As a culture of chair-sitters, most of us tend to develop a fairly typical pattern of weakness and tightness around the hips and lower back. It happens like this: sitting in a chair with support, or sitting unsupported in a slouched posture both cause the lower back muscles to gradually weaken, and the hamstrings to shorten. (See the muscles above)
Our hips naturally open, and rotate outward while sitting, which over time shortens the external rotators and the lateral hip muscles. It just so happens that these 4 muscle groups have to be functioning very highly in order for us to be able to create the beauty of the Warrior 3 pose.
Fortunately, yoga holds the remedy for this.
Above is a beautiful Warrior 3. The back is flat, the hips are level, and the foot is pointing straight down. Let’s dissect the pose: First, the back. Keeping your back straight in this pose requires very strong back muscles. If back muscles are weak, the chest will dip toward the ground and the low back will round out.
If there is tightness in the hamstrings, you’ll be aware of the tightness in the standing leg (the right leg in this picture). This tightness will limit how high the elevated (left) leg can raise.
Now to the hip: The leg that is off the ground is raised by the gluteus maximus muscle which is almost always strong enough to do this task. The weight-bearing leg is supported by the lateral hip muscles and hip external rotators, and they have to work very hard to keep the pelvis level. When these two groups of muscles are too tight or too weak, we naturally try to compensate. Interestingly, whether the muscles are too tight or too weak, we compensate in the same way – we turn the hips upward toward the elevated leg. This adjustment very effectively slackens the two muscle groups, (hip external rotators and lateral hip muscles) while at the same time, puts us in a position where we’re fairly balanced on the standing leg, and therefore, the muscles don’t have to work as hard. Although we might feel like we are in the right position, we’re not. The dead give-away is uneven hips (the raised-leg side is higher), and the raised foot will point out to the side instead of straight down.
The difficulties you encounter might be a little different than others, so here’s a few suggestions to work on your weak link:
If you think the muscles in your back are weak back, practice a lot of prone backbends such as Salabhasana, or one of it’s variations. Alternately, you can strengthen your back using reverse table pose with knees bent or straightened. To lengthen the hip external rotators try doing pigeon in the usual way, or as a balance pose. Hamstrings can be lengthened by doing Uttanasana, or single or double-leg seated forward bends (Paschimottanasana). But the biggest limiting factor in being solid in Warrior 3 for most folks is weakness and tightness in the lateral hip muscles. Here’s a test to check yourself out. It can also be used as an exercise:
With your legs together, bend over and place the hands on the ground about 18 inches in front of you. Now, bend your left knee so that your knees are still touching, and your left foot is behind you. When you relax your right hip, if the muscles in that hip are loose enough, your left knee will reach toward the floor. You are lengthening the right lateral hip muscles. I bet you can feel that.
As I mentioned, you can use this test as an exercise to warm up your lateral hips in a slow and controlled manner. I frequently do this before progressing to poses like revolved triangle and revolved half-moon. Take your time, and be consistent with your practice, and you’ll see that warrior 3 is becoming much easier.
I started this story 2 months ago in part 1 “You’re pulling my leg”, and continued it in Part 2 “‘Y’ is warrior 3 so dang hard?” I hope you can see now how an injury to the hip or back made this particular pose very hard for my patient. As an update, she’s still working on it with Physical Therapy, Chiropractic, and her yoga practice, and continues to make progress. We all get our chance to practice infinite patience 🙂
Check back in next month for a new story called, “Downward-sliding dog.”
