Practice Point #66 - Too Flexible

I received a question from Kathrin from Australia. Their question is...

What daily poses/practice would you recommend for someone who is very flexible and needs to work on muscle tone/strength?

Well this is not a problem I have personally experienced, but I have worked with many students who have this problem.

You are correct in your thinking the muscles need to be strengthened and particularly at the joints and attachments.

I have never been to a gym, but I understand that at a gym they do exercises that shorten the muscles which builds bulking muscles, where in yoga we strengthen and lengthen the muscles.

So my guess is you need to do quick, short, repetitive secessions of exercises to build the muscles around the joints.

For example to build the vastus medialis oblique which is the muscle above and on the inside of your knee, I would do Warrior 1 moving in and out of the pose with a focus on pulling up this muscle.

Similarly I would do upward facing dog up and down in quick succession, squeezing the outer shoulder blades in to build the tricep muscle.

My approach would be many repetitions of any pose and quickly so that you are getting the muscles to fire up, then relax and this will help build the muscles.

Lastly, weight-bearing builds muscles strength, so postures like dog pose, plank, vasistasana etc where you are bearing your own weight will also help to build strength.