Rethinking Stretching: How Muscle Activation Can Alleviate Pain with Yogi Aaron

What challenges have you faced with muscle tightness and pain, and are you ready to learn simple hacks and exercises to improve your overall performance and well-being? 

Join us on our latest episode of me&my health up where Anthony Hartcher and Yogi Aaron reveal groundbreaking insights on why stretching might not be the solution you think it is. Discover the power of muscle activation techniques to alleviate pain, prevent injuries, and boost your overall performance. 

Key Topics: 

•  The negative impact of stretching on flexibility and pain management 
• Yogi Aaron's insights on how stretching may cause more pain 
• Anthony Hartcher's 30-year yoga journey and back injury recovery 
• Importance of strength and mobility in yoga 
• Understanding muscle tightness and activation for physical therapy 
• Techniques for addressing tight hip flexors and hamstrings 
• Proper stretching techniques to avoid injury 
• Dynamic movement exercises for muscle activation and pain relief 
• Tips for activating glutes, hip flexors, and lower traps 

About Yogi Aaron:
Yogi Aaron, a master yoga teacher and muscle specialist, has pioneered the revolutionary Applied Yoga Anatomy + Muscle Activation™ (AYAMA) method, which focuses on activating muscles instead of stretching them to eliminate pain, reduce injury risk, and improve strength, stability, and alignment. Challenging conventional stretching practices, Yogi Aaron's approach promotes a pain-free life through muscle activation. He teaches at Blue Osa Yoga Retreat in Costa Rica and offers an online AYAMA™ Certification Program, making his method accessible globally. Known for his humor and personal healing journey, Yogi Aaron is a beloved figure in the yoga community. He addresses topics like the dangers of stretching and the benefits of muscle activation through various platforms:

- Website: www.yogiaaron.com
- Email: DareToLivePainFree@gmail.com
- Facebook: /Yogi.Aaron.yoga
- Instagram: @Yogi_Aaron
- YouTube: /YogiAaron
- Podcast: "Stop-Stretching"

Tune in and transform your approach to health and wellness with practical tips and expert advice. Don't miss out – your journey to a pain-free life starts here!


About me&my health up & Anthony Hartcher

me&my health up seeks to enhance and enlighten the well-being of others. Host Anthony Hartcher is the CEO of me&my wellness which provides holistic health solutions using food as medicine, combined with a holistic, balanced, lifestyle approach. Anthony holds three bachelor's degrees in Complementary Medicine; Nutrition and Dietetic Medicine; and Chemical Engineering. 

Podcast Disclaimer
Any information, advice, opinions or statements within it do not constitute medical, health care or other professional advice, and are provided for general information purposes only. All care is taken in the preparation of the information in this Podcast. [Connected Wellness Pty Ltd] operating under the brand of “me&my health up”..click here for more

Chapters

• 0:06 Stretching's potential negative impact on flexibility and pain management.
• 7:44 Lower back pain, stretching, and muscle activation.
• 12:03 Muscle tightness and activation for physical therapy.
• 19:46 Muscle tightness, its causes, and exercises to alleviate it.
• 23:45 Muscle activation techniques for relaxation and exercise.
• 30:23 Proper muscle activation techniques to avoid injury.
• 34:52 Muscle activation techniques for shoulder and hip health.
• 42:19 Muscle activation techniques for pain relief.
• 44:39 Connecting With Yogi Aaron

Transcript

Anthony Hartcher: 0:06

Is stretching causing more pain and less flexibility? This is the question we're going to answer in this insightful episode of me&my health up. I'm your host, Anthony Hartcher, a clinical nutritionist and lifestyle medicine specialist. The purpose of this podcast is to enhance and enlighten your wellbeing. And today on the show, I've got Yogi Aaron and we're discussing how stretching is potentially creating you more flexibility issues or less flexible and potentially more pain. So who is Yogi Aaron?Yogi Aaron is an experienced yoga instructor and he's been delving into the science of muscle activation. He is the creator of the revolutionary approach to yoga, which is applied yoga, anatomy, and muscle activation. He is the host of a yoga podcast, Stop Stretching. He is the author and of an Autobiography of the Naked Yogi and his newly released book of Stop Stretching, Eliminate Pain, Transform Your Life, Fulfill Your Purpose. And he's also the co-owner of the Blue Osa Yoga Retreat in Costa Rica. Wouldn't we all love to go there and visit Yogi Aaron? So without much further ado, I'd love to welcome you into the discussion I'm having with Yogi Aaron. Welcome on the me&my health up podcast. How are you, Yogi Aaron?

