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laurelbeversdorf

Hey there movers & shakers! Today, let's talk abo

Hey there movers & shakers!

Today, let's talk about the pistol squat - not to be confused with shooting at targets with a pistol.

The pistol squat is a single-leg exercise where you lower yourself all the way down to the ground on one leg, then stand back up.

It's like the squat’s trickster cousin! Or a fancy-pants lunge.

Now, if you're “a pistol is impossible for me“ kind of a thinker, who cares!?

I jest, but not really. Hear me out.

If you prepare for a pistol squat in a smart, progressive way and you practice patience and consistency, whether or not you actually are able to do a pistol squat at the end doesn’t matter because you will have improved your strength, mobility, and balance!

The pistol squat IS a tough exercise, but that’s what makes it the perfect puzzle to take apart and build up to in a program.

It's not a requirement for being a strong, mobile, or badass human being, but it is a fantastic goal to pursue in route to becoming a stronger, more mobile, EVEN MORE badass human being!

My new program Strength for the Pistol Squat starts April 4th! It’s live Tue & The 9-10a CST with recordings added to the library.

This 6 week pistol prep program is suitable to ALL LEVELS.

You can download my Virtual Studio class calendar complete with a props list + peep membership via the link in my bio! 👀
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#pistolsquat #pistolsquats #pistolsquatvariation

When you think end range of motion, do you think l

When you think end range of motion, do you think long muscle lengths or short muscle lengths?

Typically when we think about end range, we think of muscles lengthening. There’s a lot of muscle lengthening in the yoga practice. (We call this stretching.)

But anytime muscles on one side of the joint are lengthening, muscles on the other side are shortening.

Often when we practice yoga, muscles shorten relatively passively.

However when we add bands to the practice, muscles have to work quite a bit harder at their shorter muscle lengths to overcome the bands accommodating resistance. (The band exerts more force the longer you stretch it.)

Since end range of motion involves long muscle lengths on one side of the joint and short muscle lengths on the other side of the joint, when we add bands, we often get to challenge the muscles that shorten moreso than we would without bands.

For this reason, practicing with bands can train our bodies to have more muscular control at these end range positions which can improve our skill, reduce our pain, and enhance our body awareness in these positions. (This is especially helpful for practitioners who have lots of flexibility or are hyper mobile!)

I’m about to announce an opportunity to take 2 FREE Yoga with Resistance Bands classes with me + receive the class recording to download and keep! If you want to make sure you see this offer, get on my mailing list ASAP. Link in bio 👀

When it comes to teaching movement, less is more.

When it comes to teaching movement, less is more.

When it comes to using props, they do a lot more than lift the floor up. They help you say less (while students learn more).

Here the yoga block is “saying” 3 things at once:

1️⃣ its touch brings students’ awareness to areas of their body that are difficult to sense—the rib cage and pelvis. Touch is a powerful way to help students orient in space. It is proprioception-enhancing gold!

2️⃣ It externalizes your cues. You cue students to act on the block in specific ways with their body, (rather than relative to their own body). The block externalizes their rib cage and pelvis for them to more clearly move and position. External cues are a more effective way to facilitate motor learning and enhance student’s ability to interpret what you mean kinesthetically (versus internal cues which internalize students’ attention to focus solely on moving or positioning their body relative to their body.)

3️⃣ It focuses their attention on a task rather than what the pose looks like. They do X,Y,and Z TO the block, rather than X, Y, and Z to look a certain way in the pose. You can couple this exploration with invitational questions like:

💡 What happens when you press the block closer to the ceiling?

💡 What happens when you let it sink to the floor?

💡 Which feels stronger or more buoyant in your body?

💡 What happens to your spine when you tilt the block toward your feet? Toward your back? Play with both.

💡 Where is the middle ground?

CUES become CLUES.

PRACTICE veers away from PERFECT and moves more toward discovery and connection! 💫

Want to unlock the power of props in your teaching and practice?

Join me for a day of workshops in Farragut, Tennessee (near Knoxville): April 22nd, 2023 | IN-PERSON ONLY | $50/workshop, $35/workshop before April 8th, $60/both workshops before April 8th

Link in bio!

