On The RECord

by Becca Starr

After having now duly attended two weeks of Fac/Staff yoga, I hereby proudly announce I can touch my toes. As many of my SPINNING buddies know, I am of the intrinsically non-stretchy variety. I am dense. I sink. I routinely attend early morning Boot Camps, I teach SPINNING. I do not and, until this point, could not stretch. But it’s 2013.

2012 was a year of fro-yo and mini-skirts. Of Blue Ivy, fiscal cliffs, and warm winters. For some reason, there was not enough chocolate in 2012. I am busily fixing this. For other reasons, there was a lot of playing-it-safe. We can fix this one together.

If I were to say I am terrified of Yoga I would be only mildly lying. I like being good at things, hence my avoidance of ball sports. I hang around people who are really good at things I’m ok with being bad at (read: musicians, mathematicians, people who play ball sports), and avoid people who rock the same things I do. I have, for example, never had a friend with as stellar fashion sense as myself. I do science and therefore date people who think I’m a genius. I don’t do/take/practice(?) Yoga because you can’t do it to the Lion King soundtrack, because I breathe really loudly, and because I am horrifically, extraordinarily, superbly and insurmountably inflexible.

Which is exactly why, for two whole weeks now, I’ve been doing Yoga. Safe for me is SPINNING, squats, and a ridiculous number of lunges. Safe for others is miles on a treadmill, or hours on a mat. But hey, it’s 2013, let’s play it something else.

by Maren Hunsberger

So winter can be a little rough. I love the holidays, winter break, and cozy snow weather just as much as the next girl, but the 30-degree weather we’ve been having lately has been difficult to bear.  Where are the 70-degree temperatures we had before break?  Winter seriously affects my groove.  With the days getting darker and colder, it just happens that some of us start to operate at a lower level of happy during the winter.

It’s hard enough to make ourselves get out of bed and study, much less get out of the dorm (or house) to go for a run or come to the gym. In my experience, this turns into a vicious cycle. The more I don’t get out and move, the grumpier I get and the less I want to get out and move. The transformation that occurs after I get my butt out of bed and go to the gym for a class or go for nice long run in the woods is incredible. I’m immediately happier, more energized, more likely to smile, and much more motivated to do anything else that needs to be done.

Though this cycle holds true for any time of the year, it is especially true in the winter. So how do we keep our spirits up during the desolately cold wasteland of January and February? We come to the REC and get sweaty! Maybe it’s a group class where we can dance and laugh and shake off our winter blues, maybe it’s a solid, solitary treadmill workout, but whatever it is, it’ll put a smile on our faces and get our lives moving again.

by Sarah Prowitt

As I’m spinning along with the other ten participants in an afternoon spinning class at the Student Rec, my mind begins to wander. It’s a fault of mine, the unintended meditation. I think a lot about my happiness, my health, my goals, and my state of mind. So as we’re all spinning I begin to think: Why am I doing this? I’m here sitting on an imaginary bike, okay the bike is stationary, but the “hills” are imaginary. I’m thinking about what got me to bike to the gym, to stay in a room for an hour sweating and pedaling. The instructor yells out “Increase Your Resistance!” And then it hits me; this is why I’m here.

I typically run by myself when I need cardio.  I don’t like struggling around others. I’m self-conscious about my cardio, “Am I pushing myself hard enough? Will other people notice if I skip an interval hit?” Don’t get me wrong, I consider myself in good physical shape. I workout to feel the endorphins, I push myself to achieve new goals. This past fall, I ran 13.1 miles in my first half marathon. It’s important to do these things. To find new goals, to seek out, to find the edge of discomfort: to increase our resistance.  Routine is the banality of life. We walk the same way to class everyday, we eat the same foods, and we do the same things. It’s time to take charge, time to make a conscious decision to break out of routine. In yoga poses, the body often tries to go in the direction of least resistance. It is far easier to slouch than to sit up straight in good posture. So, instead, one must be mindful of his/her body and find the dynamic energy in the tension of the pose. Consider what it would be like to apply that mindfulness to our everyday actions.

There is a lot of tension at William & Mary. There always seems to be just slightly too much to do and not enough time for sleep and socializing. So we talk about it. And boy do we talk about it. It’s even stressful when we don’t have work; we’re convincing others around us that we’re working hard too, under mutual shared stress. So here is my challenge to you: when thoughts of stress arise, don’t vocalize them. Write it down, and then write down what you are going to do about it. Seriously, jotting down your goals makes them more concrete and, in turn, more likely you will achieve them. I’m not saying don’t go talk to someone if you’re concerned. Trust me. Sometimes we need to vent or seek out help, and that is OK. But sometimes we settle into a banal routine of voicing our tension. We say we are stressed and then we get more stressed. It is a self-perpetuating cycle. But you have the key to break free.

It’s always difficult to work out in the winter, there are so many convenient excuses—it’s too cold to bike to the Rec, I have too much work and, my personal favorite, I’ll just work out over break. But ask yourself, is it worth it? Is the hour you spend studying instead of taking a break and enjoying a workout really going to make or break your semester?  If your answer is yes, consider this, in ten years would you rather say I fell in love with a healthy lifestyle and began the best commitment to myself, or I got straight As?  Your actions determine your priorities, if you put your health and well being first, other things will fall into place. And it’s scary to try something new, or to choose to be a beginner in a fitness class. But it’s important to consider that every participant, every teacher and every expert was once a beginner too.

Increase the resistance in your reasoning. Ask yourself, for what end am I choosing this option.  Does it make me feel good about myself? Do I feel more productive? Does it give me peace of mind? If your workout isn’t doing these things than you should increase your resistance to the reasons that have brought you to your workout. Let go of feelings of obligation, you should only do what you decide to do, not feel compelled to do. And focus on what really matters. Nobody will remember (or care) what you looked like when you’re 50; they’ll recall the things you did.

So I leave you with these thoughts, choose the path of internal resistance. Step outside your comfort zone for the sake of dropping routine. We are young, decisive, and no one is going to tell us: you cannot. You determine your actions, your motivation, and ultimately your lifestyle. Pick something that is hard for you, for the sake of trying it. New experiences can only improve you, you learn from every single one. Don’t let the hard things in life feel like they are too much to handle. Instead, choose your hard: being stressed out is hard and trying something new is hard, but I guarantee on is more rewarding than the other.