Aerial Yoga Forearm Planks: Teaching & Alignment Discussion
By Carmen Curtis
Forearm Planks: Teaching & Alignment Discussion
In AIReal Yoga™, the aerial hammock becomes more than a fun prop, it’s a tool for deepening your practice. By suspending your forearm plank in the hammock, you’ll discover new challenges and alignment nuances that fire up your entire body while keeping your spine safe.
Depending on use, the hammock can make a pose easier, refine alignment, or challenge it more than floor versions. Forearm planks with the hammock are more challenging than traditional floor planks. The legs lift off the ground, requiring greater core engagement and full-body stabilization.
If you’re new to AIReal Yoga™, check out our Introduction to AIReal Yoga™.
To maintain proper alignment and protect the spine, practitioners should:
To help students:
- Engage the core by hollowing through the belly.
- Slightly scoop the pelvis to avoid lumbar compression.
- Actively press through the legs and arms for total-body engagement
This variation enhances strength in the arms, shoulders, core, and legs more than a standard plank. It demands increased activation and stabilization throughout the entire body.
Mobility Considerations
Tight Shoulders:
For students with limited shoulder mobility, forearm planks on the mat or hammock may be especially challenging. They may have the strength but often lack mobility to stack shoulders directly over the elbows. This shoulder stack is essential for proper alignment. As they progress into hammock-supported forearm planks, tucks, or pikes, maintaining the stack may be difficult.
For Teachers: Common Misalignments & How to Guide Through Them
You may observe:
Shoulders drifting forward past the elbows and hips lifting too high or lagging behind in tucks/pikes. Difficulty maintaining the hollow body position, especially when trying to stack the hips above the shoulders. It will be common for them to have an arch in their lower spine because they are more focused on trying to get the stacking correct.
Ultimately, it is more important to keep the hollow body and a scoop in the pelvis to protect the spine, and less important to stack the hips. Stacking of the hips and shoulders can only happen once they have more shoulder mobility, and they do not want to compromise the spine to get the stacked body.
To help students:
Encourage them to press into the hands on the mat and legs in the hammock, too push their shoulders back in line with the elbows.
Along with pressing into the hands, elbows and forearms to broaden their shoulders across the back, protecting them from dumping and dropping down into their shoulders. Although this may not be possible due to their shoulder flexibility, they still need to be encouraged to work towards it.
Guide them to keep hips lower if necessary, maintaining a strong, hollow body rather than over lifting the hips in forearm Plank Tuck and Pike, as it’s more important to maintain a strong hollow body protecting the spine, than to over-extend, arch or dump into the spine and shoulders.
Remind them that correct alignment (shoulders over elbows, hips over shoulders) takes time and practice. It is better to modify with hips lower or behind the shoulders. Limited shoulder mobility makes this pose more physically challenging and demands greater strength.
When the shoulders are stacked over the elbows, the position is more efficient and uses less strength. Limited mobility prevents proper stacking, requiring engagement of the entire body and more strength, even for the modified pose.
Emphasize core activation over hip height in tucks and pikes to protect the spine
Modifications and Progressions
Remind them that working toward stacking (hips over shoulders, shoulders over elbows) is a process that improves with practice and mobility work.
Until shoulder mobility improves, modifications are necessary. A key setup cue is to have hands placed forward at the top of the mat to provide more space and better alignment.
Encourage your students to be patient and consistent in their practice.
Progress will come with a combination of body awareness, strength-building and most importantly increased flexibility in the shoulders.
Once they have proper alignment and are able to stack correctly, therefore having shoulder mobility and strength, they can progress by moving their hands, a little bit farther back towards the middle of the mat, which makes this more challenging to stay in the correct stacked alignment and more challenging to keep the hollow body and core active because of the momentum one feels from the hammock being farther away from the plumb line.
Momentum
Momentum felt from the hammock being away from the center depends on hammock length and ceiling height. The higher the ceiling and the longer the hammock, the less momentum or push you will feel.
When you have a shorter hammock and a lower ceiling, you will feel more challenge when slightly off center. With a shorter ceiling and lower hammock, the farther toward the front of the mat the hands are, the easier planks are. If the hands move even slightly back from the front of the mat, the challenge increases significantly.
When the hammock is higher, you will feel more challenge. When the ceiling is higher and the hammock is longer, you must move farther from the plumb line to feel a challenge. The push or pull from the hammock changes depending on hammock length, hammock height, and ceiling height.
Hammock Height
The amount one can move hands forward or back to adjust difficulty varies depending on hammock height, length, and ceiling height.
In general, the shorter the hammock, the lower the ceiling, and the higher the hammock, the more dynamic the momentum. Even mild shifts in front of or behind the plumb line create powerful momentum. The longer the hammock, the lower the hammock, and the higher the ceiling, the less momentum you feel off center. You must move much farther back to feel momentum and progress.