I have been very interested in how the body reacts to a new physical activity ever since I started yoga. When I was taking physical education classes in high school, we mainly did ball sports, which require a lot of quick hand-eye / arm-leg coordinations, running, quick bursts of sprinting, and a competitive mindset. Because I have never been great with quick coordinations, I often lose the ball, be it soccer, basketball, badminton, or frisbee. I also lack the strong desire to sprint faster than the next person for a few seconds in order catch that frisbee or dive hard for that volleyball. These sports require a ton of intuition and spontaneity.
For activities like hiking, snowboarding, yoga, and climbing, it is a totally different mindset. You are in less of a rush. The goal is kind of to keep the body moving, to be immersed in the experience and feel the movements. There is also coordination required, but you are more looking in a general direction rather than at a specific item outside of your body. Of course at a competition level these activities can be fast-paced, but when performed as leisurely activities, it is more enjoyable to focus on the breathing, whether or not the movements feel smooth and natural, in order to enter a flow. While learning the movement for these activities, one even has time to examine the body specifically from within: Am I using my leg muscles correctly for this lunge? Are my cores engaged adequately for this specific move? I find the whole internal inquiry journey quite enjoyable. Perhaps it's because I'm ultra nerdy.
I learned a lot about anatomy and breathing in general through learning yoga. However, I know very little about how the nervous system adapts to exercises. I mean, my nervous system tells me how I feel in the body before, during, and after a yoga or climbing session, but I'm not sure how to observe the nervous system itself. I know it's ramped up as my heart rate increases and my breathing becomes quicker and shallower. When the heart rates starts to calm down and I feel overall less panicky during cool down, that's the parasympathetic nervous system at work. After a yoga session, I usually feel a sense of electric pulses flowing up and down the body, but I'm not sure if that's the nervous system itself or more of the nadi channels / chi / elusive meridian system.
For yoga, from not being able to do an asana at all to feeling comfortable in an asana, there is of course neuromuscular recruitment. But it is not as apparent as climbing, when I started from not be able to do a single pull up (in fact, I could only hang on a bar for about 2-3 seconds before my shoulders and just the whole nervous system screaming at me to let go), to being able to hang for 5 seconds, with no more mental panicking; rather, just the nerves on the skin on my hands ask me to give my hands a break. Now I can do some pull ups (not great ones, since I do not specifically train for them), and can do some lock-offs (hold my arms in a tight bent position for 1-2 seconds). That is an obvious neuromuscular recruitment improvement.
I need to read up more on nervous systems in order to better describe how I feel in my journey of learning to climb.
For activities like hiking, snowboarding, yoga, and climbing, it is a totally different mindset. You are in less of a rush. The goal is kind of to keep the body moving, to be immersed in the experience and feel the movements. There is also coordination required, but you are more looking in a general direction rather than at a specific item outside of your body. Of course at a competition level these activities can be fast-paced, but when performed as leisurely activities, it is more enjoyable to focus on the breathing, whether or not the movements feel smooth and natural, in order to enter a flow. While learning the movement for these activities, one even has time to examine the body specifically from within: Am I using my leg muscles correctly for this lunge? Are my cores engaged adequately for this specific move? I find the whole internal inquiry journey quite enjoyable. Perhaps it's because I'm ultra nerdy.
I learned a lot about anatomy and breathing in general through learning yoga. However, I know very little about how the nervous system adapts to exercises. I mean, my nervous system tells me how I feel in the body before, during, and after a yoga or climbing session, but I'm not sure how to observe the nervous system itself. I know it's ramped up as my heart rate increases and my breathing becomes quicker and shallower. When the heart rates starts to calm down and I feel overall less panicky during cool down, that's the parasympathetic nervous system at work. After a yoga session, I usually feel a sense of electric pulses flowing up and down the body, but I'm not sure if that's the nervous system itself or more of the nadi channels / chi / elusive meridian system.
For yoga, from not being able to do an asana at all to feeling comfortable in an asana, there is of course neuromuscular recruitment. But it is not as apparent as climbing, when I started from not be able to do a single pull up (in fact, I could only hang on a bar for about 2-3 seconds before my shoulders and just the whole nervous system screaming at me to let go), to being able to hang for 5 seconds, with no more mental panicking; rather, just the nerves on the skin on my hands ask me to give my hands a break. Now I can do some pull ups (not great ones, since I do not specifically train for them), and can do some lock-offs (hold my arms in a tight bent position for 1-2 seconds). That is an obvious neuromuscular recruitment improvement.
I need to read up more on nervous systems in order to better describe how I feel in my journey of learning to climb.
