Laurel Beversdorf is an international yoga educator, certified kettlebell specialist, and strength and conditioning coach. She runs her own Virtual Studio with over 150 members. Classes blend strength training, rehabilitation practices, self-massage, and yoga. Laurel is a mom and a New York City transplant living in Huntsville, Alabama. When she’s not taking care of her daughter or teaching, you can find her on long walks in the forested foothills of the Appalachian mountains. Find out more about Laurels work at laurelbeversdorf.com. And be sure to follow Laurel on Instagram @laurelbeversdorf.
What’s covered in this episode?
- What is “Yoga with Resistance Bands”?
- Laurel’s creative process developing the material for her Yoga with Resistance Bands Teacher Training. What was her experience like weaving the bands into her own personal practice and into her teaching of yoga asana?
- How does adding resistance training to yoga benefit the overall practice?
- Proprioception
- Control of movement
- Brain-body mapping
- Neuromuscular recruitment
- Hypermobility
- A “primer” or “gateway” for heavier strength training
- How does strength training inform your other fitness practices?
- How adding resistance training can reduce pain while you perform repetitive yoga poses?
- Laurel shares some of the most difficult aspects for new teachers attempting to bring bands into their personal practice or yoga asana classes, and tips for introducing new material to a group of students who’ve become accustomed to your typical way of teaching.
- How can you sign up for “Yoga with Resistance Bands Teacher Training”?
Episode Transcript
Caitlin: Welcome back to the Practice Human Podcast, everyone. I’m your host, Caitlin Casella. I had such a fun time speaking with my friend, Laurel Beversdorf. Those of you who know her know that she’s always a good time on a podcast interview and we just totally geeked out about our past as yoga teachers, things we struggled with, with pain and injury.
teaching yoga full time, how things changed for us when we started introducing other stimulus to our bodies, like, uh, resistance training and strength training. We talk a little bit about our running journeys, um, go into kind of all the things and all the areas of movement that we love. And I am I’m super excited to, um, have this interview with Laurel where she dives deeper into her creative development and her approach for her yoga with resistance bands teacher training.
Uh, I’m hosting her here at Practice Human in February and Before we get started with this interview, I just wanted to let you know that while you’re listening, if you’re interested in finding out more about this upcoming training, she’s offering two free Yoga with Resistance Bands classes on January 23rd and January 30th at noon Eastern Standard Time.
Um, I’m going to put a link in the show notes so that you can sign up for those two free classes. But if you want to get just like a little taste of what the training is like, some inspiration on things that you can do with the bands, you’ll get two live classes plus recordings. So if you can’t attend live, that’s no problem.
If you sign up, you’ll get the recordings of the classes. So I think it’s definitely at least worth worth signing up. If it’s something that you’re interested in, uh, it’s free. And again, there’ll be a link in the show notes. I’m also going to pop a link into like my bio on Instagram. It’s there on our event listing on the practice human website.
So if you go to practice human. com slash events. You can find the link to sign up for the two free classes, and you can read all about the training. We have a very limited amount of spaces available for the in person training here, and the training is presented hybrid. So you can sign up to participate live online.
You can come in person for limited spots remaining. So sign up soon if you definitely, uh, definitely if you want to come in person. Um, and you’ll get the replays of the videos of the workshop as well. So, um, I wanted to give you a little bit of information on that before we start the interview because these free classes are not to be missed if you want to get a little taste of what Laurel’s work is all about and what her work with the resistance bands is all about.
Laurel Beversdorf is an international yoga educator, certified kettlebell specialist, and strength and conditioning coach. She runs her own virtual studio with over 150 members. Classes blend strength training, rehabilitation practices, self massage, and yoga. Laurel is a mom and a New York City transplant living in Huntsville, Alabama.
When she’s not taking care of her daughter or teaching, you can find her on long walks. In the forested foothills of the Appalachian mountains. All right, so let’s get into it. I hope you enjoy my talk with Laurel Beversdorf.
Caitlin:Laurel, Beversdorf, it is so good to chat with you again. We do not actually talk enough these days and I miss you since you left New York City. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Laurel: I am so happy to be here and so looking forward to finally getting to talk to you for a long period of time.
Caitlin: Yes, and I want to catch our listeners up, a lot of people in my audience, in my orbit know who you are, know your work, really appreciate everything you bring to the movement community and I want to catch people up on what you’ve been up to because you left New York and you moved to Huntsville, Alabama and you’ve been doing amazing things with your teaching online but also like I’m so impressed with your training, like the training you’re doing for yourself on your own body. And all the ways that you’re mixing things up. And so I just wanted to give our listeners a little bit of an update on your move and what it’s been like since you’ve been living down in Huntsville and what your work is like and a little bit about what you’re working on in terms of your own goals for yourself.
Laurel: Awesome. Yeah. So in July of 2021, we packed up our 900 square foot apartment in Manhattan and drove a very large truck south to Huntsville, Alabama. And it was my husband, my, at the time she was, let’s see, three and my cats. And then we got. Our lives started here and it’s now two and a half years since we’ve been here.
My husband took a job as a professor at a university here, and I am still going strong teaching for my membership and also now a course that I am, uh, leading with. Dr. Sarah Court, who’s a physical therapist, who you know, called the bone density course lift for longevity and, uh, and, and life is good. Yeah.
Currently, um, in my membership, I’m teaching a progressive kettlebell program, which is a. 8 to 12 week program, Tuesday, Thursday mornings, um, women between the ages of, uh, I would say 40 and 60. Most of them are over 50, quite a few over 60 show up. And we do, uh, we get strong using traditional kettlebell exercises like swinging, clean snatches, the Turkish get up.
And this one, this program is pretty heavy on plyometrics. So we’ve been doing a lot of jump and impact training. Um, and so, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s one, it’s one of the, Very unique programs and in my membership where we’re actually moving more what I would call like an athlete. Um, and I don’t, I don’t ever refer to anyone as an athlete because I don’t know, it’s just not the word.
I usually word student or person, but it’s a big CrossFit thing to call everyone an athlete. And I do a lot of CrossFit here. Um, and I’ve talked a little bit on the, on my podcast with Sarah about how I get a little twitchy when people call me an athlete, because I don’t know why it’s like, uh, just an identity, I guess that I, I don’t identify with as strongly anymore, but athletes move quickly under resistance.
And, um, that’s really what we’re working on in kettlebell. Progressive program. I love it. I know, at the same time, I’m, I’m recording a lot of, pre recording actually, a lot of yoga with resistance bands classes for my membership and I just released one called Banded Pistol Play. So I like to take like traditional strength moves and then yoga fy them and.
Put some bands on them and make it really creative and unique and, and interesting and fun for me and fun for hopefully the people taking the class. Um, and then every other week I’m teaching barbells to women online through the boned end with longevity. Yes, Sarah and I had a, an amazing turnout for that.
