This Is My Weekly Workout Routine (Strength + Yoga).

Hey guys, if you're getting older and you're trying to stay strong and mobile for the long haul, and you've been struggling to figure out how to fit your strength training and your yoga into a single week without overdoing it, and something that's actually realistic for your schedule, this is exactly how I do it. In this video, here's what we're covering. First, I'm going to tell you the exact weekly schedule that I follow, including what it looks like when life gets in the way, because I don't always do everything I planned. Second, why I do it in this specific order, because that's where most people get it wrong. And then third, I'll give you two signs that you should be watching out for to make sure that you're doing too much or not doing enough. Let's get into it. First off, I want to address how you think about yoga, because most people only think about yoga as recovery from lifting. You stretch out sore muscles, you release tension on the joints, and maybe you do some stress relief and mindfulness, and it does do those things. But that's only part of what a good yoga workout can do for you. It also helps to build strength in ways that's complementary to your strength training, basically plugs the gaps of traditional strength training that those traditional strength training exercises won't do, particularly with building strength in end range of motion, strengthening balance postures, moving your spine in all directions, building comprehensive core strength, not just ab strength, and helping with body awareness and muscle activation. Now, this combination is ultimately what helps your strength training to be sustainable in the first place. Without it, stiffness builds up, muscles don't recover fast enough, and muscular imbalances eventually lead into pain or discomfort that prevents you from lifting at all. So yoga helps you be proactive with those avoidable problems. That's the big difference. It's not just recovery, it's full body maintenance that keeps the whole system running. And it's what allows you to actually be able to strength train consistently while limiting pain, discomfort, and reducing your risk of injury. So hold on to that distinction as we move through the rest of the video. All right, now let's get to my weekly schedule. And this is really, really, really easy. You just alternate days. So Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are strength training days. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday are your yoga days. Now, in addition to that, I typically like to do at least two movement sessions per day. So my main workout, I work out in the evening, but you can work out in the morning. That's just how I do it. And then usually in the mornings, I'll do something less intense. That means I'll do some really easy or some medium intensity yoga, or I'll go for a walk. But the important thing is focusing on those longer workouts, those main workouts, which again, is that Monday, Wednesday, Friday lifting, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, yoga, and more building work. All right, so let's break down what that looks like in a bit more detail. So Monday, first day after the weekend, I've got kids. I'm usually running around with them on the weekends. I don't have time to go out and do a two-hour workout on Sunday. So this is my first day back in the saddle. So I usually do a little bit of time on Monday morning, doing some light mobility work, doing some easy stretching to relieve stiffness or whatever pain or discomfort popped up over the weekend. And then on Monday evening, that's my main workout. That is my resistance training workout. That's me here in the gym doing about 45 to 60 minutes of strength training. Tuesday is a yoga day. So I'll usually wake up Tuesday morning. I'll either do some light yoga in the morning or I'll go for a walk. Just depends on what I want that day. And then my main workout, just the same time as my resistance training workout that I do on Monday and every other day, usually happens around three or four or five p.m. And so that's when I'll do yoga with an emphasis on strength because it's only day two of the week. I'm not that sore yet. So I'll do a bit more medium or high intensity yoga session on that day. Wednesday is the middle of the week. I might be feeling a bit sore from the yoga and the strength training that I did earlier that week. So Wednesday, I'll make sure I'll do some walking or some light mobility yoga work in the morning. And then in the evening, I've got my strength training workout. So this is usually my less intense strength training workout for the week. Again, I've already had a couple sessions before that. I did yoga, kind of intense the day before. So I'm not at 100%. So usually, this is a medium and higher, but not super high intense strength training session. Thursday is when a lot of the soreness starts to add up. So Thursday is usually my easiest yoga day. So I'll go for a walk or do some light yoga in the morning, some light mobility recovery work in the morning. And then in the early afternoon or the early evening, I'll usually do a low to medium intensity yoga session. So that means that I'm doing more restorative work. I'm not doing as intense or core focused or balanced postures. I'm usually doing stuff that helps with facilitating recovery, getting the blood moving in, getting the old stuff worked out and helping to release any tension or muscle soreness with the appropriate stretches. Friday is my last lifting session of the week. So with whatever I've got left, I put that into a big hurrah at the end of the day, usually afternoon or early evening. And then I'll start off Friday morning with a walk or with some light mobility yoga work, just like I do on every day of the week. Saturday or Sunday is different because I've got two young kids. So that means that my days aren't always structured. They're usually never structured on the weekend. So I try to get in some mobility work when I can or a yoga session. Usually that means maybe I'll get up early and do some mobility or some yoga work in the morning, or I'll find a pocket of time in the afternoon where I can do some dedicated yoga time. But this is usually focused on recovery. I'm usually not pushing myself that hard unless I want to. Some weekends, I will push myself on those days, but usually it's a pretty medium intensity session and it's helping to recover and also get me ready for the next week so that when I get to my workouts on Monday, I'm not feeling super stiff, super sore. I have to do a ton of warm up to get ready for my lifting session in the evening. So that's my ideal workout schedule for the week. And you're probably watching this and thinking, oh, Dean probably does this every week and never misses a workout. And that is completely false. More often than not, I do not have a perfect weekly workout schedule. So there are days when I'll end up skipping a resistance training session because I listen to my body. I know that I shouldn't do it. My joints are fatigued. I'm really tired. I have very, very little motivation for the workout. And there are some days when a yoga session