1. Start with squatting.
Sadie Chanlett-Avery, a wellness consultant and founder of Sassafras Revival, a yoga instruction and corporate wellness practice based in Asheville, North Carolina, says that the first order of business when launching a new, strength-building yoga routine is addressing underlying problems.
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“If you’re in pain, you’ll have a really hard time strengthening,” Chanlett-Avery says. “So, we unravel aches and pains in the neck, shoulders, wrists and back and remove layers of conditioning that maybe have helped us sit effectively at a desk for long periods of time, but are not actually conducive to strength training.”
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While she says that “yoga is great for making us more flexible, we can also use it to create a really strong platform to build strength upon.” This is why she likes to start with something as simple as squatting to rebuild a movement everyone should be able to do, but a lot of folks can’t.
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While squatting isn’t necessarily thought of as a yoga pose, “getting the squat pattern down is a fundamental human movement pattern that most Westerners do not have in their everyday movement diet. So, setting that up and getting people’s hips, knees and backs happy to squat is a whole project in and of itself,” she says.
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Once a sound squat movement pattern is established, you can add weight or increase frequency to build more strength without pain.