We all know that in order to be healthy we need to eat well and exercise. However, the best strategy for optimising our bodies is still up for debate with the health philosophies of yogis being frequently at odds with the traditional fitness community.
In actual fact, there are many aspects of physical strength. Being strong in one discipline doesn’t certainly translate to another. Perhaps you’ve mastered a hand-stand but become short of breath a couple kilometres into your run, or you can squat many kilograms but can’t hold a tree pose. Total body fitness is a mixture of strength, flexibility, endurance, balance, and power. In an ideal world, we should aim for a balance in all these facets of physical health.
The perfect fitness regimen will look differently for everybody depending on your goals however a mix of high intensity training, cardio and a dedicated yoga practice can benefit just about anybody. Plus it’s good to switch up your workouts so that all the different muscle groups get worked but not burnt out.
Why Is Yoga Good For You?
Slow movements – as well as deep breathing – increase blood flow and warm up muscles, while holding a pose can build strength.
Yoga is as good as fundamental stretching for lowering pain levels and improving mobility in individuals with lower back pain. It is recommended that yoga is done as a first-line treatment for chronic lower back pain.
Gentle yoga has been demonstrated to ease some of the discomfort of tender, swollen joints for people with arthritis.
What Is High Intensity Training Good For You?
High-intensity interval training (or HIIT for short) involves short and intense workouts. You’ll give a series of exercises your full effort for short bursts of between 30 and 60 seconds. After this, you’ll follow it up with an even briefer period of rest. While exercising with this kind of maximum effort is difficult, it does absolute wonders for your health.
It’s exercise after exercise with a minimal amount of rest. This gives your entire body, particularly your heart and core, a fantastic workout.
While you’re performing a HIIT workout, you’re burning around the same number of calories as you would during a normal workout like running. However, you burn more calories after you do a HIIT workout than you do during a steady-state cardio exercise such as running, where your heart rate stays relatively stable.
The phenomenon of burning calories after you stop exercising is called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). EPOC takes place when your body burns more calories healing the wear-and-tear from an intense workout. It’s common with HIIT workouts as the exercise is so intense, and it has been linked with effective muscle growth.
As HIIT burns more calories because of EPOC, it can be a more convenient way to assist you with you losing weight, since you don’t have to spend as much time working out.
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