My Favorite Yoga Poses

“Yoga is so universal in its principles and so holistically beneficial, it is possible for any person, young or old, religious or agnostic, to embrace and enjoy a practice.” – Christy Turlington

Ever since I can remember, my grandpa has been a yoga instructor. I used to participate in his classes when I was younger. But as I entered my teen years, I remember thinking that yoga was too boring and slow for my liking. In recent years, I’ve discovered more challenging forms of yoga that are more my style because they have me breaking a sweat, while making me feel long and limber.

I now do yoga a few times a week, and love to practice it on days when I’m feeling sore from my more hardcore workouts. I also enjoy doing a bit of yoga when I wake up feeling sore and stiff, and will do anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes of poses, depending on what I have time for.

The best part about yoga is that it’s meant to be a practice where you embrace your journey in progressing and becoming more flexible, balanced and strong. I usually rep most of the poses out to get my heart rate up a bit, holding the position at the end for a good 15 seconds or so. Here are some of my current favorite yoga poses:

Tree Pose is a good one to start with:

(via)

I always do a bunch of Sun Salutations:

(via)

Camel Pose feels great when I’ve got a sore back:

(via)

I like doing reps of Chair Pose to wake my legs up: 

(via)

Dancer Pose is fun for balance and flexibility:

(via)

I tend to throw some Reverse Triangles in in the midst of my Sun Salutations:

(via)

A fitting name I think, the Warrior 2 pose makes me feel strong and is tough to hold if I have super sore legs:

(via)

And lastly, Warrior 3 is all about concentrating on balancing:

I did some of these poses this morning after I awoke with a funny soreness on the right side of my neck and shoulder for the second day in a row. I felt better initially, but a few hours later, was experiencing a shooting pain from the top of my neck to my shoulder blade whenever I turned my head. It was distracting me from working, and I wound up getting a massage this afternoon in hopes of ironing it out a bit. After cringing in hurts-so-good kind of pain during my hour massage, the area now feels a little better and isn’t quite as tight. I rested it today by doing a strictly lower body workout of cycling 20 miles, and am off to ice it now. Fingers crossed that my tweaking muscles will resolve themselves quickly! 😉

Minimizing Muscle Soreness

This morning when I got out of bed, my first thought was ouchhhhh, what workout did I do yesterday? 

(source)

The answer to that is NONE! I had taken yesterday off from exercising since I worked out every day last week, and knew I could use a rest day. The delayed onset muscle soreness (48 hours+ delayed) I’m experiencing is from my workout on Saturday, where I did some weight training exercises I haven’t done in awhile. Typically when I’m sore 2 days after a workout, I’ll first feel some aches the day after, but for some reason, that wasn’t the case this time.

I sort of have a love/hate relationship with muscle soreness. Obviously it’s not fun to have a hard time lifting my arms above my head (yes, that’s happening right now), but at the same time, it makes me feel like my workouts are challenging my muscles and making me stronger. I find myself sore pretty often because I’m constantly switching up my exercise routine.

The interesting thing about muscle soreness is that we don’t know a whole lot about it. There’s been an ongoing debate about both the cause and treatment of delayed onset muscle soreness. Though it was once believed to be caused by a buildup of lactic acid during an intense workout, we now know soreness occurs because of microscopic tears in muscle fibers and connective tissue, and is part of the adaptation process that leads to greater muscle strength and stamina.

Though I’m not an expert (and just admitted to feeling sore a lot!), there are some things I do often that I feel minimize the amount of muscle soreness I experience:

• Always warmup – I start my workouts with 5 minutes of cardio and some dynamic stretching (such as arm circles) to get my muscles warmed up before jumping into intense exercises.
• Eat post workout – I make sure to eat within an hour or exercising. I’ll have at least 15 g protein to help repair and rebuild my muscles, and also eat some carbs to boost my insulin levels (thus, helping my body to more efficiently utilize the amino acids from the protein I’m eating).
• Ice, ice, ice! I’m constantly icing muscles post-workout (especially my nagging calf injury) and really believe in the power of icing to help with the amount of soreness I feel.
• Stretching – It’s controversial if stretching actually helps with muscle soreness, but I do it after every workout. It can’t do any harm and feels great to stretch out after a hard workout.

Ok… maybe not that kind of stretching!

(source)

• Rest, but don’t rest too much. The day after an intense workout, sometimes I’ll give myself a complete rest day. But then the day after that, I get back to it, even if I’m still sore. Other times I’ll do some low-impact aerobic exercise the following day, like a long walk with my dog, the elliptical, or my favorite sore muscle workout, yoga. Low intensity exercise increases blood flow and diminishes muscle soreness. So, even if you’re tempted to curl up in a ball in pain and not move for days, your body will feel better if you get moving.
• Treat yourself to some heat or a rubdown. Getting in a hot tub, sauna, or hot bath is also thought to increase blood flow to your muscles. Better yet, a massage does that too. Unfortunately, with my marine deployed, I don’t have anyone to nag to massage my achy muscles! I’m not able to get a massage every time I have muscle soreness (though I wish I did), but it certainly makes me feel better when I do.

(source)

Because it was only my upper body that was feeling sore today, I skipped the weight training and was all about the cardio, setting a new max on the spin bike – 25 miles in 75 minutes 🙂 Here’s to hoping my butt and legs aren’t sore tomorrow! Off to get out my ice pack…