Build Strength for Chaturanga With These Four Progressive Poses

Chaturanga dandasana, or “four-limbed staff pose,” is a common presence in many modern yoga classes. A pillar of the Ashtanga, power, and vinyasa practices, among others, it can also be one of the most challenging yoga postures.

Whether you love it or hate it, it’s hard to deny that chaturanga is complex and requires lots of strength and mobility. And, specifically, it requires adaptation in the upper-body tissues to be able to sustain the load of body weight. That’s why it can be especially challenging for students who are not accustomed to bearing weight in their arms.

But what may be the most challenging aspect of chaturanga is that it’s not particularly easy to modify effectively. This is where progressive overload comes in.

What Is Progressive Overload?

Progressive overload is a concept in exercise science of systematically and progressively adding more and more load to your tissues so that they are then able to withstand more load. The term load describes physical stresses or forces exerted on the body or anatomical structures within the body.

Unlike a suspension bridge, for example, the human body is alive. If you load a suspension bridge past its maximum weight-carrying capacity, it will break. However, if you load your own body with gradual increases and lots of patience, you will not break, but instead, your tissues will eventually adapt so your body can bear more load.

Of course, bodies do have breaking points, which is when injury occurs. But if you follow the principles of progressive overload and respect your body’s limits, you can train your tissues to grow and adapt to the demands that you wish to place on them.

The Right Amount of Stress

Progressive overload exists on a continuum. On one end of the spectrum, there is overloading too quickly with high forces. This can lead to distress and may cause injury. On the opposite side of the continuum, there is underloading with low forces. This can also lead to distress and can likewise cause injury. 

But in the middle lives eustress. Eustress is just the right amount of stress as to be perfectly beneficial. The continuum is constantly changing as our bodies adjust and adapt to the various stresses that are repetitively placed on them. 

Through the principles of progressive overload, we can healthily, steadily, and safely challenge our tissues to adapt to new stresses, such as in chaturanga dandasana—so that we can always linger in the “safe zone” of eustress—even as our tissues are constantly changing.

Build Strength for Chaturanga With This Progressive Overload Sequence

This progression is designed to build strength in your upper body to skillfully overload your tissues to prepare for chaturanga. Progress to the next posture only when you feel that the pose is no longer challenging your tissues’ capacity to bear load. This could take two days or two years. Whatever the time frame, enjoy the journey. 

1. Wall Chaturanga

This variation of chaturanga applies minimal load to your arms and shoulders, so it's a great place to start to build up tissue capacity to maintain load. 

To practice:

• Start facing a wall about an arm’s length away from it.

• Plant your hands on the wall roughly shoulder width apart at about shoulder height. You can also start with your hands higher on the wall (as shown), and then progress from there if and when you're ready to by lowering your hands, lifting your heels or walking your feet farther from the wall, all of which will increase the load. Spread your fingers evenly and root down into the perimeter of your palms. Gently grip the wall with your fingertips.

• Activate your core by three dimensionally hugging the musculature of your abdomen toward your spine.

• Take a deep inhale and create global tension in your body by rooting your feet into the floor roughly hip distance apart, hugging your legs into the midline of your body, and lengthening your spine to create a stable wall plank position.

• As you exhale, bend your elbows straight back and lower to a point where you still feel strong enough to straighten your arms again while maintaining global tension in your body and without arching your back. 

• As you inhale, press the wall away from you and straighten your arms to return back to a wall plank shape.

• Repeat until just before you fatigue.

2. Half-Plank Chaturanga

Once you feel comfortable with bearing some load in your upper body, you can progress to the floor to add a bit more load compounded with the downward force of gravity.

To practice:

• Start in a neutral plank pose with your hands roughly shoulder width apart and your fingers spread evenly. 

• Lower your knees to the floor and activate your core by cinching in around your waistline. 

• Inhale and create a long line of tension from your pelvis to the crown of your head and establish global tension along that line.

• As you exhale, lean your weight slightly forward and bend your elbows straight back. Lower to a point where you feel strong enough to press the floor away and rise back up while maintaining a long spine and global tension throughout your muscular system.

• As you inhale, root into your hands to rise back up to your knees-down plank shape.

• Repeat until just before the point of fatigue.

Variations: If you’re feeling too much weight in your hands, you can place them on blocks to send more weight into your lower body. If you’d like to add more load to this shape, you can bend your knees even deeper to lift your feet off the floor.

3. Single-Leg Chaturanga

When you feel ready, you can increase the load in your upper body by lifting one knee off the floor and/or drawing one heel in toward your seat. 

To practice:

• Start in a neutral plank pose with your hands roughly shoulder width apart and your fingers spread evenly. 

• Lower your right knee to the floor and either lower your left knee as well or keep your left leg extended for a more challenging variation, reaching back through your left heel and resisting your legs toward each other. You can also draw your right heel in toward your right sitting bone.

• Activate your core by cinching in around your waistline. 

• Inhale and create a long line of tension from your left heel and right knee to the crown of your head and establish global tension along that line.

• As you exhale, lean your weight slightly forward and bend your elbows straight back. Lower to a point where you feel strong enough to press the floor away and rise back up while maintaining a long spine and global tension throughout your muscular system.

• As you inhale, root into your hands to rise back up to your modified plank shape.

• Switch legs.

• Repeat until just before the point of fatigue.

Variations: To take some load off your hands, you can place them on blocks, which will send more weight into your lower body. 

4. Elevated Chaturanga

Elevating your hands onto blocks helps to shift weight into your lower body, which is more able to bear heavy loads. After all, your legs carry your body weight around daily. 

This variation will help to lessen the load on your arms, shoulders, and chest while still using specificity training (since it is the same exact shape as chaturanga).

To practice:

• Set up two blocks on their highest setting at the top of your mat roughly shoulder width apart.

• Place your hands on the blocks and walk your feet toward the back of your mat to come into plank pose.

• Activate your core by hugging in around your center, and activate your legs by reaching back through your heels and hugging in toward your midline.

• Press firmly into your blocks and, ever so slightly, draw your shoulder blades apart to help stabilize your shoulder girdle.

• Inhale and lean your weight forward slightly as you roll toward the tips of your toes and draw your shoulders slightly forward of your wrist creases.

• Exhale and bend your elbows straight back to lower to the point where you still feel strong enough to rise back up without arching your back.

• Inhale and root into your hands to rise back up to your plank shape.

• Repeat until just before the point of fatigue.

Variations: As you progress, you can lower the height of your blocks to increase the load on your upper body. Eventually, you may wish to remove the blocks altogether. 

Safely Create Tissue Adaptation With Progressive Overload 

Once your tissues have adapted to bearing load in your arms, shoulders, chest, and beyond, you’re probably ready to practice traditional chaturanga. Once you feel completely comfortable there, you can play with increasing the forces even more by adding acceleration into the equation (like in a jump back) if you wish.

Progressive overload allows you to safely increase the load-bearing capacity in your body. Just as you would gradually add heavier dumbbells in a bicep curl as you gained strength in the gym, you also need to gradually increase weight in your yoga practice.

So if you or your students are new to weight-bearing in the arms, rather than throwing yourself or your students straight into the deep end, progressively overload your tissues in a methodical manner to build resilience and strength that can sustain you in your practice for a long time to come.

After all, we need eustress for our tissues to thrive. We need that magical amount of stress that isn’t too much and isn’t too little to keep our bodies healthy. And progressive overload allows us to give our bodies just that: the perfect amount of beneficial stress.