What’s wrong with this Plank?

1. What's wrong with this Plank?

2. What injuries is this practitioner prone to?

3. When your students hold themselves in Plank this way, which practices can you give them?

What’s wrong with this Plank?

Apart from the fact that this woman is practicing in her socks, which is considered a yogic sin ;) , can you see that her buttocks are not in line with her spine? Her buttocks are raised up, causing her lower back to extend into lordosis. In other words, her lower back is curving in a way that puts a lot of pressure on it!

What injuries is this woman prone to?

This can cause lower back pain, of course. But what many yoga teachers don’t know is that when they see their students in yoga poses like this, they can infer about other physical challenges their students face in other yoga poses AND in everyday life!

This misaligned Plank suggests that the yogini doing it suffers from a very common phenomena, especially in women. This phenomena is hyper lordosis – an excessive inward curvature of the lumbar region of the spine.

Hyper lordosis affects the whole posture and comes hand in hand with weakness of certain muscles and tightness of others.

It indicates the weakness of the abdominal muscles, the gluteal muscles and the hamstrings, and also the tightness of the hip flexors (which includes the famous and important psoas muscle, which we will talk about a lot in Yoga, Anatomy & Alignment Course.)

And by the way, “tightness” of a muscle is not synonymous to “strength”. Most often, when we have hyper lordosis, our psoas muscle is tight, but weak. But maybe that’s a subject for a different post.

What’s the good news?

The good news is that if you have hyper lordosis, or your students do, you can give them a big present through the correct practice of yoga.

Putting some effort in the right direction and giving attention to the precise pitfalls that you are prone to, can have wonderful effects not only on your yoga practice, but also on your everyday life.

In Yoga, Anatomy & Alignment Course, I teach these things in detail, but let me give you 5 steps you can already take:

STEP ONE:

Practice Navasana every day! Do this to strengthen your abdominal muscles and your deep hip flexors, little by little.

STEP TWO:

Warrior 3 and Shalabasana can be great for strengthening your gluteal muscles.

STEP THREE: Mula Bhanda can help you strengthen your core muscles, which will of course help you hold yourself up with your deep muscles and put less weight on your lower spine and joints.

STEP FOUR:

In Plank pose itself – tuck your tailbone in, make sure you lower back is not sinking downwards and contract the transverse abdominis. The transverse abdominis is a very deep core muscle that surrounds your abdomen like a belt. People who suffer from backaches can earn a lot by strengthening it.

STEP FIVE:

Get familiar with your Psoas muscle by practicing Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana - lifting your leg as high as you can in front of you. It’s important not to extend your back and to keep the right and the left sides of the pelvis aligned. This requires your attention because there is a tendency for the hip of the raised leg to rise automatically. This asana strengthens your psoas, which, as a deep core muscle, is in charge of our stability.

These steps will balance your body: they will strengthen the weaker muscles, so that they can support your weight in a healthier way.

If you want to learn more, join us in Yoga, Anatomy & Alignment Course, taught by osteopath Oren Dotan, D.O.