First Visit To The New Forum And Brief Update

Hello everybody, this is my first visit to the awesome new forum, and I must say it's looking really good - thanks Brett for all your hard work! Thought I'd give a brief update on myself, I'm healing very nicely from my hernia surgery, and will be going to Beaumont TX on Tuesday to deliver the required documents for my TWIC card application. This was one of my goals to get accomplished while recovering. Brett you'll be glad to hear that I'm doing some beginning Yoga exercises that my wife showed me so that I can help strengthen and align my body core. I could tell that I was already starting to favor one side of my body due to the incision from surgery and it was causing some unnecessary lower back pain. I'm still staying in contact with my recruiter from TMC, and am looking forward to getting back in the saddle with their program.

Best of luck, Old School. Pullin' for ya every day!

All the best Old School, hope everything works out for you.

Brett you'll be glad to hear that I'm doing some beginning Yoga exercises that my wife showed me so that I can help strengthen and align my body core. I could tell that I was already starting to favor one side of my body due to the incision from surgery and it was causing some unnecessary lower back pain.

Awesome! Oh, I'm more than glad to hear it - I'm thrilled! Having muscle groups that are unbalanced in their levels of strength or flexibility causes misalignments throughout the body which in turn morph into tons of other problems, as you're already experiencing. And at your core is the worst possible place this can happen because it's your core that holds your lower spine in alignment. Having your spine out of alignment with your spinal cord running down the center of it causes pinched nerves and therefore all sorts of aches and pains throughout your body. Your core is also responsible for the majority of your balance and you don't want to be crashing to the ground every time you step on a pebble funny, ya know?

But having muscles that are inflexible or out of balance when it comes to levels of strength is like having a small leak in the roof of your house. At first, no big deal. Heck, you might not even notice it. But slowly over time that imbalance causes changes in other muscle groups which leads to further misalignments and more changes. That's why you see so many people in their 60's and above walking around all hunched over, stiff, and their balance looking so frail that a small breeze is going to send them tumbling over. Their muscles have lost their flexibility and are no longer in balance when it comes to strength. Their body is all misaligned, they have aches and pains from head to toe, they move at a snail's pace, they don't have the strength to do any lifting, and they fall over easily. It's not "because they're old". It's because they didn't maintain their strength and flexibility over the years and your body will not maintain something it doesn't feel it needs.

Stick with that Yoga. Once you've done it for a month or so you'll really begin to see how incredible it is. It's life-changing. And as you progress you can do different variations for anything, including strength, flexibility, balance, coordination, and endurance.

Wow, I can't believe you're actually trying it! I've been telling people about it for years but 95% of the people never give it a shot. You would never in a million years think something as simple as Yoga would be as life-changing as it is. But once you experience it you'll realize you'd be crazy to ever quit doing it.

If anybody is worried about looking silly or like a little girly man, check out YRG yoga or DDP yoga..I do and they rock..and NO, I'm NOT affiliated. Just a big fan.

Yeah, DDP Yoga I'm a bit familiar with. For those who might know, DDP stands for "Diamond Dallas Page" - the former wrestler. I'm not familiar with the other one you mentioned. DDP yoga is a type of "power yoga" that focuses a lot on strength training.

There's also another program I use that's absolutely fantastic and it's called "You Are Your Own Gym" by Mark Lauren. You can find his site here:

Mark Lauren - You Are Your Own Gym

He's a (former?) Special Forces Instructor and his routine is a strength and endurance building system using basically only your own body weight - no weight lifting - and it's highly effective. His mobile app is only $3 so you're not exactly taking a leap of faith to check it out.

So I combine Yoga with "You Are Your Own Gym" for overall fitness - strength, flexibility, balance, coordination, and endurance. Both of these systems could me modified to work in a rig. It would take some creativity, but you could do it and get fantastic results.

If anybody is worried about looking silly or like a little girly man, check out YRG yoga or DDP yoga..I do and they rock..and NO, I'm NOT affiliated. Just a big fan.

Hehehe... thanks for the share... I just became a fan too... actually I went and purchased the program! This is exactly what I need, as I have been a Barber for nearly 20 yrs so a bit on the soft side. I will be retiring my clippers this May, and Lord willing, I hope to be starting my CDL training with Prime by mid June. I need to get this "soft" body in shape for that!

Welcome Bigdubber, we're glad to have you on board! Feel free to ask any questions you have and somebody on here will do their best to help - there are no dumb questions - we might give a dumb answer every now and then, but if we do slip up somebody will get on here and set us straight. Wish you the best at Prime - you can't go wrong with this as a second career, a lot of the companies are actually looking for guys like you - mature workers that know what it takes to get the job done. Best of luck to ya!

In the beginning