Buzz
A single glance at someone holding Scorpion Pose shows it: yoga has the power to develop strength and enhance balance. But how does it compare to traditional strength training? And are there any limits to what yoga can do for your body?
It's important to remember that there are many yoga styles, each offering different levels of athletic benefits. For a more fitness-focused practice, look out for terms like 'ashtanga' and 'vinyasa', though class and instructor variations are common. Names like 'power yoga' can also be a hint, but checking class descriptions or asking the instructor directly can help clarify what to expect.
Now, let’s explore what yoga can—and can’t—do for your body.
Great for: Strength
Yoga can enhance strength, depending on your current fitness level. Like all bodyweight exercises, it may be tough initially, but maintaining that challenge can become harder over time, though not impossible.
If you’re starting from scratch, finding challenging exercises, whether yoga poses or others, is easy. If a pose leaves you feeling fatigued or sore, it’s working to build strength.
Remember, the best exercise is the one you'll stick with, so when starting your fitness journey (or returning after a break), go with whatever excites you. For many, yoga is the answer.
As you progress, how do you continue to improve? Strength training requires progressive overload, which means consistently challenging yourself over time. In the gym, this typically means heavier weights. With yoga, it’s about holding poses longer, improving your form, or advancing to more complex versions of the pose.
Here’s the challenge: yoga poses engage multiple muscles at once, each supporting the other to make the pose possible. This is a great thing, tied to functional training—teaching your body parts to cooperate in useful ways. But this interconnectedness slows down the process of building large muscles quickly. For example, your quads might be fully prepared for a one-legged chair pose, but it might take weeks or months for the smaller stabilizing muscles in your legs to catch up.
This might be fine, depending on your goals. If you’re aiming to lose weight or build significant muscle in a short period, yoga alone won’t cut it. However, if you’re looking to work on different types of strength than what you focus on at the gym—or if mastering advanced yoga moves is your goal—yoga is a fantastic option.
In this case, how you practice matters. At-home videos only get you so far, since proper form is essential for building the right muscles in each pose. To build strength through yoga, you need guidance on how to perform poses correctly, making it crucial to find a good instructor.
Excellent for: Flexibility and Balance
Yoga is fantastic for flexibility. While some styles focus primarily on this, even more athletic forms of yoga will still dedicate plenty of time to stretching, both to prepare for the tougher moves and to cool down afterwards.
For those of us who rarely find the time to stretch, yoga provides an excellent opportunity to fit in flexibility training. The more you stretch, the more it benefits your overall flexibility, meaning a yoga class will do far more for you than a few 30-second stretches at the end of your gym routine.
Yoga also improves neuromuscular coordination—the connection between your brain and muscles. This communication is crucial for balance and might even help prevent certain sports injuries. Neuromuscular training (though not specific to yoga) has been shown to reduce some knee injuries.
Not Ideal for: Cardio
Regardless of how intense your yoga session is, it can’t replace running, cycling, or other forms of aerobic exercise. You won’t ever push yourself hard enough to get your heart rate up significantly. Some studies suggest benefits that might relate to heart disease risk, such as lower BMI and blood pressure, but yoga won’t improve your cardio fitness, like helping you run faster or longer.
Yoga instructors agree: you'd need to be doing exceptionally intense yoga—well beyond the usual practice—to get your heart rate into the zones considered vigorous exercise. In terms of cardio, yoga is more comparable to walking: it's beneficial, but it won’t offer the same benefits as running or other more intense activities.
Not Effective for: Detoxifying Toxins, Aligning Chakras (Whatever That Means)
No matter how much you sweat or twist your body, yoga won’t help you detoxify. That’s perfectly fine because your body is perfectly capable of detoxifying itself.
When practicing yoga for fitness, be prepared to encounter some pseudoscience from instructors—like being told not to do headstands during menstruation, which is a complete myth. Ignore advice based on imaginary energy flows and focus on the tangible: the muscles you’re working, stretching, and relaxing, and how your body feels—just like with any other form of exercise.
Illustration by Tara Jacoby.
