We spend so much of our lives slouching, weakening our erector spinae muscles. Slouching trains us to have poor posture, leading to poor running form. Yes YOUR posture effects you running form. Weak erector spinae are the first thing that causes you to break your stride . The problem with posture muscles is they are hard to strengthen once weak. You can’t lift weights to help strengthen your postural muscles, in fact strength training with a weak core often leads to injury.
This is why Yoga is great for runners looking to strengthen their core. Yoga is resistance training that uses your own body. When you first start practicing you can’t do many of the poses because of a lack of strength and body control, mainly in the core. This is actually a good thing, because it is your body’s own way of keeping you from pushing too hard. Then one day you’ll progress in the posture discovering how much more room you have to grow!
Yoga is a great medium for all because you get benefits even before you can do the posture. That is right, you get benefits from trying to do postures. Before you can do a posture, you are stretching a tight muscle, preparing your body to strengthen it in the future using your own body for resistance. When you learn to finally control your own body you can then start to strengthen it.
Yoga isn’t just about stretching (although that is a huge aspect us runner’s can benefit from!)
What is your favorite type of yoga? If you haven’t tried yoga, what’s keeping you from trying it?
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