Why You Should Add Yoga to Your Gym or Cardio Workout

When choosing the workouts that are best for you, and help you to meet your goals, it is sometimes necessary to look at trying new activities. Yoga is a useful add-on to any workout as it boosts the results of your other workouts, improves your ability to perform better in sports, supports cardio training, and even helps you lift higher weights.
As a workout on its own, Yoga offers a way to improve your overall health. It improves the communication of mind and body, which is crucial to avoiding injury and expanding your abilities and limits. As a way to stretch muscles in preparation for other activities, improving balance and increasing lung capacity and stability. Many find Yoga helps to bring their body and life into balance, reducing stress and body aches and pains. Often it will improve sleep and concentration while reducing anxiety and depression, all of which help the body to recover faster after workouts and help to maintain the energy to do other workouts. The skills that are gained in Yoga, balance, control over each muscle, awareness of the movements, and how your body feels as you move through poses, are helpful in any sport or workout. It will help to avoid injury and encourage proper healing and rest time to heal.
While moving through Yoga poses it is important to control the breathing. With an inhale as you move into the pose and then an exhale as you settle into it, you can both expand your lung capacity and help to improve the stretch that you receive from the poses. If you do a lot of cardio training practicing the breathwork that comes with a Yoga practice will help to improve your breathing during your workout and help you to achieve better results from your regular cardio at the gym.
Cardio includes not only running, jogging, and biking, but also boxing, sparring, rowing, and stair machines. While these each work several muscles and can be enjoyable, they are also cardio workouts due to the intensity and speed of movements. Each of these will also benefit from adding yoga to your workout routine. You will be able to respond faster, move more fluidly, and safely as you will feel any incorrect movements with time to correct.
If you regularly use the gym to do weightlifting it may seem as though Yoga is not complimentary, but it does help to strengthen the muscles and improve the core. By improving the stability and strength of the core muscles weightlifting becomes safer and easier. The muscles gain strength not only from intentionally moving from one Yoga pose to the next but also from holding the poses between transitions. By strengthening and toning muscles they are better able to lift more without injury or strain.
There are many benefits to adding Yoga to your regular gym workout and avoiding injury while improving lung capacity and stamina are some of the most beneficial. You will find that you are better able to perform other workouts and it will also help improve your performance in any sport that you enjoy.