Top 5 Reasons to Try a Different Sort of Yoga

If you need reasons to try yoga, I teach yoga classes a little differently than a traditional class.

• The class is not a serious, quiet atmosphere. I try to teach you how to move and the goals of the pose, all while talking and sometimes telling bad jokes.
• We hold our many poses for 10 to 15 breaths to build strength.
• We spend a lot of time practicing breathing, through the nose and into the belly.
• Classes are less than 30 minutes.

So as an everyday endurance athlete, if you’re interested in getting stronger, more mobile, and improving your breath capacity, it’s worth trying out a class.

Reasons to try yoga: Increase mobility by moving with your breath

Research suggests that static stretching, or holding a position for a long time, can be less effective at stretching muscles (your muscles and fascia around the muscles lengthen).

Instead, doing a progressive stretching movement can work better.

So one of the reasons to try yoga is that we do this by getting into a pose on the exhale, then relaxing on an inhale, and repeating.

For example, in Warrior 1, the goal is to rotate the hips and shoulders so they point forward while our arms point in the air.

The inhale would be releasing the hips and shoulder sideways, the exhale is rotating the shoulders and hips forward.

This way we are constantly moving with our breathing and effectively improving the depth of the pose.

Develop lung capacity is another one of the reasons to try yoga

Breathing is obviously at the heart of all endurance sports.

Learning to improve your ability to breathe will help you control your breathing.

Another one of the reasons to try yoga is that we first practice nose-breathing that will directly help your performance.

If you can consistently breathe through your nose during endurance training, you can improve your breathing capacity.

We then work on deepening the inhales into our belly to develop belly-breathing.

Sometimes we work on other breathing methods as well, all to help you control your breath and improve your endurance performance.

Increase joint range of motion

One more of the reasons to try yoga with me is that every time we get into a pose, we work to move our joints through a full range of motion.

For example, in a Crescent Lunge, we work to open our shoulders and create a back bend that deepens with each exhale.

Like the dynamic stretching already mentioned, we’re trying to lengthen the muscle and also increase the range of motion so you are more comfortable in daily life.

We do the same thing with the inhalation and exhalation, relaxing with the inhale and getting deeper with the exhale.

Strengthen your muscles through isometrics

Go ahead and try it now.

Get into Warrior 2 as deeply as you can and hold it.

When you inhale, straighten the front leg a little, and sink a little more deeply on the exhale.

Or get into a Triangle and work to rotate your torso and get it parallel to the ground.

Holding these poses for 10 to 15 breaths can be really hard!

Holding this kind of isometric pose and continuing to stress a lot of muscles is a great way to build your strength without going to the gym.

It doesn’t replace lifting heavy weight during deadlifts, but it builds stabilizer and supporting muscles in a better way.

Strength training while mobilizing your joints could be one of the best reasons to try yoga.

Strengthen and stabilize your core

Besides the countless Downward Dogs, many of the yoga poses we use require a ton of core strength.

A Side Angle, for example, has you tipping your torso sideways and holding it up.

All of the Warrior poses require you to stabilize your upper body with your front and back torso.

And the breath practice we do — working to breathe into our bellies — requires muscular control of the movement.

So our yoga practice, since we hold the poses for a while and practice our deep nose and belly breathing really makes us do a lot of core work.

And that in turn makes us faster runners, cyclists, and swimmers.

You have several options for classes

First, we have Tuesday 6 am and Thursday 6 pm live Zoom classes.

I teach from my garage studio, and our class lasts no more than 30 minutes.

You can try a class for free with the code EVERYDAYYOGA.

You can purchase single classes for $9 each or get a monthly pass for $36.

That means you get eight yoga classes for the price of four.

Second, I teach a very short free Yoga for Recovery on the Simple Endurance Coaching Facebook page live every Monday evening at 7:30 pm.

Third, you can also get a membership for the on-demand class library for $29/month.

The library has most of the classes we’ve done, including the Facebook live sessions.

You can view any of the classes at your own time and pace.

These are a lot of good reasons to try yoga with me!

Want to Know More About What You Can Achieve?

You have a lot of good reasons to try yoga!

Contact me or sign up for Virtual Coffee so we can discuss your goals!

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Contact me to ask questions and talk about making your endurance training more effective.