Why and How to Activate Your Muscles in Yoga Poses

by Nina 

Bicep Muscle

Tricep Muscle

For some time now we’ve been suggesting that you add “isometric muscle contraction” to your poses to enhance both strength building and stretching. I, myself, have been experimenting with it quite a bit in my practice, and have noticed some dramatic results. But since we’ve never really explained much about what we meant by that or how to put it into practice, I’ve decided that today I’m going to go into detail about both the benefits of this technique and the best ways to practice it so you, too, can give it a try. 

Why Do It 

Stretching. When you are stretching a particular muscle, consciously activating the agonist muscle (the opposite muscle to the one you’re stretching) will cause the muscle you are stretching to release (though reciprocal inhibition). For example, if you are stretching the your back thigh muscles (hamstrings), activating your front thigh muscles (quadriceps) will release your back thigh muscles, allowing you to increase the hamstring stretch. 

Bone Strengthening. Although a weight-bearing pose on its own will strengthen bones, if you consciously contract the muscles holding you up by firming them toward the bones, you will enhance the bone strengthening effects of the pose. For example, if you’re standing in Tree pose (Vrksasana), firming your leg muscles will enhance bone building in the standing leg. 

Muscle Strengthening. As you work in strength building poses, you can strengthen more than just the obviously active muscles by consciously contracting other muscles as you work in the pose. For example, as you hold you arms out to the sides in Warrior 2 (Virabradrasana 2), you can activate your triceps as well as your biceps to increase all-around arm strength. 

Joint Safety. For people with joint problems, such as arthritis, consciously firming the muscles that support a joint will help protect the joint from strain or wear and tear. For example, if you have knee arthritis, firming the muscles on all sides of your thighs in Extended Side Angle pose (Utthita Parsvakonasana) will help support your knees. And for people who are overly flexible and can bend easily into deep forward bends and backbends, consciously activating the muscles that are supporting you in the pose will prevent you from hanging from your joints, which can cause injury. For example, instead of passively dropping into pose where you bend backward or forward from the hips, such as Camel pose (Ustrasana) and Standing Forward Bend, (Uttanasana) you can protect your hip joints by activating your upper thigh and lower buttock muscles. 

How to Do It 

To achieve the benefits I’ve described, you should contract your muscles gently rather than strongly. Strongly contracting a muscle shortens the muscle, which seems to prevent you from moving as freely in the pose. On the other hand, gently firming a muscle toward the bone provides muscular support without interfering with movement. If you’re not used to working this way, it may take some practice. Take it in two steps (thank you, Donald!): 

1. Consciously relax the muscle, allowing it to lengthen. 
2. Gently firm the muscle toward the bone. 

Stretching. When you are stretching a particular muscle, bring your awareness to the agonist muscle (it is already contracting), which is the opposite muscle to the one you are stretching. Gently relax and then firm the agonist muscle toward the bone, and feel whether the opposite muscle stretches a bit more. For example, if you are stretching your tricep muscles (underarm muscles) with arms overhead, try gently firming your biceps toward to the bone. (I realize that which muscle is the “opposite” to the one you are stretching is not always obvious but that is an anatomy lesson for another day.)

Another technique I just learned about is that if you are targeting a particular muscle, you can contract the muscle you want to stretch BEFORE you go into the pose. For example, if you want to stretch tight hamstring muscles, you could practice Locust pose (Salabasana) to contract the muscles just before practicing Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana).

Strength Building. If you are practicing a strength-building pose, rather than contracting only the most obviously active muscle, firm all the surrounding muscles around the bone as well. For example, in Downward-Facing Dog pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana), firm all your arm muscles and shoulder muscles toward the bone. When you want to strengthen your hip area, in a standing pose, for example, you can slowly engage the muscles all around your hip joints, ensuring that this action does not pull you out of good alignment. 

Joint Safety. For joint safety, you want to emphasize strength and stability rather than promoting more flexibility. So practice as you would for increasing bone or muscle strength by firming the muscles that support your joints. For example, to protect your front knee in Warrior 2 pose, you might shorten the distance between your feet so you are not bending your front knee through such a deep range of motion, and then, when your knee is positioned over your ankle joint, focus on firming the muscles on all sides of the knee joint toward the bone. 

If you decide to experiment with any of these techniques, either in your home practice or in a class you're teaching, please let me know how it goes!

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Strength Building: How Long to Hold Poses

by Baxter

Joy Sassoon, Age 60, Photographed by Tanya Constantine

In past posts, I have tried to give you some guidelines on how to use yoga poses to increase or maintain the strength of your both your bones and muscles (see Yoga for Strength: An Overview). Today based on some new information I have learned, I’d like to revisit my guidelines for how long to hold your poses because I’m going to make some different recommendations. 

Building Stronger Bones 

For building stronger bones, I initially used information from Loren Fishman’s book Yoga for Osteoporosis, in which he cited an animal study that showed placing strain on a bone starts to stimulate new bone to be laid down as early as 8 seconds. But in his recently completed 10-year study that utilized 12 poses done over 12 minutes, Dr. Fishman had the participants hold the poses for 30 seconds each (nine of the poses were asymmetric and therefore would take 1 minute total to complete) with positive results. So for strengthening bones, I'm now going to suggest that you hold your postures for 30 seconds, if possible. Could you hold them for less than 30 seconds, especially if you are weak or fatigued? Sure, but we don’t have evidence at this time that those timings would be as effective for bone building. 