Many struggle with the squat. Restriction limits t

Many struggle with the squat. Restriction limits their squat depth, causes their torso to pitch forward, or for them to plop onto their butt. Maybe they round their back a lot.

Often we assume we need to correct these issues by perfecting the bodyweight squat *first* before loading.

Or maybe you’ve heard “don’t add strength to dysfunction.”

This reasoning and adage make an assumption about posture that does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. The argument is circular and goes like this:

Posture predicts functionality. There are functional and non-functional postures to be in. Your posture is suboptimal (according to my opinion) and therefore your posture is dysfunctional.

With circular arguments, your best bet is to ask for more evidence.

Which brings us to the fact that research has failed to show causality between posture and pain, and that there is an optimal posture for pain-free living or a suboptimal posture that is predictive of pain. In some cases it’s actually shown that what is typically held up as suboptimal posture can be better for people in terms of pain.

It seems cookie cutter logic doesn’t work on people, pain, and adaption because we’re more complex than cookies.

Here I’m showing how to use a 10lb weight in an offset way to shift my center of mass (like counterbalance) to make my torso more upright.

I wouldn’t be able to achieve this shape—heralded as more ideal—without the load.

Load changes posture, and in this case, makes the squat *more* accessible.

Posture matters, it’s just not predictive of good or bad things, necessarily.

Let’s shed that savior complex and focus on giving folks more access to movement, not saving them from a painful fate we predict (and in some cases help create through the power of suggestion.)

Do you struggle to squat with an upright spine? Try this counterbalance trick.

Do you feel less restriction despite being under more load?

Let go of perfect ALIGNMENT and focus on optimal L

Let go of perfect ALIGNMENT and focus on optimal LOAD.

A simple, low key mini band can make all the difference in helping students be successful practicing Chaturanga Dandasana.

We can let go of striving for elbows over wrists—a disadvantageous joint angle (would you push your dresser across the room in that alignment?)—and make the posture more accessible with a band.

Here are 3 more ways a band is helpful:

1️⃣ — offload bodyweight for more than just “surviving the pose”. Stay a little longer and FEEL where your body is in space.

2️⃣ — figure out the rate at which you need to extend your shoulders, elbows, AND spine as you press into upward dog. Shoulders and elbows can want to extend a little faster than the T-spine, which can bend the lower back too much—the path of “least resistance” (when it comes to backbending).

The band helps you slow down. It gives you something to move your ribs into. It encourages front body opening and T-spine extension.

3️⃣ — speaking of quickly straightening elbows, for people who hyperextend especially, this is a joint that can lock out fast and then joints around it go on lock down! (Meaning sometimes after we lock out the elbows, not much more movement happens at the shoulders and T-spine in upward dog, namely.) As you press the floor down through your hands, resist your arms OUT into the band to avoid fully straightening your elbows. Notice if this opens up new avenues of movement in your shoulders and upper back, and if your wrists feel better too.

Psssst! Did you know I’m teaching a day of workshops all about how simple props like a mini band and a yoga block can go from things students grudingly use, to their favorite tools for unlocking their potential in poses?

Revitalize your class planning process and go from feeling like a one-trick pony with one solution that doesn’t seem to work—one way of aligning poses, one way of helping students, one way of sequencing—to absolutely brimming with creative, effective ideas.

Your ability to use props to solve your students problems is about to be shot out of a cannon!

Link in bio to about April 22nd day of workshops @realhotyogafarragut. EARLY BIRD ENDS APRIL 15! 👀

Want your wrists to feel better while doing yoga?

Want your wrists to feel better while doing yoga?

Give them a reason to.

Here are a number of ways (3 shown here + 3 more!)

1️⃣ add variety to the way you load your wrists with bodyweight. Don’t keep doing the same dang thing all the time. When you want to make a CHANGE to how things are going (because clearly what you’re doing isn’t working as well as you’d like it to) CHANGE what you are doing. That’s primary.

2️⃣ Bosu Ball blocks are like a tilt board (or stability board). They get muscles on all sides of the wrist involved and make you have to pay attention to your hands and wrists which you can eeeeasily forget about when there are many other muscles speaking to you in a shape like plank or an arm balance.

