Wild Thing and Flip Dog: Here’s How to Keep Your Shoulders Safe (Photo Tutorial)

There’s a lot of confusion about the poses Wild Thing (Camatkarasana) and Flip Dog in the yoga neighborhood. Are they backbends? Are they Side Planks? Are they the very same pose?

The answer is: It depends. It depends on your yoga teacher and college lineage. Clear as mud, proper?

No matter what you contact these poses, it is significant to enter them with intention and stability to retain your shoulders secure. For the purposes of this report and clarity, let’s distinguish among these two poses, and cover the nuances of each and every version.

Why Should You Care About the Shoulders in Wild Thing and Flip Dog?

Our shoulder joint is one particular of the most mobile joints in our body. It’s a ball-and-socket style joint, but the socket is fairly shallow. It’s shaped more like a plate than a bowl.

This offers our shoulders good freedom to move, which is valuable for activities all through our day from reaching items on a shelf to providing an individual a hug. But this variety of movement also tends to make the joint and surrounding muscle tissues vulnerable to injury.

Three most important bones make up our shoulder joint: the humerus (upper arm), scapula (shoulder blade), and clavicle (collar bone). The principal muscle tissues supporting the shoulder joint are aspect of the rotator cuff.

The rotator cuff is a group of 4 muscle tissues that hug the scapula and provide help, protection, and movement. Some other muscle tissues of the shoulder girdle are the deltoids, trapezius, rhomboids, triceps, and biceps.

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How Can You Turn on Your Rotator Cuff to Prepare for Wild Thing and Flip Dog?

To bring awareness to the muscle tissues of the rotator cuff, you can discover them in a straightforward pose.

Let’s attempt it:

- Come into a Forearm Plank
- Place your palms face down on the mat and your forearms parallel to each and every other
- Isometrically pull your elbows toward each and every other, and spread your hands apart

Did the muscle tissues in your shoulder and back say “hello?”

Those are the muscle tissues you want to use to help oneself when moving into either Wild Thing or Flip Dog.

To enter these two poses, there’s a lot of movement and rotation that takes place by way of the shoulder.

Combine this movement with bearing weight in one particular arm and one particular or two feet, and you have the possible for a rotator cuff injury, related to what baseball players practical experience just after years of pitching.

But with a handful of shifts in alignment, we can safely use each these poses and delight in the stretchy goodness and strength creating they provide.

Here’s Your Step-by-Step Guide to Practice Wild Thing:

Ready to give it a attempt? Let’s start off with Wild Thing:

1. Prepare

Starting in Side Plank or a seated position could be less complicated for alignment. But entry from Down Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana) appears to be a more common entry, so we’ll start off the tutorial right here.

Let’s attempt it:

- - - Start in Downward Facing Dog
    - Lift your proper leg up in the air
    - Bend your proper knee and lift up by way of your proper hip to send your knee toward the ceiling and your foot to the left
    - At this point, retain your weight dispersed evenly among your hands and shoulders, and retain your proper shoulder level with your left
    - Come onto the ball of your left foot
    - Bring our gaze forward among your hands
    - Shift your weight forward till your shoulders stack straight more than your wrists
    - This shift in alignment is important to maintaining your shoulder girdle secure and the movement controlled

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2. Rotate

There’s a lot of simultaneous movement that takes place right here, so move as gradually and cautiously as you require.

Let’s attempt it:

- - - Come onto the pinkie toe side of your left foot
    - Shift your weight into your left hand
    - Slide your proper arm up, and then overhead, as you lift your proper shoulder toward the sky
    - Bring the ball of your proper foot to the ground behind you for balance
    - Keep your proper heel lifted
    - Ground down by way of your left hand and stabilize by way of your left shoulder girdle
    - Your left arm, shoulder, and foot are the foundation for this pose, and are set up related to Side Plank (Vashistasana)

3. Lift

Once you have a strong foundation, you can discover more lift and come into the complete expression of the pose.

Let’s attempt it:

- - - Press down into the ball of your proper foot to lift your hips up
    - Your hips will keep angled, with your proper hip point larger than your left
    - Lengthen by way of your chest, lifting it toward the ceiling to build a backbend
    - Extend your proper arm lengthy and gaze toward your hand
    - Keep your proper leg bent, and your left leg lengthy
    - Stabilize along the back of your body and spine and permit the front to open
    - Come out of the pose how you came in, getting a Side Plank and then returning your proper hand to the ground, just before moving back to Down Dog or your next pose

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Here’s Your Step-by-Step Guide to Practice Flip Dog:

Flip Dog builds on Wild Thing, but the set-up is a bit more like Wheel Pose (Urdhva Dhanurasana) than Side Plank.

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Because of the continued rotation and opening by way of the hips, it can be a bit more tricky to retain the shoulder joint supported. So keep supported in Wild Thing if you favor.

1. Ground Both Feet

In this step, we’ll continue the lifting and opening movement from above.

Let’s attempt it:

- - - Start in Wild Thing as described above
    - Drop your proper heel to the ground
    - Bend your left leg and spot the sole of your left foot on the floor
    - Line your knees and feet up so they are no wider than your hips
    - The outdoors of your feet must be parallel to the lengthy sides of your mat
    - Continue to rotate your hips open so that your hip points are even and open to the sky
    - Reach your proper arm lengthy overhead
    - Press down into the ground with your left hand and lift by way of the back of your left shoulder to retain from collapsing
    - To come out, extend your left leg, shift your weight back into your left foot, and discover a Side Plank just before moving onto your next pose

The Takeaway on Wild Thing and Flip Dog

Once you discover stability in either of these poses, you can play about a bit with the placement of your floating arm. You can bring your hand to your chest to give you some thing to lift into or bring your hand to the nape of your neck to accentuate the shoulder opening.

There’s no stress to do or really like either of these poses. If these postures make your shoulder a bit glitchy, then attempt a supported option.

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Some yoga teachers use Wild Thing and Flip Dog interchangeably. Others treat these poses differently and use the one particular they want based on a class theme, such as backbending versus strength creating.

So comply with along with the pose known as for, and incorporate these alignment cues to retain your body secure and your shoulder wholesome.