Incorporating yoga into your daily workout routine has numerous health benefits, such as improving muscle tone, enhancing respiratory function, and whatnot.
However, failing to schedule your yoga sessions around your weight training or cardio sessions can have a severe negative effect on your results.
So, what would be the right thing to do? Should you do yoga before or after a workout? Well, the answer may vary depending on a bunch of different factors.
For instance, if you’re preparing to lift weights, yoga would be the best thing to do afterward.
The key to establishing a good exercise routine is balancing different types of exercises.
You’re already being generous to your health and lifestyle if you’re asking yourself whether you should do yoga before or after workout.
You can clearly tell that you have dedicated yourself to your health and fitness journey by doing two different exercises in one session.
Even though yoga is a challenging workout on its own, it also complements other types of exercise very well.
Due to this, you may find it more beneficial to do yoga before or after another workout if you have the time and motivation.
However, is it best to practice yoga before or after doing any type of cardio? Should you practice yoga before or after weightlifting or strength training?
Is performing yoga more beneficial after a heavy workout session or before that?
Well, your mind must be battling lots of questions. Rest easy as we have compiled the answers to your concerns loud and clear in this article.
Continue reading to find out how to incorporate yoga with other forms of exercise and whether you should do yoga before or after workout if you want to get the most out of your workouts.
What Are the Benefits of Adding Yoga to Your Daily Routine?
Yoga is much more than just a physical exercise – it encircles the mind, body, and soul altogether.
Over the years, fitness freaks are getting more adaptable to yoga as a complete workout activity.
Want To Find Out More About How Yoga Can Benefit You?
Here are some impeccable health and lifestyle benefits of yoga you’d love to know!
Improves Strength, Balance, And Flexibility:
While holding a pose can help you gain strength, deep breathing and slow movements warm up your muscles and increase blood flow.
Check This: Back Pain Relief
Yoga is just as effective as simple stretching when it comes to reducing pain and enhancing mobility in those with lower back pain. As first-line therapy for persistent low back pain, the American College of Physicians suggests yoga.
Check This: Heart Health
Regular yoga practice may lower stress levels and overall inflammatory levels, promoting heart health. Yoga can also be used to address a number of the risk factors for heart disease, such as high blood pressure and being overweight.
Check This: Better Sleep and Relaxation
A regular bedtime yoga routine, according to research, can help you set the right mood and get your body ready for sleep and help you stay asleep.
Check This: Stress Management
According to scientific research, yoga promotes mental health, mindfulness, healthy eating, weight loss, sound sleep, and stress management.
Check This: Connection to a Supportive Community
Yoga classes can help people feel less lonely and offer a space for communal healing and support. Even in one-on-one sessions, loneliness goes away as each person is respected as a unique individual.
Every individual in the session is given time to vent and is involved in the development of a customized yoga schedule.
Should I Do Yoga Before or After Workout?
No matter whether you do yoga before or after your workout, adding this soulful workout to your fitness routine will yield uncountable benefits for you.
But it may be better to structure things in one way over another based on your fitness goals.
For instance, the type of workout you will do (cardio or strength training), and the style of yoga you practice.
Yoga can prepare you for a vigorous workout by increasing circulation and warming up your muscles.
Instead of going straight from sitting in front of a computer all day to going to the gym, moving through some Sun Salutations will help you boost your heart rate, warm up tight muscles, and connect to your breath.
However, doing yoga after a workout is an excellent way to transition your body from a high-intensity and heart-pounding state to a relaxing one.
Now, let’s look closely at the benefits of doing yoga before and after workout.
What Are the Benefits of Yoga Before Workout?
Even though it’s generally preferable to practice yoga after working out, there are some advantages to getting in a flow on your yoga mat before getting on the treadmill or starting a set of rigorous squats.
Here are some noteworthy benefits of practicing yoga before working out:
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Ease into the Heavy Workout:
As you have probably been there, it isn’t always motivating to jump straight into a hard workout from a mental standpoint.
Whether we are overtired, understaffed, or overcommitted, we all have days where we are battling our urges to quit the workout and binge-watch something on Netflix instead.
Warming up on a yoga mat before a strenuous workout can make the transition easier and help you remain focused and motivated.
An approachable way to get moving is to do yoga before working out. After you get started, you’ll feel mentally prepared to deal with intense workouts.
Bingo! Yoga trapped you into working out as intensively as possible.
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Establish a Healthy Mind-Body Connection:
By practicing yoga, you will increase your connection between mind and body, thereby gaining body awareness and feeling more connected to your breath.
Before exercising, practicing yoga may help you activate your core and control your breathing, as well as your overall coordination.
