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As a competitive athlete, I held onto the notion that yoga wasn’t difficult enough to count as a workout for a long time. I certainly never thought it could benefit my weight lifting. But after incorporating both yoga and strength training into my workout routine, I experienced increases not only in my recovery time but my performance at the gym.
If you’ve been reluctant to add yoga and can’t help but wonder how does yoga help strength training, consider that there are demonstrated benefits of yoga for athletes and, more specifically, those who strength train. There’s a lot for you to consider.
10 Reasons Yoga and Strength Training Belong Together
Following are some of the research-backed benefits of including both yoga and resistance training in your workouts.
1. Yoga Makes You More Flexible
One of the most commonly cited benefits of yoga is its ability to increase flexibility. In fact, surveys reveal that one of the most popular reasons for practicing yoga is to “increase flexibility.” Even low-intensity yoga increases flexibility.
So why is this important for weight lifters? After all, the focus of most resistance training is building muscle and/or increasing strength, not necessarily enhancing flexibility.
However, flexibility is an often overlooked component of optimizing strength training. Flexibility underlies mobility. Without pliable muscles, tendons, and other connective tissues, you won’t have an adequate range of motion in your joints. This means you will not be able to perform necessary movement patterns optimally or even effectively. This can decrease your gains at the gym.
Research has found that muscle growth and strength gains are enhanced when you perform resistance training exercises using the full range of motion. The researchers also learned that using a partial range of motion was particularly consequential on muscle growth and functional strength improvement.
For example, squat depth is compromised by tight ankle dorsiflexors and hip flexors. Not being able to squat deeply enough or move through the full range of motion can limit the effectiveness of the exercise while also increasing your risk of injury.
2. Yoga Can Reduce the Risk of Injury
Resistance training can cause your muscles and tendons to become tight, in part because inflammation often follows heavy lifting workouts. Unfortunately, tightness in certain muscle groups can increase the risk of injuries.
When you try to take those tight tissues through their normal range of motion, you risk overstretching them. You also risk overworking adjacent muscles that need to compensate for limited extensibility in the primary muscles.
“Any time a muscle is overly tight—whether stiff, short, or tight—one of the biggest concerns is potential injury like tearing a muscle due to its inability to extend and contract,” says Katya Campbell, a certified movement and mobility specialist, yoga teacher, CrossFit coach, and the fitness director at Mountain Trek Health Reset Retreat in British Columbia. “It can also add undue strain on other parts of our body that need to compensate for this lack of movement. A perfect example of this is lower back pain which is often seen as a result of tight hamstrings.”
Consider what happens when you practice a heavy barbell conventional deadlift with tight hamstrings. Due to the limited extensibility along the back of your thighs, the muscles in the lower back, buttocks, and calves will overstretch in order for you to reach the barbell to the floor. This can strain these muscles and their tendons.
3. Yoga Can Decrease Inflammation
The underlying cause of many chronic diseases, inflammation also affects how your body moves and feels. Resistance training causes micro-tears in your muscles, which leads to localized inflammation in the muscles you have trained.
The good news is that studies suggest yoga can decrease biochemical markers of inflammation. This can help reduce muscle soreness after lifting weights while supporting long-term health and disease risk reduction.
Also, consistency is key when you follow a structured strength training program to build muscle, increase strength, or prepare for a competition. Some evidence suggests that stretching and yoga may reduce delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) and expedite recovery, making your following workout not only more comfortable and efficient. By relying on yoga to reduce inflammation, you can stay on track with your training without needing to skip some days due to excessive soreness or injuries.
4. Yoga Can Increase Strength
For many athletes, gym rats, weight lifters, and bodybuilders, the notion that yoga “counts” as strength training may feel akin to telling a Tour de France cyclist that spin classes at the local gym can make them more competitive.
However, not all weight lifters are competitive powerlifters. Everyday athletes who lift weights to build muscle and improve functional strength will be pleased to hear that yoga can also increase strength, depending on the type of yoga you do, the particular poses you perform, and your overall fitness routine and fitness level.
Yoga is particularly helpful for increasing muscular endurance. When you hold strengthening poses such as Plank Pose and Boat Pose, you increase muscular endurance. This is particularly helpful when you target the same muscle groups through multiple different exercises during the same strength-training session or try for longer resistance training workouts in the gym.
Also, yoga challenges many of the smaller supporting muscles that are easily overlooked by traditional strength training.
5. Yoga Can Improve Balance
One of the biggest hang-ups that many athletes and weight lifters have about starting yoga is that they don’t have the necessary balance. After all, it can look pretty intimidating—and perhaps a little pointless—to stand on one leg in Tree Pose if you’re not used to it.
Moreover, many athletes undervalue the importance of having good balance for other forms of exercise, including strength training. But balance isn’t a throwaway aspect of physical strength that only yogis and gymnasts need. For example, when you perform lunges, split squats, or single-leg Romanian deadlifts, you support your body in a unilateral stance with a small base of support.
When you have less-than-optimal balance, you increase your risk of falling or injuring yourself. You also compromise your ability to use heavier weights for these single-leg resistance training exercises. Here again, yoga has been found to improve balance as well as overall performance in athletes. That includes bodybuilders and weight lifters.
6. Yoga Can Help You Find Safe Alignment
One of the benefits of yoga is that it can improve your mind-body connection and your awareness of your body in space. This is known as interoception and is a critical skill for any weightlifting exercise because it helps ensure that your body is in the proper alignment as you flex and extend joints to lift and lower weights.
Consider, for example, performing a standing overhead press with a barbell. If you do not have a strong relationship with your core muscles, you may lift the barbell overhead without properly engaging your core and keeping your spine straight.
If you hyperextend your back or do not engage your postural muscles properly, you may lift the barbell overhead at the wrong angle. This increases stress and strain on the small ligaments and intervertebral discs in the spine. This, in turn, can increase the risk of back pain or injuries from strength training.
7. Yoga Can Improve Your Body Awareness
Yoga contributes to gains not only in flexibility and mobility but body awareness. Practicing yoga helps you release tight muscles and enhance your ability to properly engage your core muscles and postural muscles. This helps you find better alignment and posture in your strength training. It also cultivates an understanding of which muscles are engaging.
Imagine the stress and strain on the vertebra and delicate structures in the spinal column if you have slouched posture as you perform a heavy back squat with a barbell. When you are loading your spine with external resistance, you certainly want to be aligned properly to reduce the risk of injury.
8. Yoga Can Increase Focus and Motivation
Research supports yoga’s role in enhancing attentional control, focus, and motivation. Incorporating yoga and resistance training into your workouts can hone your executive functioning and mental strength, whether you struggle to stay consistent in the gym, deal with burnout or mental fatigue, or have trouble staying present in the moment during a training session.
