogging trousers, and some kind of home made gaiters.* Gorbals, rather than Govan climbing gear, though.
* he's not completely daft, he had a proper warm jacket, and waterproofs in his day pack. But he just finds trainers much more comfortable for walking, and thinks all the fluorescent super high-tech gear looks stupid and is an eyesore on the mountain.