And as it turns out, and I never thought I would say this, The Facebook group is turning out to be the best part of the program. And that’s what the feedback we’re getting as well. It’s like people are just learning so much and getting so much out of the community on the Facebook group. So, um, yeah, never thought I’d say that, but it’s true.
And it was props to Sarah. It was her idea. She’s like, I’m starting a Facebook group. And I didn’t say anything out loud to her. But in my mind, I was like, oh, God, no, no, no, no. I feel the same way. But I cannot imagine this program without the Facebook group.
Caitlin: So. Props to Sarah. Awesome. So everybody just giving each other a lot of support and, um, that sounds exciting.
Yes, it’s, it’s an exciting program. It’s so unique. No one else is doing it. I don’t think anyone else has ever done it on its own. Yeah. What you’re doing with Sarah.
Laurel: Women lifting barbells, working to Be able to lift heavy, like objectively as it is defined in exercise science, heavy weights for them. Of course, everyone’s heavy is different and they’re learning a ton about strength training in the portal, right?
We have a whole program called strength training one on one. They’re learning a ton about bone strength, osteoporosis, osteopenia and yeah, we’re getting amazing, amazing, uh, feedback on it. So we’re going to definitely be running that next year. Yes.
Caitlin: Awesome. Yeah. Great. That’s so great. I’m so glad you’re doing that.
Thank you. Um, and I know you’re running a lot too. You’ve been doing like some trail running and, um, I’m really inspired by that because as you know, like, I’ve kind of started running as well and
Laurel: You’re my online running buddy. Like, I’m always like, what’s, okay, what’s Caitlin doing now? Like I’m in your, I’m in your stories, I’m in your DMs, I’m like, ah, um, and, and you just signed up for a half marathon.
Caitlin: I did like, what am I doing? Yeah, the Brooklyn half in the spring. Um, so yeah, yeah,
Laurel: positive, positive peer pressure. Cause now I’m like, well, if Caitlin can do it, I can do it. So I might sign up for one in 2024, but I have not pulled the trigger on that yet. Um, but yeah, I’m running a lot. So I was doing this, um, Low variation, heavy strength training program really, really came from powerlifting.
So what I was doing for about 12 weeks, I stuck with it for about 12 weeks. I was doing, um, pull ups, back squats, deadlifts, bench press, no, no fancy variations of it. I was literally just doing those exercises and I was doing them four days a week and the rep scheme was like. Uh, six sets of three or four sets of two.
And it was, there was literally nothing else to this program, but it takes a while to get through that rep and set scheme. So even just four exercises can turn into a pretty long workout. And I made like amazing progress, right. And I was also at the same time doing this in my basement. I was going to CrossFit like twice a week.
Um, I train a lot. I train about six days a week. Um, and I made amazing progress. I worked up to being able to do eight chin ups, which is. Way more than I can do. Uh, 175 pound back squat, 220 pound deadlift, and 120 pound bench press. And these were all PRs. And then I got really freaking bored. I was like, uh, I’m done with this.
I can’t do this anymore. So I started running, and I joined a run club. And it’s a, it was a trail running club. Cause I was like, I don’t really I don’t really find running exciting. So let’s make it more interesting and go run on the trails. And I live next to some beautiful trails here in Huntsville.
It’s a big, this is a very outdoorsy town, lots of mountain bikers and runners. Yeah. And so, yeah, I did this, I did this run club and it was so hard, Caitlin, I’m sure you can Yeah, yeah. miserate with me. Like the getting into aerobic or like getting into um, shape aerobically, I find, my opinion is that it is way, way, way more uncomfortable than building strength.
Like the process of going from like not strength training to being Much, much stronger. It is uncomfortable, like, it kind of has to be, but the process of going from being out of shape aerobically to being in shape aerobically is way more uncomfortable, actually, in my opinion. What do you think? Yeah,
Caitlin: I mean, I, I don’t know, I I agree with that in some respects.
It’s like such a mental game. For me, that’s the hard part. I feel like I’ve maintained a certain level of like aerobic capacity from the types of workouts that I’ve been doing, um, even before I started running because I was doing like short sprint intervals.
Laurel: Yeah. So,
Caitlin: so doing like high intensity intervals just built a certain kind of engine for me that when it translated over into endurance, like just running continuously without stopping, the hardest part for me was my brain being like, you can’t keep going, you need to stop. How are you still going? You can’t be going anymore. And like, so like aerobically, it, it didn’t feel like hard or intense on my system. It was more my. It’s like my brain, for some reason, I don’t even know why, was like, like, it’s been a mile. You gotta stop and rest. You gotta walk now. Why is my brain telling me this?
And for me, my legs just got tired. Yeah. Like my, my most limiting factor was not that like in terms of my cardiorespiratory system, I felt like gassed and had to stop, like, like my legs are just like. Same. I could really slow down, really start to feel this drag on my legs. And that’s been, like, what’s been hard for me to increase mileage of continuous running.
Laurel: Yeah, yeah, same, same. And I, I think I can really relate to what you said about, like, doing some higher intensity work. in the lead up to starting to work more on endurance because I was doing CrossFit. CrossFit is super high intensity. It’s not, it’s not sprinting all the time. There’s a little tiny bit of sprinting in CrossFit, but it’s more high intensity in other ways.
And, and it, it definitely prepared me, um, to a large extent to be able to, you know, work into a little bit quicker, I would say. Um, then of course, like the strength training, I know you’re doing a lot of training. Um, and, and, and I was doing a lot of training and I am still doing a lot of, uh, strength training like that just prepares your, I feel like it prepared my body to be able to handle the increase in volume.
Um, better than I did when I was in my early twenties. Like I, I ran track and field, which is more about sprints. And, um, or my, you know, it really is like if you’re, even if you’re running a mile or two miles, it’s still more of a sprint than like a 5k or a 10k. But then somewhere toward like junior, senior year, I started going on longer runs just by myself, you know, and I, I worked up to being able to probably do like 20 mile weeks and I was doing like probably no more than four miles at a, at a pop.
And I remember it taking me a while to get to that place, even though I had basketball and I had track and field in my background. Because I wasn’t strength training. I wasn’t doing the heavy lifting that I’m doing now, and now as a 42 year old, almost 43 year old, having done many years of strength training, a lot of it heavy, getting back into running, I had it.
Um, a couple of times ramping up, like moments where I had to say, okay, Laura, you need to chill out on the volume increase because I would have little things start to come up. Like I never had knee pain. And then for a couple of days I had knee pain. I was like, okay, it’s just because I increased my mileage too quickly.
