The ultimate runners flow

SYMBIOSIS
There are more similarities to the benefits of yoga and running than you might expect. They both cultivate a meditative mindset to help you unwind and relieve symptoms of stress, tension and anxiety. Both practices are a constant journey with no finishing line, pardon the pun! In running they say you are racing with people not against them and in a yoga class you have a shared group energy. The breath is one of the most important components of both. In yoga we link the breath with movement to stimulate the rest and restore response, and in running the breath can be the differentiating factor between running the distance and running out of puff. From a physical point of view both strengthen your bones, increase lung capacity and strengthen the immune system.

They are the perfect partnership for balance and wellness. Running challenges your cardiovascular fitness and yoga helps you stay injury free and improves your strength, stability, flexibility and endurance. The movement skills in yoga loosens tight spots, stabilises weak spots, increases range of motion and improves your running posture. It gives you the opportunity to connect to your body and help you move with a fluid, reactive running cadence. It also cultivates a focused and calm mindset on and off the mat, and helps prepare you for long endurance runs.

WHAT A RUNNER NEEDS
Runners need strong, stable, flexible and responsive muscles. The feet in particular need to be strong enough to weather the repeated pounding and the changing terrain for off road running. Stability of the ankle and knee will help you go the distance injury free, and as with everything in life, prevention is better than cure. Strong, stable and flexible hip flexors, quads, calves and hamstrings are important for building performance levels, and a strong and supple core will protect the back as the body twists from side to side to project the legs forward with each stride.

EXPLORING RUNNERS FLOW IN YOUR PRACTICE
Contrary to popular belief yoga is not just about stretching, it is about equal amounts of stretching and strengthening for a balanced body. This sequence is not your traditional ‘yoga for runners’ sequence. It offers different ways of looking at runners needs beyond a hamstring stretch. With lots of ways to find strong, flexible and stable muscles and the supporting muscles around each joint. Pay particular attention to your transitions from pose to pose. They are often a missed opportunity and are just as important as the poses themselves. They are sometimes a safer way to stretch a tight muscle rather than in a static stretch and will also give you the opportunity to work on your mobility and stability of the joints too.

ALIGNMENT CUES
There is no single peak pose in this sequence. Each pose is there for a specific reason related to a runners needs. The single leg standing poses will build stability in your feet, ankle and knee joint; the standing poses will build strength, stability and flexibility in the hip flexors, quads, calves and hamstrings; the reclined core work and leg lifts will work build a strong and supple core; and the steaded poses will stretch out any build up of tension in the hips, inner groins. You’ll notice there is no mention of intense hamstring stretches. For most runners hamstring stretches are a frustrating endeavour that needs to be approached from a different angle. Pulling at tight muscles is the fastest way to cause injury to the connective tissues. As you move through the sequence the hamstring will gradually begin to lengthen in a more dynamic way than labouring through a sequence filled with static forward folds. Here are some tips to help you navigate your way through the sequence:

• Move slowly through your warm up poses in row one. Circle each joint, remember to go both directions and notice any areas that feel tighter.

• In Adho Mukha Svanasana/Downward Dog pause for a few breaths on each side with one knee deeply bent and the other leg straight as you press the heel down towards the ground. Feel the stretch through the back of the whole leg.

• Flow through you toe taps and leg lifts mini flow in row two as slow as possible and notice the ankle of the standing leg working hard to find your balance.

• In Ashta Chandrasana/Eight Crescent Moon press out through your left heel, lift your thigh up and firm your back leg. Squeeze the glute of your left leg to strengthen the hamstring and open the left hip flexor. Hug your outer hips strongly to the midline for balance.

• Use a brick to raise the ground up for Ardha Chandrasana/Half Moon and Ardha Chandrasana Chapasana/Half Moon Sugarcane centre of row three.

• Step back from Garudasana/Eagle to Ashta Chandrasana/Crescent Moon, take a breath and step forward to Tadasana/Mountain.

• Spend at least 5-10 minutes in Savasana/Corpse Pose after you have finished the final pose which is a restorative spinal twist.

To save the images for personal use click and hold down the image until the ‘save image’ option appears; on Mac hold down ‘control’ and click the image to get the option box; on PC right click on the image to get the option box. Scroll down in the ‘option box’ and click ‘save image’.

Ruth Delahunty Yogaru

Strong legs

SLOW MO
Stability is considered to come from the core, but the legs are also working very hard to stabilise your movement while standing, walking and running. Conscious movement through transitions give the opportunity to add depth to our yoga practice. When we move slowly from pose to pose we recruit all the strong stabilising muscles of the body. Take the simple step forward from Ashta Chandrasana/Eight Crescent Moon to Tadasana/Mountain at the top of the mat – you can use momentum to lift and swing your leg forward, this is a cardiovascular output, or you can press strongly into your front leg, lift the back leg up and gradually draw it forward to the top of the mat as slow as you possibly can – this is a strong muscular output.

CULTIVATING STRONG LEGS
When it comes to strong legs in your practice look to build from the ground up. Press into the three points of contact with the ground – the big toe mound, the little toe mound and the centre of the back of your heel. Feel the arches of your feet lift, and the energy travel up your legs, as the muscles react to this simple action of grounding down. When the legs are strong, supportive and reactive in our everyday movement, the upper body becomes more fluid and holds less tension.