Yogi Aaron: 1:48

I am great. Thank you so much for having me here, Anthony.

Anthony Hartcher: 1:52

It's a pleasure. And thank you so much for accepting the invitation and joining me. I'm very intrigued about the topic we're going to be discussing today, and that is stretching is killing us. I've certainly had a very athletic sporting career myself and I've been a strong advocate for stretching throughout my sporting career and I've heard various things about stretching throughout my history of being an exerciser and a sport fanatic. So really intrigued about this topic. But before we get into the topic, I'd really love the listeners to hear a bit about your backstory, how you've arrived at what you're doing today.

Yogi Aaron: 2:33

So I, well, thanks for having me. And I love talking to people with, shall we say some knowledge, because then it adds a little bit more spice to the conversation. So feel free to challenge me, poke me, whatever you want to do. I'm ready for it. So I've been into yoga since I was about 18. So that was more than 30 years ago. And shortly after that, I got into teaching yoga. It wasn't a really a straight line to be a career path. There's many other careers-ish that came before that. But when I got into yoga, I was also, like you, a very athletic person. I still, to some degree, am. But back then, I was, you know, raised in Canada. So we did dog sledding, snowshoeing, hiking through the rocky mountains, canoeing through the northern waterways of Canada, doing, like, three-week canoe trips. So I was a very outdoors, active kind of person. And right around after school finished and I had sort of started to wind down a little bit, I noticed that my body was tightening up. And what I kind of thought to myself was, well, if you want to stay young and healthy, then you probably should stretch. And by the way, just as a side note, because I've done a lot of surveys around this, when you ask people why you should stretch and they usually will give you an answer like, oh, we need, you know, to be healthier or to stay young. So there's a kind of like two reasons. And at 18, I was already starting to intuit this. And I don't think it was the flexibility that I was looking for. It was really the strength and mobility, but I didn't really know how to get there. So, well, I sort of did, you know, people go to the gym to get strong and then go to yoga to stretch, to stay limber, if you want to use that word. So I got into that. And shortly after I got into yoga, what ended up happening was, one day I was doing something. It wasn't in yoga. It was in my life. But I was doing something and I hurt my back. My back's seized up on me. And it actually affected me for, you know, that time you have to remember I was 18 years old. So it didn't affect me as long, but it still affected me for a good solid week. And that was my introduction into back's seizing up. And this is a story that would continue to follow me. So guess what my solution was to my back pain and my back seizing up? I got to stretch more. And every time I went in to see a yoga teacher or any kind of person, a movement specialist, they always said the same story. You need to stretch. Oh, your hamstrings are tightening up. Your tight hamstrings. And I did, by the way, have very tight hamstrings. Your tight hamstrings are pulling on your back muscles. And so the solution is you're nodding your head because I'm assuming you've heard these stories before. And, um or I need to open my hips. This is another thing you hear, especially with men, but really anybody like, oh, there's like, you know, take the open hip challenge. And if you can't do this, then you need to stretch. And so I did it all. And for the following 25 years, I dive deep into stretching and all kinds of programs. What I can tell you honestly is, yeah, there was some days I felt great, especially in my more younger years. But as I got more and more into yoga, I developed serious chronic pain issues. And when I say chronic pain, I'm not talking like, oh, I've got a little headache or an ache in my shoulder. I'm talking, like, feeling like a knife was digging into my scapula. And so that journey, you know, I always kind of brushed it off as well, like, oh, I got karma to deal with. And, you know, this is just my karmic path. And, you know, God is giving me this pain so I can be a better teacher to myself. I mean, all the stories that I kind of told myself, and everything kind of culminated when I was 45. I ended up in the emergency room of a hospital with an orthopaedic surgeon saying to me that I probably would need a spinal fusion in my lower back. And that was sort of my lightbulb moment when I realised, or not realised, I asked the question, what don't I know? There's got to be an answer or a reason why I've kept hurting myself, why I keep getting weaker, why this pain in my lower back is just getting worse when I think I'm doing everything I should be doing. So that kind of led me into muscle activation. And that's where I'll stop with the story. Because I'm sure you'll have some questions.

