In yoga class, you often hear the yoga instructor say, 'Triceps contraction helps you slowly descend into a four-limb pillar support.' It's not just about 'contracting the triceps.' Because muscles can contract in three different ways, let's see how they affect posture and safety.

When we bend, what happens inside muscle tissue? And why is this important?

Let's explore the three types of muscle contractions

To feel the related movements, bend your elbow. The biceps muscle, which is in front of your arm, contracting will raise your forearm, leading to muscle fibers shortening or concentric contractions. If you maintain the bent elbow, the biceps will remain contracted to resist gravity (static) or isometric contractions. These types of contractions may be familiar to you.

Next, slowly lower your forearm. You might think that the triceps muscle, which is on the back of your arm, is now working to straighten your elbow. But since gravity is causing your forearm to descend, the triceps doesn't need to do anything. Instead, your biceps continues to contract as it lengthens (eccentric contraction), which is crucial for controlling many movements, including the ascent from standing forward fold to a four-limb pillar support and poses like side crow.

Let's see how we can use all three muscle contractions in yoga practice

By targeting concentric, isometric, and eccentric contractions in practice, you'll help your muscles work through their full range of motion, which can help you balance strength and reduce the risk of injury. To understand these contractions, you need to know what happens when muscles are working. Muscle cells or fibers contain many smaller chains called myofibrils, each consisting of a series of units called sarcomeres. Within a sarcomere, two protein strands (called thick filaments, which are composed of creatine, and thin filaments, which are composed of actin) are overlapped, like intertwined fingers.

When the biceps contracts concentrically, signals from the central nervous system cause the thicker creatine strands to grab the nearby thinner actin strands, forming bridges called cross-bridges. If the force is sufficient to overcome the reverse force (usually due to gravity), actin filaments will slide along creatine filaments, causing the muscle to shorten, such as when you raise your forearm.

Isometric contractions are similar, except that the force produced by the creatine bridges is perfectly matched against the opposing force, so there is no movement and your arm remains fixed.

And if the force exceeds the muscle's force (as in the change when you lower yourself from a pull-up), the biceps will be stretched, producing a centric force, allowing your arm to lengthen under control. Scientists have not yet fully understood this process, but it seems that during eccentric contraction, some creatine bridges continue to lock on actin filaments, while others are pulled apart.

Eccentric contractions produce more force than concentric contractions, which means you can lift a heavier weight than you could if you were lifting it with concentric contraction. You can use this principle by focusing on decreasing movements to strengthen your triceps. For example, controlling the descent from ' Plank ' to ' four-limb pillar support ' will eccentrically contract your triceps and strengthen your triceps, while pushing backward into ' plank ' is your triceps contracting concentrically.

Because eccentric contractions produce more force than concentric contractions, they also place more stress on tendons. If you're not used to it, eccentric movements can damage muscle protein, triggering delayed muscle soreness, which typically occurs one to two days after intense exercise. After a round of DOMS, your muscles will become stronger, adapting to the muscle, so the soreness will decrease when you perform the same action next time.

Regarding eccentric movements, another tip is that it can also compress the tendons, which are the connective tissues connecting muscles to bones. Repeating movements that overload tendons without allowing them to recover will increase the risk of tendon injury or tendon disease, which can interfere with your practice. Because tendons metabolize slowly, they gradually recover; once tendon disease occurs, it may take months to fully recover.

But this doesn't mean you should avoid this movement. In fact, eccentric contraction will help build stronger, more elastic muscles and tendons, as long as you allow them to adapt slowly, injuries will be less likely to occur in the future. In fact, physical therapists often use eccentric exercises to repair injured tendons.

Let's see how to use eccentric contractions in side crow pose

Transitioning to the arm balance pose can be intimidating. Relying on your arms to support most of your body weight does indeed carry the risk of falling. Concentric triceps contraction allows you to safely and controllably enter the pose, avoiding a fall.

• Bend down, rotate your upper body to the right, so that your left elbow is outside your right knee.

• Place your hands on the floor on the right side of your upper leg.

• Imagine you are pushing the floor away with your hands.

• When you bend your elbow, it will initiate the eccentric contraction of your triceps, controlling the distance your head descends to the ground.

• Find the balance point, and the triceps will move in an axis-oriented manner, keeping you balanced.

• But when your upper and lower body are perfectly balanced, your triceps don't need to do much work.

• If you feel yourself falling forward, gently press your finger on the floor to contract the triceps concentrically to return to the balance point.