Yoga Series!

I have never been a big fan of yoga, I tried one class at my local gym and found it very slow, boring and I wasn't too keen on the chanting, however after being inspired by Charlie from The Runner Beans 21 day yoga challenge I gave another class a go and was instantly impressed by the girls ability to just casually sit in the splits and hold different poses in handstands. After trying this class I thought the benefits would be great for both the aerial stuff I do and running so I've decided to do my own version of the 21 day yoga challenge and do a yoga month series of posts on my blog.

My aim is to practise yoga at least 3 times a week for the next four weeks so expect plenty of class reviews, yoga related posts, maybe even a special competition and to round it all off I've taken some pictures of myself in basic poses and at the end of the month I will take pictures of myself in the same poses to see how much I have progressed.

Are you a yoga fan? Any class suggestions are always greatly appreciated because I'm so new all of this. Bring on the yoga!

Blog holiday

Hello!

So you may have noticed the blog posts have been few and far between, I'm very sorry for this. Sometimes life likes to hand you lemons and you have to make lemonade instead of writing blog posts. I do feel very guilty though for not having the time or energy to write so I just want to say I am sorry and I've made the decision to not write until I am back from Japan at the start of April. I'm hoping I will come back refreshed and full of blog posts, I'm already excited about a potential yoga series I'm thinking of doing! I'm also planning some tips for those of you looking to start pole/aerial arts.

To those of you who have stuck with my blog, thank you, I promise I will have some decent content soon. I will leave you now with a picture of me doing the flag on the hoop, for no apparent reason other than I like this picture.

Trying out spinning at H2

My first time trying spinning was at Boom Cycle in Holborn, and much to my surprise I instantly fell in love, unfortunately at £16 a session it’s just a bit out of my price league which is when my quest to find a suitable alternative started and how I found H2.

H2 is only around the corner from where I work which is very convenient, and at only £12 a session it’s a bit more suited to my budget.

Unfortunately I think trying out a Boom class has ruined spinning for me because I can’t help but compare any class to theirs, and nothing seems to come close.

The class was fine and the instructor was good, but unlike at Boom where you are in a closed off dark room, this class takes place in a studio that is dimly lit with a glass partition that looks into the rest of the building so people can see your lovely sweaty red face as they walk by.

The bikes also don’t have any digital displays so you can’t see your RPM. I think this meant I didn’t push myself as hard and I didn’t know how fast or slow I should be going, in Boom’s class the instructor tells you what sort of RPM you should be aiming for as all the bikes there have digital displays. The studio does however allow you to hook up your heart rate monitor so you can see on a screen at the front of the studio your heart rate, this is a cool feature but depending on your personally it can be a good or a bad thing, I like to compete against myself, no one else so I can sometimes find things like this discouraging.

I just didn’t enjoy this class as much as the Boom one and it didn’t feel like I worked out as hard. Being super picky now but I also didn’t enjoy the music that much, it wasn’t as motivating, but then what’s motivating to me might not to be others.

Before the spin class I was greeted by a very lovely receptionist who gave me a locker pass. The changing facility’s are great and very clean, however half of the lockers don’t work and I had to go outside to ask the receptionist, a different one to the one I originally dealt with to help me and she didn’t seem all that happy about it. I also asked this same receptionist after the class if we could talk about membership options and she told me that all the information is online and that’s how you join, I appreciate everything is online but clearly I wanted to ask a few questions and this comment confirmed that I definitely won’t be coming back.

H2 itself is a pretty cool place. If you cycle to work you can keep your bike locked up here during the day and it’s only accessible to members and there is CCTV monitoring at all time. There are also the shower facilities that I mentioned earlier so you can lock up your bike and freshen up. As well as the spin studio there is also a gym that looked pretty well equipped. H2 spin classes are absolutely fine and fairly priced, but it just wasn’t a stand out class for me.