The Yoga Team

I began the Fightmaster 30 Day Beginners Yoga Challenge today.

Update 30 September 2019

I really enjoyed this, and I feel like I improved throughout. Her instructions were great, and her little reminders and tips were spot on. She offered helpful modifications and always encouraged participants to "listen to your body" and "hit pause if you need to." I found it helpful to pre-watch each video, usually the night before, so that I knew what to expect.

I discovered that she has a different 30 Day Challenge for Beginners as well, so I will be doing it in October.

🖤 yoga. Just saying.

So much free yoga on the internet. It's amazing. gotta get back to a daily practice. Will check back soon.

I’ve been on the mat the past 4 days!!

Hello, fellow super-flexible bees!

I come to you from the distant and misty lands of strength training and HIIT, as you can see from my badges of honor.

Myths of your relaxing practice travel from tongue to tongue in my land and I have abandoned my post to come and listen to your wisdom!

You see, a spiritual physician has appeared within me through mindfulness meditation, and told me that I am tired. And stressed. And although I long for and love the sweat and the burst of energy that follows my rigorous traditions, they ultimately leave me feeling more tired than before I started them. They then lead me on the perilous path toward sugar and unnatural carbs, to which I have become a slave for the energy I have lost. Those perils lead to the Sickness of the Squishes.

Oh, great Yogic masters of the Darebee realm, I come to you in humbleness, to inquire if your practice of Yoga can meet my needs for a strong heart (cardio) and strong muscles. For I am not one like many of my land, who wishes to have very big muscles. I would rather have strong ones, so that I may live to fight evil and uplift the oppressed even when I am 90 summers old. Might your ancient practice be done every day of the week? And how, to balance it all?

Forgive me DareYogicMasters, for I am foolish. Tell me, how does one design a Yoga program that would meet all the needs of general fitness, which includes Cardio and Strength? I have seen your marvelous scroll, mapping the way to Yogic Masters in alternate dimensions (Youtube excell spreadsheet), but what to do if one does not always have the means to tap into their knowledge? (Video takes a lot of data)

I beg of you, show mercy and guide a poor lost soul on her path to enlightenment.

Nevetharine

Yoga is AMAZING! I do a restorative practice EVERY DAY! After practicing for 4 years, I pretty much know my poses lol. However, I do use the yoga workouts here on Darebee and on the Down Dog app. If you are lacking internet access, I'd suggest finding a class/school/instructor locally to educate yourself on the basics. You would need to build the knowledge to practice without guidance from a video or such. My yoga brings me peace, pain relief and balance. I still do otherbworkouts though. Perhaps others in the thread here can help more. Namaste!

Namaste! I honor the Soul residing in you.

I'm thinking that Power Yoga might be fun. I can download a few videos, even low quality ones would work. I do know some basic poses. I've done 30DaysofYoga.

Just wondering how I would arrange the workouts for the week? I currently have 3 fullbody days, 3 rest/core days, and 1 detox yoga day. Would that be good?

Nevetharine certainly you can practise yoga every day. How to optimally schedule the different varieties of yoga into your practice is a matter of personal tastes, training goals, and fitness levels.

Currently I do a short (15-25 minutes) yoga-based workout focussed on upper body and core strength, 5 days/week and a short (5-25 minutes) workout focussed on lower body strength on the same 5 days. (The lower body workouts are sometimes yoga, sometimes barre, and sometimes a DAREBEE workout.) On the 6th day I do a longer, full body, yoga flow, usually in a power vinyasa style. On the 7th day I also do a longer yoga flow, but one which I know will be light on upper body work. I also try to run 6 days/week. If I was not running, I would definitely want to be doing more vinyasa style yoga.

There are many different styles of yoga out there these days. Anything with the word "power" or "vinyasa" in the name is a vigorous style which will give you both strength training and likely also a cardio component. Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga is one such style, which you may see described as simply "Ashtanga". Ashtangis traditionally practice 6 days/week the same vigorous sequence of poses. (I don't remember if we have a link to the Ashtanga Primary Series earlier in this thread or not. I'll try to source one.) Following printed charts of yoga sequences, and memorizing sequences are both ways you can get a good yoga workout in at home without chewing up the bandwidth required of an online video. See here and here for brief descriptions of some of the more popular styles of modern yoga. (The second resource includes links to videos of classes in each of the described styles.)

PDF of Ashtanga Yoga Primary Series: https://cdn.davidrobsonyoga.com/wp-c...forprint-3.pdf
PDF of Ashtanga Yoga Intermediate Series: https://cdn.davidrobsonyoga.com/wp-c...heat-sheet.pdf
See also DAREBEE's Sun Salutation workout, which is based on Ashtanga's sun salutation A:



You can definitely get a good cardio and strength-training workout going simply by repeating a sun salutation sequence at a one breath (inhale or exhale) per movement pace. (Sun As are basically a mindful way of doing burpees.)

Nevetharine, yoga is not really the best option for cardiovascular health, assuming you are generally fit. "Cardio" exercise is defined as an exercise that raises your heart rate above 65% of your max for an extended period of time (at least 20 minutes) and even hardcore, longtime yogis don't really reach that with vinyasa or power yoga. Some sources will say that even if you stay below 65% but keep that intensity for a longer period of time and do it frequently enough, it may count towards cardio but these sources are usually biased towards yoga. If you're looking for true cardio, brisk walking, jogging or other cardio exercises might be better options. That is not to say that if you are a beginner, you will not sweat and breathe hard during your first vinyasa/power sessions but your body will adapt quite quickly to this new challenge.

In terms of strength, yoga is basically a bodyweight regimen so your strength will improve to some degree but this depends on your choice of poses - tree pose is obviously not as challenging as holding chaturanga (push-up plank, kinda) for an extended period of time.

If you're looking to try something new, definitely go for it and see where it takes you, but personally, I view yoga as a mindful practice, enhancing the mind-body connection more than a cardio/strength workout.

Free live-streaming yoga class tomorrow:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfZifGRsIjw

And some free yoga resources:

https://relief.ekhartyoga.com/

Thank you, Colin !

Alo Moves also released some full classes for free: *klick*

Down Dog is entirely free until 1 April: *klick*

Commune has a service where you can register and use their 21-day alignment-based flow series for free: *klick*

Thought I'd revive this thread as I saw some folks looking to maybe start or revive yoga practices in the new year, and there are usually some free video offerings out this time of year.

Yoga Download has a free 21 Day yoga challenge commencing on January 1, 2021. Each day will have 2 or 3 video classes to choose from. (You can do them all if you have the time, although usually there is one beginner friendly class and one more advanced class.) This channel features a good variety of instructors and styles of yoga.

Adriene Mishler is offering a free 30 day program in January once again. This one begins on January 2. (She doesn't like to call these series of classes "challenges".) You can also access all of the free January programs from previous years via the YWA YouTube channel.

I'm sure there are lots more out there too.

I signed up for the Yoga Download challenge myself. But I likely won't do it every day. I want to commit to a more regular yoga practice this coming year, but not necessarily a daily one. (I did that for 4 years. And it was great. But I'm doing a lot of different things now. Trying to do all of them every day is too much!)