I don’t know why I always have to torture myself. Then again, maybe I do.
I was thinking about that the other day when, toward the end of an hour-long circuit training class, our trainer, Bernadette, made us hold a squat for a full minute. Mind you, this was after doing a few laps on the weight machines and 20-plus minute of butt-crunching floor exercises. I could feel my quads start to tremble, the lactic acid seething into my glutes with such ferocity I was sure I probably wouldn’t be able to walk the next day. (I was right).
“Why is she doing this to us?” I asked Olivia, one of those perfect-looking, immaculately groomed women you’re going to find only in Aspen. Olivia is an artist, but when it comes to fitness she’s as focused and calculated as they come. I’ve seen her add ankle weights or voluntarily up the speed on the Stairmaster like she’s looking for punishment.
“We’re paying her to do this to us, don’t forget,” she replied, hardly breaking a sweat.
“Lower!” Bernadette screamed, and I did as I was told. I swore I could taste the lactic acid burning in my mouth, an acrid metallic flavor that saturated my tongue like a stain that can’t be removed. It had an uncanny similarity to the taste of vodka and I hoped no one around me could smell it.
Then it hit me – that sensation of being in a low squat with my thighs burning is a familiar one. It’s pretty much the way I feel on every run during a powder day when it’s too good to stop. Those are the days when the whole concept of snowboarding and skiing being “recreational sports” goes out the window and locals start competing for nonstop vertical feet and who did the most top-to-bottom laps on the gondola at Ajax. But it’s not just about bragging rights as it is about never getting enough turns on those epic days we live for.
I tried to focus on that very idea during Balancing Stick, one of the hardest postures in the Bikram Yoga standing series. The way Bikram himself describes it with his cute little Indian accent, it’s supposed to “give heart attack to your heart.” The heart gets flushed with fresh oxygenated blood by balancing on one leg with your arms up over your head and tilting forward with one leg up behind you perpendicular to the floor, sort of like the letter “t.” The posture is only 10 seconds long, but you do two sets on each leg. It’s about 40 minutes into an hour-and-a-half series that is performed in a 100-degree studio. This particular posture always kills me. My heart rate jacks up and I can see beads of sweat dripping off my body onto the towel. My clothes are typically soaked through at this point (what little clothes I’m wearing, anyway), face red, hair damp and sticking up in every direction with the heat and humidity. It literally is hell.
By the end of this class I always feel wrung out, like a soggy wet towel that someone dropped in the pool. Bikram is always talking about how “yoga is a gas station” that is supposed to give you energy, but that’s never the case for me. By the time the class is over, I’m ready for the couch and an ice-cold beer.
But no matter how much I suffer, I always think of how much it’ll pay off when the snow starts to fly. It might seem a little overkill to devote so much time to preseason conditioning, but skiing and snowboarding require the strength I get lifting weights, the balance and flexibility from yoga, and the stamina from running and doing cardio. I figure I’d rather suffer in the gym or the yoga studio than miss those precious turns on a powder day.
Freelance columnist Alison Berkley can be reached at alison@berkleymedia.com.
