Have yoga teachers misled you?

Has your yoga teacher ever told you that flexing your ankle in pigeon pose will protect your knee? Becoming a yoga teacher we often inherit cues and practices that our instructors assure us are important. One positive outcome of this is that some of their expertise is passed on to the next generation of teachers. Unfortunately, it also means that many of these cues and practices go unexamined, are misunderstood, or linger past the point that science finds them to be unfounded.

Flexing the ankle in pigeon pose to protect the knee is one such cue and it's time to put it under scrutiny. Is it nonsense or is there something to it?

How to protect your joints?

As a general rule of thumb, engaging the muscles that cross a joint is a good way to stabilize and protect it. Imagine you are driving a car with manual transmission down a hill. To control your speed you can either hold down the breaks, or you can put the car into gear and control your speed with the motor. The motor is stronger than the breaks and putting the car into gear will save wear and tear on the breaks. (Apologies if you’ve never driven a car with manual transmission and this analogy was lost on you)

The same is true with your joints. To control movement at your joints you can either rely on the ligaments, cartilage and other connective tissue that hold them together, akin to relying on the breaks. Or you can control their movement by engaging the muscles that cross them, akin to using the motor. In both the case of the car and the joints, relying on the muscles (or motor) is the option that will save wear and tear on the connective tissue (breaks).

The problem is that flexing the ankle mostly engages the tibialis anterior, a muscle that doesn’t cross the knee. So, flexing the ankle doesn’t protect the knee, at least not directly.

What about preventing rotation?

The knees are not fixed hinge joints, they can rotate. The natural tendency in pigeon pose is for the shin to rotate laterally relative to the thigh bone. But, flexing the ankle brings the edge of the foot parallel to the shin, preventing (some) rotation at the knee. This seems like the only effect ankle flexion could have on the knee in pigeon pose.

So what?

Should we be trying to prevent rotation at the knee? The answer will vary from person to person and knee to knee. If you have healthy knees it’s probably nothing to worry about. Indeed, there are several poses that require rotation at the knee, so in and of itself knee rotation is not something that needs to be avoided.

If you do have sensitive knees, pigeon pose is probably one best modified or avoided. Unless you are engaging some other muscle that crosses the joint, the weight of your upper body is still putting stress on your knee in a direction that may aggravate it, regardless of whether or not you are flexing the ankle. That is, flexing the ankle might prevent rotation, but doesn’t alleviate the mechanical pressure that causes rotation. 

Final verdict?

Flexing the ankle to protect the knee is mostly nonsense. If you have healthy knees you probably don’t need to worry about it, if you are taking extra care of your knees there are better ways to stretch the hips. Watch the videos for some suggestions on how to modify this pose or sign up for a free consultation and we can figure it out together.