I get asked a lot by many people-especially people in social media-whether yoga is good for building muscle? The simple answer to that question is yes. With yoga, you can build muscle. That is a fact for sure.
There are two ways we can build muscle. One of them is by working on explosive exercises, explosive movement, that will create more mass into the muscle eventually. If you are looking to build muscle, to become considerably bigger, to pump yourself up, then I would recommend trying weightlifting.
In yoga, what we are doing is lengthening a muscle, we are strengthening the muscle that is lengthened and we're building endurance into that muscle. In my opinion, this is more efficient mobility-wise. It brings the body into a more lean form. You become more aware of your body, especially of muscles that you didn't even know they existed before. You discover your body much more and you're able to support your body weight.
If you want to build more muscle and you want to pump yourself up a little bit, one thing you could do within the practice is to hold for longer periods of time. When you're feeling that you cannot hold a position any longer and you feel pain in your muscle, basically you're breaking the muscle tissue. When the muscle tissue repairs itself and reconstructs, it becomes a little bit bigger. Therefore, if your goal is to create more mass, then you can alter your practice and hold the positions for longer periods of time.
This article was created for Warrior Addict by our Global Brand Warrior and yoga teacher Joaquin Gomez. If you're looking at how yoga can help your fitness then also check out our article on if yoga can give you Abs here.