How to Avoid Yoga Injuries

Transcript

[Music] hi guys this video is about yoga and how to avoid injuries when you do yoga my name is Marika I'm the physiotherapist from sports injury physio calm we can get online physiotherapy assessment as well as treatment for your injuries have a look at the description of this video for a link to my website okay so I'm gonna aim to give you three major tips that should help you stay injury free from yoga but first of all we all know that yoga can be good for you there's loads of evidence to show that it can help with pain management of different conditions like back pain for instance it can help with mental health it can help your flexibility it can also help to build your strength but people do still get injured and sometimes they find that makes their back back pain worse so why is that well point number one is don't force your body into positions that's really uncomfortable yoga started in India and people in that area of the of the world are really flexible so yoga poses are quite extreme some of them and you may not actually be able to achieve those poses just because of your genetics so we scale flexibility on a scale of 1 to 9 with your Amin on the 9 you're a hyper mobile nearly to mobile or flexible wears if you towards a 1 you're really on the inflexible spectrum and all of us are somewhere in between and it's to do with how much elastin and collagen your connective tissues like your ligaments and your muscles and your tendons and things have if you've got more elastic you're more flexible if you've got more collagen you're less flexible now if you're on the more flexible side of the spectrum you may be able to get into those positions no problem if you're on the other side of the spectrum you may strain things if you try to get into those positions another thing is that our joints all have different sizes and shapes and we know that for the from parts of the population things like the hip joint the depth of the joint or the orientation can even differ so if you're doing it like the pigeon stretch and you're getting a really strong pinching sensation or a painful sensation in your groin it's more likely that the joint surfaces are making contact in that position and if you're going to continuously try and force that you can actually injure your joint whereas if you're doing the pigeon pose and you're feeling a nice muscular stretch in your buttock that's something that can become more flexible so take note of your body if it's a nice stretchy sensation probably okay if it's really uncomfortable and it feels like a pinch or pain then it's probably not okay so chat to your teacher and get them to adapt things for you so that is my first tip is focus on your body kind of identify what it is that you're feeling and ease into things but if it's a pinching or pain probably not something you want to try and push through then secondly you've got to adapt the poses if you've got certain medical conditions looking at the research for yoga and injuries there are certain things that stand out so people with glaucoma which is a condition where you've got higher pressure in your eyes should really watch out for anything where they do poses where their heads are lower than the rest of their bodies because when your head is lower blood rushes to your head and that increases the pressure and the blood pressure in your eyes and everything even more and it has been documented that people can actually increase their glaucoma and damage their eyes if they do things like shoulder stands head stands or downward dogs excessively then if you've got bone density issues so for instance your osteoporotic osteopenic you've got to watch out that you don't do those positions where you flex forward extremely forwards flexion is fine but just not forcing the position as well as extreme extension positions of the spine were you're really hyper extend the spine because both of those have been indicated to actually cause spontaneous fractures of the of the bones in there in the now be careful then don't just be frightened of those positions now if you've got good bone strength and bone mineral density you're absolutely fine and that's most of the population but if you're slightly older and you know that you've got bone density issues then you want to avoid those positions doesn't mean no flexion no extension it just means don't push into those in positions then people with arthritis or any jointiy type diseases where the joint surfaces aren't so pristine those joints often don't do well if you over compress then so again you've just got to adapt the positions so the key to things where you've got previous injuries even or you've got medical conditions is you can still do yoga you've just got to adapt the positions and if you're not sure about how to do that chat to a physiotherapist that step number two is go and see a physio because physios have an in-depth knowledge of all of these types of conditions they've studied at at university but we also understand exercise and we understand yoga so we can give you guidelines as to what things to avoid and then it's as easy as telling your teacher and she can adapt she or he can adapt things for you so don't be frightened of it it can still give you loads of benefit go and do it but just adapt it then thirdly more is not better so I don't know if you guys if you're in the UK you may have seen the article a while back in the beep on the BBC News website where this where a physio commented he works he's a specialist physio works with hips and things and he sees about 5 yoga teach teachers a month who has hip injuries and labrum injuries and it all comes from overuse and forcing positions that they shouldn't be in for that much and that often or that long so yoga is exercise even though an exercise all exercise is pretty good for you but because it's exercise you do get bits of micro damage and things which is normal that that's what happens with exercise and then after you stop the exercise session your body repairs that and makes itself stronger but now if you keep on hammering it several times a day or several day after day after day with high intensity yoga going really deep into positions and not having easy days and harder days you will over work and you'll get over overuse injuries so already mentioned you can get labels strains and things like that but you can also get a very common one that I've seen in the past is upper hamstring tendinopathy so right where it attaches they have a string to the sit bone if you do a lot of deep hamstring stretches that can cause that tendon to actually become become injured and that can become a chronic problem and be very painful to sit on so be careful when you do yoga the third of three is think of it as exercise and don't just hammer it every day after day after day half days will you work harder and then other days where you do it more easily or maybe for some days focus on breathing techniques more and relaxation and then other days are harder working days or more stretching days so that you don't work the same system every time excellent so let me know if you've got any questions but in summary it's not everybody's body is made to go into the typical yoga poses your genetics may actually stop you from doing that and you will end up straining stuff if you force it too much second is if you've got a pre-existing medical condition or previous injury to a physio get them to give you some adaptations that you can do in a yoga class and thirdly more is not better so don't just force it every day have rest days or easy load days as well if you need more help with an injury let me know you can always consult me via a video call and you can find the link of my website in this description of the video but if you've got any questions feel free to ask them in the comments and I'll get back to them as they come in take it you