Um, a couple of days ago I started to feel, um, Um, my big toe mound in a way that I was like, Oh no, stress fracture. Let’s, let’s chill out a little bit. Maybe don’t try to increase mileage so much. Like I, I have these ideas about what, what pain might be like everybody, you know, and it, it causes a little bit, not, I wouldn’t say fear, but it causes me to pause and go like, What have I been doing in terms of volume increase that might be contributing to my body kind of giving me a little bit of a red light?
Um, whereas before, you know, I didn’t have this heavy strength training to allow me to ramp up as I think efficiently as I’m able to right now. But I also had this idea about pain that was a little, uh, Incorrect, which was that. Oh, no, I have pain. I must be injured. So the combination of having strength under my belt and also having a much better understanding of what pain is and what it, you know, could be.
And then also what it probably isn’t. Um, pain science education has made it so that, you know, I can work into this new, this really very new modality, this new way of exercising that I haven’t done in over 20 years and have what I consider to be really good results from it to where now, Oh my gosh, I think I might like running more than strength training, Caitlin.
It’s so good. It’s so, it’s like free drugs in your brain. Sarah said once on the podcast, it’s like the runner’s high, you know, that happiness, that feeling of like, I don’t know, addiction. Like I want to do this right away again tomorrow. And of course then when I wake up in the morning, I’m like, no, I think I’m going to take a day off.
But like right after you run. You’re like, I wish I were running right now because the happiness factor is high. You know, the runners
Caitlin: really get hooked. Um, and what you said is so cool. Cause I think it’s like, it’s kind of in two parts in terms of understanding, like understanding stress, understanding workload, capacity, those kinds of things that you have studied those.
You understand them like cerebrally, right? You also. I understand them so well experientially that you can start to stress your body in intentional ways. Yeah. And like know what you’re doing and know, you know, like feel the effects and feel confident and comfortable, you know, with those, those effects that might be somewhat like, you know, Uncomfortable or undesirable sensations, but like, just something to notice as data points, right?
Right. Um, I think that’s really interesting. Because I feel that too. I’m like, oh, I’ve got a little posterior tib tendonitis that comes and goes with my running, but I’ve got it under control and I know how to monitor it and it’s like, um, it’s just my little laboratory over here in my body. Yeah, and like
Laurel: we, we, we’ve, we’ve done yoga for, for decades and we, we understand like what it means to listen to our body.
I mean, that’s all of yoga is learning to do that. But I think when you understand pain science and when you actually start to stress your body in more high intensity ways. And, and study pain science, right? You start to be better at interpreting what it is your body is telling you while you are listening to it.
Mm hmm.
Caitlin: Totally. Totally. I love talking to you, Laurel. I love how we like, like we got into all of this and we haven’t even started to talk about like our agenda for this episode.
Laurel: From zero to 60. Awesome. Nerd mode. Here we go. Start sharing.
Caitlin: Um, let’s Let’s get to, like, the exciting topic of next year, you’re coming back to New York City.
I’m so thrilled you’re coming here to teach in person at my studio at Practice Human.
Laurel: I am honored and thrilled and I just, I’m like really selfishly excited to hang out with you and eat food in New York City because you have the best restaurants.
Caitlin: We will do it. I know food in New York City. Um, yeah, and we can run in nice places in New York and, um, uh, yeah, so yoga with resistance bands teacher training.
You’ve run this training a couple of times in this hybrid model, right, where you teach in person. So it’s, so it’s, so it’s going to be in person, but it’s also available fully online. Yep. Exactly. And, um, yeah. And I just want to hear a little bit more about why. You made this training, Yoga with Resistance Bands, teacher training.
Laurel: Yeah, absolutely. Um, well, around the time that you and I were teacher trainers at YogaWorks, I started to have, um, an escalation of persistent aches and pains, and it was hip and SI joint related as yours was, according to my memory. Okay. And. Mm hmm. It was at times bothersome, at times debilitating. It started to actually interfere with my daily activities.
I couldn’t, you know, sometimes I couldn’t walk without pain. I couldn’t sleep because I had pain. And that’s when, you know, my stress around this issue that I didn’t really understand started to, to increase. Then around this time, as you might remember, there was a wave of senior yoga teachers, um, having their hips replaced.
And I spent a lot of time on Google in the middle of the night searching, finding, trying to find answers to whether or not I had potentially torn my labrum, if I actually needed a hip replacement surgery, um, and, you know, I did all of this without actually going and consulting a PT, which may, may have been a good idea, may have also not been a good idea depending on the PT, right?
Because I think, um, as you know, there are like yourself, evidence based. practitioners who will, um, you know, not increase fear or stoke fear or create, uh, fear avoidance issues. And then there are ones that will. So depending on who I went to for APT, I don’t know if it would have made the, the, the. You know, situation better or worse.
I think we have to be picky when we choose our PTs. In other words, that’s why I refer people to you all the time. Um, the, uh, the internal conflict, though, of teaching yoga while having personal pain from the practice myself was difficult. to grapple with. I mean, I, I recognize that the pain I was experiencing was at least in part due to how I was practicing yoga or in, in some cases, maybe the practice itself.
I didn’t know if it maybe was just asanas were harmful or if the way I was practicing was harmful. Um, and you know, the turning point came when I When I actually decided to maybe ask a better question, right, which is like rather than asking what’s wrong with the practice or what’s wrong with how I’m practicing it, I started to ask, what am I not doing?
Because all I’m doing is practicing, and that’s what led me to seek out a strength coach who introduced me to some very basic exercises. Well, I wouldn’t say basic in the sense that they’re easy. No strength exercise is easy by definition, but they were, you know, the staples. I learned to hang from a bar.
I wanted to do a pull up, and then she was like, Elizabeth Wipff, by the way, who I know you Oh, yeah. She was like, how about we just work on hanging from a bar? I was like, okay, that sounds good. Uh, head lifting, a kettlebell, uh, swinging a kettlebell, uh, squatting. And, uh, and from there, I started going to the gym near my apartment, playing around with those strength moves at the gym.
And then I, I realized I had resistance bands in my apartment and Elizabeth had had me do some warm ups with resistance bands and I was like, huh. And so then I started bringing the resistance bands into my yoga practice and started to realize that, okay, this is another way to externally load my body.
And it’s one where it applies really easily to the yoga practice that I understood because it’s basically a stretchy belt. And I, you and I both trained in a, in a style that was heavily influenced by the Ayungar method, which heavily utilizes props like a yoga belt. So yeah, I, I started to bring resistance bands into my practice and it was, um, Fantastic, because not only did I have this different prop to start to get creative with, but it was a prop that when I pulled on it, it pulled me back, right?
So then I had to work against its resistance, and I increased the amount of resistance. Work I was doing I increased load in the asanas in a number of ways that probably enhanced my ability to tolerate loads But also the bands the bands showed me different ways of approaching yoga poses That I wouldn’t have been able to find with the more traditional prop props.
