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3 drills to help improve your Downward Facing Dog 👇

After Part 1 of my Downward Dog series, I had lots of requests for practical exercises — so we’re taking a little detour this week! 😂

These drills target ankle mobility, hamstring strength and range, and active shoulder flexion — all capacities that can contribute to your Downward Dog.

1. Weighted ankle mobility

Place the weight just behind the knee on the soft tissue — not directly on the kneecap.

Keep your whole foot grounded and gently rock forward with control.

• Start with 5 reps and build towards 10
• Hold each rep for around 3 seconds
• Final rep: hold for up to 30 seconds

2. Straight-leg hip hinge

Keep your feet grounded and slowly push your hips back. Adding load helps develop strength and control through a lengthened posterior-chain position.

• Start with 5 controlled reps
• Build towards 10

3. Overhead squat hold

This trains your ankles, hips and active overhead range together.

Use support if needed and only squat as far as you can while keeping your heels grounded. Stay active rather than relaxing into the bottom position, and reach your arms towards your ears.

• Start with 10 seconds
• Progress towards 20–30 seconds

Remember: these aren’t 3 magical exercises that will “fix” every Downward Dog. It’s a closed-chain, multi-joint position, and different people may need to develop different capacities.

Missed Part 1? Watch “Why don’t my heels reach the floor in Downward Dog?” for the biomechanics behind this.

And yes — the standing poses video is still coming next! 😂❤️

Save this one for your next mobility session.

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Just a little thank you. ❤️

In March 2026, Emma Forever Yoga was ranked the 4th fastest-growing Instagram account in Australia, gaining more than 137,000 followers in one month. 🤯

It all happened so quickly that I don’t think I ever really stopped to process it — or properly say thank you.

So, thank you for following, subscribing, commenting, sharing, asking questions and being part of this little community. I’m incredibly grateful you’re here.

And please keep telling me what you’d like to learn. I’m listening. ❤️

Emma x

Why can’t I get my heels to the floor in Downward Facing Dog?

I went down a bit of a biomechanics rabbit hole with this question — because the obvious answer is usually tight calves, tight hamstrings or limited ankle mobility.

And yes, all of those can matter.

But Downward Facing Dog gets much more interesting when you stop looking at the ankle in isolation.

Your hands and feet are supported by the floor while multiple joints contribute to the shape you create.

At the ankle, the tibia moves relative to the planted foot as you move into dorsiflexion.

At the other end of the leg, your hamstrings cross both the hip and knee. Bend your knees and you change their length and the mechanical demands at the hip — which can change how you organise your pelvis and trunk.

Your shoulders and trunk are part of the equation too.

In other words: change one part of the system, and you can change the demands elsewhere.

Which is why I love the simple experiment in this Reel.

Bend your knees in Downward Dog.

You haven’t suddenly gained ankle mobility. You haven’t suddenly made your hamstrings more flexible. But the entire position can change.

Your heels being off the floor tells us what your Downward Dog looks like. It doesn’t necessarily tell us why.

And that’s also why I think foundational yoga poses deserve much more credit. Warrior I, Triangle and Pyramid give us different opportunities to practise the range of motion, strength, balance and control that more complex positions ask us to coordinate.

Sometimes improving a pose isn’t simply about stretching harder.

It’s about giving your body more options.

References
Polsgrove et al. (2016). Impact of 10-weeks of yoga practice on flexibility and balance of college athletes. International Journal of Yoga.
Chen (2009). A Biomechanical Analysis to Yoga Asana’s Downward Facing Dog Pose. National Taiwan Normal University.
Neumann (2024). Kinesiology of the Musculoskeletal System, 4th ed. Elsevier.

Why do your knees hurt your arms in Bakasana?

For a lot of people, it isn’t just about “toughening up.” It often comes down to how you’re supporting your body.

Compression strength is one important piece of the puzzle. Your hip flexors help draw your knees toward your chest, your abdominals help maintain spinal flexion (a rounded spine), and muscles like the serratus anterior help stabilise the shoulder blade against the rib cage while you push the floor away. Together, these muscles help create a stronger, more compact position that can reduce how much pressure you feel through your arms.

That doesn’t mean compression is the only thing you need for Bakasana. Wrist tolerance, shoulder strength, balance, hand pressure, confidence leaning forwards, and technique all play important roles too. This reel focuses on one piece of a much bigger system.

If you’d like to practise these exercises, I’ve put together a full Bakasana class over on my YouTube channel where we work through the slider tuck and plenty of other drills together.

I’d love to see you there. 😊

You know when you think you’re about to have a simple day… and then Bakasana turns into a biomechanics problem? 😂

This one became a bit of an adventure — and a journey of discovery. My imagination may have gone slightly wild while I was researching how forces move through the body, and how all these different parts work together to keep us balanced against gravity.

The deeper I went into the research, the harder it became to describe this pose as simply a question of strength, balance or technique.

Because those things aren’t really operating independently.

Your hands create the base you’re balancing over. Your body position changes where your mass sits relative to that base. Your joints change position, moment arms change, muscular demands change — and your nervous system has to coordinate the whole thing.

Which means two people can struggle with exactly the same pose for completely different reasons.

So rather than asking:

“Why can’t I do Bakasana?”

Try asking:

“Where does my Bakasana actually break down?”

Can you shift your weight forward comfortably?
Can you get your feet off the floor?
Can you create enough compression to bring your knees high?
Can you maintain the shape once you’re there?
Do your wrists have the mobility and capacity to tolerate the position?

Find the piece that’s limiting the movement.

That’s the part I’m most interested in — because once you can identify where the system is failing, you have a much better idea of what you actually need to train.

I’ve also put together a free Bakasana class on YouTube where we’ll spend around 20–30 minutes training these pieces individually and then putting them back together.

Same pose. Different sticking points. Different solutions.

Research informing this video:
Neumann, Kinesiology of the Musculoskeletal System
Biomechanical analyses of the handstand: a systematic review (2025)
Research examining balance-control strategies in hand balancing

Instagram Caption

Every movement you make starts with a conversation.

In this reel we’re only looking at a single neuron. One tiny cell making one tiny decision: Should I fire or not?

But that tiny decision is happening over and over again, across billions of neurons, every time you move.

Every step.
Every squat.
Every arm balance.
Every deep forward fold.

For me, understanding the nervous system completely changed the way I think about flexibility, strength and movement.

The goal of this series isn’t to overwhelm you with anatomy—it’s to translate it into something that actually makes sense.

Because once you understand the language your body has been speaking all along, movement starts to look very different.

And this is only the beginning.

References
• Enoka, R. M. Neuromechanics of Human Movement (6th Edition).

What part surprised you the most? 👇

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