Power Yoga for Strength, Balance, and Physical Fitness

Yoga training involves many balancing poses, whether you are interested in single-leg stands, arm balancing, or core work, it offers quite a wide variety of poses. Muscle coactivation in balance poses is the main weapon of power yoga for strength.

Yoga has many positive effects on strength and balance, without us realizing it during training. Many athletes lack some of the specific mobility, balance, and flexibility in their key points, which can further increase performance.

Many elderly people lack basic movement patterns, live through pain, and have weaker musculoskeletal system. All of this can be reversed through yoga, and you don’t have to lift heavy weights around.

Yoga is a very versatile practice, offering many different styles which can improve your physical fitness. Certain yogic styles can fit greatly with one’s strength progression and build a strong and toned physique.

Strength and Balance improving yoga styles are Power and Ashtanga Yoga, which are more strength-work dominant dynamic yoga styles that use many bodyweight exercises through sequences with the efficient transition.

But, can yoga be a functional fitness alternative? Is it that strength and balance enhancing?

Definition: Strength, Muscular Endurance, Balance, Physical Fitness, Power

However similar it sounds, strength, power, and balance are very different. All these strength-related physical abilities have something in common, but can be different in nature.

In yoga, we can mainly influence our strength, balance, and muscular endurance of specific muscles – not power and explosiveness.

Holding Poses for Muscle Endurance & Strength

Many of the yogic poses enforce muscular endurance in us, without us realizing it. Think of any yoga session and how many times you pushed from downward dog through vinyasa to cobra, around 30 times per class. That is tremendous work for your shoulders, core, chest, and back.

Aside from this, many arm balancing and one-legged poses will improve your vestibular balance and intramuscular coordination which can prevent falls, improve neuroplasticity and enhance overall balance.

Toning your body, losing some weight, increasing muscular strength and endurance, balance improvements, and core toning are just some of the benefits that yoga practice can offer to improve physical fitness.

Not to mention that when we deepen our breath, sweat a lot, and put our minds in a meditative state, we have a bunch of other positive effects of mood, heart and brain health, and full body detox.

Yoga Effects on Physical Fitness, Balance, and Strength

As a physical practice yoga comes with many potential benefits for our musculoskeletal system. Many of these abilities like strength and balance, or muscular endurance have a lot to do with our vestibular system, neuromuscular control, energetic physiology, and many more.

Here are a couple of Evidence-Based facts on yoga in relation to balance, strength, and physical fitness:

• Improvements in overall Physical fitness
• Increased Range of Motion and Joint Mobility
• Significant Improvements in Agility, Coordination, and Balance
• Improved Balance, Singe Leg Standing Poses
• Improved Cardiovascular performance and Endurance
• Improved Muscular Strength and Muscular Endurance
• Longer duration of withstanding Balancing Poses
• Improved Upper Limb and Abdominal Strength
• Improved Quality of Life
• Reduced Incidence of Falls
• Improved Stride Speed, Physical Confidence, and Legs Flexibility

These are the main improvements seen throughout those studies, shown in the sections below. Of course, there are many other benefits regarding yogic training and physical performance, but those are the main evidence-based ones.

From abdominal core strength, which is crucial for shoulder and hip mobility and muscular endurance, yoga training is worth pursuing if you want to improve your health and fitness.

Physical Fitness & Yoga

There are many studies on the effects of yoga on physical fitness, and the collected data shows very promising evidence of the positive effects of yoga.

Physical fitness is defined as health and well-being, the ability of an individual to perform a given physical task. Now, it’s safe to say there are many levels of physical fitness, and if the top athletes are at the peak of it, normal non-athlete humans have certain measures they should live up to.

Depending on age, health, and preoccupation – these measures vary a lot. But, if one can achieve the basic physical tasks and function properly throughout his daily activities without getting too tired or feeling pain, he is considered physically healthy.

So physical fitness has a lot to do with sports performance abilities like strength, aerobic endurance, balance, coordination, speed and many more.

Yoga Effects on Strength and Endurance

Yoga can also positively influence strength and muscular endurance, here are a couple of studies showing these findings:

• Hatha Yoga (12 weeks, 173 individuals) – leads to improvement of cardiorespiratory endurance, muscular strength, and endurance. VO2max was increased, and practitioners showed better results on curl-up and push-up tests and hamstring flexibility. (3)

• Hatha Yoga (8 weeks) – improved participant’s flexibility by 13-35%. On average, participants were able to perform 14 more curl-ups and 6 more push-ups. The balance time in the specific pose improved for 17 seconds, plus leg and ankle strengthening was on point. (4)

• Yoga’s (6 weeks, 18 sessions, 3 weekly) static and isometric contractions can improve muscle endurance. It lead to the greater upper limb and abdominal strength which resulted in better sit-up and push-up scores. (5)

• When female hockey players were following an 8-week yoga protocol, they improved many aspects of physical fitness. Improvements were seen in muscular strength, endurance, flexibility, and agility. This provides good enough evidence for how yoga can help athletes to improve their sports performance. (6)

Yoga on Balance and Mobility

Balance and mobility are one of the most important assets of physical health and fitness, not just to prevent injuries but also to live a better, more active lifestyle. People with greater balance have better neuromuscular coordination and control, and people with better mobility can access specific poses, improve sports performance and ease movement.

