Review of Daily Burn Day 21: Yoga Warrior 2

Day 21: Yoga Warrior 2

I really enjoy the Yoga workouts with Daily Burn. I love how yoga makes me feel all stretched out and can even give me a good muscle burn without a huge amount of flopping around and a bunch of sweat. I have plenty of days where I'm all about the bouncing around, but there are days when I just want to do something without all the drama. Yoga is my drama free zone. Although, I do make faces because some of the stuff is just hard! She says not to make faces because it can create tension, but the faces help focus the tension someplace other than where the tension is and then I can hold the pose. :) I'll work on the faces. I promise

This workout follows the normal format for Daily Burn stuff. There is a clock in the lower right hand corner that ticks down the total time left in the workout and there is a bar along the bottom that fills up as you do each move. When the bar fills the whole bottom of the screen, you move on to another section. 

We started off on our backs again. Then we moved into some stretches. We did the spinal twist thing where you lay on your back and bring your knees up to your chest then one arm goes out to the side and the knees go out to the other side. I'm getting better at this one! We did some knee circles too that I liked. Then we did one that I liked in the beginning, but the longer we held it, OMG! So we were on our backs with our knees bent and our feet on the floor. It was kind like just before going up into Bridge. So then we let our knees fall in opposite directions until we could get the soles of our feet to touch. The held this for what felt like an eternity. I got quite the stretch on that one! I actually had to lift my knees a couple times. She did say that you can use a yoga block under your knees if you feel pressure. I didn't have a yoga block and wanted to just tough it out. It wasn't knee pain I felt anyway. It was just intense stretching.

We did some crazy bent knee core twist things. These were hard. We were on our backs with our feet off the ground with bend knees forming a 90 degree angle. Imagine the position you would be in if you were sitting on a chair and then the back of the chair got tipped all the way down to the ground. Our arms were out by our sides and then we rotated the knees to the side and went as far as we could while keeping both shoulders still on the floor. Then we came up and went to the other side. We did this pretty slowly a few times. Then we did it with our legs straight up. Well, she did it with her legs straight up. Mine were a bit bent and closer to the floor than straight up.

We did some more stretching and then did a birddog kind of move. We were on all fours and one leg went back while the other arm went forward. More stretching and then some Down Dog. Then we did the Vinyasa move where we went from Down Dog into a plank, down to chataranga, then up to up dog, We did that twice through. Then we spent quite a bit of time in Forward Fold. I feel like I look like her, but I know I don't! I'm getting better at this folding this, but I still probably look like I have a flat back instead of being bent in half. Oh well. Then we did Surya A a couple times before moving into the new stuff for this workout.

We started off in Chair pose. I still suck at chair pose. I can't seem to get my torso upright and my shoulders just don't want to hold my arms up.  Then back to Vinyasa. Then we moved on to Surya B which is essentially the move in PiYo that I was not a big fan of. So it's like Down Dog, but you take one foot off the ground and throw it up into the air as high as you can go. It just kills my shoulders. There is one part where we bring the knee forward and arch our back up. That part actually isn't that bad. We only did it once on each leg, so it wasn't too bad. 

Then we had our feet out pretty wide and we folded forward. Her head was pretty much on the floor between her legs. She's crazy flexible. I did not there! I liked this pose though. I really felt it in my legs and it was kinda fun being all bent over like that. 

Then we got into Warrior 2. She went slow getting us into the position and then we just held it for awhile. We did it on each leg. Then we went through what I think was Triangle, but she uses the more traditional Japanese names. We had both legs straight. We bent forward and touched our front arm down to the ground so our fingertips were on the outside of our front foot. She suggested a yoga block if we couldn't reach. I insisted on toughing it out, but it was hard! Then it got interesting! We did our first balance pose. We were supposed to take the hand that was down on the ground and reach it out in front of us as far as we could and then left the back leg up. Then we held that for what felt like forever because I was bouncing all over the place! My balance is horrible! I survived though and felt better for it. Although, I was kinda wishing for that yoga block. Then we repeated the section on the other leg. 

Back to Vinyasa and then into Child's Pose. She does it different though. I must have learned the modified version which could explain why I never understood why it was called Child's Pose. She goes all the way to the floor with her forehead and brings her arms back behind her so she's in pretty much a ball. 

Then we did the Bridge. I like the bridge. It was hard not to squeeze my glutes though since this is one of those traditional glute exercises! Then I stayed in bridge while she went to wheel. I'm not sure that I'll ever be able to do that one. It's like bridge, but then you bring your upper body up on your your hands. It's takes crazy strength and flexibility. I got neither. 

Then we did Happy Baby. It's funny how some things have traditional names and some don't. Anyway. You're on your back and you have bent knees with your knees pulled up to your chest. You grab your feet and let your knees drop to the side. I can't really describe this, but I can't reach my feet. I tried to use a yoga strap to get into the position, but she didn't hold it for very long so I'm not sure where you feel this.

Then we did reclined pigeon. I love pigeon and might love reclined pigeon even more! More back twist things like at the beginning and then we went to Savanasa which is that Corpse pose that I love so much. We stayed there for close to five minutes. I love this section. Then we roll over to our side and stand up so we can say Namaste and be done. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this one. It gave me a nice good stretch, but I wasn't sweating all over the place. It was calm and relaxing and that's what I needed on this nice snowy day. Later in the day I shoved snow and got a bonus workout in. Woot Woot!

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Here it is in all it's glory. I'm totally fine with the low calorie burn on these. It's a calm relaxing workout that makes me feel all stretched out. Not everything has to be a sweat inferno of calorie blasting.