Whether you want to stave off muscle loss,
support flexible joints, or add extra oomph to difficult poses, just a little
bit of strength training can go a long way.
Small but mighty
Small but mighty is an apt description of
yoga teacher Amy Ippoliti. When you see the petite powerhouse effortlessly rock
deep backbends and arm balances, it’s hard to imagine that just over a year ago
she suffered a shoulder injury that interfered a shoulder injury that
interfered with her regular practice. Clearly, her highly developed body
awareness and her consistent yoga practice were important in her healing. But
her full recovery, she says, required open-mindedness: After months of trying
to heal the injury through yoga, she did what some yogis deem blasphemous – she
hired a personal trainer.
She’s more than glad she did. The cross –
training healed her injury and gave her the stability to do her favorite poses
without pain. “I started to become someone who felt like it was great to bring
in other disciplines,” she says. “Not only was I getting toned up again, I was
starting to see significant improvement in my injuries. Strengthening my back
muscles specifically helped my shoulder.” Although Ippoliti had always believed
that her yoga practice could – and should – be a cure-all for everything, she’s
now a believer in opening up to different modalities when it serves her. “I can
still do my yoga practice traditionally. I’ve been enhanced by going to the gym,
and I’m able to do my yoga practice even better.”
Bo
Forbes, a therapeutic vinyasa teacher in Boston
Other yogis see the benefits of combining
traditional yoga practice with weight training to create a healthy, balanced
regimen. Bo Forbes, a therapeutic vinyasa teacher in Boston, has been combining
yoga and weight training for more than a decade in her work with professional
athletes. Using her method, Functional Integrated Yoga, Forbes teaches athletes
traditional yoga classes on the mat and then incorporates aspects of the yoga
practice into their routines in the gym. Watching the athletes both on the mat
and in their teams’ training rooms has helped Forbes troubleshoot injuries and
create more ease and body awareness in her athletes. “For me, weight training
isn’t just about building brute strength. It’s about building self-awareness,”
she says.
Forbes points out that it’s the students
who seem like the yoga “naturals” – those who are flexible to the point of
being hypermobile – who become injured. It’s these students who need to build
strength and awareness, especially around their joints, so that they don’t
unconsciously push themselves too fair into a pose and create an injury. Weight
training can be an efficient way for bendy types to build strength and bolster
muscle awareness so that they’re working form a palace of integration in the
body, tapping into equal amounts of flexibility and strength in their poses.
“I’m always looking that flexibility. I think that flexibility without strength
is out of balance, and strength without flexibility is, too.”
