Affekonig

The goal of the pose is to close your hip joint with straight legs, forehead on shins is just a side effect. The point of bent knees is to learn to fold forward in the hip joint instead of bending the waist. You bend the knees until you're able to actually close your hip joint then work on using the leg muscles to drive the hips up while maintaining the fold by keeping the core engaged. In this way you fold at the hips and work on releasing the hamstrings to achieve the final goal of being able to have a closed hip with straight legs. If you think of the "goal" as forehead on shins, you end up cranking your back around and "reaching" with the upper body. You *can* work the fold properly with straight legs, but it takes some direct coaching and teaching and adjustment etc for the student to learn the difference between folding at the hips and flexing the spine. Plus discipline to actually do it. Iyengar in my experience is customarily taught in a much more hands-on way with more direct instruction and adjustment. In a large follow-the-leader type format it's much easier to just teach it the other way and people who are starting out don't need to necessarily understand as well.

It does seem hard to believe that a guy your size could eat 1155 calories, be reasonably active, and not be ravenously hungry, yes (Who knows, every body is different...) Did you use an actual scale when estimating on MFP? Careful not to enter Oz of something as grams? Check the actual entries? MFP is crowd sourced, it does occasionally have bad numbers for things. I looked at my summary a few weeks ago and was baffled how my protein was so low until I realized the entry I'd been using for roast beef was calories-only and didn't add any protein! As far as progressing, tweaking your programming doesn't mean abandoning your goals willy-nilly. "3 sets of 10 pushups" is a SMART goal. "3 sets of 10 pushups reached by doing 3 sets to failure 3x/week" not so much if you don't already know that's a training stimulus your body responds to. A common recommendation to break through a rep plateau is "greasing the groove." Instead of doing 3 big pushups-to-failure workouts a week, do like 5 pushups constantly throughout the day every day. Out of bed, 5, out of shower, 5 home from work, dinner ready, etc etc. The jump in total volume usually leads to gains in max rep #s when you go back to the conventional sets after a few weeks.

Work on grounding the base of your index finger into the mat. Spread your fingers wide and make sure the outside edge of the hand is grounded. Pressure "should" be evenly distributed across the whole hand, not focused on the base of the palm. (I quote should because in reality this takes tremendous amounts of practice, but do work on pushing the index mound into the ground.) Rotating the hands in a bit (so index fingers are pointed in a bit instead of straight forward) can help with this. Voodoo Floss wrists and forearms. DownDog, Work on opening up your shoulders and getting a better overhead position. When you can get deeper into the shoulders your hand will straighten out more and the load more evenly instead of crimping at the wrist. (Check out mobility WOD for overhead position exercises.) Don't be too proud to bend your knees enough to get the weight back and evenly distributed onto your feet if it's too far forward. UpDog, again, push like hell the index mound into the ground, don't dump into the base of the palm. If it hurts, lay off it. IMO, this is actually a really advanced asana that people start doing in a junky manner long before they are ready because it's part of sun salutation. Cobra, should be a strength exercise for the muscles around the spine to lift you up. Not a backbend "pushed" with the arms. Try doing it on fingertips, no more "help" from the arms than you are able to generate force on fingertips! Get checked by a professional to make sure you don't have actual damage/RSI in there that requires special rehab exercises.

You really need to shop around and find some instructors whose style lines up with your goals. One Man's "Vinyasa Power Hour" is somebody else's "Moderate Hatha Flow".

I will buck the trend. I hurt my back badly 4 years ago. Pilates fixed it. None of this flopping around on the living room floor in front of a DVD with pink dumbbells stuff. That will likely as not make it worse, especially with asymmetric thing where you can't even tell on your own how badly out of whack you are. The real exercise programs developed by Joseph and Clara Pilates and their students, taught by serious career instructors who have the proper certifications that take years to earn, not some 'two weekend intensive' personal trainer cert. Using the correct equipment which most certainly does provide progressively increasing resistance and/or decreasing assistance as needed.

That would be an awfully nice problem to have... Thanks for the informative article. Here I was just planning to keep doing couch-stretch until I can hit full ROM in a shrimp!

