Yoga Keeps You Fit?

Yoga keeps you fit? That's stretching it! Studies reveal getting into the lotus position will NOT get you into shape...

By Peta Bee

Encouraged by A-listers such as Trudie Styler and Christy Turlington, who claim they owe their perfectly honed bodies to yoga, around half a million of us now regularly attend yoga classes.

Many more diligently practise our downward dogs at home — according to Amazon, yoga DVDs regularly out-sell other home workout programmes — and luxury yoga retreats have become the cooler alternative to a spa break.

And the popularity of yoga shows no signs of waning, with the growth rate set to reach 25 per cent this year. But, last week, one of Britain’s leading fitness experts, celebrity personal trainer Matt Roberts, suggested that yoga isn’t doing much for our fitness levels, at all.

‘You may feel that you are keeping fit by doing a weekly yoga class, but you aren’t,’ Roberts said. ‘The reason why everyone likes yoga is that it isn’t very hard.

‘Yes, there are individual parts of your body that are being worked hard, but with every form of exercise you should ask yourself is it intensive enough? Is my heartbeat raised? Am I out of breath and sweating for at least 25 to 30 minutes at a time? The answer when you’re doing yoga is, I suspect, no.’

His comments will undoubtedly unsettle yoga enthusiasts everywhere. Yet, Roberts isn’t alone in suggesting that yoga offers less of a workout than we have been led to believe.

John Brewer, professor of sports science at the University of Bedfordshire, is keen to debunk the myth that celebrities achieve their streamlined appearance solely through endless sessions on a yoga mat.

‘You just can’t achieve weight loss and a high level of fitness through doing yoga alone,’ he says. ‘These people probably devote hours a day to running, cycling, the gym and do yoga on top of that for its relaxation and flexibility benefits.’

Brewer says that other than leaving you with better balance and flexibility, yoga doesn’t provide too many benefits, because the most important muscle in the body is the heart and this workout doesn’t really work the cardiovascular system at all.

Quite how limited a workout yoga provides was put to the test when the U.S. consumer watchdog, the American Council on Exercise (ACE), commissioned researchers at the University of Wisconsin’s human performance laboratory to investigate its fitness benefits.

What the exercise scientists found was surprising. In their trial, a group of 34 previously sedentary women were asked to take part either in three 55-minute hatha yoga classes — the most popular variety in the West — a week for two months, or to abstain from exercise altogether.

‘You get changes in strength and muscular endurance, flexibility and balance — all those types of things — but, in order to improve aerobic capacity, essentially the efficiency of your heart and lungs, you really need to be working in the training zone where your heart rate reaches 70 to 80 per cent of your maximum,’ says Professor John Porcari,  who led the study. ‘Based on what we found, the intensity just wasn’t there.’

In other words — doing three sessions of yoga a week led to no significant improvement in aerobic capacity. An additional study by Porcari and his colleagues monitored the exercise intensity of a group of intermediate-level yogis as they took part in two sessions: one hatha yoga, and one power yoga, which is said to be more aerobically-challenging.

They found that 50-minutes of hatha burned just 144 calories, no better than a slow walk. Even the 50-minute power yoga class burned only 237 calories (half the amount of a circuit class) and boosted heart rate to only 62 per cent of its maximum, meaning it provided only a mild workout for the heart and lungs. But Brewer stresses that yoga does have its place in a fitness programme if you want to improve flexibility.

Read on here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2038876/Yoga-keeps-fit-Thats-stretching-Studies-reveal-getting-lotus-position-NOT-shape-.html