This week I was asked a great question:
"How long should I hold a stretch for?"
And as with many things in life, the answer is - 'it depends'.
If you're looking to increase range and flexibility in a given muscle (or muscle group), then you'll want to hold the stretch for 90-120 seconds.
However, if you're simply looking to maintain range, then 30-40 seconds will suffice.
Either way, as I explain in this video, you'll want to incorporate strength building components into your flexibility training, rather than simply relying on passive stretches alone.
This ensures that we develop strength through range across both sides of a given joint - meaning we can actively 'own' and apply force through that range. A much better strategy for functional application and movement.
In the video above I use isometric loading as an example of how to incorporate strength building elements into a stretching practice - but there are a range of other techniques that we can also apply for this purpose.
So - if you've ever wanted to know how long to hold your stretches for, I hope this helps to answer the question.
And if you want further support to improve your flexibility and or reach your mobility goals then don't hesitate to get in touch or head over to the Yogathletic app for a range guided practices....there's a 7 day free trial and you can cancel at any time.
5 Benefits of Yoga for Men
Although yoga was practised almost exclusively by men for much of its history in India, in the West we tend to think of it as predominantly a pastime for women. And whilst the benefits of yoga are universal, here are the 5 main reasons why I believe that more men should be practising yoga.
1. Yoga improves our flexibility
Without wishing to generalise or resort to cliche, the majority of men (at least the ones I see in class) struggle with their flexibility to a greater degree than women.
This is probably largely due to their history of movement and exercise. It’s more common for women to have practised movement modalities such as dance or gymnastics in their youth and to incorporate yoga and other stretching practises into their training.
Conversely, most men have a legacy of participating in sports that place much less demand on flexibility - and often tend to prioritise strength building programmes.
Some studies suggest that there may also be a genetic component to flexibility (with men coming off second best!) and it’s certainly true that as we get older, our flexibility naturally starts to decrease as our connective tissues (muscles, tendons, fascia etc.) become less supple.
As a result, many men reach middle age feeling chronically ‘stiff’. Yoga is a great practice to start addressing this by training our nervous system to increase our ‘stretch tolerance’ so that we gradually become more flexible over time!
2. Yoga helps us to move better
Another physical benefit of yoga is that it helps us to improve joint mobility, stability and strength, helping us to move better by developing greater control of our body and joints through full ranges of movement.
This has many carry-over benefits such as improving athletic performance and mitigating against injury…or simply keeping up with our children in the park (one of my private students, an ex-rugby player of 30+ years, was delighted that he was finally able to sit cross legged at a picnic for the first time in his life!)
Many of the practises of yoga also challenge and develop our core stability and once again this allows us to move more efficiently by developing ‘proximal stability for distal mobility’ - i.e. we’re able to transfer force more effectively from our centre throughout the kinetic chain.
And when we consider the improvements to balance and proprioception (awareness of the body in space) from practising yoga we have pretty much the complete package for moving with greater ease and efficiency.
3. Yoga helps us to manage stress more effectively
It’s perhaps not an over exaggeration to say that we’re living through a mental health crisis. With so many environmental triggers - Covid, climate change, rising costs of living, social media etc. - many of us are increasingly struggling to maintain our mental health.
And whilst this impacts women at least as much as men, the way in which men deal with stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges has led to a situation in which men are over 3 times more likely than women to die by suicide.
Society’s (and internal) expectations that men stay ‘strong’ and in control often makes it difficult for men to talk honestly about their mental health struggles, or to ask for help, with the result that they often resort to unhealthy coping mechanisms that exacerbate the issues.
Yoga provides many simple techniques, from mindful movement, to breathwork and meditation, that can help us to address both chronic and acute stress when it arises by shifting attention ‘out of the head and into the body’.
Moreover, simply having time out from the pressures of life, from the need to do, achieve, compete or perform can be a powerful antidote to stress by offering the space we need to ‘reset’.
4. Yoga improves how we breathe
Chronic patterns of breath dysfunction are endemic - reverse breathing, paradoxical breathing, mouth breathing…the list goes on.
Whilst this may not sound critical, the impacts of these faulty breathing patterns can in fact be significant and pernicious - elevated stress levels, increased heart rate (and lower heart rate variability - a key indicator of health), increased blood pressure, and inefficient delivery of oxygen to our muscles, cells and organs.
Yoga can help us to address these issues, firstly by bringing awareness to how we breathe and then by retraining breathing biomechanics through exploration of the many breathing and pranayama techniques that are a core feature of the practice.
Over time these practises will help to increase mental clarity, improve athletic performance and decrease stress levels, leaving us feeling calmer and more centred so that we can move through life with just a little more ease.
5. Yoga improves overall health and wellbeing
I’d say that as a general rule most men are not that great at taking care of ourselves…but yoga can help.
Yoga practice can be a great refuge from the constant overstimulation of modern day life and an opportunity to ‘down-regulate’ our chronically stimulated nervous system.
This helps to shift us from a ‘flight, fight, freeze’ dominant state by stimulating the ‘rest and digest’ parasympathetic nervous system response, and this has many benefits, such as:
Improved sleep
Improved mental health and wellbeing
Improved immune system response
Enhanced memory and cognitive abilities
Lower blood pressure
Improved Heart Rate Variability (a key indicator of nervous system health)
Improved ability to recover from the strenuous exertions of exercise and sport
So there we have 5 key reasons why I think more men should be taking yoga classes. The benefits of the practice are manifold and extend to all areas of life - home, work and sporting endeavours.
So if you know a man who might need a little nudge to take the first step on their yoga journey (or maybe that person is you?), then do point them in the direction of this post, or encourage them to get in touch to discuss one to one teaching sessions so that we can get them started on the right foot.
A Simple Yoga Sequence For Happy, Healthy Shoulders
If we were to rewind the clock to our hunter gatherer past, we’d find our ancestors using their arms and shoulders in a variety of interesting and exciting ways - climbing trees and rocks, scrambling across uneven terrain, throwing projectiles at prey - and many more important ways besides.
Fast forward to today, and for many of us our shoulders (as with most of the joints in our body) are chronically under used (think long hours sitting at a laptop with our arms resting on a desk).
And to coin a cliché, if we don’t use it, we’ll start to lose it. If we only take our joints through very limited ranges of movement, then our nervous system responds by literally closing off our ability to move through greater ranges (why waste precious energy and resources?)
But thankfully there’s an antidote that’s readily available - movement.
Yoga is a great start - it gets us moving our arms and shoulders through ranges that we might not be accustomed to on a daily basis. But most of the movements we take in yoga are passive stretches that rely on the application of external force (teacher adjustments, the leverage of our own body or gravity).
To complement these passive stretches it’s helpful to take active, controlled movements that cultivate the strength needed to functionally access the range of motion in our shoulders.
To get you started, I've put together a short shoulder mobility sequence that will help you cultivate more active strength and control through the range of movement in your shoulders and maintain healthy functioning of these important joints to support your yoga practice (and daily life!). And as most of them are simple movements, it’s ideal to take this sequence as a mindfulness practice, really dropping your awareness into sensations, thoughts and breath, and welcoming whatever arises.
So enjoy the exploration, be interested in your experience of the movements and the sensations that arise, and as always, be sure to listen to the feedback from your body.
Shoulder Girdle Articulations
This first movement is called a ‘Controlled Articular Rotation’ (CAR) - we’re not simply rolling our shoulders around, we’re moving intentionally through the full range of motion available to us. At the same time we’re creating some internal tension and resistance through the rest of our body (tensing legs, belly etc.) to both isolate the movement in the shoulder girdle and to maximise the feedback that we’re sending to our nervous system.
For this movement keep the elbows locked and your palms clamped to the sides of your legs (rather than rolling your hands around to the fronts or backs of the thighs).
Begin by drawing your shoulders up towards your ears and then with the shoulders lifted, squeeze your shoulder blades back towards your spine. Maintaining that squeeze of the shoulder blades back, slide them down your body - then with the shoulders drawn down, roll them forward. Finally, with the shoulders rolled forward lift them back up towards your ears. That’s one round.
Take 3 - 5 rounds in total and then 3 - 5 rounds in the opposite direction (i.e. shoulders lift, roll forward, slide down, squeeze back and lift up again).
Upper Arm Axial Rotations
For this movement we’ll rotate the arms along their length - technically called axial rotation. Watch out for the front ribs wanting to lift and flare (keep them a little bit ‘knitted’ towards your mid line instead).
Start with your arms reaching wide of the body, palms open, and then rotate the little finger edges of your hands towards the space behind you. You might feel the muscles around the tips of your should blades engage. From there rotate the palms forwards, down and around behind you. Continue for 20 - 30 rotations.
Shoulder Joint Rotations
This is another rotational movement - joint rotations are the best way we have of moving through all ranges of motion accessible to us and letting our nervous system know that we want to keep those ranges open.
Again you’ll need to keep your elbow locked for this movement and create some internal tension throughout the body. Other things to watch out for are that pesky rib flare and the torso wanting to rotate around towards the direction of the arm that you’re moving…keep it facing directly forward instead.
Start with one arm reaching up overhead (palm facing in towards your midline) and then begin to rotate that arm back behind you, drawing a semi circle in the air with your hand. At the same time, rotate your arm along its length (just as you did in the axial rotations) first rotating the palm forward and then away from your midline…so that when your arm reaches the side of your thigh the palm is turned away from you with your thumb pointing behind you.
From there we return to the start position - drawing a semi circle in the opposite direction and rotating along the length of the arm so that the palm ends up facing back in towards your midline when you’re reaching overhead. That’s one round - take 3-5 rounds each side.
Shoulder Diamonds
Start with your arms alongside your body. As you inhale reach your arms overhead and, keeping a slight bend into the elbows, tap the tips of your index fingers and thumbs together. As you exhale, return the arms alongside the body.
Take 20 - 30 rounds moving slowly with intention, awareness and focus - imagine you were moving your arms through treacle.
Shoulder Flexion Active Stretch
Place your hands against a wall and walk them down until you can feel a gentle ‘stretch’ in the shoulders - make sure it’s not too intense, just so that you’re aware of some sensation there and make sure that the movement is coming from the shoulders, not from arching the lower back and flaring the front ribs.
Hold for one to one and a half minutes and then actively press the palms into the wall and also create the sensation of trying to pull them down the wall at the same time - gently at first and then gradually building the intensity of that sensation. Once you’ve found your strongest safest sensation, hold for 5 full breaths.
From there, try to pull the palms away from the wall - they more than likely won’t actually lift away . Again, hold for 5 full breaths and then relax. Optionally take another round.
Shoulder Extension Active Stretch
Hold a belt behind your back with your palms facing forward. Take a deep bend into your knees and fold forward to rest your abdomen on your thighs (this isn’t a hamstring stretch). Draw your arms away from the back of your body and hold for a minute and a half to two minutes, making sure that you maintain a squeeze of the shoulder blades back (rather than rolling the shoulders forwards).
When you come back up from the fold, rather than dropping your arms back towards your torso keep them lifting away from your back. Once you’re standing fully upright hold for 5 - 8 full breaths and then release. Optionally take another 1 - 2 rounds (on subsequent rounds no need to stay in the fold for a long time).
Active Gomukhasana (Cow Face Pose) Arms
Begin with your arms reaching wide, palms open. Reach one arm up to point to the ceiling, turning the palm to face forward. At the same time reach the opposite arm down and back behind you, turning the palm of that hand to face backwards.
From there bend both elbows, bringing the top hand towards the back of your head / neck and the bottom hand towards your lower back - there’s no need to actually make any contact between your hands and your toros (if there is contact, keep it light).
Keep the shoulder blades squeezing back towards your spine at all times and your gaze directly forward. Try to resist the impulse to round the upper back / drop your gaze, roll the shoulders forward and wriggle the hands closer…we’re not interested in interlacing the fingers here, simply moving through our active range.
Take 3 - 4 rounds moving side to side and on the final round hold for 5 breaths each side.
Active Garudasana (Eagle Pose) Arms
Hug your arms around your torso and lift your elbows. From there point your fingers up to the sky.
Keeping the elbows lifted, press the top elbow into the bottom forearm and draw the backs of the hands towards each other - DON’T worry about taking a double cross of the forearms so that the palms are together. In fact definitely don’t do this - instead simply point the fingers upwards with the wrists in a neutral position.
Hold for 5 full breaths and then feel as if you’re trying pull the elbows apart. Again hold for 5 full breaths before relaxing, lifting the elbows and holding the position for another 5 full breaths. Switch sides, rinse and repeat.
This post was originally written for my friends at soweflow…
A Manifesto For Practice
Super fast movement, punishing sequences, extreme poses, brutal intensity, loud music...a complete absence of introspection or cultivation of self awareness.
It seems that this is becoming an increasingly popular approach to yoga - the ‘do more, push harder’ culture is in full effect.
And whilst I really enjoy challenging calisthenics and exercise, unless they encourage an exploration of the self and cultivation of presence then they’re not yoga.
I'm conscious that what I offer in my own classes sits at odds with this trend.
I don’t play music, preferring to give you the space and silence to really connect to your breath and a sense of inner stillness - rather than giving the mind another ‘hook’ for distraction.
We explore the practice in a way that encourages a rebalancing of the nervous system - breath work and meditation in particular - rather than using our yoga practice to further agitate our fight, freeze or flight response.
We move slowly, paying attention to the sensations that can be felt in the body, and the effects of the postures, transitions and practices at the various layers of our experience (physical, mental, energetic).
We work with simple movements and sequences so that we can focus on how we move and the quality of movement rather than worrying about complex sequencing.
We take ranges of motion that can be controlled functionally rather than pulling and pushing our bodies into extreme places - making sure that we pay attention to cultivating strength and active mobility rather than simply focusing on passive flexibility.
There aren’t many (if any) hands on adjustments - you’ll be encouraged to connect to the intuition and innate wisdom of your body rather than relying on me for external guidance. Any assists I do provide will help cultivate a greater sense of grounding and stability rather than forcing your body into places it’s not ready to go to.
And we approach everything that we do in our practice with a sense of curiosity and compassion - cultivating kindness towards ourselves and our bodies, and engaging in the practice in a way that’s both enjoyable and nourishing, rather than as another way of diminishing and criticising ourselves.
That’s not to say it won’t be challenging or even dynamic at times. Yoga is a means of probing our existing patterns of thought and behaviour and expanding our potential to its fullest state (including our movement potential). But we’ll explore these edges in our practice mindfully and with a sense of care.
This approach might not be fashionable, but I’m increasingly convinced it’s the approach that most of us need.
We’re subjected to so much ‘noise’ these days that we’re chronically over stimulated - the time we spend practising yoga is an opportunity to retreat from this constant assault on our senses. To embrace quiet, to still the mind and soothe the nervous system.
And if this approach to yoga strikes a chord with you then I very much look forward to exploring the practice together - in whatever shape that may take.
Knowing is Overrated
The above quote is from Dr. Andreo Spina, founder of the Functional Range Conditioning system of mobility training...an incredibly smart approach to working with the body.
I've been exploring his techniques for developing mobility for a while now, and a few weeks ago I took a certification in the system (I'm now an officially designated FRC 'mobility specialist' :))...and this exploration has led me to question many things that I previously thought I 'knew'.
Many of us, myself included, place a lot of store in 'knowing things', in looking for concrete answers and being 'sure' about things. Sometimes we look to science to support this knowledge...without acknowledging that science (like everything else) is also not fixed, but an evolving entity.
And I have to say that yoga's pedagogy can often be particularly guilty of making statements of fact that leave little room for questions, challenge or evolution.
Personally I believe that part of the reason is due to the heritage of the 'guru culture' in yoga - that the teacher's instructions are to be accepted as fact and not questioned.
If you read the hatha yoga scriptures you'll find many descriptions of the benefits of practising poses (including eternal life!) presented as absolute certain fact...many of these assertions (and more recent ones too) have become so ingrained that they are no longer questioned.
For example I often hear it stated with confidence that practising shoulder stand 'is beneficial for thyroid problems' - but there is absolutely NO evidence to support this...the only thing we can be sure about is that practising shoulder stand makes you better at doing shoulder stand (unless you hurt your neck...).
This is just one example but I could list countless others.
If you contrast this with the approach taken by movement scientists and trainers you will find that they often use the 'language of possibility' (e.g. the current evidence suggests that doing x MAY lead to y) - and their assertions are usually supported by considered research rather than seemingly being plucked out of thin air.
So where does this somewhat ironic attachment to accepted wisdom in yoga stem from - is it a lack of empowerment (accepting what we're told because it comes from a 'higher authority'), dogmatism, quality of training, laziness...or because things are being taken out of the context for which they were originally intended?
I don't know, but I do feel that it's very limiting because 'knowing' limits the potential for discovery and asking questions - if everything is fixed then where is the opportunity for uncovering new possibilities? Surely yoga is first and foremost a practice of exploration, of diving into our inner experience and finding our own truth?
It's also very liberating to be open to exploring new possibilities and revising our perspective when we discover approaches that serve us better (as long as we're clear on why we're doing something a particular way, and, to quote Dr.Spina again, we're 'confident in our current interpretation').
This is why you may occasionally notice that I'm teaching something differently to the way I was 6 months ago - because I'm always looking to evolve my teaching in ways that serve my students best
So how about rather than being satisfied with 'knowing' we embrace 'not knowing' instead - always questioning, always exploring, always discovering new possibilities and always seeking to expand our understanding?
Thanks for reading and enjoy your practice.
The Evolution of Practice
'Cat stretch' is a great way to explore spinal flexion
What brings you to practice? What are your motivations and intentions?
When I was younger I played squash to a fairly decent, competitive level...so much of my motivation for moving and exercising was for competition. And up to my mid 20s aesthetics were also a big motivation for me - simply put, I wanted to look better.
When I found yoga, the motivation moved away from aesthetics...I loved exploring the movement and flow of the practice. But without realising it, I'd come to play out a lot of my existing patterns and behaviours through my practice (in yoga these are often referred to as samskaras...all that really means is a conditioned way of doing / seeing / thinking about things).
I'd push myself hard and really test the limits of what my body was capable of...striving to 'get the next pose' which was a big motivation in the system of yoga I was practising. It took me a long time to realise what was going on...that I was striving and pushing so hard because I didn't feel good enough as I was.
In the last few years the focus for my practice has shifted to a more functional approach - trying to get my body to work as well as possible. I still include a lot of challenging, strength building elements in my practice because I believe in the benefits of cultivating strength, proprioception and mobility...but my contortionist days are over. I'm also increasingly exploring other movement disciplines because, well, I love movement and I think it's healthy to mix things up.
But is it 'yoga'? For me the answer is a resounding yes - these days I believe that the form of the practice is much less important the its function. After all it doesn't really matter 'what' we do but how we're use our practice to cultivate greater awareness, presence and compassion.