Benefits of Enrolling in an Online Yoga Course for Bodybuilding
Despite the stereotypical misconceptions about yoga being reserved for women and vegans, the practice has also proven beneficial to amateur and professional bodybuilders as well as serious athletes. Bodybuilding and yoga actually complement each other quite well, and many athletes and bodybuilders are combining these two disciplines to reap the many benefits they offer when paired together.
One of the best aspects of yoga is that you can compliment your existing strength training with yoga by attending yoga studio classes or by taking online yoga classes if you happen to have a busy schedule. Take your strength training to the next level and let yoga improve your flexibility, alignment, circulation, digestion, balance, agility, endurance, and joint health. You may also begin to notice a decrease in stored fat and a boost to your immune system, while also allowing yourself to better target muscles that are often overlooked in normal bodybuilding routines.
Let us go into a bit more detail with some of the top ways yoga can help you improve your current bodybuilding or fitness routine.
Stress Relief
One of the greatest benefits of yoga is its ability to reduce stress. Being stressed will have a huge negative impact on your normal fitness routine. Stress not only leads to aches and pains which can make bodybuilding much more difficult, but it will also cause you to fatigue much more quickly. This is largely due to stress being blamed for poor sleeping and eating habits which will cause your muscles to go without the much needed nutrition and rest they need to function and grow.
When you’re stressed, your body releases hormones which can lead to muscle stiffening, muscle cramps, and aching joints. Many athletes and bodybuilders also notice a decline in motivation to keep up with their normal strength training routines when they’re stressed. Yoga centers offer a large welcoming supportive community where you will gain support from others in addition to the many mind and body benefits it provides.
The yoga instructors at Yoga Kawa suggest opting for something truly fun and relaxing like puppy yoga if you’re just starting out with yoga. Animals have been scientifically proven to rapidly reduce stress and when combined with yoga, the results can be truly explosive. Engaging in corporate yoga on the other hand can reduce the stress of your employees and often leads to greater productivity and efficiency in the workplace.
Muscle Building
Yoga can be exponentially more effective than your usual warm-up routine. Certain yoga poses, which are particularly recommended for bodybuilders, promote the rapid growth of muscles, allowing you to see much faster results.
Yoga is all about stretching and increasing mobility, both of which will allow you to gain more muscle over time. You’ll start to grow long full muscles as opposed to short stocky ones. Yoga basically allows greater room for your muscles to grow and without it you may notice your muscle growth will be limited.
Gym routines often focus on isolated movements whereas yoga focuses on more balanced workouts and building strength in functional ways. Yoga will also allow you to avoid experiencing reduced mobility and flexibility which is quite common as you increase your muscle mass. For those times when you may be injured or are in recovery mode, yoga allows you to still build strength in a low impact way.
Yoga also comes in handy when you just can’t find the time to make it to the gym or don’t have easy access to one and don’t have the space to set up an at-home personal gym. Setting up an at-home yoga sanctuary and routine is quite easy and you can get tips on how you can do this yourself from Yogi Times. They’ll teach you the benefits of practicing in-home yoga, what some of the best online streaming platforms and channels for yoga are, ways to create the proper yoga environment, what gear you’ll need, and more.
Increased Energy
While intense workouts can often deplete you of energy, yoga can actually bring your energy levels up. Yoga focuses on the importance of effective breathing, allowing you to transport more oxygen to your muscles. This in turn allows your muscles to endure longer and more rigorous workouts. Through its balancing of cortisol levels and stimulation of blood flow and circulation, yoga is bound to leave you feeling less fatigued. Certain yoga routines are also designed to improve sleep quality, allowing you to wake up feeling refreshed and ready to tackle your workout the next day. Over time, this will give competitive athletes and bodybuilders a definite edge.
Injury Prevention
Regular stretching is the most effective way to protect your muscles from being overworked and will decrease the chances of injury. Stretching your muscles allows you to enjoy a greater range of motion which will allow your muscles to be more flexible when it comes to bearing the brunt of sudden or awkward movements that otherwise might have the potential to sideline you for days while you recover.
While bodybuilding is great for developing fast-twitch muscle fibers needed for speed and power, you still need to build slow twitch muscles through yoga to enjoy enhanced endurance. Through yoga, you’ll be able to increase the strength of smaller often neglected muscles which are vital for balanced joint alignment. You’re overall increase in muscle elasticity will act as a preventative medicine for many common muscle injuries.
Better Recovery
Yoga has been proven to reduce the occurrence of delayed onset muscle syndrome which is the stiffness and soreness that many bodybuilders and athletes feel several hours or days after they hit the gym. It’s caused by small-scale damage to your muscle fibers that is common with repetitive eccentric exercises.
Stretching by way of yoga also allows you to remove any toxins from your muscles and bloodstream that may have been created through strenuous workouts. If you consistently suffer from muscle soreness in your chest, hamstrings, shoulders, back, quads, or calves, there are specific yoga poses designed for each area of the body which will allow specific muscles groups to recover more quickly so you can target them more often in the gym.
Yoga Poses for Strength Training
Now that we have explored some of the benefits of yoga for strength training, let us look at just a few popular yoga poses that you can start off with as you combine yoga with your bodybuilding.
Planks are great for strengthening your core which can in turn allow you to engage in more strenuous strength training exercises. Regularly performing planks will help increase isometric strength in your posterior muscle groups and targets the shoulders, glutes, and even your obliques when doing side planks.
Develop a better back and torso with the cobra pose which helps to open up your chest and stretch your shoulders. The increase in back strength will be welcomed when it comes to lifting weights and toning your upper body. Another great pose for strengthening your back is the bird dog pose which will specifically allow you to enjoy more effective resistance training exercises. The boat pose on the other hand acts as a great abdominal and deep hip flexor strengthener.
We hope we have shed some light on the many ways yoga can help take your bodybuilding to the next level. More and more athletes and serious weightlifters are taking up yoga to take advantage of this easy way they can see results more quickly. Tap into the many physical and mental health benefits yoga offers and start experiencing more effective gym workouts today.
