There's no specific connection between Bikram, or "hot," yoga and weightlifting. However, strength training is an important part of any fitness program, and lifting weights could help your muscles perform better in difficult yoga poses. However, you might not want to go directly to the weight room after a bikram class; hot yoga makes you sweaty, and weights could slip out of sweaty hands, potentially leading to injuries. Consult your doctor before adding either Bikram yoga or weightlifting to your exercise regimen.
Bikram Basics
Bikram yoga, a practice developed by guru Bikram Choudhury, is a series of 26 specific yoga poses. The poses are ideally performed in a room heated to around 100 degrees F, or even a little warmer. The heat is meant to keep your muscles warm and fluid, which could help you avoid injury while moving between poses.
Weightlifting Benefits
Holding a yoga pose works your muscles in an isometric way, meaning the muscle is actively working but not contracting or lengthening. The other types of muscle work are isotonic --- the contracting motion you perform when curling a dumbbell --- and eccentric, in which you resist the weight while lengthening a body part, such as with a leg press. You need to do all types of muscle work for the most effective muscles, because different types of work build different types of endurance. Adding some strength training to your yoga regimen will make your muscles strong as well as more limber.
Guidelines
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that adults do muscle-strengthening activities that involve all the major muscle groups on two or more days per week. It's typically a good idea to skip a day between lifting sessions to give your muscles time to recover; however, you can also focus on one muscle group one day and a different group the next, as long as you get a total of two sessions per week for every group.
Helpful Poses
Any yoga pose that requires you to balance on your arms or on just one leg will help build muscle strength. Bikram yoga includes some of these poses, such as Eagle, Standing Head-to-Knee, Bow, Balancing Stick, Tree and Toe Stand. Chair pose is also a good strength-builder, because it takes your balance onto your toes. Handstands and headstands build a lot of arm strength, but they're typically not included in a Bikram class.
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