HOW A PAIR OF YOGA BLOCKS CAN HELP

You’ll always see foam blocks calling your attention when you enter a yoga training centre or when working on mastering asana with a friend in his/her personal set-up. In fact, a pair may also be resting on your home gym’s floor depicting your familiarity with this amazing yoga tool. It means yoga blocks are important and that’s why we advise you to learn using them the right way for the sake of making your yoga sessions effective. Speaking of which, this 5-min read has got adequate information on yoga blocks for you to munch on that certainly will improve your overall yoga experience.

Before we move forward

Do you know what a yoga block looks like?

Just as the name suggests, it is a block made of foam, cork, or even wood with bevelled edges for aesthetics and good mobility as required during the different exercises and arrives typically in 3 or 5-inch dimensions. They are mostly sold in pairs, while you can own them in your favourite colour as you always have an option or two to scroll through when looking for them in both the offline and online stores. In case, you don’t know how a foam block looks, just take a note of this pair of splendid yoga blocks by Xn8 Sports!

Stretching your hands to the floor gets convenient

Some yoga poses need you to touch the mat on full stretch by bending forward. Doing such for beginners is difficult but that’s something the exercises like standing forward fold, standing split, upward forward fold, and more demand. This is the time when owning a yoga block feels like owning gold. Just slide them under your hands on a yoga mat to reduce the distance that will need a moderate stretch of your body to complete a pose. Guess what, there are three ways you can use yoga blocks for such stretch exercises.

1. Place two yoga blocks in vertical positions over a yoga mat, and make sure you reach the top of each with the tip of your fingers when stretching. This will need a moderate level of stretching - all that a yogi needs in the beginning.
2. Lay a block on its belly over a yoga mat and put another one above it. Now see you can reach the mat through them without putting much force in your stretch. This one would need you to stretch a bit further than what the vertical position will demand.
3. If both the vertical and horizontal methods of stretching are getting easy for you, promote yourself to this one. Here you need to remove one block from the top while leaving the other, which will need you to put more effort into stretching. That means you are getting closer to touching the mat without any support. Keep on practicing champ!

They take care of your knees

Knee injuries are common among people who are often engaged in practicing yoga or such other stretching workouts where this muscles is often used. You can relate that some poses may even need you to shift your weight on the knee and try balancing on it over a yoga mat for long, which sometimes can cause troubles for your knees! Particularly, you can disturb the weak muscles responsible for protecting your knee joints that you otherwise could have avoided by maintaining a proper alignment. Yes, yoga blocks can help you maintain a proper alignment. Let’s get to learning it by using yoga blocks in the most commonly practiced yoga poses.

It’s never easy to be a camel in the camel pose

Yes, you stress knees and back while practicing the camel pose because here your knees shift wider apart than necessary. Whereas, the best way to perform this pose is to ensure your knees are no wider than your hips’ distance apart. That you can achieve with the yoga block! Here’s all you need to do:

• Place a block between both your ankles and thighs
• Now use those muscles for keeping the yoga block in place
• This will strengthen the muscles that are protecting your knees and would ensure you maintain a proper alignment

Chair pose can get you into the trouble

What often gets us in trouble in a chair and twisting chair pose is that at times one knee slides further forward than the other. That you can prevent by putting a block between the knees and engaging those muscles to make sure the joints stay in place.

Are you practicing bridge pose the right way?

Here’s what you need to do in a bridge pose for avoiding getting into the trouble

• Place a yoga block between your thighs
• Press into the block while lifting the hips and chest upward
• Now you are all set to perform it effectively

It’s time to work on the proper alignment of your arms and shoulders

You know right that your arms should be shoulder-width apart in poses such as the chair, side angle, and tree. Yes, you can use a yoga block to achieve this! All you need is to place one between the palms and let the palms press into the smallest sides of the block that’ll engage the triceps and biceps without stressing the shoulders. Just don’t let the pressing of palms into the block cause your shoulder blades to rise up to your ears.

That would be all on yoga blocks

You may be new to hearing the term yoga blocks or may already be familiar with them. The pair actually is an excellent training accessory that also provides great support to your yoga exercises. Only if you know how to use it the right way, which is something you must have learned by reading this blog post to this point.

From making you practice the yoga pose perfectly to preventing injuries, yoga blocks are much more useful training equipment than you could think of them.

If you feel like we have missed including some information worth sharing here, feel free to make the reader know through comment box below.