Maybe You SHOULD Do Yoga

Last time I wrote this hand grenade about why Yoga might not be the best option for you.

And subsequently watched my subscriber list get decimated.

So I guess some folks got all butt hurt…or they just don’t like me and think I write like poop.

Either way, here’s why you might actually want, hell, you NEED Yoga in your life.

The #1 Reason, By Far…

Yoga Teaches You How To Breath….. Again

Yes, you breath wrong, at least for the situation.

You’re Waaay Too Damn Stressed……ALL THE TIME.

In modern life we worry about too damn many things.

• Mortgage
• Car bill
• Grocery bill
• Fights with the significant other
• Bosses
• Subordinates
• The cable guy who’s going to be there between 9am and 9pm like you don’t have anything else to do in that 12 hour time frame but wait for him to flip a god damn switch.
• No Wi-Fi, what? OMG, no Wi-Fi, What the F- type of establishment is this?

And it’s all legit, except it’s not.

“the things we all find stressful– traffic jams, money, worries, overwork, the anxieties of relationships. Few of them are “real” in the sense that the zebra or lion would understand. In our privileged lives, we are uniquely smart enough to have invented these stressors and uniquely foolish enough to have let them, too often, dominate our lives.”- Robert Sapolsky

Our stress response (sympathetic nervous system) is made for “real” (physical) stressors, not this bullsh@t.

Things like famine, cold, lions, tigers and bears…

That’s real sh@t. Real, as in, if you don’t successfully navigate that stressor…

You Die

Point is: We literally DO NOT have a way, a proper physiological response, to emotional (made up in our heads) stressors.

So in modern life, some of us live with the stress response turned on 24/7, 365.

Stress Response = Stressed Breathing

You no longer take deep, relaxed breaths through your diaphragm.

Instead you breath through your ribcage using the accessory breathing muscles and shutting down the diaphragm.

Those accessory breathing muscles become “overactive” tight and you look like this.

Worst part is, remaining in this posture and state helps to feed the beast.

The more often you’re like this, the more you’re locking this craptastic posture in until it’s your “new normal”.

The greatest aspect of the Yoga is that it legitimately helps most people relax by placing you an environment that facilitates calmness and

TEACHING YOU TO BREATH AGAIN..

Yoga that focuses on calmness and breath is good enough for me.

If you can pull yourself back into parasympathetic – sympathetic balance you can stop being so damn up-tight, freaked out and anxious all the time.

This breathing crap can literally change your life and that alone is worth the cost of the pants..

Inhibition/ Activation – Using the Right Muscle At the Right Time

Good yoga postures and cuing (with proper breathing) can help increase mobility.

Not the crappy, hang off the joint type, but the good, proper, alignment so the joints articulate how they should and you can, “get the most out of your structure”, type of mobility.

Fun Example: Tight Hamstrings

Usually aren’t.

They’re usually a combination of:

• Lack of glutes
• Lack of abs
• Tight/ Overactive hip flexors
• Overactive spinal errectors

Put all these together and you’ve probably got “tight hamstrings”, but maybe not.

Maybe your hamstrings are having to help stabilize the pelvis, while in an overstretched position and the hip flexors are too tight because they have to do the same thing on the front end.

Your pelvis is locked back (anterior pelvic tilt) because both sets of muscles (hamstrings and hip flexors) are overactive from the get go.

So when you go to do the touch your toes stretch, which is horrible for you btw, you run out of hamstring, cause you don’t have enough length left in the hamstring to begin with. Not because the hamstrings are “tight”.

But what if you got the pelvis to sit flat and the correct muscles to turn on or off.

THAT, is where Yoga can come in.

Getting into and correctly maintaining many Yoga postures relies on you activating and inhibiting the correct muscles. <—this also has a lot to do with sympathetic tone, just like breathing.

Sometimes, simply sitting there long enough will do the trick.

Eventually the overactive muscles (which are usually in a less than perfect position) will down regulate and the under-active ones, you want to come on-line, will take over .

Most tension in athletes is caused by dysfunction or compensatory movement patterns. Fix the pattern and you release the tension–without unnecessary static stretching- Dana Santas

Simply being able to get into the correct posture, brace and relax where necessary will dramatically increase most people’s mobility.

Flexibility, Big Guys Need it…

Some of you are jacked and tan and immobile as the Tin Man.

You jackassess are just plain tight.

You’re either naturally that way, or more likely, your training and lifestyle (read: desk job and commute) have left you in a chronically crappy position, changed your length-tension relationships and stuff actually is just plain tight.

If you are sitting all day for years on end I can pretty much guarantee you that your neck, chest, and hip flexors are “short” and could use some stretching.

If you’re just really thick and have a ton of very dense muscle tissue, YOU TOO can probably use some yoga in your life.

When you have a lot of muscle thickness and density you tend to get “short” and tight.

Aint nothing wrong with hanging out in the back of class, struggling not to fart through it and actually being able to get your hands past your knees afterwards.

So yoga isn’t always a bad thing, sometimes it’s damn good.

See, to me, it’s a lot like the coach guy who says do a 100 box jumps, “Cause it’s really hard and burns lots of calories”, or a set of 20 snatches.

They’re well-intentioned, they  just don’t know what the hell the purpose of the exercise is.

And if there is one exercise you should take from the Yoga it’s this:

 

The Cat/ Camel Stretch:

On the Tube of You’s right here

I can’t think of one reason every person alive should not be doing this stretch on a regular basis.

If you’re tight through the thoracic spine (sit too much) it unlocks you.

If you’re stiff, it loosens you up.

When my back feels a bit “off” I do this and 90% of the time it feels better.

It’s like magic, except, it’s not.

The best part is that it can help you to feel what movement from the thoracic spine instead of the lumbar spine feels like.

Key Points:

• Lock the elbows so your actually get scapula movement and not a crappy triceps workout.
• Keep the hips over the knees, not in front of them.
• Focus on pushing the shoulder blades apart and pushing the spine in between them, NOT rounding the low back.
• Focus on Pulling the T-Shirt logo “up” and spreading the chest (shoulders back, down the ribcage) NOT just overarching the low back by slamming the pelvis into your L5 vertebrae.

And if there are Two exercises, this is the other:

 

The Overhead Hip Warrior Lunge with Thoracic Extension:

YouTube version (P.S. it’s the same….shhhhhhh)

 Key Points:

• Hip flat
• Ribcage down on the ribs, not rounded, not extended.
• Chest up <—–the difference wont be much here, but always “T-Shirt logo or Nipples (for the more risqué of us)” UP, but ribs down. 
• The glute of the leg that is down should be flexed hard and pushed forward into the hip the whole time.
• When you reach up focus on pulling the ribs apart without leaning back.

ALWAYS REMEMBER TO BREATH INTO THE DIAPHRAGM.

Taking a breath into the chest will lock the ribcage in place and you’ll screw that whole “extending the thoracic spine thing” all up.

You’ll be all low back and no one wants to be friends with and sit at the same lunch table as someone who is all low back….