FOUR ADVANCED YOGA STRETCHES
Hello my dear Readers we are in November! .The holidays are coming and its TIME to have your behinds off of the sofa and take it to BURN the Extra Calories we will be eating this Holiday season. So remember you still have written in your memory always warm up whether on a treadmill, Elliptical, walking or jogging not to hard at least 15-20 minutes ALWAYS. After this I will show you some Yoga advance positions and how to condition your body while at the same time working on your strength and flexibility of all your muscles before you go straight to the Weights. Remember that the purpose of the warm up is to elevate your temperature to prepare your muscles for higher intensity exercises, improve your circulation, range of motion or flexibility to avoid a muscle cramp or tear. Again if you are being trained and your trainer takes you RIGHT into the work out without a pre-warm up, I feel he is not a good trainer or either you are 20 years old and you may not get HURT at this moment but sure after you cool down you may start feeling PAIN. Or you are 30, 40 or 50 years old and our bodies are NOT well prepared to work out and just following a Trainer (especially the young ones) that dont ask you to warm-up. With or without a trainer ALL of US have to always warm up as this is MANDATORY even for professional athletes. This is not optional. So to start, lets warm-up for 20 mins. Train smart and dont hurt yourselves.
After a good warm up, let me show you some fun advance stretches:
1 Down Dog (Intense stretching of calves, hamstrings, gluteus, dorsal muscles).
Keeping your hands in the same place you are, from Up Dog
. you will put your toes touching the ground and now move your Butt and Tail Bone towards the ceiling, hands and fingers well spread and your legs will be fully straight trying to maintain both heels on the ground to get the effective stretch to all the muscles of the back of the legs (see in detail the image). Breath slow and controlled when you hold the position
return to Neutral Position with your body back on the Mat. Repeat this 10 Times. See image #1.
2 Advance Side stretch for gluteus, calve and hamstrings.
You Start in this position from your Down Dog
so pay attention
. LOOK at the image and copy my posture. Your right knee is flex and your hands are fully extended to the floor so you can move your body BACK and SIDEWAYS keeping your left leg totally straight and keeping all your toe as YOU SEE IN THE IMAGE….stay 30 sec and after you will do the other leg, same hold for 30 secs. Repeat this 6 times. Inhale and exhale slow. See image #2
3 Standing Gluteus and Abductor Stretch (gluteus, abductor and lots of balance).
Here if you need to HOLD on to something its OK since its necessary that when we FLEX the knee that is on the FLOOR. The KNEE has to ALWAYS to stay ALIGNED vertically with my ankle and NEVER passes the FRONT of your foot so we dont BREAK or DAMAGE the Knee. You can PRACTICE this sitting in a CHAIR. So you have to bring your RIGHT leg on top of your LEFT knee and carefully flexing left leg as if you were about to SIT. Inhale…..The MORE you move your BUTT back with your right LEG away from your right ELBOW you will feel more intense the GLUTEUS and the ABDUCTOR exhale…. if you are holding onto something or sitting in a chair you can USE your right ARM to push down your right KNEE. Hold as much as you can then switch LEGS. Hold this position 30 secs
See image #3.
4 Advance Standing Gluteus and Abductor Stretch( gluteus, abductor and lots of balance).
Well this one is a tuff but still for those who have a lot of flexibility this will make you very happy. Here we do all what Ive said before and now we ADD the bending forward of my Upper Body touching with both hands the floor, again keep AWAY your right knee from your body and ALIGN it more towards the floor. Inhale and exhale during the stretch
.Hold as long as you can then switch legs. See image #4.