And so it was just a really Um, exciting time of discovery and, and creativity and, um, development of a, a way of practicing that I then eventually decided to turn into a larger offering for teachers. So, um, I. you know, around the time that I had just recently had my daughter, I put together a training. I took it was only in person, took it to Dublin.
So, uh, baby, baby Eliana and my husband came with me to Dublin, Ireland, which is a fantastic opportunity to take a little vacation together. I taught it in person and then the pandemic hit and um, Recently, uh, or rather, uh, got contacted by a former colleague through Yoga Tune Up who has her own, um, membership and she has her own community of people in Quebec and she asked me to do it in Quebec and because she has this online membership, I was like, well, we should.
We should hybridize this. And also, everything was online because of the pandemic, so it was like a no brainer. It was like, we cannot, we can no longer just offer things in person. Like, everybody wants the recording. And also, I love teaching online. Um, I absolutely love, uh, the ability to connect with people who, for various reasons, are not able to fly to the local place you’re teaching it in person and can still have this live experience on Zoom.
Or, even if they can’t attend live, they can. Watch the recording and be a part of a collective community experience where it’s not just like one person alone in her room talking to a camera, but it’s me with a bunch of other teachers having conversations, Q and A’s. Um, we do a lot in this training. We do a lot of, um, creative brainstorming around.
for example, different ways to apply a band to a particular pose or a different, different band arrangements to do on the same pose. And so there’s this like collective brainstorming happening and like that you can get so much out of that type of recording. versus like someone, you know, just talking to a camera.
So, um, I think that that, uh, ultimately why I created this training is to give teachers more tools, right? Um, to give teachers, uh, more tools to be able to solve their students problems, right? To be able to address what might be gaps and for their students in the practice where the student’s not getting enough of a certain type of stimulus, whether it be the stimulus needs to be a little higher, or maybe the student just needs to be able to feel.
More in the pose to be able to understand how to place their body in space, or maybe the student wants to actually get a little help in the pose, right? So resistance bands can actually offer assistance and make poses that are incredibly challenging, like arm balances, for example, a lot more accessible because they help to kind of squeeze, you know, for example, your legs around your arms or help lift your feet up for you so that you can have a little easier time coming into it.
Um, they’re incredibly, resistance bands also translate really well to yoga because they’re very, portable. I think yoga practitioners are by nature, minimalists. Uh, that’s, that’s, what’s so romantic about the yoga practices that it’s just your body or maybe a blanket or maybe a block or maybe a belt. It’s just a resistance band, right?
It, it’s maybe two resistance bands. They’re very light, portable. They don’t cost a lot of money. You can put them in your bag, you can take them on the airplane. Um, and so it. It’s, it’s a very practical prop as well to bring into the practice. And, um, yeah, the bands, I think are a wonderful way to, uh, foster creativity, to add a little bit of cross training to a practice that is familiar and that we already know, like when students come to our yoga class, uh, class that they love yoga.
So we’re not going to change that. We’re going to keep teaching yoga, but we’re going to give them. a tool that’s very unique in terms of the potential that it has to to do different stuff, right? That the block and the blanket and the belt can’t necessarily do. And it varies the loads, right? So if, if like you and I had, you know, persistent hip and has eye joint pain, probably because we were doing too much of one thing and not enough of everything else, right?
The bands. bring in a little something different so that you can keep doing the practice that you love, the poses that you love, but the band is going to load your body in a different way and give your body a different challenge in that pose. And that variability that, that can really go a long way toward helping to kind of.
Prevent these types of persistent pains that might crop up from a repetitive practice, but also, um, to potentially help you desensitize your body within certain poses that would otherwise sensitize, sensitize for whatever reason, because you’ve, you’ve Changed the I would say is my joke. My mom used to say you change the emphasis on the syllable.
I love it. Exactly. Yeah, emphasizing a different muscle group or you’re emphasizing a different action because the bands are, uh, asking you to via their line of their line of pull their line of resistance.
Caitlin: Yeah. I mean that I think that that is so key for like, um, pain desensitization, right? Something I use a lot in the clinic is getting people to move against light resistance, whether it’s like me giving a little bit of manual resistance while they’re moving their joint through a maybe kind of iffy range of motion, or then transitioning to work.
you know, do, do on their own so that they can have that tool to treat themselves with a band. But it’s like, it’s like, just put a, like a little bit of force through that area that’s like a different force or a new force is going to talk to that body region in a different way, but in a way that is in a familiar context, like you’re saying, right?
This, this familiar safe container and in a way that feels really like, like you, you are in control. Mm hmm. Of how much and how intense and, um, and, uh, it’s such a, such an important tool for desensitizing like persistent kind of pain regions in the body, I think.
Laurel: Yeah. I, I’ve had, you know, and this is anecdotal, but I’ve had lots of, Students taking the training, but also teachers, you know, who communicate with me online who use resistance bands express that they were able to do poses for the first time without pain.
They didn’t feel their hip hurting like it normally does or their shoulder hurting like it normally does because Their body had to re pattern and learn a new, novel way of expressing the same shape and that in and of itself, that novelty helped to help the pose feel better for them, which is just, that’s like the best outcome you could ask for, right?
Caitlin: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. It’s so great. And I, I also think, um, kind of speaks to what you were saying about strength training and, uh, kind of gradually ramping up. Our, our, I guess our tolerance of feeling stress or feeling intensity. Um, I think the bands are a great, um, maybe like a gateway to strength training.
Laurel: I use
Caitlin: that term a lot. People who are apprehensive. Yes. Because it’s, yeah, like it just kind of primes the nervous system. Yes. For handling a little bit more load. It
Laurel: does. It does. So on a kind of physical or biological level, right, this word primes the nervous system is really good, right? It’s like, okay, you’re handling a slightly higher amount of load or you’re handling load in a pose that you would normally not be handling because of the line of pull of the band.
Right? Right. It’s really effective. Um, So, that is a great introduction to what happens on a larger, more significant scale when you start lifting weights for the purpose of building strength or strength training, right? In the training, I talk a good bit about how yoga with resistance bands is not strength training, but that you can.
Increase your strength by practicing yoga with resistance bands. What’s missing with yoga with resistance bands is that there’s no progressive overload, probably. Unless you figured out a way to structure your classes so that there was, and it’s not impossible. Right. There are a lot of smart teachers right now bringing in progressive overload to their yoga classes, probably not the whole class, though, because that probably wouldn’t feel too much like a yoga asana class, right?
Right. But you can bring it in, in small bits and pieces. But for the most part, when people Start bringing bands into their yoga classes. It’s still their yoga class, right? And that’s another big piece of advice I give in the training is like, don’t suddenly completely change your class, right? Go back to your group, teach how you teach, teach what you teach, but bring in the bands for parts of it.
