Feeling that deep relaxing stretch is one of the most satisfying aspects of yoga. Some tight areas, though, can be a real challenge to get to.
That’s what a yoga wheel can help with.
Let’s learn more about the ways to use a yoga wheel during your next yoga practice.
What Is a Yoga Wheel to Begin With?
At first glance, a yoga wheel seems like nothing more than just a large sturdy cylinder. But there’s more to it than that. Used skillfully, a yoga wheel can take everything you do during a yoga session and kick it up a notch.
Namely, using a yoga wheel can help you:
- Improve your flexibility by allowing you to go deeper in your stretches.
- Make balance exercises a lot more challenging by providing an unstable base.
- Learn new complex exercises by giving you an additional source of support.
As you can tell, a yoga wheel can be a valuable addition to your yoga training and you can find more about it at True5. But many people struggle with making a yoga wheel part of their training sessions. How do you go about it?
Below are the training goals that make for some of the best ways to use a yoga wheel.
1. Improving Your Thoracic Mobility
Modern lifestyle makes us slouch constantly. And if you don’t make up for all this flexion, you lose mobility in the thoracic region of the spine. This in turn invites a slew of postural and health problems associated with poor thoracic mobility.
That’s what makes such yoga poses as fish pose, easy pose, and child’s pose so valuable. Each of these exercises helps you reach a healthy level of extension in your mid-upper back. And prevent the insidious loss of mobility in this vital region of the spine.
A yoga wheel takes these yoga poses to a whole new level. Working much like a foam roller, a yoga wheel provides solid support for getting a deeper stretch. And since you can roll on it, a yoga wheel lets you get in some soft tissue work.
2. Enhancing Your Hip Mobility
Hip mobility is another precious quality most modern people lose with time. Sitting for long periods of time inevitably leads to the adaptive shortening of hip flexors, hamstrings, and calves. As a result, the hip joint ends up losing its natural range of motion, becoming prone to injuries.
Yoga exercises like half-pyramid pose help improve both hamstring and calf flexibility. And yoga poses like low lunge help make hip flexors a lot less tight. Leahsfitness.com can provide you more information on it. Done with a yoga wheel, however, these exercises work especially well at unlocking your hips and enhancing your hip mobility.
3. Developing Your Core Strength
Doing planks is a wonderful way to build a strong functional core. And yoga has no shortage of plank exercise variations of its own. Planks don’t remain challenging for a long time, though, since the body tends to adapt to them quickly.
But luckily, this situation is easy to fix.
With the help of a yoga wheel, you can make various plank poses in yoga tougher. By placing your feet on a yoga wheel, you can make the exercise more dynamic and less stable. This tricks your core muscles into having a harder time stabilizing your entire body.
As a result, a yoga wheel can make your core strengthening yoga exercises much more effective.
4. Training Balance and Coordination
Yoga comes with a rich selection of poses that help develop balance and coordination. But similar to planks, these exercises only work until the body eventually adapts to the challenge. And it doesn’t take long if you perform them on stable surfaces like floor.
If you want to take your balance skills to the next level, look no further than using a yoga wheel. It gives just the unstable surface you need to make such balance poses as malasana and toe stand more challenging. And leaves you with more room for improvement.
5. Mastering Complex Yoga Poses
Without a doubt, yoga has no shortage of sophisticated poses that can test even its most experienced practitioners. And while some people are quick learners, others need more time to get the hang of new movements. Performing assisted variations of yoga poses helps accelerate learning.
Using a yoga wheel helps do just that. A yoga wheel gives you as much extra support as you need. And helps you master such challenging poses as upward-facing two-foot staff pose faster and at a comfortable pace.
Step Up Your Game with a Yoga Wheel
As you can see, there’s a lot to gain from practicing yoga with a yoga wheel. This simple tool can help you improve your mobility, balance, and movement skills much faster. And take your yoga game a step forward.
