Yoga provides a full-body workout that can strengthen and stretch your muscles. It can also help you improve your balance and focus.
Some forms of yoga can be quite intense, including ashtanga and power yoga. But you can also find a less challenging class to get your cardiorespiratory fitness in shape.
Strength
Many people think yoga is just a gentle workout that’s good for you, but it can actually be quite challenging. It’s a great complement to other strength training exercises, as it increases your range of motion and improves the quality of your movements. It can also help you build a more balanced physique, especially when combined with other mind-body activities like breathing approaches that teach focus and mindfulness.
A recent study found that incorporating yoga into your strength training routine can increase your muscle mass and endurance. The key to this is that yoga involves a lot of isometric contractions, or holding a pose for a long time. This increased time under tension works your muscles just as strength-training moves using a barbell or weights would.
If you want to challenge yourself further, consider adding wrist or ankle weights to some poses or trying power yoga, which has faster movements from one pose to the next for a more intense workout. However, it’s best to avoid stacking your yoga routine directly after a hard strength training session since this can cause you to overtrain and lose the benefits of the workout.
Flexibility
Children are like little contortionists, able to twist their bodies into strange positions and postures. That flexibility fades with age, but a regular yoga practice can help restore flexibility.
Yoga poses stretch muscles and increase your range of motion, making it easier to move your joints. Better flexibility also means less pain and pressure on the muscles and joints.
In one study, researchers found that after 16 weeks of regular yoga practice, the hip and leg flexibility of female college students improved by 3.5 cm with the sit-and-reach test and by 6 cm with the Splits test. Researchers believe that this improvement reflects the overall balance of strength and flexibility that yoga develops in participants.
When it comes to flexibility, the old adage “practice makes perfect” is true. Just be careful not to force yourself into a pose too quickly and remember to listen to your body. If you feel discomfort or tension, release the pose and try again.
Balance
Yoga is an excellent balance workout. Most classes begin with a series of standing postures that challenge your balance and end with seated or lying positions that improve core strength. The interplay between these two areas of the body is what makes yoga unique as a workout and what helps prevent injuries.
Just like on a seesaw, to maintain your balance you must pair movements of light parts of the body that are far away from your center of gravity with movements of heavier body parts that are closer to that center. In this way yoga strengthens the smaller stabilizing muscles of the body to help prevent falls and injury.
While there are many different types of yoga, all rely on the same principles and can be adjusted for the needs of the participant. Often, participants use a mat to avoid slipping in standing poses and to cushion themselves in seated and lying positions. This makes yoga a relatively low-impact exercise.
Focus
When practicing yoga, focus is a major component. The repetition of movements that require sustained effort allows more muscle fibers to contract, resulting in strength gains. This increased strength can help improve posture and reduce injuries.
A regular practice of yoga also can have mental health benefits. It improves mood, lowers stress levels and promotes a restful night’s sleep. In addition, it can reduce chronic inflammation that has been linked to many disease states.
There are a number of different yoga workout formats, from Hatha-type yogas that incorporate stretches to hot yogas like Bikram, which uses 26 poses and two sets of breathing exercises in a room heated to 105 degrees. HIIT (high intensity interval training) is one of the current fitness trends that blends yoga moves with high-intensity exercise. This combination can boost aerobic fitness, build muscle and challenge balance and flexibility. It can also increase the metabolic rate, which can lead to weight loss.