Anthony Hartcher: 7:44

Well, I could certainly relate to what you're sharing, Aaron, around that, that lower back seizing up and, you know, it being somewhat associated with tight hamstrings. It's very much my story. In essence, it didn't happen as early. It happened a bit later on. And I was seeing a chiropractor and thinking, I really want this lower back issue to go away. It's quite debilitating. I feel like an old man, but at the time, I was probably in my 30s. And I'm thinking, no, this is not right. Like, you know, I'm struggling, like I get out of bed and I'm a hunchback, right? So I'm sort of trying to get around the house and I've got this lower back issue. And so I kept seeing the chiro and I wasn't really progressing. But I was seeing the chiro weekly and I was thinking, there's something more to this. I don't seem to be making the progress I want to make. And then I ran into an osteopath and the osteopath assessed me and they said, look, you've got lower back issues. You've got really tight glutes and tight hamstrings and that posterior posterior chain. Posterior chain. Yeah, posterior chain. So I very much had that. And he said, look, I want you to do these exercises. I want you to roll out. And I presume this doesn't fall under the definition of stretching. I'm not sure but I was. So I had a ball. I was rolling out my glutes. I was doing various stretching exercises, definitely stretching. And and what I found over time, I had a significant improvement in my lower back. So this is why I'm really intrigued about the work that you do and what you're teaching around muscle activation because I want to get a clearer idea of what it actually is and how it works.

Yogi Aaron: 9:33

So before we continue, I have a question for you. As soon as you said that you had stretched a lot I wanted to kind of ask you a question, but I thought I would just wait. Now's the perfect time. So you did this rolling to, you know, deal with the back pain, to deal with a tight hamstring. So are you still dealing with tight hamstrings? Are you still dealing with tight glutes?

Anthony Hartcher: 9:57

That's a really good question because then I went, I did a period of yoga, like, you know, regular yoga, probably four or five times a week yoga. And then I got a frozen shoulder or, you know, shoulder issue that I went into um I found myself doing martial arts after that. So I, yeah, so the martial arts has really helped. And this is where I'm intrigued about what you do, because it's more that mobility sort of tight, releasing, and I'm finding that really helping my mobility. Yeah, so.

Yogi Aaron: 10:41

So in the martial arts, there's a lot of lot of dynamic mobility drills that you guys do. And so my last question, and then I'll answer yours. But my last question is, are you still rolling on these balls? Correct, I am. You are still rolling? Yes. So before I get into my whole spiel, I'm going to just say something. So I once asked my teacher, and this is going back several years ago, when I got into muscle activation, which I'll talk about. But I asked my teacher, what do you think about people rolling on balls? And, you know, for like, or like foam rollers for IT bands, you see this a lot, like, we've got to beat the hell out of our IT bands to make them relax. And I'll tell you why the IT bands are tight, by the way, he said to me, and I'll never forget it. Well, people that are rolling on foam rollers or balls, they're probably still rolling on foam rollers and balls. So ask your question again. I'm sorry, I forgot what it was, because I wanted to ask that about it. So I could circle back to it later. But ask me your question, Anthony.

Anthony Hartcher: 11:51

Absolutely. So I'm still rolling. And so I'm really intrigued. So the, the question is really understanding what is muscle activation and how it works?

