Renegade Yogi

My jumpbacks and jumpthroughs are improving!

After weeks of practice, I finally feel that it has paid off. I did several jumpbacks tonight where I landed on my toes in plank. It felt so good when it first happened. Vindication, even.

And on several jumpthroughs, I managed to navigate my crossed legs through my arms, straighten them, and then touch my butt to the floor. These felt good, too.

I have been practicing those for a long time. I have been patient. I have worked each part of the movement, waiting to add the next part before moving on. I’ve been at the hardest and most important part of each for at least a month.

The hardest part of the jumpback, for me, is to lift the feet high enough so that, even though they scrape the mat, I still have enough momentum to make it all the way through. How many times have my feet pushed a little rise in the mat that they couldn’t get over?

The hardest part of the jumpthrough is tightening uddhiyana bandha to hold myself from falling. It’s almost like there’s an extra lift right at the peak of the jump. Your butt rises in the air. I’ve been doing that, sometimes falling on my face from jumping too far, for a while. But I’ve never managed to lower down and navigate through my arms at the same time. Sometimes my feet would hit my arms and stop them. Sometimes I’d just slam my legs into the ground.

I’ve added a new exercise to my other workout routine. I noticed that my shoulder muscles would hurt from the exertion of lifting myself up. So I started working those muscles out specifically. I guess that payed off.

To be sure, not all of my jumps were good. But this was the first day I had decent jumps at all.

I felt very flexible today. I wonder if it’s because I slept in.