Monthly skating review: progress and goals adjustment

I was telling you at the beginning of April that my plan for the month was to crawl trough it. I'm so happy that I haven't planned for more, because I would have been disappointed.

Now, firstly, not necessarily related to skating, but with life in general, I have so many thoughts... And I'm conflicted in choosing between suppressing them, and wishing and waiting for life to come back to "normal", or acknowledging the thoughts and using this time to re assess the "normal" and hope that the world will move forward, to something better, not backward, to "normal".

Then, on a more practical side and related to skating, I try to help my body stay healthy and in shape. But, I'm disappointed I've gained 5 pounds. Obviously I ate too much for the amount of exercise I've been doing. My exercising now consumes less calories then before, because I don' t do that much cardio. So I would have had to eat a little less then before. But, for the first few weeks, while adjusting with staying home and cooking more, I think I may have eaten more... I'm looking at what I eat now and I think I'm eating healthy, and I think is less then before the quarantine as calories. I think at this point my weight will be stable. Of course I would love to loose that extra weight I've already gained, but not by dieting... not now, when I need the strongest immune system I could have. So, I should increase the cardio exercises...

As for last month exercising, I definitely haven't figured it out. I did consistently some strength exercises, some light yoga exercises and mostly watching instead of following, some ballet. And, I've ran outdoor twice...

The strength exercises it seems I approached wrongly. I wasn't warming up before them, and I wasn't stretching and rolling after... I didn't think I was doing that much. A set of eight here and there... But, I cramped few times and my hip had some pain. I mean, from what? I wasn't doing anything strenuous... It was eye opening when I started to roll my hips, quads and IT band. Oh boy... As for the hip, besides of not rolling the big muscles and them probably pulling the hip muscles, I think I do sit more then in the past and that shortens and tightens the hip flexors.

With yoga, the light exercises are fine. For really getting into a more serious practice, the problem is that I cannot use a mat with the cats around, and any pose that I would need a grip for, like deep lunges, triangle, even down dog, I cannot do on the rug.

For both yoga and ballet, I just don't have enough space near the computer if I want to follow along. There are so many ballet and yoga lessons online, and as I was watching and trying to follow along, it just didn't click for me. I thought maybe they are over my level, or I was just not emotionally connected. But them my regular ballet professor offered a ballet class on Zoom and I definitely connected. After hitting the furniture on the smaller steps it became evident that I couldn't go for it...

That instructor also offered a stretch class (yoga and pilates inspired) and that hit the spot big time. I did take the time to move some things around and turn the monitor around before the class.

And outdoor running... Well it was a rainy and cold month and... I hate running anyway...

I'm trying to learn from all these in order to improve my life moving forward. And I'm not thinking just about this month. There are some ice rinks that posted the safety guidelines for when they'll open. There is gonna be masks, social distancing, limited number of skaters on ice, so limited availability of ice, maybe price increase. It may not be very accessible. And no partnering... so my ice dancing training for the test goes away. If I cannot be on ice at least 3 times a week, the whole training concept goes away. And this can take a while...

The plan for this month is to move more and it has to be outdoor because I cannot move more in the house. Also, do the strength exercise after warming up, and do the rolling. If at the middle of the month I'll see that the real skating and ballet won't be back any time soon, I'll have to rearrange some furniture so I can really get into ballet and yoga at home.

So instead of crawling as I did last month, I would like this month to start walking... Small steps...