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In general, the few
available experiments involving yoga suggest that it leads to measurable
but limited and patchy strength gains.
Consider the results of a 2012 study of premenopausal women
who were randomly assigned to yoga or to a control group. The yoga
group completed twice-weekly, 60-minute sessions of Ashtanga yoga (which
consists of sequential, standardized postures), while the control group
continued their normal activities. After eight months, the yoga
practitioners had developed more powerful legs compared with at the
study’s start and with those of the control group, but had not
increased strength in other muscles or improved their cardiovascular
fitness.
Similarly, in a 2013 study,
12 weeks of Bikram yoga (a variety that consists of other, specific
poses done rapidly in a heated, saunalike space), enabled a group of
young adults to dead-lift more weight on a barbell than they could at
the start, but did not improve their hand-grip strength or any other
measures of health and fitness.
Over all, yoga appears to be too gentle physically to be anyone’s lone exercise. In one of the most interesting studies of the activity to date,
experienced yoga enthusiasts performed their favorite type of yoga for
an hour in a metabolic chamber that tracked their caloric usage and
heart rate. The volunteers then sat quietly in the chamber and also
walked on a treadmill there at a leisurely 2 miles per hour and a
brisker 3 m.p.h. pace. In the end, the measurements showed that yoga was
equivalent in energy cost to strolling at 2 m.p.h., an intensity of
exercise that, the authors write, would “not meet recommendations for
levels of physical activity for improving or maintaining health or
cardiovascular fitness.”
So if you downward dog, jog occasionally as well, and visit the gym to build full-body strength and wellness.
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