Does Yoga Have Any Real Fitness Benefits?

Take one look at someone inScorpion Poseand youll know: yoga can build strength and balance.

But how does it stack up to traditional strength trainingand whatcantyoga do for your body?

With that in mind, lets talk about what yoga can (and cant) do for your body.

Good for: Strength

Yoga can be good for strength, depending on your current fitness.

If youre starting from couch potato status, its easy to find exercisesyoga poses or otherwisethat challenge you.

If a pose feels fatiguing, or maybe leaves you withsore muscles, its working to build strength.

For many people, thats yoga.

Once youve begun, though, how do you progress?

Strength training requiresprogressive overload: basically, working harder and harder over time.

In the gym, that usually means using heavier weights.

Thats a good thing, and related tofunctional trainingyoure teaching your body parts to work together in useful ways.

But this interconnectedness gets in the way of building muscle as big as possible as fast as possible.

That may be okay, depending on your goals.

In that case, the way you practice matters.

Yoga is excellent for flexibility.

Yoga also helps with neuromuscular training: the coordination between your brain and muscles.

Somestudies have found benefitsthat may be linked to heart disease risk, like lower BMI and blood pressure.

But in terms of cardio fitnesslike being able to run faster or fartheryoga isnt likely to help.

Thats okay, because your bodydetoxifies itself just fine.

You know, like you would with any other exercise.

Illustration by Tara Jacoby.