Yoga After Workout: Reinforce the Effect

If you’re an avid runner, hiker or sports athlete, then you are no stranger to the pain that these high impact exercises can cause. In order to reduce pain, strengthen the joints, and increase weight loss, you may consider a routine of yoga after workout to help you considerably.

After pounding the trail or playing a 90-minute soccer match, your legs and back build up tension from the high impact. Focus on yoga after workout stretches like Wide-Legged Forward Bend, Straight Split Leg Forward Bend, and Crescent Lunge to calm the circulatory and nervous systems. After compacting the muscles, joints, and ligaments during a workout, these stretches will help balance the work you’ve just done. Instead of compacting, your muscles will be elongated to develop their full range of motion. If you don’t stretch, the muscles in their shortened state are at a higher risk of injury. Yoga after workout also works as a balance to the constant motion produced in high endurance activities. The yoga stretches are static, still, and therefore, a calming way to recalibrate the different systems of the body. This makes the yoga after workout a vital practice.

Furthermore, when yoga stretches are paired directly after a workout, it also works to increase fat burn and calorie loss. After practicing a high endurance sport or exercise (like running, steep hiking, basketball, etc.), your heart and lungs require more oxygen. This sends the body working in overdrive, shooting up your metabolic rate, burning calories to take in more oxygen. As a result, you continue to burn calories. With static yoga exercises, you continue the workout, burning less calories than you would if you were still running, but still more than not doing anything at all. Also, yoga’s focus on breath and taking in large amounts of oxygen will have you burning even more.

To improve your calorie burn during and after a workout, keep your yoga breathing in mind. Practicing yoga will teach you to breathe in from the diaphragm, taking in maximum oxygen and slowly releasing it. Remember – the more oxygen you take in, the more your body burns to process it. As a result, your workout burns more calories. Furthermore, applying the rules of yoga breathing to your regular high endurance workout will improve your long-term endurance.

When training for your next half-marathon or mountain climbing gig, remember that a yoga after workout will greatly improve your body’s strength and longevity.