Can Yoga Really Make You a Better Runner?

They say opposites attract--and in the world of fitness, nothing proves that more than running and yoga! In this episode of Mile Marker Matriarch, we explore how yoga and running--seemingly opposite practices--can actually create the perfect partnership for performance, recovery, and longevity. Whether you're short on time, unsure how to get started, or want to learn more about how yoga can benefit your running, this episode is for you. You'll learn:

• The top yoga poses for runners
• The best types of yoga to support your running goals
• How yoga boosts flexibility, mobility, and recovery
• Why breath work could be your secret weapon on race day
• How to start a practical and sustainable yoga routine--even if you're short on time

This episode will help you rethink yoga as not just stretching and recovery, but as essential training. 

Plus, get a FREE "Yoga for Runners" download--Just DM Stacy on Instagram @milemarkermatriarch! 

Let's connect!

Instagram: @milemarkermatriarch

Twitter: milemarkermatriarchm

https://milemarkermatriarchpodcast.com

Email the show at stacycac@milemarkerspodcast.com

Transcript

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I am so excited for our episode today because we're going to be talking about running and yoga. Is it the perfect marriage? You know, they do say that opposites attract, you know, yin and yang, peanut butter and jelly, sugar nuggets and barbecue sauce. I feel like that kind of goes together. But anyways, running and yoga do seem to be opposites and these opposites do attract. I have been wanting to incorporate yoga into my running practice for years, but I always seem to have some kind of excuse like I don't have time or yoga is boring or what's it going to do for me? I had this mind mindset that if I wasn't running, that I wasn't improving my running. And that has been a huge mind shift for me over the years that to be a better runner, it's not just running that I need to focus on. I really need to focus on holistically mind, body health, strength, yoga, flexibility, in addition to cardiovascular health. For many overuse injuries, stress fractures, and overall burnout, I knew I had to make a change to see better results and be able to run for the long run. Research shows that yoga offers tremendous benefits for runners. Improved flexibility, breath control, strengthened mental resilience, faster recovery, and reduced risk of injury are just a few ways that yoga really can help your running. But how do you get started? And what type of yoga should you do? And what poses? And how often? And how do you incorporate this into your already busy routine? Don't worry, in today's episode, we're going to break down how you can incorporate yoga into your running routine in a few simple, practical, and easy to follow steps. As we break down the yoga basics for runners in today's episode, I am First, gonna be talking about the benefits that yoga will offer you as a runner. And alongside of that, I'm gonna talk about the types of yoga you can use and the types of poses that are really gonna be best for your practice. And then we'll get into the best ways of incorporating that into your routine to see results. Since running is high impact and puts a lot of stress on the joints, this can lead to tight muscles, especially tight hamstrings, hip flexors, and calves. So one of the first benefits I wanna talk about in regards to adding yoga to your running practice is improved flexibility. So yoga can help improve your flexibility and all yoga types can do this, but especially yin yoga. When I first started doing yoga, I didn't realize there were so many different types. But yin yoga, according to Yoga Journal, is a style of yoga that focuses on deep stretching of connective tissues like ligaments, tendons, and fascia. And you do this by holding poses for an extended period of time, sometimes all the way up to 10 minutes, more likely between two to five. And two to three really is about what I can do. You can build up to 10 minutes. As you hold poses for a longer period of time. It allows time for the central nervous system to relax. It's a more meditative and a slow paced style compared to styles like vinyasa. Yin yoga is also used to reduce tension and promote a deeper connection of the body and the mind. A few poses that are really great within yin yoga are downward facing dog, which can improve flexibility for your calves, hamstrings, and spine. Another great pose is malasana, also called the Buddha squat. And this can really open your hips and stretch your ankles and your knees. It's a great pose for improving your mobility. It's also important to note that mobility and flexibility are related, but distinct concepts in movement. Mobility refers to the ability for joints to move through their full range of motion. Flexibility, on the other hand, is the ability for muscles, tendons, and ligaments to stretch and lengthen. Peloton instructor Hannah Corbin explains that mobility is how the joints move through their normal range of motion, and this involves body tissues, including muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Flexibility is considered a component of mobility. Flexible muscles can affect the joint's range of motion because if the muscles surrounding the joint are tight, it really is going to limit that overall range of motion in the joint. Think about flexibility as the ability to stretch up and reach something on the top shelf, whereas mobility is about moving the joint through the full range of motion and includes various aspects like flexibility, range of motion, strength, coordination, and balance. A great exercise for flexibility is the hamstring stretch and a great exercise for mobility would be thread the needle so for thread the needle you'll want to get on all fours you can take your left arm