Mark Has Some Challenges Ahead

This post appears as part of our Healthier 2021 series, in which we follow three WebMD team members as they strive to improve their health this year. You can follow their journeys here.

By Mark Spoor

So I decided to try and step up my yoga game earlier this week and learn a new pose called chaturanga. (I can hear all you yogis going, “Oooooooooooh.”)

Basically, it’s as if you start a push-up from the ground, stop halfway, and hold it.

Sounds easy — and it is — for about 3 seconds. After that, your body realizes what it’s doing, you start shaking like a leaf, and if you’re like me, you go back down to the ground quickly with a little bit of humiliation.

So yeah, more core workouts to come!

That challenge notwithstanding, after nearly 2 months on this fitness journey, I can’t say that I have very many complaints. I feel better. My clothes fit better. Honestly, I’m pretty sure my family likes me a little bit better, too.

Thanks to our amazing WebMD social media team, I even learned what an Instagram takeover is. Ask your kids. They probably know.

Anyway, if you can get an industry-leading website to let you write blogs for a couple of months about your fitness journey so that you have no choice but to, you know, go on a fitness journey, I highly recommend it.

But friends, over the next month or so, we’re gonna find out what I’m really made of.

My daughter’s travel softball season is about to start. Unlike when I was a kid, youth athletics in 2021 is often quite the commitment. When my kid has a tournament, we’re at the ballpark from sunrise to about 0-dark-30 on Saturday, then again from sunrise to 0-twilight-30 on Sunday.

This presents a few challenges for me. For one, it messes with my workout schedule. I like to work out in the mornings because, much to my wife and daughter’s chagrin, I’m a morning person. (Seriously, they really hate that.)

And if I work out at night, for whatever reason, I can’t sleep. So for the spring and summer, it looks like my early-morning workouts will happen even earlier.