Nip it in the Butt
After years of practicing yoga have you finally achieved a Yoga Butt?
Unfortunately (or fortunately?) Yoga Butt does not refer to a Kim Kardashian-esque physique, but rather pain or a dull ache around your sitting bone region that gets worse when sitting or forward folding…And it gets worse over time.
Yoga Butt is a colloquial term referring to proximal hamstring pain or tenderness. The technical term for this is Proximal Hamstring Tendinopathy.
It is a common complaint in yogis, dancers, runners and quite frankly can be a pain in the butt! (1)
Hamstrings consist of three muscles on the back of the thigh - semimembranosus, semitendinosus and biceps femoris. These muscles are responsible for hip extension and knee flexion - they are the ones that LOVE to cramp when you do an active dancer's pose or bridge slide out.
They are also the muscles that we spend a lot of time stretching in Yoga. Sun salutes, forward folds, down dog, triangle pose, pyramid pose, splits etc are all about lengthening these muscles… and therein lies the issue.
When we have been practicing yoga for a while, these muscles are no longer adapting to increasing loads. The load has stayed the same and we are repetitively doing the same actions over and over. (1)
The Flexibility Farce
As a society we are somewhat obsessed with stretching the hamstrings, as if this is the golden ticket to health and longevity (2). I see a number of people who are convinced that their hamstrings are tight, but upon testing they are absolutely fine for the demands of daily life. In fact, people who run or play sports that require jumping need a degree of stiffness in the hamstrings to allow for propulsion.
Type II hamstring strains or tendinopathies are common when there is repeated overstretching, chronic overuse coupled with hamstring weakness and decreased lumbo-pelvic stability.
When tendons are underloaded (i.e not enough strength work) they lose their spring and ability to bear load. Insufficient rest periods can also lead to matrix degradation further adding to the perfect storm for a tendinopathy to develop.(1)
Load Is The Love Language Of Cells ❤️
Your cells love load, they are biologically active and loading communicates to them what they need to do or become. Particularly if there has been an inflammatory response in the area which is why the current paradigm is to get people moving as soon as possible after knee or hip surgery.(3)
Tendons also love slow, heavy loads. This is something that we do not tend to do a lot of in Yoga, dancing or running.
Progressive loading helps our bones become stronger and our muscles and connective tissue adapt to the demands placed upon them. Davis’ law states that stressing connective tissue improves its ability to tolerate loads. Wolffs’ law states the same but in relation to bone.
The use it or lose it principle
If we do not continue to add load, the rate at which we break down bone and muscle exceeds the rate at which we are building it up, leading to conditions like osteopenia and sarcopenia or in the case of tendons, tendinopathies.
Variable loading also helps the tendons tolerate unpredictable loads, stimulates tissue adaptation and reduces repetitive stress on the tendon.
If we look at our yoga practice in the traditional forms there is very little variability of load. The ‘alignment’ of the pose has a specific form. This does not allow us to create an adaptable body or nervous system to the variations that occur in day to day life. Think of how uneven the ground can be for instance.
Butt wait…I don’t have pain?
That's great! Even if you do not have tendinopathy you will still benefit from adding some variable and progressive loading to the hamstrings to prevent Yoga Butt from ever occurring in the first place.
If you notice your hamstrings cramp in class doing knee flexion at short range - then your hamstrings could use some strength work.
Cramp is neurological confusion and is basically a sign that your brain and muscles are not used to doing that action and are not strong in that range.
Try out this class which is designed to address the issues of lumbo-pelvic instability, and hamstring and glute weakness. (4) See this as your jumping off point. Once you have mastered these exercises it's time to add more load.
You can do this by adding more reps to these exercises or adding external load like a weight.
Remember your cells LOVE load and tendons love slow heavy load. Building strength is how we adapt, meet the demands of daily life, stay mobile and out of pain as we age.
Check out some of the other classes in my library that also help you add variable load to the hamstrings:
Or book a one to one with me so I can assist you in creating a plan to build strength, gain mobility, decrease stress or anxiety and much more.