stretch it high up to the sky and then pull it underneath your right body and stretch it over and do a twist in your spine it's a really great way to get some mobility through your spine the next benefit we're going to talk about when it comes to yoga for runners is breath control so learning to control your breath is critical for run when i run the chicago marathon I often find myself focusing on my breathing and counting my inhales in and exhales out to keep my heart rate in check and help my body calm down from the intense effort. I found that I was able to focus on my breathing much more easily after I incorporated yoga into my practice. And it turns out this wasn't just my imagination. According to a new study, just three weeks of yoga breathing techniques boosted running efficiency. In this study, a group of experienced runners were asked to do a treadmill test. So they were asked to hop on the treadmill and run at a rate of perceived exertion of 4 out of 10 and then 7 out of 10 for 10 minutes each. That then divided the group up into yoga breathers and a control group who did not do yoga breathing exercises. The group who did the yoga breathing exercises over a three-week period were able to run even faster at the same rate of perceived exertion. What a great benefit just for adding a little yoga to your practice. According to Eric Dandenberg, a performance and training specialist for runners, breathwork is essential when running because it has so many different functions throughout the body. For example, running requires a very high oxygen demand and efficient breathing makes sure that your muscles can get enough oxygen to function. It also helps with carbon dioxide removal because as your muscles work, they produce carbon dioxide, which of course has to be removed. Proper breathing can help regulate those CO2 levels in your blood. Breathing can also help with your overall fatigue because consistent, controlled breathing can help minimize that fatigue by ensuring a steady supply of oxygen to the working muscles You'll also notice improved efficiency because improving your breathing rhythm, runners can maintain a steady pace and avoid overexertion. Of course, breathing is very important for endurance running because having strong respiratory muscles through specific breath work can really help with endurance running and reduce your overall breathing fatigue over long distances. Breathing techniques are also great for mental focus, which is extremely important for maintaining mental resilience during your runs. And from a practical standpoint, proper breathing can help prevent prevent those side stitches, which if you've ever had one of those when you're running, you know how much a nightmare they are because once one comes in, there is like nothing you can do to stop it. One of the best poses for breath work is the tree pose. When you're in tree pose, stand tall with your collarbones wide and your ribs stacked above your pelvis. Then focus on expanding your rib cage in a 360 degree circle as you inhale and exhale slowly through the nose. This simple move can help activate your diaphragm, which is attached to your lower ribs and plays a major role in your respiration. As part of your core, a strong diaphragm can help support your running form as well. Prana Nama is a yoga breathing exercise that can really help enhance your breath work and promote relaxation. This type of breathing helps with the prana or your life force in the body. I should also add, I am not a certified yoga instructor and I may be pronouncing some of these poses wrong and I definitely can't claim to be an expert on yoga, but I can just tell you as a runner, what yoga poses have worked for me. Not as an expert just as your running buddy. My personal favorite breathing technique is the box breathing method. This is where you inhale for four counts, then you hold for four counts, and then exhale for four counts. This method really can help regulate your nervous system and improve your overall focus. I tried alternate nostril breathing the other day for the first time, and this is a great yogi breathing technique because it involves inhaling and exhaling through one nostril while the other one is closed. I did this in Chelsea Jackson Roberts yoga class, and she had us sit an easy pose to a to practice this particular breathing technique. I highly recommend it. Speaking of poses for practicing your breathing techniques, in addition to easy pose sukhasana, the mountain pose is a great one for practicing your breathing techniques. It's especially beneficial for those respiratory issues because the breathing helps expand the chest. The cobra pose is another great one because it can help strengthen the back and open the chest and promote deeper inhalation. The third benefit of yoga for runners that we're going to talk about today is increased mental resilience. I am of the firm belief that running is more mental than physical. I think the most important muscle to work for a runner would be your brain. So anything that can help me improve my mental resilience, I am all over. Yoga really taught me humility and focusing on the process and not the outcome. The first time I signed up for a yoga for athletes course in my local YMCA, I thought the class would be a chill stretching class. However, I quickly realized that yoga would be a cardio workout within itself. Running works one plane of motion and uses a specific set of muscles, while yoga has us twisting and contorting into all planes of motion and recruiting muscle fibers that we typically don't use. When I was taking this class frequently, every once in a while, we'd have a buff male weightlifter come into class, no doubt after his coach or someone told him that he should add yoga to his practice. He would come in really confident, and I knew he was likely thinking what I first thought, which