Hot June Challenge, Geriatric Gymnast Style

What do Geriatric Gymnasts do in the heat? We pull it back a bit, but we still know how to have fun. Read on for some tips and examples of how we navigate class in the hot summer heat.

The heat is on!

Tuesday was one of those long, hot days just before summer begins. At my day job as a high school teacher, we are proctoring exams in rooms without air conditioning (torture for everyone). It definitely hit 90 degrees and despite my diligent hydration efforts, it was hard to keep up. 

I had also chosen to do a walk/run in the morning, before the real heat began. In my perimenopausal fitness journey, I’m trying to figure out how to be consistent in zone two, which is proving to be harder that I was hoping. Too fast, too slow, slow running, fast walking: it’s even tougher to manage when it’s hot. I completed two miles before calling it quits. 

Given all that, and also knowing that I was planning to go to the gym for class (also no AC), I kept further activity quiet for the rest of the day. I even took a two hour nap when I got home so I could get some recovery time in from the extended day of heat. Fortunately, I have air-conditioning at home, so I could regulate and recover for a while before braving the heat again.

Managing the heat at the gym

As much as I love my Tuesday night class, there is often some doubt at the end of a work day whether I’ll have the energy to sustain through an entire class. When it’s really hot, the doubt doubles.

The long nap kept me from curling up into a ball and I decided to try to power through my tiredness. When I parked at the gym, I saw the end of the kids’ classes and they were active and energetic as usual. I figured if they could do it, so could I.

I opened the door, and the humid heat wave hit. Oof. The big-ass fan was cranking, the garage doors were open wide, and it still felt like hot soup in there. My brain kept yelling you should just leave, go home and go back to sleep on your comfy couch in the cool AC!!

To be honest, there were several points along the way when I was just about to high-tail it home. But I also know that once we get started, all of us geriatric gym rats would find a bit of a second wind. We’d all be taking it easy and not pound ourselves for this workout. Slower, quieter activities were definitely on the agenda. And, I knew where the door was, in case things were just too much.

What do we do in the heat?

As the temperature rises, it takes a couple of weeks for our bodies to acclimate to the change in training temperature. These are some extra things to be really mindful of when you are working in the heat:

• Hydration: for every 20 minutes of exercise, you should be drinking an extra cup of fluid (non-caffeine) to what you’re already drinking during the day. We were sipping from our water bottles often.
• Lower the intensity and repetitions and take breaks: we don’t want to raise our heart rates too much. The last thing we want is to suffer a heat injury.
• Work on smaller, more fundamental skills: it’s actually a great opportunity to work on the stuff we often pass over when we want to get to the harder stuff.

This is what class looked like

After a few minutes of gabbing and stretching (aka procrastinating) with my gym buddies, coach Michael finally got us up and moving. There would be no vaulting and we’d limit the big power activities. We all knew we had to pull it back today.

Floor

Going forwards

We started on the floor, testing front rolls, dive rolls, and handstand rolls. No injuries, no whammies, no passing out; so far so good. 

Next, we did a little dive rolling with no springboard. Michael likes to challenge us by adding and extra octagon to make us fly.

Going backwards

Michael wanted to do some back extension drills.  Sigh…back rolling is probably my least favorite thing to do, but it was a good opportunity to go slow.

Handstand Challenge

Then, Michael posed a handstand challenge (yikes). The winner would get a mention in my blog (lol). Full disclosure: I did NOT win. I just wanted to hold one for more than 2 seconds.

This is how it went:

Winner: TAMMY! (of course). You should look at her IG @theneotenyprinciple to see why she’s so good at handstands. Hint: she works really hard and is really consistent in her training.

Honorable mention: Lisette (who has 3 cavities filled earlier that day). Her IG is @upside_down_gymnast and she loves to post fails (they’re pretty hysterical).

Bars

While some of the others spent more time doing their glide-kip monkey business, I just wanted to keep it simple and take a few tries on bars.

There was a bit of trampoline and TumblTrak, but that kind of jumping around was short-lived. More next week, for sure.

You can check out more of my Geriatric Gymnastics musings here.