Yoga Tune Up^® Blog

A client of mine has been an avid golfer for years, but one morning he confessed to me that he’d been finding his swing lacked the grace and power it used to have. “It can’t just be because I’m getting older,” he mused. “There must be a different reason – and there must be something I can do about it!” Without wanting to step on that potential landmine by commenting on the fact that he was getting older, I explained about the importance of the oblique muscles and how it might help to incorporate some stretching through the side of the body to keep the torso supple and fluid as he swung his golf club. As with most people, he had a vague sense of what these muscles are, but lacked a clear understanding of their function for the core. Once we discussed the obliques and had him find the muscles on his body, he agreed that they needed some attention!

I had him start practicing the Boomerang pose, posted below, and called it his “Golf Flexibility Exercise.” You can also find in the Yoga Tune Up® Quick Fix for Lower Back here. After only a few times doing the pose, he reported that his swing felt smoother and that connecting with the ball was easier. Landmine successfully avoided!

Strengthening the obliques will improve any golfer's swing.

Golf is an enormously popular sport for people of all ages: approximately 25 million people step onto a golf course at least once a year. And for those who play regularly, crafting your golf swing can be a lifelong pursuit. Minor tweaks and changes to the way you stand, the movement in the pelvis, and the twist of the torso can add score-improving feet to your drives and of course, bragging rights with your friends. To effectively and efficiently create that twist in the torso, the hips have to engage the oblique abdominal muscles and use them to drive the upper body through the swing. In this article we’ll look more closely at what exactly those muscles are for, and how we can get them working for us as effectively as possible using golf flexibility exercises!

It’s All Oblique to Me

There are several major muscles groups in the abdominal cavity, but for our golf-related purposes, we’re going to look more closely at two of them: the internal and external obliques. These two sets of muscles run in opposite diagonal directions and overlap each other around the sides of the body.

The external obliques start on the front of the body, attached to the bottom of the ribs, and wrap diagonally down and around the side to insert on the back of the pelvis. Meanwhile, the internal obliques begin attached to the bottom of the ribs on the back of the body, and wrap around to the front of pelvis. In this way the muscles criss-cross over each other and provide support for the sides, front and back of the torso.

Get These Muscles On Your Side

The primary function of the oblique muscles is to stabilize your core by aligning the ribs over the pelvis and holding this relationship in place. However there are many different reasons why the obliques may not be able to do their job properly: scoliosis, hip problems, even an ankle injury can throw off their natural balance.

For many of us, these muscles are simply overlooked and weak, because so much of the time when we think of core strength, we immediately go to the infamous ‘six-pack’ or rectus abdominus muscles on the front of the body. You can do crunches to your heart’s content and get those muscles to pop out and look impressive. But if you’re a golfer, they aren’t really going to help your golf swing, as they’re not the primary movers for the twist of the torso! (And on a separate note, too many crunches can start to ‘crunch’ your spinal vertebrae and cause damage over time). Instead, start to pay a little attention to the obliques and stabilize your core in every direction.

How to Get The Obliques Working For You

The side of the body can often be both weak and stiff – but the following tips will help with both conditions!

1. Stretch through the side body. Read my blog post called “Core Strength: Find Your Obliques” for video of a great side-strengthener called Boomerang, part of the Yoga Tune Up® Quick Fix for the Low Back.

2. Strengthen without a sit-up. The 10 Minute Yoga Tune Up® Quick Fix Low Back Video is a great way to continue to build low back strength.

With just a little more attention to these potential powerhouse muscles, you’ll be able to get your swing in shape in no time!

We all have it - after sitting at the computer finishing a project, receiving bad news, or just a hard workout, that feeling that the sides of our neck are getting shorter! But it’s not that our neck is getting shorter; instead, our shoulders are tensing, particularly the levator scapulae muscles that attach our shoulder blades to our neck and can cause neck pain.

Our breathing patterns change when we are under stress. Breaths shorten and become more shallow, and rather than breathing from our diaphragm, we begin to breath from our upper chest and shoulders. This places undue stress on those shoulder muscles and quickly tires them to overuse. Test yourself right now: are you tensing your shoulders as you sit at your computer? Can you relax, depress your shoulder blades, release some tension, and breath more into your diaphragm? How does that feel?

This pattern of tension leads to an overdevelopment of the trapezius and levator scapulae muscles and hikes them up to our ears. Bringing conscious awareness to our bodies during our activities can help to decrease tension and keep it away. Put a sign on your computer or work station, or in your car that says, “RELAX”. Eventually, the pattern of relaxation will take over for the pattern of tension!

Keeping the shoulders supple prevents other shoulder problems such as rotator cuff injuries, bursitis, tendonitis, and arthritis from developing. For a Quick-Fix, try this shoulder rolling move from the blog I posted earlier this week. You can see more shoulder exercises in the Yoga Tune Up® Quick Fix Video here. In addition, bring some massage therapy products into your regular routine for neck pain relief. I recommend the Upper Back and Neck Series using the Yoga Tune Up® Therapy Balls which you can find here.

Fresh from the oven, the latest batch of YTU Teachers.

