Blue Lotus | The Casual Blog

August 6, 2011

Gary Player’s diet and exercise routine, and a few thoughts on yoga

One of the nice things about getting older is that you gradually worry less about being cool. You slowly realize it’s almost impossible to be old and cool, and give up on the idea. Letting go of such worry frees up some energy for more fun.

Age is tough on a body. Fight as we will, eventually we’ll all succumb. But I see no real choice but to fight. Over time I’ve become more dedicated to the battle for good health, though it occasionally strikes me that it could be viewed as hopeless, ridiculous, or both. A middle-aged white guy sweating — for what? It’s certainly not cool.

Thus I was cheered and inspired this week by an account of Gary Player’s fitness program now that he’s 75. As golfers know, Player is a legendary player, with more than 160 tournament victories. In his prime, the man was known to be serious about exercise, and he still is. His routine involves 1,000 sit ups and push ups every morning. He does lunges and squats, works with weights, and runs, swims, and does stairs. As for diet, Player says that it’s 70 percent of the fitness puzzle. He eats a mostly vegetarian diet heavy in fruits and vegetables, and aims for portions about half the size he used to eat. He says he has more energy since he cut the meat, and his stomach works better.

I also have found that a diet of moderate portions of plant foods is energizing. And so is regular morning exercising. Lately I’ve been noticing how during most of my waking hours I feel really good, and feeling grateful for it.

I’m especially grateful to my yoga teachers (Yvonne, Suzanne, Kathleen, Jill, and others). Over the past couple of years, yoga has gradually insinuated itself into my life, and has become a good friend. Lately I’ve been doing two or three classes a week at Blue Lotus. Every teacher and every class of every teacher is different. Some classes are quite arduous (think high heart rates and lots of sweat) with an element of risk, and some are very slow and calm.

When I began, I’d expected that yoga would help my flexibility and balance, which it has, but it has done some other good things that I hadn’t expected. It has made me a better breather and more conscious of the significance of breath. It has helped my focus and concentration. And it has made me view relaxation as an essential element of good health.

There’s also something pleasing about exercising in a class. It’s sometimes humbling but often inspiring to see so much strength and grace in the group as it moves together. I like the sound of people breathing in unison. It’s good to be with people who are committed to taking good care of their bodies. And it’s fun.

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May 8, 2011

A spring baseball game and a crazy yoga class

In early spring, it is most pleasant to go to a minor league baseball game. On Friday night, Sally and I went over to Durham to see our first Bulls game of the season, where they played Syracuse. Just as we got to the stadium parking, it began to rain, and just as we got to the gate to hand over our home-printed ticket, it started to pour — so much so that the scanner had trouble reading our tickets. So we got wet, and it continued to rain for most of the next hour. But the sky kept getting brighter, and we had pizza and beer, talked, and looked at the types in the crowd.

When the rain finally stopped, we watched the stadium crew roll up the giant tarps that covered the infield and sweep the baselines. We watched the Syracuse pitcher warm up, throwing gently at first, then harder and harder. We’d bought tickets four rows back from the field halfway down the third base line, but after some quick soul-searching decided to award ourselves a free upgrade to empty seats in the area immediately behind home plate. I used my jacket to dry the seats as best I could (i.e. not completely), which Sally supplemented with paper napkins, and we sat down.

Both pitchers were throwing fastballs around 91 MPH, which doesn’t look amazing on TV, but from behind home plate is fairly impressive. The batters on deck warmed up directly in front of us, and I studied their mechanics with the thought of improving my golf swing. These were strong young guys. And the game unfolded slowly but distinctly, as baseball games will. The first Bulls batter hit a home run on the first pitch, and there was no further scoring for several innings. Yet there were jabs of excitement here and there — a close play at first, a double, a stolen base, an out at home plate, a double play. Between innings there were mascot antics, T-shirt giveaways, and contests for little kids. We never quite got dry, though, and as it got cooler we felt chilly. We packed it in after six innings. The Bulls eventually won 3-1.

