Wholistic Fitness

…my idea of a “Health Insurance Card”…a Season Pass to the local ski hill insures my mental, physical, and spiritual health…what’s so hard to understand about that?

My board and i…as the other skiers and boarders coast their cars down the ski hill after an epic day of crankin’ the fluff of sweet”soft opening” only for locals, a lone figure in the parking lot swaps out his snowboard for a tiny pair of skate skis, and in the surreal shimmer of an svadhisthana colored alpenglow, starts skinning up, up, and up…alone, breathing, and so sacredly happy…the mountain yogi is at h(om)e again…(note; i usually tele-ski, in fact, it’s been 3 years since i have snowboarded, however, when conditions line up to create near bottomless,dry powder like today? uhhh, i’m gonna opt for surfin’ those 3,000′ waves on a snowboard!)

one of the things i coach into my fitness warriors is the notion of “NO SPIKES ON THE GRAPH!”. what this points toward is teaching ‘ego restraint.’ often, along the Way of Fitness, it is very easy – seductive really – to let the fun and focus of our fitness efforts get the better of our Intuitive Wisdom and we do ‘too much, too soon’ and upon awakening the next day, we realize we just overdid it; our knees swell, our back goes out, each bodypart feels like a vase of lactic acid. for the competitive athlete, such non-Sense spells chronic sport performance dwindling. our fitness training, if plotted on a graph, needs to reveal a GENTLE, GRADUAL increasing of imposed demands. anything else is a monkeywrench and a sure sign of an immature, egoically-subservient warrior.

yesterday, your feeble coach demonstrated again just what NOT to do; yesterday i created a Spike On My Graph the likes of which can only be displayed by a seasoned WF Warrior Lunatic like Yours Truly.

And it was sooooooooooo fun, that even though i feel like that i got pile-driven by the entire squad of the New England Patriots (damn that Tom Brady is cute, isn’t he?), and i have zero idea how the hec i’m gonna teach a HP Prop Workout tonight…i would willing create another such Spike in a heartbeat; sometimes, a mountain boy just gotta prioritize good ol’ fashioned snowplay over Training Wisdom…however, don’t you DARE let me catch you EVER following the recipe below without my exclusive written permission…or better yet, side-by-side you!!!

RECIPE FOR ILG’s OPENING DAY AT THE SKI HILL:

1) gather the following ingredients:
• 7 months of no skiing
• 1 month of freezing temperatures
• 2 days of wet, thick snow
• Season Ski Pass
• an entire off season of kickass WF and HP Yoga training

combine the above within your emotional/spiritual blender, let rest for 3 days

2)
add to the above ingredients 2 days of the driest, coldest, most Utah-like dry powder you can possibly imagine all timed perfectly for the First Day of Opening at the Ski Hill

3)
make certain you blow off all possible money-related ‘duties’ to be as close to getting First Chair as possible…(note to daddies of newborns; perform all baby duties EARLY then wait patiently until you get the Green Light…)

4)
snowboard (or tele ski) for several hours through scuba-deep powder until you can no longer feel your legs.

5)
continue #4 until Ski Area closes and everybody, including the Ski Patrol have gone to the lodge for their brews…

6)
take a pair of nordic skate skis (you know, the ultra light, ultra skinny, no-edges ones that no one in their right mind would even think about skiing down an alpine hill with?), attach ‘kicker skins*’ to the above skis.

7)
skin up the Ski Hill (mandatory vertical gain; 3,000′ and/or 1 hour of uphill effort)as the oceanic crush of an unreal alpenglow** mesmerizes your uphill effort.

8)
continue #7 without letting your HeartRate drop below High Zone 3. Feel the growing CHI and DIVINITY start permeating every friggin’ cell of your body, mind, and spirit!

9)
reach the summit as twilight turns to darkness and only the sheer sickle of Grandmother Moon smiles upon you as you merge into the totality of the infinite solitude of being the ONLY ONE at the Ski Area; with the entire resort beneath your track ski tips!

10)
peel off your climbing skins, do a High Altitude Pranayama as the darkness creeps deeper as the world below you falls to sleep…let out a Wolf’s Howl and LAUNCH! fly down the runs using the most ugliest of GS turns, half-assed tele turns whatever you can use to stay upright on those flimsy track skis!! SPEED IS RELATIVE,baby!…seek out the SnowCats grooming the hill, find the fresh “cord***” as your Flying Carpet and SOAR downward with the most unbelievably sacredly fun feeling EVER! — NOTE: last night i crashed in total darkness, probably clicking off 35mph on the fresh cord…after i untangled myself from the heap of flesh and bone i had tumbled into, i hit “IndiGlow” on my heart rate monitor: 171! going DOWNHILL! when was the last time you crashed at Heart Rate of 171!?!? hilarious!

Long Live Track Skis On Alpine Hills! NINJA STYLE!!!!

oh damn my L. Gracilis hurts…

head bowed,
the limping, smiling mountain yogi

* – if you don’t know what this terms means, consider “CrossFit” as your choice for personal fitness training

** – don’t know what this term means? it’s time for you to watch a mountain sunset

*** – dude, c’mon!?! CORD!!! as in “corduroy”…you know, that blessedly fun to ski upon ‘ribbed path’ of snow left behind the Grooming Machines?