What do YOU think Wedenadays 4 - Is Yoga good for Running?

Good morning! It's already three days into February, can you believe? 2010 has been a flyin'!

Thanks for reading Part 4 of What do you think Wednesdays.

Let's just jump right into it.

What do you think.....

Is Yoga good for Running?

I am clearly no Kara Goucher, and clearly no Rodney Yee, but I run sometimes, and practice yoga sometimes, so… that counts for something, right?

In my humble, non-expert, but still-should-be-good-for-something opinion, YES, yoga has been good for my running.

Without getting too verbose, I’ll try to sum up how I think I’ve benefited from yoga.

The following is a list of generic/common benefits of yoga:

* Relaxation of Muscles
* Increased Energy Levels
* Improved Cardiovascular Endurance
* Improved Core Strength
* Improved Flexibility and Balance
* Enhanced Overall Muscle Strength
* Enhanced Immune System
* Improved Digestion
* Weight Control

To spare you from death by boredom, I’ll try to stick to the important bits!

Relaxation of Muscles:
This one’s pretty self explanatory. Running hurts. My leg muscles get tight. My tummy cramps. My neck and shoulders cramp. Yoga stretches and soothes. Relaxation of muscles: check!

Increased energy levels:
Hmmm.... Though I find yoga to be invigorating, restorative, stimulating, and exhilarating, I don’t think it has contributed much to making me MORE energetic overall as a human.

Improved Cardiovascular Endurance:
For runners and endurance athletes, this statement might make you chuckle. Yoga? As Cardio? I personally don’t think yoga, even Bikram Yoga (aka oven yoga) can come even close to running in terms of improving cardiovascular endurance. However, that being said, there are challenging yoga sessions that left me panting. I think “improved” is an overstatement, but it does help somewhat.

Improved Core Strength:

(Boat Pose: Image source)

Bingo! This one’s huge for me. My lack of core strength slapped me in the face when I first started running. I was so weak, I would get too tired to hold my upper body upright on long runs. Even worse, with my weak core, I couldn’t support all the movements of my hips. Hello Pinched Nerve!

Yoga, with all its balancing poses, has helped my core strength tremendously! According to this LA Yoga article, yoga "[is] way to help runners with core strengthening, since running forces athletes to work the major muscles, while the stabilizers (tendons, ligaments and minor muscles) are often neglected.”

Every week, I do a 60-min or 25-min Core Yoga Class at home. (Available from yogadownload.com. SUPER awesome website BTW). HOLY CRAP. My abs are so ripped up, I call it The Situation.

Well, not quite, but my core strength is MUCH better. Thank you navasanas!

Improved flexibility and balance:(Standing Splits: Image source)

This one is by far the most important benefit, in my opinion. According to super Yogi Baron Baptise and Kathleen Finn Mendola in their article "Yoga for Runners",

A typical runner experiences too much pounding, tightening, and shortening of the muscles and not enough restorative, elongating, and loosening work. Without opposing movements, the body will compensate to avoid injury by working around the instability. Compensation puts stress on muscles, joints, and the entire skeletal system.

The article further goes on to explain that

Knee pain, too, is related to other parts of the body. If the ankles are weak or the hips are not aligned, that can put strain on the anterior ligaments in the knees.... Due to constant forward motion, hip flexor muscles shorten and tighten and cause hyperextension in the lower back. This constantly arched position holds tension in the back and can hamper the fluidity of the hamstrings as well.

Um..... wow. Has Baron been stalking my blog or something? Cause he just recapped all the injuries/pain I've been having, like tendinitis, ITB pain, pinched nerve in my lower back....

When I first started running, I kind of threw yoga off. I used to be little miss Gumby, but run ning, combined with a desk job did something unexpected to my body; it made me stiff as a board. My hip flexors especially were so tight! So much so that last February, I pinched my nerve in my lower back. That was NOT a fun experience. Running also put a lot of strain on my quads, as they constantly felt tight, swollen, tired, and heavy. I pushed through it and got tendinitis. Because my hips were weak, I got ITB pain.

Back in Octoberish of 2009, I got serious about my yoga again. It became a mandatory weekly workout. At first, I was so inflexible, I could hardly hold the poses I used to be able to do perfectly. I was shocked! Had I gotten that tight/stiff? wow.

But now, 5ish months later, I'm glad to say I'm back to being 96% of my original flexibility. My ITB pain is but a memory. My quads feel much better. My tendinitis has fewer flare ups. I think balancing the muscles being used, giving them appropriate flexibility, and stretching out the tightness caused by running has been crucial. I think without yoga, I'd be running with a lot more pain right now!

Enhanced overall muscle strength:
Yes. Yoga has improved my overall strength. I can now hold poses deeper and longer. I can balance without toppling over. I know yoga will never replace weight training. You can't hypertrophy through yoga. But using gravity and your own body strength goes a long way in developing strength.

I think the trick to gaining strength through yoga is choosing classes with "power" in the name. I like the "Power Vinyasa Flow" classes from yogadownload.com. I am too much of an adrenaline junkie to be able to yawn through "let's touch our toes and take a deep breath" kind of BS classes. I want to be challenged. I want to work out, I want to get strong! So I stay away from classes like "Gentle Hatha Flow" or "detox yoga", or anything targeted towards beginners. I think power yoga and other challenging classes def has muscle strengthening capabilities.

I've never tried yoga with weights... I don't know if I'm coordinated enough for that :)

Enhanced Immune System:
Dubious claim, in my opinion. I still get sick.

Improved Digestion:
Yup. I'll let em rip during yoga sessions. Keeps me from feeling dyspeptic. :)

Weight Control:
I suppose if I stopped with all those damned chocolate-covered, peanut butter filled pretzels from Trader Joes, I would lose weight.

In a nutshell; I have found yoga to be extremely beneficial to my running. The flexibility and fluidity I regained in my hips/quads is remarkable.

To be honest, I only look at yoga from an athletic point of view, not a spiritual one. I really couldn't care less about mantras, shakras, cosmic energies, ayurveda, or any of that sort of mysticism. I think yoga as a physical practice can be separated from its spiritual origin. In fact, a lot of that mumbo-jumbo scares me and turns me off. But I know that deep trikanasanas and utktasanas make me stronger, so I will keep at it.

Also worth mentioning is that I do all of my yoga at home. I use yogadownload.com, which is an amazing website for at-home yoga classes. I highly recommend you check it out. Dawnelle is my favorite instructor BTW :) They have everything from 20 minute classes to 60+minute classes for all levels and styles. I like to crank up the heater in my house to about 75 degrees and have a nice, warm, long, yoga session.

I know this has turned more into a "let me preach at you about yoga" rather than a "what do you think?" but forgive me. I love to talk about myself, obviously :)
So thank you for listening to me go on and on, but What do you think?

• Do you practice yoga for running?
• Do you have a stretching regimen instead of yoga?
• Or do you cross train instead? Do you find that cross training is enough to balance out your muscles?

Again, I very much appreciate your wise thoughts!

Happy Humpday!