Smarter Fitness—A Farewell to Yoga

I might ruffle some feathers here. But please don’t take this as a personal affront against your yoga. This has been building for me for some time and I thought that before I talk about my current fitness endeavors this week, it would make sense to first talk about what I’m not doing.

I was an avid student of yoga for ten years, entering into it via the philosophical and Eastern religion aspects. I was not unaware of the physical benefits, but I always thought it rather silly that anyone would undertake it without understanding the larger philosophical foundations. I once took a friend to a yoga class and she called it “stretching.” Any hardcore yogis out there will understand how that description comes across as insanely limited, bordering on insulting.

But to let you know how much of an apostate I’m being here, I got serious about it back in 2004, even considering a teacher certification. I found many capable teachers during my years of practice, but finally found one that resonated with me deep down when we moved to our current location. She and I developed a friendship and I continue to learn from her wise and challenging teachings. I continued my mat practice with her during my pregnancy through private lessons. I’m absolutely certain that my yoga involvement helped me give birth to my daughter drug-free and peacefully.

But let me back up a bit. In October of 2005, I was stretching before a run, bent over in a wide-legged forward bend, and I started to rock back and forth with my hips to loosen them up. Before I knew what had happened, my right hip popped out of socket and back in. This is not a normal occurrence for a perfectly healthy 28 year old. I didn’t even have time to react before tears welled up in my eyes, my body knowing that something really funky had just happened. There was no pain—yet—so I went on my run. The next day, my overstretched hamstring was incredibly painful and had a burning sensation that would be with me for the next two years.

It wasn’t until this past year that I finally put 2 + 2 together. Why? Because we’ve been sold on flexibility as a fitness marker for far too long.

Maybe I’m more sensitive to everyone’s New Year’s resolutions this year, or maybe social media just makes them more prevalent, but everyone is trying to get more yoga in their lives. I’m not necessarily against it, but I’m here to tell you that there are some serious potential problems with it. Don’t believe me? Check out this page on the New York Times about yoga injuries. I’m now struck through with fear when I hear someone bemoan the fact that they’re not flexible enough: “I wish I could bend like that!” I remember failing that portion of the Presidential Fitness Test in 6th grade because you had to stretch 6 inches past the end of your toes in a sitting-V position. Resisting this tide is difficult because it’s the dominant paradigm, but that’s nothing any of us Paleos aren’t already used to, is it?

Eureka!

My lightbulb moment came when I was reading Frank Forencich‘s book Exuberant Animal, specifically the chapter called “Joint Efforts.” I’ll excerpt some of it here since he’s smarter than me. Sorry for the info dump, but stay with me here, because it’s all important:

• “The performance and perceived length of a particular muscle is a product of muscle tissue and the nervous system control circuits that regulate contractions. A muscle without nervous system wiring is just dumb, contractile tissue…Normal muscle tissue that’s coupled with a hyperactive control system may feel tight even though the muscle itself is of normal length. The problem is not that the muscle is short; the problem is that the nervous system is driving it too hard. In cases like this, stretching may not be the solution at all.”
• “Joints are not simply places where two bones come together; when we start looking closely, we find some incredibly sophisticated structure…skeletal joints are wrapped with layers of connective tissue and bathed with nourishing synovial fluid…If we look closely, we find that skeletal joints have a surprising amount of neurological wiring…Why would they have so much neurological circuitry? Clearly, a lot of this capability exists to help us coordinate movement, but much of it has a protective function as well…to maintain skeletal integrity—in other words, to prevent dislocation.”
• “For all vertebrates, skeletal integrity is an urgent priority. If a joint dislocates, movement is seriously compromised. If you live in a wild environment, this can be catastrophic.”
• “Given the importance of skeletal integration, it seems likely that joints would have some neurological ‘knowledge’ of the condition of their associated muscles…if muscle tone is low, the joint is likely to compensate by tightening things up…A tired muscle is simply less capable of maintaining joint integrity than a well-rested muscle.”
• “[L]et’s say we’re diligent about stretching a particular muscle that spans a particular joint. Over the course of a few weeks, we lengthen the muscle and connective tissue around the joint, thus allowing a few degrees of movement. But are we any better off? The joint is looser now, but unless we have done some strengthening work, our ability to control the movement has not increased. In fact, the joint may be more vulnerable to injury than it was before the stretching program.”
• “[W]e can make a good case for strength training as an effective means of promoting flexibility. This may seem counter-intuitive, but when we think about the needs of skeletal joints, it becomes obvious that joints love strong, fast muscles. If the surrounding muscles are strong and fast, the joint can relax. It no longer needs to send urgent signals to the spinal cord; since the muscles are capable of of powerful contractions, joint integrity is assured and all is well.”

