Yoga Teacher Tells What Yoga Won’t Do For You

…and what to do instead in those cases:

Eliminating weaknesses

Yoga has some deficits, but they can be made up for in the four foundations of what Liv Townsend (the teacher whose video this is) uses in her “Yoga Rebel” method:

• Foundation 1: strengthen your target muscle in its shortened position, because weak muscles limit flexibility to protect joint stability (example: hamstring curls to shorten and strengthen hamstrings)
• Foundation 2: strengthen the opposite muscle pair (agonist/antagonist system), because contracting the partner allows your target muscle to release more (example: strengthen hip flexors to improve hamstring flexibility)
• Foundation 3: include passive stretching, since it reduces tightness, helps the nervous system tolerate discomfort, which is essential for stretching further, and thus lets you reach deeper ranges (example: yoga is actually good at this one and provides a lot of this; no need to add non-yoga exercises for this unless you want to)
• Foundation 4: strengthen your target muscle in its lengthened position (eccentric loading), which reduces the stretch reflex, builds resilience at end range, and lowers injury risk (example: Romanian deadlifts for hamstrings)

We realize a building does not normally have four foundations, and we might have called these “four pillars” or something instead, but it’s not our program and she didn’t consult us :p

It doesn’t take away from the usefulness of the advice, though, hence us sharing it here. For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

Want to learn more?

You might also like:

Yoga Teacher: “If I wanted to get flexible [from scratch], here’s what I’d do”

Take care!