Fitness for Life: How’s Your Torque?

BY MOLLY FIELD | YOGA INSTRUCTOR

Twisting and trunk rotation (torque) is important everyone, not just athletes. For golfers and court sports, however, it’s essential to a strong and successful drive, serve, and play at the net.

Do you want to improve your torque? Consider yoga. In yoga, we aim to work each body part separately and investigate how our limitations and physical habits contribute to our range of motion. Some yoga poses are practiced standing up, others with the whole body on the mat. Either way, the twists we perform in a yoga practice are deeply informative in terms of where we are stuck.

In yoga, a pose called “reclined spinal twist” can alert you to tightness and limitations in your lumbar, hip flexors, upper spine, and shoulders.

It’s a simple pose, elementally, but it imparts a more complex understanding of muscle imbalance without having to worry about losing our balance. If you’re lying on your mat, you won’t fall down!

It also informs you about where you are compensating in other, often unnecessary, muscle groups —tight jaw, pursed lips, shortened breath—to “just make it” through the pose.

Yoga isn’t about “faking it until you make it.” It’s about meeting you where you are, in that moment, on that day, with no questions asked unless YOU want the answers.

Here’s how to do a reclined spinal twist (and you don’t need a mat, even though we have plenty at the Club!):

1. Lie on your back with your knees up. Feet positioned closer to your hips and wide apart from each other will increase the intensity of the work.

2. Spread your arms out to a “T” position. Look to your left.

3. Breathe. Are you breathing? It’s all going to be OK! Promise!

4. On an exhalation, let both knees fall ALL THE WAY to the right. Do you need a pillow or a cushion under your right thigh? Get one and let it support you.

5. Is your left shoulder off the mat? That’s okay. Two options: let it hang if you’re okay with that or push your right elbow and the back of your head into the mat to raise your chest and then twist your CHEST to the left to drop that shoulder down. You’ve just deepened the twist. BREATHE.

6. (You’re almost done!) You can choose to lift the right leg and place your right ankle on the outside of the left thigh. That will deepen the rotation and stretch your left hip flexor more. If you drop your knees away, you’re getting into your upper glutes at the low back. So much is going on in your body because of this pose and it’s ALL GOOD.

7. Breathe! Hold this pose for about two rounds of “Happy Birthday” and on an inhalation, lift the right leg off the left and bring both knees back to center.

Repeat on the other side sending your knees to the left. Sing two rounds of “Happy Birthday” once you decide if you want to place your left ankle on your right thigh just above the knee joint.

BREATHE! Release the left leg from the right thigh and see how you feel. Relax your jaw and your glutes. They’re not helping. Release resistance.

Was it harder and maybe more painful for one side? That’s your information. That side needs more balanced trunk rotation.

Do this a few times a week and watch what happens on the green or the courts, or when you back up your car, and when you reach for something.

When you twist, where’s the power center? Your core. If you’re returning a tennis shot, the racquet is the implement that strikes the ball. Your ability to reach that ball depends on your ability to stretch your body and move your feet.

Banish the idea that yoga means “pretzel.” Yoga is so much more: it’s about mental control, physical endurance, and breath awareness. The mindfulness of yoga transcends the mat: it informs you on the court, on the links, or in the boardroom. Yoga isn’t about STARTING strong, it’s about becoming strong. In a yoga practice, to the best of your ability you stretch, reach, twist, breathe, stand, balance, push, pull, swing, arch, press, fold, rise, bend, and concentrate.

That’s a little like life, isn’t it? Join us at the Fitness Center or via Zoom for any one of our several yoga classes. Happy breathing! Namaste! 