Yoga Poses For Before and After Your Workout

It is important to warm up before a workout and take the time you need to recover from exercise because it takes a toll on your body over time. One way to address both the need to prepare for a workout and to recover from a workout is to do certain yoga poses before and after every workout.

Why yoga?

Yoga is helpful for both warmup and recovery. For warmup, yoga primes your muscles for exercise, ensuring your body is ready for the stress of exercise. Yoga also helps your balance and agility, putting you in a good position before your workout. For recovery, yoga allows oxygen to flow to hard to reach places to aid healing.

How To Incorporate Yoga Into Your Workout

Before your workout, start with some yoga poses to prime your muscles. Below, we will go over some good poses to do both before and after working out on the two most popular machines at our fitness club. Then, complete your workout. Once you have finished, gently ease into your first post-workout pose. Both warm up and recovery should only take about five minutes each.

Treadmill

While the treadmill causes less stress on your joints than running outside, people tend to overstride on treadmills, throwing them off balance. It is important to work out the tension in your hamstrings and lower back before working out on the treadmill.

Pre-workout pose: Lying Big Toe

Start by lying on your back on the floor. Lift your right leg up to a 90-degree angle. Grab the big toe of your right foot with your right hand and gently pull it closer to your body with your left leg grounded to the floor. If you can’t reach, use a yoga strap or towel instead. If your back rounds, bend your left knee and put your left foot on the ground. Repeat on the other side of your body.

Post-workout pose: Half Hero

Use this pose after your treadmill workout to avoid thigh cramps. Get on all fours, facing away from a wall and touching it with your feet. Place your left shin on the wall by bending your knee back and putting it on the base of the wall. Gently lift your torso. You should feel the stretch in your quad. Be gentle, as this pose can cause a very intense stretch. Repeat with your right side.

Elliptical

Elliptical workouts can be a great way to get an intense cardio workout without hurting your knees. However, ellipticals can also cause a lot of tension in the body, particularly the lower back and shoulders, so it is important to stretch before and after.

Pre-workout pose: Reclined Twist

Stretch your glutes and spine with this pose. Lie on your back and cross the right thigh over the left, allowing your knees to roll to the right. Hold this for a few breaths before switching to the other side of the body.

Post-workout pose: Cross-Legged Stretch

Sit cross-legged on the floor. Then, put your hands in front of you and lift your hips. Walk your hands out as far as possible without rounding the back. Breathe deeply to push yourself further out. This will release the tension in your lower back.

Now you are ready to get the most out of your workout at our fitness club! Come into Spunk Fitness to work out today.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why You Should Try A Fitness Class?

Image
We’ve all been there: you know you should workout, but you are dreading another dull hour on the treadmill. More often than not, if this is your attitude, you will decide to stay at home on the couch instead. Fortunately, there are many ways to spice up your workout routine and increase your motivation. One such way is to implement this is to try a group fitness class. Many people are resistant to group fitness classes because they feel embarrassed. After all, what if you don’t understand how to do the exercise and make a fool out of yourself? This is a common feeling, but it is not the right attitude with which to approach fitness. Believe it or not, no one in the room is looking at you; they are thinking about how to not make fools out of themselves! If that is not enough, here are some of the many benefits of group fitness classes: Accountability When you sign up for a class, you are automatically more likely to go workout because it keeps you accountable. If you start regularly att...
Read more

Can Food Sensitivities Cause Weight Gain?

Image
There’s been plenty of hype about food allergies over the last few years. People are going gluten-free, dairy-free, and looking for other things in their diet that might be hurting their health or even hindering their fitness goals. If you’ve wondered if the foods you eat could be affecting your health and fitness, here is some gathered insight from the medical community. Food Sensitivities Versus Food Allergies If someone claims to have a food allergy but can eat food that contains it without an immediate allergic reaction (known as an IgE response), it isn’t technically an allergy. It’s more like a food sensitivity. Food allergies are life-threatening realities for many people and shouldn’t be confused with the mild digestive problems or inflammation that’s more typical of a food sensitivity. In other words, if you have a food allergy, it will be obvious. Food sensitivities or intolerances, however, cause less immediate reactions in the body that are much less severe and may even...
Read more

In Appreciation of Your Workout Buddy

Image
Just like peanut butter goes with jelly and Barack goes with Michelle, you and your workout buddy just make sense together. Whether you jog together in the morning, hit a fitness class over lunch, or pump iron after dinner, your workout buddy is your cheerleader, therapist, and personal trainer, all rolled into one. Without an excellent workout buddy, many of us wouldn’t be able to achieve our fitness goals. Here are some of the reasons why you should take some time out of your day today to give a shoutout to this special person in your life. They make you show up One of the most important ways a workout buddy can help you with your fitness goals is by actually forcing you to show up. This doesn’t mean that your buddy has to pound on your front door to physically drag you to every workout; in general, social pressure is sufficient to motivate us to workout. You may feel the strong need to skip your fitness class after work, but the thought of your workout buddy in class alone and disap...
Read more