The Benefits of Yoga for Runners

Here are the benefits and why you should incorporate yoga into your running routine:

Creating harmony and balance in your body Running requires a lot of endurance from your joints and muscles. Yoga can help balance your body by stretching and lengthening your muscles. Engaging in regular practice allows you to have a wider range of motion throughout your entire body. Yoga brings your awareness to muscles that need strengthen to support your running. By fine tuning these secondary muscles, you can protect yourself from creating imbalances that occur when you use the same muscles over and over.

In addition, a study showed that people who did yoga three times a week for 12 weeks saw their blood pressure numbers go down.

Connects the mind to the body Yoga helps you develop a more intuitive sense of the body and how it works. You become more in tune with your internal energy levels and where it may be stuck in the body. A review of 11 studies on yoga and the brain has shown to increases your brain’s volume of grey matter and more grey matter means better brain function.

Prevent injury Engaging in the same repetitive movements causes muscle imbalances, tightness, and weakness that can lead to injury. Yoga helps you activate the underused muscles and aligns your body by bringing balance and symmetry from right to left and bottom to top. Maintaining a regular yoga practice is especially helpful with addressing chronic injuries. Often times chronic injuries are a sign of some type of imbalance.