comes up and instead of doing that, I'll just lay on the floor and take a nap instead. So it's not about perfection. You don't have to be consistent with everything every week and hit every single workout you're scheduled. It's more about doing your best to show up and then modifying if necessary or being okay with giving yourself grace and missing the workout that day. So now we'll talk about why this order is important. And if you struggle with being consistent with this schedule, I would highly recommend you watch this part because it could be the motivation you need to actually do the workouts you say you will. Now, strength training creates the stress that forces your body to build muscle and bone density. But the workout itself isn't what helps to build muscle. It starts the process. But your muscle building actually happens during recovery. So the recovery portion is really important. And your yoga workouts help with boosting that recovery. So when you lift, you create micro damage in the muscle tissue. You also create muscle tightness, compression in the joints and restriction in the fascia. If all you do is rest and sit down on the couch, your body isn't going to recover quickly. That's why it's so important to get into movement in the following day. You accelerate the recovery process. Now, equally important, doing yoga or mobility work the day before a lifting session helps to open your muscles for proper functional range of motion or strength training. That means that you are preparing your body to be more effective with your strength training in the day ahead. You'll have more functional range of motion, you'll have fewer muscular imbalances, and the overall workout will feel smoother. You won't feel nearly as much discomfort or joint pain, and you won't need as much warm up. So make sure that you're doing yoga both as a way to recover and as a way to prep your body for strength training. And a way to make that really easy is by just using that simple schedule that I mentioned earlier with strength training on days one, three, and five, and yoga on days two, four, and six. Now I want to talk about how to know if your balance is right. So if you're doing the right amount to provoke growth, but also not doing too much. This is important because if you're not, you can probably lean to burnout and not feeling motivated, not actually following the program. And if you're not doing enough, you're not actually going to get results. So if you're doing a lot of strength training, and it is very intense, that means that you have to scale back on your yoga workouts. That means less intensity on your yoga workouts, that means longer holds, more restorative, not as much balance or strength work. If your strength training is more moderate, so still hard, but not too too hard, then you have a bit more flexibility with your yoga sessions. You can make them more challenging, you can make them more strength focused, you can do more core work, and you can do that safely without overloading the system. I find that most men tend to do too much and not enough. So if you are doing too much, you're going to see some signs. You're going to see your motivation dipping, you're going to feel a lot more joint pain or soreness that doesn't go away. Your sleeping is going to suffer, you'll feel more fatigued than usual. So if you're noticing all of these symptoms, that would be a good sign to back off a little bit. So make sure that you're doing less intense yoga sessions. You might even want to take a day off of strength training and do some yoga instead until you feel that motivation, that energy, and that sleep start to get better. Remember, this is a long-term 5, 10, 20, rest of your life thing. This isn't something that you need to fix in two weeks. So take those couple of weeks, let your body recover, and then get back into it safely. Now on the other end of the spectrum, you could also not be doing enough. And by not doing enough, I mean you're not doing enough to grow, you're not doing enough to get stronger, you're not doing enough to maintain where you currently are. So signs of that would include your muscle size shrinking, you would also feel like your workouts are too easy, you might not get much soreness, you might also feel motivated all the time, which might sound counterintuitive, but if you feel motivated to do every single one of your workouts, that's probably a good sign that you can challenge yourself more, because your body will naturally want to conserve energy. So you shouldn't always feel motivated for every workout, because that means you're probably not challenging yourself. So if you're in that situation, you can probably do a bit more. So for you guys in your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, I would err on the side of caution. Remember, you don't need to be heroic with your workouts, you don't have to reach your ideal fitness level next month. This is about longevity over time. So listen to your body, build gradually, and focus on consistency rather than crushing every single workout. That's how results actually compound over time, and that's how you establish a healthy lifestyle that you actually enjoy. So that is the weekly workout structure exactly that I use. You've got what I do day by day, you've also got the reasons why that order is important, hopefully some information that's motivational to you, and then you've got some built-in kind of strategies that you can utilize to assess whether or not you're doing too much or not enough. But here's the thing I really want to leave you with. Yoga is not the bonus at the end of the workout. It is the reason why lifting works for years instead of months. Maybe you're like me, when I was 17, when I was 18, and I was lifting weights, I didn't need to do any sort of recovery, right? I could go lift weights and then go play lacrosse and then go for a run and I'd be fine. But now that I'm not 18 anymore, and you're not either, you have to start doing some yoga. You have to do mobility work because if you don't, you're not going to be able to keep strength training. You're eventually going to run into pain, injury, and discomfort that's going to make it impossible for you to work out, period. Not only that, but you're also limiting your gains. When you're not working on your mobility, when you're not working on increasing your functional range of motion, building more core strength, working on those muscular imbalances that happen as a result of sitting down or being inactive through the day, you're not being as strong as you could be with your strength training. You're leaving gains on the table. So get out of the mindset that yoga is something that's nice to have and recognize it as a non-negotiable that fits into your overall fitness goals. If you can do that, you're going to be able to be consistent with your workouts, continuing to see progress, and you're not going to be inhibited by ideas like getting older means I can't do this anymore. You just have to have the right mobility levels, the right strength, work on those imbalances, all the things that we talked about in this video, and all the things that we do with a good fitness-centric yoga program.