Does Yoga Cause Weight Lifting Injuries?

July 13, 2018 Ashley 0 Comments

Love your morning yoga routine?

Me too.

But then you maybe heard some story about how stretching’s messing with your workout – how it could lead to an injury. So you quit quit doing it. Ya know, I stopped my salutations for just a month. One. (But it was ’cause I was “too busy” – not because an article said so.) And, within a mere four weeks, I’d landed both an ankle and a wrist injury. Am I saying lack of asanas caused it? Not necessarily. But I’m also not not saying it. Especially since it’s the first time in four years that I A.) hadn’t done yoga, and B.) had gotten myself any serious injury – much less two.

So, how can we reconcile these two things?

Well, the idea behind less stretching actually has zero to do with yoga. See, what they’re talking about is passive stretching. Ya know – that stretch where you plop your leg in front of you, scroll through your emails, and maybe gain a little length in your hamstring. The problem with this kinda stretch is that you get a new range of motion, sure, but you haven’t put it to the test. It’s had no weight on it at all as its gone through this new range. So, if you try to strength train in that new range when there’s no strength yet – just flexibility – it could be a big issue. You could tear something. No bueno.

Yoga, on the other hand, isn’t just passive. First off, you’ve constantly got the weight of your body to consider. Stretching my hammies in downward dog is totally different from the above described exercise. In fact, I’m using my body weight to aid the stretch, and slowly shift in or out of it. And that’s key too – the slow shift; the flow. As you’re flowing through each motion, your body weight’s involved as well, every centimeter of the way. You have to take care at each moment to be aware of what effect your fleshy tentacles are having on other bits of your body as they move with you. Your core has to activate to hold you steady as you transition into warrior. Your intrinsic ankle muscles have to wake up to support you into eagle or tree pose. And do you complete the routine feeling like a looser winner? Are you more stretched? Absolutely. But you also feel stronger.Because yoga’s not just stretching. I’m gonna say that again for the people in the back, deadlifting their dead and misinformed ideas about what yoga is: yoga isn’t just about stretching. Done correctly, this is a practice that’s as much about strength as it is flexibility.

And what’s more, everything described above also makes it a dynamic and mindful practice. And why would that matter? Well, for one, dynamic warmups are always favorable before cardio. But also because, if we’re worried about injuries, one of the best ways to prevent them is to couple body awareness with mindfulness. The more connected we are to our bodies, the more intuitive we become about how to move or recruit what muscle at any given moment to avoid marring our bodies. Add onto that the somatic weight strengthening yoga allows (along with the agility to quickly react), and it’s indisputable: not only is yoga not bad to add to your warmup; but it might just help you prevent injuries – like the two I got when I stopped asana’ing myself for too long.

As for me, now that I have my practice back, I’m gonna hold onto it with more limbs than a Hindu god.

(“I’m so sorry I ever let you go, baby…”)

So don’t dismiss your hippie limbering routines, kiddies.

Just make sure you’re doing ’em right.