How Yoga Made Me a Better Weightlifter
When most people hear the word yoga, they picture stretching, deep breathing, and maybe a bit of meditation. Rarely do they think of barbells, squats, or deadlifts. For years, I didn’t either. My world revolved around lifting heavy — and honestly, it still does. But when I started practicing yoga at home in 2019, what began as a way to get “more flexible” turned into one of the most valuable additions to my training.
The interesting thing is that yoga was never originally created as “exercise” in the way we think of it today. Its roots go back over 5,000 years to ancient India, where it was developed as a spiritual and philosophical practice — a system to unite mind, body, and breath. The physical postures (called asanas) were actually meant to prepare the body to sit comfortably in meditation for long periods. Fast forward to today, and yoga has become one of the most widely practiced forms of movement worldwide — often adapted into fitness, stress management, and even rehabilitation programs.
What surprised me most is how relevant those ancient principles are to modern weightlifting. While yoga wasn’t designed to make someone stronger under a barbell, it absolutely can. The focus on breath, body awareness, mobility, and recovery translates directly into better lifting. And beyond the physical, yoga has centuries of tradition rooted in mindfulness and resilience — things I didn’t realize I needed until I experienced them for myself.
When I first unrolled my mat in 2019, my goal was simple: loosen up tight hips and shoulders so I could move better in the gym. But what I got was so much more. By the time COVID hit and gyms closed, yoga had become a daily anchor. It helped me move fluidly in my job as a trainer, and later, it gave me the mental strength to cope with one of the hardest seasons of my life — losing my dad in 2020.
That’s where the story really began to shift for me. Yoga didn’t just make me a more mobile athlete — it made me a calmer, more grounded person. And as I later discovered through my teacher training, the science actually supports everything I was feeling.
From Flexibility to Fluidity
At first, yoga felt like an accessory to my lifting. But after a few weeks, I started to notice real changes — not so much in my “flexibility” (though that improved too), but in how fluid I felt moving through my day-to-day life as a trainer.
I’m on my feet all day, racking weights, demonstrating exercises, and moving with clients. Yoga made those movements smoother. Getting into a lunge to demo form felt easier. Twisting to grab a dumbbell didn’t feel stiff. Even carrying and adjusting equipment was less taxing on my joints.
Research backs this up: yoga improves joint range of motion, dynamic movement efficiency, and balance. For lifters and trainers, that means more efficient movement in the gym, better lifting positions, and fewer overuse issues.
The Mental Shift
Once I felt the physical benefits, I started to notice something else. The more I practiced yoga, the calmer I felt. I wasn’t as quick to feel stressed or frustrated, and I had a greater sense of patience — both with my workouts and with life.
This became especially important in 2020. When the gyms closed during COVID and after my dad passed away, yoga became more than just stretching or exercise. It became my outlet. A way to move my body, breathe, and give my mind a break when everything else felt uncertain.
Yoga has been shown to reduce stress and anxiety by regulating the nervous system and lowering cortisol levels. Yoga-based breathing also improves both physical and emotional resilience. For me, those benefits weren’t just theoretical — they were what helped me keep going through a really difficult year.
How Yoga Carried Into My Lifting
Even though yoga started out as a “flexibility project” for me, it’s had a much bigger impact on my lifting than I ever imagined. Over time, I began to see how the lessons from the mat carried directly into the weight room.
Mobility That Matters
Yoga opened up my hips, shoulders, and ankles in a way that made big lifts feel more natural. Suddenly, hitting depth in a squat didn’t feel like a battle, and pressing overhead wasn’t limited by shoulder tightness. This isn’t just about being able to move further into a stretch — it’s about functional mobility. When joints have better range of motion and control, you can load them more effectively and safely. That means stronger squats, cleaner deadlifts, and fewer compensations.
