Strength in Yoga is Not an Either/Or question!

Strength in Yoga: More Than Just Lifting Weights...

Strength is often discussed as though it has only one definition: how much weight you can lift? But strength is far more complex than that.

Our bodies need to be strong enough to produce force, control movement, stabilise joints, absorb force, move slowly and quickly, maintain positions, and respond to unexpected changes in balance. We need endurance, eccentric strength, isometric strength, coordination and resilience. We need tissues that are prepared for a wide variety of physical demands.

So where does yoga fit into this picture?

The answer is more nuanced than either “yoga makes you strong” or “yoga isn't strength training.”

Traditional yoga asana has some limitations when it comes to developing maximal strength or muscle mass, but a thoughtfully designed yoga practice can develop substantial whole-body strength, particularly when we understand how to manipulate intensity, leverage, resistance and progression.

What Kind of Strength Does Yoga Develop?

Traditional yoga, particularly practices built around holding a pose and then moving to the next one (Iyengar in style), often emphasises isometric endurance, balance, mobility and motor control.

A practitioner might hold Warrior, Triangle or Chair for several breaths, maintaining alignment and controlling their position. This can be physically demanding, but the intensity may be relatively low once the body has adapted to the movement and this distinction matters.

Muscles respond to mechanical tension and sufficient stimulus. It doesn't necessarily matter whether that tension comes from a concentric, eccentric or isometric contraction. What matters is whether the muscles are being challenged enough.

A low-intensity hold repeated indefinitely may eventually provide little new stimulus. A high-intensity isometric, however, can be a very different proposition. For example, imagine holding Triangle while placing a block between the hands and actively reaching the arms forward pushing the hands into the block. The block itself isn't magically creating strength. The strength stimulus comes from how the block is being used: the practitioner is actively producing force against resistance. The same principle can be applied to Half Moon, Warrior III, arm balances and many other poses.

Props Don't Create Strength ... How We Use Them Does

Yoga teachers have an enormous range of tools available to increase mechanical loading.

Weights such as ankle weights, dumbbells or weighted vests increase external load and require greater force production.

Straps can be used actively rather than simply as passive aids. Pulling against a strap can create an overcoming isometric, dramatically increasing muscular effort.

Blocks can change range of motion, leverage or the position of the body. A block held behind the back, for example, can be used to increase the demand on the posterior shoulder musculature.

The wall can provide resistance when we actively push into it during Warrior variations, handstand drills or other movements.

Resistance bands and traction can provide external resistance throughout a movement or static position.

The important point is that the prop itself isn't the stimulus. The way the prop changes the mechanical demands of the movement is what matters.

This is one of the opportunities for contemporary yoga teaching. We don't have to think of props solely as tools that make a pose more accessible. They can also be used to make a pose more challenging.

What About Bone Strength?

Muscle and bone don't respond to exactly the same stimulus.

Bone responds particularly well to high strain, impact and novel loading. Heavy resistance training and impact-based activities have strong evidence behind them for improving bone density.

This means that if someone's primary goal is maximising bone density, resistance training and appropriate impact exercise shouldn't necessarily be replaced by yoga. But that doesn't mean yoga is irrelevant to bone health.

Weight-bearing yoga poses expose the skeleton to load, and varying the ways in which we carry our body weight can provide useful physical stimulus. As we age, maintaining the capacity to bear our own body weight, move through different ranges of motion, on different planes of alignment and control our bodies in different positions is valuable.

So I would be cautious about saying that yoga builds bone density in the same way as heavy resistance training. But I would be comfortable saying that an appropriately designed, weight-bearing yoga practice can contribute to maintaining physical capacity and supporting bone health.

Again, the details matter.

Does Yoga Only Strengthen the Front of the Body?

This is another common criticism, but it is an overstatement.

Yoga recruits muscles throughout the body, including the posterior chain.

Think about Locust, Bridge, Wheel, Chair, Warrior III, Half Moon, Plank variations, Dolphin and arm balances. These movements can require significant activation of the glutes, hamstrings, spinal extensors, calves, shoulders and upper back. The posterior chain is certainly not absent from yoga. However, there is a more nuanced point worth making.

Many mainstream yoga classes are biased towards mobility, pushing movements and anterior-chain loading. Some sequences provide relatively little progressive loading for muscles such as the glutes, hamstrings, lats and upper back. But that's a sequencing and programming issue, rather than an inherent limitation of yoga. If we recognise that these muscles need to be challenged, we can deliberately include movements and variations that do exactly that.

Yoga can absolutely strengthen the posterior chain when it is sequenced and taught with that intention.

The Strength of the Deep Stabilising Muscles

One area where yoga has a particularly valuable contribution is the development of awareness, control and strength in the deeper stabilising musculature.

As informed body aware yoga teachers we should be targeting :

• the deep core, including the transverse abdominis and multifidus

• the hip stabilisers

• the scapular stabilisers, including the rhomboids and serratus anterior

• the rotator cuff and other humeral stabilisers

• the intrinsic muscles of the feet and ankles

• the muscles involved in postural control

  
  

These muscles may not always produce enormous amounts of force, but they are essential for efficient movement and joint stability.

Yoga's emphasis on alignment, balance, controlled transitions and sustained positions can develop these qualities exceptionally well.