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Warm-up your Muscles for what’s to Come:
Beware, yoga for a prolonged period of time can become static stretching before a workout which is likely to be counterproductive. However, if you do it like dynamic stretching, yoga can be a helpful warmup exercise.
Your muscles receive more blood flow during dynamic stretching, which helps them get ready for exercise.
In order to avoid immediately transitioning from a resting state to vigorous jump squats, running, or other highly-active and demanding exercises, yoga also helps in raising body temperature, warming up tissues, and elevating the heart rate.
If you decide to practice yoga before working out, switch between the poses as quickly as possible.
Alternating between poses in a fairly quick flow will simulate dynamic stretching, thus prepping you for an enjoyable workout ride.
Tip: A great way to warm up before a workout is to practice yoga poses like cat-cow.
What Are the Benefits of Yoga After Workout?
Perhaps the last thing you feel like doing after a tough workout is going into a half-moon pose.
Despite this, adding yoga to your workout at the end is often a better option than starting with it before you exercise.
Why?
Because yoga is a great way to help your body transition from a vigorous workout to a feeling of relaxation.
So, yoga can be beneficial post-workout for your body and mind, which can help them transition from high-energy work to regular rest.
The following are some advantages of doing yoga after working out:
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Get a much-needed Cooldown after a Heavy workout:
Following cardio with yoga allows you to lower your respiration and heart rate. While running, cycling, swimming, rowing, or engaging in other forms of cardio, your heart beats faster and louder than it usually does to produce the oxygen your working muscles require.
Directly following intense cardio with a shower or time to rest will cause your heart rate to plummet, which results in blood pooling in your legs.
You can suffer from lightheadedness as well as delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) for days after your workout.
A yoga practice after running or cardio can help the body transition from intense activity to rest.
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Enhanced Muscle Recovery:
By boosting blood flow to the muscles, yoga aids in muscle recovery following a workout. Vital nutrients and oxygen are delivered to your working tissues by the increased blood flow. In fact, this helps muscles recover more quickly from a strenuous training session.
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Enhanced Muscle Flexibility:
As you are probably aware, muscles are composed of interlocking fibers. Simply put, when muscles contract, their fibers pass next to one another, shortening the muscle.
After exercise, some muscles may continue to be contracted, resulting in tightness and stiffness.
Here comes the yoga practice for rescue!
Your muscles are stretched out completely when you practice yoga. Re-aligning the muscle fibers results in consistent stretching. Consequently, the muscles are able to heal more rapidly and effectively.
Over time, stretching the muscles regularly will help them become more flexible. It puts less pressure on the joints when the muscles are flexible.
As well as making your joints less vulnerable to injury, yoga can also help prevent osteoarthritis from developing.
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Reduced Blood Sugar Levels:
Cortisol levels in the body will increase during moderate to intense workouts. The hormone, which is produced naturally in response to stress, can lead to:
- Weak immune system
- Increased blood pressure
- Muscle weakness
- Fatigue
- Increased Risk of Developing Diabetes
The good news is that practicing yoga can help the body’s cortisol levels decline. After a workout, doing yoga has the added benefit of lowering your blood sugar levels.
The adverse effects of short, intense workouts that increase blood sugar are also lessened.
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An Ideal Climax to your Intense Workout Session:
The relationship between the mind, body, and soul is a primary focus of many yoga practices.
They frequently also include relaxation exercises and meditation. (Really, the best way to let your worries go is to strike the child’s pose.)
For this reason, yoga is renowned for lowering blood pressure and stress levels. Thus, yoga is a wonderful way to reward yourself after a challenging workout.
You can develop a sense of serenity and completion through yoga, which will help you feel upbeat as you move on to the rest of your day.
Final Verdict On “Should I Do Yoga Before or After Workout?”
The short answer to whether you should do yoga before or after workout is, in most cases, after a workout. More specifically, if the workout involves more strength than flexibility.
Many fitness professionals agree that yoga should be practiced after lifting weights or doing strength training, as well as after running or doing cardio.
In fact, yoga before a workout reduces overall strength, which negatively affects your performance. Furthermore, you will gain more benefits from yoga after a workout, especially after a cardio session.
However, you’ll still reap plenty of excellent benefits from including yoga in your workout regimen, even if you’re doing it at the beginning of your session.
In other words, don’t let the fact that practicing yoga after a workout is a little more fruitful stop you from getting into your natural flow.
No matter when or how you set up your exercise routine, your body and mind will thank you.
Wrapping It Up!
We hope this article was helpful if you were wondering whether you should do yoga before or after workout. Research suggests that doing yoga after working out is usually the best choice.
But if you’re short on time or like to warm yourself up with yoga, you should consider doing it before exercising.
You can choose to incorporate a few yoga poses or flows before or after your training to see what feels most comfortable for you.
Best of luck keeping that body up and running! ☺