Yogi Aaron: 12:03

So I think before we answer that, we have to understand why muscles are tight in the first place. I got into yoga because of my tight hamstrings, right? And so there's a few things to unpack here. The first thing is, why are muscles tight? The simple answer, kind of like, you know, the Reader's Digest answer is it's a protective mechanism with the body. So you know, like, if you, you're in Australia, so I don't know how much ice you get in the wintertime, but here in Canada or North America, we get ice sometimes. And so, you know, when you step on ice, what is your body do? It freezes up, it seizes up, it tightens up. And so the body contracting and tightening up is a biomechanical response when we go into a protective state. So the correct thing that we should be asking is, why are the hamstrings tightening up? And what we have become obsessed with in our culture is this idea of trying to stretch out a muscle that is in a protective state. Like you told me you were dealing with frozen shoulder. And I know that a lot of the protocols with frozen shoulder syndrome is we need to keep stretching it out. We need to keep moving. And with most people that are dealing with frozen shoulders, it takes them a good solid year and a half, if not longer to heal from that. And I've got a reason why for that. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is, you know, what do we need to do about those tight muscles? We need to start asking the question, why are those muscles tight? And so from any kind of perspective, I just want to say that I think the wrong thing to do is to violate our body's own, you know, protective mechanisms. And so if the body is like tightening up, I think the wrong thing to do is to try and force the body to open. And I'm speaking from lived my own lived experience. But it also kind of makes sense because the hamstrings are tightening up. And so one of the things that we've often forgot about in the general conversation is a couple of facts. The fact one, what do muscles do? Muscle they kind of distill it down into two things, muscles move bones and muscles stabilise joints. Okay, that's fact one. And if we can't agree on that, then there's no conversation, by the way. Fact two is that in order for muscle, for the muscles to move bones and stabilise joints, they have to contract. Another word we can use is shorten. So they have to shorten in order for them to do their job properly. From a muscle activation perspective, we say that muscles should be able to contract and contract on demand, meaning that if you're like, you know, lifting a weight above your head, you're placing a load on the shoulder joint, all those muscles should immediately start working. Not like they're thinking about working, but all the muscles that are doing the movement in that shoulder. So the reason why I'm saying that, by the way, is because frozen shoulder syndrome, and I know that it's a little bit more complicated than that. But at the end of the day, what's happened is that the shoulder joint got stressed. Why did it get stressed? Because the muscles in that joint weren't working properly and able to contract and contract on demand. So there's more and more and more stress. And then finally the shoulder says, screw you, and it locks up. And I know it's a little bit more nuanced than that, but that's kind of it in a nutshell. So we want to be able to get all the muscles working. And the third thing that we want to think about is that muscles work in pairs. And so this is another thing in the kind of conversation that we just negate in the conversation. We just. I just watched this whole like expert, like, major expert give the science for stretching. Barely once did he ever mention the fact that muscles work in pairs. And the reason why a muscle tightens up is because the opposite muscle is not shortening properly. So in my case with the hamstrings, my hamstrings were tightening up because my quads and my hip flexors weren't working properly. Keep in mind that the body is always trying to, let me rephrase that, the central nervous system is always trying to keep equilibrium, is always trying to maintain stability. Ergo, why if you slip on ice, you just tighten up. So if it senses instability, it's going to tell muscles just to tighten up. And because for me, my back muscles weren't working properly, my trunk flexors, my core muscles weren't working properly, and my hip flexors and quads weren't working properly. And when I say working properly, they weren't able to contract and contract on demand as I was going through, you know, my sports. And so what I needed to do was start activating my quads and my hip flexors. Not once in that 25 years leading up to the hospital did I ever have one, you know, movement specialist come up to me and say, Aaron, the reason why your hamstrings are tight is because your hip flexors are not working properly. So for muscle activation, we come in and how it works is we go, okay, well, if we're doing like the hip flexors, what is the number one hip flexor? Psoas major. And so we're looking to find ways that we can isometrically engage the psoas, for example, and do that for a short amount of time over a certain amount of reps. And what this is doing is it's starting to reboot, if you want to, if you want to use that word, like reboot this connection between the muscle and the central nervous system. So it's really this kind of connection. I call it the neuromuscular connection. It's got nothing to do with if the muscle is strong in and of itself. It's about how strong is that neuromuscular connection so that the nervous system can talk to the muscles. You know, another thing I just want to say before you ask your next question, going back to hamstrings, you know, a really great kind of exercise to do, if you will, if you've got really tight hamstrings, just lie on your back and do leg raises, just lift one at a time, lift one leg 30 degrees, no more than that, just 30 degrees and place your hand on that thigh of that leg that's lifting. And just see if you can kind of engage it just a little bit more like, you know, if you're going to flex your bicep and just hold it there for six seconds, lower it back down and then do that six times. That's just the general rule of muscle activation, six seconds, six times, just lift it to 30 degrees, hold it there and lower it back down. You're going to notice instantaneously the tightness in your hamstring either dramatically reduced or it will just go away. And you can do a test beforehand, you know, you can bring the leg up as high as you can, you know, maybe you only get to 70 or 80 degrees, and then you do this little muscle activation, all of a sudden, the legs going like much further. So that's a little bit about muscle activation.

Anthony Hartcher: 19:45

Wow, that's really intriguing, actually, because you've shared a lot about muscle tightening and why the body, you know, has tight muscles or is expressing tight muscles. And I can see how stress has a lot, you know, modern day stress has a lot to do with why we are so tight, right? Yeah, as you said, it's a protective mechanism. Just like when we're out in cold elements, you know, our body contracts to protect itself and preserve heat. And I'm just thinking, well, yeah, we're also chronically stressed, because of the modern lifestyle, we're always doing, doing, doing and chasing more and pursuing more. And I can see how that would also implicate muscle tightness. And then the other layer I see on top of this, which certainly had an effect on me, which probably has a lot of effect on school children, adults is because we're so sedentary and we're seating seated a lot of the time, like we are now that you mentioned the hip flexor, right? And you said, you know, that just wasn't activating and switching on. And I'm thinking, well, because we're permanently in that seated position, I'm sure that's having somewhat an impact, you want to just talk to, you know, the listeners about sitting for prolonged periods of time, and what sort of impact that's having on the body and some good exercises, if you are stuck in a sedentary job to do, I don't know, you, you tell the listeners how frequently they should get up, do some muscle activation, and then get back to being seated, if you could, you know, share something on that would be great.

