Dumping Into The Joints On the Yoga Mat

Have you ever caught yourself locking out your knees in straight-leg standing postures, hyperextending your elbows in Downward Dog, or crunching into your lower back or SI joint in backbends?

What do all these examples have in common?
They often stem from underusing the muscles responsible for supporting joint stability. Sometimes it’s linked to hypermobility. Other times, it’s simply a reluctance to engage muscles — whether due to tiredness, a desire to relax, or chasing the sensation of stretch.

But here’s the issue: bringing passive stretching (as used in Yin and Restorative Yoga) into an active, Yang practice like Vinyasa or Hatha can cause problems for your joints.

In Yin Yoga, passive stretching involves relaxing the muscles and allowing the body to release through the myofascia. This places more stress on the ligaments — the structures that connect bone to bone and stabilize joints. Yin practitioners believe that a little stress on ligaments is beneficial, much like stress on bones can strengthen them. However, this principle applies within the careful context of the Yin practice: using props, respecting the body’s natural limits, and avoiding compression at end range. Yin Yoga’s intention is not necessarily to increase flexibility, but to balance the body’s energetic pathways and myofascial lines, often aligned with TCM meridian theory.

However — and it’s an important however — this passive approach doesn’t translate well to the Vinyasa or Hatha mat. In alignment-based Yang practices, we aim to increase flexibility through active stretching. This means engaging certain muscles while stretching their opposing muscle groups, creating both strength and release. This dual action supports the skeletal system and prevents joint compression or impingement.

Let’s revisit those three examples I mentioned earlier:

Let’s take a look at the 3 examples I referred to above.

1. Locking out the knees. Hyperextension in the knees is very common. Whether or not, this is does to ligament laxity in the knee joint, the action of “hugging the back of the calf forward onto the shin bone” will help re-create stability in the joints. Students may also want to co-contract the quadriceps and hamstrings with the posterior calf muscles, specifically the latter, because on the hyperextended leg, muscles generally tend to be weak and the hamstring long. The hugging of the back of the calf forward onto the shin bone activates the tibialis posterior muscle which is a deep slow twitch antigravity muscle that sometimes gets bogged down holding the body up against the force of gravity all day long. An excellent way of encouraging this muscle out of its locked long state in straight leg standing poses in bending the knee, hugging the back of the calf forward onto the shin bone and then slowly straightening the knee once again, without locking, keeping the contraction in the calf muscles.
2. Locking out the elbows in similar to correct. Often hyperextension of the elbows is accompanied by week bicep muscles. By bending the elbows, the biceps begin to engage. Then keeping the contraction in the elbow, the students should start to straighten the elbows once again without locking into the joints and relaxing the biceps once again.
   
3. Crunching into the lower back and S1 joint in backbends is another common dumping action that can occur on the yoga mat. This is caused by arching the spine into the desired shape of the pose without engaging the spinal extensors and side body muscles, thereby creating jam in the lumbar, which can in turn contribute to premature degeneration of the discs. The spinal extensors are commonly called the erector spinae muscles and are synergised or assisted by other muscles of the back like the trapezius, latissimus dorsi and quadratus lumborum muscles. The side body muscles are also very important synergists of the erector spinae in backbends. They are activated by the cue side body long, or what I like to call the lateral hug, which cues students to adduct the outer shins, inner thighs, outer hips, side waist and side ribcage muscles towards the midline. The lateral hug creates connection with the core musculature and also creates extension through the spinal column. When these muscles are employed in backbends in conjunction with correct placement of the body, the joints are protected against dumping and there should be no pain, allowing the yogi to deepen their flexibility safely and with integrity.