Fitness Editor Blog

Yoga. It sounds so serene, so calming, so…. so not a workout, right? Not quite. Not if you do certain types of Yoga. I tried out Power Vinyasa Yoga with Lauren Mensikovas and lemme tell you something, that was nothing short of a hard workout.

I sweated. And it wasn’t Bikram-style heat-induced sweating… it was OMG-this-is-tough-sweating. My arms were shaking and really tired afterwards, my legs were a bit wobbly and my abs took a few days to forgive me. Even some deep muscles hidden way back in my hips and pelvis were a bit otherwise with me for a few days after the class.

But was it fun? Hells yeah. It was so much of fun. As much fun as you can have silently contorting your body into different positions in a room full of strangers doing the same thing and quietly sweating and gently huffing. It was also ridiculously invigorating, and it set the tone for my whole day afterwards.

This is one of those poses that you glance at and go “meh, looks easy enough”… then you try it… eish…. (BTW this is Lauren, my version of these poses is not really printable)

The nitty gritty

But what IS Power Vinyasa? According to Lauren it’s a “dynamic style of yoga blending steady poses and flowing sequences, linking breath to movement and opening you up to more energy, vitality and flexibility in your life.  It is an invigorating form of yoga that works for all body types and physical abilities working at your own level of fitness, doing just what you can”.

Couldn’t have put it better myself. I had a young man of about 13 next to me on one side and a rather supple granny on the other side of me… and there were a lot more men in the yoga class than I have ever experienced before. Which is fantastic, perhaps more men are finally realising the amazing benefits yoga has to offer.

If I could do this I would SO watch TV like this…

The flowing style of Power Vinyasa made the class really interesting, just when you were getting comfortable the position changes and becomes more challenging. Lauren says she finds this form of yoga “the perfect blend of endurance, strength and freedom to play”. And she’s right. I consider myself quite strong, but I found a lot of the positions very challenging. Not that I didn’t try the harder ones (there is always an easier option), cause where would be the fun in not trying the hard stuff… it looks so cool….

Why you should do yoga

The list is endless with regards to the benefits of yoga, and listing them would take forever. Suffice to say it’s good for mind, body and spirit. Although Lauren adds that she finds yoga improves physical strength, improves concentration, is great for stress relief and has a positive impact on overall physical, mental and emotional health.

Again… looks easy but it really isn’t.

“Yoga can help us all in many ways, and with a regular practice, we can see improved muscle tone, flexibility, strength and stamina as well as helping with weight loss.  It improves circulation and stimulates the immune system.  It reduces stress and tension as well as improving concentration and clarity. It can help to boost self esteem and help us find a sense of well being and calm.”

Learning from yoga

Unlike many other exercise programmes or fitness regimes, once the yoga bug bites, it bites hard and deep and it’s very hard to shake off the feeling of accomplishment once you’ve finished a class.

This one I could almost do. I am a little worried I’ll face-plant into the floor, but every sport has it’s injuries right?

Lauren, a self-confessed yoga addict, says that it’s had such a profound effect on her life in many ways.

“From a physical perspective, it has helped me change my body enormously. I am the strongest I’ve ever been.  I also used to be a lot heavier and through yoga, I’ve learned to respect and care for my body and by being kinder to my body and enduring the physical intensity of the practice, I’ve managed to keep my body in much better condition, helping the weight to come off.

When looking at Table Mountain gets boring try it from this angle

“My yoga practice started to take me much deeper than just experiencing a physical change – I became more aware of how I treated people and most importantly, how I treated myself.  I saw how important it is to practice non violence towards yourself, your body and towards others.

“It had a huge impact on my body and the connection to my daughter while I was pregnant.  I practiced right till the very end of my pregnancy and believe it to be a huge part of why I had such a healthy, easy pregnancy and that it prepared me to be able to have a relatively easy, beautiful home birth.

“Yoga encouraged in me, an appreciation towards community and connection to others.  It re-awoken my inner curiosity about myself and about my world and was a powerful way for me to develop & maintain my physical vitality, mental clarity and be joyfully engaged with my life.  Most importantly, yoga helped me to find that subtle connection between my breath, my body, my mind and my emotions.”

I think she sums it’ up pretty nicely when she says that “ yoga gives us the power to have a better relationship with ourselves and through this,  a better relationship with others and the world we live in.”

All that and a damn good workout?! How could you NOT want to do it?