is, this is going to be a piece of cake. He's probably thinking, I'm bench pressing like 300 pounds. What's a little light yoga class going to do to me? Inevitably, he would be the one dripping in sweat and turning beet red during class. I'm not throwing shade at all. I was in that same position and actually multiple times in my life, which I think is part of the beauty of yoga is that you meet yourself where you're at. Meet yourself where you're at for that day. Yoga is not about competing against anyone, not anyone in the room, and really not even with yourself. For me, I I don't compete with anyone else when I'm running. I am only competing against myself. But I do hold myself to very high standards of previous Stacey. What did I used to do? What pace could I used to run? And I hold a lot of judgment on where I think I should be, how fast I think I should be going, how improved I should be, what my distance should be. There's a lot of holding yourself accountable in running. But in yoga, you're really encouraged to meet yourself where you're at. Don't look at anyone else on their mat. They're having their own practice. You're not comparing yourself to others. You are there for yourself internally. And don't fight it. If you can't get into a pose or something is not easy, you take a modification. Yoga is all about taking modifications to work for your body in that day. Because there's definitely days where you might be able to get into tree pose upon first try. And there might be other days where you keep falling out of it. And that's okay. Because there's no judgment. It's simply connecting your mind and your body, being there for yourself and who you're showing up for that day and where you're at that day might be different than where you were the previous day or maybe even earlier that day or the previous week or previous month. And that's all okay. That is one of the wonderful things about yoga is it really does teach us to meet ourself where we're at in that moment. And that really does help build mental resilience. I've seen that carry over in my own runs because I used to really beat myself up if I felt like my pace was too slow. But once I incorporated yoga into my practice, I've begin to accept myself more where I was at that day, even in my running. So the mental resilience really does carry over. Now, some of my favorite yoga poses for building mental resilience are a child's pose because it's very restorative. It really helps release tension in the back, hips, and shoulders. Also the tree pose because that requires balance and focus. That can really help with mental clarity and promote a sense of grounding. And warrior two pose builds strength and stability, both mentally and physically, because it requires so much focus and concentration. Speaking of restorative yoga, we are now going to get into one of the other benefits of incorporating yoga into your running practice, and that is faster recovery. Restorative yoga is great for recovery because it can help reduce your stress and anxiety while improving your sleep and helping with muscle tension. It's great for promoting deep muscle relaxation, which can in turn improve your mobility and your flexibility. Restorative yoga differs from other types of yoga because it's focused on supported poses. What I mean by supportive poses is that you get to use props to help you get into the position and to help you stay there. Whereas in other forms of yoga, you're using your body to help you stay in a certain pose. Examples of props that you can use to support your yoga practice are yoga blocks, blankets, a bolster, and a strap. All these you can get on Amazon. And I'm going to put links to some of my favorites in the show notes for you. Some of my favorite restorative yoga poses include legs at the wall. That is my absolute favorite. If you get back from a run, of course, make sure you get your heart rate down to a reasonable rate. So do your cool down first, but once your heart rate is at a reasonable rate, you can lay down on the ground and prop your legs up on the wall. You can stay like that five, 10 minutes, and you are going to notice a wonderful feeling in your legs. It's going to really help reduce that stress. It's going to help promote blood circulation and flow to that area. It's a really great one for relieving tension in the legs, feet in the back, and it helps reduce swelling. And there is nothing more scrumptious than a cat cow stretch in the morning. I do a cat cow stretch before I go out for any run because it really helps with my back and my shoulders, which having those areas free of tension while running are essential for me because then I can just focus on my legs and anytime I don't have to worry about some other body part flaring up and hurting, that is great. The cat cow stretch is great for flexibility and it can help improve stiffness. The forward fold is another really great stretch because it stretches out your hand hamstrings and your back else promote relaxation and every yoga class i've ever taken has ended in savasana also known as corpse pose it seems like you're just laying on the ground but you often can put your hand over your heart and one over your belly and practice your breathing techniques and it's great for overall relaxation spinal twists are also really great because they can release tension in your back hips and spine they can even aid in digesting and promote relaxation gentle spinal twists are wonderful with helping with back pain and improve your overall range of motion and preventing stiffness. I had a yoga instructor tell me one time that doing a spinal twist was like wringing out a towel of your insides and I haven't been able to unsee that image since but it does feel that way and it's a great way to work your body on a variety of planes and really reduce that overall stiffness in your spine. Restorative