Fitness and beyond with Yoga
October 15, 2008
Yoga and ‘Yogik Kriyas’ i.e. yoga’s action, are becoming popular day by day for attaining spiritual and mental peace. With the advent of modern media, training facilities and demonstration classes available in various forms of visual media, there is a lot of hype amongst the people to learn different kind of Asanas i.e. postures. In the present series of articles, we will try to figure out the best possible Yoga postures and exercises that are suited for improving the muscular fitness. An attempt is also made to discuss the yoga asanas in context with body building or weight loss training exercises.
Does Yoga help in building lean muscle mass?
As a body builder the primary focus is to have greater lean mass and muscles, while the role of Yoga in such a practice is still dubious and ongoing researches have not come up with any justifiable answers, still one thing that can be confirmed with certainity is that Yogic Asanas do help in improving the stretch ability of the muscles. Improved stretch ability of the muscles helps to ensure lesser chances of muscle tear on the one hand and help in restoring the flexibility lost in weight training.
Weight training and Yoga ?
Another important query lingering in the mind of various people involved in body building is that, whether it is beneficial or harmful to perform Yoga exercises and weight training together in unison or is it better to stick to weight training alone. Well, the answer to such a query would be that neither of them are supplementary to each other, yet Yoga could well compliment with your body building regime. Not only does Yoga helps to ensure a relaxation of musculo-skeletal system but by performing certain Yogic actions like Pranayama, one can relax mentally as well. Relaxation of mind helps to secrete certain endogenous hormones which assist in reducing stress related degradation of muscular tissues and also prevent physical and mental physique.
In this series of articles, we would be trying to focus individually on each Asana of Yoga and understand it’s utility in body building program.
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