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Funny because I did yoga for years and I've never felt better since doing olympic weight lifting and other forms of strength training.

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Same. I find yoga and most stretching to be a waste of time. You can do mobility work with strength exercises.

Nothing transformed my life more then serious strength training. Everything from sitting behind a desk to running uphill is a hundred times easier.

I'm sure you can achieve the same strength with yoga, but it seems to me its very inefficient. You can do strength training 2-3 times a week for an hour and it just works.

I've no skin in the game but 30 mins a day of yoga and 2-3 hours a week of weights aren't hugely different.

They have really different outcomes though.

There's absolutely no way you can stress the nervous system and build muscle and bone density as efficiently as with lifting weights.

Calisthenics, which is what Yoga is, body weight exercises, can never achieve the same results. You can come close in a lot of ways, one legged squats etc, but ultimately, you cannot work your back and your core as effectively as with a 1.5x body weight dead lift.

I don’t think either Calisthenics or Yoga people would agreed with you that they are the same. I mean even within different Yoga types there are huge differences.

Yeah, if you want to do calisthenics then the best thing to do is to follow a calisthenics routine. Some yoga routines have a decent amount of calisthenics in them, many don't. Also, progression is going to be much better with a good calisthenics routine - most yoga routines and classes have a very poor sense of progression.

Same goes for stretching as well. A good stretching routine is going to get you much more flexible faster than doing yoga. Yoga has stretching in it, but again, it's unfocused and tends to have a very poor sense of progression.

Yoga is probably more akin to a sport. You can keep fit by playing sports, depending on how much work you put into it. But if you're trying to build strength, cardio, or flexibility, you're going to get much better results with a routine that focuses on those.

This actually isn’t necessarily true, one of the reasons I loved Sivananda yoga was that the classes were near identical and you could see yourself getting better at the breath hold/shoulder stand/sun salutations/etc. as the course progressed.

Unless we're talking about the calisthenics we did in school gym class, circles with your arms, you can get pretty big and shredded with it. Calisthenics is basically gymnastics and gymnasts are much bigger than yogis.

Note on bias: I do calisthenics...and weightlifting (https://www.instagram.com/p/CScdKCjr_0c/)

Serious Gymnasts also lift weights at specific points in their overall training. It’s faster and helps avoid bad habits to have the strength to do specific moves before attempting them. This is especially true after injury.

However spending hours a day doing gymnastics is plenty to maintain that level of physical strength and even slowly improve.

Really nice handstands! I was also going to say you definitely can get very, very strong just doing calisthenics. Mike Tyson famously was doing pretty much all calisthenics until the 90s. Here's him fighting a 30-0 Spinks -- who reportedly didn't even want to leave his locker room for the fight he was so intimidated by Tyson -- training mainly calisthenics up until this point. I'd say Tyson was pretty strong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuaFIRD7_5Y

No knock on weight lifting though, it's great. But for most people getting on a yoga mat and doing some calisthenics is a lot more approachable than learning how to use a gym properly for their bodies.

Most people are never going to come close to the level where it makes a difference.

For me I saw 10x better results with calisthenics than intermediate powerlifting because the amount of volume I could get in was much much higher on compound exercises.

It's only when you get to an advanced level of strength, where advanced calisthenics exercises don't quite cut it, and almost no one gets to that level.

Big lifts, typical of strength training, are also compound exercises. I don't see a way you can match the level of potential volume even at intermediate level without putting in much more time with calisthenics, for legs anyway. That is, sets x reps x weight. For pressing you can get more volume doing just push ups at intermediate, but you won't yield the same level of absolute strength, i.e. you wont just automatically be able to bench 200 lbs by virtue of push up volume. You can get the best of both worlds by doing "frequency method" push-ups as in linear programs like Greyskull.

I think you’re missing the point here, which isn’t efficiency in activity but efficiency in ease of activity.

"The point" is muscle-bulding and bone density, as that is what the above user was responding to in context.

You need to make calisthenics excercises progressively harder instead of endlessly increasing the volume, if you want to increase strength. The pinnacle are pushups on one arm, Bruce Lee demonstrated those on two fingers. The book Convict Conditioning contains progressions for several bodyweight excercises.

Tell me you've never done a second of actual yoga and just assume its "stretching" without telling me.

> There's absolutely no way you can stress the nervous system and build muscle and bone density as efficiently as with lifting weights.

I'm not sure about that - have you looked at the strength required for some of the exercises people do on gymnastics rings? Things like ring planches, maltese, victorian cross (once thought to be impossible) etc.

> There's absolutely no way you can stress the nervous system and build muscle and bone density as efficiently as with lifting weights.

That of course assumes that building huge or strongest muscles is universal goal. It is not.

