Sweatin' it out

I think I've mentioned it before, but it’s worth repeating here: I can pretty easily be convinced to try anything at least once.  So when my sister mentioned that she wanted to try hot yoga, I said I’d join her.  When she found a place near my dad’s house that was $20 for the first session, with a second session free, I said sign me up.  Doesn’t matter that I’m not really a huge fan of being super hot.  Or that I sweat profusely even if I’m working out in a freezer.

Kim and I made our way to class bright and early (and by bright I mean dreary and disgusting and rainy, and by early, I mean 8:30) on a Sunday morning. We’ve both done yoga before, but never hot yoga.  Instead of saying that to the instructor, I just said “This is our first time.”  Meaning our first time at hot yoga, and at her yoga studio, but she apparently interpreted it as our first time ever doing yoga.  She regularly mentioned how good the first day-ers (us) were doing during class.  (Note to self: a great way to get tons of praise for doing something marginally well is to let someone believe you’ve never done it before even if you have.)

She gave us some quick instructions.  (Like if you don’t feel well, it’s worse to leave the room and come back than to just stay in the room.  You should just "pose out" and lay on your mat in child’s pose.)  She showed us where to put our stuff.  She didn’t tell us how long class would be (bad move on our part.  We both thought it was an hour.  There was a clock in the room and as it got toward the hour mark I started to get really happy.  Apparently it was a 90 minute class.  I started to get angry over that last 30 minutes).  And then into the hot room we went.  

Honestly, just sitting in there wasn’t so bad.  It was kind of like sitting on the beach on a hot, humid day.  The heaters were on which meant that air was circulating, which made it bearable.  In the middle of class, she turned the heaters off, and the stagnant air was more stifling than having the heat blowing out full force.  

Toward the end of class, she turned off the heat and turned on the ceiling fan. I have never in my life been so happy for someone to turn on a ceiling fan.  Or for it to be raining and chilly out in mid-May. 

Here’s what I learned while doing hot yoga with a room full of disgustingly sweaty strangers (and my sister) on a rainy Sunday morning:

1. Wear as little as possible. Seriously, the fewer clothes you have on, the cooler you’ll stay (and I use cooler in a very loose way here - there’s no staying cool in this class).  Also, you’ll have a lot less to wring your sweat out of when you get home (see #3).  

2. Arrive early.  This way you can pick your spot (that’s not right in the middle of the room) and get acclimated to the temperature.  It also gives you ample time to contemplate what the hell you’re getting yourself into and to wonder why everyone else is nearly naked while you're wearing a regular yoga outfit.

3. Bring several towels.  And a change of clothes. And a bucket to wring out your clothes in.  You will sweat.  Profusely.  (You might as well just jump into a pool with all of your clothes on.  You’ll get the same effect.)  Sweat will drip off of every inch of your body.  And onto your yoga mat.  Making it nearly impossible to do some poses without slipping.  I thought it was weird when everyone else had big beach towels at a yoga class, but when my feet kept slipping further and further away from each other in warrior pose, it all made sense.  Also, bring several gym towels to mop the sweat from your face, hands, arms, neck, and shins (you know it’s bad when your shins are sweating!) so that you don’t accidentally fling it on your neighbor.

4. Hydrate.  Before.  Especially before.  During.  Especially during.  And after. Apparently you can’t be too hydrated for this thing.  As we were signing in, the instructor told us that most people that have trouble with the heat haven’t been hydrating enough beforehand. Great thing to learn as you’re walking into class.  Good thing I generally drink a ridiculous amount of fluids on a daily basis.

5. No matter how cold it is to begin with, your water is going to be piss warm in about .3 minutes. Prepare for it.  Bring backups.  Bring a brick of ice.  Bring more water than you think you could ever possibly drink.  And leave some in the car so that it will still be cold when you get out.  You’re going to want it.

6. It’s cool if you need to pose out. Which basically means taking a pose (or 2 or 10) off and laying on your mat in savanyasa or child’s pose.  No judgement.  When I started to get angry around minute 75, I took her “If you have knee or hip problems, you might want to pose out on this one” to heart and did child’s pose for a few minutes.  It didn’t really help to cool me off at all or be any less angry that I had no idea how long this was going to last, but it did help my heart stop racing (although I wasn’t fully aware it was racing until I went into child).

7. It should just be called really sweaty yoga. Other than being disgusting after about 2 minutes of just sitting in the room, I didn’t really notice much of a difference between hot yoga and regular yoga.  I thought that maybe I’d be more flexible because I’d be warm or something, but that wasn’t the case.  My head did feel like it was going to explode a few times, so there’s that. I suppose that I sweat out all my toxins or something, but really I just felt super cold and tired the rest of the day.  

Would I do it again?  Of course - I have a free class waiting for me!  

But after that? Probably not. I honestly don't think that it did much more for me than a regular yoga class, except make my hair feel ridiculously dry and stringy, and make me sweat a lot more than normal. But, I drank a ton of water over the rest of the day, so any water weight that I lost from all that sweat was quickly replaced. 


In the future, I think I'll just stick to my Jillian Michaels yoga DVD. Or a Yoga to the People class.