Start to wet their whistle. And you’re going to give your students a little taste of what it means to increase. intensity within poses where, you know, they, they might be coasting at this point, right? This pose is kind of easy for them or this pose was never hard for them. Suddenly you put a band on it, you ask them to move against its resistance and they’re like, wait a second.
And not only are they working a little bit more intensely, right? Which you could, you could also easily do without bands, right? You could just have them do a different variation of the pose, for example, but you’re asking them to use equipment in For the purpose of doing that. And that’s, that’s also kind of something that I find yoga practitioners need a slow run.
They need like a longer runway, uh, in order to kind of get off the ground with this idea of like, now we’re going to bring equipment into the practice in order to challenge ourselves a little bit more because a lot of times when we think about a prop, right? I think, you know, unfortunately props are often described as things that make the practice easier.
Okay, now I know a lot of teachers that we know online are using props to make the practice more challenging, like yoga blocks can make the practice more challenging, blanks, everything, any prop can make the practice more challenging.
Caitlin: Yeah, or just like informing
Laurel: something different. Right, but when, but with, with the lay, with the, with the general population of yoga practitioners, not necessarily teachers, like their idea a lot of the time about what a prop is.
Is something that makes their practice easier, right? And in a lot of mainstream classes, that’s how props are still positioned. You place your hand on a block if you can’t touch the floor, right? Hold on to the belt if you can’t reach your hands, right? Make the practice easier for yourself. So then when you bring in a resistance band, most of the time you’re bringing it in actually to objectively make the practice more challenging because you’ve increased external load.
You’ve increased, you’ve added external load. You’ve increased load. You’ve increased, uh, the, the effort that you’re now going to need to put forth to accomplish whatever the pose was. Right. And so I think that that can be, um, good. It’s going to take some time to get people used to it, but it can be really good primer for strength training because then suddenly they’re doing this yoga with resistance bands class.
They’re using equipment. Right to increase load and they might start to look at weights a little differently. They might then start to look at the idea of going to the gym where they’re all of these tools to increase load is like, well, so I’m doing with bands. Maybe I could also do it with this.
Equipment at the gym to or this equipment that I bring into my house to and that has absolutely been my experience as a teacher as a as an online movement educator, like the people in my membership, they a lot of them found me because I did a course with yoga journal called resistance bands one on one, they found me through yoga journal.
And now they’ve been with me since the beginning, doing kettlebell progressive program, they a lot of them signed up for bone density course like, um, Yeah, it’s, it’s definitely a gateway as he, as he, as he called it.
Caitlin: Yeah, absolutely. I think, um, one of the things you’ve talked about too in the past when it comes to using the bands is just the different types of proprioceptive stimulus or kind of mapping, mapping out the body, which I think can be really helpful for, I’m, I’m not an expert on hypermobility.
A lot of our friends are like, like our colleagues, like Trina Altman and people who, really, really work with that because it’s part of their own lived experience. Yeah. Um, but I know, uh, the resistance from the bands can be really beneficial for that, um, as well. Do you find that you often get teachers who have either had a, a, a formal hypermobility diagnosis or know that they’re somewhat hypermobile or work with hypermobile students that have gotten a lot out of using these bands for
Laurel: yoga asana?
Absolutely. I mean, as we know, yoga attracts hyper mobile students because their bodies are able to do the poses. They’re able to do those big ranges of motion very, very easily. Um, and so that though can kind of beat the antithesis of what they actually need to be doing right, which is Um, maybe pulling back from end range and working to feel where their body is in space, right?
That’s that proprioceptive element. Maybe, maybe also build some tolerance, uh, and some ability to resist, uh, resist their end range or resist loads. So, um, There’s a, there’s, there’s, I think, three main ways that resistance bands can help with hypermobility. Um, one is, I already said, it pulls students back from end range.
Um, and the reason that it does that is that when you add a band, right, and you ask someone to move against its resistance, uh, they’re, they’re likely not going to be able to get to their absolute. And range of motion because you’ve just taken what was probably a more passive range of motion and made it more active and we always have less active range of motion than passive range of motion.
So just by asking them to move against resistance, they’re not going to be able to achieve that same, um, Ultimate and range of motion and they’ll have to pull back, right? So that’s a good thing. The other thing is that it slows people down. So if you’ve got a hyper mobile student who comes in and they do what all lovingly called flop and fold yoga, whether kind of just flopping around their body and sinking in and, you know, just getting into shapes by hook or by crook using leverage or whatever it is, you put a band on them and because of that increased resistance, because of the, because of the relationship between velocity and resistance or velocity and load, like the more resistance you apply to a moving object, the slower It has to go, right?
So they will have to slow down and you won’t have to turn blue in the face telling them to slow down because a lot of times when you like hyper mobile students, um, they hear what you’re saying and they’re trying to do it. They just they have a hard time propriocepting their body. So you’re telling them to slow down and you’re like, what do you I am?
So this is slow, right? I’m moving slowly. Um, so the bands can can sort of, uh, be like, um, What’s a, what’s a good analogy?
Caitlin: Constraint. Exactly. Constraint. So it’s like, yeah. Like you’re saying, you don’t have to keep telling them. You don’t need verbal cues. You just give them a constraint. Yeah. And they, they feel their way through.
Listen. To
Laurel: move within that. Listen, one of my favorite things about resistance bands is how many Fewer words have to come out of my mouth. It’s like, I don’t know if you can relate, Caitlin, but I think I was taught to over cue. I was taught everything too much, and it’s been really difficult for me to learn how to say less.
But as soon as I started to harness the power of a prop and the way that the student can basically autonomously engage with the constraint that a prop places on their body, The less I have to say, right? You, you basically, you, you make the prop. They’re problem to solve, not problem in a bad way, they’re puzzle, right?
They’re puzzle to solve. And you say, okay, now here’s the puzzle and here’s what you’re going to do to solve it and then get after it. Right? So pull the band apart. Okay. And, and that, you know, in and of itself, just saying, pull the band apart. You connect the band to their body and then you tell them to pull it apart.
There’s only so many ways they’re going to be able to move. There’s only so fast they’re going to be able to move. So it’s a wonderful construct. It’s perfect. It’s like point
Caitlin: A, point B. Move them apart. And then, such a cool thing about the bands too, and you touched on this a little bit earlier, is the bands can create resistance in directions that are not the same direction as gravity.
Yeah, exactly. And that is. It’s perfect for everybody. And that’s like such a cool advantage of using like, I mean bands or like a cable machine, something that’s like gonna give your body feedback that’s like, it’s what makes it so novel, right? It’s like. Yeah. It’s not just picking up heavy objects or feeling your own body weight in gravity, it can create resistance on all these different trajectories and all these different You know, force vectors that are not gravitational force.
