Yoga for Men - Reason 1 - Integrated Functional Strength
5 Reasons Men Should Do Yoga
Reason 1 - Integrated Functional Strength
Some years ago, I started hitting the gym hard, I was preparing for my next Aikido grading and I had set myself a goal of getting a strong and fit as possible in that time.
In the gym I hit the weights, pumping away at isolation exercises. I got stronger. But after a while I realised I was losing flexibility and suffering from something else that I couldn’t quite articulate at the time - I was losing body integration.
The way I was working out was treating the different parts of my body as separate units, and in so doing I was diminishing my body’s ability to work as a single unit.
Now Yoga isn’t as efficient as building strength in your biceps as doing bicep curls, but it is unparalleled at building integrated functional strength, the type of strength we can really use in the real world.
In Yoga, we constantly move and engage the whole body, learning to control, manage and manipulate our body weight, and our muscles as a single holistic unit. In Yoga, we build strength and stability throughout the whole body. We don’t divide the body up into arms day, legs day, etc.
Real-World Strength
By building our awareness of our whole-body and how it works together, we build strength that we can use in practical day-to-day situations. Those situations where we are moving, lifting and twisting together.
What’s more this integrated strength and body awareness works together to prevent injury in sports and day-to-day life.
This is one of the reasons why so many athletes turn to Yoga, to build connected strength throughout their whole frame and to help avoid career threatening injuries.
References:
Many studies are available on this subject, two examples are listed below:
The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: Yoga for Strength and Stability in Young Adults
Biomedicine Central Publishing: Yoga for Injury Prevention in Military Personnel
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Reason 1 - Integrated Functional Strength