| Go Figure viewer question
"I've got bad posture - sway back, and have been working on it for around 5 years now with gym and yoga and 2 years ago started going to an osteo which has helped even more. So I took a break from the gym to do more yoga, but now I'm back at the gym again, as I'm also a Personal Trainer and novice figure girl. My gym workouts are affecting my yoga as I'm quite fatigued trying to hold poses for a while - so my question is, how do I find the right balance of flexibility and strength? I train 5x at the gym and 2x yoga."
The first question I have for you is. Which is more important - gym or yoga? I'm guessing at this stage yoga is a priority in your fitness regime and you'd like to have the energy to do this. So my suggestion would be to schedule your yoga classes where you have the most energy ie early on in the week or first thing in the morning so you make the most of your energy reserves. If you're doing yoga and weight training on the same day, do yoga first and make sure you have plenty of time to recover before undergoing weight training so that you get benefit from both.
The other factors to consider is the volume, frequency and type of weight training you're doing. You might want to drop back to 3 days a week as 5 days a week can be quite draining of your body especially if you're not eating enough - will cover this aspect a little later.
I'd get ‘back to basics' with your weights by doing an all over body workout each time, training just one or two exercise for each bodypart so you can concentrate on gaining strength so you can hold your yoga poses. I'd recommend on 2 of your 3 weight training days, you concentrate on traditional strength movements like bench press, squats, lunges, shoulder press, rows with medium to heavy weights to 10-12 rep range. On the other day of weight training, you do an overall conditioning/plyometric style training so you can incorporate some cardio/core work into your training which will also help your yoga moves.
Ofcourse we can't overlook nutrition as part of your regime. You have to make sure you're eating enough carbohydrates pre and post workout to help you with pre workout energy and post workout recovery. If training at night, don't be afraid to eat a small amount of carbohydrates with your protein as you'll need energy to restore your glycogen cells so you can hit it hard again the next day. As you know protein is important to help our muscle cells recover from training so make sure you get at least 25g of this at each meal as a guide.
Also don't be too hard on yourself on your diet, give yourself some extra calories like some more kumera or rice, if you're feeling flat or muscles feeling 'empty', it won't kill you!
Another factor is allowing for a rest day!!!! you sound like you're a hardworker and you probably drive yourself to the max at each workout so I'm sure you deserve at least one rest day where you can sit back and relax and enjoy the telly and do absolutely nothing. You've earned it.
Hope this helps!
Lisa, Go Figure
22 June 10
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