Yoga can be a great adjunct to running. This is an exercise regimen that works well with running because it has the perfect balance of opposites. When compared in terms of aerobic exercise, running is typically more strenuous while yoga is usually considered to have a lower level of intensity.
Engaging in a jog is a vigorous exercise, whereas yoga is a more gentle physical activity. Jogging has a tendency to prompt muscle tension, while yoga fosters suppleness and extended mobility.
Yoga can be a great tool to build a mindfulness between the body and mind, diminish pressure, and increase general health and happiness.
But does yoga count as cross training for runners? Would it be possible to perform yoga rather than activities such as swimming, biking, rowing, or aqua jogging? Does yoga count as strength training for runners? Can you do yoga instead of lifting weights?
In this article, we will explore how yoga can be incorporated as a form of cross-training and strength training for running. Additionally, we will outline the best poses that target the core, arms, legs, back, chest, hips, glutes, and legs specifically for those that run.
What Is Cross Training For Runners?
Cross training in relation to running can be seen as an exercise which is not running. Runners usually engage in cross training that is either of a cardio or strength-building nature.
Aerobic exercise is an activity that grows the cardiovascular system, elevating the rate of your heart while still enabling you to take in oxygen. Your breathing and heartbeat rise, though you can still converse whilst doing it.
Typically, your maximum rate of oxygen consumption during aerobic exercise usually falls between 70-80% of your peak cardiac capacity. For instance, if the highest your heart rate can be is 180 beats per minute, an aerobic exercise should make your heart rate fall between 126 to 144 bpm.
Strength training increases muscular strength, size, power, and/or endurance.
So, does yoga count as cross training? Before we get into that, let’s check out the benefits of cross training:
Benefits Of Cross Training For Runners
Engaging in both aerobic exercise and strength training (cross training) can bring a variety of health advantages to runners.
Cross training with an aerobic exercise can give similar cardiovascular benefits to running, namely fortifying the heart, lungs, improving the inhale and exhale of breath and diminishing blood pressure. It may also serve to mitigate against lifestyle-related conditions like obesity, diabetes, and hardening of the arteries, as well as stretch and increase the capacity of veins.
Research indicates that performing low-impact aerobic exercises can help to reduce levels of blood sugar and heighten the body’s sensitivity to insulin, as well as lower LDL (“bad”) cholesterol while amplifying HDL (“good”) cholesterol. Additionally, this type of exercise strengthens the immune system.
Finally, cross training burns calories, helping manage weight.
Weightlifting for runners develops muscular strength and lastingness, forestalls muscle disparities, and can limit the probability of running traumas.
Strength training can help to build muscle, leading to an enhanced metabolism that burns energy even when your body is inactive. This means more calories will be burned in total.
Does Yoga Count As Cross Training For Runners?
So, does yoga count as cross training for runners? Would it be OK to classify your yoga class as the cross-training portion of your workout program, as opposed to something like riding a stationary bike or swimming?
Similarly, does yoga count as strength training? Would it be possible for you to practice yoga instead of using weights for strength training?
The short answer is, it depends.
Unfortunately, not all styles of yoga, nor all postures done in yoga, can be considered cross-training for running or help to build strength. For instance, while Corpse pose offers great rest and calming of the body and mind, there is no way to build cardiovascular or muscle force since no matter how long it is held, the heart rate won’t increase.
The positive outlook is that there is a selection of yoga classes and particular poses which may not do much to increase your strength or bulk up muscles, but there are also some yoga classes which can act as a good workout for runners and many yoga postures that can help you become stronger.
Pros & Cons Of A Consistent Yoga Practice
A consistent practice of yoga offers comparable advantages to those of a typical exercise regimen, such as increased muscle tissue, increased strength, and a reduction of stress and anxiety thanks to the production of endorphins. Yoga differentiates itself from other types of exercise, like weight lifting or running, through the use of both breath control and balance in establishing both physical strength and flexibility, all aimed at optimising one’s overall mental and physical health.