Building Stronger Muscles

In my post Yoga for Strength: An Overview, I recommended that holding your poses statically for 90 seconds would build muscle effectively. Unfortunately, I cannot locate the research I used to make that statement. But in going back to look at this more closely for our upcoming book, I discovered some important facts I’d like to share with you today that flip my earlier recommendations almost upside down. 

There are two commonly used techniques to build muscle mass and strength, both in sports training and rehabilitation from injury. The first technique uses motion against resistance, called resistance training, as in curling a 10lb. weight up and down with your arm smoothly at the gym to build up your bicep. This utilizes what is known as “isotonic” muscle contraction (with the muscle contracting and visibly shortening during the curl) against some sort of resistance (the hand weight) to build muscle. And because you lower the weight down slowly, your bicep muscle also is contracting as it is grossly lengthening, which is called “eccentric” contraction. For this action to be effective, you have to do multiple repetitions. In our yoga practice, dynamic sequences or mini vinyasas could count as resistance training, especially if you do them more slowly. Since we are using our own body weight as the resistance, it may not work as quickly to build muscle as weight training, but it will still build strength. See below for more recommendations about how to use this technique in your asana practice. 

The second technique is isometric holds, usually accomplished by pushing or pulling on an immovable object, which maximally contracts the muscles involved without changing the gross length of the muscle (in other words, triggering an isometric contraction of those muscles). You can trigger the same response—although maybe not as maximally—by pretending to push or pull against an imaginary surface/object in yoga poses. For example, as you come into the full Warrior 2 pose (Virabradrasana 2) and hold it for a while, the leg muscles that keep you in position, such as the quadriceps, and the muscles that keep the arms out to your sides, such as the middle deltoids, are all working isometrically. You can enhance the number of muscles contracting isometrically by consciously firming all the muscles around a particular bone or joint towards the bone, sometimes called “hugging the bone”. In the world of sports training, these holds are usually for 8-10 seconds and done in a set of 6-12 reps, sometimes for more than one set. If we applied this to our yoga practice, you could do six rounds of a mini vinyasa, staying in the full pose for 3-4 breaths (around 10 seconds), while hugging the muscles to your bones in all the major areas that you want to strengthen. You could even do a second set.

If you want to practice mini vinyasas for strength, which of these two techniques should you choose? Both ways can build strength, although the second technique might arguably do it faster. But if you are new to the practice, out of shape and weak, or simply wish to gently warm up your muscles, you might wish to start with the first technique. I, myself, prefer the first technique when I plan on practicing a static hold of the pose afterward.  

Now, what about longer isometric holds? Certain modern yoga systems encourage longer holds for poses that are strengthening, such as Warrior 3 (Virabradrasana 3). The Iyengar yoga system is a prime example of this approach. Isometric training is said to have the advantage of not putting as much stress on joints as other muscle building methods, which could be particularly useful in rehabbing an injury. Another strength building concept could apply here: the idea of taking the muscles to a point of fatigue, possibly indicated by muscle shakiness, as a way of stimulating the muscle to grow. But whether that is definitely applicable here is unclear. One study I reviewed did compare shorter 3 second isometric holds to longer 30 second holds, and found that the longer holds led to greater strength in the muscles tested. But another study showed no difference in strength gains in a group over 55 between short and longer holds, yet both groups did get stronger. And, for even longer holds, it may be that you will be increasing muscle endurance, rather than muscles strength, which is a different quality and characteristic of muscles.

The only warning about longer isometric holds is that they can cause an increase in blood pressure during the hold, so those with untreated hypertension should probably avoid this method until their blood pressure is under control. 

Here are my new recommendations for building bone and muscle strength: 

1. For building bone strength, hold poses for 30 seconds or more, if possible. 
2. For building muscles using isotonic and eccentric contraction with a mini vinyasa, do the vinyasa slowly for six repetitions, possibly for two sets of six. As you increase in strength, you can add more reps per set. 
3. For building muscles isometrically with a mini vinyasa, hold the full pose for 8-10 seconds (3-4 breaths) for six repetitions, possibly for two sets of six. For example, if you were doing the Warrior 2 mini vinyasa, you would inhale from the starting position into the full pose, hold full Warrior 2 for four breaths, and then exhale back into the starting position. 
4. For building muscle strength and endurance in static poses, hold a full pose isometrically until your targeted muscles become shaky and feel fatigued, and then exit the pose. The length of time you hold the pose could be short if you are weak, out of shape, or recovering from injury, or much longer if you are healthy and relatively strong to start. You can gradually build up your length of time in the pose as your strength increases. 

In general, do your strength practices every other day to allow a day off for muscles to rest and repair, which is part of the muscle building process. (On alternate days, focus more on gentler practices, such as stretching or restorative practices, or work on pranayama and meditation.) 

Ram’s post Yoga Asanas: Resistance Training or Endurance Training? from few years back addresses some of these concepts in slightly different ways, and is worth a read if you have not seen it before. And thanks to our contributing writer Shelly Prosko for some additional information that helped clarify things for me! See these links:

The role of metabolites in strength training. II. Short versus long isometric contractions

Effects of isometric strength training on quadriceps muscle properties in over 55 year olds

Isometric Exercises & Static Strength Training

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