You probably don’t want the size and mass of a professional bodybuilder. Well, yoga alone won’t get you there anyway. But you still want the muscle tone, leanness, and low body fat associated with activities like weight lifting, crossfit, swimming, climbing, and other sports. Can yoga build muscle? Can we get those sweet, lean muscle gains, without the mass and veins?
Yoga Can Build Muscle The Same Way As Bodyweight Exercises
Yes, yoga can build muscle and increase strength. Muscle and strength go hand in hand, and usually more muscle mass and tone means more strength for that muscle. The ways you can build muscle and increase strength in yoga work similar to performing bodyweight exercises.
As the name suggests, bodyweight exercises refer to any movement that only uses your bodyweight without any resistance like weights. A classic example of a bodyweight exercise is the push up or pull up. Bodyweight exercises build muscle primarily through increasing time under tension, increasing repetitions, decreasing rest times, and variations.
The good news is that yoga already uses most of these muscle building strategies! Go here to learn about its other benefits.
Progressive Overload Is Key to Build Muscle
Progressive overload is a simple principle to build muscle that works well for all experience levels. This principle works by gradually increasing the stress to the muscular system and forcing your muscles to adapt and grow in response.
The term progressive overload is most often used in weightlifting and usually refers to increasing the weight of each exercise over time to build muscle.
However, there are no “weights” in yoga except our own bodyweight! And most of us don’t want to increase our bodyweight each week! Fortunately, we can also take advantage of progressive overload in yoga, too! We do this by adding more repetitions, decreasing rest time between poses, and increasing tension.
Increasing Repetitions During Yoga Can build Muscle
A great example that most beginners are familiar with are sun salutations. We can simply increase the amount of sun salutations to increase overall repetitions and volume and this will help you build muscle. When you challenge yourself with more repetitions of this flow, you are adding overall volume to your yoga exercise session. Consequently, this will increase overall stress on the muscles worked which will cause greater muscle fiber stimulation and force them to adapt and grow.
The good news is that sun salutations works almost every major muscle group in the body. Similar to weight lifting, we will build the most muscle in yoga with poses and flows that include the largest muscle groups. We want to include as many poses as possible that include our bodies largest muscle group, the gluteus maximus. The gluteus maximus is generally considered our strongest muscle group and is located in the buttocks and responsible for hip and thigh movement. Similarly, we also want to include many of the other biggest muscle groups in the body such as the latissimus dorsi and quadriceps.
Decreasing Rest Times During Yoga Can build Muscle
Decreasing your rest times between yoga poses or flows can build muscle similar to increasing repetitions. This practice also works on the principle of progressive overload. This will cause your body to adapt more quickly, create more metabolic stress, and add more muscular tension. Decreasing rest times will also give the added benefit of fat loss through calories burned during aerobic exercise.
And speaking of fat loss, head here to learn what the best yoga poses for burning belly fat are.
So, embrace the sweat and burn and build muscle and loss fat at the same time! Decrease your rest times and increase the speed of your yoga session to build more muscle!
Increasing Tension Through Pose Progression
One of the core principles of building muscle is through increasing muscle tension. This is another component of progressive overload. It is also often referred to as time under tension. In weightlifting, this is done by spending more time on the eccentric, or lowering part, of the movement.
In yoga, we can build muscle by increasing time under tension through pose progression, variations, and modifications. This is perhaps the most important way that yoga encompasses the progressive overload principle. Similarly, it’s also one of the most effective techniques for building muscle.
Yoga Can Build muscle With More Challenging Pose Variations
There are three simple and general ways to make yoga poses more difficult and help build muscle.
- Remove any props. This may be a bit obvious, but props are designed for beginners and to make poses easier. When we remove props, we are increasing our range of motion and the time our muscles are under tension. Of course, there are many benefits to using props in yoga, which you can read more about here.
- Increase Depth. By deepening and increasing the height of the pose, you will also increase the stretch and tension. In many cases, we are simply doing the more difficult variants of each pose. For example, for the Seated forward bend (paschimottanasana), we can increase depth by making sure our knees are fully straight with no or little bend at the knees. With feet flexed and hands on the outside of each foot, this will increase tension on the hamstrings.
- Change Angle. In many poses, we can change the angle to make it more challenging and increase muscle tension. The angle change and movement will differ for each pose, but you can try different techniques like narrowing stance, turning hands, and hip and pelvis movements.
Best Yoga Pose Variants to build muscle and strength
Now that we have listed the general recommendations of removing props, increasing depth, and changing angles to increase difficulty of poses, let’s give specific examples of the best yoga pose variants to build muscle and strength.
Learn more about other the types of yoga poses here.
By increasing pose difficulty, we are acting on the proven progressive overload principle to increase time under tension and build muscle and strength!
Chaturanga Dandasana
This pose is also known as the Four-Limbed Staff pose or as Low Plank and will strengthen and build muscle in the arms, wrists, chest, shoulders and core. To perform, straighten your body so it is parallel to the ground. Support your body with your toes and your palms, and keep you elbows along the body at a right angle. Chest, shoulders, elbows, and upper arms will all be in alignment.
