I am not sure how or why this division came about, but whether or not to bend the knees during a hamstring stretch is a fiercely contested topic in the yoga community. Perhaps it is because injury at the proximal tendon (yellow part of photo below) is quite common among yoga teachers and students. When I lead biomechanics workshops for yoga teachers, I often ask who in the room has experienced, or knows someone who has experienced, proximal hamstring tendon injuries. The show of hands is staggering.
Your hamstrings aren’t short, they are low in extensibility. There. I said it. What I’d really like to do now is run and hide, since the questions and discussions on social media will likely overwhelm my schedule. I mean, I’ve already led...
The theme song from Frozen may as well be the mantra for many yoga classes – where letting go, surrendering, and opening your (fill in the blank) are seductively crooned by the teacher at the front of the room, perhaps only a little less emphatically...
Headlines are so misleading. All of them. Except this one. Stretching does improve flexibility. Really. It does. The data tell us so. Until the data tell us differently, I feel confident in saying that stretching improves flexibility. In fact, stretching...