Here are a couple of evidence-based data on yoga in relation to balance and mobility.

• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses provide good evidence of yoga’s effects on preventing falls in people over 60 years. For many, this may be crucial to avoid musculoskeletal injuries. It turns out that in a total of 307 participants reviewed, yoga had a small effect on balance performance and a medium effect on physical mobility. (7)

Falls are pretty serious for older people since they might cause injury or disability. Active individuals have a lower risk of falls and overall potential injury, simply because their cartilage, bones, muscles, and joints are more nourished, strong, and flexible at the same time.

• Yoga and Tai Chi practice can reduce pain and the number of falls, as well as improve balance function and quality of life. (8) There’s a correlation between yoga and balance. (9)
• Yoga’s also a great tool for improving mobility and joint flexibility (10)
• In women over 65 years, yoga may reduce fall incidence. It improved stride speed, overall physical confidence, leg flexibility, and one-leg stance balance. (11)

Power Yoga Special

One of the most unique styles of yoga that focuses on building strength and balance is Power Yoga. As a branch of Ashtanga yoga, Power yoga focuses on many balancing poses, isometric contractions, and transitions which will make you work hard and sweat.

The point of ashtanga yoga is to tap into your personal power, both physically and mentally. A very popular style of yoga that involves purification of your mind and body.

Since ashtanga yoga is more of a strict and static set of sequences and poses, power yoga uses most of the ashtanga’s poses and exercises, and has a similar goal in mind but is allowed to be manipulated and changed, just as Vinyasa Flow.

This, therefore, allows different people to access a great yoga practice that will strengthen the core, shoulders, back, and legs, through a series of movements and asanas. The versatility and adaptability are what make this style unique for strength building.

It is important to mention that power yoga is for those who are more athletic, active, and strong, rather than elderly amateurs. This class has loud music, balancing poses, sweaty transitions, and a hot environment.

Best Balance and Strength Building Yoga poses

Ashtanga yoga incorporates the Surya Namaskara sequence, which involves fall down, warrior, downward facing dog, cobra, chair pose, prayer pose, and raised arms pose.

To many, this seems very easy, but after a couple of transitions, our shoulders and core have worked pretty well to sustain this transition smoothly. If we continue with extra balancing arm work, it is a pretty good shoulder, chest, triceps, and even back workout.

Here are a couple of Ashtanga or Power Yoga poses, best for building unilateral and bilateral balance, core and shoulder strength, and full body stability.

• Tadasana – Mountain Pose can work your quads, glutes, and adductors if you can contract and push your pelvis forward consciously. Activating the right muscles will even work lower abdominal and shoulder retractors.
• Utkatasana – Chair pose, with your hand above your head, this exercise can strengthen and lengthen both neck and back muscles, improve posture and activate your glutes and quadriceps muscles.
• Vrksasana – The tree pose builds unilateral strength and balance, since you put all your weight on one leg, having the other foot rest on your standing leg. From here you can lower to activate more quadriceps and gluteus muscles.
• Utthita Hasta Padangustasana – Extended Hand to big toe Pose can definitely make you sweat. A lot harder than it might look, works your whole body, all the stabilizers are involved and it depends a lot on our hamstring flexibility.
• Bakasana – Crow pose is one of the easier arm balancing poses. As you progress you push the knees up higher on your triceps and shift your weight forward until you fly. This works your shoulders as well as other push motion muscles such as the chest and triceps, but also a lot of core is involved.
• Pinchamayurasana – The forearm stand is more of an advanced level pose, where you hold your body as in a handstand, it’s just that you stand on your forearms. This works your shoulders and core pretty efficiently.
• Adho Mukha Vrksasana – Handstand is one of the basic, but still, pretty challenging balancing poses which involve full body activation if done properly. Yeah, even your legs are involved in a proper handstand. Mostly hip flexors, abdominals, inner thighs, lower back, and shoulders are activated during a handstand.
• Garudasana – Eagle Pose is one of the fanciest ancient exercises done by twisting and wrapping your arms and legs around and reaching up. This activates shoulder and back muscles, but is also a pretty good balancer for the standing leg and involves our core.
• Anjaneyasana – High lunge is also one of the easier balancing poses to do, since we can separate our feet to be more stable. However easy it seems, it requires quite a good work of your inner thighs and core to keep it smooth and non-jiggly.
• Virabhadrasana I, II and III are Warrior I, II, and III poses that are great and an easy way to work the legs, especially the quadriceps and glutes, and also involve our core and shoulder, especially in longer duration of this exercise.
• Utkata Konasana – Goddess pose is also a good strength builder. It involves all of our leg muscles, including the adductors, abductors, hamstring, glutes, and quads. For those lifting on their toes, it activates the calves too.
• Natarajasana – Dancer Pose is one of the fanciest aesthetically pleasing poses in yoga. It involves single-leg balancing while you pull the other leg from behind, working all the muscles of your standing leg but also your core, lower and upper back.
• Ardha Chandrasana – Half Moon pose is one of the best side torso stretching poses. It also involves single-leg balancing, light twists, core work, and arms spread. One of the best single-leg balancers, suitable even for amateurs with the usage of block for hand support.