But there is an important caveat.

Awareness alone isn't strength.

Becoming more aware of a muscle doesn't automatically make it stronger. Those stabilising muscles still need to experience enough physical challenge to adapt.

This is where an educated yoga teacher can make a huge difference. We can use alignment, cueing, leverage, instability, unilateral loading, resistance and duration to turn awareness into a meaningful physical stimulus.

Progression: The Missing Piece?

One of the strongest criticisms of yoga is that the body eventually adapts to body-weight poses. This criticism contains some truth.

If you always perform the same movement, with the same load, for the same duration, your body eventually becomes more efficient at it. Strength gains will plateau when the stimulus stops increasing.

But this is not a problem unique to yoga. It is a fundamental principle of exercise physiology.

Someone who lifts the same weight for the same number of repetitions indefinitely will also plateau. The barbell makes progressive overload easy because you can simply add another two kilograms. Yoga requires a little more creativity.

We can progressively load yoga through:

• moving from two limbs to one

• increasing lever length

• increasing range of motion

• reducing points of support

• increasing time under tension

• slowing eccentric or concentric phases

• progressing towards more mechanically demanding variations

• adding external resistance

• introducing unilateral loading

• carefully manipulating instability

• changing the position of the centre of mass

Consider Bridge progressing to Single-Leg Bridge.

The exercise hasn't simply become a new pose; the mechanical demands have changed.

This is progressive overload.

It is entirely possible to continue developing strength through yoga for decades when the practice continues to evolve.

When Skill Becomes Part of the Equation

There is another interesting phenomenon that happens as we become more advanced: skill starts to account for more of our efficiency.

Take a handstand...

A beginner may expend enormous muscular effort because they are constantly making large corrections. An experienced practitioner can stack their joints efficiently, organise their body and make tiny adjustments to maintain balance.

The handstand looks effortless.

But effortless-looking doesn't mean effortless.

An elite gymnast can make a planche or handstand look almost easy precisely because they possess extraordinary strength and extraordinary skill.

Efficiency reduces wasted effort. It doesn't eliminate the physical demands of the task.

In fact, many advanced yoga skills depend on an impressive combination of strength, mobility, balance and refined motor control.

Where Traditional Resistance Training Has the Advantage

It is also important not to become so defensive of yoga that we pretend it does everything equally well.

It doesn't.

If someone's primary goal is maximal strength or hypertrophy, traditional resistance training is generally more efficient.

There are also movement patterns that traditional resistance training can train much more directly than traditional asana.

Two obvious examples are pulling and elbow flexion.

Rows and pull-ups provide clear, progressive ways of training the pulling muscles of the upper back and arms. Biceps curls provide a straightforward way of progressively loading elbow flexion.

Yoga can train the muscles involved in these actions, but traditional resistance training gives us much more direct and measurable ways of progressively loading them.

Recognising this isn't a criticism of yoga. It's simply good programming.

Strength Is More Than Muscle

Perhaps the most important point I want to make is that strength shouldn't be reduced to how much weight we can lift.

We want our tissues to be resilient and prepared for a wide variety of demands.

We need to be able to:

Move quickly.

Move slowly.

Control eccentric loading.

Produce force.

Hold positions.

Absorb force.

Balance.

Stabilise joints.

Move through different ranges.

Respond to changes in our environment.

Our bodies don't move in one predictable pattern.

This is why variety matters.

Yoga can be an incredibly useful way of cross-training and diversifying our physical practice. It exposes us to different ranges of motion, different positions, balance challenges, isometric contractions, controlled transitions and complex movement patterns. And when we combine that with appropriate resistance and progressive loading, yoga can become a much more comprehensive strength practice than the traditional stereotype suggests.

The Role of the Yoga Teacher

Ultimately, I don't think the question should be “Can yoga build strength?”

A better question is:

“How are we teaching yoga to develop strength?”

A class consisting exclusively of low-intensity holds may develop mobility, balance, endurance and motor control without providing enough stimulus for substantial strength development.

But a teacher who understands biomechanics and exercise physiology can manipulate the practice.

We can change leverage.

We can increase resistance.

We can use unilateral variations.

We can increase time under tension.

We can challenge the posterior chain.

We can introduce higher-intensity isometrics.

We can reduce points of support.

We can progress movements.

We can use props creatively.

We can deliberately train qualities that might otherwise be missing.

That changes the conversation entirely.

Yoga Isn't the Same as Resistance Training ... And That's Okay

Yoga doesn't need to become weightlifting in order to be valuable for strength.

If your goal is to become as strong as possible or maximise muscle size, resistance training deserves a significant place in your weekly practice.

But if your goal is balanced functional strength, joint stability, body awareness, balance, motor control and whole-body resilience, a thoughtfully designed yoga practice can offer something quite different and extremely valuable.

The limitation is often not the discipline itself.

It's the way the practice is designed and taught.

Strength isn't one thing. Our bodies need many different expressions of strength, and they need to be prepared for many different physical demands.

Perhaps the real opportunity for yoga is not to prove that it can replace every other form of exercise, but to recognise where it excels, understand where it has limitations, and teach it intelligently.

We don't have to choose between yoga and strength.

We can use yoga to become stronger - and use strength training to make our yoga, and our bodies, even more resilient.