Yogi Aaron: 21:16

Yeah, I mean, during I think it was 2013, or 14, there was a lot going on around social media and different blogs, like how sitting is killing you. And it's, it's not really kind of a hyperbolic statement, it really is a truth statement, depending on how you want to interpret it. But the fact of the matter is, you know, when you're sitting, there's some estimates that say that your glutes start to shut down and atrophy after 30 minutes. So you know, I, I actually recently just got one of these, like sitting to standing desks. So I usually alternate every 30 minutes, 30 minutes I'm standing, 30 minutes I'm sitting, or something like that. And so that's one of the ways that I deal with it, you know, I got, I was fortunate to get a desk like that, maybe some of your listeners can't, but taking that kind of information about 30 minutes, you know, definitely getting up, you know, standing up, I was gonna say stretching, but I'm anti stretching. So engaging, you know, activating after 30 minutes is a really good thing to do. And there's you mentioned, like the hip flexors, your hip flexors are passively being brought into a shortened state. And that's going to have a negative impact. Now, you know, one of the, I think myths out there is that because they're passively brought into this contracted, shortened state, that they become tight. Well, the tightness, muscle tightness, as we were just explaining before, is a symptom of muscle weakness. And so there's a couple of things going on there that we need to address. But if you've got tight hip flexors, aka tight, you know, rectus femoris quads, and psoas and iliacus, you know, two things need to happen simultaneously. And this is the same by the way, with the tight hamstrings, you know, for my tight hamstrings, I do a lot to make sure my hip flexors are working properly. And so there's a really cool way to do that in my, you know, my YouTube channel, I've got a lot of videos about this and courses. And so if your listeners don't get the visual, you know, contact me on Instagram and I'll, I'll send them something. My Instagram handle, by the way, is yogi_aaron, or just search Yogi Aaron. I'm the big Yogi Aaron out there. But the simple hack is to lie on your back. And this is my general great hack to get those hip flexors working. If you're working in an office and can do this, you know, once an hour or a couple of times a day, you know, I don't know how much you want to get onto the floor in your office. So maybe bring a blanket or something and or a towel you can put on the floor, but just lie on your back. And some people call this dead bug pose, you bring your knees above your hips, your feet are off the floor, you bring your knees above your hips, more or less, you bring your hands towards your knees, not to your knees towards your knees. Now, your hands may touch your knees or not. But just below the kneecap, place the heel of your hand and take your knees into your hands, press your knees into your hands. Now some of you might recognise this because some gym instructors will do this for core work. You know, they'll say like, press your knees into your hands, you feel your core. Yeah, it's really engaging the core, but it's also engaging a lot of your hip flexors, your rectus abdominis, sorry, your rectus femoris, your psoas we just talked about. And then of course, it's engaging some of your core. It's such a great way to start turning those muscles that we're asleep on. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing, and this is why like when you hear people talking about like, oh, the way to deal with tight psoas is to stretch it. Don't walk away from them, run, because they know nothing about the psoas. The thing that you do want to do is make sure your glutes are working. So we're talking about before, like the pairs of opposites in muscles, there's always an agonist and an antagonist, the agonist to the psoas. So if you're dealing with a tight psoas, glutes, your glutes are the opposite. There's actually a couple, but the glutes are the main ones that are the opposites to the psoas. So you want to make sure that your glutes are working. Now, if you think about sitting in a chair, your glutes are in this passive, forced, elongated state. And now you're sitting down, which means you're not using them. Do you think that's going to have a negative effect, you know, on your glutes? Heck yeah. So doing something to start, first of all, activating the glutes, but then also we need to think about ways to actually make those glutes stronger and make sure the muscle fibers are also getting worked. One of my great, my favourite glute hacks, there's a couple out there, but one of my favourite ones is just one that most of your listeners know probably called bridge pose. Again, lying on your back. If you're at the office and want to do this, get a, you know, throw a towel out or something and just lie on your back, bring your arms to the sides. Don't use your hands. A lot of times in yoga classes, they use the hands to get the hips higher. We don't want to do that. We just want to lift the hips up as high as we can and squeeze those glutes and then slowly lower down. Do that every single day. And Anthony, what I want to recommend are both of those exercises, by the way, and a few others, and see how long it takes before you don't need to keep rolling anymore.

