My first experience with yoga was 10 years ago when I took on a month-long challenge in a small college dorm room. I couldn’t continue practicing, but I wanted to start this year with a renewed focus on flexibility, so I decided to take on a new 31-day challenge.
I was basically trying to get started again, so I checked out Top Tips for Yoga Beginners and found it to be one of the best yoga mats with enough grip to support all the different poses. That’s fine, but I also used a yoga block to help with some of the postures.
I decided to try this challenge at home so I would be more likely to do it every day, so I found Yoga with Adriene’s 31-day flow series on YouTube and started. I’ll explain what happened.
I did yoga every day for 30 days – this is what happened
I expected this experience to be a little different compared to my college days, but that wasn’t the only change. I managed to see through the program and used a different routine from Adrian’s playlist to add variety to the proceedings.
1st week
After the first few days, I noticed that the muscles around my core and stomach were tense again. This improved as the months went on, but I was impressed with how quickly I felt the effects thanks to the exercises focusing on balance and stability.
Towards the end of the first week, I did some big core-focused exercises that might have been really painful before, and found that I was in much less pain than before. I did. This is one of the benefits of regular exercises that continuously challenge your muscles.
However, not everything was smooth sailing. It turns out my feet are causing some problems. Although I try to keep my hips flexible, I often left classes feeling mild aches and pains around my lower back. Usually this feeling was reserved for recovery after leg day.
The most important benefit I discovered in the first week was amazing. Yoga’s focus on form means you’re not just strengthening your muscles, you’re starting to feel the effects of your practice in other workouts.
Strengthening my mind-body connection during yoga has helped me focus more effectively at the gym. His first week doing downward dog has definitely made him famous for his back workouts such as lateral pulldowns.
2nd week
I’ve spent a lot of time over the years training my leg muscles. But the endurance required to hold certain lower-body yoga poses taxes your quads and hamstrings in a completely different way than regular leg-day squats, curls, and extensions. I did.
We often imagine that you need a set of weights to train effectively, but as I discovered, yoga can also build muscle. This is why it has become easier to do and hold these poses in his last two weeks, and as a bonus, he has noticed improved flexibility around his hips.
Another unexpected benefit was a desire to make more time for exercise in general. Setting aside time for yoga every day means you’re more likely to find time for an easy run. This is useful for runners as they can also benefit from a regular yoga practice.
Combined with faster recovery and more flexibility, especially around the lower back and lower back, beginner poses that used to require concentration are now more and more instinctive, and I feel healthier overall. It felt like it was.
3rd week
By day 15, I was noticeably more flexible and getting into a lunge seemed much easier than it had been two weeks ago. The first day was a multi-step process, but it started to resemble a smooth movement from standing up to getting into position.
Since I was still new to yoga, I quickly realized that focusing on my breathing played a huge role, making it easier to hold positions like chair pose and balance-oriented positions. And as my endurance increased, I became more confident.
I was also starting to feel the effects of daily yoga on other parts of my body. I noticed immediate results in the gym, and upper body exercises like lat pulldowns and shoulder presses benefited from the time I spent in downward dog, and I felt stronger.
Now that I’m more aware of my body, I can better sense when I need to make small adjustments in each pose to improve my form or focus on specific muscles. Ta. This focus on form carried through to my resistance training workouts as well.
Week 4
Going into the final week of the 31-day challenge, the most noticeable effect was that my core became even stronger. The regular plank pose that formed the basis of these classes was much easier, and it felt more natural to draw the core into position to better support the other poses.
Overall flexibility has also been significantly improved. There are some poses that still require effort, especially poses around the lower back and hips, but you can now go deeper into poses like child’s pose and add more intensity to those exercises. It is now possible.
31 Day Yoga Challenge Verdict
Core strength and flexibility were two things I somewhat expected to improve through this challenge, but the added benefit was that my overall fitness level increased.
Perhaps this is not surprising after 31 days of daily exercise. After all, running for a month can improve your cardiovascular fitness. I also began to see my breathing as a tool.
Changing the way I breathe and just focusing on my breathing has helped me hold difficult poses. This resilience is also known as mental strength, and is great for training and everyday life.
At the beginning of the month, I would have been nervous (physically and mentally) to do difficult poses, but when I finished the last class, I felt strong enough to hold poses for long periods of time and rely on strength. I realized that I was learning a lot of techniques. The right muscles too.
