It’s official: Yoga is strength training!

But of course, it's SO much more...

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The US government released new physical fitness guidelines on Monday. It’s not surprising to learn that most Americans are not getting the recommended amount of exercise: 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity and two sessions of muscle-strengthening activity each week. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, less than 1/3 of us adults are meeting the guideline and only 1 in 5 teens are hitting the target.

The definition of ‘moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity’ falls rather short of what most of us here in northern Utah already practice and includes walking briskly, riding a bike on level ground with few hills, and playing doubles tennis. But it was nice to see yoga explicitly called out in the government’s definition of muscle-strengthening, which included ‘lifting weights, heavy gardening, and yoga.’

Any Tadasana.Yoga student of our regular Power Flow knows that just two of these classes a week will enable you to easily meet the new standards, and so as always, I take issue with the fact that yoga is not automatically classified as an ‘aerobic physical activity’. But being on the ‘national standards’ list will continue to legitimize the practice — and might even help bring more of our men in the door!

If you want to know what’s it’s like to combine high-intensity aerobic physical activity with muscle-strengthening, be sure to check out our Yoga Sculpt classes. And best of all, we’re jumping right in to help our teens, with a weekly Teen Yoga class, giving them the opportunity to experience the aerobic training and strengthening benefits of yoga that they need!

~Melissa