Increasing your flexibility through active stretching boosts your range of motion and power, plus incorporating breath-work alleviates stress, decreasing blood pressure, and resulting in enhanced mental acuity.
I’d like to concentrate this blog on the most prominent physical advantages of participating in yoga sessions two or three times, or even more, per week. These include:
- Balance
- Body awareness
- Isometric strength
- Flexibility, mobility, and range of motion
- Recovery
Yoga For Balance
Maintaining balance is a crucial ability that you rely on regularly, as it is not a straightforward task to stay upright while utilizing two feet – take a gander at toddlers for example. Having a good sense of balance involves more than just dexterity; it also necessitates having the physical fitness to remain stable, robustness, and an enlightened consciousness of how the muscles work.
Yoga can help to create stronger joints by intensifying and becoming familiar with the muscles surrounding them, like the ankle, knee, and hip. Practicing yoga on a regular basis aids in developing better balance. This will result in enhanced together bonding, which is also beneficial in hindering ankle and knee traumas.
Yoga For Body Awareness: But What Is Body Awareness?
Being conscious of your body entails having the capacity to recognize which regions of your body are either tense or relaxed, and where they are located in relation to the rest of your figure. It’s vital to be aware of your surroundings, not just for exercising.
Being conscious of your body and its posture can aid you in managing your daily life and ward off stress. Noticing if there’s tension in your body, realigning your posture when you’re slouching, and monitoring your breathing prevents you from becoming too worked up when confronting difficult scenarios.
You may be wondering how yoga leads to an increased body awareness. Yoga focuses on proper body alignment, muscle activation, and proper joint alignment during each posture thus resulting in an increased body awareness.
Yoga poses offer an isometric approach, enabling you to concentrate on varied components of your body like your core strength, positioning, and breathing. Doing so allows you to acquire an understanding of your body that may not be achieved with other exercises.
Isometric Strength with Yoga: Why It’s Important
The capacity to remain in a static push, pull, or frozen stance for a bit is known as isometric strength. The utmost vital and rudimentary form of power required to solidify your joints, sustain positions, and maintain a proper stance is necessary.
Yoga stands out in its ability to produce isometric strength, because many of the postures practiced in strength-based yoga involve sustaining difficult positions for a specified amount of time. This results in the fortification and expansion of the deeper muscle tissue and the smaller muscles that sustain the more brawny muscles when they become exhausted.
Might you be wondering what this could mean for you? It means this: by developing isometric strength, your joints will become more stable, it will be easier to engage your muscles quickly, and you will gain better muscular endurance.
This enables you to practice more intensely and achieve higher results in other sports.
Yoga for Flexibility, Mobility, and Range of Motion
Yoga is also very beneficial due to its concentration on improving flexibility. Having a decent degree of suppleness can help diminish your danger of harm from straining a muscle, broadening a joint excessively, or harming a ligament or ligament.
Nevertheless, traditional yoga does not focus on range of motion or producing energy from a strained or lengthened stance. Alternatively, exercises like Man Flow Yoga combine both flexibility and strength.
Yoga that focuses on building strength helps to raise your mobility by combining power development with enhanced flexibility or a longer position. Contemplate it – if you are not capable of bending your legs into a full squat, you are not maximizing your potential strength as you use all the range of motion.
It is unsafe to merely attempt to sit in a squat more deeply without having initially acquired the flexibility for it. Strength-based yoga is able to assist by developing and elongating the muscles and tendons and giving the joints the room to move more profoundly.
Recovery
Incorporating restorative yoga into your regimen can expedite the healing process in preparation for your next workout. Yoga is fantastic for recovery. Restorative-focused yoga, or yin yoga, can be beneficial to your muscles, central nervous system and joints to give them a break after an intense workout.
There is an abundance of benefits to this method — it expedites clearing a workout routine, guards against potential damage to muscles from overexertion, grants an improved experience while training through smoother movement and fewer joint aches, and could even lead to a sequelae of increased strength.
