Yoga is a low-impact exercise that is ideal for stress management, sleep quality, mindfulness, and weight loss. Like walking, swimming, golf, skating, and Pilates, yoga is a low-intensity, joint-friendly exercise that can be easily incorporated into your workout routine.
Many people wonder if it’s better to do yoga before or after a workout. The answer depends on several factors, such as the intensity of your existing workout and the intensity of your yoga session.
This is crucial to understand because doing too many workouts in a single day can lead to injuries, hormonal imbalances, and potentially endanger your health. It’s important not to overdo your workout routine to avoid health issues.
Yoga Before or After Workout: Which is Better?
Yoga offers many health benefits; it can help sculpt your body, calm your mind, and improve your overall mood and mindfulness.
To answer your question about whether it’s better to do yoga before or after a workout, we need to consider the intensity of your existing workout. For example, if you have a heavy weightlifting session, that would be a key factor.
Do you feel tired after your workouts? Do you recover in time for your next session? Do you have the capacity to add another type of workout before your main one?
Let’s dive deeper into this topic.
How to Add Yoga Before or After Workout?
First of all, if you already do heavy workout sessions, incorporating yoga before or after your workout is not a good idea as it can cause exhaustion. In this case, it’s better to do yoga on your rest days.
If your workouts are not that intense and you focus on low or moderate workout intensity, it is possible to integrate yoga into your routine. Your body will have the capacity to complete an additional workout without causing injuries or exhaustion.
As for whether it’s better to do yoga before or after your workout, we recommend doing yoga after your workout since your muscles will already be warmed up.
Please note that there are different types of yoga, each with varying intensities. Understanding the primary forms of yoga will help us determine which one to incorporate into our workout routine. Let’s take a look at Vinyasa and Power yoga.
- Vinyasa Yoga: Vinyasa is a fast-paced style where you move from one pose to another without taking a rest. The movements are done in sync with your breath. It’s a great option to include either before or after your workout.
- Power Yoga: Power is similar to Vinyasa but requires more strength and intensity. As it is more demanding, it can be harder to add before or after your workouts.
Let’s break down the topic further to understand why exactly it’s better to do yoga before or after your workout.
Yoga Before a Workout:
- Warm-Up: Yoga can be an effective, dynamic warm-up, especially if you try vinyasa yoga or a series of sun salutations. This can help increase blood flow, improve flexibility, and prepare your muscles for more intense exercise. Make sure to limit the warm-up to no more than 20 minutes. Please note that yoga may lower your testosterone, which can be problematic as it can negatively affect your lifts.
- Improved Focus: Yoga before a workout can help you improve focus and mindfulness, and enhance your mental state.
- Potential Drawbacks: Yoga can temporarily reduce muscle strength due to intense and static stretching, which can negatively affect your weightlifting ability and hinder your performance during high-intensity exercises. If your workout requires maximum effort, doing yoga beforehand is not a good idea.
Yoga After a Workout:
- Cool Down: Yoga is excellent as a post-workout exercise. Yoga can help with cool-down, reduce muscle tension, increase flexibility, and promote relaxation. It is ideal when transitioning from a high-energy workout to a relaxing and resting state.
- Enhanced Recovery: Doing yoga after a workout increases blood flow, delivers more oxygen and nutrients to your muscles, which helps in recovery and reduce muscle soreness.
- Mental Relaxation: Doing yoga after your workout can help lower cortisol levels, reduce stress, and promote mental clarity. Yoga is an ideal cool-down that can complement your overall workout routine.
Key Takeaway:
- Before Workout: Doing yoga before your workout can be beneficial as it can serve as an effective warm-up. However, focus on high-intensity movements to avoid entering a relaxed state, as this can interfere with your main workout. Remember that yoga decreases testosterone, an important hormone that maximizes your output during workouts.
- After Workout: Yoga is an ideal post-workout exercise for cooling down. Post-workout yoga aids in muscle recovery, increases blood flow, and promotes relaxation. This is the best approach, and we recommend doing yoga after your workout as it complements strength-focused or high-intensity exercises.
Doing yoga before or after a workout depends on how it fits into your overall routine. If you do heavy lifting, we would advise doing yoga on your rest days.
If you believe that yoga can fit well into your existing workout routine, the best approach would be to do it as a post-workout activity, ideally incorporating it as a cool-down.
Health Benefits of Yoga
It is believed that yoga originated thousands of years ago. It has been practiced for centuries, and many people note that it carries numerous physical and mental health benefits. Let’s discuss how exactly yoga benefits our bodies and whether it’s worthwhile to take up an activity like yoga.
Back Pain
Yoga is great for relieving back pain and is recommended as a first-line treatment for chronic low back pain. It is as effective as basic stretching for relieving pain and improving mobility. For example, the Cat-Cow Pose is something you can try to relieve your back pain.
Heart Health
Yoga is said to be effective for cardiovascular health as it is great for regulating and lowering high blood pressure, cholesterol, and heart rate, comparable to all major exercise types.
Relaxation Effect
The relaxation effect, mindfulness, and increased mental and physical energy are all benefits of yoga. It’s a great activity to do either early in the morning or before bedtime. Yoga can prepare your body and mind to fall asleep more easily.
Arthritis
Studies have shown that gentle yoga is effective for individuals with arthritis as it helps improve flexibility, strength, and balance while reducing joint pain and stiffness. It’s important to choose the right exercises and focus on stretching poses and movements that specifically strengthen the muscles around your joints.
General Recommendations
Coming back to the main topic of whether doing yoga is better before or after a workout, let’s consider another option—if you don’t work out every day and your routine consists of 3-4 workout days, consider doing yoga on your rest days.
This ensures that you stay active throughout the week and reap both physical and mental benefits daily. Be mindful not to overexercise, as this can negatively affect your long-term health.
Yoga is especially enjoyable on early Sunday mornings when you’re not in a rush and can fully enjoy your session. Try to find balance and avoid burnout.
Conclusion
All in all, the short answer to whether you should do yoga before or after a workout is after the workout. This approach offers more benefits, aids in recovery, and helps with relaxation and cooling down.
Yoga can be easily incorporated into your existing routine, but we recommend avoiding it before a workout as its relaxing effects might interfere with your main session. Dynamic stretches would be a better warm-up.
If you really want to do yoga before your workout, focus on movements and poses that require some strength to serve as a proper warm-up, and avoid deep mindfulness movements that could interfere with your workout.
Overall, yoga is effective both before and after a workout, but the best advice is to do it post-workout. Limit yoga to 20 minutes if your main workout requires maximum effort (e.g., heavy weightlifting) to avoid burnout.
If possible, consider doing yoga on rest days, as this can yield better results by keeping you active throughout the week and ensuring daily physical activity.