Behold the face of endorphins!
A wise man once told me, “There’s magic in loaded carries.” I did what I always do with really great advice: I ignored it as long as possible. But 2018 is shaping up as Jason’s Year of Loaded Carries.
Today’s game was to hump Vanya the 32kg Bell and the Backpack of Bricks up the ridge and back without letting either one touch the ground.
This was stupid but sublime. Stupid because even though I knew I wouldn’t be allowed to take off my pack, I still carried my water in there, making for a thirsty trek and proving that it’s not just my backpack that is full of bricks. But adding the backpack of bricks was transcendent: it’s only 30 lbs., but it pulls you off your already-weird axis, at a different angle from the kettlebell.
Strangely, the weighted carries have improved my yoga. They share a lot of commonalities. Yoga teaches you to recruit the 1,001 tiny, unglamorous muscles of the trunk and pelvis in any combination, and then you give them prolonged on-the-job-training by carrying heavy things over broken terrain. In both cases, if you are going to last 90 minutes without crumpling, you need to use them judiciously, resting some and relying on others in alternation.
In both cases, you have to “let the breath lead you.” That sounds metaphysical, but I mean something very mundane: If you are going to last an hour, you have to relax under the load enough to subsist on rich, deep nose breathing. You can last indefinitely that way. But the clock starts ticking on your stamina as soon as you start breathing roughly through your mouth. Your body stiffens up as your muscular tension rises, and you’ll be able to put on a burst of speed or power, but only for minutes or seconds before you have to stop and recover.
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