Hot Yoga

A new yoga/Pilates studio has opened upstairs in Porirua City Fitness called Abundance. A few years ago, I was a member of PCF, but quit after I stopped going to the gym. You can get a separate membership to Abundance only (without being a member of PCF). They offer mat pilates, machine pilates, basic yoga and hot power yoga.

I've done yoga classes a few times before (nowhere near a regular, but more like once a week for 6-8 weeks), and I grew up doing ballet, so I was quite flexible. I'm finding as I do more swimming and running, I'm getting less and less flexible, and I think flexible is very important for many reasons. I also found yoga quite relaxing when I've done it in the past, so I thought it would be a great thing to do alongside the C25k program.

I was quite worried about doing hot yoga, yoga is hard enough as it is, and I'm not a person who suffers in the heat well. I tweeted about it, asking if anyone had done it before and got lots of replies saying that the room would be about 40degrees, 40% humidity, and would get very very hot. Apparently, the purpose of it is to loosen your muscles and make you sweat out all the toxins in your body.

Understandably, I went into the class a little bit wary of how hard it would be. The first class is free, then you can buy 2 classes for $10 to see if you like it. They have done a major upgrade to the gym since I was a member, and the upstairs area has totally changed. I spoke to a couple of the ladies while we were waiting outside for the class before ours to start, and I was quite relieved to hear that they hadn't done hot yoga before either.

The class was really great - tiring, and very hard on my weakling arms, but I felt stretched and relaxed. The heat did make me sweat a lot, but it wasn't unbearable. I'm definitely going to go back. Today my shoulders are really sore, they have that nice 'I've exercised' feeling which is good because I haven't been getting that from running.

I'm going to be going to mat pilates tomorrow. I've never been to pilates before and I have no idea what to expect. Initally, I thought it was a really good deal to join, but when I worked it out, it's not so great. It's $18/class if you're not a member, or if you are a member, it's $14.40/class + $19/month. If you go to two classes a week, that's $135 a month. Most other yoga classes are about $15/session.