Power Yoga for Runners: Build Strength and Mobility

Do you feel “stuck” in your body? As if this stuck-ness is hindering? Hindering your mobility, your strength and general ease in your body?

As runners, it’s extremely easy to get tight and to lessen mobility in crucial areas of the body. Much of that can be attributed to lack of strength throughout the body. So with that… we have a power yoga for runners flow!

Throughout a couple of posts (called out below – I got you!), we’ve talked about working with tight hips and building glute, hamstring and core strength. Today we’re bringing these together with a yoga flow combining all these fun things.

Fill out for the form below to get my tips for ten arm balances and inversions!

Hip Mobility

This may be one of the most common areas of tension and weakness. And it makes sense! Especially as runners, we’re constantly pulling on our hip flexors and moving in the same motion. If you’re not prone to moving your hips in other ways, you’re likely feeling tight here. So what do we do? MOVE THE HIPS IN ALL DIRECTIONS, PEOPLE.

Related: 8 Yoga Poses for Tight Hips

Glute and Hamstring Strength

Have you ever heard of ‘yoga butt’? Basically, those super-bendy yogis that can touch their toes to their head need to get to work on building more posterior chain strength. Obviously, that’s not all of our super bendy friends. 😉

Nonetheless, it’s so damn important to be strong in these areas – especially as runners. When we run, we’re relying a lot on our quad strength, which isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just important to notice that this can bring imbalance to our bodies and what we can do to balance our love of running.

Foot and Ankle Mobility

The poor lowest parts of our bodies often get forgotten about! Until they have issues, of course. Our feet and ankles are SO crucial, because these areas are literally our foundation. Our feet and ankles need the mobility to allow us to simply MOVE.

Although we don’t do a ton of foot and ankle mobility in this flow here, we do work on a bit of balance work, which helps strengthen these areas. If you have extra time, try working some ankle circles into your practice.

Core Strength

Saving the best for last! Core strength is the BOMB. You don’t need anything fancy, you need to DO anything fancy – you just have to work it. Of course our core isn’t just about having six-pack abs (although they may be a nice bonus), but it’s another area that’s vital for our overall well being.