emma_forever_yoga

emma_forever_yoga Movement rooted in clarity, anatomy, and lived experience. I help people build strength, flexibility, and skill by understanding how their body actually works.
(5)

07/09/2026

Never underestimate the power of your standing poses. 🧘‍♀️

Mobility drills and weight training can absolutely contribute to improving your Downward Facing Dog — and I’m a big believer in integrating different movement modalities.

But don’t underestimate what your yoga practice is already doing.

Standing poses can challenge many of the same physical qualities you need in Downward Dog — including hamstring flexibility, hip flexion, ankle dorsiflexion, strength and control.

In one study, male college athletes added yoga twice a week for 10 weeks and improved measures of flexibility and balance. Researchers also measured changes in joint angles during yoga poses, including lunges and Downward Dog.

And standing poses aren’t just about mobility. Biomechanical research shows substantial muscular demands through the lower body in poses such as Chair, Warrior II and Warrior III.

That’s one of the beautiful things about yoga: the poses can complement each other.

And yoga isn’t just flexibility. Next up: why I think athletes and bodybuilders can benefit from yoga. 👀



Research:
Polsgrove et al. (2016) — Yoga practice, flexibility & balance in college athletes
Liu et al. (2021) — Standing yoga: lower-limb biomechanical analysis

02/09/2026

Getting deeper into a forward fold doesn’t always mean pushing harder into the pose.

Practising the forward fold itself can absolutely help — but if you’re struggling to find the hip hinge or pelvic movement you need, sometimes changing the position you train from can make that range much more accessible.

Starting from standing gives you another way to practise the movement, build control through your available range, and progressively work on your hamstring flexibility and mobility before taking it back to the floor.

If you want to work on your hamstrings further, I also have a hamstring flexibility practice on my YouTube channel.

YouTube link is in my bio 🤍

31/08/2026

I’ve never fully understood where the idea that yoga is “just stretching” came from.

Yoga certainly isn’t a replacement for resistance training, and different forms of training produce different adaptations. But yoga still asks your muscles to produce force.

Depending on the movement, you’ll find isometric, concentric and eccentric muscle actions throughout a yoga practice. In standing poses, for example, your muscles are producing force to support and control your body against gravity.

And isometric exercise is a recognised form of strength training — the muscle produces force without changing joint position.

So the more interesting question isn’t “yoga or weights?”

It’s: what qualities does each train, and how can they complement each other?

References:
Liu et al., 2021
Ghayomzadeh et al., 2025

I think we sometimes make exercise far more tribal than the human body actually is.Yoga vs weights. Strength vs flexibil...
29/08/2026

I think we sometimes make exercise far more tribal than the human body actually is.

Yoga vs weights. Strength vs flexibility. Mobility vs yoga.

But your body doesn’t know what we’ve decided to call an exercise. It responds to the task you’re asking it to solve.

The more I’ve studied kinesiology, biomechanics and neuromechanics, the more I’ve realised just how much different forms of training actually overlap.

Yoga can involve isometric, eccentric and concentric muscle actions. We produce force, resist gravity, control our body weight, move through different joint positions and develop mobility at the same time.

Resistance training uses many of those same principles but gives us the enormous advantage of being able to progressively add external load.

They’re not opposing systems. They’re different ways of applying training stimuli to the same human body.

Years ago, I trained an extremely strong powerlifter who could lift well over 200 kg. I put him into Extended Side Angle and eventually he had to stop.

Not because he wasn’t strong. He was exceptionally strong.

I was simply asking his body to solve a movement problem it wasn’t accustomed to.

I saw versions of this constantly when I was teaching: strong, athletic people shaking and sweating through yoga poses. And it always made me question the claim that yoga was “just stretching.”

That’s why I found the study in this post so interesting.

Eight months of Ashtanga yoga was associated with an 11.4% increase in 1RM leg-press strength.

One study certainly doesn’t mean yoga is the best way to improve your leg press, nor does yoga replace resistance training.

But it adds to a much more interesting conversation about what yoga is actually training.

And perhaps the better question isn’t:

“Does yoga build strength?”

Maybe it’s:

“What kinds of strength and movement qualities does yoga develop and how might they complement the rest of our training?”

I think yoga deserves a little more credit than “just stretching.”

More on this soon. 👀

17/08/2026

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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15/08/2026

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

10/08/2026

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.

03/08/2026

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. 😊

Hi everyone! Just a quick heads-up that I’m currently having some issues with Facebook Messenger.For some reason, my key...
29/07/2026

Hi everyone! Just a quick heads-up that I’m currently having some issues with Facebook Messenger.

For some reason, my keyboard won’t appear when I open messages, so while I can see your messages and even react to them, I can’t actually type a reply at the moment.

I’m trying to get it sorted as soon as I can. If you’ve sent me a message and I haven’t replied, please know I’m not ignoring you—it’s just a technical issue.

Thanks so much for your patience! 😊

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