Monday, May 08, 2017

Yoga Isn't Exercise

From a man who practiced yoga for 5 years.

And coincidentally, I'm off to the gym.

5 comments:

tpkeefe said...

Agree, yoga isn't exercise -- that is, if not done in conjunction with some hard cardio, HIIT, and weight training.

For the life of me, I can't understand why women took to yoga so readily from when it started getting popular. Sure, there are the harder forms of yoga and other ones, like hot yoga, that are more intense than the standard vanilla fare that you see in most gyms and in studios. But, rarely have I ever seen women do weight training, save for one women in her 50s (I think). She obviously was doing it for strength and for doing better for her bones.

Most women, I'm sure it's been said, don't want to do it because they feel self-conscious when trying to do it themselves, are intimidated by the fact that it's usually a "male space," and because they don't want to bulk up (even though, weight training might make their legs more shapely).

Anonymous said...

Yoga is stretching. Which I will do in about half an hour. Before I do the workouts at the gym.

Anonymous said...

@tpkeefe: "I don't want to bulk up" is like the motto of fat, lazy women who don't want to work hard at the gym. Of course, women and men don't respond to weight training similarly, and there's no way that like 99% of women would get the physical build that even an average man gets from a weight regiment. Plus, they can just do low weight / high reps if they're truly worried, but resistance training is too valuable to ignore.

It's kind of hilarious though, how much you can see the difference between the sexes at the gym, and the effort that they give. It's pretty much universal from every one I've been to that men stay longer, and are higher intensity when there. Men are always more represented at squatting, benching, and hard cardio; women at yoga class, ellipticals and the stretching mat.

HawkMan said...

Not quite on board with this opinion,
Just the fact that gals that do yoga
have decent bodies should be evidence it
does something good for you, I'm sure the
biggest and baddest bodybuilder didn't get
that way with simply yoga, but I'd be highly
surprised it doesn't have any health benefits

kaangonel said...

Lets get the semantics first.
The thing that people do which looks like pilates is called asana practice. This practice is one of the many different aspects of yoga

Yoga is a tradition which is way more deeper that we can understand. We westerners have a different mindset compared to eastern people. Like many other things in life yoga is heavily commertialized so that people can make money out of it.

The poses that are thought today were found in the last century. The old scripts show only a handful of poses which is more than enough for yoga purposes.

When i do asana practice, i do it to listen to the sensations that my body generates when i move. Thats it. I ve been doing moon salutations for a long time, no inversions no streches nothing. But if i want to have a good workout it is totally a different story and i do calisthenics.

And coincidentally, I'm off to a meditation retreat..