The Non-Negotiables: #1

I’ve got two non-negotiable items when it comes to the competition in November. Today, I will talk about #1:

#1: My head WILL stay on my knee during standing head to knee. It WILL stay on there as long as I tell it to. Since it’s the first posture, I would like to kick things off with a bang. I had a discussion with myself where I explained to all my body parts how this was going to work. I know it won’t work everytime I practice it, but ultimately it will happen.

That head will stay there until I tell it otherwise!

I practice standing head to knee every single day. No joke. I’m not even counting the in class time. I practice it every day outside of class. Yesterday I discovered I was starting to make some improvement. I did five sets. My left side is my strongest, and it’s the side I expect to use in competition. Yesterday, I was able to do the following when kicking out on my left side:

Set 1: Held for a 17 count

Sets 2&3: Held for a 10-12 count

Set 4: Held for a 15 count

Set 5: Pretty much fell straight out of.

Then I took class. Well, I also did some mountain, and split arm, and floor bow before class. I am getting better at doing a pre-class workout and not feeling exhausted when class starts. The stamina is starting to get there!

Anyways, the thing to know with yesterday’s standing head to knee is that those counts don’t equal exact seconds. So a 15 count does not mean I held it for 15 second. I probably held it longer than that because I counted to 15 as I breathed (breathe in = 1; breathe out = 2). I really would like to know how long I am holding it for. Mark tried to time me last night but I was beat and couldn’t stay in it long. I need to find out.

Sometimes I wobble or my brain thinks I can’t do it. You know a good way to fix that? I yell at my head. For real. I say, “You will too stay there!” and often it does. Crazy weird, right? I gotta work on getting my elbows down next to my calves more. This work is never done.