Laurel: Exactly. That, that speaks to the amount of variety that bands can offer a practice, um, which, which is beneficial to people with hypermobility, but it’s also beneficial to everybody because variety, um, you know, if we get stuck in these grooves where we’re just digging deeper and deeper ruts through these movement patterns, like I think I was when I started to have that hip and SI joint pain, right?
I was like doing certain, only certain poses, not. Not, I wasn’t doing, first of all, I was only doing yoga, right? And then I was doing certain poses more than others and I was doing them in this very kind of, um, micromanaged, alignment y type, correct alignment way. And I wasn’t exploring doing other modalities outside of yoga.
I wasn’t exploring doing certain poses that I had, you know, for one reason or another, not gravitated toward or that the style didn’t really prize as, as highly as others. And then I was also, um, you know, not exploring alignments that were, oh, maybe a little bit less, uh, straight lines, 90 degree angles, everything has to line up with the edge of the mat kind of alignment.
And we’re more maybe circular, spirally, flowy, modern, dancey looking, right? And so, um, the variety of just moving differently in the practice helped enormously. Well, the same thing goes when you start to use props differently. The same thing goes when you start to also position your body in different orientations to gravity and do the same shapes.
The same thing goes when you put resistance bands on your body, which is really kind of a sneaky way to like work against, right? If you were to like, say, do, um, downward facing dog, but then if you were to do a downward facing dog flipped upside down, so now your butts on the ground. And your feet are straight up in the air and your hands are straight up in the air, you can, you can feel how like flipping that egg in the frying pan is going to completely change your experience of your body in the shape that it’s in when it’s in down dog and when it’s in like this version of Navasana bow pose, right?
Well, you can have that same type of thing happen with a band in the same orientation to gravity. Right. You could be in the same orientation of gravity and just wear the band five different ways. And now you’re experiencing loads in five very different ways, having to resist five different very, uh, five very different directions of force.
And so that the variety is, I think, especially. Variety, especially when we’re dealing with a practice like yoga asana, where the loads are low. So what we’re really working on is first of all, mindfulness, probably relaxation, connecting with ourself, right? Finding some, some more internal focused attention instead of being drawn out by our senses to our like cell phones and to do lists and then children and spouses and things like that.
Uh, clients, um, we get to go inside, but also We’re working on moving our body in all the wonderful ways that it needs to move to be able to keep fluid moving through the joints, to be able to keep, um, our, our tissues pliable and ready for, for the variety of movement that it has to do in our daily life to break out of those, those ruts that we get into when we kind of just sit down in our chair for.
extended periods of time and like even strength training. Like, I love my yoga practice so much since I’ve gotten really deep into strength training because strength training can be pretty repetitive, right? There’s a lot of sagittal plane movement. Um, and so, uh, variety becomes really important to keep things feeling good and moving well, right?
To keep your body feeling Good. Um, strength training also incorporates variety, but actually variety can, can run counter to strength training because if we’re always doing something different all the time. Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. difficult to apply the principle of progressive overload. Right. And so, um, I think Variety really has a, a very, like, it’s like vari variety I think should be.
Well, I won’t say should. I won’t should on people. But I think variety is one of the things that we can, with good cause, pursue for its own sake as yoga teachers. Because it has so much value inherently to move differently. So in all the ways that you can bring variety into your yoga practice, do it. But it’s also okay for your yoga practice to be a little repetitive too.
I’m not saying that it all has to be all different all the time. I mean, repetition is really important for learning. So there’s a, there’s an argument to make things repetitive as well. But I think variety is, is a wonderful, at least, in my opinion, um, aspect of a yoga practice because it just, you find all these areas of your body where like, oh, I haven’t moved that for a while or oh, I haven’t stretched that for a while and it just feels good and you feel good because of it.
So bands are a wonderful way to get that variety and a little bit of extra resistance too. Mm
Caitlin: hmm. So, in creating this teacher training, your Yoga with Resistance Bands training, what do you find are some of the most difficult aspects for new teachers who are attempting to bring the bands either into their own personal practice to start experimenting on their own, but then also introducing them to their students in the Yoga Asana classroom?
Laurel: Yeah. So, I think probably The number one pitfall or mistake that teachers could fall into or like, you know, make and not realize they’re making is to Get really so get really excited about it. That’s not a mistake. Like like get really excited about this new thing You’re gonna start doing your teaching but the mistake is that sometimes you change your teaching too much or you Introduce too much of that new thing too soon, right?
And so the dosage is a little too high From the student’s perspective, so that, you know, I, I liken it to having a favorite restaurant, you know, the menu inside and out, you’ve had all your favorite dishes on there multiple times. Then you go into the restaurant and they completely changed the menu on you.
Like nothing is the same and you’re like, wait a second, what? I can’t get my, you know, Irish stew that I always like to get or I can’t get my, uh, croque monsieur anymore. Like what the heck? And, and so that’s when, you know, people become disenchanted and, and a little bit, they feel a little betrayed.
They’re like, who are you even, you know? And so I would say if you’re gonna bring bands into your class and you’ve never brought bands into your class before, maybe pick one moment in the class to have the students try the bands and make it a, this isn’t the other piece of advice, it’s like when you bring them in, keep it really simple.
Like pick an arrangement, maybe just instead of using two or three bands, like just use one. pick an arrangement that is a no brainer, like no one’s gonna mess it up, and it’s going to make an impact. So yeah, students are really gonna feel what the band is trying to help them feel, and if you can give them a Pre check and a recheck opportunity, have them do the pose before the band, then do something with the band, and then have them do the pose again without the band.
Like, really send it, like, send it home to them that, like, this is a very useful tool that you can do to really Help yourself and, and on top of all that, right, tell them why they’re doing it. Like, find simple, enticing ways that speak to your audience and their, um, desires and goals and needs and problems and talk about the band contextualizing it in those terms specifically for them.
And if you do those three things, keep the dosage small. Keep the application of the band simple. Actually, it’s four things. Make the application of the band potent and obvious, and then give a pre check and a re check. You, you will, you will win them over at least in, in, in terms of how the band’s being used in that scenario.
Okay, so, and then, you know, this is what happened with me, I’m sure it’s what’s happened with you too, which is that you basically, as a teacher, if you want to change, You start to change your students practice slowly, and then they reflect back to you how that is for them and help you change continuously more, right?
So you don’t just suddenly become a different teacher. You engage in a In a back and forth collective relationship with your students where you’re changing them and they’re changing you back, right? And, and you’re steering the ship. You’re like, I want to bring bands into the practice, but I’m going to do it in a way that doesn’t leave you in the dust.
that you get to come along with me. And of course, you’re going to have people who drop out too, right? You can’t please everyone. Some people are just going to not like the bands. And if, hey, listen, if you want to teach with bands, you’re not going to win them all. Right? But you’ll probably win a large percentage of your students if you do it in a way that has purpose, that’s purposeful, like applying the bands in a purposeful way that is relevant to your group.
