Gym or Yoga or Both? which one is better; Yoga or Pilates? This are some common questions we always receiving from our readers. Each discipline has its own benefits on health but without proper understanding, one may see the ill effect too.
Recently we received an interesting question from an Engineering student has this dilemma. Here is the exact question:
I am a engineering student planning to go to gym in the morning. And do yoga in evening . Will this be a good lifestyle and help me progress in studies?
Artofliving has published a beautiful article explaining how Yoga & Gym can complement each other as close allies. Here are few useful points we cited from the article:
The best part is, you can continue with your daily workout routine just the way it is now and simply add a few minutes of yoga practice to it for better results.
I recommend yoga postures to my trainees before the gym workout, as they reduce risk of injury and help warm up the body. After the workout, yoga poses help stretch the muscles and cool down the body – Shashank Mehta, fitness model and silver medalist (2008) awarded by Punjab Technical University, India.
We have also shared this question with Franz Andrini, an international yoga teacher and founder of Yoga Andrini from Istanbul, Turkey. According to him:
Doing gym in the morning and yoga towards the evening is a good combo. Yoga should be always practiced after all the other exercises.
If yoga is done in the evening, it should be sort of more gentle. More vigorous yoga is better in the mornings. Well, that is not always the rule but if it is practiced around 8pm, it should definitely be light and gentle. it wouldn’t be wise to practice yoga after 8pm.
Pranayama also shouldn’t be vigorous in the evening but rather short and gentle, if any at all. In any case Pranayama should be done after asanas only.
