Running is not just running: to the different race workouts that we do throughout the week and that can be of quality (series, fartlek) or longer runs to add kilometers, we must add strength work, stretching, the career technique and the work of other basic physical abilities such as coordination or flexibility.
Maybe right now you’re thinking “all this I have to work on?”: Yes, if you want to be a good runner and save yourself injuries along the way. One of the most useful disciplines to work these physical abilities that benefit us in the race is Yoga, and then we explain why.
On the one hand, the practice of Yoga, on variants such as Hatha, Vinyasa or Ashtanga Yoga, gives us a good strength training with our own body weight. Both Ashtanga and Vinyasa Yoga are very dynamic variants of this discipline, which will also help us to work on coordination. The practice of Yoga can help us work the muscles of our extremities but also that of the central area of our body, which helps us to maintain a correct posture while we are running.
Strength, flexibility, improvement of breathing … Yoga is one of the best complementary activities for runners
The breath is a point very important for runners, as we talked about before, and it is also for yogis. During the practice of Yoga, the control of the breathing has a special importance: different types of breaths are carried out until reaching the complete breathing or in four phases, something that we can extrapolate later to our race training.
The work of flexibility and muscle stretching are also an important part of Yoga, since it requires good mobility to perform many of the postures or asanas of the sessions. One of the main problems of the runner is the shortening of the musculature, especially in the case of hip flexors and hamstrings, and the practice of Yoga can be very useful in this regard.
Yoga is, without doubt, one of the best complementary activities for runners of any distance, have you started to practice it already?