One of the Coach Carl tricks (Gymnastics WOD) is to grip with your 1st pinky knuckle way up on top of the bar. This does a lot to force your shoulders into the correct rotation. That goes a long way toward preventing the 'down and back' queue from turning into the 'out of place scapulae and hyperextended t-spine' queue that it sometimes does. (It's also way harder and hurts like hell in the forearm at first if you're used to more of a finger grip, but it's still good to learn what better shoulder position feels like.)

Curious what struck you as unorthodox? I am certainly no DPT, but coming from a fair bit of practice and reading in the work of Joseph Pilates and his students it seemed pretty standard to me. (Reading the two articles you linked and a few others.) One thing is a lot of this is about working with people who, for example, are completely incapable of putting their arms over their head at all. Not people who 'get a little tweaky putting up the 100kg barbell if they don't warm up enough.' So it is certainly very different from content on fitness sites targeted at people who are already working out and experiencing some discomfort! But I think most of it still boils down to the much easier to remember Kelly Starrett joint axiom: work upstream and downstream. It's just how do you do that in cases of extreme disfunction.

The 'Tavern' thread in the current challenge is usually more active than this area of the forum. http://rebellion.nerdfitness.com/index.php?/forum/343-druids/

Whaaaaaat, over already? Where did this time go . B for this one:( Two weeks in there that I didn't get in 7 practices. I can blame work, but that's still just blame! Going to dock a point off STR based on my own perception of how I've been improving. +1 STR, +2STA +2 DEX Wow, rocked this one pretty easily. I was expecting it to be harder, but I'm confident I was dilligent about measuring and came in well under every week. +1 CON +2 CHA I let this one trail off in the second half of the challenge C, +1 WIS

Oh there is nothing I detest more than standing splits My left knee got a little bit inflamed last week so I've been taking it easy, just did some restorative stuff yesterday and basically nothing today

Whoops, forgot to post a week three wrap-up! Still going strong, doubled up some classes last week so I still got in well over 7 hours, if not technically 60 minutes each day :/ This week is looking to be the same. In the office every single day for something or other, so I've missed all my regular lunch time workouts. Was feeling really sick to my stomach tuesday and ate hardly anything, so I was able to have a totally awesome chilli cheese and bacon dog today and still be tracking well under food target for the week. That was a nice treat.

Yay skiing! It's been to *warm* here (all the trails have gone to ice.)

Mmmm, Indian Buffet for a good friend's birthday tonight. so...much...food. Gonna have to be extra good the next few days to stay on goal this week.

awww, envy ways to go for festival season here. have fun!

Ahoy, fearless leader came back! Happy Friday.

Two weeks down! 740 under weekly food goal, pretty happy with that. It's not super accurate since I had two big meals on Wed and Fri that were guesstimated, so I am glad all the other days are on the low side...! Gotten all of my practices in so far. Next week is gonna be rough, have to go into the office every day but Friday. A test of commitment! Been going to bed at 12:59 mostly, so I don't know if I have embraced the *spirit* of the going to bed goal, but I've stuck with it anyway.

I've just come too terms with keeping dark chocolate around and eating more than I probably should It is better than the alternative of going without a treat at all for too long until melting down and eating an entire cheesecake... not... that... I would know anything about that...

The 'heat wave' is apparently universal. It's supposed to be 8 here tomorrow, (normal is -20). Gonna walk around in shorts in January!

Thank you for the encouragement. The challenge rules said it was supposed to be an epic life quest, so I tried to pick something that seemed epic at the time! I've got quite a long way to go on a few of them yet. Went to a Robbie Burns supper today... crazy scottish people. Ate nothing but a cup of cottage cheese all day so that I could sneak in two helpings of Haggis and stay under target

Wednesday already where you are? pesky round planet. Hoping for you that getting some blood moving will be what you need to feel better!

Ouch, two full classes today. I may have let my ego win and cranked myself into some somewhat unnecessary positions that my knees are going to let me know about tomorrow. Oh well Lots of guys around right after new years brings out the competitive streak.

Welcome! Wish I had gotten my act together 18 months into marriage, took me more like 6 years and a back injury Any luck finding a studio to practice at?

Sounds like a week to envy if the worst thing to report is Dorito Dreams (that needs to become a thing) Keep on blessing yourself with good decisions.

Glad to hear you're moving again! I am always pleasantly surprised how the right amount of exercise, without over doing it, can be such a boost to recovery.