How Much Can I Change My Hip And Shoulder Rotation In Yoga?

Transcript of: How much can I change my hip and shoulder rotation in yoga?

Let’s settle one of the most frustrating questions in yoga. If your hip or shoulder doesn’t rotate much, can you change that in yoga? Or is it literally your bone structure? This comes up constantly, and today’s question gets straight to the point.

The Question:

Rebecca wrote in and asked, I don’t have a lot of internal hip or shoulder rotation in yoga at the moment. How much of this can be improved with practice? How much is limited by anatomical variation? Again, this is a great question because it hits on a very common sort of fear that yoga students have. Is this something wrong with me, or is this just how I’m built? How do I know the difference between whether it’s how I’m built or if it’s muscles that I should change?

The Answer:

So let’s walk through this in a clear and practical way. First of all, human bone structure is far more similar than it is different. Of course, there are a few places where natural variation, which does exist, really does show up. Yoga makes those places more obvious. The two big ones are the hips and the shoulders.

Let’s start with the hips.

Hip rotation in yoga

Remember, the hip is a ball-and-socket joint. Both parts, the socket and the top of the thigh bone here, can vary slightly from person to person. You don’t need the deep biomechanics here, but you should know a few things. Some people have sockets that face a little bit more forward or a little bit more sideways. Some have joints that sit a little deeper or a little bit shallower, and some have thigh bones that naturally rotate a little bit more inward or outward.

Now, these differences can absolutely change how much internal or external hip rotation in yoga you get. The key point is that for a very small number of people, these variations make positions like lotus genuinely inaccessible, no matter how long they practice.  But, I’ve only met a handful in over 20 years of teaching.

The way you usually see this sort of thing coming up is through long-term patterns. If someone practices consistently for 10, 15 years, does the prep work, strengthens and opens everything, and it still feels like they’re hitting that hard bony stop, or hip rotation in yoga never changes, that’s when you start to suspect structure. But that’s not instantly. It’s not right away. Remember, most people don’t fall into this category anyhow.

Shoulder rotation in yoga

Now, the shoulder rotation in yoga is similar. But the place where bone shape matters most is not really in rotation. It’s overhead movement. It has to do with the shape of the acromion. That’s this part right here. Okay. This is, you know, you could call this like almost like the roof of the shoulder joint. So there are three different types. There’s what’s called the flat acromion. That is kind of the most open shape and gives the most amount of overhead. You’ve got a curved acromion, which is the most common. It is just a gentle downward, but still allows for normal movement. And then the third one is the hooked one, but this section on the front actually hooks down and forward.

Distinguishing shoulder versus scapula movement

This can create a very early block to raising the arm over the head, in the front, or on the side. Now, to be fair, I test this in every workshop when I have people distinguish shoulder movement from scapular movement. Because, keep in mind, when you raise your arm up to here, most people hit the acromion. Everything above this is scapular movement. But again, most people are here.

There are very few people, but they do exist, who can take their arm all the way up without using their shoulder blade. So bone structure can limit shoulder rotation in yoga, but it’s uncommon. It’s usually blocking this movement. For the vast majority of people, limited shoulder rotation in yoga comes from muscle tension, the joint capsule, maybe general connective tissue stiffness, or just a nervous system that hasn’t been taught to go there yet. And those things can improve slowly, safely, and over time.

There are some other factors there, but we should always assume it’s muscle tissue first until we find out otherwise. So what you want to do is not chase the extremes anyway and overstretch the ligaments. Right? Because the ligaments give the joint stability. If you overstretch them, you can destabilize the joint.

Okay. Now there’s a somewhat practical way to tell if your end range feels like a hard, abrupt stop, like something is physically blocking motion that might be bone. Okay? It’s a different feeling, like it can’t be adjusted further, right? If it feels like a gradual resistance or it can be adjusted a little bit further, then chances are you’re getting into the tension of soft tissue of one form or another. And typically, soft tissue can, of course, adapt.

Either way, nothing is wrong. It simply means your practice needs to work with your structure, not against it. So in closing, if you’ve got a question, you want me to break it down in one of these deep dives, go to yoganatomy.com/my question. Send it in.