How To Use Progressive Overload to Build Strength in Your Yoga Practice.

How exactly might we approach incorporating progressive loading into our yoga practice?  

After all, in strength-training, adding and removing load is as easy as modifying the weight until you can do the intended movement with good form. 

In yoga, our load is our body weight, which we obviously can’t instantly modify (as much as some of us may want to). With body-weight exercises, we need to get creative about how we adapt load to our bodies. This is why it’s important to have a working understanding of both the principles of progressive loading and the different loading parameters, so that we can make decisions that are customized to our unique bodies. 

Of the seven different types of load explored in Part 2 of this series, there are three that stand out to me as particularly useful for experimenting with in yoga. We can use these tools to both decrease a load that’s too challenging--perhaps in the case of the ever pesky chaturanga push-up, or to increase a load that is no longer generating strength adaptations--perhaps in the case of a lunge that feels too easy after years of practice.

My hope is that the following explanations start to make intuitive sense, and that it actually produces less thinking and more spontaneous action when you move your body. So without further adieu, let’s start exploring the three loading parameters that I see to be most useful for our purposes in yoga: magnitude, direction and duration. 

Modifying Magnitude

You might recall that magnitude refers to the weight of a particular load. 

Yoga is an internally loaded form of movement, which means that the load we work with is our body weight. If my goal is to always be on the edge between what I know how to do and what I don’t know how to do, the question becomes: In what instances is my body weight too much load, and in what instances is my body weight too little? 

For example, if I find that my body weight is too much load for my push-up position, I can decrease the magnitude by placing my knees on the floor. This de-loads the weight of my lower body so that my shoulders have less weight to manage. By modifying the magnitude of my load, I might be able to hold the position longer, or do more repetitions of a push-up, or give my shoulders a chance to actually explore mobility and stability--all of which will contribute to strength adaptations, and ultimately a higher capacity to withstand load. 

This strategy can be summed up as: To decrease magnitude, add points of contact with the floor. This is the same thing as placing the back knee down in a lunge or Warrior 2. And if you’re in a situation where your position goes from being too difficult to being too easy, consider that there are other loading parameters you can change to customize the load even more, which you’ll learn in the next sections of this article! 

But before we move on, let’s also look at how we can increase the magnitude of something that’s become too easy. One effective way to increase magnitude is to introduce external load into your yoga practice. This might look like: 

• Free weights

• Kettlebells

• Resistance Bands 

• Yoga props - Sandbags, differently weighted blocks 

One of the things I love most about yoga is that it’s a body-weight exercise that I can do anytime anywhere with minimal set-up. So, adding external load wasn’t a super exciting prospect to me when I started studying progressive overload. As a way of dipping my toe in the water, I started following more physical therapists, weight lifters, and sneaky strength yoga teachers on Instagram and gradually introduced myself to the concept of an externally loaded practice. I found that what was initially off-putting was my lack of experience with external load which made the whole thing seem daunting. Watching other people move with weights and instruct weighted movement helped me build up confidence around adding external load to my practice. Now I almost never practice yoga without adding some form of external weight. 

Is there also a way to increase the magnitude of a load without adding external weight? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Above, we went over the relationship between decreasing magnitude and adding points of contact with the floor. Conversely, if we want to increase magnitude, we can remove points of contact with the floor. Now, this obviously only works in some instances. If I’m in a lunge, I only have two points of contact with the floor and removing either one of them won’t allow me to keep my shape. But let’s say I’m in a downward facing dog pose or a table top position where I have four points of contact with the floor. If I remove one point of contact--let’s say lifting a hand or foot--it will increase the magnitude. If I remove a second point of contact--let’s say the opposite foot or hand--I add even more load. 

Let’s imagine a different scenario. Let’s say I’m lying on my back in a supine twist. With my chest facing the ceiling and my legs rolled over to one side, almost my entire body is making contact with the floor. If I wanted to increase the magnitude of the load, I might try hovering my legs off the floor, which will challenge my body to generate more contractile resistance to maintain the position. 

We’ve likely all experienced the differing effects of modifying our magnitude in yoga--I mean, who among us has not felt the relief of putting a knee down in a lunge--but perhaps didn’t realize how it fits into the overall picture of load and tissue adaptation. I hope that this explanation helps you integrate your experience with this new understanding! 

