Little Bridge Slide | Pose of the Week #97

Happy Monday gang!!

For those of you who don't live in Alberta Canada, we are having a very cold snap in the weather!! (going down to -37 degrees celcius tonight!!! Which is -35 fahrenheit!!!)

But Albertans are very hardy, and can keep functioning in spite of the cold - not that we don't LOVE our fireplaces and hot cocoa!!

Here is a practice that will heat and strengthen the body very quickly!!! And it happens to be the last in the series of Pose of the Weeks that were all about these "sliding asana"!!

If you want an "extra warming practice", where the heat comes from within your own body, string them all together and make a sequence!!

In this series I focused on a few important concepts:

1. "Developing Range of Control" - this means you can control your position when you are at the end of your range of motion, and you can maintain strength and alignment even when you have gone as far as you can go in the pose.

2. "Activation at End Range" - this means that, in order to get stronger at our end range, we contract there, instead of "letting go" or "softening". Contracting your muscles at end range will help strengthen the tissues, and make them less prone to injury!

3. "Eccentric Loading" - this means we challenge the muscle (load it) while we lengthen it (like I'm doing in this video as my legs straighten under tension). Nothing passive about that!!!

But, we have good evidence that "eccentric loading" increases range of motion (flexibility) while it builds strength - which is not something passive stretching can say for itself!!

4. "Reducing Muscular Resistance by Contracting the Muscles First"
this is a trick we are playing on the nervous system (kinda)!

After a muscle contraction there is a "refractory phase" when muscle spindles cannot "fire" as strongly.

"Muscle spindle firing" is what we feel as "resistance" in our muscles and why we might say that our muscles feel "tight" - because they don't want to lengthen or relax.

But muscles ARE able to relax after a contraction, or a few contractions!

In fact, its silly to ask a tight muscle to relax! We have to work with the nervous system to help that to happen, and that's what muscle contraction does!!!

I hope you enjoyed playing with these sliding asana and learning some new principles!! And maybe you even underwent some "adaptation" (getting a bit stronger!)

Weave some sliding into your practice whenever you can!!

As always, I invite your questions, comments and reflections!!!

Warmly, Denise xo