More challenging variant to build muscle: You can add multiple rounds of push ups to make this pose more difficult. You do this by exhaling at the bottom of this pose, then pressing into plank pose. Repeat. Continue repeating this challenging variant multiple times in a row and feel the burn! By adding rounds of push ups as you alternate between chaturanga dandasana and plank pose, you will place more tension on the chest, shoulder, and arms and build muscle.
Downward Dog Split
This pose is also known as Eka Pada Adho Mukha Svanasana or the Three Legged Dog. Beginning in downward facing dog, raise your right leg high off the ground while keeping hips square and level. Keep the right foot flexed as raise and hold this pose.
More challenging variant to build muscle To make this pose more challenging, first move into a high plank so your shoulders are directly over your wrists. Now, bring your right knee to your nose as your exhale. Finally, inhale and kick back with your right foot. Repeat this movement multiple times to increase the time under tension of the legs, shoulders, arms, and core.
Standing Split
This pose is also known as Urdhva Prasarita Eka Padasana in Sanskrit. Start with a forward fold position with your feet shoulder width apart. Move onto your fingertips with your back flat and lift one leg in the air behind you. Point the toes. Grab the ankle of the leg still on the ground and pull the crown of your head down towards the ground. While still holding ankle, pull your forehead toward the shin of grounded leg while raising your other lifted leg as high as you can
More challenging variant to build muscle
Bend your lifted leg and pull the forehead in even further. Next reach your lifted leg up even higher and then straighten again. You can repeat this movement of bending and straightening your lifted leg while pulling in your forehead towards grounded leg to maximize muscle tension and build muscle in the hamstrings and calves.
Dolphin Pose
Also known as Ardha Pincha Mayurasana in Sanskrit. Get on your knees, and then place elbows on ground in front of you with fingers interlocking. Curl back your toes. Exhale and lift knees and hips away from the mat while pushing on toes. Take one or two slight steps forward so feet are fully on ground in addition to elbows and forearms.
.More challenging variant to build muscle
Lower the forearms to the floor simultaneously while keeping the legs in down dog, rather than going on knees first. This will increase muscle tension and difficulty to maximize muscle building gains!
Best Yoga Poses to Build Muscle and Strength – No Variants Requried!
Some poses are already really hard and there are no more challenging variants available. The plank pose, for example! No problem, use the following exercises without any modifications. Try to hold each pose for longer time periods, decrease rest periods between poses, and do each pose several times to increase tension and build muscle.
Plank Pose and Side Plank
These poses are among the few used outside of yoga, and used regularly by athletes and bodybuilders too. The plank and side plank yoga poses are on the best poses and exercises for building muscle and strength in your core and abdominal muscles. They also work the deltoid muscles in the shoulders.
Specifically, tension is increased in the transversus abdominis muscle, the abductors of the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus muscles, the adductor muscles of the hip, and the internal and external obliques. To build muscle with these yoga poses, try to also follow the strategy of decreasing rest times between plank pose sets and also increasing volume by gradually holding this pose for longer periods of time.
Warrior II
This pose is a great full body pose that works some of the largest muscle groups together which is optimal for building muscle. The Warrior II yoga pose can build muscle by creating tension in the gluteus medius, quadriceps, deltoids, and the lateral rotators of hip.
Chair Pose
Similar to Warrior II, the Chair Pose engages nearly every major muscle group in the body, especially he larger muscle groups in the legs. The chair yoga pose can build muscle by creating tension in all of the glutes (the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus), the quadriceps, abdominal muscles, and shoulders.
Although it looks easy, this pose is tough! To build muscle with the chair pose, try to gradually increase the length of time holding this pose.
Tree Pose
This pose is excellent for building muscle in your core and legs as well as in the stabilizer muscles. The tree pose works many of the major muscle groups and focuses primarily on the erector spinae, trapezius, glutes, quadriceps, tensor fasciae latae, and the rectus abdominis This is a great pose to build muscle and also increase coordination and balance at the same time. To build muscle with this pose, try to hold this pose for as long as you can.
Conclusion
Yoga can build muscle and strength. This is done primarily through the principles of progressive overload. This includes increasing time under tension, increasing repetitions, decreasing rest times, and variations. To build muscle with yoga poses, it’s important to focus on poses that target the biggest muscle groups, like the gluteus maximus, and also multiple muscle groups at once.
Pose progressions and variants on poses such as chaturanga dandasana, downward dog split, standing split, and the dolphin pose are a great way to make poses more challenging and increase muscle tension. Poses such as the chair pose, warrior II, plank and side plank, and the tree pose are already great at building muscle. For these, they are already challenging enough. No variants required!
Yoga won’t get you huge muscle mass gains like bodybuilding or powerlifting, but it can build muscle and strength that can get your body lean, toned, and cut. Try the yoga poses here and start building muscle today!
Sources
Jonathan O’Donnell, Founder and Senior Contributor At L’Aquila Active
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