What are muscle agonists and antagonists? Here's a short video and review with a little help from Batman and Robin. A massage therapist named James introduced me to this superhero analogy some time ago, and I've used it to teach this topic ever since. Thanks James!

The world can be tough and stressful place that causes us to "hulk out" sometimes. If you're not familiar, the Hulk is a comic book hero who is a genius scientist that turns into a huge, monsterous rage machine when he gets overly stressed or irritated. He then goes about wreaking havoc and destroying everything in his path. Maybe that sounds familiar to you sometimes? The good news is yoga can help! Let's look at how a little yoga knowledge can soothe your inner Hulk.

We've finally made it to the third and final part of my hip opening anatomy posts! In this post, we'll take a look at how we can open the hips in the transverse (or horizontal) plane. If  you missed the sagittal and coronal planes, please check out  part I and part II of this series. Remember that the transverse plane is all about rotation, so we'll be looking at internal and external rotation of the hips.

I'm often asked how to do a simple adjustment that I use to reduce sassy hips in virabhadrasana II (warrior 2). Check out my post about sassy hips if you're not sure what I'm talking about. This is a common warrior 2 misalignment that I used to see constantly in some of my regular students. One day I thought, "Ok, this needs to change!" and just grabbed one of my students hips and twisted sassy-ness right out of them. That was the birth of the sassy hip adjustment. Over time, I've refined this adjustment a bit, so check out the video of the current version below.

Have you ever seen a hiked up back hip in Virabhadrasana II (warrior 2 pose)? I call it the "sassy hip" because it has some life and attitude. It pops up like the hips of a runway model taking a stroll down the catwalk. What's going on with these sassy hips in Virabhadrasana II? Let's take a look at the anatomy behind it.

In part I of my hip opening posts, we took a look at opening the hips in flexion and extension in the saggital plane. Remember the hips move in several directions, so let's talk about the next ways that we can "open the hips."