Yoga for Toned Legs and Strong Back, 20 Min Standing Yoga for Leg Strength

Hey guys, welcome. Before we get started, I did want to remind you, if you haven't seen my last video, that I am pregnant. So my belly is getting a little bit bigger. So just FYI, as we move forward with this sequence. So for today, guys, we're gonna be doing yoga for toned legs and strong back. And we're gonna spend a lot of time on some of my favorite standing poses. Some benefits of this class are gonna be strengthening and toning the legs and also just doing things that really support the back in a really healthy way. So let's go ahead and get started. If you don't have time to watch this video right now, go ahead and save to your watch later and just do it whenever you get a chance. So guys, let's go ahead and start in Tadasana. So big toes, start over with that description. So starting with our feet nearly touching, I like to have about half an inch in between my feet. And spread your toes wide, rooting down through your feet, through the four points of your foot. So the outer edges of your heels and below the big toe and little toe. Really remember those four points of your feet as we move through our practice today. And just really rooting down and feeling that strength in your thighs. Tuck in your tailbone in, go ahead and roll your shoulders back, nice long spine. Just feeling strong and steady like a mountain. And go ahead and bring your arms overhead, feeling that length in the spine. Really reach through your fingertips. Go ahead and tuck the tailbone in and draw the shoulder blades in, opening up the heart and the chest. And forward fold, nice and slow. So go ahead and just ease yourself down. You can bend your knees a little bit if it feels like too much and go ahead and just grab hold of your ankles or any part of your leg. And a few breaths here, just warming up before we really get into the meat of our lesson. And letting the shoulders relax away from the ears. Relax your face. And pressing through the feet, go ahead and bring the arms overhead. And bring the palms to center. Go ahead and just close your eyes for a moment and feeling rooted through your feet, feeling a nice open heart and chest. Go ahead and just take a moment and really set your intention for this practice. It can be just to honor yourself more or to cultivate more inner strength, whatever you need, just keep it simple. Take a moment. And go ahead and just bring your arms overhead. You can open your eyes. And forward fold one more time. Nice and slow, keeping that spine long, go ahead and grab hold of your ankles or your calves. Moving a little bit deeper, really sinking down through your feet, through the four points of your feet. Relax your shoulders away from your ears. And I'd like you to just sink your hips down, moving right into chair. Bring your palms in front of you and really sinking down through your feet. Nice long spine and make sure that your knees are not moving too far past your ankles, definitely not past your toes. Nice strong thighs here. Few breaths. And forward fold. Go ahead and keep that strength in your thighs, but a little bit deeper stretch for the hamstrings this time. Letting that heat build. And chair, go ahead and just sink those hips down a little bit more if you can. Bring the palms to center. Rolling those shoulders back, long spine, and just really embracing that challenge. Feeling the strength of your thighs, feeling everything fire up. And relax your shoulders, relax your face. And forward fold one more time. Go ahead and grab hold of your ankles. Deep forward fold. See if you can sink into your feet a little bit more and bring your chest towards your legs a little bit more. Rolling the shoulders back. And go ahead and press through your feet. Go ahead and bring those arms overhead. Long spine, really reach. And tucking the tailbone in, lift through the chest. And go ahead and come back to center. And let's go ahead and I'm gonna turn around so that I can, this is just better for you guys to see what's going on. All right guys, so go ahead and separate your feet about hip distance apart. And we're gonna sink into, we're gonna start with our standing asana sequence. This is a great sequence for toning the legs especially. So just rooting down through the feet, we're gonna sink into a chair, a more complete chair. So go ahead and just keep your hands on your knees for now. Make sure that they're nice and safe behind your toes. Sinking down through your feet. You might feel like you're gonna fall back. Really press through those two points in the front of your feet, palms together. And actually go ahead and just bring your arms overhead. So really drawing your shoulder blades in and sinking down through your feet. Relax your face and come on up, palms to center. And we're really just warming up our legs here and starting to engage our arms a little bit more. And one more time, go ahead and just sink down through your hips and see if you can sink down a little bit more and open your chest a little bit more. So