Shapeshifting Sloth

Yin yoga for the lower back and hips:

1. start in a low squat, you can place your hands in front of you to get more support. If your heels don’t touch the floor, put a blanket underneath to get more stability. Stay here for 2 to 3 min

2. butterfly: from the squat put your bum on the ground, place your feet together and fold forward. Stay here for 3 to 5 min

3. square pose: put your right shin parallel to the front of the mat, place other leg on top, shin also parallel, so the top foot is on the bottom knee and vice versa. If this is too hard you can also cross your chins or sit in cross-legged position. Fold forward for more stretch. 3 to 5 min per side (pay attention to your knees, if you feel pain go less deep or come out of the pose!)

4. happy baby: come lie on your back, point lower legs up and take hold of your thighs or your feet, push your upper legs down towards to mat. 3 to 5 min

5. frog: it’s easy to start from child pose here. From child pose walk your knees wider, you can keep your feet together or turn the legs out so they make an angle. Walk your upper body forward, find a place to relax. 3 to 5 min

6. stretch out, grab hold of your elbows, place head on your arms. 3 min

7 and 8. swan and sleeping swan. Come to down dog, lift leg and place knee in between hands, walk your back leg back if you want. You can put the foot of the front leg more to the back if you want less of a stretch. Watch out for your knee, go less deep or come out of the pose if it hurts your knee. Stay upright for 2 min, then walk your hands further and relax your upper body to the floor, stay for 3 to 5 min, then come back to down dog to change sides.

Did You Know?

I need to do some cardio.

Putting weights away is cardio.

The 60 best ab workout you can do at home

Calisthenics exercises are characterized as using large muscle groups to lift or move your own bodyweight. Here is a list of calisthenic exercises.

I was always frustrated how my P.E. teachers wanted all of us to go “all-or-none” and basically hurt ourselves without letting us build up from square-one like in the first gif.  Then they’d fuckin yell at us for not doing it right >:|

And remember, many exercises can be modified in this way! I did an image search for “modified pull up” and got exactly what I was looking for right away, which is this:

Doing pull ups on a lower bar, or from the straps with handles that gyms sometimes have (called the TRX - they can also be used to support yourself during squats and some balance exercises) is a lot easier than jumping straight into vertical pullups, and lets you build up that muscle with exercises that are still comfortable and safe for you, so you can do more sets of more reps.