Fitness and exercise for endurance training are extremely popular worldwide. However, intensive, long-term training can be strenuous and associated with muscle and joint pain. Your legs will feel heavy during your next workout, and your motivation may suffer.
Regular yoga exercises can significantly contribute to effectively preventing the discomfort caused by endurance training. In our article, you'll learn how you, as a runner, can benefit from specific yoga exercises. This will help you stand even more securely on your feet!
Running and yoga: a perfect combination
More and more runners are discovering yoga for themselves, harnessing the positive effects of this gentle movement technique on running success and overall physical well-being. While yoga and running as sports couldn't be more different, combining them improves body awareness and optimizes training success.
If you are a passionate runner, you can use targeted exercises to regenerate overstressed muscle groups, improve your running form, and increase your performance readiness for the next training session.
Full-body fitness for runners
If you, as a runner, practice yoga exercises after jogging, you're integrating two sports into your daily routine that complement each other perfectly and benefit from each other. When running, you work almost exclusively the muscles and joints of the lower half of your body. While this leads to an intensive training effect for the legs and boosts fat burning, it also results in one-sided strain, muscle imbalances, and limited coordination.
Yoga, on the other hand, is all about inner peace, as well as controlling and stretching the entire body. When performing the exercises after a run, you also activate those areas of your body that are generally neglected in endurance sports. Therefore, yoga is an ideal complement for runners to counteract the muscle shortening caused by jogging. By holding the body positions still for longer, yoga is a gentle full-body workout and a soothing massage in one. For runners, this results in strengthening and regenerating the entire musculature, which has many positive effects after a run.
How yoga affects your body
The buildup of metabolic byproducts such as lactic acid in the muscle fibers that occurs during running is broken down by the gentle training effect of the exercises. Yoga mobilizes the body's self-healing powers , detoxifies tissue, and prevents muscle tension, pain, and wear and tear on the joints. Unfortunately, many passionate runners are affected by this.
How yoga helps you run:
• overstressed muscles are regenerated
• Metabolic byproducts are broken down
• Your running style improves
• overall mobility is increased
• Your willingness to perform for the next running training will be increased
• the overall body feeling is quickly improved
• Promote your mental strength
• Strengthening the cardiovascular system
Jogging and yoga: holistic training for greater well-being
Yoga not only detoxifies the tissue, but also calms the heart rate and reduces the release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. This promotes healthy sleep, which in turn prolongs the recovery period after strenuous endurance training and accelerates regeneration. At the same time, yoga improves body awareness, gently correcting poor posture rather than exacerbating it due to the one-sided strain of running.
After your run, yoga also increases your flexibility and positively changes your running form. With improved knee lift, your stride automatically adapts to the surface and your running speed. Improved running form means longer and faster runs without fatigue. Yoga is therefore the perfect, relaxed balance to endurance sports.
The best asanas for runners
Yoga has a lot to offer runners. We'll give you a brief insight into various exercises (asanas) that can be useful for strengthening, stretching, and recovery. Just grab a yoga mat and let's get started!
• Asanas that stretch the entire body give you a sense of which muscles are shortened and therefore need gentle training. Downward-Facing Dog, or Adho Mukha Svanasana, is an ideal exercise for runners. It stretches the Achilles tendons, which have shortened from running, as well as the muscles in the buttocks and hamstrings. Because this exercise also opens the chest and shoulders, breathing improves, allowing the lungs to absorb more oxygen while running.
• If you have shortened hips and are prone to knee pain, you should incorporate the Dead Pigeon Pose or Sucirandhrasana into your yoga workout, as it stretches the connective tissue between the hips, thighs and shins.
• Runners can also counteract pain in the knees and hips with the standing forward bend (Uttanasana) , as this gently trains the sitting bone muscles in particular.
• In the Trikonasana or triangle position you stretch and strengthen the entire muscles from the shoulders to the ankle joints of your legs and thereby improve the overall balance of your body.
• You can achieve improved hip mobility in the cobbler's pose (Baddha Konasana) . This position opens the knees and inner thighs, and exercise-related tension in the lumbar and hip areas is sustainably relieved.
The crowning conclusion of your yoga workout: Balasana
After your yoga workout, you should definitely perform one final exercise. Relaxation significantly improves the effectiveness of your workout. Balasana , Child's Pose, is an excellent gentle recovery exercise. It promotes blood circulation to the brain and spine and counteracts tension in the neck and pain in the shins. It also allows you to focus solely on your breathing and your mind for a moment.
Have you discovered yoga as a runner? Or are you already practicing certain yoga exercises and have noticed an improvement in your running? We'd love to hear about your experiences!
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