Check out Lauren’s Facebook page here for where she teaches classes in Cape Town.

It might be getting cooler and less appealing to workout outdoors at the moment, but that doesn’t stop the guys from Cape Calisthenics from hitting the outdoor gym in Sea Point every evening for a very eye-catching and visually pleasing workout.

Three of the guys behind Cape Callisthenics: Adrian Alberts, Alwyn Marx and Matthew Kriel. Enough six-packs between them to make anyone blush…

Outdoor gyms are very popular overseas and although they are few and far between here in SA, they are gaining popularity and hopefully soon the right people will take notice of how providing outdoor exercise equipment for free will inspire people to exercise and perhaps even curb the growing obesity problem.

But what Cape Callisthenics do isn’t just gym. It’s something else. Something far more primal and manly. It makes you gasp in awe as you watch them swing from the bars, hoist themselves effortlessly into the air and hold impossibly difficult positions at extremely difficult angles for an ungodly amount of time.

According to one of the group, Matthew Kriel, the Cape Callisthenics project was started “in order to promote awareness of the sport and fitness movement of callisthenics in South Africa”. He says that although he has only been with the group for a few months, he has seen such progressions in his fitness and strength in that time that he could previously never have done in an ordinary gym environment.

“When I started here in December I could only do like 3 push-ups, now I’m popping out muscle-ups,” he says. And for anyone who doesn’t know what a muscle-up is (trust me, it’s a tough move) check this pic out:

This my friends is a muscle-up. They make it look easy but it’s actually a very difficult move to get right.

The guys (and some girls) meet at the outdoor gym every evening where they do their inspiring callisthenics workouts. However, they have taken this one step further and have a following of people who now join them in the evenings to learn how to do what they do. And they gladly offer advice and assistance where they can – all for free too.

Matthew says that there has been so much interest that half their time is now spent helping others at the outdoor gym.

Alwyn Marx, another member of Cape Callisthenics says it’s all about finding out how well ur body can perform what it is is designed to do. They may use some of the bars for pull-ups and dips, but the exercises are primarily bodyweight exercises that require a lot of muscle strength and a tonne of core strength.

“Anyone is welcome, any fitness level,” says Alwyn, adding that the classes aren’t ego-driven at all. “We don’t compete against anyone else. Here you compete against yourself and be inspired by others.”

They popped up into this position while still talking to me. That takes a mighty strong core!

So if extravagant gym fees are putting you off going to the gym, or you just feel like a different challenge, why not get in touch with these guys and see if you can’t learn a little something from them?

They’re not experts and none of them have any fitness or gymnastics qualifications to speak of, yet watching them in full swing you’d swear they’d been at it their whole lives. And given the number of six pack abs between them, taking a few pointers from some guys who have built their bodies doing very difficult bodyweight exercises with very little equipment.

I’ll leave you alone now to ogle the pictures. What’s nicer than watching three strong, shirtless men working out on a warm winter’s day by the beach? Stumped? Me too… enjoy….

Adrian Alberts holds this insanely hard position in rings for what felt like at least a minute, if not more. This my dears, is how abs are built.

What’s this you ask? Why it’s one guy doing a push-up while the other does a handstand on him. Duh!

Matthew Kriel demonstrates a dip with a kick-through and hold. I don’t know if that’s what it’s really called but that’s what it looked like

Just when I thought my 5RM pull-up was impressive I had to meet this guy – who does a muscle-up INTO a handstand. I got some way to go….

I know right? Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better this guy pops out this lever move. He must have triceps of steel I tell ya!

However, while the pics may show off their muscles and strength, a video goes even further to illustrate just how strong these guys are. Check this out:

Kelly Dessington is the perfect example of how the right kind of training and eating can get you the body you want. She’s petite, feminine and has a six-pack that most guys would kill for…. am I right?

Ass to the grass…. this ladies, is a very good front squat. But don’t let those little weight plates fool you, this lady can lift a LOT more.

In the recent 100% RAW power-lifting drug-free competition in Cape Town she also proved just how strong she is with a staggering deadlift of 145kg, squat of 100kg and a bench-press of 67.5kg, the deadlift and benchpress which are now new SA records. It’s little wonder that she claimed first place in both the women’s category and her 60-67kg weight class. That’s a lot of power in a small (and rather toned) package.

Don’t you love the touch of pink in the equipment at Progressive Edge Performance gym?

Yet she does no cardio.

Yup, you heard me. NO cardio. Zero. Nadda.

