Yoga Is a Strength Practice (Whether You Realise It or Not) - Where Did the Flexibility Obsession Come From?

If I had £10 for every time someone told me, ‘I can’t do yoga, I’m not flexible enough,’ I’d be retired by now!

It’s one of the most common misconceptions about yoga and one of the most limiting. Yet I still hear it all the time.

Somewhere along the way, yoga became synonymous with flexibility: deep backbends, splits, gravity-defying shapes. Scroll through social media and it’s easy to see why. But those of us who’ve practiced for years know something very different.

Yoga was never about touching your toes. It’s about what you learn on the way down.

Where Did the Flexibility Obsession Come From?

The yoga we see being taught now, especially in the West, has been heavily shaped by Ashtanga. When Pattabhi Jois brought yoga to the United States in the 1970s and developed the Ashtanga series, he focused on teaching women. It was these bodies that tended to suit these flowing, dynamic sequences.

The Ashtanga sequences emphasise flexibility because they were being taught to bodies that already had a certain degree of mobility, and because visually, flexibility is compelling. It photographs well. It sells.

Over time, that emphasis stuck. Yoga became something you achieve with your body, rather than something you experience within it.

But that’s only one small piece of the picture.

Yoga Is a Strength Practice (Whether You Realise It or Not)

When yoga is taught and cued with specific intention, it becomes an incredibly powerful strength-building practice.

Not just the kind of strength we associate with lifting weights - using the big, superficial muscles that create movement (our prime movers) - but deeper, more intelligent strength:

• Strength around the joints

• Strength in connective tissue

• Even strength within the bones

Yoga develops what we can call integrated strength - where muscles work together to support, stabilise, and move the body efficiently. These muscles (the deeper stabilisers) are usually closer to the bones.

Meet the Muscles That Actually Matter

Take the serratus anterior, for example.

It’s a thin, fan-like muscle that wraps around the ribs and connects to the shoulder blade.

Its job? To stabilise the scapula (shoulder blade) keeping it anchored to your back.

It doesn’t feel dramatic when it works. In fact, activation can feel surprisingly subtle. But it’s crucial.

Without it, you might see “winging” of the shoulder blades, instability in weight-bearing poses, and strain further down the chain, especially in the arms and shoulders.

In yoga, we strengthen it in simple but powerful ways:

• Scapular push-ups

• Crow pose

• Any weight-bearing through the hands, like side-plank

It works in balance with the rhomboids one pulling the shoulder blade one way, the other pulling it back. When they work together, they create stability.

Not stiffness. Stability.

And that’s a key distinction.

Another of my favourite stabilising muscles is the gluteus medius - a muscle that deserves far more attention than it gets.

We often talk about “the glutes” as if they’re one thing. They’re not. There are 3 on each side of the body.

The glute medius sits on the side of the pelvis and plays a critical role in:

• Hip stability

• Pelvic alignment

• Supporting the lower back and SI joint

Any time you stand on one leg - walking, balancing, transitioning - it’s working.

Or at least, it should be.

When it’s weak, we tend to “hang” in the hip. You’ll see it in poses like Tree, Half Moon, or Warrior III—where instead of lifting and stabilising, the body collapses into the joint.

When it’s active, something different happens:

• The hip draws into the socket

• The pelvis stays level

• Movement becomes lighter, more controlled

We strengthen it through:

• Side plank

• Half Moon (especially the lifted leg working against gravity)

• Any single-leg balance

  
  

And interestingly, we often need to stretch it too - because muscles can be both tight and weak at the same time.

Strength vs Flexibility: It’s Not Either/Or

One of the biggest shifts in understanding yoga is realising that it’s not about flexibility or strength.

It’s about balance.

Think of a joint like a trampoline.

Each spring represents a muscle or tissue around that joint. If one spring is too tight, too loose, or not functioning properly, the whole system becomes uneven. Force gets distributed poorly. Movement becomes inefficient.

You can keep stretching the “tight” areas endlessly - but until you restore balance across the whole system, nothing really changes.

This is especially important because some parts of the body - like cartilage - don’t give us clear feedback. They don’t “speak” in the same way muscles do. So we can’t rely purely on sensation.

We have to train awareness, balance and integrity.

Mobility Needs Stability (and Vice Versa)

If our joints were only flexible without support, they’d be unstable - prone to wear and tear.

If they were only strong without mobility, they’d be rigid - limited in movement.

Yoga teaches both:

• Muscles contract to create strength and support

• Muscles relax to allow movement and range

Healthy tissue is responsive. It can switch on and off when needed.

Not stuck in chronic tension. Not overly loose.

But adaptable.

The Deeper Benefits You Can’t Always See

When we work with muscles intelligently, we’re doing more than shaping the body.

We’re improving circulation - helping blood, lymph, and oxygen move through the tissues.

We’re supporting joint health.

We’re even stimulating bone strength. Gentle loading and dynamic movement can create a piezoelectric effect - this is where mechanical stress encourages bones to become stronger.

On the flip side, chronic tension (think shoulders creeping up while sitting at a desk all day) reduces circulation, creates inflammation, and limits how well muscles can function.

Yoga, when practiced in specific ways, helps break that cycle.

It creates tissue that is:

• Oxygenated

• Resilient

• Responsive

Not just flexible.

So… Do You Need to Be Flexible to Do Yoga?

No.

In fact, believing that you do might be the very thing holding you back.

Yoga isn’t a performance. It’s a practice of building awareness, strength, and balance in your body.

Flexibility will come from consistent practice - but it’s not the goal.

The goal is integrity.

The goal is connection.

The goal is learning - on the way down, on the way up, and everywhere in between.