So today, I want to talk to you guys about Yoga. Don’t worry, WB Fitness isn’t going the soy boy route. Yoga can play a valuable role in bodybuilding both on and off season. So here I would like to talk to you briefly about where Yoga comes from (and where it doesn’t), the different types and which of them will be best for you and give you a basic bodybuilding yoga routine to get you started.
Origins of Yoga
I am sure at some point you have heard someone go on about how yoga is a 5000 year old practice from India. Let me start by saying, it isn’t. It is about 60 years old and is made right
I’m, like,totally doing some ancient shit from another country which makes me awesome. Pants by lululemon: 200 dollars.
here in the good old U S and A. This makes the
Catching Ferris ditching school just as sacred as yoga
ancient art of yoga the same age as Jennifer Grey.If anyone in a leotard stinking of patchouli tries to tell you differently here are the facts.
Indus Valley cave drawings prove that sitting on ones ass and daydreaming is a practice which is thousands of years old
Yoga, as it is practiced, is a set of postures which are called asanas and are combined with breathing techniques. This is something that dates to 1960. The claim that Yoga is a 5000 year old practice rests 100% on pictures found in the Indus Valley of a man sitting cross legged. The problem with this is that the drawing is simply a picture of what people look like when they sit down on the ground. There is nothing else linking yoga to an ancient culture than one crude picture of a guy sitting down.
Yoga is where we get the word yoke. Idiots is where we get the word “woke”
So where does this idea come from. Well, 2500 years ago in the Hindu religious books called the Upanishads, the word yoga is used. It is used to describe a way of strapping horses together. Yoga is the root of our word Yoke. In the Upanishads it is used as a metaphor for mental prayer while sitting down. So yeah, Yoga can be used to describe an old Hindu teaching, but so can the word Avatar and no one is suggesting that traveling to the distant world of Pandora will in any way be good for your body and soul or that Sigourney Weaver is part of an ancient spiritual tradition.
Now here is where things get interesting. Back in the 19th century an Indian Prince named Krishanaraja Wadiyar III wrote an exercise
You haven’t tried yoga yet?
manual called the Sritattvanidhi. In it there were 122 poses taken for the most part from Indian Gymnastics. The British who were in India at the time got into the exercise craze and brought it back to Europe.
Later on, in the early 1960’s, in America, a fellow named B.K.S. Iyengar had the great idea of
That look when you make millions off of a 150 year old gym class and a little hocus pocus
taking Wadiyar’s gymnastics and mixing it up with the old ideas of meditation found in the Upanishads and selling it to hippies as an ancient and spiritual practice. Adding a mental or spiritual (or pretension laden) component to gymnastics caught on with the young people in the 1960’s and Yoga was born with very few people realizing it is just 19th century Indian Gym class with some phony bologna bs tacked on to it.
So what is Yoga in the end? It is the thing we bodybuilders neglect the most. It is stretching and if you can access it while leaving the hocus pocus bs behind it will be very good for your body. Yoga will help you be proactive about tendon injury, it will help you get good stretching and, most of all, certain yoga will strengthen your core making it ideal for tons of different lifts. Because it is very easy on the body, Yoga can be done on off days or even on the same day as lifting without causing too much bodily stress.
There are lots of different types of yoga and I think that a beginners version of most of them are excellent. One thing I will caution is with Bikram yoga. Bikram yoga is a type of Hatha yoga utilizing 26 asanas held between 6-60 seconds each in a room that is 105 degrees and kept at 40% humidity. I think the poses in the Bikram sequence and the heat are great, but a word of caution, hydration is a bitch. If you are working out doing something as intense as the WB program, you will need to be drinking 1.5-2 gallons of water a day. If you toss in a bikram class, you should add at least another half-gallon of water because over the course of 90 minutes you will sweat and sweat hard.
Aside from bikram and any kind of Vinyasa or Restorative yoga there are six particular poses that are very helpful for bodybuilders. I do them (or at least try to, I have been terrible with stretching) before AND after each workout holding each pose for 1 minutes and doing all six of them twice from the first to the last and then over again.
Pre and Post Workout Yoga Stretch
Pigeon Pose will stretch out the piriformis and open up the hips. Piriformis issues are one of the most common injuries bodybuilders deal with so keeping it stretched and open is a great thing.
Hero Pose will stretch the quads and the anterior tibialis as well as the patellofemoral joint (often called the knee). This is a great way to take care of your legs and knees.
Belly Twist stretches the lower back and, according to some, hydrates the spinal discs. If true, this is probably the most important thing a lifter can do. Keeping the discs hydrated will prevent disc injuries. As someone who has had several slipped, bulging and herniated discs…trust me, you will want to avoid them. Further, it gives a good stretch to the chest, shoulders and arms.
Upward Facing Dog is where we stretch out our abs and our hip flexors. Even if it did no good for us, this will feel good.
Legs Up Against The Wall Pose is a terrific restorative. It is great for blood flow, helps with foot pain and will generally make you feel better.
Now I am never going to tell you that a regular yoga program will in anyway replace the iron: it will not. Lifting weights is what gets us strong, cut, lean and acts as our fountain of youth. But some small amount of Yoga poses built into our stretching can help us feel better and help our lifts get better. Whether you decide to do this in the stretch area of your gym before and after working out like I do in order to prepare for and finish off lifting or you take a class at your gym or find a yoga studio (always fun being the jacked guy in the yoga studio!) I do suggest incorporating some yoga into your workouts.