Increasing frequency and intensity

[julad]

This relates a bit to the question below from alexseanchai.

My local studio is offering a special course soon, where you do a fairly intensive run of yoga for a month. It's not an "advanced" course, it's open to every ability, but it involves about five classes a week plus some seminars and such. There's a variety of classes and some are definitely more challenging than what I'm used to.

When I first saw it, I thought it was something I'd love to do in future, but not now. I currently do one class a week and that's it (I rarely practice at home), so jumping to five classes a week, including more intensive classes, didn't seem like the right thing for me.

But now I'm reconsidering. I think the course might be a good opportunity to kick start me to better and more consistent practice, which is something that I want and haven't been able to do on my own yet. I usually respond well to the structure of a course, and I always get a lot further when I do a course than I do by self direction. The studio does a great job of mixing their classes for all ability levels, so I do trust that I could get something from the more challenging classes and not feel pressured to overdo it. But I'm definitely not sure if making such a big jump in practice in a short time will be a good idea.

My question is, does anybody have experience with doing a sudden increase in frequency and intensity of yoga? What happened for you?

Comments

[jumpuphigh]

I've done it. As long as you are listening to your body and drinking a lot of water and the classes are designed to give you time to recover, I think you'll be fine. You should be prepared to be sore.

[julad]

Thanks for this. Recovery time is probably what I'm most concerned about so I'll look at the classes with that in mind. I definitely expect being sore, just a bit concerned about crossing the line from "sore" to "damage" if the increase is too strong.

[afrikate]

I took a 21-day yoga challenge at my studio about 6 months ago. I went from yoga 2 times a week to daily 75 minute classes. By about day 5, I was really exhausted and my arms in particular were really sore. I felt like my practice was deepening, but I was too tired to appreciate it. About two weeks in, I got a really bad cold and had to stop. My general view is before trying a challenge like that again, I need to be much more used to frequent, intense practices.

[julad]

That's definitely the experience I want to avoid. :)

Even though you didn't finish, did you get any lasting benefit from the amount you did? Or did you just end up back to where you were before?

One of the things I'm wondering is, maybe if I don't make it all the way through, making it part way could still be worth something. Here they teach us, "it doesn't matter if you can only do half a class, what matters is whether that half a class will benefit you." So I'm thinking about whether I could take that mindset to the course, or whether it's too much of a leap to be beneficial.

[afrikate]

I would say that I ended up where I was before physically. As always, if you don't keep practicing, there's no real physical benefit. Shortly after I got healthy, I traveled overseas for a while, and didn't practice, so I ended up where I was before I started.

I would say that, despite not finishing, I felt pretty strong for trying, and I felt like I was really getting in touch with my body. But I also think it's the value judgements you are making in your head. If you think that dropping into child's pose for a good chunk of class is "bad," then you aren't letting yourself fully benefit from the poses. Don't force yourself to continue if you feel pain or illness. If you can take a really positive mindset despite not doing all the asanas, then I think you will get something out of the practice.