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The transition of stepping forward from Downward-Facing Dog to the front of the mat is something that I see students struggle with when I teach in person and I hear their frustration in online comments. Although many teachers cue it as if it was the easiest thing in the world, it’s a challenging transition. And in a vinyasa yoga class, there’s usually not enough time to educate people on how to do it.
What tends to happen for a lot of us is the leg will go up and then something seems to block the knee and the leg from making their way forward. There might be a lot of reasons for that and you may be able to work through some of them. I often observe students grab hold of their ankle to help step it forward and that’s certainly an option. There are also other ways to move from the back of the mat to the front.
There are also strengthening exercises that may help you learn how to step through from Down Dog. Namely, exercises that strengthen the hip flexors and core.
How to Step Through From Downward Dog
In case you’re not certain what it means to step through, more often than not, it happens when you’re practicing vinyasa and need to transition to the front of the mat from Downward-Facing Dog. As you lift a leg in Three-Legged Dog, bring your hips as high as they’ll go. As you exhale, your lifted thigh comes toward your belly as you shift your shoulders forward over your wrists in Plank.
Try to keep your belly in contact with your thigh. If the knee lowers away from you toward the mat, you’re not going to be able to get your foot forward. So that means you need a ton of core strength.
What’s also happening is you can come onto your fingertips to make more space between your chest and the mat for your foot to step through. It’s hard to step through with the hands flat.
In terms of biomechanics and what’s actually happening in your body as you step through, you’re contracting through the abdominals as well as the hip flexors. So if you’re having a hard time with this movement, try building strength in those muscles and see if that helps. We work on this strength a lot in yoga. So over time, stepping through may become easier. The following exercises also help build this kind of strength. Try practicing 10 repetitions on each side every day.
1. Use Blocks
One thing that can make it easier to build the strength to step through is to use blocks beneath your hands. They’re going to make this so much easier for you. Start your Down Dog with your hands on blocks. You still want your palms to be shoulder width-distance apart. As you come forward, you will have a lot more room to step your foot forward.
Practice the motion of rocking your weight forward, keeping your thigh close to your chest, and then stepping through. You can play around with the height of the blocks.
2. Practice Bird Dog in Tabletop
You need quite a lot of lower belly and hip flexor strength. But if for any reason, this feels too difficult from Down Dog, there’s another way that you can work on strengthening and it’s just as effective. It’s practicing the same movement from Tabletop Pose.
So instead of being in Down Dog, you can come to hands and knees, extend one leg straight back, and work on bringing your knee toward your belly as you draw your navel toward your spine. You’re working on the exact same action as you are when you step forward from Downward-Facing Dog, which is squeezing and strengthening the hip flexors so you can pull the knee and thigh toward the chest.
As you lift your leg behind you, think of rolling your right hip down so the front of your knee and front of your toes point down to the mat and then exhale and try to tap your knee to your nose. Then inhale and take your right leg up again. Exhale and practice the same thing coming forward without letting the knee come too low. You’re always trying to touch your thigh to your belly. You can make it more challenging by reaching your opposite arm forward.
3. Practice Bird Dog in Plank
Then practice the same Bird Dog movement from Plank Pose as in Tabletop while keeping one leg lifted.
4. Practice Lifting Your Knee While Standing
I want to show you one other thing that you can do to help build strength in hip flexors and lower abdominals, and it’s done from standing position. Stand at the top of the mat with your hands on your hips leaning on one leg and pull your right knee into your chest. This action of drawing the knee toward the chest is what the hip flexors do when they contract. They allow you to pull that knee up.
So let your knee hover there for a few seconds. You’re going to feel the hip flexors start to tire. So often, what happens is, when we lift one leg, we kind of dump all of our weight into the opposite hip. You don’t want to tilt on one side more than the other. I’m just squeezing and lifting and then I’ll switch sides.
One way that you can make it even harder for yourself when you’re really working on strength, you want to try to focus on pulling your navel in and then maybe even extending your leg straight. If this isn’t an action that you’re used to doing, hip flexors might be tight without necessarily being strong. So doing things like three legged dog to lunge can be challenging, but it’s the same action of drawing in is the same thing I’m trying to do when I’m in Three-Legged Dog.
5. Practice Stepping Through From Down Dog
Keep working on it. I know it’s hard. Definitely continue to practice and play around with it but from your Downward-Facing Dog.
If this isn’t working for you, then continue to explore that same movement by starting from Tabletop Pose, using your blocks next time you’re in Down Dog, and try coming onto your fingertips as well. Then work your way to practicing the movement from standing and then from Downward Dog.
Practicing other hip flexor- and core-strengthener poses, like Boat Pose, can also be helpful as you learn this transition. But I would focus on the floor work that keeps you in the same position as when you step through from Down Dog.
