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When you first start practicing yoga, you will notice a huge improvement right away. Your flexibility will increase and it will only take a few sessions before you are able to hold poses that you struggled with to start with. You will see a big improvement in your stress levels and overall mental health as well.

However, a lot of people find that they hit a plateau after a while and they struggle to progress. If you find yourself in this position, there are a few different things that you can try to improve your practice. Finding a good teacher is important and you need to make sure that you are consistent, but one of the things that people often overlook is strength training. In fact, combining yoga and strength training is one of the best ways to improve the results from both exercises. These are some of the benefits of combining strength training with yoga.

Improved Functional Strength

If you want to build muscle and make yourself stronger, lifting weights is the obvious way to do that. For example, if you want to strengthen your pectorals, there are plenty of great chest day exercises that will help you to do just that. The problem is, lifting weights trains your muscles to work effectively in very specific motions and that doesn’t always translate to functional, everyday improvements.

That’s where yoga comes in because it helps you to reconnect with your body’s natural movements and build that functional strength. However, yoga doesn’t build muscle as quickly as targeted weight lifting exercise will. So, a combination of both is the best way to improve your functional strength and notice a difference in your everyday life.

More Advanced Yoga Practice

When you move onto more advanced yoga poses, you may find that strength is a problem. If your muscles are not developed enough, it can be difficult to hold your weight and that creates a big barrier when you are trying to progress in your practice. However, if you do regular strength training sessions, you can build more muscle and you will notice that it’s easier to hold difficult poses for longer and you will be much more stable when you do.

Improved Recovery

Recovery is so important when you do any kind of strength training exercises. You need to stretch your muscles out and make sure that you are eating right so your muscles can repair themselves. If you don’t focus on recovery, you will notice that your muscles are sore for days after a workout and that makes it tough to keep up with your routine. However, regular yoga practice is a brilliant way to stretch your muscles and keep them from tightening, so you will notice a big difference in your recovery times. Yoga is also excellent for mobility and flexibility, which is important because people often find that they are quite stiff after a lot of strength exercises.

If you practice yoga and want to improve your abilities, strength training is one of the best ways to do it. It’s also very beneficial for people that are focused on strength training to take up yoga because the two go hand in hand.