Cultivating Strength in Your Yoga Practice
One
of my favorite teachers was making the rounds in a crowded yoga studio,
and she paused when she passed my mat. I was deep into a pose, using
all my focus to “melt deeper” and “find release” as yoga teachers are so
fond of repeating. She paused, and asked me to stand up and step off
my mat. Trusting her guidance, I stepped off, and she took my mat,
replacing it with a blanket, and said, “Continue.”
A blanket is the opposite of a yoga mat
when it comes to traction, and I found myself barely able to get into
the pose. It took all my strength to support myself, and after a minute
or two of struggle, she came back to my side. “You’re falling into
your flexibility, and resting on your ligaments. Yoga is about more
than flexibility. You’re very flexible, that’s great. Now focus on
cultivating strength. At first it’ll be a challenge to keep your
footing on the blanket, but it will balance your practice.”
Making a conscious choice to balance your
practice, and incorporating strength and endurance into your yoga
routine will help ensure that you’re developing the strength to support
your flexibility, both on and off the mat. Continuing to stretch and
lengthen muscles without the strength to maintain stability can lead to
injury. Fortunately, there’s many simple ways to incorporate strength,
balance and stability work into your yoga practice.
Yoga on a Blanket or Rug
Removing the stability of a sticky mat
can be a great first step toward evaluating your strength and balance in
some of your favorite yoga poses. Without the mat, do your hands slip
away from you in downward facing dog? Perhaps you’re not generating
enough lift through your hips or core engagement. Cant maintain warrior
pose? Perhaps you need to work on strengthening and engaging your
adductors, quads or posterior chain. Be safe, and make sure you slowly
attempt poses on a blanket or rug, because while the purpose it to make
you work to not slip, you obviously don’t want to slip and hurt
yourself.
Holding Positions for Extended Periods
If you’re a fan of vinyasa yoga, and tend
to move rapidly from one pose to the next, what’s your rush? Try
deliberately holding challenging poses for extended periods, starting
with 1-2 minutes, and working your way up to as long as 15 minute holds.
Wide leg squats in goddess pose may be easy to accomplish if you’re
rushing through it, but can you keep your glutes and upper back engaged
during a prolonged hold?
Practice Slow Transitions
While many positions in yoga are
comfortable resting places, the journey to them is often not. When
moving from down dog to up dog, if you’re used to rushing through chaturanga,
try to remember that it’s known as a “yoga push up” for a reason. It’s
supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to engage your upper body and core,
and provide a repeated challenge as you use it to transition between
poses, some times dozens of times in a single yoga class. Slow it down,
master your form, and make sure you’re using your transitions as a
place of instability that you slowly move through while consciously
engaging your muscles.
Repetition to Exhaustion for Endurance
Once you’ve mastered perfect form in
chaturanga, and can engage your core to slowly lift your legs into the
perfect headstand, it’s time to do it again. And again. Then maybe 3
or 4 more times. Is it getting harder? Good. You’re toning and
shaping your muscles through repetition of challenging poses. Obviously
you don’t want to repeat positions or transitions to the point of total
exhaustion, but once you’re strong enough to complete a move in good
form once, trying to repeat it a few times once you’ve already engaged
and fatigued the muscles involved will build strength and endurance and
improve your practice. By working up to a few repetitions, you are
ensuring that when you complete that pose or transition in the course of
normal practice, you preform it flawlessly.
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