I remember sitting with YTU Teacher Maura Barclay in her office last spring (April 2009), having newly arrived from New York City, ready to make my mark on Los Angeles with all my East Coast yoga teacher expertise. I remember listening to her talk about the Yoga Tune Up® Teacher Training that was coming up in a few weeks, and how it was so clearly the next step for me in my teaching, and that I would benefit so much from it, and all I could think was: I just got here. I’m already a yoga teacher (with two certifications!). What did I need with another training?

Thankfully, wise Maura prevailed, and she convinced me to take just one Yoga Tune Up® class. After class was over, I walked out a convert. My hips, so often a source of pain, were moving fluidly and painlessly, and I knew that if I could get that much from one class, this was a method I wanted to be able to share as a teacher.

Training was intense, and deep, and broke open my world. My knowledge of movement, anatomy, alignment, and teaching technique was taken to a new plateau. The experience shook me up enough that I wrote a whole blog entry about it! As I’ve continued to train in the Immersions, I not only deepen my capabilities as a teacher, but I get to keep expanding my mind with cutting edge techniques and data.

This past weekend in Los Angeles I was honored to assist Jill as she took a new group of teacher trainees through their paces. It reminded me once again of the joy of learning, and seeing this group of brilliant, smart, talented people step out of their comfort zones and submit to our critique was a humbling experience. We were there to teach them, but they certainly taught us as well. And I am re-convinced, and re-reminded, that to be a teacher means to continue to be the student, to learn and expand and grow. Which is a relief, because the alternative would be unbearably dull!

For more on Yoga Tune Up® Teacher Trainings across the country, go here.

I noticed Roger in my class right away. He was having a lot of trouble doing downward facing dog, unable to fully extend his elbows and bring his arms overhead. After class he came to me and asked, “Jeff, is there anything I can do to create more flexibility in my shoulders?”

I could tell this wasn’t just about yoga, but a quality of life issue - there was emotion behind it. He was feeling insecure about not being able to do what he thought a person of his age and health should be able to do. He felt pain when he moved certain ways, when he slept the wrong way, and when he lifted weights. He had been to doctors who had told him the problem was a frayed rotator cuff, which was followed by some physical therapy – but the pain never really ceased and he was looking for something else.

I took a quick look over Roger and had him go through some range of motion exercises. He said he felt a huge relief from doing Shoulder Circles which you can find in the video below. Try it and see if this helps you to loosen the family of muscles that surround and stabilize the shoulder joint.

For more on healing shoulder pain or rotator cuff injuries, including the sequence that leads up to Shoulder Circles, watch the full Yoga Tune Up Shoulder Quickfix Video here. In addition, I’ve just posted a great article that gives even more information about Rotator Cuff injuries and shoulder pain.

Happy Healing!

There is one pose that I do religiously that tackles so many issues at once, it’s practically an ALL-IN-ONE Yoga Tune Up® pose. My students know that they will get one of a dozen variations of this pose in any of my classes or within the multiple sequences on the Yoga Tune Up® At-Home program. Yes, it’s just simply MAGIC how many different issues it helps: it decompresses your back, lengthens hamstrings, IT Band and calves. It also strengthens both your abdominals and your back while stretching the chest, and for an added BONUS, massages your internal organs!… And that pose is…. Leg Stretch #3.

Here is a version that is easily done against a wall or sturdy piece of furniture. It’s helpful to have a yoga strap, but you can also use a long towel or a tie instead. ENJOY!

For more great poses, go here and get a new pose each week.

An inside look at the muscles of the rotator cuff.

Severe pain around the top, front, and side of the shoulder is quite common and can often be traced to problems in the Rotator Cuff, the group of muscles surrounding the shoulder joint. In this article, you will learn about this delicate muscular collection and discover important steps toward healing your shoulder pain.

The shoulders are perhaps the most overused and under-cared-for joints in the body. They are essential in the performance of everyday activities such as typing, driving, reaching, lifting, etc, but also take a lot of strain in more strenuous activities like tennis, weight lifting, rowing and other sports.

Rotator Cuff Basics

The four muscles of the rotator cuff wrap around the arm bone, attaching it to the bones of the shoulder and holding it in the hollow of the joint. Read the rest of this blog post »

I remember getting the call from my mom a few years ago; at age 58, she had been diagnosed with osteopenia, the precursor to osteoporosis. “And your aunt has it too … you better watch out,” she warned. There are many factors that contribute to the weakening of our bones as we age: poor nutrition, genetics, smoking and lack of exercise, to name a few. But a new study tells us that a yoga practice can not only help prevent these crippling conditions — it actually builds the bones back up! Here’s how to use the 72-second rule plus photo and video how-to’s for two yoga moves to help you build bone density.

In early March, I attended a Yoga Therapy conference in Los Angeles, www.sytar.org. Dr. Loren Fishman and his study partner Ellen Saltonsall presented the most compelling information about this killer disease. They emphasized that bones need STRESS (no, not the anxiety building kind) to maintain strength. Yoga poses act on the bones by “applying forces of opposing muscle groups to them that greatly exceed gravity, stimulating bone cells (osteocytes) to create more bone.” They also suggest that yoga greatly improves arthritic joints by circulating synovial fluid, and stimulating all of the connective tissues around the joints, helping to mobilize these stagnant tissues. Read the rest of this blog post »