Some people often ask: Teacher, what should I do if I practice yoga and my calf gets thicker? In fact, every time I encounter such a question, I am very confused.
At least I haven’t met anyone who has thickened his calf by practicing yoga.
Of course, three days of fishing and four days of net drying, and the fat-prone physique that can be eaten in particular has fattened the whole body, and the calf has also thickened with it.
Today, let’s talk about the thin leg in yoga practice.
When it comes to a certain part of being thin, you will mention exercising muscles and stretching.
Together, these two will make the target part compact and have lines.
The relatively large muscles on the lower leg that can affect the thickness of the leg are at the back of the leg.
Heel lifting is recognized as the best way to exercise the posterior calf muscles.
The so-called heel-lifting movement, to put it plainly, is to step on the ground, stand on tiptoe and then fall down, and practice repeatedly.
In yoga, the most common basic movement of stepping on the ground and standing on tiptoe is the Skyscraper.
Skyscraper: standing on the mat in Mountain Style, with feet as wide as the pelvis, knees and toes facing straight ahead, thighs tightened and lifted, and tailbone rolled and abdomen closed.
Raise your hands above your head and turn your palms up with your fingers clasped.
When inhaling, lift your heel up, enter the pose, and maintain 3 to 5 groups of breathing in the Skyscraper pose, then drop your heel and return to the Mountain pose for 10 to 15 times.
Although there are not many postures in yoga such as Motiango, you can raise your heel and step on the ground to practice variants of all postures that need leg strength if you want.
In this way, the exercise frequency of calf muscle strength will be greatly increased.
Let’s take a few examples.
1.
The feet of Goddess pose are separated by two and a half shoulders, the soles of the feet are rotated outward to their own range, the spine is extended when the knees and toes inhale in the same direction, the hands are raised above the top of the head to exhale, the knees are bent and the hips are sunk into Goddess pose on the basis of Goddess pose, and the toes are held up for 5 to 8 groups of breathing when inhaled again.
2.
Stand in the phantom chair mountain style, with feet the same width as the pelvis, knees and toes facing straight ahead, lift your hands up over your head to exhale, bend your hips and knees into the phantom chair style, and then inhale again with your toes up, and exhale to keep 3.
The soldier stands at the front end of the mat, with feet the same width as the pelvis, and take a big step back with the left foot, and adjust the pelvis alignment.
Inhale, lift your hands above your head and exhale, bend your right knee and right calf to the vertical pad, enter the soldier first, and hold your right heel up when you inhale again.
There are many examples like this.
As long as the posture requires leg strength, you can strengthen the exercise of the muscles behind the lower leg by tiptoe, that is, heel-lifting exercise.
There are two problems to be explained.
1.
Make sure to use even force when stepping down on the heel.
Some people’s calves are not thick, but their calf muscles are turned out to look thick.
Such a crowd will exert more force on the outside of the sole of the foot when the sole of the foot is forced, which will make the calf belly turn out more prominent, and will not play the effect of thin calf.
The correct method should be to exert force evenly on the whole sole of the foot, step down the ball of the big toe, and pull the calves of both sides towards the middle.
2.
Only when using the strength behind the lower leg can the heel be regarded as a heel lift.
Sometimes we lift our heels not to stimulate the calf muscles more.
For example, raising the heel in the downward dog pose is more due to the lack of flexibility at the back of the body.
After talking about calf muscle exercise, let’s talk about calf stretching.
In yoga, we may pay more attention to the stretch of the thigh, but often ignore the stretch of the calf.
The key point of leg stretching is: the heel is hooked back.
Note that the toe is not hooked back, but the whole foot is hooked back from the ankle joint, and the heel is pushed back to lengthen the back of the leg.
Let’s take an example.
The demigod monkey, look at these two movements in the figure below.
The upper one is the standard demigod monkey style, and the lower one can be seen as a variant of the demigod monkey.
This is not important.
Let’s look at the difference between the straight leg and the foot.
The upper foot is almost perpendicular to the ground, and the whole foot is hooked back from the corner of the foot.
The extension of the foot to the back of the lower leg will be more.
In the next one, only the toes are hooked back, and the ankle is almost in a straight state, so the stretching range of the back of the lower leg will be reduced a lot.
So there are two secrets to practicing yoga thin calf: one is to use posture variants anytime and anywhere to strengthen the calf muscle exercise on tiptoe, and the other is to make the heel hook back to increase the stretch range of the back of the calf when stretching the back of the leg.
If you want to slim your calves, you can’t do without them! As long as the calf is properly practiced, it will not become thicker because of yoga.
Yoga will only make the leg straight, long and beautiful..
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