Hot Yoga and Heart Rate Questions
December 28, 2014 12:16 PM Subscribe
I am trying to become healthy and fit. I recently tried a couple of weeks of hot yoga (not Bikram), and I really enjoyed it. However, I wonder how much I am getting out of it. When I do it, I notice that my heart rate goes up considerably, which I assume is a result of the heat and not the poses. Am I right? Either way, is this elevated heart rate the good kind, or would I need to supplement the yoga with another form of cardio, especially if weight is my goal?
As always, thanks for your help.
As always, thanks for your help.
Best answer: I practice yoga regularly (used to practice hot yoga, now regular temperature vinyasa) and my experience is that I do not need "extra" cardio and that my cardio fitness has improved, a lot. I think most hot yoga is active enough to improve it. In fact, before I started practicing yoga I did cardio regular and my cardio fitness improved more after the yoga- I think because my muscle strength improved significantly overall.
Yoga can include restorative and stretching poses, which won't do much for your cardio fitness; however, in my experience of practicing yoga several years, if your heart rate is going up and you are putting in a sustained effort, your cardio fitness is improving. I think the heat during hot yoga may make you breathe heavier but that does not mean all the heavy breathing is from the heat. If you like hot yoga, that's good, but personally I found it didn't benefit me more over regular yoga and often made me feel dehydrated and occasionally, faint. sometimes the extra sweating did feel good, though.
Also, in my experience yoga is good for weight loss (as an aid) and great for toning and muscle.
posted by bearette at 6:38 PM on December 28, 2014 [1 favorite]
Yoga can include restorative and stretching poses, which won't do much for your cardio fitness; however, in my experience of practicing yoga several years, if your heart rate is going up and you are putting in a sustained effort, your cardio fitness is improving. I think the heat during hot yoga may make you breathe heavier but that does not mean all the heavy breathing is from the heat. If you like hot yoga, that's good, but personally I found it didn't benefit me more over regular yoga and often made me feel dehydrated and occasionally, faint. sometimes the extra sweating did feel good, though.
Also, in my experience yoga is good for weight loss (as an aid) and great for toning and muscle.
posted by bearette at 6:38 PM on December 28, 2014 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I take hot yoga (Moksha) classes on the regular & I had a good stretch where I attended quite often (4-5 times a week on average).
Hot yoga has profound benefits for me when I practice regularly: I gain flexibility, my stamina improves, my balance improves, my lung capacity definitely improves (I don't feel out-of-breath when I run; I feel I am breathing more deeply & I can run for longer without slowing down), it's very good for me in the winter since the prolonged heat seems to help boost my mood, and not the least of it I find it helps me mentally & emotionally much like meditation does (in a way that room-temperature yoga does not - the heat, specifically, helps me focus & clears my mind). Seriously, I can't praise it enough - it's been that good for me, and I consider it a revelatory keystone to improving my mental health & my physical fitness.
But what it doesn't do for me is help me lose weight. I don't lose weight unless I am dieting & doing more strenuous exercise (cardio, kettlebells, etc.). Hot yoga feels like you're getting quite a workout but the poses are gentler than you think they are - as they should be, so you don't overdo it and hurt yourself! If you did the poses you do in a hot yoga class in a room that wasn't heated, they would not be aerobic - a lot of balancing and stretching poses; your heart rate is going up from the heat, pretty much.
Anecdotally I have been told by other people that they lost weight doing hot yoga, and perhaps so but my suspicion (based on my experience) is that it's more likely an indirect effect such as: hot yoga makes you feel calmer & therefore less likely to stress-eat, or the sustained time in the heat simply makes you less hungry, or hot yoga makes you feel physically better & more capable of other exercise, or when you're doing hot yoga you're also unconsciously or consciously making other healthier choices in your life as well. I think too it feels like a particular exertion to finish a hot yoga class - requiring some extra effort to stay with it - and that "I can do this!" feeling is really helpful in discipline & motivation in other areas where you might get discouraged.
