Yoga provides a full-body strength-training workout. Engaging in a flow style class or practice three to four times per week will help you create a balance in your body by strengthening weak muscles and stretching tighter ones. However, some of the more advanced poses do require additional strength, which is where a weight training routine can be a benefit.
Yoga as Strength Training
Yoga utilizes your own body weight as resistance in order to strengthen and build muscle. For example, the push-up is one of the best all-around exercises for building strength throughout your core and upper body. During a 90-minute vigorous flow class, you may complete over 100 push-ups, often without even realizing it because the movement is built into the poses. The same is true for standing poses, which incorporate numerous squats and lunges.
Advanced Practice
As you continue your yoga practice, you will realize that many of the level 2 and 3 poses require a good deal of strength, in ways that are not necessarily obvious to the novice practitioner. "Yoga Journal" reports that if you are very flexible, your muscles may benefit from a weight-training routine in order to gain proper strength and avoid injuries. Weight training can also increase endurance in your muscles, tendons and ligaments, which is necessary to go deeper into poses and hold them for longer periods of time.
Strong Back
Having a strong back is imperative for executing arm balances and inversions. A common mistake among beginners is to try to rely on shoulder and arm strength in these types of poses, but those smaller muscles will fatigue quickly. Instead, engage your latissimus dorsi, or lat, muscles, which are the large, broad muscles that run along the sides of your back. Weight lifting exercises such as lat pull-downs and rows will help strengthen weak lat muscles, which in return will help you to sustain these more difficult poses.
Sturdy Legs
Similarly, leg strength and endurance is necessary in order to fluidly execute many of yoga's standing poses, such as Warrior I, II & III, high lunge, triangle pose, chair pose and extended side-angle pose. Strong inner thigh muscles will help you when you're trying to execute yoga's tricky balancing postures. Weight training moves that work the glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings and inner and outer thighs, such as squats, lunges, leg presses and side leg lifts, can help improve your strength and agility and will benefit your yoga practice.
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