We Never Internally Rotate Our Hips in Yoga!
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We never internally rotate our hips in yoga!
I know this may sound like a bold statement, but hear me out. :)
We never (or to be technical about it, we very rarely) internally rotate our hips in yoga.
In case you're new to the anatomical movement of hip rotation, here's a quick guide:
When we're standing, if we turn our toes to face out (away from us), we are externally rotating our hip joint.
And if we turn our toes to face in (pigeon toed), we're internally rotating our hip joint.
Now that we're experts on hip rotation ;), let's use this understanding to take a closer look at our traditional yoga pose lexicon.
We have an abundance of asanas that take us into external rotation, including the following:
warrior 2
triangle pose (pictured here)
side angle pose
half moon pose
tree pose
pigeon pose (and all of its variations)
gomukhasana (contrary to popular belief, this sneaky hip opener is actually an externally rotated pose, not an internally rotated one – I visually demo this in the video I’ve linked below!)
But compared to allll of those externally-rotated poses, which asanas in a typical yoga practice take our hips into internal rotation?
Hardly any, in comparison! There are a couple of seated poses that do involve a bit of hip internal rotation. (I mention them in the video below). But that's about it!
Is the lack of hip internal rotation in yoga a bad thing?
I definitely don't think the fact that we don't meaningfully target hip internal rotation in traditional asanas is a bad thing – or any sort of "strike against yoga."
Not at all!
I'm not aware of any movement practice that takes all ~350 joints of the human body through all of their ranges of motion in an equal and "balanced" way. 😉 I don't think it exists!
All movement practices move some parts of our body in some specific ways more than others. That's just the nature of any structured movement practice.
Side note: This is why I'm a big advocate of cross training for yoga practitioners – so we can expose our body to a more well-rounded selection of movements and loads across a variety of activities. (Pssst! Our Strength for Yoga Remote Group Training program is an excellent option for cross training your yoga practice with strength!)
Again, I don't think it's a bad thing that we don't meaningfully internally rotate our hips in yoga.
However, if moving our hips through their full range of motion on a regular basis is important to us – or if specifically improving hip internal rotation mobility is a goal for someone – then I think there's value in bringing more internal rotation into our yoga practice.
And that's why I created my newest free tutorial: How to Target Hip Internal Rotation in Yoga!
Learn my top 5 ways to bring hip internal rotation into yoga – along with a quick, geeky anatomy lesson about the hips in yoga.
I hope you enjoy!