STOP FORWARD FOLDING SO MUCH IN YOGA

Transcript

can we please stop doing so many forward folds in yoga don't we do enough of this every single day i'm dr anthony davis and i've got a bone to pick with modern yoga but first i want you to know i'm one of you i'm a yoga teacher i've done two 200 hours and a 300 hour yoga teacher training and i teach anatomy in several yoga teacher trainings so this is not an assault on yoga i love yoga and i practice every morning i think asana or the physical practice of yoga the postures are great they have a great foundation but in light of modern science and biomechanics we can make some changes to an older practice and make it more beneficial to our physical body and again i'm not blowing smoke up your butt i'm a doctor of chiropractic and i have my master's in exercise science so i'm just trying to bring some modern science into yoga because i think that it's sorely needed look if you took a yoga teacher training then you already know that there are many different types of yoga poses yeah we've got forward folds we've got back bends we've got some side bends and of course we've got twists well i challenge you to think about the classes that you're taking and really look at those four types of poses and see and yes there are other types of poses but break those down and just look at the proportion of forward folds to anything else and i think you'll find that most yoga classes have a really really unbalanced amount of forward folding and not very much of anything else and i think about physical postures kind of like a balanced diet yeah we want some proteins we want some carbs some fats etc we can't just eat carbs or just eat proteins or just eat fats we need all of those things and we need micronutrients etc etc etc so if your whole day is sitting at a computer sitting on a couch sitting in a car then why are we doing more and more and more forward folding in our yoga practice don't we get enough of that already but here's the thing it's not even just about back bends forward bends side bends twists inversions that kind of stuff we can really think outside the box and apply modern exercise science to these poses so we can get even more types of poses what about instead of deep forward folding which is a flexibility exercise what about lifting halfway so that it's a strengthening exercise for the posterior chain or what about balance what about instead of having the back foot down we lift the heel up and now it's a balanced pose and what if we added movement to it as well which challenges your balance uh challenges your balance even more or another fun way to challenge balance is look at your own thumb when you reach overhead and if you're gonna do a twist watch your own thumb the entire time as you twist and it's really hard to balance that way what about looking at the amount of isometric work in other words holding a static pose right muscles need to work in three ways they need to hold a static position they need to get shorter under tension and get longer under tension so that's concentric isometric and eccentric contractions well chaturanga is a good time to practice these dynamically why don't we do multiple push-ups in a row that's how you're gonna actually get strong in the chest and then if we start to look at various types of body movements right pushing and pulling exercises well in yoga we do lots of pushing we do planks and chaturangas and all kinds of arm balances that strengthen the front side of the chest and shoulders but we don't do any pulling we don't do anything to strengthen the back of the shoulders or the rhomboids or trapezius or latissimus right these are super important muscles again when we spend our whole lives forward and these muscles are always in a contracted state it's not that this is a bad posture it's just that you only do this posture with your whole life it's time to do something else and yoga doesn't have any exercises that allow you to truly train your pulling muscles for the upper body it just doesn't and then we talk about flexibility versus muscle endurance versus strength and a lot of people we have these yoga classes that they say oh we're doing strong yoga well it's stronger than most yoga but it's not strength in the true definition of the word because the true definition of the word strength i'm telling you this because yoga does not train strength it does not it period end of sentence because the true definition of strength is maximum force production really a measure of strength is what is the heaviest thing that you can pick up one time so even if i do chituranga and push-up push-up push-up push-up all day long is that a measure of strength no it's a measure of muscular endurance which is a totally different physiological adaptation to your muscles tendons joints and bones than actual strength which is picking up heavy stuff and yoga just doesn't train that so yoga itself is a very imbalanced physical fitness type of program and i want to chime in here and just acknowledge that yoga is not supposed to be a physical fitness program in the first place yoga is supposed to be a mindfulness program yoga is supposed to teach you how to behave when nobody's looking how to treat others how to treat yourself how to have a moral code how to meditate how to sustain that meditated concentration how to um again drop into yourself and be aware of your surroundings those are the tools of yoga physical fitness has nothing to do with yoga but as long as we're going to be doing physical postures in yoga we might as well be doing ones that allow our physical body to benefit in a positive way and in my opinion that means that we look at the types of poses that we're doing we look at how most of us are living our daily lives and we try to you know if we only have people in our classes for an hour maybe one to three times a week at most for most people anyway then shouldn't we use that hour to help them in the maximum possible way and give them the maximum benefit well if their whole life is spent bent over like this do you think that doing more of this is the maximum benefit for them or do you think that exploring you know back bends and twists and strength and pulling and dynamic movement and balance and mindfulness and all of those types of things is going to have a better benefit for them i'd love to hear from you right if there is one thing that you could change about yoga classes that you either teach or attend that you think would make it more beneficial to you what would that change be please comment below is that something that you would change about the postures about the teaching the queuing the atmosphere you know is it too competitive is it what is it comment below let me know again i love yoga yoga is wonderful practice i just want to emphasize that it could be better and we can all work together to create that positive change i'm dr davis movement as medicine motion is lotion and i'll see you in another video