Cross Discipline Benefits: Yoga and Weight Lifting 

I’ve been working with a new weight lifting method, a combination of Pavel Tsatsouline and Kellie Davis while also deepening my yoga practice. I’ve found a surprising amount of overlap and benefits shifting between the two. I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am—so often belly dancing form has bled over into martial arts or soft ball.

I’ve been concentrating on revisiting the foundations of yoga postures. I’ve improved my overall stance, how I carry my weight and am much more aware of how my feet connect to the ground. I’ve improved how I position my hips and pelvis after working on yoga’s basic poses in front of a mirror to check my tail bone, spin, and shoulders. This has directly carried over into improvements in my lifts and better awareness of my form while in motion.

I’ve been working particularly on stability. My weaknesses become much more apparent when I am stretched into a long position and forced to balance than when I am in a more solid, load bearing posture. As I’ve improved my low runner’s lunge, triangle, and tree pose, I’ve improved my weighted lunges and single leg lifts. And, as with the foundations practice, I’ve become more aware of when a posture isn’t as stable as it should be.

Weight lifting isn’t about moving something a few feet in the air and then dropping it anymore than yoga is about bending yourself into a pretzel while your body screams at you. Both are about respecting your body and putting form and awareness before your ego. Developing a deeper understanding of your body through many diverse practices allows you to pull on these complimentary skills to support one another. It makes you physically well-rounded, able to jump into a bike ride, a game of softball, or a hike any time the opportunity arises.
For those of you wondering about the weight lifting:

Pavel Tsatsouline recommends a general rule of 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps. This should get you just before the point you feel sore. Following the 80/20 principal, the reps you do before you feel your muscles burn are responsible for 80% of your results. I’ve been doing various combinations from the following:

Knees-to-elbows

Pull ups

Dead lifts

Straight leg deadlifts

Bridges

“Parkour” push ups (Just a variation on chaturanga push ups: down dog, flow through to plank, push up, reverse back to down dog.)

Pavel’s planks (Hold plank for 10 seconds, tensing everything below the neck)

Lunges

Anything from Kellie’s Glute Goddess workout that the gym has equipment for (you’d be surprised how lacking my gym is, makes me get creative!)