does yoga really have fitness effects

When you see someone doing the 'Scorpion Pose,' you might feel a twinge of emotion: people who practice yoga have such good fitness, body shape, balance, and coordination, while I'm still a long way off on my running journey.

However, you might also wonder: what is fundamentally different between yoga, this 'asexual' exercise, and traditional physical training (running, fitness)? Today, let me tell you,the benefits that yoga can bring you, which are different from 'aerobic exercise' and 'traditional fitness training,' as well as the health indicators that yoga cannot address.

Before we delve into the details, it's important to know that today's yoga has developed into a state of flourishing diversity; if running is a linear development exercise, then yoga is more like a type of exercise that easily integrates subjective will and automatically differentiates. Therefore, there are now many schools of yoga, some of which are more helpful for fitness, such as 'Power Yoga.'

Next, let me explain what yogacan/cannotbring to you.

Yoga can enhance physical fitness

Like all bodyweight training, the difficulty level is high when you first start practicing yoga. If you begin yoga as a 'couch potato,' you will find the poses hard to achieve. If a pose makes you feel particularly tired and your muscles sore, it means your physical fitness is improving.

Of course, the best exercise for everyone is the one you can stick with. So when you decide to start getting fit or losing weight, or when you're returning to fitness after a break, choose any exercise that makes you feel super cool and form a habit, and you've won. For many people, yoga has a mysterious attraction.

So how should a yoga practitioner start step by step and become an expert? In terms of physical training, to make progress, you need to continuously increase the intensity, making it more challenging so that your body constantly feels stimulated.

For example, in the gym, you would increase the resistance of the equipment. In yoga, holding a pose for a longer time, achieving a more precise posture, or being able to do an advanced version of a pose is evidence of leveling up and becoming a higher-level yoga practitioner.

The challenge of yoga is that the poses involve multiple muscle groups simultaneously, and the muscles support each other to achieve the pose. This is a good thing because it teaches your body parts to cooperate, but this interdependence of muscles makes the goal of rapid muscle gain elusive.

For example, your quadriceps might be ready for the 'One-Legged Chair Pose,' but the small stabilizing muscles in your legs might take weeks or even months to coordinate.

If you want to achieve fat loss or muscle gain in a short period, relying solely on yoga is not enough. But if you want yoga to complement the physical fitness aspects that the gym can't train, or if your goal is to master the most standard advanced yoga poses, then don't hesitate, start practicing yoga.

Therefore, the method of yoga training is crucial. Watching videos at home can only get you started, but achieving the correct posture to stimulate the right muscle groups requires professional yoga instructor guidance if you want to use yoga to train your physical fitness.

Yoga can increase flexibility and balance

Yoga can make your body very flexible, which is the main goal of some yoga schools. But even the more athletic schools generally spend a lot of time stretching, both before and after doing advanced poses, greatly enhancing flexibility and balance.

Therefore, a yoga class is more useful than a 30-second stretch after a day of training at the gym.

Yoga can also help you with neuromuscular training, which is the coordination between your mind and muscles. Improved coordination can help prevent sports injuries. Some studies report that neuromuscular training can reduce knee injuries.

Yogacannotincrease aerobic capacity

No matter how intense your yoga training is, it cannot replace running, cycling, or other aerobic exercises. Some studies show that yoga can reduce the risk of heart disease by lowering body fat and blood pressure, but it doesn't significantly help with aerobic capacity (running pace, running distance).When practicing yoga, if you want to reach the heart rate range of intense exercise, you must do some crazy and intense movements, which may not be the original meaning of yoga. In terms of aerobic exercise, yoga is more similar to brisk walking.

Yogacannothelp you detoxify

There are often claims in yoga that it can help you detoxify or unblock energy channels. However, no matter how much you sweat or twist your spine, you cannot remove any toxins. This isn't necessarily bad because your body already has the ability to detoxify.

If you practice yoga for fitness, you might be skeptical of some pseudo-scientific claims from instructors. Besides the mentioned toxins and energy channels, 'not doing inversions during menstruation' also seems to be an unscientific claim.