EXPLORING STRONG LEGS IN YOUR PRACTICE
As you move through this sequence concentrate your attention on the quality of your movement from pose to pose. Feel for the stabilising muscles around your joints and how the body is constantly correcting it’s balance with proprioception. See can you isolate the sensations in the muscles of the legs as you move slowly through the ‘step back’ flow. Take your time and don’t rush. You might even find that you don’t get through the full range of standing mini slow flows in one practice. If so, come back to it at your next practice, start with the warm up section and explore the next mini slow flow.

ALIGNMENT CUES
You will flow through the peak pose of Ashta Chandrasana/Eight Crescent Moon several times as you work through this sequence. This pose is a opportunity to strengthen and stretch all the muscles on of the legs in the alternate sides. In the front leg the hamstrings and glutes are being stretched, and the quads and hip flexors are being strengthened; while the hamstrings and glutes are being strengthened, and the quads and hip flexors and being stretched in the back leg. The alignment cues below will guide you through your optimal alignment for Ashta Chandrasana/Eight Crescent Moon and how to approach the first mini slow flow.

• From Adho Mukha Svanasana/Downward Dog, inhale, step your right foot between your hands, exhale here.

• Inhale, press into your feet to come up, place your hands on your pointy hip bones and lift them up to stack the pelvis.

• Press out through your left heel, lift your thigh up and firm your back leg. Squeeze the glute of your left leg to strengthen the hamstring and open the left hip flexor. Hug your outer hips strongly to the midline for balance.

• Reach your arms up high, shoulder width apart or palms together. Stack your front knee over your front ankle. Press strongly into your right foot and feel the quad working hard to keep you balanced.

• Draw your navel towards your spine, broaden through your collarbones, lengthen through your spine to the tip of your crown, gaze forward or to your fingertips.

• Exhale, lean your weight forward over your front foot. Inhale, slowly lift your left leg and draw it forward to Urdhva Hastasana/Upward Salute with a lifted leg. Pause.

• Bend your front knee and on an exhale slow as you can step back to Ashta Chandrasana/Eight Crescent Moon. Repeat three times.

To save the images for personal use click and hold down the image until the ‘save image’ option appears; on Mac hold down ‘control’ and click the image to get the option box; on PC right click on the image to get the option box. Scroll down in the ‘option box’ and click ‘save image’.

Ruth Delahunty Yogaru

Strong glutes

TIGHT & WEAK
Recently in my practice I’ve become more conscious of building a sustainable practice with longevity that will see me practicing well into my 90s’! After twenty years of a regular practice I’m starting to notice an element of overstretch in the back of my hamstrings and glutes. A phenomenon called ‘yoga butt’, which is very common in yogis with a long standing practice, where the tendons become inflamed from regular stretching and you develop tendinopathy. It doesn’t necessarily correlate with flexible muscles. Forward bends remain as the poses I find most challenging. We associate tight with strong but muscles are more often tight and weak. We are very sedentary in our day to day lives, we sit for long periods of time. This causes the muscles to become weak and tight from lack of blood flow and lack of movement. Stretching strongly into tight, weak muscles increases the chances of injuries to the connective tissue and the tendons. An athlete, or someone who has a specific regular sport discipline, may find they have certain areas that become tight and strong over time. For these people plenty of stretching in their practice will balance them out. But for the majority of us we need equal amounts of stretching and strengthening in our yoga practice.

FINDING EQUAL STRETCHING AND STRENGTHENING
The misconception about yoga is that it is all about stretching. Yes there is plenty of opportunities to stretch, but there is equal opportunities to strengthen too. To remedy my ‘yoga butt’ and make my practice more viable for the future I am consciously looking for the strength in each pose and adding poses to strengthen certain areas where I know I need more stabilisation and strength. Finding the strengthening muscles isn’t as hard as you’d imagine. To every muscle that is stretching there is a muscle that is strengthening. Think of a forward bend – the back body is in extension and stretching, while at the same time the front body is flexing and strengthening.

EXPLORING YOUR STRONG GLUTES IN YOUR PRACTICE
The glutes comprise of three muscles – gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. Glute max extends the leg back, externally rotates the leg and abducts it out to the side. Tight gluteus max limits forward bends. Glute medius and minimus are quite similar in function – they abduct the leg out to the side, internally rotate the leg and stabilise the pelvis. They are the muscles we switch on when we ‘hug to the midline’. Tight medius and minimus leads to instability in standing poses.

ALIGNMENT CUES
This sequence will give you plenty of poses which to feel the glutes working and to help you sense their position and their function in the body. The peak pose is a version of Ardha Chandra Chapasana/Half Moon Sugarcane where you will be coming into the balancing pose with the top leg bent and reaching back, and instead of holding onto the foot you will reach for the foot but not hold it. This will allow the strength of the muscles to carry the weight of the lifted leg. Particularly the glute max of the lifted leg and the glute medius and minimus of the standing leg as they work to keep you stable in this balancing pose.

• From Ardha Chandrasana, bend your left knee, reach your left hand back toward your left foot without holding onto the foot.

• Flex your foot and reach your left knee up and back, squeeze into the back of the knee.

• Hug your right hip in to the midline and press down through the three point of your right foot.

• Draw your navel to your spine and lift your pelvic floor.

• Broaden through the collarbones. Arch through your whole spine, lengthen your neck and softly reach your head back, gaze down or up.

To save the images for personal use click and hold down the image until the ‘save image’ option appears; on Mac hold down ‘control’ and click the image to get the option box; on PC right click on the image to get the option box. Scroll down in the ‘option box’ and click ‘save image’.

Ruth Delahunty Yogaru