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Inhale deeply and exhale slowly. Feel the earth beneath your feet as well as the sky above. Are you starting to feel better? These are some of the beginnings of practicing yoga. Yoga has been practiced in various forms for over 5.000 years. It has countless health benefits, including stress relief and increased flexibility. If you’re considering incorporating yoga into your daily routine, you might find yourself asking, “Should I do yoga before or after workout?” The answer depends on a number of factors, including your goals and what option will work best in your everyday life.
Yoga + Exercise
One of the most important things we can do to improve our health and well-being is to exercise. And though yoga is a form of exercise, you might not want or be able to attain all of your weight loss, strength, and flexibility goals only through yoga.
In addition to yoga, you can include any other type of physical activity or exercise in your regular fitness plan. Low-impact cardio routines like brisk walking, biking, and swimming will be the most compatible. Weight training, which helps strengthen muscles and burn calories, is an excellent anaerobic activity to combine with yoga.
What Are the Benefits of Yoga?
People have discovered a number of health benefits related to yoga over time.
Yoga is a practice that includes both the mind and the body. It’s a simple activity that people can enjoy. Anyone can practice yoga and benefit from it, regardless of their physical condition. It’s also accessible (you can do it anywhere) and affordable (depending on where you look). You can find a lot of free or low-cost classes on the internet.
Yoga has the ability to affect different body systems, resulting in significant health advantages. It may, for example, help the endocrine system, which regulates your body’s hormones. Yoga has been linked to a number of health benefits, including the decrease of chronic pain, blood pressure stabilization, and stress reduction. Yoga also improves strength, flexibility, breathing, balance, spine and mental health, as well as blood flow.
Should you add yoga before or after your workout if you’ve already developed a steady fitness routine? The answer is definitely yes. Yoga has numerous health benefits, making it a perfect addition to your training routine.
Yoga among many other things can:
- Improve strength, balance, and flexibility
- Help with back pain relief
- Ease arthritis symptoms
- Benefit heart health
- Help you sleep better
- Give you more energy
- Manage stress
- Connect you with a supportive community
- Promote better self-care
Knowing the benefits of including yoga into your fitness routine might help you decide whether to do yoga before or after workout.
The Benefits of Yoga After Workout
Even if your first inclination after finishing a sweat-dripping cardio workout is to slug a full bottle of water or sports drink, shower, and then kick your feet up and relax, rolling out your yoga mat and doing a few poses can provide a variety of mental and physical benefits.
Dropping into half moon pose after a rigorous workout may be the last thing on your mind. But adding your yoga practice to the end of your workout is often a better alternative than starting with yoga before you get your sweat on.
Why? Because yoga is a fantastic technique to assist your body shift from a high-intensity workout to a more relaxed and restful state.
A Great Cool Down After Workout
To deal with the good stress of exercise, your heart is beating, you’re gulping oxygen, and your body is pumping out cortisol. It’s not beneficial for your body to go straight to the showers and then get in your car and drive home.
Blood may pool in your lower extremities, resulting in less oxygenated blood reaching your brain.
Add a few minutes of yoga to your workout as part of your cool-down practice instead of pushing your body to screech to a halt after a workout is a better option. Your body will automatically transition to a resting state.
Reduces Muscle Soreness
As a cool down after cardio, yoga lowers your heart rate more gradually while still supplying blood to your muscles. This helps in the removal of metabolic waste products created by intensive activity as well as the delivery of reparative nutrients and oxygen, which can assist to reduce soreness.
Best Time to Work on Your Flexibility
Yoga is known for its ability to increase flexibility over time, which can help you avoid injury in the future and keep you strong and flexible as you get older.
When your muscles are already warm, such as shortly after an exercise, static stretching (which means holding a stretch for a length of time) is most beneficial.
When you do yoga after your workout, you might notice a greater improvement in your flexibility than if you do it before a workout.
Improves Excercise Recovery
It was once thought that doing static stretches before a workout could help with soreness and tightness afterwards.
However this was proven to be a fitness myth.
Instead, following an exercise, stretching and other recovery techniques (such as foam rolling) are a superior strategy to help remove pain.
Yoga has been reported to help with delayed onset muscular soreness in particular. Why? Stretching boosts blood flow to your muscles, bringing nutrients and oxygen to help your muscles rebuild themselves. As a result, you may experience less soreness in the coming days.
Boosts Well-Being
Yoga has been found to boost mood, alleviate depressive symptoms, reduce stress and anxiety, and promote general well-being. Yoga as part of your post-exercise cool-down gives you the mental space to reflect on your workout, connect with your breath and body, relax your mind, organize your thoughts, and tackle the rest of the day with a good perspective.Yoga can help you achieve a sense of calm and completeness, allowing you to move on to the next part of your day in a positive mindset.
Can Yoga Be Done Before Workout?
Can you do a couple of sun salutations before starting your workout? Yes, especially if doing yoga before your workout is convenient for your schedule or simply your personal preference.
Here are a few more reasons to strike a warrior position before hitting the gym or doing a set of hard squats.
Eases You to Your Workout
It’s not always simple to get to the gym, especially when you know you’re in for a tough workout.
Consider starting with 10 or 15 minutes of yoga before your workout if you’re on the fence about going to the gym.
If you’re still not feeling the workout after the yoga practice, you can call it a day.
In many cases, though, the most difficult step is simply getting started. You may feel better prepared to go into a workout once you’ve gotten your body moving with yoga. This simple trick might help you stay on track with your exercise objectives and improve your overall fitness.
Warms up Your Body Before a Workout
Static stretching is not recommended before a workout, especially if you want to do any type of strength training. Static stretching stretch your muscles naturally, which can reduce their capacity to contract. This means that after a yoga session, you might not be able to lift as much weight.
However, if you focus your pre-workout yoga practice on completing dynamic stretches you’ll have more benefits. Dynamic stretches, also known as active, moving stretches, are a great method to warm up before a workout. In terms of yoga, this means going slowly and softly through positions and only holding them for a few seconds at a time. Dynamic stretches progressively raise your heart rate and begin to circulate blood throughout your body.
Connects You With Your Body
Yoga’s capacity to develop your mind-body connection is one of its most powerful features. You’ll be able to feel your muscles, ligaments, and bones as you go through the poses. Yoga encourages greater body awareness and mobility. It can also help you prepare for your workout by putting you in a good and powerful state of mind.
You might get more out of your workout if you have a better mind-body connection.
Yoga Before or After a Workout – Which Is Right for You?
Ultimately, whether you do yoga before or after cardio is a matter of personal preference and what works best for your schedule. If you’re having problems getting started with your workout, yoga can help. Yoga after your workout is a good alternative if you want a moderate cool-down that may help with soreness.
If you plan on doing strength training, doing yoga afterwards is a preferable option; but, if you must do yoga first, focus on doing a moving, dynamic version of yoga rather than static stretching.
Overall, the health benefits of yoga are so important that you should do it whenever it is most convenient for you.
Of course, don’t forget to supplement your activities with proper nutrition!
FAQs
Yes, you can do yoga and work out on the same day. Based on your personal preferences and schedule you can choose to do yoga before or after workout. Always listen to your body and choose what works best for you.
Prior to working out, you can improve your focus and control, both of which are essential when working out by meditating. Also, meditating after a workout lowers cortisol levels, which rise when you exercise. Meditation after an exercise also helps recovery and reduces pain.