Core Stability Without Crunches
Yoga challenges the core in a way most people don’t expect. Balancing in Warrior III or holding side plank doesn’t just “work your abs” — it trains deep stabilizing muscles like the transverse abdominis and obliques. These are the muscles that protect your spine when you lift heavy. I’ve noticed that since adding yoga, my brace under the bar feels stronger and more automatic. Instead of losing tightness halfway through a deadlift, I can hold my core solid from start to finish.
Breath Work = Calm Strength
In yoga, the breath guides the movement. That taught me how powerful breath control can be for lifting. Breathing with intention helps me brace better for a squat, recover faster between sets, and stay calm even when the weight feels intimidating. It’s the difference between rushing into a lift and approaching it with composure. Breath work has also helped me avoid “panic breathing” during longer sets, which means I can focus on form instead of just surviving the reps.
Mind-Muscle Connection
One of the most underrated things yoga taught me is awareness. Holding a pose for several breaths forces you to notice small adjustments — which muscles are working, which ones are overcompensating, where you’re holding tension. Carrying that awareness into the gym has been huge. Now, when I do a hip thrust, I can actually feel my glutes doing the work instead of letting my quads or lower back take over. In deadlifts, I can lock in my lats and maintain tension all the way through the pull. This mind-muscle connection has made my training more intentional and more effective.
Recovery Between Sessions
Another benefit I didn’t expect was how yoga sped up my recovery. On rest days, doing even 15–20 minutes of gentle yoga left me feeling less stiff and more energized. The combination of stretching, controlled breathing, and low-impact movement helps improve circulation and activate the parasympathetic nervous system — the “rest and digest” state. That means my body can repair and rebuild more efficiently. For me, that’s meant fewer nagging aches and being able to hit my lifts harder, more consistently, week after week.
From Student to Teacher
In 2020, I decided to take my yoga practice further and completed my 200-hour yoga teacher training online through YogaRenew. I registered with Yoga Alliance and started teaching. For about a year, I taught yoga and Pilates at Align Yoga in Orillia.
I loved it, but between running my own personal training business in Barrie and commuting, it became too much. Walking away was a tough decision, but it allowed me to focus on my business while still carrying yoga into my own practice.
Since then, I’ve taught an 8-week chair yoga series — which I loved — and I plan to run more in the future through Training by Robyn. These days, I still practice yoga regularly for my own wellbeing, and I blend pieces of it into my clients’ programs when it makes sense.
Recovery and Longevity
Heavy lifting can take a toll — tight muscles, sore joints, and nervous system fatigue. Yoga has been the perfect balance for recovery. It helps me move blood through sore muscles, stretch under tension, and relax my nervous system after hard sessions.
Yoga has been shown to reduce inflammation, improve recovery time, and even help reduce delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). Personally, I’ve noticed I recover faster and feel less “beat up,” which keeps me consistent in my lifting.
The Balance I Didn’t Know I Needed
I’ll always love lifting heavy. That’s part of who I am. But yoga has given me a balance I never expected — more mobility, better bracing, greater patience, and resilience both in training and in life.
If you love lifting but sometimes feel stiff, sore, or mentally drained, yoga could be exactly what you need. Even one or two short sessions a week can help you move better, recover faster, and feel calmer.
For me, yoga hasn’t replaced strength training — it’s made me a better lifter and a better person. And that’s a balance I think a lot of us could benefit from.
Hope that helps,
Happy Exercising!
References
Streeter, C.C., et al. (2012). Effects of yoga on stress and mood. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.
Telles, S., et al. (2016). Yoga as a therapeutic intervention: A bibliometric analysis. International Journal of Yoga.
Wirth, K., et al. (2017). The role of flexibility in strength training. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
Cramer, H., et al. (2015). Yoga for improving core stability: A systematic review. Sports Health.
Zaccaro, A., et al. (2020). How breath-control can change your life: A systematic review. Frontiers in Psychology.
Gard, T., et al. (2014). Mindfulness training alters the neural basis of pain perception. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Tran, M.D., et al. (2014). Effects of hatha yoga practice on the health-related aspects of physical fitness. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.
Donahue, T., et al. (2019). Yoga and delayed onset muscle soreness: A pilot study. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies.