Hi, I'm Dr. Ginger Garner.
I'm back with you again to help you preserve and have happy hips your whole life.
Injury prevention is a big deal for me and it's something that doesn't often get addressed.
I don't often see you and people in general for injury prevention in physical therapy
and I wish I did because I think our healthcare in general would be a lot better if we could
do that.
So in lieu of that, I'd like to show you two poses that are often done incorrectly and
unknowingly in yoga classes and in yoga therapy in general.
I would like to show you how to do those more safely, more effectively for better strength,
better power, which means strength plus endurance in yoga class.
It's the proverbial work smarter, not harder, essentially.
Those two poses that we want to work on are Warrior I and Warrior II.
I'm going to show you what not to do in class first and then I'm going to show you how
to correct it, okay?
Often times in class, you may be asked to come into Warrior I in a variety of ways.
Maybe it's jumping, maybe it's stepping forward.
I would like for you to avoid, particularly if you have hip pelvic or back pain at all,
which includes the sacroiliac joint, I'd like you to avoid stepping forward or jumping into
Warrior I and instead I'd like for you to do it this way.
Is to come into mountain first at the front of your mat, feel what that very tall posture
would be like and I don't want to tell you exactly any hard and fast kind of cookbook
rules on how to stand in mountain because it's different for every hip joint and set
of hip joints.
So I want you to find your mountain that feels comfortable to you.
I'd like for you to transfer down into chair, so katasana, from a tall mountain into chair
and for people that I work with in therapy, I often have them bring their hands here so
they can feel that power breath.
If you need to feel that power breath, watch my power breath video, TATD power breath video,
Google it, it comes up easily.
You can also find it on Dr. Ginger Garner on Facebook or on my website, medicaltherapytogeota.com
or on the yoga mate website under power breath.
Have your hands here, if you need to, hiss down into chair, take a small step back of
Warrior I and this is where the first mistake is usually made.
Warrior I is way back here causing a lot of extension in the back and a lot of maximum
extension in the hip.
If you have a hip pain, a hip lateral injury, impingement, this doesn't, this won't work.
This is when you make your pain worse most likely and we don't want that.
We want happy hips.
This is what I'd like for you to do instead of that long lunge back, is mountain, if you
need to hiss through power breath, feel that neutral spine happening which is not a back
bend and not a rounded spine somewhere in between.
Short lunge back.
Do you see how short my lunge is?
Not very big.
It's big enough to allow my toes to essentially point forward and not have the foot turn out
because that actually puts a lot of torque on the hip and the SI joint.
We're avoiding that for the purposes of hip preservation.
Stay out of a back bend here.
If you have any hip pain, labral tear issues, arthritis type issues, it's often hard to
get full extension in the hip.
That's totally fine.
If I was seeing you as a physiotherapist, a physical therapist, I would work with you
on that to increase that mobility.
But in the meantime, what you can do to protect the hip in class is bend that back knee so
there is little or maybe even no hip extension in your warrior one.
And this is the way your warrior one can look.
Not so concerned what the hands will do, but if you do decide to bring your arms above
your head, there should be no pain.
This is where your warrior one will be.
And there are more details I can share and more things that I would do with you to be
able to get that power and placement of the hip in an optimal position for rehabilitation
if you did have hip pain.
That's your entry and exit into warrior one.
Pose number two.
Warrior two.
This one is even an even bigger offender so far as exacerbating pain, making your hip
pain worse, especially if you have a labral tear or impingement or arthritis or if you
have had a hip replacement.
This is the way I would like for you to do warrior two.
Here we go.
First, what to avoid.
Avoid jumping into warrior two.
Avoid stepping forward into warrior two.
That's a lot of sheer force on the knee joint.
Let's be kind to our joints, but let them last as long as possible, especially if they've
been replaced.
This is the way I'd like for you to do warrior two.
Mountain.
Power breath.
Hiss.
If you need to, through that power breath, slowly lunge back into a warrior two position.
This is where warrior two usually codes a ride.
Warrior two can often look like this.
It seems fine from the outset, but if you have hip pain, it's going to make it likely
worse or increase the risk that it could worsen your hip pain or do more damage.
Everyone has a different shape of the hip socket as well as the femur and the neck of
the femur and the shaft of the femur and the upper thigh bone.
This means warrior two needs to be recalibrated biomechanically.
Instead of just popping down into a typical warrior two with the toe pointing forward
and the back toe pointing in and seeing it, see how the spine just kind of dumps forward.
I call this dumping the pelvis.
We want to do this instead.
Point your toes forward.
Look down.
No hip pain.
If you have hip pain already here, stop.
Don't do warrior two.
This needs to be evaluated by a physical therapist before you go any further.
If you don't have hip pain here, I want you to bend the knees.
Come down to a forward fold, a wide angle forward standing bent.
But we're not going to go all the way down into it, particularly if you don't have enough
mobility in the backside of the body.
And with those of you with hip pain, often the hamstrings are involved, the glute medias
is involved, and we don't want to aggravate any of that.
So we're just going to come to here.
Let's pretend that we're in a wide angle forward standing bent.
Now I want you to turn your front foot out only as far as it can go with no hip pain.
Leave your back foot either straight forward or turn slightly in.
Find a spinal neutral, which means I'm not slouching.
The spinal is neutral where the shoulders are broad and you're not backbending or swaying
or flattening the back.
From this point, you see how my pelvis is neutral, it's in a happy position, stand upright.
Do you notice how my front foot is not all the way out?
That's because I've recalibrated the pose based on what my hip is capable of doing.
Your foot will be in a different position.
But the baseline is, if you have hip pain, a hip replacement, or you know you have some
other hip intraarticular inside the joint issue, please bend both knees, bend both knees and
keep the pelvis upright.
Otherwise, try straightening the back knee, again, if you have hip pain, go back to bent
knee.
You can try straightening the back knee, but don't let the pelvis down, keep it upright.
Now look at your front foot, your knee and your foot should be in the same alignment.
That means I don't want my knee collapsed or my knee moving way backwards past my foot.
Keep the knee right over the foot.
This is my Warrior II for today.
Pain-free.
It's much more difficult to hold this pose than it is just to dump into the traditional,
I won't say traditional, but a typical type of Warrior II.
It takes less power, which means less strength, less endurance, less control, less coordination,
less proprioception, less of all the exceptions to do a Warrior II like you typically see.
It takes a lot more power and control, athleticism and ability and patience to be able to do
it this way.
So as you drop down into your new Warrior II and the knee is over the foot, the foot
does not have to be straight out, it is wherever it is comfortable to allow the spine to have
priority, not the extremities here.
We want stability close in first, that's called proximal stability, so that we can have distal
mobility and happy movement.
If you want to, you can add the arms from here.
I call this an arm spiral.
This is also a free video on medicaltherapytheoga.com with your free registration, you get access
to dozens of videos that I have for free for you.
Arm spiral is one of them, so I won't instruct that now, just go to the video to see that.
And then you drop down into a Warrior II that you have recalibrated, where the spine gets
priority, the extremities are being strengthened, you're working in endurance and you also have
a safe and happy hip.
Thanks for joining me.
I'm going to sweep back up into mountain.
Hopefully these two practices will make your Warrior I and your Warrior II a lot more safe,
a lot more effective, and prevent any injury that you might have, as well as improve athleticism
and your ability to just enjoy life based on having a functional, happy, strong hip.
Thanks.
