Yoga is a great way to stay healthy and happy for women and men alike, however yoga often gets seen as a women-only environment. Here are some of the key reasons that yoga is fantastic for men too:
- Men often state their lack of flexibility means that they can’t practice yoga, however yoga is about more than this, strength, balance, breath-work, joint suppleness, increased body awareness and so on are also on the cards. Joint and muscle tightness is a great reason to actually attend yoga classes regularly, as the movements and postures work on increasing flexibility and opening the joints to help lengthen and stretch muscles out. This is even more apparent for those who already attend the gym/run/cycle, as these activities impact the muscles and joints, so yoga is a great way to release this tension and strengthen the muscles (i.e. cyclists can benefit from strengthening the core and supporting muscles in the lower back, to help them improve posture and avoid lower back issues).
- Yoga widens range of motion and increases access to more muscle fibres, allowing for more substantial hypertrophy* in any given muscle group to aid the growth of muscles with weight training.
*Hypertrophy is when a muscle is enlarged because its cells are enlarged (it's basically muscle growth on a cellular level).
- Deep abdominal breathing is a huge part of yoga, which activates the parasympathetic nervous system. This lowers levels of cortisol, a hormone that forces your body to hold on to belly fat, so it helps you to stay leaner. Training yourself to breathe deeply through yoga can reduce stress and cortisol levels in your daily life.
- Another giant benefit of yoga is lowering your heart rate. More intense yoga routines will challenge your heart and breathing rates, which strengthen your cardiovascular system and can lead to a reduction in overall heart rate. Your breathing volume can also improve, providing more oxygen for your body to work as efficiently as possible.
- If you’ve trained for years either weight lifting, running or cycling, the body responds a certain way, setting up particular neurological and neuromuscular patterns that stay the same and serve us in that sport. We breathe a certain way; we move a certain way. We often injure the same muscles or ligaments in the same way. Yoga brings the body back into balance, into its natural alignment to help counteract old or persistent injuries to help strengthen the body and improve physical weaknesses from other forms of sport.
- If you aren’t a regular gym-goer, yoga will offer a way of keeping physically healthy without the sometimes competitive environment of the gym.