drawing the shoulder blades in. I have a really tight upper back so this is something that I kind of struggle with. I know I need to do it. Drawing the shoulder blades in, a few more breaths and press through the feet. And go ahead and just rest your hands on your hips for now. So to find success in your warrior poses, you really need to engage those thighs quite a bit and chair is just a great teacher for that. So we're gonna go ahead and move into triangle. Go ahead and separate your feet. I really like using the edge of my mat. I'm a little bit OCD, so I like to be like perfectly aligned as much of the time as I can. Don't worry about it if you're not as OCD as me, but you can use the mat. So to know your distance, you want your wrists over your ankles more or less for most standing poses, but every body is different, so it might be a little different depending on who you are. So moving right into triangle, go ahead and you can keep your hands on your hips, pivot that back foot and go ahead and line your forward foot, the heel of your forward foot with your back arch. And with triangle, you wanna keep the sides of your body really long. Go ahead and bring your arms out, reach through your fingertips and really keep that right side of your body nice and long. Go ahead and press through your feet and really reach through your fingertips and you can drop your hand on that leg. Go ahead and bring the left arm overhead and the challenge here is to keep that left torso long, really rooting down through your feet and really reach through those left fingertips. Relax your head, gazing overhead if you can. A few breaths here. Great stretch for the left hip and the back and press through that back heel, come on out and moving to the opposite side, go ahead and pivot. And with triangle, this is one position where you really wanna make sure that you have a nice, healthy angle on that back foot or you can hurt that knee. So nice, healthy angle, keeping the side of the left torso long. Go ahead and reach and you can drop. If you're feeling stiff, this hand can be up the leg as much as you need it to be, just so long as you're really trying to keep that left torso nice and long as you slide the hand down. Sometimes what I see is people will, in an effort to go as low as possible, they'll collapse forward and that's really not very healthy or helpful. So really reach through those right fingertips, breathe, a few more breaths here and press through that back heel, come on out and let's go ahead and just step the feet together and just a little break here. You can grab a drink of water if you need to and I'm just gonna shake out my legs a little and not taking too long. So we're gonna start working our way into the different Varipadrasana poses. There's one, two and three and we're gonna go ahead and move into our first warrior. Go ahead and separate your feet to start about the same distance as triangle and I really like to do triangle before I do warriors just because it kinda helps me to get in touch with my balance. I really like this sequence. So go ahead and for warrior one, you're gonna need to pivot your back foot about twice as much as triangle. So you're actually gonna face your hips forward. So you wanna pivot your forward foot and so your hips are facing forward. So getting the proper alignment with your legs can be a little tricky here. So we're just gonna take this into parts. So keeping the hands on the hips, go ahead and bend that forward knee and I already know that I need to go a lot wider. So just kind of explore. You wanna form a 90 degree angle with your forward leg as much as you can and just exploring right now. Go ahead and drop down and hold this time. So it's all right if your back heel pops up a little bit but just really making an effort to sink down through that back heel, at least move it towards the floor and really sink down through those hips and come on up. So we know that we have about the right distance for our opposite side. So without changing anything, go ahead and just pivot and this side is gonna be easier. We're already in proper position. So go ahead and just really take your time warming up and I need to pivot my back foot a little more. Another reason that I do this is to make sure that my knee tracks right in line with my foot. It's not moving in or out. So pressing through the four points of that forward foot, really making an effort to form that 90 degree angle. Feeling that left leg fire, fire up and breathe a few more breaths here and come on out and opposite side, moving right into full warrior. Go ahead and make sure that you have a nice exaggerated angle on that back foot and we're gonna start with the legs. Go ahead and sink your hips down and forming as much of a 90 degree angle as you can. You can bring your palms to center. Finally, you can bring your arms overhead and sink down a little bit more, attempting to really keep that forward position of the hips and breathe. You can look up if you wanna practice your balance a little more and like two more breaths and