Yoga For The Inflexible.

There is a curious male notion that we have to continually impress our partners, no matter what, we must prove to them that we are virile, strong and capable of bringing home the bacon, or at least putting together a decent meal and providing in general. It used to be that we would prove our ‘manliness’ by lighting fires, drinking beer and starting fights with other similar red blooded types but, as women have become more empowered they have learned the lessons of previous generations of sisters and decided that there is a far more subtle way of having their needs met.

If I was feeling ungenerous, I might say that they tricked us into altering our behaviour but this would be unfair, rather they subtly modified us. I give you, by way of an example, the fact that men are now seen cooking, creating and asserting their male qualifications by showing that they are more metrosexual than the next fellow. Blokeiness is dead, long live modern man. If you need further proof then consider the tattoo. For eons this has been the ultimate badge of male pride, the harder you are, the harder the tattoo. A generation ago, your first introduction to a tattoo may have been the words ‘love and hate’ rapidly filling your vision as the knuckles they were imprinted on accelerated towards your face. Now you are more likely to come across a ‘man’s man’ sporting Celtic ribbons or names of his children complete with birth dates in flowery italics. David Beckham is the new male icon and it is hard to see how he would have been accepted as anything other than effeminate even in my fathers generation. When I was a child TV programmes would show smoking, greasy bus drivers saying ‘Hello darlin, fancy a bit?’ and the woman would fall into his arms without question, now, if we want a woman in our lives we must earn that privilege, discover our inner selves and become one with our feminine side.

It was with that thought in mind that at seven this morning I donned vest and shorts and joined my partner for a brief session of Yoga. My partner, let’s call her Nicola, because that’s her name had been trying to get me to do ‘a bit of light stretching’ for a while after she had seen me getting out of bed in the morning. I don’t exactly spring, in fact, it’s a good fifteen minutes before I can stand fully upright and I can whinge about aches and pains for another hour easily. Nicola on the other hand, is something of a Goddess in the fitness department. She has, from her early teens spent much time and a mortgage worth of money keeping up her appearance and now, at fifty one, she has a figure that turns the heads of twentysomethings, she is more supple than a greased Slinky and, when we talk about the ten year age gap between us, people assume I am the older one. Me? I have the athletic ability of a stroke patient.

She had suggested Yoga as a compromise after we had tried another form of exercise the day before. Upstairs she has something called a Pilates Machine. It’s not an easy thing to describe but imagine a rowing machine with straps attached either side. Now imagine those straps attach to your ankles (yes, they are furry) and every time you slide backwards your legs fly up in the air. It’s a cross between exercise and a Spanish Inquisition sex fantasy. You can also kneel on the sliding part of the framework and strap your wrists using your bodyweight to provide resistance as you pull your arms and slide forward. It was this posture that I had been instructed to adopt. Now, I naturally assumed that my bodyweight would provide more resistance than most and so when I was told to begin I put some effort into moving my arms forward. To be honest, the resistance was not as great as I had expected and the sliding board vigorously catapulted me forward. As my arms were tied up I was unable to stop myself falling, fortunately my chin was able to step in for my incapacitated limbs and provided a useful brake on my fall when it impacted with a handily placed bedside cabinet. As a method of instant weight loss it was successful if you take into account the couple of ounces of skin I lost off my leg and the centimetre deep piece of flesh that was gouged out of my toe.

Anyway, moving on. Nicola decided we should try a bit of Yoga. She lay down on her stomach.

‘I want you to do a bit of light stretching’ she announced.

‘You want stretching, I could stretch……’

‘Enough!’ she barked. It was clear she was taking this seriously. I lay down beside her.

I followed closely as she raised her torso up using her hands. ‘Easy’ I thought to myself, ‘It’s like a slow press up. I did one of those once’. I raised myself up on my hands, feeling the burn, feeling proud of my new found fitness.

Then the blasted woman took it to another level.

Her fingers ran like little spiders towards her ankles until she was standing, feet flat on the floor, head level with her knees. I think the position was called the ‘dead dog’ or something but I couldn’t hear her properly as my neck fat had cut off the circulation to my brain and a black halo was forming in my peripheral vision. I managed to turn my head very slightly to see if I was following her ‘form’. She looked like a hairpin, I looked like a concertinaed marshmallow.

One of three things was going to happen, I could let go and stand up, I could fall forward and form a perfect isosceles triangle on the carpet or I could just stay where I was and die. I chose to stand up, but I couldn’t because my back had bent beyond the point of no return, my vertebrae shattering like a Digestive Biscuit in a blender. Consequently I crumpled to the floor and spent the next few hours contemplating my impending paraplegia.

I think the lesson to take from this, in fitness as in life, if you can’t meet your own standards then don’t fuck about, just lower them and have done with it. I may not be flexible; I may not be macho, you could even accuse me of letting down my entire gender. But trust me, no matter what a poor example of manhood I may be, I have a girlfriend that can kiss her own knees and that, on its own, is reason to keep smiling.

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You can contact me on Twitter @mattwebb1973