It’s time to separate fact from fiction. Most of what people know about yoga is based on what they learn from popular culture, which doesn’t always present an accurate picture. These pages dispel some common misconceptions that might hold you back from getting the most out of your yoga workouts.
Some of what you do in yoga is stretching, but the majority of it is more than that. Stretching typically refers to passive lengthening of the muscles, but yoga is actually mostly active engagement. It involves balance postures, lunge and squat variations, core and spine strengthening postures, breathing work, isometric exercises, and more. Yoga combines many aspects of fitness into an efficient workout, including strength, endurance, core stability, mobility, flexibility, breathing, recovery, and, yes, stretching.
The term yoga refers collectively to a group of spiritual, mental, and physical practices, but you can easily focus on just the physical aspects: the postures and the breathing. So, while yoga can be much more, it’s perfectly fine to focus on the physical aspects of yoga without engaging in chanting, meditation, and spiritual practice.
It’s true that three out of four people who practise yoga in the United States today are women, but the original practitioners of yoga were almost exclusively male. Yoga was practised by men in India for thousands of years before it made its way West in the early 1900s, when it was predominantly adopted by women. However, in the early 2000s, yoga started to become popular among athletes to improve performance and prevent injury. In 2003, star running back for the US national football team, Eddie George, appeared on the cover of a book called Real Men Do Yoga. In 2015, Lebron James was leading yoga sessions at his basketball camps. In 2016, a study by Yoga Alliance found that men make up 28 per cent of yoga practitioners in the United States, an increase from 20 per cent in 2012. This number continues to grow, and it’s now common to attend a yoga class that has as many men present as women.
Wrong. Yoga actually helps you build more muscle – more efficiently, and in less time than if you were to only do resistance training. Yoga helps you directly build muscle (particularly in your back, core, hips, and thighs), but yoga really shines as an indirect method of muscle growth. It helps you regenerate muscle cells more quickly by releasing muscle tension, an essential step in the muscle-growing process. This decreases muscle recovery time and helps you get back to your workouts sooner.
Yoga also helps you avoid missing workouts due to injury, and keeps your body feeling fresh so you can stick to your workout schedule. Anyone who wants faster, more substantial muscle growth from their current workout programme will benefit from regular yoga.
Lack of flexibility is exactly why you should do yoga. Think about it – you wouldn’t avoid weights because you’re not strong enough; you start lifting weights exactly because you want to get stronger, and yoga is the same. Your level of flexibility isn’t what’s important. It’s about doing the postures in a way that works for your body and fitness level, so you can get the benefits of yoga no matter how flexible (or inflexible) you may be. All postures can be adapted to your current abilities with the right instruction and the proper tools.
Unfortunately, this is also not true. Just like any form of fitness, there is potential for injury due to incorrect technique. The most common yoga injuries result from excessive forward folds and back bends executed with poor technique, or from attempting to push your body further than it is ready to bend. But don’t worry; you can reasonably expect to avoid injury by focusing on proper technique, paying attention to your body, and using common sense.
It can be, but it ultimately depends on your fitness goals and body type. Yoga is great for toning and strengthening muscles, but you may need to add resistance training like pull-ups, push-ups, or weights to your routine in order to build significant mass. Yoga also doesn’t address your cardiovascular endurance, so you may want to include activities such as jogging, cycling, swimming, or brisk walking in your routine to keep your heart healthy.
While morning can be a great time for yoga, it depends entirely on your schedule and preferences. You can practise any time of day. Experiment with different times to determine when is best for you. The only restriction I recommend is avoiding strenuous, strength-focused yoga workouts (or any workouts, for that matter) two to three hours before sleeping. Non-strenuous, restorative yoga, on the other hand, actually encourages better sleep and is great to do anytime in the hours leading up to bed.