yoga can also help regulate your nervous system by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Another benefit of adding yoga to your practice is a reduced risk of injury. I used to always think about yoga as increasing flexibility, but Tiffany Kruthyshank, a licensed acupuncturist and a sports medicine teacher and a yoga teacher at the Nike headquarters, she states that expanding the functional zone of your muscles creates a larger range of contraction that not only helps prevent injury, but it also increased strength and the power within the muscles themselves. This enhanced strength results in better performance. Yoga could help make your muscles more like rubber bands and less like guitar strings. Yoga is also a wonderful balance to running because because it helps us tune in with our bodies instead of tuning them out. I don't know about you, but when I'm running, I'm often trying to come up with tricks for avoiding the pain, not embracing it. I play metal tricks for myself and I listen to music or get deep in thought, all to distract myself from the painful components. But the downside to tuning out is that tuning out pain also means tuning out the natural communication between the mind and the body. And that communication can really help improve our running form and our rate of perceived exertion. It can also be difficult to discern between running discomfort and running pain. For example, if I'm running up a hill, usually my quads are killing me. Hills are my kryptonite. But the pain is dull and heavy. However, if I take a corner too quickly and I feel a sharp pain in my knee or ankle, I know that that's red zone pain, not an inconvenient throbbing. And that makes a huge difference because we can push through discomfort, but we should never push through pain. It's extremely challenging to tell the difference sometimes, especially for newer runners, but yoga can encourage you to slow down and listen to your body throughout the practice. As you move into a pose, concentrate on where and how you're feeling it in your body. A great style of yoga for doing this is vinyasa yoga because vinyasa style is dynamic and flowing and poses are linked together by breath and usually include a flow sequence. Normally the flow sequence goes like this. You start in downward dog, You move in a plank, then do a chaturanga down, and then upward facing dog to bring your chest forward, and then you go back to downward facing dog. You make fluid movements between all these poses and connect your breath to your movement. Vinyasa is great for breath work and injury prevention, but another great style of yoga for runners is hatha yoga. Hatha yoga is slower and a more gentle practice that can help improve flexibility and balance, which are the two most important things when it comes to injury prevention. Incorporating single leg balance exercises to improve your balance, stability, and mobility is crucial for runners. Some of the exercises that you can do within your yoga practice to help with your balance include a single leg plank on your forearms, and then add some plank variations. We talked about some of these in our last episode, but I can't get enough of the Copenhagen plank. To do a Copenhagen plank, first start off in a side plank position and put your outermost foot on the top of a box. So let's say you're on your right forearm, then you're left leg is going to be on top of a box then what you're going to want to do is take your other leg so in this case you're going to have your left leg on the box and your right leg underneath and you're going to lift up your hips into the side plank and lift up your right leg and then hold it in front of you and then do pulses for about 10 seconds and then you repeat what this does is really help with your range of motion it helps with your hip flexibility and also helps with your side obliques which all are great for core stability while you're running and by moving your body in single planes, you can really help identify any imbalances, any areas that you need to strengthen. You can really do that better with a single body form than if you're doing it both at the same time. You can also do single leg movements for your entire vinyasa flow that I mentioned earlier. So you could start with a single leg downward facing dog. You can move into a plank, a single leg plank. Then you can go to upward facing dog and go back to downward facing dog and put the opposite leg in the air. You can do your entire sequence this way and that will really help you identify any imbalances. Another one of my favorite yoga sequences to help with single body balance is going from lunge to crescent lunge to half moon pose. So the crescent pose which is also known as a low lunge is a variation of the warrior one pose where your back knee is grounded and your back foot is untucked. Half moon on the other hand is a balancing pose where one leg is extended horizontally and the opposite arm is extended upwards creating a crescent shape. You can move from the crescent lunge to your half moon pose and do this sequence a few times in a row on either side, and it absolutely will work your balance and requires a lot of stability in the body. All these benefits are great, but how often do you need to do them to really get benefits? So if you're looking to improve your performance and recovery, practicing yoga two to three times a week is generally recommended. It can be either shorter 20 to 30 minute sessions or a longer 45 minute class. If you have time, doing a 15 minute sequence at night is a great way way to unwind at the end of the day and can really help improve your sleep. Sleep is very important for runners as it impacts the physical and mental performance as well as your overall health. Over the years people have made fun of me for my early bedtimes especially on Friday nights because I really like