The other, the other thing I, we talk quite a bit about in the training is the logistics, right? Like the real kind of straightforward logistics of bringing in this new equipment, of bringing in resistance bands specifically. So the way I use the bands is I. I use, uh, what I call stirrup bands. So it’s basically a long band with two little loops tied into each end.
And so as teachers, you want to have those pre tied, right? You would never want to bring those in and have your students tie the bands. Never, never do that. Um, you also want to inspect the bands to make sure they’re in good condition because bands can snap. Right. It’s not really a big deal if they do.
It’s a little bit, it’s just kind of like a sudden like, you know, you’ve ever been in a, in a class where the, where the teacher’s teaching with metal chairs and some student makes the mistake of folding the chair up and leaning it against the wall and slides down and just scares people a little bit.
However, you do want to make sure you are never teaching with bands in a way where students are pulling the bands toward their face. Okay. And I talk a lot about that. That’s just a big safety thing for the eyes. You never want the band to snap in someone’s eyes. So, um, that’s really the biggest safety thing I talk about with bands is like, just don’t pull the bands towards someone’s face or eyes.
Um, and then like figuring out, you know, how long should the bands be? How heavy should they be? Um, these are, these are the logistics of what we discuss, but basically the sky’s the limit. I mean, this is a stretchy thing. belt. And so if you’ve, if you’ve explored props in a creative way at all, you know, there are about 11 million ways to use a yoga belt.
Well, there’s probably more ways to use a band. And it’s, yeah, my training doesn’t tell you those 11 million ways. My training gives you a ton of ideas, a ton of ideas. But what my training helps you do is it helps you think. Purposefully about how you’re going to use bands, harnessing their unique capabilities to help your students specifically.
So the training is largely about, yes, resistance bands, but it’s largely about how to teach purposefully and cue purposefully and sequence. There’s a huge part of the training is about how to sequence with bands specifically in mind so that you create a class where students can understand why they’re using the bands and get some wins, have some success, have some, you know, aha moments, you know, like, Oh, I did this pose and it didn’t hurt my shoulder.
Or I was finally able to get up into crow pose or, Oh my gosh, I was able to lower into chaturanga and then press up into upward dog. And it felt so good. You know, that’s ultimately as teachers, what we want to do is create. opportunities for our students to organize opportunities for our students to learn.
And so my training kind of does that for teachers. I organize opportunity for teachers to learn how to use bands in a way that their students will benefit from because they know their students and now they understand these really simple, um, habits of thought, these really simple things to keep in mind.
that they can apply to creating their own banded classes. And then you get a ton of ideas as well. Like there’s five bonus classes that you get. There’s 39 pose tutorials that give you tons of ideas for how to use the bands in, um, different poses. Then there’s these, uh, four full length, uh, practices where, um, we do a deep dive on like intentionality of like, we do the practices together in the training live.
And then we go back and we look at like, What did we do in this sequence, and then why? What purpose did it serve? What larger purpose did it serve? In terms of, you know, what was the peak pose, or what was the theme, or what was the goal? And then, how did this particular pose with this particular band arrangement really kind of serve that purpose?
So, the entire training is really about being intentional and knowing why you’re bringing bands in and in this way it’s kind of a training that teaches you to do that with everything with with every kind of prop including if you wanted to bring like other non traditional props into the yoga practice say like dumbbells or something like that so um it’s a resistance band training but it’s it’s it’s really about how to teach purposefully training yeah Yeah.
Caitlin: Um, well, I want to share a little bit with the listeners about the training, um, because I’m sure we’ve piqued some interest as there are some people listening. Um, this training is going to be in person here in New York City. The whole thing is also available online. Um, the whole thing is available as a recording to watch later, right, for anybody that participates in the training in person or online.
Yes. Um, dates for this training are February 17th and 18th. Um, there is like an early discount, correct, Laurel, if people sign up by a certain date they can save like 100
Laurel: bucks? Yeah, you are gonna save a hundred dollars if you sign up. By February 4th, and if you want to know more about what’s in this training or who I am or what it’s like to practice with me, we’re doing two free classes that you can sign up for right now.
They are on February, excuse me, correction, January 23rd, which is a Tuesday from 12 to 1 Eastern and January 30th. which is a Tuesday from 12 to 1 Eastern. And in these classes you’re going to do a 30 to 45 minute yoga with resistance bands class with me. And then we can talk about resistance bands and the training and what’s inside the training for 15, 20, 25 minutes after the class.
You can ask your questions and get them answered. Um, and, and if you can’t make it live, that’s totally fine. There’s always a recording. There is always a recording and you get the recording, I think, uh, for a couple of weeks. The, the training, okay, the, the full length 12 hour training that has over 5 hours of pre recorded content.
Included as well. And then also a 120 page manual that you keep, which is photographed, right? So you get all the post tutorials photographed and the sequences written out and all that. And you’ll never forget what happened in the live training. But you get all that recorded content for an entire year after you sign up.
So you have a year to watch it. Um, so if you want to find out, like, What the practices feel like in your body and meet me come to the free classes on the 23rd and 30th of January, you will get the recording as well. If you can’t make it live, you’ll get the recording. If you can make it live, everyone gets the recording and you’ll get a taste for for what it is because I like a lot of people still haven’t practiced yoga with resistance bands.
So they’re like, okay. You know, uh, this sounds interesting, but I don’t even know what it’s like to practice with resistance bands. It’s like, well, come to these classes, you’ll, you’ll get to feel it in your body. And then also know that, um, resistance bands go with yoga, like peanut butter and chocolate, because it’s basically, it’s a stretchy, Yoga belt.
So you know, you have familiarity probably with a yoga belt. Now you’re going to bring a band in and there’s other things to keep in mind with a resistance band. Right. But, um, it’s good. It comes quickly for people who’ve been practicing yoga for a while, teaching yoga for a while. But, um, but yeah, you’re, you’re, you’re going to want to come to these free classes and get a, get
Caitlin: a feel for it.
Yeah. Thank you. And I think you can, um, and for anybody, I think you can, you can find out more about this both on Laurel’s website, laurelbeversdorf. com, um, I think just in your, um, which tab is this under here?
Laurel: Well, link it in the show notes. I’ll link it. Because, yeah, we’ll, we’ll do a direct link in the show notes to the training page.
Caitlin: Cool. Sounds good. And yeah, and if you’re, if you go to practicehuman. com, you can see it listed in our events, our upcoming events here for this. So you can kind of access it at any angle there, but I’ll link Laurel’s pages in the show notes. And
Laurel: we’ll also, we’ll also link the free class sign up in the show notes.