Modifying Direction

Direction is another loading parameter we can modify to add and decrease load from our yoga practice. You may recall from Part 2 of this blog series that Direction refers to the angle of a load, and that angle can refer to one of two things: 

1. Angle of joints

2. Angle of position

The angle of our joints is another way of saying the range of motion of our joints. The bigger the range of motion, the more intense the load, and vice versa. Imagine putting this into practice in a squat. A squat features three main joint positions: ankle dorsiflexion, knee flexion and hip flexion. If I wanted to increase my load, I could change the angle of my joints and increase the load by flexing more in my ankles, knees and hips. Conversely, if I felt like my squat was too much load, I could decrease my range of motion by flexing less in my ankles, knees and hips. 

I find changing the angle of my joints to be one of the most effective ways of modifying load in my yoga practice. What I love most is that I’m easily able to apply this principle to universally to all yoga poses. 

We can also modify direction by modifying the angle of the position itself. Let’s take our classic chaturanga push-up as an example. If doing a push-up on the ground is too much load, we already know that we can change the magnitude by placing our knees on the floor. But that also changes the shape of the position. What if we wanted to retain the original shape of the push-up but decrease the load somehow? How could we do that? 

We could change the angle. 

Changing the angle of a position means to take the same position and reorient it in space. Doing a push-up on the ground is one load. Doing a push-up against the wall is another load. Doing a push-up leaning over a bench, or a counter-top or a bar is another. In this particular example, when we reorient the shape in space and take it from the floor to the wall, we transfer the load from the upper body to the lower body, and it becomes easier for the upper body to explore the movement. As the upper body adapts to the load at the wall, we can gradually orient the pose back down to the floor, by finding surfaces that allow us to work at different angles. 

I find that changing the angle of a position works really well in my free time--not when I’m in the middle of a group-led yoga practice. Countertop push-ups happen when I’m brewing coffee, bench push-ups happen on a hike. Changing the angle of a position often means using our environment as an element of our practice and sometimes requires us to step off our yoga mats. 

Modifying Duration

The final loading parameter I’d like to talk about is duration, which can also mean two things: 

1. Time-under-tension

2. Repetition

Time-under-tension refers to the length of time a position is held. The longer we spend in a position, the more loaded it is. This is part of the reason that a pose will start to feel harder the longer we’re in it. This is another parameter that can be broadly applied across all yoga poses. 

Repetition is the other component of duration and refers to how many times we repeat a position. One squat is a particular load, but 20 squats repeated one after the other is a completely different load. Less reps = less load. More reps = more load. The formula is pretty simple and can be applied almost everywhere in yoga.

Putting It All Together

Now that you know how some of the different loading parameters can impact your yoga practice, it’s time to take this knowledge to the mat. 

I like to think about loading parameters as dimmer switches that I can modify to create my just-perfect amount of load for my body today. 

For example, I usually practice push-ups with my knees down on the floor because I find with knees lifted I’m not able to be specific with my joint positions. But knees down on the floor is almost too little load, so I need to adjust other loading parameters to bring the challenge level back up. In the spirit of this, I may decide to modify the duration by adding repetitions and time under tension in the hardest parts of the pose. I might also adjust the angle of the joints by moving into deeper end ranges on each repetition. This is how I build a push-up progression that creates strength adaptations in my body day after day. 

I encourage you to think about your yoga practice and where you might adjust your loads up and down. The just-right amount of load is determined moment-by-moment and the rewards are optimal tissue adaptation, which is no small thing. Well-adapted tissues are often tissues that feel and work better as a result of our lifestyle. A good-feeling well-working body is one big thing we can take off our worry list. 

If you’re looking for advice, my two cents are this: Find teachers to study with. It doesn’t have to cost anything--most teachers teach for free in some capacity on social media, YouTube, etc. If you’re feeling aligned with my take on things, find me on YouTube, Instagram and in my FREE weekly letter. Good teachers who can help point you in the direction of research and common sense are the most valuable resource--after all, we don’t know what we don’t know. And we know that there might be things we don’t know that might change everything for the better. So we gotta keep digging :) 

Additional Resources: 

Yoga Biomechanics: Stretching Redefined by Jules Mitchell [Book]

How To Add Load to Your Yoga Practice with Jenni Rawlings [Online Workshop]

Progressive Overload by Jules Mitchell [Article]

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