Above the Surface: The 3 Must-Do’s

1.) Square your hips as much as possible. Do this not by physically manipulating the torso, but by grounding through the back foot as much as possible so that your hips can relax and rotate.

2.) Do not allow Warrior 1 to become a backbend. Actively draw your belly button back toward your spine to prevent the lower back from bending.

3.) When you lift the arms overhead, lengthen equally from both sides of your neck and do not allow the shoulders to creep up anywhere near your ears.

Under the Surface

Warrior 1 is one of the most, if not the most, difficult standing pose.  Personally, I recommend you learn Warrior 2 before this one.

Front Foot

Like all other standing poses, you must ground through your front foot correctly.  Push the rectangular portion of the foot down and lift the triangular portion of the foot up. It’s really important to not allow the inner arch to flatten into the floor.

Also, when doing poses that resemble a lunge, make sure you don’t put excessive weight in the ankle. Counter this by lifting your inner ankle bone up and out and lifting your outer ankle bone up and in. This will provide added stability to the foot.

Your front heel should be lined up to the back heel. Heel-to-heel alignment.

Back Foot

Your back foot should be turned in approximately 45 degrees. Or as I like to say, turn your back foot in until its facing 10 on the clock.

Push the edge of the foot and do not allow it to lift off the ground. Allowing the edge of the foot to lift will encourage your body weight to be held in the knee rather than the foot, that opens you up to a potential injury.

Front Leg

The front leg is another really tricky aspect of Warrior 1.  Compared to poses in which the hips are externally rotated (think Warrior 2 and Extended Side Angle) it is much more difficult to safely lunge deep into the front leg.

Lunging too deeply into the leg will cause your lower back to start to bend and naturally your stomach to disengage. Though eventually, your thigh bone and your shin bone will create a 45 degree angle.

Back Leg

The back leg takes some work. If you have a hard time with the back leg and foot, start with Crescent Pose.

If you can get the foot down firmly, work on the proper engagement of the leg muscles.  The trick here is to get your back leg so fired up that your hip and relax and rotate into a naturally square position.

What should you feel?

A majority of the proper leg engagement comes from your thigh.  You should feel the inner thigh wrapping forward and slightly down.  You do this to encourage proper grounding of the back foot.

In addition, learning to engage muscles properly helps to support your joints, in this case the knee and the hip.

Also, if you can, attempt to lift your quadriceps up toward your hip.  This will provide a solid yet light feeling of the back foot.  Think Lego pieces here, once two pieces are stuck together, there is no need to push them together even more.

Hips

The hips are what makes Warrior 1 difficult.  You will probably never be able to fully square yours hips, but you always want to work with that intention.

Watch out for This: The Left Hip

In an attempt to square the hips, students will often times physically try to rotate their torsos to get the hips in place.  You don’t want to do this.  Rather, focus more on really engaging the muscles in the back leg and grounding properly through the foot.  Over time, this will get the hip in proper position.

You also have to understand that moving the hips takes a certain degree of flexibility that you might not have, yet.  Be patient on this one.

Torso

The most difficult part of the torso is keeping your core engaged and not allowing the lower back to bend.  If you are flexible, it can feel natural to bend the back.  You will be supported much more by keeping all of your core muscles engaged to actively support the rest of the body.

Try to avoid allowing your rib cage to stick out, especially your two bottom ribs, known as the floating ribs (only two ribs not attached to the sternum).  Think about streamlining your torso. Imagine pulling the front and back of your body together.

In your back, you do not want your shoulders blades to squeeze together and pull you into a backbend. Think about keeping your shoulders blades spread naturally wide and engaged enough to support the arms.  The primary goal of your back muscles and shoulder blades is to support your arms and shoulders.  The shoulders should stay away from the ears at all times.

Why is allowing your shoulders to lift up to your ears necessarily a bad thing?

Simply lifting your shoulders is not a bad thing.  However, it becomes more apparent why when you work on arm balances.  Distinguish the difference between lifting and clenching your shoulders.  Normally, when your shoulders lift, they are clenching as well.  Clenching the shoulders tends to disengage your core muscles.

Instead of using your core to hold yourself in poses, you begin to train yourself to use your shoulders and traps.  This is referred to as “muscling” poses.

Shoulders & Arms

In this pose, you lift the arms straight up into the air while at the same time keeping your shoulders down.

A couple of things here.  One, rotate your biceps out slightly, this will encourage the spreading of your shoulder blades and back muscles.  Two, if you have the mobility, spin your palms in so that they face one another.  The pinky sides of your hands should be facing forward.

Neck & Head

Lengthen both sides of the neck equally and take your gaze straight forward.

Master the Feel: Homework Questions

1.) What do you feel in your back leg if you allow the back heel to lift off the floor?

2.) How does the torso change if you try to rotate the back hip without engaging the muscles in the back leg at all?

3.) Enter Warrior 1 by starting with the front leg straight, then slowly bend your front leg until you come into the pose.  How does the feel of the pose change as the front leg bends more?

4.) What muscles do you feel engage if you try and rotate your palms all the way back (so your palms are facing behind you)?