Know how to stand and bend forward.
Let's first understand the standing posture and the posture of leaning forward:
First enter in a mountain posture, then inhale, lengthen your spine, raise your hands above your head, and then exhale. Drive the upper body with your arms, and fold forward and down with your hips as the folding point.
Standing and bending forward can calm people, nourish the facial skin, make the skin brighter and ruddier, increase the flexibility of the back of legs, beautify the shape of legs and buttocks, exercise the muscle strength of our thighs and front abdomen, gently massage the abdominal organs and flexible the hip joint.
Many people are prone to two misunderstandings in the process of standing forward and bending forward.
People who have practiced this pose should also think that the password of this pose sounds simple and the action itself is not very complicated, but many people, especially beginners, feel that they can't do this pose well. Why? Personally, I analyzed some misunderstandings about the practice and understanding of coming forward.
The first misunderstanding: password execution is not in place.
In the past, we should feel that the most common mistakes in doing this pose are hunchback and shrug, but why do we know that this is the reason, or will there be mistakes? The most important reason is that we didn't follow the password to do this action with the hip as the folding point, or we knew that we had to take the hip as the folding point, but we didn't do it well, so we still did it according to our own ideas.
Some people will do this with the lumbar spine as the folding point, and the lower back will arch. Some people will take the thoracic vertebra as the folding point, and the upper back will arch. However, this action requires everyone to take the hips as the folding point. You can look at the different consequences of these three folding methods first.
First, bend forward with the thoracic vertebra as the folding point.
The typical problem with my chest is that at first, I was afraid that my arm was not long enough, so I tried to shrug my shoulders and stretch my arm further, but the result was not as expected.
The second type takes the lumbar spine as the turning point.
The typical problem with the lumbar spine as the turning point is that during the downward flexion of the lumbar spine, the hip joint is driven slightly downward, but it is driven passively by the lumbar spine instead of the hip joint.
The third is to bend forward with the hip as the folding point.
In fact, it can be clearly seen that when the hip is the folding point, the spine begins to decline because the pelvis leans forward. At this time, the forward tilt of the hip is active and drives the spine to move forward and downward in a straight line.
The second misunderstanding is that the understanding of asana is too one-sided
In fact, in the practice of yoga asana, we must first recognize the asana before we can complete and strengthen it correctly.
Like many yoga poses, when people talk about standing forward and bending forward, the first thing that comes to mind is the flexibility of the body. Then when I can't do this pose well, I always feel that my body is too flexible. For example, the back of my thigh is too tight. There is nothing wrong with this idea, but it will make me feel too one-sided.
Why is it one-sided? We should all know that yoga practice is accomplished through the combination of strength and flexibility.
In many schools of yoga, except for the relatively quiet Yin yoga, almost all yoga postures should actually activate muscle strength and protect joints, and also help us enter deeper postures, as well as standing and bending forward. If we stand and bend forward, if we only pay attention to the muscles at the back of our thighs, of course we can do it, but we may just stay in a certain state and have no way to go deep. This is why some people are always at a distance of 10 cm from the ground, but they can't walk. So if you want to go deeper, you should start with the muscle strength of the front thigh and abdomen. Why do many people always say that the yoga core that has been practiced for a long time has no strength?
So, what should I do to stand up straight and bend over?
1. First, push your hips backwards (to avoid folding your chest or lumbar spine).
Mainly in the process of pushing the hips back, the pelvis can lean forward first, which actually guides the forward flexion of the hip joint and lays a motion track for the forelimbs of the hip joint, so push the hips back first, the pelvis leans forward, and then do the folding action. At this time, the body will naturally bend the knees slightly to avoid excessive stretching of the knees.
2. Start the muscle strength of the abdomen and the front of the thigh, let the abdomen force close to the thigh, and then start the muscles of the front of the thigh.
Theoretically, in order to bend forward well, the upper body and lower body are closed together, which is equivalent to the elongation of the back side of the body, so the front side of the body will be tightened.
If the posterior side is elongated, it is the force to push the pelvis forward and downward, so we will say that the coccyx is pushed upward and the anterior side is tightened, which is the force to push the pelvis forward and downward, so we will say that the abdomen and the anterior side of the thigh are tightened, so that the abdomen is close to the anterior side of the thigh, and the iliopsoas and abdominal muscles are activated.
So one pushes in the back, the other pulls in the front, and the two forces intervene at the same time to work together, which naturally makes the forward flexion deeper. At the same time, this kind of exercise can exercise the flexibility of the back of the leg and the muscle strength of the front thigh and abdomen, which also increases the effect and harvest of our exercise.
If the strength is weak or the control of the leg muscles is not enough, there is no way to start the leg muscle strength better. At this time, if you want to make your muscles conscious, you can tie an extension belt on your thigh.
Finally, let the flexibility of the back of the leg match the strength of the front abdomen of the thigh, and don't pursue the difficulty of pose too much.
In fact, when we use muscle strength to intervene in the forward flexion pose, we will find two more interesting phenomena.
The first one is that if the flexibility is not good, you can't get down at all in the early stage, but you will find that you have made a big step forward and deepened a lot by practicing in this way.
The second phenomenon is that, in turn, flexibility is better. Probably I was able to stand before, and the range was still relatively large, but later I found that the forward flexion was not as big as before. In fact, there is no need to worry too much, because when I did it in the early stage, the flexibility of the back side was the flexibility of my whole body when I used it completely, but when I did it with strength,
The strength of the front thigh and abdomen is not enough to pull the pelvis down to the degree of folding, which seems to be a retrogression, but it is actually just a lack of strength.
In the final analysis, if you want to stand forward smoothly, you need two conditions, the flexibility of the back side of your leg and the strength of the front side. If a person has these two conditions well at the same time, but only one of them is used at the beginning, and the other condition is useless at all, then if the two conditions are used together, this pose will see progress.
But if one condition is good and the other condition is weak, only one condition was used in order to do this pose well in the early stage, and it was finally achieved. But if both conditions are used, the conditions are average, but they will be worse than before.
So whenever this kind of problem occurs, don't just use one condition to achieve the effect, you must increase your muscle strength, because yoga practice is not only for the degree of asana, but for exercising those parts that have never been exercised.
Many people actually misunderstood when they first started practicing yoga, thinking that yoga is the pursuit of flexibility. In fact, in the process of yoga practice, physical balance, strength and flexibility are equally important. Don't just care about one of them, or you will find that yoga practice can't progress at a certain stage.