In Defense of External Rotation

Yogis of all stripes view external rotation with ambivalence at best. I've heard many lamentations about coming to yoga and being very externally rotated and how yoga saved said person from being externally rotated.

OK, jokes asides, I think lateral/external rotation is usually poorly done (in life and in yoga asana practice) and, therefore, misunderstood and under-appreciated.

But first--external rotation of what, you ask? The hip, as we know, is that juncture where the thigh and the pelvis meet. My experience tells me that we need to consider the pelvis and the thigh separately when we talk of external rotation. Usually, external or lateral rotation refers to lateral rotation of the hip as a whole. To me, this view simplifies lateral rotation and deprives the concept of its usefulness and benefits. I am not sure how else to say this, but here it goes: I think that external rotation of the thigh bone (with the greater trochanter as the fulcrum of the rotation, since it is easily accessible and a good proxy for the head of the femur in the hip socket) coupled with internal rotation (or narrowing of the front) of the pelvis (with the inguinal ligament--or your hip crease from the hip point to pubic bone--as the focus of one's attention and condensing the front of the abdominal wall to activate/lift the abdominals to support the spine from the front) is the external rotation that is under-appreciated and rarely practiced. More on this later.

External rotation goes awry when we mindlessly or unknowingly take the pelvis along with the femur for the trip away from the midline. So by external rotation of the pelvis here I mean that the lip of the ilium bone is fanned open, causing the abdominal wall to distend forward and down and the back of the pelvis to become narrow and compressed, leading to an uptight, tight-ass situation so many of us are familiar with. Here is a yoga example caused broadly by tight hips:

Tight warrior 2

Why misunderstood? I think the first misunderstanding comes from the name (and therefore our understanding) of the deep muscles that are involved in external rotation, commonly known as the deep lateral rotators. The most famous of these is the piriformis and one that many yogis are familiar with. The others are: gemellus superior, obturator internus, gemellus inferior, obturator externus and quadratus femoris. Thomas Meyer calls them the deep six, because they are under the big butt muscle (the gluteus maximus).

The Deep Six: from top down--piriformis, gemellus superior, obturatur internus, gemellus inferior, (barely visible obturatur externus) and quadratus femoris. From http://info.visiblebody.com/bid/255757/Learn-Muscle-Anatomy-Lateral-Rotators.

Secondly, for deep psychological reasons (often established in very early childhood) such as a need to control, an ingrained desire to please (in the sense of avoiding anger or disapproval from another human being), and submissiveness, many of us (yours truly has been and tends to go there when under stress and duress) habitually grip or clench these muscles, causing full lateral rotation of the hip by recruiting the glutes in the process and by virtue of where they attach: back of the greater trochanter of the thigh on one end and the back of the pelvis (sit bone and foramen)/sacrum on the other. So when contracted, these muscles would tend to bring the thigh bone and the back of the pelvis closer to each other, causing for example a tucking of the tail between the legs (fear, submission, tension) and a flat butt/low spine. Fair enough.  

What is often overlooked is that these muscles, when properly used and optimally engaged are an essential part of what makes us human in the sense that we are the only animal that is bipedal and lives with its spine in an upright position. That is, these muscles (along with the hamstrings and glutes, for example) are hip extensors (and thus helpful spine uprighters) but, most importantly, pelvis stabilizers and antagonists to the powerful hip flexors in the front, whose ingrained pull is sadly reinforced and thoroughly misused by our sitting lifestyle and poor postural and walking habits.

So, one can say that these muscles lead to a posterior/tucked tilt to the pelvis and a counternutation (flattening) of the sacrum (and they can certainly do that as I mentioned above), but one can also say they prevent an anterior tilt of the pelvis, which is all too readily created by the following stellar line-up: iliacus, psoas, pectineus, anterior adductors (front inner thighs), tensor fasciae latae, rectus femoris and sartorius. Yes, these are your hip flexors. Yes, they are a formidable force to be reckoned with. Yes, they tend to overwork. Yes, they need to be balanced by the deep six, the hamstrings, and the adductor magnus, if we want to live up to our evolutionary yearning to stand upright. Below is an image which nicely shows the hip extension and pelvic stabilization function that the deep six perform.

Left most image: piriformis, coccygeus (part of pelvic floor) and obturator internus. Second from left: obturatur externus. Top right: piriformis from the front, as if you were facing someone and could see through their skin and the contents of their pelvis. Bottom right: coccygeus and quadratus femoris. From Grundy, John Hull (1982). Human Structure and Shape.

To come back to practice, useful and beneficial external rotation comes down to learning how to separate the movement of the leg from the movement of the hip point/pelvis, which will allow for the deep six to perform their pelvic stabilization and hip extension function optimally. So, for example, in a simple seated posture, like sukhasana (easy cross legged pose), it works like this: first, with the pelvis adequately supported (i.e. hips slightly higher than knees) ground evenly and straight down through the sit bones, keeping the sit bones widening from the inside; then, turn your attention to your hip creases (or the line of connection between your hip points--ASIS--and your pubic bone; aka your bikini line): from hip point to pubic bone in that direction, firm and deepen the hip creases into the body as you lift the torso up and out of the legs from there; at the same time, release the greater trochanters of the thighs away from the sides of the pelvis and down towards the floor.

When you balance these two actions, the narrowing of the hips points in the front (what I called internal rotation of the pelvis in the beginning of this article) with the external rotation of the thigh bones, you were hopefully able to create space and release in the front groin area (psoas, pectineus, to name a couple) without clenching the butt, narrowing the sit bones and/or tucking the tailbone, none of which will bring any release anywhere (front, back, sides). You can experiment with this in many other poses like the raised leg in (supta) padangustasana A and B or (reclining) big toe pose, front leg of trikonasana, standing leg of urdhva prasarita ekapadasana (standing splits), to name a few. In all of these suggested poses, keep the deep core line of the body active by pressing through the big toe mound of the foot and the outer heel, while drawing up through the inner ankle.

You can apply the same idea in both the front and the back leg of warrior 1 (feet in two separate lanes, please, like you are on skis). In this pose, in order to create a stretch and a release in the front of the pelvis for both the front and the back leg sides, I think of both legs externally rotating, but not in the same way. The front leg and that side of the pelvis would do what I just described above. The back leg will be turned out to the degree that the back foot is turned out, which let's face it, is turned out 45-60 degrees. That is, the center of your knee cap should not be twisting to face the front of your mat, but should be in line with where toes #2 and #3 are facing, so more diagonal if you wish. With this established, turn the back hip point forward and around towards the other hip point without taking your leg with it. Then, lift from the pit of the belly to turn the torso more to the front and feel how this creates a stretch in the front of the back hip without straining the ligaments there.

So such integrated external rotation gives much needed space to the femoral triangle that I talked about in my previous post.

Further, looking at leg and pelvis rotation separately can give you a lot of feedback about your own body. For example, a leg can be internally rotated while that side of the pelvis can be fanned out (externally rotated) at the same time. Moreover, this can change based on whether the hip is in extension or flexion.

I hope this gives you food for thought and practice. I've wanted to write this article for a long time. It was probably one of the reasons why I started this blog in the first place. Thank you for reading!