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How Yoga Can Improve Your Strength Training
Yoga is a very versatile practice. There are many benefits to engaging in a yoga practice. If you want to calm your stressful mind, you can partake in Mindfulness Meditation. If you're recovering from a recent knee surgery, a Yin Yoga Practice can help rehabilitate your joints, ligaments, and muscles. If you want to lose a few pounds and tone your body, step into a Hot Yoga class. No matter what activity you're involved with, yoga can be an added complementary practice.
A wonderful way to take advantage of the benefits of yoga is to include the practice in your gym workout regimen. Yoga can help improve your strength training if you lift weights regularly. Here's how...
- Stretches Tight Muscles
- Improves Recovery
- Enriches Your Breathing
- Gain Strength
- Enhances Range of Motion
Stretches Tight Muscles
An obvious way yoga can help with your workout routines is by stretching tight muscles. People associate yoga with postures that lengthen and stretch out muscles for better flexibility and mobility. That is certainly the case and is quite applicable in a gym setting. When you lift weights, you are breaking down muscle tissue. With proper nutrition and rest between workout sessions, your muscle cells repair and grow to endure your next workout. With a lot of use, your muscles also can get tight and bound up. A stretch routine before and/or after lifting weights is well worth it. It will keep your hard-working muscles in good condition as you continue your strength training.
Improves Recovery
When you lift weights, you build up lactic acid in the muscles. This can produce fatigue and can hinder the progress of the strength trainer. Yoga helps to flush out lactic acid from the body. This makes your workout recovery more efficient so that you feel energised and strong; ready for your next round of pushing heavy weights. You may even find that you feel stronger when you incorporate a yoga practice with your lifting routine.
Yoga also provides a calming effect. It helps you to relax so that you feel less stressed. This will help you to concentrate more effectively when you're working out. Some yoga styles help you to become more proficient at focusing on specific areas of your body which contributes to better performance and results in the gym. You'll be able to focus better on exercises like bench presses, bicep curls, or leg extensions.
Enriches Your Breathing
An important, yet sometimes forgotten aspect of weight training, is breathing. Learning how to breathe appropriately during your workouts will improve your sessions. Knowing how to take full deep breaths and exhaling while engaging your core to lift heavy sets of weights is a key factor when weight training. Yoga teaches highly efficient ways to breathe that will support efforts in the gym.
Gain Strength
As mentioned, a yoga practice can also help you get stronger in the gym. When you practice certain yoga poses, you engage a different set of muscles than in a workout routine. By holding certain positions, your smaller muscle fibers are targeted. They become stronger thereby assisting your strength-building goals in the gym. You will find that you can lift heavier weights and endure longer workouts.
Enhances Range of Motion
As you may know, yoga helps with flexibility. This can come in handy when you're working out. To build and tone your growing muscles, you want to establish a greater range of motion when lifting. Muscle growth can be limited if the range of motion in your joints is lacking. Yoga classes that involve a lot of movement and postures will enhance your range of motion in areas like your shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, and ankles. This translates well to the gym. For example, bench presses or back squats will likely improve when you add yoga to your routine.
By adding a yoga class 2-3 times a week, you will see a great overall improvement in your gym workouts. If you've plateaued in your lifting game and want to see more changes and results, start a yoga practice and you will be rewarded with remarkable outcomes.