Anthony Hartcher: 27:16

It would be great. I'm happy to change up my nightly routine because yeah, the rolling is part of the nightly routine. Well, I could just do those stretches instead. So. Can I ask you something? Exercise, exercises.

Yogi Aaron: 27:28

Why do you roll at night?

Anthony Hartcher: 27:31

Just to feel all loose and limber when I go to bed. I find that it's like I'm sort of telling the muscles to relax, you know, it's okay, there's nothing to be frightened of or defend me, you know. Like it, you can just start chilling. And I find that it has an effect on my brain to say, hey, it's time to chill and relax and go to bed.

Yogi Aaron: 27:54

Oh, you know, if you are, if you're like the person that, oh my God, I cannot give up stretching or I need to keep rolling. That is actually one of the, I mean, I would just prefer to stop altogether and give you some other relaxation techniques. But aside from that, you know, if you are going to stretch, doing it before bed is the best time because, you know, you're gonna go to bed. You're going to relax. You're not using your body and there's no way that you can harm yourself. You know, but if you're kind of like stretching before you go, you know, do an exercise or work out in the gym, like the worst thing that bodybuilders do. And I see this all the time is they stretching their shoulders and then they're gonna go put load on those shoulders. So it's, yeah, we definitely want to, if you must stretch, do it before you go to bed.

Anthony Hartcher: 28:48

Fantastic. And you've touched on my next point, which is yeah, what we do before exercise or before training and around that muscle activation. And I just want to get that understanding between the static stretching and the dynamic stretching. I don't know whether you call it differently or have different terms for it, but I guess what we're talking about is that more static stretching, and what you're advocating is more of that muscle activation, which comes from dynamic stretching. Am I right in putting that or?

Yogi Aaron: 29:22

Yeah. I mean, this whole term dynamic stretching, I watched, for those of you who are listening to the audio version only, I'm putting air quotes right now. Professional, who, by the way, was an orthopaedic doctor. Orthopaedics is about bones, not muscles, but she was giving advice about muscles. Anyways, I digress. So I always have a term, stay in your lane. I stay in mine, you stay in yours, we'll be good. But she was giving some interesting tips on dynamic stretching. And I looked at it and I thought, that looks really passive to me, what she was doing. And it looked like a lot of smoke and mirrors. So she was kind of terming dynamic stretching as just dynamic movement. And that also, we get into a little bit of shady area there. So what we wanna do, let me define static or static slash passive stretching. So if you, well, standing and you fold forwards and you try and touch your toes and you hold it there for 15 seconds, that's a static passive stretch. It's passive because you're using gravity to pull you forward and you're just hanging out there. And you're creating a range of motion that your body isn't ready for. And anytime you create a flexibility, if you improve your flexibility or create a flexibility, you're always going to be open and vulnerable to injury. Flexibility always leads to instability, which makes you open and vulnerable to injury. Another example of static passive stretching is if you're lying on your back and say, for example, remember I was talking about bringing the leg up to 30 degrees. I also said to do a test and see how far you can bring your leg. So if you're just lifting your leg up as far as you can, that's dynamic. Because remember, what do muscles do? Muscles move bones and stabilise joints. So you're using your muscles, your hip flexors, probably even some trunk flexors, you're using your muscles to lift the leg up. Now, if I reach and grab that leg, or I grab the foot, or I use like a belt or something wrapped around the foot and then pulling it towards me, or your yoga teacher comes up and pushes the leg towards you, that now becomes really passive. And that's where we start to run into problems because anytime we passively stretch or, you know, hold a stretch statically for a long period of time, in that way, we're going to shut down the muscle. The muscle will lose its force output. What does that force output mean? Remember, muscles need to shorten and they need to be able to contract and contract on demand. That muscle will actually become weak and lose its ability to contract and contract on demand. So that's like an example of a, by the way, that's a great static stretch, sorry, dynamic stretch or dynamic movement, I prefer to use dynamic movement, just lying on your back and lifting your leg up as high as you can and holding it there for six seconds. The cool thing is if you keep doing that every day, you're going to notice your range of motion improving and you'll also be able to get rid of your tight hamstrings because you're now starting to activate all of your quads. You're activating all of your hip flexors as well.

Anthony Hartcher: 33:01

Fantastic. So, Aaron, I'm really intrigued as to what the listeners should do before they engage their HIIT training, their run, their resistance training, whatever it may be. What is the best way to avoid injury and get ready, get the muscles ready for activity?