So how does she keep so incredibly lean and toned? By lifting heavy weights. (*and BTW she takes NO steroids or other funny stuff either… it’s all hard work and good nutrition). And when she “wants to drop body fat” she does tabata-style sprints (8 rounds of 20 seconds of all-out work and 10 seconds rest). Other than that though, it’s all about lifting weights and doing body-weight workouts like pull-ups. Which she pops out like she was born doing a pull-up btw! Check it out….

Sigh…. one day I will be able to do a pull-up with such style and ease… one day!

It’s not hard to see why she says that women should lift heavy weights too – if they want to see an improvement in their physique that is. And those 2kg dumbbells with lots of reps just ain’t gonna cut it I’m afraid. Not if you want to look lean and toned like Kelly.

But there are lots of other reasons you should lift heavier weights if you’re a woman too – it helps improve your bone density which can lower your risk of developing osteoporosis, it helps with your posture, it helps in every-day life from lifting shopping, boxes, children… but it also helps with your confidence. It might sound trivial in the grand scheme of things, but let’s be honest here…. the better we look, the better we tend to feel about ourselves. Right?

And if you got to looking good by training hard with the right form and with a proper coach like Kelly, and had a good, clean diet to go along with it, then why SHOULDN’T you be proud of your new physique?

Read more on Health24 about what Kelly says about women and lifting heavy weights and how it won’t bulk you up if you do it right.

Check out Kelly’s specialist gym Progressive Edge performance.

Do you lift heavy weights? Show off – send us your numbers! 

So I survived Fittest in Cape Town 2013. I have many bruises and bumps to show for it and I couldn’t walk properly for about 3 days afterwards but I had an absolute blast. Same time next year? For sure!

First of all meet my team:

The rocking team ‘WOD you looking at’ comprised of Hermann, Francois, Daniel, moi, Kirsten and Tania

Not a bad-looking bunch eh? I was very proud to be a part of such a strong team. We’re all from Cape CrossFit but we all go to different classes so until Saturday morning about 10 minutes before this picture was taken I had only met Kirsten and Hermann. Nonetheless we still made an awesome team!

The first team event was tug-of-war. I know right? When last (if ever) did you do that? I don’t remember it being quite so brutal in my school years though. When they announced it I thought “OK, that’s not too bad…”

But I was wrong. It was a rookie crossfit mistake. NEVER underestimate a workout. It’s usually those ones that jump up and bite you in the ass with big shiny teeth.

Not only were we not allowed gloves, which made pulling on a rope very sore, but you should have SEEN some of the people we were up against. Holy shit, they were BIG. And strong.

But we held our own. First the girls pulled against the girls from another team in our pool (which we won!) then the boys, then we pulled as a team. We had to do this 6 times. It was brutal.

I only realised when we got the pics back that I hadn’t taken my sunglasses off. I’m not usually so ‘dolled up’ during a workout

This is what happened after the first team pull:

Rope burn. My badge of honour from FICT 2013

Sexy huh? By the end of the weekend I had another 2 of those.

Then we had time to eat and rest and watch the amazing men and women individuals compete before the next team event.

Could there be a more stunning view?

The next event was ball tosses and sprints. It was quite complicated and very hectic. By now it was about lunchtime and there was not a breath of wind on the field and it was a blistering hot day. So sprinting wasn’t much fun. But we gave it our all.

Basically it started with tossing a 14lb medicine ball then running and touching it, running back and tagging a team mate. We did this for 100m. Then back 100m. Then we had to sprint to the opposite side and try fit in as many individual 100m sprints as possible before the time cap of 9 mins ran out. THEN we had to try get as many ball tosses as possible in 1 minute. It was very hectic. But we did damn well and finished top in our pool.

Sprinting to the end

Team celebrations

After that we had a nice 2 hour rest before our final event for the first day. Which was great because by then we were all buggered and it was so hot everyone scattered to find shade and water.

The final event proved to be just as tough. It consisted of front squats (29kg for girls/ 50kg for guys) then partner carries, then 10 burpees. It was a tough one to coordinate and we were the first group up after they revealed the event so we didn’t have much time to prepare a strategy, but we still did quite well. Big bonus was having really strong guys on our team so they could carry us girls across the field to do the burpees.

Partner carries

Me on a very tired Francois’ back.

And we’re done for the day! Thank god!