to do my long runs on Saturday morning and I just know if I don't get in bed in time that run is going to suck in the morning so it really gets me in bed early and there's a reason for that. Sleep can really help improve your overall performance because because it does so many things. Sleep allows the body to recover from the stress of running. When you're running, you're getting hundreds of little micro tears all throughout your muscles. And while you're at sleep, those muscle fibers can repair and come back even stronger. But if you just continue to put stress on them and not give them enough rest and sleep and relaxation, your body is going to break down. So it is absolutely essential that if you're running hard runs and going out there and putting your best physical effort forward, you must give yourself at least that much effort on the back end for rest and relaxation sleep can help your overall mental performance your hormonal balance your immune function and injury prevent a study published in the national library of medicine found that long-term practice of yoga exercises is associated with less sleep disturbances and good sleep quality having good quality sleep is essential for replenishing your energy stores that you used when you were exercising harvard medical school published a national survey in harvard health publishing and they found that 55 of people said that you yoga helped them get better sleep. They also found that 85% of people found that yoga helped reduce their stress. So how can you get started incorporating a yoga practice that works for you? So there are several different routes that you can take. If you prefer to have group instruction or if you're new to yoga and would benefit from a certified yoga instructor helping guide you and make sure that you're doing the poses correctly, I encourage you to take a yoga class. There are so many different varieties of yoga and there are a variety of yoga teachers. I encourage you to take a class and if that one doesn't resonate with you try a different one try a different instructor or try a different type of yoga or a different studio and I promise you'll find a good fit but it's not always a good fit upon the first class so I just want to warn you on that I prefer to do yoga at home I have very little time in my day to incorporate a yoga practice so I really like to do it at home through Peloton I'm a huge Peloton fan and I cannot speak highly enough about their range of classes and the quality of instruction available you can You can do it all within the comfort of your own home and if you have a monthly subscription, you can take as many classes as you want. So what I usually like to do is settle down for the night with a nice 15, 20 minute yoga class to just incorporate it into my daily routine and have that as part of my nightly routine before I go to bed. It really helps set me up for success. There are also some really great YouTube videos that break down how to do the yoga poses and you can follow along with those at home. I began doing yoga nightly for about three to four and I began seeing improvements in my flexibility after about three to four months. Like anything, it takes consistency, time, and commitment to see the benefits. In the past, I would do a yoga class here and there, but one yoga class a month wasn't enough for me to see the thread pull through my yoga practice and running. However, that is not to knock taking a class here or there. Yoga can have both immediate and long-term benefits. Even a 10-minute-a-day yoga practice can help provide mental clarity and mindfulness, and doing a small yoga class before a can really help get your muscles activated and in the right way and doing a quick yoga class after can help with some flexibility so don't feel like you have to stick to a structured routine for it to be beneficial incorporating it into your practice in any way shape or form will offer you benefits either in the short term or in the long term now for my listeners i am offering a free download called yoga for runners all you have to do is like and follow the show on instagram at mile marker matriarch and dm me and i will send you a free I'm going to be offering more freebies for listeners, such as video instruction on some of the exercises that we talk about. I'm looking at you Copenhagen Plank. I also think after I tried to describe how to do a crescent lunge into a moon pose, I believe I need to do a video on that as well. But I have lots of freebies in the works from workout plans to printables to even ebooks. So stay tuned for all the fun we have in store. Oh, and pick the new logo I designed for the show. I would love to hear from you. Do you like it or do you prefer the original? And what other topics do you want to hear about? Did this show resonate with you? If anything in the show resonated with you or you know someone who would benefit from the conversations that we have here, please share the show with them. It's a great act of love to show your friends and family that you see them and understand them. By sharing this with your runner friends or friends who want to start running, you're telling them that not only do you support them, but they're supported by this great community of women here at Mile Marker Maid's Yard. I'm here for you to cheering you on and encouraging you every mile. Until we talk again, have a great run. Now for the legal language, I want to state that the information in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. I'm not a medical professional and my recommendations shared are based on my experience and knowledge as a certified personal trainer, a running coach, and nutrition consultant. Always consult with your doctor or a qualified healthcare provider before beginning any new exercise program, making significant changes to your diet, or addressing any health concerns.