A yoga workout can help boost strength, balance and breathing. It’s also been shown to lower blood pressure and improve heart health.
Standing poses are typically done first in a yoga class to warm up the body. Beginners’ balancing postures like tree pose can challenge the core. If a balance is too challenging, try placing a block under your butt for support.
Flexibility
Whether you’re looking to improve your posture, alleviate back pain or simply feel more relaxed, flexibility is important. Regular yoga can increase your range of motion, reduce tightness and muscle tension and help you move more efficiently.
Yoga can improve flexibility and build strength at the same time. The poses often involve holding your own body weight as resistance, and research shows that these poses can boost muscular strength and endurance.
Most yoga workouts include both poses that strengthen muscles and ones that improve flexibility. Some may be more focused on one or the other, but a good yoga instructor will incorporate both into your workout.
If you’re a beginner, start small and work your way up. Flexibility takes time, so don’t be discouraged if you can’t do the splits or reach your arms overhead like a pro gymnast. With practice, you’ll get there. For now, focus on breathing, releasing tension and having fun!
Strength
Whether you are a gym goer or a yogi, strength is important for your health and your performance. Stronger legs make you run and cycle faster, stronger upper body muscles help you throw or swim further and longer, and a strong core helps improve your balance, posture and body control.
For bodybuilders and weight lifters, the idea that yoga counts as strength training might be a bit of a stretch. But for everyone else, yoga provides a challenging mix of endurance and muscle-building exercises.
Poses that require you to support your own weight, such as plank pose, target the arms, shoulders and back, while standing poses like crow and dragonfly work the legs. And even the simplest poses, such as boat pose and supine bridge, can strengthen the abdominal muscles. The long, controlled hold times of some yin poses challenge your muscular endurance, too. And a regular practice may reduce biochemical markers of inflammation, which can slow recovery after strength training and lead to delayed-onset muscle soreness.
Stability
While flexibility gets all the attention, stability is actually a very important component of any yoga practice. Stability is more than just being able to hold your hand to your leg in dancer’s pose and nailing that perfect beach insta shot; it’s about resilience, balance and the ability to face challenges head on with grace.
Yoga builds muscle strength through poses like the warrior, plank, downward dog and chair. But more than just strengthening the muscles, it also improves stability through stabilizing and engaging the core. This is why physical therapists and personal trainers often incorporate yoga moves into their workouts, as it helps stabilize joints in the body.
A recent study tested the effects of 10-weeks of yoga on a group of college athletes and found significant changes in both balance and flexibility measures. These improvements were largely due to changes in whole-body measures (like joint angles, or JA) that are associated with the development of an optimal kinetic chain.
Breathing
Yoga provides an excellent workout for both the mind and body. It strengthens the core and upper body muscles, improves balance and flexibility and helps reduce anxiety and stress. It also improves breathing, digestion and immune system function.
In yoga, there is a strong emphasis on linking breath with movement. The yogi must breathe deeply into the lungs to fill the chest with oxygen and exhale completely to release tension in tight muscles. This breathing pattern becomes particularly important in poses that require balance such as Pigeon Pose or headstand.
Advanced yoga breathing techniques called Pranayama offer a way to improve the level of energy in your body. One example of this is Kapalabhati, or Skull Shining Breath, which involves forceful abdominal breathing. It is recommended to practice this early in the day on an empty stomach and can be done for up to 20 rounds. This will help cleanse the respiratory system and increase your energy levels.