coming out and let's pivot to the opposite side. So starting with the legs, make sure that you feel nice and solid through your feet before trying to move any further and palms to center. You can bring your arms overhead. Rooting down through your feet, really reach through those fingertips and gaze towards the ceiling. Sink down a little more and come on out. Go ahead and let's take a little break. Your feet. And I really like to shake out my legs in between this warrior sequence because it is a little more challenging for the knees. All right, guys, not taking too long. Let's go ahead and head into warrior two. This is my favorite warrior. So go ahead and pivot those feet to the right. You should be starting to feel very awake in your legs and really starting to sense that proper alignment with these warriors. So less of an angle on that back foot for warrior two and go ahead and just keep the size of your torso long and let's just warm up a little bit. 90 degree angle if you can and you really don't want your knee moving too far past your ankle. So just make sure that your knee feels nice and supported as we hold and go ahead and bring your arms overhead. Gazing out over those right fingertips. Sometimes I'll see this. So really make sure that your right and left torso are nice and long and even and just let your face be soft. Go ahead and sink down a little more. Just a few more breaths here and moving right into the opposite side. Go ahead and pivot to the left. This is another position where you need to make sure you have that angle on the back foot or it puts a weird pull on your knee. So go ahead and sink down and just warming up, making sure that knee is tracking right in line with the ankle and go ahead and bring those arms up and gazing over the left fingertips. Really reach through your fingertips, no floppy hands. Sink down a little bit more and breathe. Feeling strong and capable like a warrior with that softness in your face and spirit at the same time and come on up and you should definitely be starting to feel it in your legs right now. You can walk your feet together and just shake it out and we are gonna end with warrior three. So even for the most advanced yoga practitioner, this is challenging. So it's definitely fun to explore. It's fun doing at a wall too if you're new to it but we're just gonna do it freestanding today. So we're gonna take this in stages. So I want you to first go and transfer your weight to your left foot and I want you to just keep your spine nice and long, feel that strength in your thigh as you start to bring that right leg back and it's all right if you lose your balance. We're just playing right now, just exploring and go ahead and just bring that right leg up as much as you can and we're just gonna do this a few times, really feeling our center of gravity kind of shift and getting comfortable with that. There's a soft bend in my left knee. I'm not locking my knee at all. Let's do the same thing with the right foot. Go ahead and transfer your weight and the main thing that I see people do wrong here is they just try to move too fast. So really just embrace the process. That's really all yoga is at the end of the day is loving yourself throughout the process. So just explore bringing that leg up, keeping that spine long and rooting down through those four points of the feet that I mentioned at the beginning of class. This side is a lot easier for me for some reason and breathing, keeping a subtle bend in that right knee, moving right to the opposite side. So nice and slow, go ahead and bring your palms to center and we're gonna explore coming into the full position. Soft bend in that left knee. You can bring your arms overhead and you're attempting to bring your leg and your arm in parallel with the floor. This is a really fun pose to do if you wanna work on your balance and core strength. Opposite side, palms to center and notice if you're starting to berate yourself for not doing a better job or whatever and just bringing yourself back to process, to breath, to loving yourself just the way you are right now and back to Tadasana, the way that we started, rooting down through our feet. Go ahead and close your eyes and coming back to that intention that you set at the beginning of class, knowing that you've given yourself more of that, whatever it is, that is it for today's practice. If you enjoyed today's class, guys, we have an app called Yoga Plus. There's some really great content on there and you should definitely check us out. Look forward to seeing you next time. Welcome to Yoga Plus. Courses available from pupil to yogi. Sort by yoga, fitness, and instructors. Create your own routines. Access the Pose Library. Yoga Plus by Psyche Truth, available on Google Play and the App Store. Join us for 14 and 30-day programs, hour-long classes, and much more on our yoga app, Yoga Plus by Psyche Truth. It's free to download and features a variety of wellness content, including yoga, fitness, Pilates, guided meditations, and interviews with dozens of wellness experts.