Cycling and Yoga

Combining cycling with yoga is a great way to improve the conditioning of your muscles, focus, flexibility, and strength too. Find out more about how you can incorporate yoga with your cycling activities

Yoga itself has been around for centuries and there are many different types or schools of yoga that exist. Some of the most popular types in modern western tradition include Hatha yoga and Ashtanga yoga (or more commonly known as power yoga). Yoga is discipline that requires the focus and connection between mind and body, and this is played out through the execution of various poses combined with the controlled use of breathing techniques within each pose.

Yoga poses, or Asanas as they are also known, once mastered are performed seamlessly and flow one after the other. Proper breathing during the practice is also another essential discipline to performing the poses correctly and gaining the most benefit from each pose. There’s a great article available on BellaOnline’s Yoga site that tells you how simple it is to breathe correctly during yoga practice here.



How Yoga can Help Cycling


Everyone who does any form of exercise needs to incorporate stretching into his or her regime, essential to preventing injury if nothing else. A gentle warm up (5-10mins walking, slow paced cycling etc) followed by a full body stretch before working out is essential. And a cool down (5 mins gentle jog, cycling, etc) after a workout followed by another succession of stretches to ensure your body is safe from injury, as well as all the other benefits of improved flexibility, and strength etc.

A few yoga stretches are ideal to incorporate after a cycling session. By using the discipline of yoga you’ll be able to really focus on stretching your muscles as well as improving the mind's ability in mental focus and clarity too. With just a few yoga poses worked into your exercise regime you’ll soon begin to have more awareness of your body, its muscles and any tensions within - great toward avoiding injury!

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Further Reading

Yoga Poses for Cyclists
Why not have a go at incorporating some yoga poses into your next cycling cool down session? The poses featured in this article are great for cyclists, aiming to give a gentle full body stretch; they are ideal if you’ve spent a long time in the saddle!

More Yoga Poses for Cyclists
Yoga offers a great way to for cyclists to stretch out and relax the body especially after a long time cycling. The poses featured in this article aim to give a full body stretch and are great to stretch out the back and the spine too.