Poser
WKR
I did Yoga on and off, informally and formally, for years. I used to do a lot of rock climbing and flexibility was a big advantage, however, I began to subscribe to "if your body hurts, do more stretching" philosophy and stuck with that for years. After returning from a break from strength training, I began to spend more and more time focusing on deep tissue work (foam roller, lacrosse ball etc) to address aches, pains, discomforts etc and found it much more productive. I also found that I had serious problems building tension in my hips, hamstrings and shoulders for strength training because I was too flexible. The lack of hip tension was actually a big problem and I had to completely reconstruct my backsquat and lose the hyper flexibility in order to make considerable progress. Hamstring tension was also a big problem. During this time, I continued to go to Yoga semi regularly, especially on recovery days, but I began to pay increasing attention to the people in the Yoga classes. Very few, if, as was often the case, any of them, looked to be in good shape. In fact, a number of them looked unhealthy: Skinny, weak, out of shape etc. The ones that were in shape were good at Yoga and nothing else. It started to set in that these people had no application for Yoga outside of doing Yoga. The vast majority of them also had the opposite diet of an athlete. You start realizing that you are taking fitness guidance from a person who considers ToFu and Hemp milk to be perfectly acceptable source of BCAAs.
I'm still pretty flexible -as flexible as I need to be. I can comfortably sit in a 3rd world squat and don't have any reason to have hips more flexible than that. There are certainly things to be gained from it, especially if you are stiff, lack balance etc, but the inability to create power with your muscles in a meaningful and functional manner is a serious disadvantage for any athletic pursuit besides yoga. I also think that if you have aches, pains and injuries, stretching and more stretching is not necessarily the best way to address those issues. If you do it and your body feels better, then by all means continue to do it. If you are coming off the couch, have a particularly weak core and/or have no intentions of doing strength training, it can probably provide decent springboard towards making progress, but I have come to view it as tiny supplementation -maybe something to be done just to get the body moving on an otherwise rainy recovery day and your body is either wasted or you just want to do something.
I'm still pretty flexible -as flexible as I need to be. I can comfortably sit in a 3rd world squat and don't have any reason to have hips more flexible than that. There are certainly things to be gained from it, especially if you are stiff, lack balance etc, but the inability to create power with your muscles in a meaningful and functional manner is a serious disadvantage for any athletic pursuit besides yoga. I also think that if you have aches, pains and injuries, stretching and more stretching is not necessarily the best way to address those issues. If you do it and your body feels better, then by all means continue to do it. If you are coming off the couch, have a particularly weak core and/or have no intentions of doing strength training, it can probably provide decent springboard towards making progress, but I have come to view it as tiny supplementation -maybe something to be done just to get the body moving on an otherwise rainy recovery day and your body is either wasted or you just want to do something.
