Can Yoga replace bodybuilding?

Tone and muscle your body with postures – without any training with weights. When you hear the term “bodybuilding”, you probably think about lifting weights – many repetitions of a movement with more or less heavy weights to vary the resistance. But if you’ve ever had sore muscles after a good yoga class, you’ve probably already wondered: does a yoga session count for a bodybuilding session?

Experts advise to do a bodybuilding-style session at least twice a week for your metabolism to continue to function effectively, and many doctors recommend bodybuilding as a preventative method No. 1 against loss Bone.

For many of us, this idea evokes a vision obliging us to become eternal slaves of the bodybuilding machines, dumbbells, etc. So… can you just do some yoga instead?

 

Does yoga really help to develop muscles?

“People always ask me:” You never lift weight? “said Marie Hartault, a yoga expert. I laugh in myself saying: “Yes, I raise my own weight”

Mary explains that when you do yoga poses, you put your body in positions and situations that you will have to maintain through your muscles. So you’re lifting weight. »

Like many yogis, Mary doesn’t like to focus on how yoga can sculpt your body. She prefers students to focus on reflection, how yoga allows them to feel and be, rather than being concerned about their outward appearance.

Yet when you look at the arms of Mary, you can’t help but want to do yoga to look like her.

You can actually develop your muscle tone and the definition of your muscles – even their size – through yoga. But because you are limited to “lifting” your own body weight, this discipline requires more technique, time and determination than bodybuilding.

“Yoga can be just as effective as bodybuilding to develop a stronger, more visually impressive body,” explains Marie. Yet experts agree that if yoga can be your only form of physical training it all depends on your objectives

 

Weights are more effective in developing large muscles

“If you’re just looking to develop your muscles, bodybuilding is the most practical approach,” advises Marie. In fact, the American Council on exercise defines bodybuilding as “a progressively increasingly important resistance exercise aimed at strengthening the musculoskeletal system.”

The key part of the sentence is “progressively more and more important resistance.” Basically, muscles and bones need to be overloaded in order to continue to grow. With a traditional bodybuilding workout, your muscles adapt to the resistance and become stronger, this weight is a challenge for your body, and you need to add more and more to get the same results.

Theoretically, with bodybuilding you can continue to increase the size and strength of your muscles indefinitely – as long as you continue to increase the weight you raise.

 

Yoga is a more balanced approach to body development

There are several reasons why yoga is a more balanced way of developing your body in relation to bodybuilding:

A regular yoga practice helps reduce the risk of injury and condition your body to perform daily movements with more ease like walking, sitting, stooping, bending, carrying errands… As a fitness sport, yoga stimulates your whole body in the way it works so that it can continue to stay in shape. For example, when you practice yoga you use both large and small muscle groups and you solicit them in all directions (torsion, etc.), and not only in both senses of a one-dimensional plane, as in the movement Up and down a bicep flexion.

Yoga tones the muscles of the whole body, respecting the balance that exists between them. Weight training with weights is usually

 

To be in good general physical condition, you need to do some yoga and a little bodybuilding

I always advise people who wish to stay fit and healthy (and not true bodybuilding practitioners) to create a routine that includes a mix of both types of exercises – lifting weights and yoga sessions. Many studies have shown that the more varied your workout routine, the faster you will see results

Note that weightless exercises also include pumps and good old-fashioned traction, squats and other-all movements that require you to maintain or lift your body.

Even if the most important thing is to find a form of exercise that you like and that suits you as a habit of life, I encourage you to try constantly new forms of different exercises. If you put many types of workout techniques into your routine, you will continue to challenge your body and push it to exceed its limits in different ways and you will continue to develop your athletic abilities as an individual. .

 

What are the most effective yoga poses to develop physical strength?

Mary explains that certain types of yoga postures develop muscle tone in different ways.

Stimulating arm balance and reversal postures is very effective for developing muscle strength, they force you to flex groups of small muscles – not just the main muscles that you work when you use a Weight-Lifting device – to support your body weights and maintain the pose.

Holding postures like the posture of the warrior and that of the triangle is ideal to strengthen the muscles of the legs. And balance postures like that of the tree allow you to work a leg by making it support the whole of your body. You increase the strength of this leg by imposing to carry all your weight.

By keeping these positions longer, by doing more rehearsals, and by learning new yoga postures, you can modulate the difficulty of your yoga sessions, as you can do in bodybuilding. On the other hand you do not have to directly try to make advanced yoga postures. Start with basic postures either by registering for yoga classes or by purchasing a beginner’s DVD.