3️⃣ Orient shoulder challenge around a task (rather than alignment). Here the task is “press your upper back up into the resistance band” which encourages more support from the shoulders (to work against added external load!) and may distribute tension better around the wrists because the shoulders are doing more.

4️⃣ (not shown here!) Increase your maximum strength in shoulder horizontal flexion—think: bench press, freeweight chest presses, push ups, and chest flies.

5️⃣ Increase your maximum strength in WRIST FLEXION so (this ones gonna surprise some people) strengthen your *grip strength with heavy deadlifts, pull ups or pull-up adjacent strength training. Do rows with suspension equipment like TRX or rings and/or freeweights from the bent over position. (Wrist flexors and finger flexors are the muscles of grip and they need to be strong for plank-like positions, too! Ever heard the cue “grip the floor”?)

6️⃣ Do whole body strength training with moderate to heavy loads to prime your nervous system to be able to produce higher levels of maximum force so you are stronger in a push, pull, squat, and hinge because that (believe it or not!) has a ton of transfer to just about ANYTHING YOU WANT TO DO.

Wanna get started with external load right within your yoga practice with the sequencing, postures, language, and community you love?

My Yoga with Resistance Bands training @hopeyoganj 5/6-5/7 is filling up! Link in bio 👀

In this episode, @laurelbeversdorf discusses a top

In this episode, @laurelbeversdorf discusses a topic that is important but poorly understood—training volume.

Too much too soon leads to pain, injury, and burnout.

Too little too late leads to frustrating plateaus and boredom.

It’s important to understand volume, as well as its relationship to load, progressive loading, and changing up our strength training routine with well-timed variety.

(Why is this actually important?)

Because the idea that women should stay as small as possible by sticking to high rep, light weight endurance training (sold to them erroneously as strength training) is a damaging lie that needs to die but many still fearfully adhere to it.

The idea that lifting heavy weights (high load, low reps) is dangerous is untrue, especially considering how protective strength is!

Finally, the idea that “feeling the burn” and an obsessive pursuit of fatigue in exercise is misguided at best (mostly because fatigue is not strength, nor is it a guarantee that you got stronger.)

You can feel fatigued from sitting all day.

There’s nothing wrong with light weight, high load endurance training. It has it’s own benefits. (It’s just not strength training.)

Fatigue is also a normal occurrence during all forms of exercise and is not a bad thing. It’s just not a sign you got stronger (necessarily).

Wanna learn more about load, volume, fatigue, and strength?

Listen to episode 32 of the Movement Logic Podcast.

LOAD VS VOLUME: When is enough enough? When is it too much?

Link in bio 👀

Don’t forget to
S U B S C R I B E 🙋‍♀️
R A T E ⭐️
R E V I E W ✍️
Thank you 🙏

Teachers assume certification is “the fast track

Teachers assume certification is “the fast track” to being ready (or feeling worthy?) to teach.

They drop $$$$ on a weekend, but are simultaneously not learning on a weekly basis.

Learning becomes a high stakes, short-term investment instead of a weekly habit, a way of life.

There’s no fast track to learning to teach and getting good at it.

Regular exposure to great teachers is a faster track.

Various forms of continuing ed help.

Paradoxically, teaching makes you most ready to teach.

Desire to teach makes you quite ready.

Therapy can help you recognize you’re worthy to teach (and always were.)

Start teaching before you feel ready and see if that exposure helps you feel more ready.

(Hot tip: There’s nothing like teaching to show you where you need to learn more.)

Most importantly, learning takes time.

Let it.

Don’t consume certifications as a fast track.

It’s not.

Evaluate the ways capitalism has shaped your idea of how to become a teacher.

My take: certifications are more a product of capitalism than a guarantee you’ll learn to teach.

Quality teaching happens when you have a regular practice and you make honing your craft a deliberate practice.

Teach. Get in front of teachers who inspire you.

Get feedback from mentors, students, peers.

Refine.

Learn new stuff. Integrate. Repeat.