And that was the first day done. Little did we know what lay ahead for the next day… a gruelling 5.45am start with a  seriously hectic 6.5km run up Kloof Road (if you don’t know it, suffice to say it’s f#*ing steep) and back down carrying an 11kg weight plate.

We were SO lucky our guys were so strong that they opted to carry the weight plate the whole way and just let us girls focus on running. Did I say running? So silly. I meant SPRINTING. Yes. More of that stuff from the day before. We were trying to make up points and I ran alongside our team captain Hermann who pushed me to sprint as fast as my little legs would carry me all the way down some of the steepest roads. All I could think about was not tripping – which fortunately I didn’t. We came 18th out of 37 teams in that run so all my heavy breathing, red-faced dry heaving was worth it.

Until the run I actually wasn’t’ very sore – no more than after a normal workout at the gym. But AFTER that mad sprinting I was stuffed. My hips were sore, my legs were aching, my arms hurt… basically everything hurt.

But it wasn’t over yet. We had one more team event which would see the top 8 teams go through to the next round. At this stage we were in position 25 so we knew it was unlikely we would make it through to the next event (which my body was not-so-secretly thrilled about).

And what was it? Tug-o-war! Yup. My old nemesis. This time I had a sleeve to wear to protect my already battered arm, but with an aching body I wasn’t so sure how well I’d manage.

But we did OK, we got through the first heat and got knocked out by a team of giant heavyweights in the second round.

Overall our team came 27th out of 37 teams. Which isn’t too shoddy considering how strong some of the teams competing were AND the fact that we only met as a team on the morning of the event.

I’m SO happy I took part though, I have never had so much fun doing things that hurt so badly with a bunch of people I don’t really know.

Go figure!

One thing I forgot to mention is how amazing the vibe was – it was awesome. You couldn’t hear yourself think with all the cheering going on, teams cheering for other teams, everyone rooting for the individuals, spectators and athletes like. There was nothing but good sportsmanship throughout the competition, from all athletes. Sure it’s a competition, but everyone was so supportive of each other that it made it a lot more fun than other sporting events I have been to with an “each man for himself” attitude.

Check out some of the awesome videos of the team finals and individual events on the Fittest in Cape Town Facebook page. These people are amazing. I can only hope that one day I am as strong and fit as they are.

The sun is rising earlier in the mornings, there is a faint smell of budding flowers in the air and it would seem that spring is almost on our door steps. Are you ready for it though? Never fear, there is still time before you have to bare those arms and legs that winter has so lovingly padded.

Not feeling motivated? Check out how much weight these people lost and how toned they got in the much talked-about SleekGeek Winter Warrior Challenge.

And if that lights a fire in you, why not sign up for their next SleekGeek Summer Body 8-week Challenge. Also check out their Facebook page where most of the action happens… it’s a fantastic new initiative started up by former digital heavy-weight Elan Lohmann and it’s quickly growing into a community of wanna-be-better people all with the hope of getting fitter and healthier.

When we did our interview with Elan he was so excited about this new venture that he was almost bouncing off the walls with enthusiasm. It was awesome to watch. And if you go to his site and see the transformation he’s been through – from stopping smoking to shedding a lot of weight – it’s not hard to see why he is so energetically punting SleekGeekSA.

One thing he said has stuck with me too… he said that whenever he’s faced with something that looks delicious but isn’t actually any good for him (in my case that would be ice-cream..mmm..I struggle to say no) he stops and thinks “Is this going to take me closer to my goal or further away from it?”

Isn’t that cool? It makes SO much sense. I’ve been trying to think like that about things too and I have to admit it has kept me a lot more on track with making sure only 100% healthy things pass my lips.

So if you’re struggling to get yourself motivated or just want to lurk on the sidelines and see what other people do for fitness or what they eat then check them out, it’s a very vibrant group all with positive messages and encouragement for each other.

It IS possible to lose weight and get fit on your own – but where’s the fun in that, right? 

I am ALL FOR this kind of group if it helps get South Africans fitter and healthier because GOLLY GOSH do we need it. Just walking down the street outside my office through the clouds of cigarette smoke and past the fast-food joints that are jam packed at 7am in the MORNING with people who should really be exercising and not eating any form of sugary-coated anything – it’s enough to make me cry in frustration. 

However, if it’s not for you and you prefer to do the lone-ranger thing then that’s cool too. As long as you’re motivated and can keep to your goals thats perfect!

What motivates you? E-mail us your answer to community@health24.com