Yogi Aaron: 33:20

So that's a great question. If you're kind of a lazy person, at the very least, don't stretch. And, you know, maybe just start off on a gentle walk. Doing some preparation though will help you prevent injuries long term. You might not see it so quickly in the short term, especially if you're a young whippersnapper or, you know, a young 30-year-old like you were, but doing a little something will be good. So what I would recommend is doing something to engage the hip flexors, okay? And then the hip extensors and maybe even a little bit of core. And there's a lot of like simple hacks to do this. One of them is I was talking about earlier, if you're lying down on the ground and lifting one leg up as high as you can, that is just such a great exercise. Now, if you're in the park with your friend and you can't lie on the ground, just either because you don't want to or it's wet or something, then go over by a fence or a pole and just kind of prop yourself or hold yourself for balance. And then keeping your spine as erect as possible, just lift the leg up as high as you can and hold that there for a few seconds and do that a few times. I said six times, that's a really good number. Now, if doing a straight leg is really difficult, bend your knee, lift your knee up as high as you can. And I know that sounds so ridiculously simple, but that's the whole point of doing dynamic movement is you're basically getting the muscles to move the bones, isometrically holding it there at its most in range of motion. So in this case, if you're bending the knee and lifting the knee towards the chest without your hands, of course, and you're pulling the knee in, so there's a lot of muscles that are responsible for that by you holding it and then doing it a few times. So remember, I said six seconds, six times. What you're starting to do is to reconnect all those muscles that are moving that hip joint and reconnecting them to the central nervous system. The biomechanical word for that, by the way, is proprioception. You're reaffirming that sense of proprioception so that the central nervous system knows where those muscles are and can tell them to contract and contract on demand. So that's one of my favourite little hacks. I also mentioned bridge pose earlier. Really great if you're doing any exercise, like anything, like martial arts, running, working out in the gym, like if you're gonna go do squats or anything like that. Like getting your glutes working, that should be like one of the big takeaways from this conversation. If you wanna know one of my favourite muscle activation practices, again, your listeners know this one or have heard of it, probably never do it, most don't, is one called Superman pose. And so that's when you're lying on your stomach and you lift your legs and your chest as high as you can, keeping the legs as straight as possible, the knees extended. Also keep the arms down beside you because what you're doing now, not only are you engaging your glutes a bit, but more importantly, you're starting to engage all the muscles in the back. This wonderful pose hits like the major muscles of the back, your QL, your quadratus lumborum, your longissimus, it's longissimus is the most important global stabiliser in the spine, your multifidus, which is a really important local stabiliser in the spine. So it hits all of these muscles. And, you know, when you're going out for a walk or a jog, a lot of these muscles end up getting compromised. And if they're not working, remember what our muscles do? Move bones, stabilise joints. If they're not doing that, the result is always gonna be added stress in the joints. So get, those are just some simple little things that you can do. I've got a list more, but those two are a great place to start or three, I mentioned three.

Anthony Hartcher: 37:56

I was just seeking the shoulder because we say, yeah, so I mentioned the frozen shoulder before, and it's quite common. You hear a lot of people having shoulder issues at least, you know, some type of shoulder issues. So what's the best way to get those shoulders active, you know, switched on?