Well one builds muscle and the other not so much ;)

It depends on what you want to accomplish. For me a 30 minute session of yoga is much harder than an hour of strength training. Also, they achieve different things, Yoga strenghtens your mind and your body, you touch every part of the body with yoga, weight lifting misses some of them.

What? A good weight lifting routine which incorporates squats, deadlifts, dumbbell rows, bench presses and little more, will absolutely strengthen every single part of your body. As for mind benefits, I can't speak to the scientific evidence of either, but in a physiological level I don't see why weights should be any worse.

Weight lifting doesn't train balance, whole-body coordination or flexibility as much as yoga or calisthenics would.

Are you kidding? Have you ever snatched heavy? thrown around kettlebells ?

I'm not an expert, but handstands and similar skills might require more precision and whole-body balance than any weight-lifting exercise?

Balance is heavily trained with heavy weights as well because now, not only do you have to move and balance yourself, you need to do it with a heavy weight on your back for example.

It's hard to compare the two though because one might day that, in old age, being able to do a handstand is less important than being able to haul groceries along uneven terrain standing up.

Yes, people who do yoga regularly have better balance in various odd positions then weight lifters. Yes, they do learn balance tricks (like walking on slack line) faster then weight lifters.

There's a difference between not touching something and training is less. Weightlifting touches on all three of those things ("flexibility" is usually called range of motion w/r/t weightlifting though).

Compound exercises do this. Flexibility can be improved with stretching.

Weightlifting trains balance extremely well. A max effort power snatch for example requires excellent balance.

Counterpoint. Yoga, and body weight training may as well have done nothing compared to how amphetamine has helped me.

Amphetamine being adderall (or similar adhd medications)?

in terms of "increasing brain function", I 100% agree with that amphetamine.. lol

Looks like I picked a bad week to quite amphetamines

Quite right!

I actually have quit amphetamines this week due to side effects. I feel like I can't function without them, but they're making me unwell. What a dilemma!

Don't amphetamines have a negative effect on the cardiovascular system?

YMMV

I lift on the regular, train with a PT that specializes in mobility and strength who works with pro athletes. If I don't adhere to a nightly, consistent stretching regiment before bed that includes a bit of yoga and a number of other key movements, I sleep like poo.

Highly recommend the book; Becoming a Supple Leopard [1]

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Supple-Leopard-2nd-Performan...

I am actually familiar with that book since my hobby is running and it involves a fair amount of flexibility, soft tissue issues in general, etc.

So I do stretch and do mobility work especially hips, legs, shoulders, and take care of my posture and feet etc.

But it is a time commitment, and I do think that strength training is the first thing someone should focus on. Fixing issues from constant sitting is also a whole other topic.

I have that book, it's ok, but its ridiculously large, like a bible.

It's hard to imagine it couldn't be a bit more simplified.

Same. I went from yoga to Mark Rippetoe and, while I had difficulties for a long time due to trying to learn the lifts on my own, in the end the squats and deadlifts have benefited my body much more than yoga.

My own theory is that it takes a few years to develop the mind muscles connections, and for all the neglected muscles to be correctly worked and reach a whole body equilibrium. After that you know how to use the exact muscle group for a specific activity or movement, and every muscle is trained. Weight lifting or Yoga can both get to that, or any activity as long as you are mindful about movements and muscles involved, and every muscle is worked. It seems obvious but a lot of people don’t know and feel their muscles and their relative action when they do a movement like getting up or grabbing something.

Yoga will never produce the same amount of body strength or power that a good, sustainable, compound barbell program can.

I do think there is a place for Yoga in giving our bodies different kinds of movements so we experience our body in different ranges of motion and positions but Yoga is nothing like compound barbell training (whether it's powerlifting or olympic weightlifting).

Maybe you both feel better for other reasons and exercise has nothing to do with it at all.

It's impossible to get people to stick to diet plans etc. in actual scientific studies. The number of variables in a regular lifestyle mean it's impossible to draw any conclusions from anecdotal evidence. Add to that the inability to remember what you felt like years ago and compare it objectively with what you feel like today, the placebo effect etc. etc.

And I've done daily running 25 years, pilates 20 years, yoga 10 years and 5 years ago I started krav maga and it has changed my life. I think it is just a lifetime of it or something.

my own theory: they all provide the same thing - me time.

I've tried them all too, and found success from most for my mental health.

I effectively meditate when exercising, and that is what I think gets these results.

Agreed, I found Yoga if done properly with guidance from a teacher (often trained in INdia) is much more useful than weight training and other gym exercises.

There is no need to argue about what's better or more useful. Imho, it depends on a personality. For one weightlifting is the best exercise, for another it's yoga. I think we don't get obsessed with specific movements, we get obsessed with things we do well. I'm new to yoga. I just started practicing it with https://yanvayoga.com. It's hard for me at the moment, but I like asanas that I already learned. And I can definitely say I couldn't be obsessed with weightlifting, because I don't like it.

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