Does yoga count as cardio? How about strength training? The truth is that yoga’s versatility makes it hard to pin down as a specific type of workout. The style and intensity of your yoga workout can be the deciding factors. Here’s a look at how to decide if your yoga counts as cardio, strength training, or both.
The Case for Yoga as Cardio
Cardio exercise is any exercise that increases your heart rate and breathing in order to get you into a zone where you’re burning calories + fat. However, you should still be able to continue without needing to stop to take a breath. When doing cardio, your target heart rate is 50 percent to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate. Your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age.
Hot yoga and power yoga are perfect examples of cardio yoga. In addition, Ashtanga yoga and Vinyasa yoga have some cardio components. In fact, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services actually names active forms of yoga on its list of recommended cardio exercises. Research shows that yoga may help to lower blood pressure, blood cholesterol, blood glucose levels, and heart rate to play a role in better cardiovascular health.
The Case for Yoga as Strength Training
Yoga offers strength training by default because of the way you use your own body for resistance. We often call this “feeling the burn.” Of course, you can use resistance bands or yoga bands to take your resistance training to the next level. Yoga styles that are especially geared for strength training include Hatha yoga and Ashtanga yoga. These styles also lean pretty heavily into cardio. In trials, a 12-week Hatha yoga intervention was shown to improve muscular strength and lower-back flexibility.
What Are the Differences Between Strength Training and Cardio?
Cardio is designed to improve your overall cardiovascular fitness. That means that you’re working toward improving your heart’s efficiency when delivering oxygen and nutrients during physical activity. During cardio, your heart rate reaches an elevated state as your body uses oxygen to convert glucose into energy. Cardio is essential for better heart health, improved lung capacity, disease prevention, and endurance.
Meanwhile, strength training helps you to build muscles and increase strength as you work against resistance. As your muscles fight against resistance, they become stronger. Strength training is essential for boosting overall strength, bone health, metabolism, and performance. During a yoga session, using your own body weight as resistance is a very low-impact and natural form of resistance.
Cardio and Strength Training: Yoga Offers the Best of Both Worlds
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommend that adults split their workout activity between 150 minutes of cardio and two muscle-strengthening workouts each week. Yoga is a great way to incorporate both forms of exercise using techniques that are very gentle on your body. You can even pepper in some relaxation-inducing yoga, detox yoga, or recovery-focused yoga to really balance yourself out!
At Ignite Yoga of Dayton, it’s our pleasure to let the secret out about the fact that yoga can help you to reach your cardio and strength-training goals each week. Our yoga classes range from meditative to intense. You can attend a class in person or access the Ignite Virtual Yoga Studio online.
