Square Your Hips in Warrior 2? 🫣🤷🏾‍♂️

I’ll be honest, I thought the cue “square your hips in Warrior 2” was a bit like my taste in music 🎵: dated and controversial. However, as one of my mentoring students recently pointed out, it is still around 😲🤷🏾‍♂️

That universal cue has had a remarkably good run for something biomechanically baflling and doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

My studet was curious though why I thought it had no real anatomical basis, so I stepped in front of the camera with Emma and made a very short reel about it.

First up, when people say “square your hips”, it's not actually the hips. The movement occurs at the hip joints, but it is the pelvis that actually moves. Just to be clear.

Anyway, should the pelvis face (or rotate) outwards? If you look at the image of me above 👆🏽, should my pelvis face Emma and turn completely outwards, or should it roll in slightly? 🧐

The truth is neither. It just sits where it sits. Hear me out...

Biomechanically, many people cannot comfortably get their pelvis completely “square” in Warrior 2. To bore you with some science, most people’s hip sockets do not allow enough outward rotation to achieve that position.

For someone like Emma, it might be relatively natural because of her anatomy, what her body did while she was growing up and for others, a certain degree of hypermobility. An ungraceful carnivorous chimpanzee like me has absolutely no chance 😭🐒

Trying to square every pelvis is really just forcing a square cue into a round hip socket. And the problem with telling everybody to use the same position is contained in the word itself: every body is different.

So, to square or not to square?

Neither.

I have never given that cue to my students, simply because they do not need it. The only people who might need a cue about their pelvis are those who have previously been taught dodgy ones by well-intentioned yoga teachers.

If you teach beginners who know nothing about the pelvis and simply cue the position of their feet, their pelvis will find an appropriate position for their body. There is no need to force it into a predetermined shape.

So, if you are a student, what should you do with your pelvis? Nothing.

And if you are a teacher or teacher trainee, what cue should you give for the hips? Nothing. It really can be that simple. Sadly, teachers with little understanding of how the body actually works have said so much over the years that new yoga teachers feel pressure to keep up and say just as much, but teaching does not need to be that complicated.

Sometimes teachers say more because they know less, whereas knowing more often gives you the confidence to say less.

New teachers feel pressure to fill the silence, but silence is one cue nobody has ever misinterpreted. As the mystics of the East might say, silence speaks its own language 🙏🏽✨

By the way, if you have been sitting on the fence regarding teacher training in OCTOBER, there is no pressure because you know I’m not that guy. However, we have now received a further four applications and have only two spaces remaining, so please get in touch if you are interested. If you have any questions, just message me and we can book a call.

And for those of you still following my snail-like progress 🐌 as I make my way back to physical yoga, I’ll be at Laura’s class again on Thursday 💥. You can't keep a brutha down. I've overcome more struggles in my life than a mini mid-life flexibility crisis 👊. Oh, and when in class, I’m the one whose face appears to be saying, “Why are you looking at me?” Please ignore it. That is just my face .😵‍💫 People say I’m lovely, really, and I believe them.

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Zahir Akram

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