Achieving the Backbend Yoga Pose
When I reflect on my relationship with yoga backbends, I must admit for many years I hated them. If I went to a yoga class and it was a backbends class, I would shudder because they were damn sore. However, I have not always had this relationship with backbends and will come back to this.
I think for many yoga students you either love backbends or hate them a little like avos. You either love them or hate them. I cannot believe I am going to admit this, but I am not a lover of avos either.
Yoga Backbends
My relationship with backbends has not always been one of fear and hate. As a child I was the kid who could easily drop back into a backbend, kick over and do other weird and wonderful things with my back. I have tried to understand how I could go from finding this movement so easy to so hard.
How as a child and teen could I have the required range of motion to do a backbend so easily? To now having back bends that looks very much like a long flat U shape as opposed to a perfectly evenly curved U shape.
Of course, I did the research as to why I could no longer backbend. Specifically, why could I no longer achieve that beautiful uniform U shape and why could I no longer do a drop back?
The results were overwhelming, lack of range of motion or flexibility, lack of strength, shape of spinal processes, incorrect breathing, and even incorrect clothes. Yes, some of it was factual and correct and some of it was a lot of nonsense.
Achieving the Backbend Yoga Pose
To do a full wheel, you need to have a good combination of strength and flexibility. Strength, wise you must be able to push up off the floor. This means glutes and arms are working to lift you off the floor and assist with spinal extension once you are up there.
The drop back down also involves a lot of eccentric strength to control it, specifically in your quads and core.
Flexibility wise, you need more than 180 degrees of flexion in your shoulder joint to successfully straighten your arm, otherwise other parts of the body compensate for this lack of ROM.
Interestingly normal range of shoulder flexion is 180 degrees. You also need a decent amount of hip extension, for successful backbends, the average amount of hip extension is 30 degrees.
Our thoraco-lumbar junction needs more than 60 degrees of extension to do this pose and the average is around 60 degrees. If fact, approximately 5% of a group will find backbends easily accessible.
Backbends – The art of personal patience and kindness
When you read this, you might wonder why do we even try do these big poses then? But why not?
Why do we run marathons and ultra-marathons, cold water immersions or hiking at high altitudes?
The crazy things we do and our motivations behind doing them are all different. The aim is not to make you scared of big poses, but to highlight that it can be a hard pose, so personal patience and kindness are key.
What are my personal conclusions?
I am not as supple 30 years later than I was at the age of 16. However, I am stronger than I was then. Is it the same strength though? I know my quads now can no longer control that slow drop back. Oh and 30 years later I am scared, and probably overthink it all. I know I do not have the range for a decent push up into backbend, I think I cannot manage the drop back. Can I regain that kind of strength and range of motion? Probably if I really wanted to, but it is not that important to me anymore.
So, should backbends hurt?
It depends on the kind of pain you are feeling. The easy answer is no, they should not. However, does it sometimes hurt to run, does it sometimes hurt to pick up that heavy grocery bag?
Exertion comes with muscular effort and sometimes that can be tweaky. As a yoga teacher in Cape Town, I am always going to say back away from pain, my aim is to never have anyone get hurt, that is now why we do yoga.
In my own personal practice, I know that sometimes things feel tweaky. Those backbends used to hurt. They hurt my lower back and my wrists.
It took a lot of work for me to make sure they did not hurt. That work was not only on the yoga mat, after 3 babies it involved getting back into the gym and building up overall strength.
It also involved me understanding my back better. I have limited range of motion in my shoulder’s wrists and upper back. The limited range of motion in my upper back and shoulders, loads my wrists and lower back more, which can result in that tweaky feeling.
Do I still hate backbends?
I can honestly say no… But I also do not love them.
Funnily I do love to teach them as I know how hard they can be, and the effort and hard work involved in making them an enjoyable pose.
I can say I now enjoy backbends, and no longer shudder in that backbend class. 5 years ago, I could not do a backbend and lift a leg off the floor, and now I can. I however cannot straighten my arms yet and whilst I have less that 180 degrees of shoulder flexion, I will not be able to, however, this too is improving.
That’s all I really want to see in my practice, progress albeit slow. I have another surprise for you, I can also enjoy avo now to if prepared with coriander and lemon or inside sushi. Definite growth still happening in my 40’s. Imagine what I will achieve in my 50’s!
An important note on pain in all exercise: I am by no means advocating working through pain. If you don’t know what the tweaky feeling is, it is important to work with a physical therapist to understand what you are feeling, especially if it gets worse, affects your day-to-day life, or repeatedly comes up for you.