yoga

REVIEW: Hot Yoga with Everyone Active

/ Kate O'C / Leave a comment

We’re on a bit of a yoga roll right now. Off the back of our recent trip to Yoga Hive, Everyone Active invited us to try out the latest addition to their Leisure Centre offering – Hot Yoga!

Katie
Tucked away in a little side road just off Carnaby Street, away from the hustle and bustle of Oxford Circus, aka my least favourite place, Marshall Street Leisure Centre offers a welcome calmness in a stunning art deco building. I am still fairly bad at being blasé when it comes to taking “blogger photos”, so there are fewer pictures than usual. Plus, I was a bit busy actually doing stuff like sweating my butt off in yoga to take too many photos of it and I thought it would have been a bit rude to everyone else there. But that’s for another day…

So, enough about the building and the beautiful swimming pool, and back to the reason why we were there – to get our sweat on with some hot yoga, the perfect way to ease into a Wednesday morning. Continue reading →

REVIEW: Yoga Hive – Where Art & Vinyasa Flow Collide

/ Kate O'C / 1 Comment

As you will probably have seen on Instagram, we recently attended a Vinyasa Flow session with Robyn from yogahive , which took place at the Curious Duke gallery near Old Street/Barbican. As “people who don’t do much yoga but understand it is really important”, we jumped at the opportunity!

Kate

I know that I should stretch more. I should stretch more before I work out. I should stretch more after I work out. I should stretch first thing in the morning and I should stretch to aid recovery. And yet, I don’t. I always manage to convince myself that somehow it’s a waste of time, and that attitude only changes when I tweak something and berate myself for not having warmed up properly. So, when Katie and I were asked by the lovely (and pretty inspiring!) Robyn at Yoga Hive to pop along to check out a class in their amazing gallery space, I was delighted to have the excuse to give yoga a try again. Continue reading →

Variety is the spice of life – so try something different with somuchmore

/ katieferg89 / Leave a comment

I, like many 20-somethings apparently according to MULTIPLE Elite Daily articles, am a bit flakey, easily distracted and always looking for that bit more, therefore finding it hard to commit to what I’m doing tomorrow, let alone agreeing to something for months on end.

This is especially true when it comes to classes. Races and team sport, I’ve got down to a fine art. I know what I’m doing, when, where and for how long, and it’s highly structured because I get a bit type A with my training plans. Classes, meh, I dip in and out depending on how I’m feeling. With a class, I won’t let the team down, it won’t impact my training…(answer – because yoga and cross-training are good for me and actually will benefit my training, but let’s move swiftly on) There are SO many classes I could go to at the gym, but I rarely do – preferring to use it for weights and swimming – so if I’m not going to use what I’m already paying for there, why would I pay for single studio access on top of that?!

Enter somuchmore. They’re the new kid on the London multi-studio block, bringing tonnes of sought after classes to you in one single membership, meaning that you need as much commitment to individual studios as you do to the colour of your nail varnish or which pair of leggings you’re going to wear today…#win.

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These Girls Still Do – Yoga and physical activity in older women

/ Kate O'C / 1 Comment

As I mentioned previously in our Mothers’ Day special, my mum is a yoga instructor. She took up Hatha Yoga about 15 years ago when she became concerned about her joints and has been head over heels in love with it ever since. After my younger brother was born, she trained as a Yoga teacher as it was something she loved to do and was a flexible (no pun intended…) job that she could work around Dad’s working hours and the hectic timetable of having three, and subsequently four, young children to look after.

I’m incredibly proud of my mum, her business has gone from strength to strength and she offers a valuable service of easily accessible yoga classes to women and men of all ages and abilities throughout the local, rural community. But what impresses me most of all is her clients. The majority of the people who attend her yoga classes, though by no means all, are women of retirement age. I go to class whenever I have an opportunity and let me tell you I am a fit person but these ladies truly put me to shame in the flexibility and strength stakes.

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The trials and tribulations of Bikram Yoga

/ katieferg89 / 2 Comments

So basically, I first tried Bikram this time last year because I had a stress fracture, was suuuuuuuper grumps at not being able to run the marathon or literally do any kind of impact work, and there was a good deal on at Hot Bikram Yoga for a 30 day intro membership (note, HBY is in the process of dividing up its studios, so keep an eye on them!) However, it actually led to a successful 30 day challenge, a lot of washing, the confidence to wear just a sports bra in public, the discovery of the French plait as a hair-saving device, sweat in my eyes, ruined mascara and the consumption of packets and packets of electrolyte tablets.

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Fit Mammas: A day isn’t enough to celebrate our mothers!

/ katieferg89 / 4 Comments

Let’s face it – neither of us would be where we are now without the most important women in our lives – and we probably wouldn’t have the same attitudes towards health and wellbeing that we do without our mothers playing the laundry lady/taxi driver/#1 supporter/ role that they do!

So, on this rainy Mothering Sunday, when neither of us actually have the fortune to be with them, we’d like to celebrate the top women in our lives and what makes them so freakin’ awesome

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