When building shoulder strength we can use two major categories in our pursuit: pulling and pushing.
Today our focus will be on pulling strength and the path toward pulling your bodyweight.
Hip and leg strength is particularly important for overall health in one’s movement. To this goal of gaining Hip Girdle strength I often like to utilize external load in the forms of a Barbell and/or Kettlebell
Generally consisting of 24 vertebrae, 7 cervical (neck), 12 thoracic (upper back/thorax region) 5 lumbar (lower back), the spine will initially be considered through a practice of moving each joint into flexion in order.
Allowing the center of gravity to be below the hips will dramatically reduce the force it takes to move the hips from a flexed (bent) position into an extended position.
Our ideal handstand will consist a near 90° stack of the body over the wrists, held with adequate tension to allow adjustments to be made primarily from the fingers. Physical limitations will require commensurate compensations throughout the body.
Deep closed twisting, where one twists toward the leg in front, isn’t a focus in my practice or teaching at present. The very occasional bind exists as a remnant of the haha-yoga practices that I primarily engaged in nearly 2 decades ago. However I see great benefit in utilizing less invasive practices of rotation.
We will focus on 3 poses; Cobra and Sphinx may be thought of as variations on the same pose.
Yoga-asanas (yoga poses) that incorporate back-extension often are among the more controversial of postures, with some members of the medical community making the blanket statement that these poses should be avoided by most if not all persons. While this statement is not ubiquitous, I think it’s prevalence is worth mentioning. I agree that most students would do well to spend more time strengthening the muscles of one’s core (which work to stabilize the spine) rather than focusing on deep back bending. Having said this, to avoid any range of motion is to forfeit that range of motion to muscle atrophy and likely lose neuromuscular capacity.
A good friend and Patreon subscriber posed an inspiring inquiry into my thoughts on the balance between tension and relaxation in movement.
This inspired me to think on the Taoist concept of Wu Wei “Effortless Effort.”
I was asked to address a sequence I utilize for anxiety and moving through trauma. Below you will find many of my favorite tools from Katonah Yoga for measuring, referencing and restoring a state of equilibrium.
One among many important factors a person might consider in their movement practice, is the speed at which one should move through a given movement.
This invites us to distinguish categories of movements:
postures / static
controlled
explosive
It may be helpful to consider where explosive movements (such as a sidekick or a barbell/kettlebell snatch) would benefit from time spent in variations of controlled movements and static holds.
Taking the Side Kick mentioned above as an example:
My violin teacher Lee Snyder, once told me: “Practice begins the first time you get it right.” Practice is intentional repetition and is only successful when you are capable of performing the intended plan.
Early in my introduction to strength training it was impressed upon me to perform some common rehab exercises to fortify common areas of weakness and instability. For pulling and pushing variations on external rotation have been indispensable.
The following is built upon the idea of a daily practice. Rest days may be thought of as 1-2 a week as needed by the practitioner pending on the exertion of your practice. For seasoned students with a regular daily practice I generally recommend 3 days of more demanding training/practice followed by a day of active recovery (stretching, walking, massage, cold exposure/sauna, etc.)
Once the grip has adapted to basic hanging, we will begin adding complexity of holding the shoulder girdle stable while attempting to create a loaded hip flexion which will also serve to work our core (this will be from a gravity minimized position, making it “less work” physically though a likely foreign task neurologically, creating new challenges that should carry over to other movements as a “functional” movement hopes to do.
A major limit of traditional Yoga-asana can be found in the attempt to build a strong hip girdle. Nevine Michaan’s teaching “Your hips are your stability and your shoulders your ability” foreshadowed the journey Ido Portal’s words “Your hip-girdle responds to load and your shoulders to complexity” would send me down.
Once one develops the foundation of Upper Body Pushing found in Planks we might begin progressing toward more advanced and arguably more “fun” versions of upper body strength exercises.
