Why We Need Both as We Get Older
I’ve been teaching yoga for 9 years, and one of the things it’s taught me is that being fit isn’t just about how strong you are or how long you can run for. It’s about how well you can actually move. Can you bend down comfortably? Can you get up from the floor? Can you reach, twist, balance and move without feeling frightened that you’re going to hurt yourself? As we get older, I think these things become just as important as what we traditionally think of as fitness.
This is one of the reasonsI love combining yoga with personal training. I don’t really see the two as separate things. Strength training gives us the strength and muscle we need, while yoga can help us work on mobility, balance, flexibility, breathing and awareness of how our body is moving. Put the two together and I think you’ve got a really lovely way of training, particularly for women over 45.
I’m naturally quite flexible myself, so I’ve also learned that being flexible isn’t necessarily the same thing as being strong or stable. We can sometimes think that the aim of yoga is to become more and more flexible, but actually what many of us need is strength around our joints as well. Equally, if you’re very strong but everything feels tight and restricted, adding mobility and stretching can make an enormous difference to how comfortable you feel in your body.
Balance becomes increasingly important too. We don’t necessarily notice our balance until it starts becoming more difficult. I like to include simple balance exercises in training because they’re easy to practise and can make such a difference to confidence. Standing on one leg while you’re brushing your teeth might not feel like exercise, but these little things can become part of looking after ourselves.
I also think we need to get away from the idea that every workout has to leave us exhausted. Some days we might lift weights and work quite hard. Another day our body might need more mobility, stretching, walking or gentle yoga. Learning to understand what your body needs is a skill in itself. That doesn’t mean never challenging yourself — we need challenge in order to become stronger — but it does mean learning the difference between a healthy challenge and simply pushing yourself because you think exercise has to hurt.
Breathing is another thing I bring into my personal training because of my yoga and breathwork background. It’s amazing how often we hold our breath when we’re concentrating or doing something difficult. Learning to breathe well while we move can help us feel calmer and more connected to what we’re doing. Sometimes I might even finish a training session with a few minutes of breathing or relaxation. To me, that’s still part of fitness.
Ultimately, I want the women I work with to have bodies that support their lives. I want you to be strong enough to lift things, mobile enough to move freely, balanced enough to feel confident and fit enough to have the energy to do the things you enjoy.
You don’t need to choose between being strong and being flexible. We need both.
And that’s really at the heart of the way I teach. Strength, movement, breathing and relaxation all belong together. We’re not just training for the hour we’re in the gym or on the yoga mat. We’re training for the rest of our lives.
