We decided to get in touch with out inner child last night and went to the indoor trampolining. It was literally a room filled with huge trampolines. How cool is that? We spent 1 hour just plain jumping up and down, playing trampoline dodge ball, slam dunking (well trying to) flipping, jumping off things, onto things....just a whole lot of jumping!
It's been a pretty long time since I've been on a trampoline like this, probably back when I was diving. We had to practice a lot of our skills on the tramps at the stadium which would be a good 10 years ago. So as excited as I was, also a tiny bit nervous!
Getting back on the tramp definitely took a bit of warming up before I was comfortable to do anything but jump up and down. But slowly I did and was back to a couple of flips by the time our hour had come to an end.
If you haven't been to jump on a trampoline in a while, go do it! After 5 minutes we were all breaking a sweat and one of the chicks with us exclaimed how exhausted she was...55 minutes to go! But it really reminded me of the way kids view physical activity or sport. To kids, sport is so much fun. In primary school going out for sport was the best part of the day! Lunch time use to be spent playing tag, dodge ball or capture the flag which was awesome.
Jumping on those trampolines took us all back to that time, even the non-exercise lovers!
It has been another crazy busy week. I have had bank meetings, house walk throughs, working 5 jobs, planning and organising everything to continue at the fast pace I have been running at for the week. I got to Friday (today) and am absolutely exhausted.
I am so excited to have a whole hour where there is nothing that is absolutely essential for me to do between two of my jobs this morning. I was thinking about what to right about today, and then released how relieved I was to have some time to sit here and actually think about thinking about writing. Sounds weird. But I am normally thinking about my post while doing a million other things, or while I'm driving.
So as un-exciting as it sounds, today I'm thankful of nothing to do.
So I may not have had a valentine, totally fine with that! But what I do have is some really good friends. I got sent this message on valentines morning from a friend, so cute!
There are not really many words I have behind this one today, but I am thankful for having friends who go out of their way to make others smile. Who do small things like send a text message that can actually make someone else's day.
I didn't have a valentine and that's ok because I didn't need one.
Yesterday I had a conference call with the bank to discuss my home loans and all that stuff....notice how I use 'all that stuff' becuase I have no idea about the property market and home loans and repayments and everything else that goes I to them!? Well really the call was made to me 3 days a go, but I knew immediately that this was going to be a whole world I didn't understand with words I have heard thrown around in huge past but no clue what was actually meant for them.
So I asked the bank man (don't even know what his job title is!) if I could organise a time when I had dad around to help decifer the language that was being thrown at me and confirm and deny all that I needed to.
Thank heavens he was there. I was clueless and just ended up sitting quietly while the two if them spoke bank language to each other for around 45minutes and added my occasional yes or no to confirm things. By the end of the call though, the loan has been arrived and set up, which probably would not have been the case if I was left to sort it out on my own!
I have recently taken over the Mobility Classes for Imperium Personal Training in South Perth. Two weeks in, and time for handstands! But not just so I can watch everyone fall on their face.
Being able to move properly, do the exercises these people want to be able to do and lower their risk of injury when doing it, a strong core with good postural control in challenging positions is essential. So what position is more challenging then a handstand?!
To be able to maintain a handstand position you need to be able to organise your body segments in an alignment they are not use to holding and hold a submax contraction in muscles working in the reverse way they normally do when you are standing up right. You are literally turning your postural control up on it's head.
To hold this position for a longer period of time, you also nee to breathe! Like while training, holding your breathe is not ideal. So while I am challenging these people physically, I am also teaching them to breathe whilst being challenged, otherwise you will pass out!
So give us a month or two and we will all be walking up and down the hallway on our hands!
I was running along the foreshore as I normally do on a Tuesday morning, along a path that I run regularly, but was surprised by something I don't normally see. A huge net looking thing strung over the sand to make something resembling a tunnel. Not what I'm use to seeing on this river beach.
Turns out this sculpture was part of the Perth International Arts Festival and will be in place from the 7th of Feb until the 1st of March. When looking at the piece (called Net-Work) up very close, the net is actually made out of thousands of tiny metal people that are connected by their limbs.
Interested, I looked into the reason behind the sculpture a little more and it turns out it was created by a Korean artist and is about how everyone is connected these days by the many networks (hence the name) that are available, particularly in an online platform these days. So there you go!
I am thankful today for a shake up to the run I already know, giving me something new to look at and think about while I'm running, as well as the creativity of others and the willingness to share it.
The Internet is an incredible thing. Scary, but incredible. We can video chat to people all around the world pretty much by a click of a button. I bet if we went back in time 50 years from now and told people that we would be talking to each other from down the street, cross-continent and even international literally face to face, they would have given us funny looks and said we were dreaming.
One half of my twin friends has recently moved to the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra where she is completing a one year internship in movement analysis and biomechanics. Prior to now, she had never been separated from her other half for more then a couple of days, and is now separated by a couple of deserts and few thousand kilometres...big move!
So Sunday morning at 7.30am (because of the 3 hour time difference) a group of us ex-Penrhosians who were still in very close contact gathered at the Perth dwelling twins place (some were still waking up/recovering from the quiz night the night before) to make the interstate call via this incredible thing we now call Skype.
For two hours she was able to fill us all in about life at the AIS, give us a virtual tour of her room and we were able to fill her in on all the happenings back her in Perth since she'd left, well the details that she hadn't picked up on Facebook anyway. And all of this could be done while some people were eating breakfast and I was doing some injury management on the twin left behind...the perfect tool for multitasking.
So today I am thankful for the incredible advances we see in technology constantly, making it possible to contact, talk to and even see our friend who is now on the opposite side of the country. And making it feel like she is still in the room with us.
