It’s easy to fall in love with yoga. Yoga is a slice of calm when life’s going wild. Yoga is good not only for the body but also for the mind. Apart from giving you great results, it’s also incredibly enjoyable. The best part about it is, with a yoga mat, you can even do it anywhere. You can enjoy the treat that is yoga even on vacation. So, with your newfound love, you’ve probably started wondering, can you replace strength training with yoga? So, here, we’ve put together the important facts that you need to know for the healthiest option.
What is Strength Training?
Strength training is essential because it takes care of your muscles and ensures you age well by preventing the gradual loss of strength and bone mineral content. It makes daily life easier by building muscular strength, local muscular endurance and improves running. Strength training eliminates muscle imbalance between opposing muscles for smoother movement. Most important about strength training is that it aids in all activities by helping prevent injury or if you’re already injured, it can function as rehabilitation.
The usual strength training is weight training. By adding resistance and overloading your muscles, you build strength. In yoga, the “weight” that is lifted is your own body weight. A good session of yoga can make you feel pretty sore.
Yoga for Strength
Pros
Depending on your workout goals, determines if yoga is enough for you. Yoga does provide a certain amount of strength training. How much strength training depends on the kinds of poses you do, how much lifting yourself it requires, and your bodyweight. The heavier you are, the stronger you’ll get because more weight will be straining your muscles.
However, unlike tradition weight training, yoga is a more all body experience and combine the act of lifting with stretching. Thus, when the muscles form, they are not bulky, but instead lengthened and toned.
If your goal is an enviable physique, though that is not yoga’s first goal, it is surely attainable. Other benefits are flexibility, mindfulness, and a fluid, effortless strength. Watching my yogi slowly transition from one pose to another with a serpentine grace was always something to watch. He made it look so easy and smooth but copying it was a whole other thing. The well-rounded approach of yoga takes care of all your muscles. Strength exercise often concentrates on local areas and thus can make holes in your regimen. The combination of strength, flexibility, and endurance also lessens your chance for injury.
If you’re not doing yoga right now, and instead doing traditional weights, you still have a lot to gain if you add yoga to your regimen.
Cons
If your goals, however, means wanting big bulk muscles, yoga might not be the thing for you. Also, yoga will build strength as fast as traditional means. However, if you’re looking to advance faster in yoga, supplement your yoga regimen with strength training. The important thing to know is that the gym, with all its heavy machinery, isn’t the only place to get your strength training. Push-ups, chin-ups, sprinting, jumping, and a lot of other calisthenics also classify. Also, if you hate the gym and structured exercises, check this out, or still, you can make calisthenics fun.
The Answer
If you want to solely stick with Yoga, your best bet is to go for Vinyasa or Bikram for the really active branches of yoga, compared to the meditative branches. However, the very best workout is still to have more variation.
Complement your Yoga with running and calisthenics and you are good to go. Calisthenics will give you more strength and will help you do more complicated poses. Running, or any cardio will give you more endurance. If you choose running, here’s some yoga stretches for runners.
So suit up in your best yoga outfit and get working on your best self. Questions? Stories about your fitness journey with yoga? We’d like to hear from you.