There is a reason why so many professional athletes adopt yoga as part of their training program. Yoga is a complete fitness routine; it creates a balance between the body, mind and spirit. It helps strengthen the mind and mental focus, increases self awareness and confidence, it also improves overall health, allowing you do better.
Exercise for endurance
Conventional endurance exercises are quick in impact compared to yoga. They also make a major physical impact, making the body appear buff. Yoga strength and endurance exercises don’t have the same visual result, but make the body lean, well toned and strong. Pursuing an intense yoga style, like ashtanga yoga or bikram yoga, can help build endurance just as effectively.Yoga postures and breathing techniques help develop muscle strength, body posture and alignment and improve overall body strength. The frequency of practice, the degree of difficulty, and how long you hold the posture in combination with breathing techniques, will establish endurance and strength.
Exercises to improve endurance include standing poses like mountain pose, and warrior pose, among others. At the same time endurance yoga doesn’t bring with it uncomfortable side-effects that are common with other exercises for endurance.
Conventional endurance definition workouts like lifting weights can cause muscle rigidity. The repetitive motions of these workouts cause muscle fibers to harden. If this is not addresses, muscles tend to get tighter, shorter and rigid. This increases chances of muscle injury. Muscles also lose their flexibility and as a result range of motion is compromised. The rigidity and soreness you feel is caused by the buildup of waste material such as lactic acid that collects in the muscles. By practicing yoga, or complementing your endurance exercises with a session of yoga, you can avoid this muscle tightening. Yoga for endurance stretches and pulls all the muscles in the body. This maintains flexibility and range of motion and at the same time tones the body and builds strength.
Yoga practice incorporates good breathing practices. This aspect of yoga helps enhance endurance training. The body needs oxygen to support exercises to improve endurance; fresh oxygen is a source of energy. Most people use only a fraction of lung capacity. The result is not enough oxygen supply for the working muscles. Yoga breathing techniques ensure the body has adequate amounts of oxygen to the muscles, strengthening them and improving the efficiency of the workout.