Negatives Of Only Practicing Yoga
The goal of traditional yoga is to be a comprehensive form of exercise, however it is not a perfect workout. The exercise does an excellent job at exercising your lower-body and core, but it does not provide a thorough workout for the upper body. This is because yoga primarily involves pushing exercise. One cannot participate in strength exercises that involve pull-ups unless external resistance is incorporated, like weights, an exercise bar, or something of the sort. This does not only apply to yoga, but to all bodyweight exercises.
What does this mean for your body? If you solely focus on performing pushing motions, it’s likely you’ll develop muscular imbalances which can lead to discomfort in your shoulders. Many yoga users commonly struggle with this problem, due to their enhanced chest and shoulders on the front making their body tilt and hunch over, triggering distress and agony.
Yoga can improve the strength of your upper-body through Chaturangas (yoga push-ups); however, it does not involve any pulling exercises that involve resistance, such as pull-ups or rows, which are essential for keeping your shoulders healthy.
In conclusion, the use of weights will offer more resistance when compared to yoga and bodyweight exercises, so there is a higher potential for muscle growth.
Best Yoga Poses For Strength Training And Cross Training
Certain yoga postures are designed to work particular parts of the body, while other poses work the whole body. Here are some of the best yoga poses for building strength:
Warrior Poses (Virabhadrasana)
Warrior II and Warrior III poses are a great way to build the quads, which contain a lot of muscle fibers in them.
Warrior II is effective in improving your posture and balance while also developing your strength in the shoulders and core.
The Warrior III posture is almost an all-over pose, as it builds the muscles in the glutes, thighs, arms, and abdomen.
Holding your core muscles firmly will not only facilitate abdominal strengthening, but also help you remain steady and stay in the posture.
Four Limbed Staff Pose (Chaturanga Dandasana)
Plank pose strengthens your core and shoulders. Make sure you contract your butt muscles to reduce strain on your lower back and maintain the best posture.
Bow Pose (Dhanurasana)
While performing Bow pose you are stretching the chest and hip flexors, which also acts to reinforce the glutes, upper back, hamstrings, shoulders and chest. Shift your attention to using your glute muscles to raise your legs into the position, instead of using your hands to merely tug them there.
Dolphin Pose (Ardha Pincha Mayurasana)
In Dolphin pose, your arms and upper back will be strengthened, and it can be utilized as a starting position for demanding inversions.
Boat Pose (Paripurna Navasana)
Boat pose is a prolonged still posture that necessitates extensive abdominal control as it intensifies muscles in the abdominals, thighs, hip flexors, and spine muscles that assist movement.
It is essential to maintain an upright posture with your shoulders squared off in order to develop stability and equilibrium, as well as fostering a vigorous, upright stance and allowing the lower abdominal region and lumbar muscles to work synergistically.
Downward-Facing Dog Pose (Adho Mukha Svanasana)
In Downward Facing Dog pose, you engage your shoulders, buttocks, calves, midsection, thighs, and spine. Contract your quadriceps muscles to increase the difficulty of the posture.
One-Legged Chair Pose (Eka Pada Utkatasana)
The position of this modification of Chair pose resembles a single-legged squat. This yoga pose is fantastic for building up your thigh muscles, buttocks, back of the leg muscles, and abdominal region.
Side Plank Pose (Vasisthasana)
This exercise is an excellent way to enhance your obliques, shoulders, and overall core strength.
Final Words
Have we addressed your inquiry regarding whether yoga is a form of cross training?
In the end, integrating yoga into your fitness program is a superb approach to back up your physical activity and concentrate on distinct elements of fitness that go hand in hand with running. Yoga will not give you the same cardiovascular benefits as other forms of exercise, yet it is sure to help improve the strength of your muscles.
Depending on the results you want to achieve with your fitness program, yoga can be put in the same category of strength training and can be extremely beneficial for both your physical and mental health.
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