Finally, the word certification is misleading.

Usually nothing gets certified (checked for quality.) So don’t get hung up on “being certified.”

It doesn’t say as much about you as you think.

Your teaching quality says way more. Your ability to actually help people says it all.

If you do complete a certification, look confidently and creatively for all the ways to make your learning *your own*.

Prioritize letting it come from you because that’s where the gold is.

It’s also helpful to remember that no one owns movement. And no one owns movement teaching either.

Oh don’t mind me, I’m just over here investiga

Oh don’t mind me, I’m just over here
investigating creative ways a block can increase or decrease load and range of motion.

I’m playing with how a block can provide touch stimulation and offer new avenues of coordination and connection.

I’m checking to see if a block can spice up “old” poses or movements and make them new again.

I’m testing out the idea that blocks are useful for waaaaaay more than we’ve been using them for.

I like what I’m discovering!

Wanna explore this with me LIVE IN-PERSON!? 🎉

@realhotyogafarragut Knoxville, Tennessee, I’m coming for you April 22nd for a day of workshops—Yoga Block Redemption & Resistance Band Innovations.

Link in bio 👀

What makes a yoga prop a prop? What do we use pro

What makes a yoga prop a prop?

What do we use props for?

Are resistance bands props?

I think we’re evolving the answer to this question.

We used to only use blocks, blankets, and belts.

Then bolsters, chairs, and even dowels became popular.

We used these props for different things.

Mainly blocks were to “raise the floor up” and blankets to cushion the floor.

We “propped” ourselves to reduce range of motion and increase comfort.

In some people’s minds this became synonymous with making the practice “easier” which became a sorting mechanism for the people who CAN (without a prop) and the people who CAN’T (without a prop.)

I think we’re evolving this definition and recognizing that the endless pursuit of range of motion (and self-punishment) in yoga asana is about as healthy as the endless pursuit of profit in capitalism.

We cannot pursue range of motion to the exclusion of strength and expect things to end well, just as we cannot pursue profit to the exclusion of social assistance and environmental protection and expect things to end well.

Props can be used for more than just scaling range of motion, just as money can be used for more than just making more money.

Resistance bands, blocks, blankets, and belts can all provide supplemental loads, they can help to vary the load, they can improve proprioception.

They can become, in students’ minds, less a sorting mechanism for the “cans” and the “cannots” and more a bridge to new capacity, newfound freedom of expression, and novel felt experience which can reduce pain. They can be a tool for learning and change.

Bands are *this kind of prop* with one big additional advantage—they elongate when you pull on them.

They “travel” well.

They accompany dynamic movement like the flow I’m showing here.

I used to think of bands as some separate category, but now I think of them as props.

Tools for self-transformation.

I’m headed to the Knoxville, TN area to @realho

In episode 31 of the Movement Logic Podcast @sarah

In episode 31 of the Movement Logic Podcast @sarahcourtdpt and I discuss three types of cues movement professionals use.

VERBAL, VISUAL, AND TACTILE CUES

We look at the plusses and minuses of all three types.

We also discuss:

🗣️What a verbal, versus a visual, versus tactile cue is.

🗣️A debate in the yoga community about whether or not teaching using verbal cues (only or predominantly) is preferable to demoing while teaching.

🗣️How Sarah and my teaching has changed with respect to cueing.

🗣️Different ways to stage and contextualize a demo.

🗣️Why highlighting the difference between what a movement *looks like* versus what it *feels like* can be helpful.

🗣️Whether to use first person or second person pronouns (or even to talk at all!) while demoing.

🗣️3 main ways you can give tactile cues + tips for teachers when giving tactile cues.

🗣️Why obtaining consent is crucial before touching students.

🗣️The perils of “creepy hands”.

🗣️How trying to teach too many things means not teaching much at all.

🗣️The importance of using multiple types of cues—verbal, visual, and tactile—and aligning them toward a clear movement goal.

LINK IN BIO TO LISTEN! 👂

Don’t forget to S U B S C R I B E 🎙️

#verbalcues #visualcues #tactilecues #cuetips #yogateachertraining #strengthcoaching #shityogateacherssay

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