Calculating the Caloric Impact
Researchers from the ACE study would say Hatha’s definitely not enough. “You get changes in strength and muscular endurance, flexibility, balance—all those types of things—but in order to improve aerobic capacity you really have to be working in the aerobic training zone,” says John Pocari, PhD, one of the study’s researchers, in an interview with Ace FitnessMatters.

But what about the more intense types of yoga that go beyond Hatha? Pocari and his colleague actually compared the caloric and aerobic effects of doing Hatha versus Power yoga. They asked fifteen experienced practitioners to perform fifty-minute sessions of each and then compared the results. Doing Hatha burned an average of 144 calories, whereas Power burned 237, about the same amount as any other mild aerobic workout would burn. A 2003 Adelphi University study, published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, reached a similar conclusion about non-Hatha yoga. Thirteen experienced yoga enthusiasts followed a fifteen-minute video of Vinyasa, a series of movements synchronized with breathing. (You find Vinyasa flow in strenuous yoga disciplines like Ashtanga and Power.) Researchers tested their metabolic rates in the process, and the average number of calories burned was similar to that burned while walking or dancing aerobically.

There’s Power in Every Pose
For optimal physical health, experts recommend getting in at least thirty minutes of moderate aerobic exercise each day. I hoped to achieve this by way of a steady yoga practice, but based on science’s findings, that just isn’t enough to give me the kinds of benefits regular jogging, power walking, spinning, and other, more lively forms of cardio provide. We need to get our hearts pumping and our pores sweating, and while challenging forms of yoga do that sometimes, it seems our bodies still need a little more.

Then again, yoga’s not supposed to be a form of cardio anyway—it’s a way to increase mindfulness and relax. When you compromise that, you miss out on some of yoga’s best qualities. And even if it doesn’t provide you with a heart-pumping workout, all these studies have shown that endurance, muscle strength, flexibility, and balance do improve when you do yoga. So to maintain or achieve overall fitness, yoga should definitely be a part of your routine as one of the many ways in which you stay physically active. Variety is the spice of life, after all, and when it comes to exercise, it’s absolutely necessary for physical (and mental) health.

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