Regardless, I consider it an excellent addition to your routine, but if your main goal is to lose weight then in my opinion it shouldn't be the only thing you're doing. I find it combines very well with running - stretching sore muscles & the radiant heat is really soothing, as well as the body-awareness, meditative, and breathing benefits.
posted by flex at 7:10 PM on December 28, 2014 [2 favorites]
Hot yoga has profound benefits for me when I practice regularly: I gain flexibility, my stamina improves, my balance improves, my lung capacity definitely improves (I don't feel out-of-breath when I run; I feel I am breathing more deeply & I can run for longer without slowing down), it's very good for me in the winter since the prolonged heat seems to help boost my mood, and not the least of it I find it helps me mentally & emotionally much like meditation does (in a way that room-temperature yoga does not - the heat, specifically, helps me focus & clears my mind). Seriously, I can't praise it enough - it's been that good for me, and I consider it a revelatory keystone to improving my mental health & my physical fitness.
But what it doesn't do for me is help me lose weight. I don't lose weight unless I am dieting & doing more strenuous exercise (cardio, kettlebells, etc.). Hot yoga feels like you're getting quite a workout but the poses are gentler than you think they are - as they should be, so you don't overdo it and hurt yourself! If you did the poses you do in a hot yoga class in a room that wasn't heated, they would not be aerobic - a lot of balancing and stretching poses; your heart rate is going up from the heat, pretty much.
Anecdotally I have been told by other people that they lost weight doing hot yoga, and perhaps so but my suspicion (based on my experience) is that it's more likely an indirect effect such as: hot yoga makes you feel calmer & therefore less likely to stress-eat, or the sustained time in the heat simply makes you less hungry, or hot yoga makes you feel physically better & more capable of other exercise, or when you're doing hot yoga you're also unconsciously or consciously making other healthier choices in your life as well. I think too it feels like a particular exertion to finish a hot yoga class - requiring some extra effort to stay with it - and that "I can do this!" feeling is really helpful in discipline & motivation in other areas where you might get discouraged.
Regardless, I consider it an excellent addition to your routine, but if your main goal is to lose weight then in my opinion it shouldn't be the only thing you're doing. I find it combines very well with running - stretching sore muscles & the radiant heat is really soothing, as well as the body-awareness, meditative, and breathing benefits.
posted by flex at 7:10 PM on December 28, 2014 [2 favorites]
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Yoga generally doesn't use your large muscle groups in a sustained enough way to improve cardiovascular fitness, though some forms of highly active yoga might. If you can do the routine in a cold room and get up to the point where you find it possible but difficult to speak in complete sentences, then you're getting an aerobic benefit—if you can sustain that level of activity continuously.
As for heart rate monitors, they are useful tools. But the only thing they measure is your heart rate. Anything else (calorie count, e.g.) is estimated using formulae derived from population studies. Those populations account for much but not all of the variance in calories expended. Other things being equal, two people of the same height and weight can expend the same amount of energy in an activity, such as running an 8-minute mile, while having very different heart rates depending on the capacity of the left ventricle and their muscles' ability to extract oxygen from the blood.
The formula for determining your maximum heart rate is also subject to a lot of variation. The only way to figure out your real maximum heart rate is a stress test. When I was 43, the various formulae suggested that my maximum heart rate should be somewhere between 177 and 182. I measured it at 192.
Yoga can do wonders for your flexibility and strength, but it's not going to substitute for cardio exercise if aerobic endurance is your goal.
A few good recent books on what the latest research in exercise science reveals about fitness and health are:
Gretchen Reynolds, The First 20 Minutes (reliable summaries of research, but no citations of the original papers).
Alex Hutchinson, Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights? (includes references).
Owen Anderson, Running Science (running specific, but some research applies more broadly; includes references).
posted by brianogilvie at 1:52 PM on December 28, 2014 [5 favorites]