If you’ve ever struggled with balance when coming into a high lunge in yoga, or finding a twist in a high lunge, here are 2 tips to teach you how to find your stabilizer muscles in these poses.
The key to balance in high lunge positions is to use your inner thighs. In general, it’s the slightest alignment tweaks that will help with this.
Tip #1: Even Out Your Pelvis
Pull the front leg’s side of the hip slightly back, and reach the back leg’s side of the hip slightly forwards.
Doing this will create the alignment in the pelvis that will help fire those inner thigh stabilizer muscles.
You can also think of the fronts of your hips like headlights on a car. If they’re shining slightly to the right or left, your “car” will go to the right or left, but if they’re directly forwards your “car” will move forwards. This is very slight, so you could even look down at your hips to make sure they’re even rather than relying solely on feel.
Tip #2: Make Sure Your Back Foot is Pointing Totally Forwards
This might feel really awkward at first for some of you, but it will help you find your inner thigh muscles eventually. You can do this starting by holding onto something until it starts to feel more natural.
Often times the back foot is either turned in or turned out – this changes how we can access our inner thigh muscles, so making sure the back foot’s big toe mound and pinky toe mound are firmly rooted and the toes are facing forwards is key for balancing in high lunges.
If you’re a visual person, I also have a YouTube video about how to find balance in a high lunge that will help you out:
Drop me a comment and let me know if this was helpful for your high lunges and if you have any questions!
For even more tips on balance, check out my other blog post: “4 Tips for Better Balance in Yoga”