October 28, 2010

Paula Jager
Friday, October 28, 2011 - 06:03
Friday, October 28, 2011

FEARday

Warm up:  200 m row, 10 swings 50#/30#, 10 push ups

Skill/focus:  BO Row, DB Bench Press
1 x 8, 1 x 5

Workout:
5 db bench press as hevy as you can
5 db bo row, same weight
EMOM for 10 min
3 min rest

3 db lunges per leg 55-60#/35-40#
21 du's
AMRAP in 12 min
Post emom db's used/rds for score

Flexibility is key to any kind of workout

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A few weeks away from her next figure competition, Janet Cramer Carelli is meticulous with the not-so-little details of life.

Workouts get tracked, food gets weighed, measurements are taken.

Between dead lifts and dieting, Cramer Carelli uses yoga to keep calm and carry on.

She wasn't always so obsessed with lifting weights, nor would you find her in a Zen-like mental state.

On Sept. 13, 2001, her blissful family life came to an abrupt end.

At 26, she found herself the widowed mother of a toddler when her husband, Eric Cramer, died of a heart attack at 32.

"My whole world just shattered," she says.

The long-distance swimming she was doing suddenly didn't provide the same kind of solace – nor did she have the time for it as a single mom.

"I was just kind of lost, and I needed some kind of efficient workout," Cramer Carelli says.

Power yoga gave her strength and a newfound flexibility. She found refuge in it, eagerly taking classes and workshops. She started teaching yoga in 2003.

Five years later, she was itching for something different.

"I got to the point where I was kind of tired of my own voice," Cramer Carelli, 36, of Carrollwood says. "I couldn't take enough workshops to keep doing something new."

Enter CrossFit, an intense workout style filled with Olympic weight-lifting techniques, gymnastic-based strength moves and an "if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger" attitude.

She now works as a CrossFit coach and personal trainer about 15 hours a week, along with home-schooling her 5-year-old daughter, Mia.

She still teaches one yoga class a week at the Northdale YMCA, but her focus has shifted.

Approaching 36, and urged on by her trainer, CrossFit Jaguar owner Paula Jager, she decided to try an unlikely pursuit for many yogis: a figure competition.

With only eight weeks to prepare for her November 2010 debut at the Grace & Physique Tri-Fitness Challenge in St. Petersburg, the thought of having to show off toned, defined muscles in a teeny-weeny bikini under a spotlight would have any woman stressed out.

"I appreciate the fact that I was really immersed in yoga for a long time," Cramer Carelli says. "You're on these strict diets and you're so focused on this one day, that sometimes there are restless nights just because the mind is racing.

"The mindfulness meditation teaches you to stay ever present," she says. "When you get to that point when you're hurting yourself to get ahead, you notice it, and you scale back when you need to."

She's gearing up for another figure competition in just a few weeks, and has found that one discipline informs the other.

"I think that CrossFitters have come to realize that flexibility is key, and they get a little more out of things when they drop the Type-A attitude," Cramer Carelli says.

And yogis? Well, they could stand to use a little more weight-resistance in their lives.

"Jump squats and plyometrics will bring their range of motion to different place," Cramer Carelli says.

Maybe those two worlds aren't so incompatible after all.

Daniela Velázquez's yoga column appears every other Saturday in 4you. She can be reached at dvelazquez@tbo.com. Catch up on past columns at TBO.com, search: Yoga. Or follow her athletic adventures on her blog, endorphinated.com.

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