Featured Sequence: Upper Body Strength

by Baxter

Over the years, a consistent desire expressed by many of my students is to have more upper body strength. I suspect that being confronted with yoga poses in their weekly yoga class that require more strength shines a light on an underlying weakness and fatigue that plagues many students of all ages.

So today’s sequence is designed to get you started on the road to a stronger upper body. As with our previous strengthening sequences, start with static holds to the point where you begin to fatigue or get shaky, and then gradually add more time to your holds until you can work up to 90 second. You can always warm up your muscles, connective tissue, and joints with a dynamic version of a pose, but I won’t describe those here today.

Upper Body Strength Practice

1. Hunting Dog Pose: See Featured Pose: Hunting Dog for basic instructions. Today I’ll add that since you are focusing on upper body strength, be mindful to keep your chest lifting towards your shoulder blades, especially on the side where your hand is on the ground. And strongly reach your lifted arm and shoulder blade forward. After you come out, be sure to shake out the wrist of your supporting arm. 

Hunting Dog Pose

2. High Lunge  (hands on the high side of blocks): From hands and knees position, take your right foot forward between your hands, and use the blocks on their highest height to support your straight arms. Turn the toes of your back foot under, then lift your back knee up and fully straighten your back leg. Position your front knee over your front ankle joint and keep your feet hips-distance apart, side to side. Press down into your front foot and the ball of your back foot, but for this sequence try to use your arms more for support to the point where you imagine you could lift your front foot off the floor (only imagine it!). Start with six breaths and gradually increase to 90 seconds over time. Repeat on the other side.

3. Downward Facing Dog: From hands and knees position, come up into Downward-Facing Dog pose. See Downward-Facing Dog Variations for variations you can use to experience the upper body strengthening of the versatile pose. Try any or all to find the variation that is right for you! I especially like Full Downward-Facing  and Forearm Downward-Facing Dog. 

Forearm Downward-Facing Dog Pose

4. High Plank Pose: Start in Downward-Facing Dog pose, and then shift your shoulders forward until your shoulder joints are directly over your wrist joints. Keep your ribcage lifting up towards your shoulder blades and your elbows strong and straight. The rest of your body should be in a Mountain pose-like shape, so you need to keep your core and legs engaged, while maintaining a natural curve in your lower back. To come out of the pose, swing back to Downward-Facing Dog, then to hands and knees. Afterward, give your wrists a good shake out and brief rest.

To get a whole different experience, and give your wrists a nice break, you can also do Forearm Downward-Facing Dog and swing into Plank pose with your forearms on the floor. 

After all that work with your hands and wrists, you can shift to standing and do some poses that bear less weight on the arms but that still strengthen the upper body!

5. Arms Overhead Pose: In a previous post, we showed you a version of this pose where you bind the hands. For this version, I’d like you to take a block between your hands, with your hands on the small ends of the block. Then, starting in Mountain pose, keeping your legs active swing your arms forward and overhead to the place your shoulders permit. Press your hands into the block, and lift your shoulder blades and arms actively towards the ceiling. You might repeat this twice.

6. Extended Side Angle Pose: From Mountain pose, step your feet wide apart, turn your right foot and leg out 90 degrees and kick out your back heel an inch or so. Bring your arms up parallel with the floor and bend your front knee. Then side-bend your hips and torso over your front leg and put your right hand on a block on its highest height, placed snug up against the outside of your front shin. Swing your top arm up and overhead, completing the side angle from your back leg through your torso and into your top arm. Push down firmly into the block with your bottom hand and feel your right shoulder blade firm into your chest and slightly down toward your waist. Reach your top arm and shoulder blade strongly forward towards your fingers. Inhale as you come up, relax your arms at your side and repeat on the second side.
7. Powerful Pose: We’ve featured this pose in the past, so for the basics, see Featured Pose: Utkatasana. 
For this sequence, as with Arms Overhead pose, place a block between your hands to bring more work to your arms. Make sure to listen to your shoulders if they are tight, and only take your arms up as far as you can safely go. When you come out, rest a moment and then repeat it one more time.

8. Side Plank Pose (Vasthithasana) on the Wall: Although the classic version of this pose (Vasthithasana) is done on the floor, the wall version of the pose is much more accessible because you stand on the floor and bear less weight on your arm. To come into the pose, start with your right side to the wall, and reach your right arm out to your side, parallel with the floor, and place your palm on the wall with your fingers pointing up. Engage your right shoulder blade into your chest wall and down slightly towards your right waist. Then, step both feet out away from the wall, until your right foot is positioned directly under your left shoulder. If your balance is good, try bending your left knee and bringing your left foot into Tree pose. Then take your left arm up and overhead, reaching strongly towards the wall with your left arm and shoulder blade, aligned it like the top arm in Extended Side Angle pose. Repeat on the second side.

9. Upward Plank Pose (Purvottanasana): Although this pose is often discussed as a great way to stretch the front chest muscles, it also strengthens the back of the upper body musculature. 

See Friday Q&A: Upward Plank Pose  for some easier variations. If your wrists are spent, you can get some of the same muscle strengthening by doing a static version of Bridge Pose, where you press the upper arm bones down into the floor actively while lifting your hips and breast bone skyward (see To Peel or Not to Peel).
10. Wrist Care: As I have mentioned before and Nina has discussed in her post on Upward Plank Variations, it is a good idea to do some counterposes for your wrists, and my favorite is the “wrist flossing” shown in this post. You could actually do this more than once during a strong upper body strengthening sequence like this.

IF you still have more in you, you could do Upward Facing Dog with blocks under your hands to give you a bit more lift off the floor, keeping your chest lifting up to your shoulders and your collarbones broad.

As with all practices, I would recommend you finish with a few minutes of mindful breath awareness and then set yourself up in a comfortable Savasana, making sure to support the back of your upper body so your arms, upper back and neck and head are resting comfortably and can release the work of the practice completely. There are many other yoga poses you can eventually add into a home upper body strengthening practice, but this is a good start!

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