Day 3 - The Missing Piece
You've stretched. You've rested. You've tried everything. But if you're still dealing with back pain, hip pain, or neck tension — there's a good chance the missing piece has nothing to do with any of that. It's your rotators. These are the muscles that allow your body to twist, turn, and move through space with ease. When they stop working — and for most people they have — the body compensates. The lower back tightens. The neck strains. The hips lock up. Day 3 of the Spring Into Action AYAMA Challenge goes straight to the source We're activating the TVA, the obliques, the multifidus, and the semispinalis — the deep rotators that hold your spine together and keep everything else in balance. Most people never work these muscles. Today you will. This is the missing piece.
Day 1 - You are becoming powerful!
Welcome to Day 1 of the Spring Into Action AYAMA Challenge. Today's practice is called You Are Becoming Powerful — and I mean that literally. We're not stretching. We're not forcing range of motion. We're doing something far more effective: we're waking your muscles up and teaching them to fire on demand. In this session we move through hip flexors, rotators, core activation, and glute engagement — four muscle groups that most people ignore and almost everyone needs. It starts simple. It starts on your back. And by the end, you'll feel something shift. Hit play. Your body is ready!
Tried this today with my chair yoga classes. It even works sitting in a chair. We did it standing but two were complaining about the knee of the standing leg being stressed so we tried it sitting for them. Thanks, TVA is hard to get in chair yoga. I usually do a seated boat with them.
@Teri always experimenting. Well done!
sorry, I missed in person. I am catching up. I love this one. And I can do it standing for the chair class. I always like having a little variety and choices for activating each muscle. It keeps the class from getting too repetitive and it becomes more interesting for everyone.
@Teri Thanks for sharing! Keep an eye on my upcoming videos. I have a lot coming with more variations. It is good to mix it up a little. Having said that, it does take people a while to "master" some of these muscle activations. Think about mixing up your classes/sequences more than the muscle activations and focus on the intention and energtics of the poses. That will enliven them more. 👍🏻
Yes, today's video time stamp around 12:15
Even as early as 11:15. I was just listening to cues in the morning and not watching. I thought I was not to move the knee so I did not externally rotate the thigh at all and just tried to internally rotate the lower leg. On the video it looks like the thigh is externally rotating. Maybe I was supposed to do that.
@Teri by bringing the foot over across the thigh, if you’re on your right side, it’s external rotation of the right hip joints with a femur and 90°. And then in the other hip rotator exercise we did it would be external rotation with the femur at approximately 75 to 80°. Perhaps less with some other people.
It’s not really possible to externally rotate the lower leg. The knee joints doesn’t allow for rotation really.
@Yogi Aaron I understand what you are saying. I thought putting the hand on the knee was to keep the knee in line with the hip so you did not do the external rotation. "We could talk about it tomorrow but I cannot do class live tomorrow or Friday. I have classes to teach. I could pop on at the beginning tomorrow but then I have to leave.
@Teri I understand your thought process. But it is the femur that external rotating at the hip joint.
The activation with the knee bent and the internal rotation of the lower leg and foot, when I did it this morning I got the impression that we were not rotating the upper leg, only the lower. When I watch the video it looks like the upper leg is doing some external rotation. Can you please clarify this,
@Teri are you referring to this video? Or another one? Can you tell me the time stamp you are referring to?