I’ve recently started crosstraining lifting weights and Yoga, and i was curious if i should consider my yoga days “Rest” days or workout days. I know each yoga type is different, so i primarily take hot yoga. (My shirt is drenched by the time i leave)
Great question
Adding a bit of active rest and recovery activity to ones rest days may provide the psychological and physical release you need to keep you from taking on an effort that might otherwise lead towards overtraining.
Keep a careful health and workout log week by week watching for symptoms of overtraining. Remember total recovery from overtraining or injury is going to take weeks off your training. Thankfully yogic efforts of stress reduction may do wonders towards recovery.
A light asana hot yoga class may be just the thing to stretch out, relax and reduce stress.
The heat and humidity suggest a myriad of benefits, muscles nice and warm, ‘toxins’ a movin’ and again that psychological boost that you are ‘working it’ during efforts and ‘relaxing it’ during release.
There are a lot of hot yoga classes and if your shirt is drenched from effort rather than the humidity in a hot 26 or Bikram class is that really active rest or a workout? Consider a lighter effort class or perhaps some of the wonderful non asana based yogic efforts in your community to work on your mind body focus and concentration and of course stress reduction.
Train hard, injury free, and namaste.
It si great that you are practicing! Yoga is a state…and one can only experience it, it is not quite possible to practice yoga. Asana practice is a practice of poses that in combination with other practices can lead to the state of Yoga…
I would consider restorative asana practice a rest day…hot asana practice is not considered a rest day for the body, thought is might seem to be easy compare to other activities.
Namaste
In our current societal context we seem to have a distorted definition of “rest”. Rest involves resting. There has to be actual resting. Therefore resting requires rest. So what I’m saying is that one needs to rest when resting. That should now be abundantly clear.
But just in case…
Resting is not watching tv.
It is not cooking.
It is not a yoga class of any sort unless it is exclusively Nidra or Savasana.
Rest is rest. Doing is not rest.
Whether a person opts to count their yoga practice as a day of rest for the purposes of their workout calendar is completely up to that person. But rest is rest
[QUOTE=InnerAthlete;73772]In our current societal context we seem to have a distorted definition of “rest”. Rest involves resting. There has to be actual resting. Therefore resting requires rest. So what I’m saying is that one needs to rest when resting. That should now be abundantly clear.
But just in case…
Resting is not watching tv.
It is not cooking.
It is not a yoga class of any sort unless it is exclusively Nidra or Savasana.
Rest is rest. Doing is not rest.
Whether a person opts to count their yoga practice as a day of rest for the purposes of their workout calendar is completely up to that person. But rest is rest[/QUOTE]
Well said.
Rein,
“Rest days” are what, days you don’t exercise anaerobically for muscle growth? I don’t know much about yoga either but your answer really depends on how strenuous your “non rest day” workouts are, doesn’t it? Some people do light yoga before or after anaerobic exercise. Some do light yoga on days they only do aerobic exercise. It sounds to me like you should be talking to a personal trainer. Good luck with your physical exercise.
-Jay