My name’s Eryn and I’ve been working as a Personal Trainer and Yoga Teacher for the last seven years. For me, training is all about balance, which is why I like to work on my strength in the gym, whilst simultaneously improving my flexibility and mobility with yoga.

A few years ago, I dislocated my shoulder in an acute accident (inline skating) and several times after this, my shoulder would dislocate, especially after doing a lot of yoga. As a result, I’ve used strength training to improve my shoulder stability and strengthen the muscles in my upper body so that I can still practise yoga. That’s why it’s so important to include a variety of different types of training and not confine yourself to one training style.

Now, I use the two to develop my strength and improve my mobility. You don’t have to choose one of the other, yoga and weight training work great together if you’re looking for all round health and fitness.

How Developing Upper Body Strength Improves Yoga

Upper body strength is vital during vinyasa style yoga where you’re flowing from one movement to another, specifically when chaturanga are regularly used throughout the practice. During a chaturanga, you’re moving from a plank into a push up and upward facing dog and therefore, chest, shoulder and triceps strength is vital.

If you want to use your gym work to increase your strength for this type of movement, you can do bodyweight exercises such as push ups and bench dips or add equipment and include bench press and shoulder press movements.

You will also require good upper body isometric strength when holding your arms in movements such as the warrior poses (warrior one, warrior two and reverse warrior). To improve your isometric upper body strength, try adding pauses to your upper body exercises to increase the amount of time the muscles are under tension.

Upper Body Yoga Exercises

Although you can use a Weights Set in the gym to get stronger, there are also yoga poses that will improve your upper body strength.

• Staff pose

• Chaturanga

• Reverse tabletop

• Eagle arm pose

How Developing Core Strength Improves Yoga

During a yoga session, you are required to hold poses, this can be anywhere from a few seconds through to a few minutes depending on the style of yoga. Regardless of how long the poses are held for, core strength is required for most if not all exercises to achieve stability during upright postures. It’s also important to engage your core to prevent overarching your spine and control movements, especially when flowing through postures.

This is similar to training in the gym. When performing compound movements such as squats and deadlifts, you should be engaging your core muscles, otherwise you’re at risk of  overloading your spine. It can be useful to practise engaging your core during bodyweight and light loads so that you can translate this across to heavier lifts and your yoga practice.

It’s also important to include core specific exercises to your training such as plank variations that are also used in yoga so that you can be stronger in your practice. If you're new to building core strength, an Ab Mat or a Door Sit Up Bar can help make training more comfortable.

Core Yoga Exercises

Here are some specific yoga poses that you can use to build up your core strength.

• Boat pose

• Plank

• Side plank

• Bird dog

How Developing Lower Body Strength Improves Yoga

Many yoga postures are variations of squat and lunge movements, such as chair pose, yogi squat, warrior 1 and low lunge, therefore it’s important to develop your quadriceps and glute strength for these movements. This can be done by including goblet squats, back squats, split squats, and lunges into your gym workouts.

Another important part of yoga practice is balance. A lot of the postures require balance, especially single leg movements like tree pose. Although not often considered, balance should be included in your strength sessions in the gym and can be trained by focusing on single leg movements like pistol squats and step ups.

Lower Body Yoga Exercises

To develop your lower body strength and mobility, you can incorporate these movements into your yoga practice.

• Chair pose

• Goddess pose

• Warrior 2

• High lunge

Dumbbell Workout To Improve Strength and Yoga

If you want to improve your yoga practice, cross training is a great way to do so. Including strength work in your weekly routine is a surefire way to get stronger, not just for day-to-day living, but it will help you advance in your practice. Here is a 30-minute dumbbell workout that you can perform anywhere to improve your strength for yoga.

• Renegade row

• Floor chest press

• Split squat

• Russian twist

• Weighted wall sit

Complete 8-12 repetitions of each exercise for 3-5 rounds as a circuit. Take 60-90 seconds rest between each round. To make the workout more challenging, try increasing the number of sets or repetitions, or progress to heavier dumbbells.

You don’t have to focus on a single method of movement, you can enjoy yoga and strength training and reap the rewards from both. As training goes, they complement each other extremely well, and incorporating both into your training is a great way to improve both your strength and flexibility.

For more content, follow us on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and on our official Mirafit Facebook page.

Tags: Exercise Type > Strength ; Exercise Type > Yoga and Pilates ; Misc > Workout