When I looked at hotels in the area of where I'd be staying this week (Redwood City, CA), I for once actually looked at the fitness center. It said it had a weight station. GREAT! I thought - I can do my P90X Chest, Shoulders and Triceps this week while I travel.
Then today I visited the fitness center. Two dreadmills, one two weight lifting contraptions. Not a dumb bell or free weight in sight. /sigh
So I pondered what to do. I could just bag it totally and wait till I get home later this week to do anything, I could do some barefoot on the dreadmill, I could do as much of the intended workout as I could without weights and call it good enough, I could go to a local yoga class, maybe do the plyometrics workout in the hotel room, or - as one of my DM friends, Becky, suggested - "That [$18 for a yoga class] seems awfully expensive for yoga, no? You're in a hotel, for $18 you
could get a slice of cake, watch the first 4 minutes of some overpriced porn,
rub one out and call it a night."
I ended up going with the Yoga. I figured that if I've previously determined that yoga is the best overall and all around workout (which I have), I mine as well do it in place of something else if that something else isn't available.
One of the nice things about Bikram is that it's always the same 26 postures - so once you know the routine, you can go into any Bikram studio and know what you are getting into. That rang true here for the most part and at a high level, but there were enough differences that I seriously wonder whether this place is actually a legit Bikram studio, or whether they just call it Bikram but intentionally change enough things up to avoid having to pay licensee fees.
When I first walked into the room and sat down, I noticed it was rather cool. Enough so that I was actually thinking 'seriously!?' and that it might be so cool that I may not be able to get warm enough to really get a great stretch. However, a few minutes before class started, the heat cranked on and it got to a more normal temperature. Still felt somewhat dry, though. My home studio has multiple humidifiers to keep things sticky - this place didn't seem to have any. But thats neither here nor there with regards to whether this place is an actual Bikram studio.
Right off the bat, there were differences. Standing in mountain pose before the pranayama breathing, bending in all directions during half moon pose instead of just side to side, the extremely long amount of time maintained in half moon pose, squatting down to grab ankles during hands to feet, no instruction to extend the foot during standing head to knee, no instruction to lean forward during standing bow pulling, no having hands on floor at all during cobra, second set of full locust pose being with hands clasped behind the back, and random childs poses instead of savasana in between the more active postures. And on top of it all, the dialogue was comparatively vacant. I'm used to the instructor talking virtually non-stop for the entire 90 minutes. Here, there was the bare minimum of instruction, followed by countdown until the end of the pose ("thirty..... twenty.... ten... five...change").
I still got a good workout because it's not like I really require the dialogue at this point to know what to do - but it was just different. But I did learn to appreciate my local studio - all instructors have a full dialogue, and the floor is carpeted with foam underneath as opposed to hardwood!
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