Knee / Hip Dominant / Unilateral / Bilateral Yoga Asanas

I have been in the profession of fitness for the past 16 years. Exercise science in these years has evolved to very specific model from a generalised model. Earlier all the Body Building exercises were considered ideal for anything and everything in fitness. Be it weight loss or sports training or just fitness or rehab. Earlier equipment were made for Body Builders for their specific needs of individual muscles. Hence lot of equipment designed then only isolated muscles, which was not functional. These kind of workouts may make muscles stronger and bigger but not functional. Exercises which isolate  the muscle do not help in improving a sport specific movement or even a normal day functional movement such as lifting a heavy object from the floor and passing it. Exercise science has moved on and has become very specific and functional.
            Selection of Exercise type is become very specific to the type of activity you do in life. If you are a sportsman what type of a sports do you play? If you are looking for weight loss then Exercise type / Combination of exercise / Heart rate in the session / Current fitness level / Exercise progression  etc is essential to know.
            Now you must be thinking why i am discussin all this in a yoga based article. Well as much as Exercise science progresses it keeps moving towards what yoga has been quietly saying for thousands of years. One of the outcomes of the modern school of thought of Exercise scientists is Knee Dominant exercises and Hip dominant exercises. Gray Cook and Michael Boyle talk about the Joint by Joint approach where your joints from bottom to top are responsible alternative for stability and mobility and hence the trainings should be based on this principle. I am a great fan of NSCA and Michael Boyle. I like the scientific detailing of NSCA and the simple way of teaching of complex exercise science by Michael Boyle.
           I am simply amazed how much is always there to learn no matter how long you are working in your profession. And this hunger for learning and learning new things has also made me learn Yoga.
           I have been teaching yoga since 2000 and now 11 years down the line i have evolved my own way of teaching yoga, which is a combination of Modern Exercise Science Methods and Yogic Science. The more i keep learning i see a lot of similarity in both, Modern School of thought on Exercise and Age old Yoga.
           Modern Science talks about Knee Dominant and Hip Dominant exercises, Unilateral and Bilateral Movement, and keeping the exercises as functional as possible for maximum results. Yoga has always been Functional and the Asanas have Knee / Hip Dominant  Asanas as well as their as Unilateral and Bilateral Asanas. Below i am going to put some pictures of Asanas which are Knee Dominant and Hip Dominant.

Knee Dominant Asanas:-

1) Parshwa Konasana (Unilateral)
2) Utkat Asana (Bilateral)
3) Veer Bhadrasana (Unilateral)
4) Garud Asana (Unilateral)

Hip Dominant Asanas:-

1) Ardha Kati Chakrasana (Bilateral)
2) Pada Hastasana (Bilateral)
3) Ardha Chakrasana (Bilateral)
4) Nataraj Asana (Unilateral)
5) Setu Bandhasana (Supine Bilateral 0r Unilateral)

We are discussing only about the Knee and Hip Dominat Postures here. Other types of asanas are which have Spinal Twists, Spinal Flexion, Spina Extention, Lateral Flexion, UniLateral and Bilateral Asanas.
Pictures below are of all the above asanas in the same sequence.