I was disdainful of baseball for part of my youth and generally indifferent to it for many years. I still don’t find it very engaging on television, but a live game is something else. It isn’t so much the drama, but something else. The combination of genes and training that makes a ball move quickly from pitcher to batter, from batter to shortstop, and shortstop to first is awesome. The green grass, the red clay, and the white baselines are beautiful.

The next morning I did a two-hour yoga class at Blue Lotus with Yvonne aptly named Juicy Flow yoga. Yvonne likes to push herself and her classes to their limits, and her normal Saturday classes of an hour and a half are not for sissies. Her longer Juicy Flow class is about moving with music, sometimes rapidly for several minutes, in unfamiliar ways. The music is an eclectic mix of east and west, soul, disco, rock, and other. It’s lively fun, at least at first. I sweated a ton, and my mat got so wet it was difficult to do a down dog. I pushed hard for an hour and a half, then suddenly hit the wall and felt like I might get sick. I noted with some alarm that my upper body strength, which is usually good, was gone; I couldn’t hold my arms over my head. Never was I more relieved to lie on my back in shavasana for a few minutes, just breathing.

May 9, 2010

More fun at Red Hat, trying Mirage, yoga, and mindful driving

After the intensity of the trial in Texas and a great win, it was another intense week back at the Raleigh office of Red Hat, digging out of the pile of backlogged work and dealing with new emergencies. Not for the first time, I felt on Friday as though I’d done a months’ worth of work in a week. The range of activities was typical, but as always, varied — from solving specific IP problems to formulating strategy to addressing customers’ legal questions to being interviewed by reporters to writing and editing for opensource.com to drafting commercial agreements to dealing with management challenges — and along with these dozens there were literally dozens more still on the short term to-do list. I deal with one interesting issue after another, some of them important, all day every day. I am never bored. Is it stimulating? Yes. Exhilarating? Yes. Stressful? Yes.

So as a matter of surviving and flourishing, on weekends I try to find some space to recharge and rebalance — some social time, some time alone, some time to care for the mind and body. As to the social part, on Friday Sally and I went to Mirage, a brand new club on the ground floor of our condo building which was having its pre-grand-opening. It’s large (capacity 650) with a dance floor, large island bar on the ground floor, sushi bar in the back, second floor balcony space with another bar, and various side rooms. The decor uses Egyptian motifs in a Vegas way, large video projections, a mirrored ball, and the waitresses in short gold-plated dresses. The over all effect was glitzy but not gaudy. We ran into Charles, who did a short speech as part of the dedication, and Ann and several people who live in the building. We enjoyed talking to friends. The sound engineering seemed good — very loud, but somehow tweaked so that it was still possible to talk. Also, happily, the sound was not audible in our apartment.

I woke up early on Saturday and started to head over to Pullen Park to swim some laps, but then checked to see whether there was a yoga class at Blue Lotus, which is next door. There was: Yvonne was scheduled for 8:00 to do an hour and a half open level class. From past experience, I’d learned that open classes with Yvonne are fairly advanced classes, and for less advanced students, there’s no quarter given. So it proved to be. Yvonne likes to share inspirational words on such themes as oneness and truth, and she pushes the class past known limits of strength and flexibility. After the first half hour, I wondered whether I could just hang on to the end. I did, barely, soaked in sweat. But I felt good the rest of the day. I have no well-developed theory of why yoga helps over all well-being, but for me, it does.

I took my little German sports car out for a run in the afternoon. Just east of Raleigh, Old Milbournie Road winds through farm fields and pastures, forests, lakes, and country stores. It’s got some great curves and hills — an excellent road for just driving for fun. When I got there, there was a caravan of minivans and pickup trucks led by someone proceeding 10 miles under the speed limit (45). I had in mind the possibility of exceeding the speed limit (no worries — not too much), but this was clearly not going to happen, so I tried to practice patience and enjoy the beautiful countryside. Coming back, though, I had a stretch of the road to myself. I felt the subtle weight shifts as the vehicle took the curves at speed, and the G forces as I accelerated out of them. The sound of the exhaust note rising and falling as I shifted between third and fourth was like music.