So you can go right to the show notes. And click the free class sign up and put your, your name and your email address in and you will receive the links to join the live classes and you will receive the replays when you do that.
Caitlin: Sweet. Awesome. Also, for anybody listening, if you don’t follow Laurel on Instagram, Follow her at Laurel Biebersdorf.
Um, she shares a ton of creative movement ideas, sequencing ideas, strength training, lots of resistance band stuff on there. Um, there is so much valuable, evidence backed, really well researched, really well explained information on Laurel’s Instagram page. It’s a big source of inspiration for me. And, um, that’s a great place to learn from her as
Laurel: well.
Thank you. And I feel the same way about your page on Instagram.
Caitlin: Um, I think that’s all we’ve got for this, uh, this chat, but I’m looking forward to seeing you in February. Maybe we can do some runs together. Yes.
Laurel: Oh, absolutely. I can’t wait to run in Central Park. I did when I was in my early 20s, and I just can’t wait to.
Reminisce.
Caitlin: I love Central Park. And there’s something about, well, like you said, how you get kind of hooked on running. I think a big part of that comes with the motivation you get from running outside. And running outside in like beautiful, scenic locations. I’ve run last fall and this fall quite a lot in Central Park in the fall.
It’s my favorite season, by far my favorite season in New York City. I think it’s a very special thing about New York and like, oh, the way, the way I’ve experienced the city running this fall has just been Incredible. And, yeah, so we’ll definitely take some trips to Central Park. I don’t, I don’t know what it’ll be like running in Central Park in February.
Oh. It’ll be fine. If it’s anything like this past February, it’s gonna be like 65 degrees and sunny every day. So,
Laurel: I don’t know. I’m excited to get all my winter gear out and bring that along with me
Caitlin: too. Yeah, and it’s like, alright. I didn’t know how, this is, this is the first winter I’m running through the winter.
I keep wondering week by week as it gets colder what this is going to be like for me and if I’m going to be running outside through the winter. And as it gets colder, I’m doing these runs and I’m like, I like this. This feels really good. Like, early in the morning, 7 o’clock at dawn, like cold weather, run.
Get warm. It’s, it’s feeling great for me, actually. So, who knows? Maybe I’ll be an all season, at least for New York City,
Laurel: all season runner. I mean, you grew up in Nebraska. You’ve lived on the East Coast your whole life. Like, you’re fine. You’ll be fine. I think I can
Caitlin: do it. Yeah. I mean, I ran over the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday morning, 30 degrees.
When we started our run, and it was gorgeous. We got, we hit the bridge. So I’m running with a run club here too. I know you were saying you’re trail running with a club. I meet this club at the West Village at the piers. And, um, and we ran over the Brooklyn bridge, like before all the traffic gets to the bridge.
Like we hit the bridge at probably like 7. 20, 7. 30 in the morning on a weekday.
Laurel: Oh, I was going to tell you, Caitlin. I have, I’ve started working out early in the morning, which is something I never, ever thought. Yeah. I, I can’t believe I am. I am a person who wakes up at five to go work out. Like I, I just can’t even believe it, but I am.
And I, and I love it. I love it. I love the feeling of, um, yeah, like I get, I get to CrossFit sometimes at six. I start my run at six. Yeah. That’s early for me. I need, I need that much time to like have my coffee and read a little bit to like, you know, wake myself up on all levels. But, um, Yeah. I, I can’t, I can’t believe it.
Well, you say you get to like, you get there at like seven or whatever you start running at seven. Yeah. I mean, that’s early. Like I, I was more of a, like working out at 3 PM or 4 PM kind of a person, but, um, this morning,
Caitlin: I don’t know what it is. Do you think the running has changed it for you? Was it when you started running that you started working out earlier?
You know, before the running, it was, the running does it. I
Laurel: hadn’t thought of that until you just said that.
Caitlin: Running early feels really good.
Laurel: Yeah. It might be that the running, yeah, made me an early morning workout person. I’m not really sure, um, the mechanism behind that, but I don’t know why. Me either. I’m
Caitlin: questioning, I’m questioning a lot in terms of physiological adaptations right now and um, because I’m seeing a ton of changes in like, well, like my mood.
My kind of cycle of the day, my energy. I’ve even found that things have changed in my thermoregulation. So, like, since I’ve started running, I can tolerate extreme changes in temperatures more comfortably. I, I felt the same. Right? Like, I can de cold and feel comfortable with that. Yeah. Not just because I’m running and I’m warm, but when I’m not running.
And I go out in the cold. It doesn’t bother
Laurel: me. For me, it was the heat because I started running in September. No, I started running in early October. It can still be really hot in Alabama in early October, like 80s, you know, 90s. Like, not 90s, but like 80s, 85. That’s hot for me to be running outside. But, um, I found that in the beginning it was hard for me to regulate my temperature.
That was kind of the hardest part. And I would run on my treadmill in the basement and have the fan on and like my husband likes to keep it really cold in here. And I’d be like, I’m so hot. And it reminded me of like the people who would take my yoga class at, at yoga works who were always hot. And then the before I was cold, it was cold.
Someone wanted the temperature to be higher and not lower. And like, it was like the battle of what the temperature of the room should be. I felt like the people who were always hot. I was like, why am I hot? Because I’m not usually always hot. I’m usually always cold. But starting off running, I’m like, I’m immediately way too hot.
And now I don’t have that issue anymore. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. You don’t. Thermoregulation is definitely one of the adaptations that I had to. for the CSCS, like your body does better at handling that with running. I
Caitlin: feel it so much. I used to be like so sensitive to like changes in temperatures. And now I’m just like, whatever.
Yeah. Nice. It’s like a nice superpower. I know. I don’t have the pain of the temperature
Laurel: anymore. Your winter clothes are on the inside of your body. Right. Yes, yes. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so
Caitlin: much, Laurel. This has been wonderful. It’s always wonderful to catch up with you, and I’m sure we’ll do a lot more catching up when you’re here.
I know, I agree 100%. When you’re in February.
Laurel: Yes, absolutely. I’m so excited.
Caitlin: Thank you so much for listening. Again, if you’re interested in signing up for a couple free classes to get a taste of what Laurel’s Yoga with Resistance Band Training is all about, go to the link in the show notes. I’m also going to put a link in my Instagram bio.to our event page on the Practice Human website, practicehuman.com/events, you can find Laurel’s training there, and within that page you can sign up for these two free classes on January 23rd and January 30th, again, you have the option to attend live, but if you sign up and you can’t come live, you’ll still get the replay videos, so I hope you enjoy that, and any questions, For us or observations to share here at Practice Human, you can always email us at hello@practicehuman.com. We respond to all of your emails and look forward to continuing the conversation.
