The series of poses is always the same in every studio around the world. I have been to 20 studios in 4 countries. To teach you have to go to a 6 week teacher training course to become certified. It would cost you about $10,000 to do it. Hundreds of people take it each session. There are over 70 studios in California alone and 7 in San Diego.

As for the back stretching, these poses are over 2000 years old. I think they know what they are doing. The flexability is very helpful in all aspects of your life. For mor info have a look at the website http://www.bikramyoga.com.

Flash

I wouldn’t have a problem with repeating a routine, but I can’t believe there are yoga instructors who yell at people. That’s just stupid. Sorry to hear about your troubles, Cynthis, that’s plain wrong what they did.

Routine and variety is something I find very interesting in the context of Crossfit. Constant change and variety is preached and offered up as a great virtue of the practice, but there is also the concept of virtuosity which is occasionaly (too infrequently, imo) raised. Virtuosity only comes through practice and repetition. Martial Arts and Yoga both use routines to drill for virtuosity; consistent practice of the same technique is used to ingrain movement patterns and take them to a point where they are second nature. I think this is very important.

Vituosity is not going to be attained in a movement like the squat, and certainly not in something like the snatch or clean, by doing them as part of a WOD a couple of times a month. They have to be practiced regularly and frequently. No doubt variety in one’s workouts is a good thing for both adaptation and mental freshness, but the constant vareity of WOD programming will not lead to virtuosity if that is all one does. The neatest thing I think Invictus is doing in its programming (although the emphasis on mobility, SMR and dynamic stretching is very cool, too) is adding a strength movement at the beginning of the WOD. Not only does this help increase strength, obviously, but it adds repetition and will, I think, assist with attaining vituosity in the weightlifiting movements.

I don’t know of a better place for the weight.

Ways to increase intensity/difficulty besides increasing weight would be to hold an isometric contraction at the top of the motion, slow down the negative or lowering portion of the movement, and/or put a mini-band around the knees to add an external rotation element to the glute function during the bridge.

You could also put the shoulders on a bench and do a similar motion, but I think this is really a different excercise altogether.

That being said… I have tried Bikrams and had a less than pleasant experience. I too had the strict instructor that yelled at you, and would yell at me for pausing to catch my breath or for drinking water. To be fair, I tried various Bikram studios to get an accurate feel for the classes; well my final attempt was my last. I ended up with the worst headache in my life and was vomiting non-stop!!! I was intrigued with benefits of the deep stretching and the intense heat might have on the body, but unfortunately it just did not agree with me.

Here’s what I did: Lie on the ground in a sit-up position with feet on floor and knees bent. I put a dumbell across my hips. In the starting position from my butt to my shoulder blades were touching the ground. Then I fired my glutes and straightened my body so that only my feet and shoulder blades were touching the ground.

First, did I do them correctly? Second, is there a better location to place the weight? Is there a way to scale the exercise to make it easier or tougher besides just adjusting the load?

The owner of this studio is a former co-worker of mine and she happens to be my favorite instructor. The classes are small and she is very good about telling people how to properly do poses. It is easy to hurt yourself if you don’t do them properly, just like in crossfit. I find that the instructors at Bird Rock tell me how to modify certain poses so that I keep proper alignment, a good lumbar curve and get the most benefit from the poses.

I really can’t say enough good things about this studio- I absolutely love it and wish I had started years ago. I have been going several months now and myself and my friend who owns it have already noticed improvement in my form and flexibility. (I still have a long way to go though…..stupid tight hamstrings) I highly recommend Bird Rock if you want to do some yoga classes.

I do like the intense heat, though.

I’ve done Bikram’s about 20 times and it’s always been the exact same series of stretches…