How to step your foot forward from down dog

Transcript

[Music] a lot of students in vinyasa classes struggle with stepping the foot forward from downward facing dog into a lunge and it's a transition that we do a lot in the vinyasa class so if you have a hard time with it it can be a little bit frustrating so in this video i'll share a few tips with you to make that transition a little bit easier i'm joe i make videos about yoga fitness anatomy physiology and movement science to help you to understand how your body moves and also how it can move better okay let's talk about that transition of stepping your foot forward into a lunge the first thing i'll say about this is if you don't get your foot all the way forward that's perfectly fine so let's say you're in downward facing dog and that's as far as your foot comes forward and you want to bring your foot more forward you can just wiggle the foot up that'll work you can take hold of your ankle pick the foot up and move it forward with your hands either of those options will work they'll get you to where you want to get to but if you want to work on getting your foot further forward i have a few tips for you so the big issue with stepping your foot forward is finding the room underneath you so a couple of things to think about here if you drop your pelvis down too low that's going to limit the space you have to bring your foot forward so one thing that will be helpful would be to lift your hips high that will help to give you a little bit more space to be able to bring the knee towards the chest to step the foot forward so rather than letting the pelvis sink towards the floor as i step forward i think about lifting the pelvis and letting my back round a little bit to create even a little bit more space that rounding of the back is important because when we round the back that tends to tuck the pelvis under a little bit and that helps to bring the knee up a little bit more tightly towards the chest you can see if i stand up and i bring my knee up as high as it will get to easily and comfortably towards my chest while maintaining an upright spine you'll see that if i allow my back to round that will enable me to bring the knee in a little bit closer towards the chest so i go from here to here as i round the back you'll see how my pelvis tucks under so what i'm really doing is i'm just using the movement of the pelvis to pull the knee up a little bit more tightly into the chest the same thing happens from downward facing dog so as i bring the knee in i let the rounding of the back turn the pelvis under to step the foot forward so those two things lifting the pelvis high and curling the pelvis under so the backgrounds will both help you to get a little bit more space under you to bring your knee up towards your chest another thing that can be really helpful is to find a weight shift toward the hand on the opposite side so what do i mean by that if i'm a downward facing dog and i keep my weight in my left hand and i try to bring my left foot forward and you'll see i'm going to run out of space but if i can shift my weight over towards my right hand that will enable me to lift my left wrist a little bit i actually turn my pelvis and chest just a bit to the left and that's also going to give me a little bit more space to be able to bring the foot i know some teachers teach a version of this where they keep the palms flat on the floor during that transition that can be an interesting challenge certainly it's harder but it's worthwhile working on is another option but if your main goal is just to bring your foot forward i think the weight shift is really helpful because it just makes it much easier and also as a teacher i feel like it's useful to teach students that weight shifting because it's such an important part really of any efficient functional movement as an example if i'm walking and i have all of my weight over in my left foot and i want to pick my left foot up and step it forward i can't possibly do that the only way that i can pick my left foot up off the floor is to shift my weight over to my right foot that lets me bring the left leg up to swing it forward so this ability to shift the weight from one side of the body to the other is so important in many movements and i think that it's the the missing piece for a lot of students and stepping the foot forward so give that a try play around with those ideas of lifting your hips high rounding the back to help the knee come a little bit more in towards the chest and finding a weight shift over towards the opposite side to give yourself the extra space to step the foot forward see if those help you and if they make those transitions a little bit easier for you i hope that was helpful for you if you liked the video please give it a thumbs up if you'd like to see more videos like this and i'll see you in the next video thanks for watching you