Yogi Aaron: 38:11

Really quickly, three major muscles, serratus anterior, which kind of wraps under the shoulder blade and into the ribs. Pecs are really important muscles. And you might think like, well, you're here and I go to the gym and I'm doing like, you know, benching 150 pounds. Yeah, but probably your pecs aren't even working properly. They're not able to contract and contract on demand. And how do I know that? Because you've got pain in your shoulders and you're always stretching it. So pecs get compromised a lot and they're so important for shoulders. And the other one is traps. If I tested like a thousand bodybuilders, I would be hard pressed to find 10 with strong traps. So my favourite, there's a couple of muscle activations for traps, lower traps specifically, but one is just bringing your arms up to the sky like a V, not a U and not a T, a V. And so bring those arm bones back without moving your spine. And you're going to feel that in your lower traps. By the way, the lower traps are the antagonist, sorry, the agonist to the upper traps. So if the upper traps are really tight, one of the major muscles that's probably not working, lower traps. And so the upper traps tighten up in response. So getting those lower traps working is so important and can help people to start regaining movement in the shoulders quite quickly actually. And you mentioned the pecs. I'm interested, intrigued about the the pecs. You say they get a bit, you know, they're not as active and it's really important that we get them activated. What's a good way, is it like a pushup or what's a good way to engage the pecs? Definitely not a pushup. Don't do pushups. Well, actually you can, one of my little simple muscle activations is coming into a plank pose and you can sort of do it with the knees on the ground too. So you don't have to be a superhero and try and keep the knees up. But what you do is you bring the hands a little wider than the shoulders. So a little bit wider and then rotate the humerus bone in about five or 10 degrees. So it's not a lot. That's not a lot of inner rotation. And then just with the hands there, kind of squeeze the hands or the forearms towards each other, specifically the wrists. So kind of think about squeezing the wrists in. Now you don't want to go for broke. Like, I don't want to see your eyeballs popping out of your head. One of the rules in muscle activation is less is more. So you don't have to actually do it that much. All you're trying to do is actually stimulate the nerve endings or the more specifically the intrafusal muscle fibres of the muscles where it's starting to send messages to the central nervous system. Another one, and I've been playing with this a little bit myself, is you know, like how you kind of wrap your hands around you. Just do that. But instead of like bringing your hands to the side body, do this with me, is you just bring your arms and reach as much as you can. Do you feel your your pecs? Isn't that marvellous? And then relax. And then do it the other way now. So, you know, reverse your arms. Do you feel your pecs? They're engaging, right? They're isometrically engaging. And so doing that is one that I've been kind of playing with. There's a, there's a few other ones that are better, but those are two to start with, you know, in a pinch that are just easy. So if my neck or shoulder starts bothering me, I quickly run through a couple of those muscle activations for lower traps and then also pecs. By the way, you know, frozen shoulder pecs, you know, getting the pecs starting to work. And in the muscle activation world, so I said earlier, like frozen shoulders typically take most people a year and a half plus. In the muscle activation world, we can usually get a shoulder working very quickly. I've heard different estimates. I've heard anywhere from, you know, a few weeks to about six months. So we can dramatically decrease the amount of time in how long it takes to get back.

Anthony Hartcher: 42:43

Oh, fantastic. No, I really appreciate what you've shared. There was one thing that's intriguing me and it was on your bios that was sent to me. And it was around that number one yoga pose that you shouldn't do, which, what is it?

Yogi Aaron: 42:58

So I hope there's not a lot of yoga people listening because I don't want to get, you know, hate mail or hate messages on Instagram, but it's child's pose. It's the number one pose that everybody loves or that yoga teachers always tell their students to do. They always start people in there, but the child's pose is the worst pose that you can do because it shuts down all of these muscles, the hip flexors, the hip extensors. I mean, just just start with the glutes. You're bringing the glutes in this very stretched, elongated, you know, lengthened position and you're holding it there statically and passively for a long time. That's not a good thing. And I can, you know, for your listeners that are like, oh, Yogi Aaron, you know, how do you know this? We can test the force output of muscles. So we know whether or not a muscle is strong or if it's weak. And that's a really cool thing I love doing. I love always testing muscles. And one of my favourite little things to do these days is like when somebody comes and asks me, like, one of my students asked me the other day. Oh, what about Bird of Paradise? So we got his hip flexors strong. They were testing strong. He went up into Bird of Paradise. He actually tested weaker than when he first started. And so I was like, Miguel, do you think that's a good thing to do? And he was like, I don't think so. So that's always the question that we need to ask. Is this making us stronger or is this making us weaker from a neurological, uh, neuromuscular perspective?

Anthony Hartcher: 44:37

Such great insight, Aaron, I really appreciate what you shared with listeners today. And I'm really keen for them to hear more about how they can best connect with you.

Yogi Aaron: 44:47

Yeah, well, go to yogiaaron.com. I have a lot of free stuff there. They can access my Seven Days to Becoming Pain-free series, which kind of gives them a small taste of muscle activations. We were talking a lot about glutes before, as well as psoas. And I actually show you how to activate the psoas specifically, good one for you, by the way. Get you to start rolling. So getting, you know, getting the psoas activated. And then, like I said earlier too, if any of your listeners wanna reach out to me, I'm always available on Instagram and message me there. It's, you know, it's just search Yogi Aaron. It's also connected through my website, yogiaaron.com.

Anthony Hartcher: 45:29

Fantastic. Thanks so much for sharing that, Yogi Aaron. And to the listeners, I'll have all the links in the show notes, so you can go directly to the show notes and click on the link. Really appreciate your time, Yogi Aaron. It's been so insightful. I've learned a lot and I'm sure the listeners have.

Yogi Aaron: 45:44

Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Anthony Hartcher: 45:47

You're very welcome. Thank you.

Podcast Disclaimer: 46:00

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