5 Reasons Why You Should Add Yoga to Your Fitness Routine

Add Yoga to your weightlifting and cardio program to improve overall health.

As you age, your flexibility and balance tend to degrade.

While a fitness program that includes both cardio and weight training is important, it’s also essential that you include exercises that improve your flexibility as well.

By adding just a 30-45 minute Yoga routine each week you can significantly improve the other areas of your exercise program, and even increase your overall health.

Below are some of the things Yoga can do for your exercise program:

1. Yoga adds flexibility

While most of us try to do a little stretching prior to lifting or running, this doesn’t come close to the flexibility Yoga provides.

As we age (yeah, that tends to happen), our muscles, tendons, and ligaments lose their springiness, and become more prone to sprains and tears.

Adding a consistent stretching and balance routine like Yoga keeps these parts well ‘greased,’ and will significantly cut down on injuries from your other activities.

2. Yoga provides a wider range of unfamiliar movements

If you take a look at a few Yoga videos, you’ll see it takes you beyond just a few head rolls and calf stretches.

Through Yoga, your entire body is involved in movements that you probably won’t find yourself doing in real life.

Holding these unfamiliar positions through several breaths strengthens and loosens areas that typically aren’t touched during normal weight and cardio routines.

3. Yoga increases your sense of balance

In addition to improved flexibility, Yoga provides you with a much improved sense of balance.

Again, as we get older, we tend to lose our ability to maintain our center of gravity (I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!). Yoga provides a number of movements forcing us to hold our balance for several breaths.

Learning to balance while standing on one leg, or while twisting in strange positions, will teach your body to recenter itself, and this will translate to your daily routines.

4. Yoga makes your body more resilient

Everything mentioned above, improvements in balance and flexibility, will make your body much more durable. Not just for your weight and cardio routines, but in most other activities as well.

Thanks to your new found flexibility, you won’t spring your back the next time you bend the wrong direction to pick up something heavy.

The balance Yoga provides means you won’t go head over heels the next time you slip on the ice.

5. Yoga will increase your overall fitness

All of this stretching, bending, and breathing doesn’t just improve balance and flexibility.

By gently working the muscles and ligaments, your blood supply begins reaching areas of the body that haven’t seen much oxygen over the years. This helps flush out toxins and provides nourishment to these nooks and crannies.

This will improve your overall health and increase your energy levels.

Summary

Hopefully the info above has provided you some incentive to give Yoga a try. This will be a great addition to your weight and cardio program.

 

Tagged as: Fitness