Hello everyone. Today’s article is a guest post from the freelance writer Melanie Slaugh.
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When people start exercising it’s not uncommon to get swept up into the ideology that more is more and the only way to get into great shape is to do a lot of high impact, heart pounding activities. High impact activities like running, high intensity interval training (or HIIT) and plyometric exercises all have their place in working out. However doing too many high impact activities can be hard on your joints and leave you physically and mentally fatigued and burned out. This is why doing a lower impact activity such as yoga on some days can be both beneficial and rejuvenating. Yoga is one of those exercises that have risen in popularity over the years and with good reason – the benefits of regular practice are astounding.
1. Focus on Slow Dynamic Movements
High intensity exercise focuses on fast dynamic movements which elevate your heart rate and lead to fat-burning. Yoga, on the other hand, focuses on slow dynamic movements and since every yoga pose is designed to focus on stretching out a particular set of muscles before flowing into the next pose it is ideal for increasing your range of motion and overall flexibility. Each pose also has several different variations, making it easily adaptable to people who are more or less flexible than others and allowing you to cater to your own physical needs.
2. Lower Impact Strength Training
While regularly lifting weights at the gym is great for adding strength and developing muscle, yoga concentrates on using your body weight to help tone and strengthen muscles. Through practicing yoga you give your body a break from using added weights while still focusing on improving overall strength and conditioning – something that will help you in the gym lifting weights as well.
3. Better Breathing Technique
Breathing mindfully through each pose teaches us to zero in on how we’re breathing and really pay attention to doing it right. With this extreme focus on breathing we become more mindful of it during higher impact activities as well, allowing us to maximize on the technique and perform better overall. It also helps to increase our lung capacity, which is beneficial when doing any exercise.
4. Cardiovascular Fitness
Mindful breathing and slow purposeful movements that are standard in yoga practice results in a lower heart rate and increased oxygenation of the body. This translates to improved cardiovascular fitness and endurance, making it the ideal complement to higher intensity training.
5. Strong Core
One of the major benefits of yoga is the focus on enhancing core strength. Almost all yoga poses work to strengthen the core and many athletes can attest to the fact that a strong core is vital in performing well.
There’s no denying that doing intense physical activity burns fat and helps to aid in weight loss. However taking time to focus on doing lower impact activities like yoga that help to stretch out and strengthen our muscles is equally as important to maximizing on our overall health.
About the Author:
Melanie Slaugh is enthusiastic about the growing prospects and opportunities of various industries and writing articles on various consumer goods and services as a freelance writer. She writes extensively for internet service providers and also topics related to internet service providers in my area for presenting the consumers, the information they need to choose the right Internet package for them. She can be reached at slaugh.slaugh907 @ gmail.com.