Mentality and Recovery
The mental and recovery aspect is another impressive thing about yoga. If you are an avid lifter, you probably love finding excuses to add more intensity to your workouts. Whether it is extra weight, an extra workout, or even an extra spin class. Far less often do people think of ways to add more recovery movement.
Yoga helps to fill in that void where you still get your movement for the day but still allows the body to relax and recover. Your muscle growth and performance can only improve to the extent your recovery allows it. People often assume that working out more will do you good, but this simply is not true. It is actually the time spent not training that allows the muscle to grow larger and stronger.
Muscles also grow best at a full range of motion. If you practice yoga consistently, you actually keep your muscles active through that full range of motion, which will transfer perfectly to the gym. A muscle that’s taken through its full range of motion will always grow more than one that’s taken through a shortened range.
The mental break provided by yoga also lets you take a moment to reflect on being present, and slow down your mind and breath. Your days are constantly filled with stressors and yoga can help bring the body back to a parasympathetic state.