Hmm. Yes. So you feel “tight” which is really just your joint’s way of protecting its integrity when your muscles are tired or weak. Then you respond by stretching, which counteracts that protection. Then you pop out a hip. I see.

From this perspective, the aggressive stretching of yoga is potentially disastrous, especially as we age and the integrity of those joints can make the difference between independence into old age or a decade spent stuck in a wheelchair.

Now, don’t let me throw out the baby with the bathwater. There are many, many other fantastic benefits to yoga. The mind-body connection is hard to beat, and I have yet to find a proper replacement, though when done masterfully, MovNat should come close. In many disciplines, such as Ashtanga and Vinyasa, there is great movement and strength building. All yoga practices concentrate on good form and posture, helping to stack the body in ways that will serve you through other activities. And there’s always the amazing feeling of showing up to a class, getting to check your brain at the door, and carving out some time for yourself away from the concerns of your day.

But in every class I’ve ever taken, the emphasis on stretching is dominant. Instructors walk around the room, “adjusting” people deeper into poses. If someone can’t get their heels down on the mat during Downward-Facing Dog pose, they feel like a failure. People considered “good” at yoga are the ones who can pretzel-twist their way into all the crazy configurations invented by out-of-their-minds yogis who had renounced the world to meditate in the woods. That’s right. Yoga was invented to counteract the ills of SITTING ALL DAY.

I’ve participated in some esoteric practices that have proven to me partly why yoga values deep stretching. In a nutshell, it helps to activate our fight-or-flight system when part of an aggressive, deep, and fearless practice. I say “fearless” because you have to override your body’s intuitive protection response—the very thing Forencich spoke about up there—to “access” the energetic response we all hear about, that mystic-y stuff that sounds way out there. And let me tell you, only experience can properly capture it and, yes, it is out there.

I would argue that if you’re interested in the benefits but wary of the damage, you can cobble together a few things and reap most of the same awesomeness. Cultivate a meditation practice and after a sitting session, counteract it with a walk and some nice yoga poses that won’t scare the daylights out of your joints like Cat/Cow, Malasana (aka Garland Pose, simply a deep squat), rock back and forth between Child’s Pose and Cobra. If you’re into the out-there stuff in yoga, look into the various pranayama exercises. Those alone can help access some of that fight-or-flight response.

If you just can’t quit the yoga, promise yourself you won’t push it. Especially if you do hot/Bikram yoga, or if your instructor likes to keep the room warm, back off. Warm/hot conditions will artificially allow you to go deeper than you should, and injury is bound to follow. (Besides, has anyone ever qualified exactly what “toxins” are being purged by sweating? I’ve never heard the specifics, so I’ve always considered it hogwash—akin to “cleansing” a colon with juice.) You can facilitate the backing off by explaining to your teacher before class that you won’t be going as deep as usual. You have my permission to fib and say you have an injury, if you must. But if you have nagging aches and pains from yoga, I urge you to reconsider your devotion to the practice.

And whatever you do, whether you stick with it or not, begin the brain deprogramming necessary to stop seeing flexibility as a benefit. Stretching does not, as we’ve been told for decades, prevent injury (for more, click here and go to #5), and it may, in fact, weaken your athletic output.

Stretching isn’t always a horrible thing. We’ve all seen animals stretch after napping, and we feel the urge to do it too after periods of inactivity like sleeping or working at our desks. Perfectly natural, feel free to give into that. In fact, I’m finding that I still have to pay some attention to stretching my calves, especially with the new regimen I’ve been doing (will talk more about that later this week). If you have a trouble spot too, research some new ways to get in there and explore some dynamic stretching that combines movement. Or check out foam rolling, which according to initial research, looks like it might actually be useful.

But that ritualized, aggressive, static stretching? That’ll do you in. Don’t do it. Your body needs its framework strong and properly articulated for everything in life, now and in the years to come.