How Do Long Femurs in Yoga Effect Handstands and Jump Throughs?

Transcript Below Of: How to Work with Long Femurs in Yoga

Hi everybody! Welcome to this month’s question of the month. As you know I take a question in from the website and I answer it on film just like this. If you want to submit your own question, go to yoganatomy.com/myquestion

The Question:

So this question comes from Stretch Cunningham. His question relates to working with long femurs in yoga. He asks: “How do long femurs in relation to body height affect handstands and jump throughs? More generally, which postures are easier for someone with this body type and which postures are harder?”

The Answer:

Well, first, remember that when we say long femurs in yoga, we’re saying long femurs in relationship to the rest of the body proportions. Like, is it long femurs relative to a short torso or are torso height, femur length, and arm length all relatively proportionate? That’s what ends up mattering more than anything.

Your specific question was about handstands and jump throughs. You didn’t say all of this, but long femurs usually imply somebody who is particularly tall and well your name is “Stretch” Cunningham, so I’m going to guess you’re a tall person. It is a little bit trickier in handstands for people with long bodies to control the core of the body while being upside down. But, having said that, I know people who are really long and tall and stretch kind of people who can do handstands, so it’s not an impediment, that’s for sure.

Getting more specific with the jump throughs, of course if you’ve got long femurs in yoga transitions like this, they’ve got to be tucked in tighter. Again, it also depends on the arm length. If you had short arm length, long torso, and long femurs in yoga, you know, that’s tricky to work with.

In general, going back to your next question, which is, which postures are easier and harder, I think the most common thing that I see is people with long femurs have a much easier time binding around a knee that’s sitting higher when you’re sitting on the floor. Of course arm length and shoulder mobility also have an impact on that. And, which ones are harder? I don’t find generally postures being harder with longer femurs in yoga. The only place it shows up is where you asked, in the first question, which is relative to jump throughs. And again, you want to look at that relative to the rest of the body.

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See you next month!