One of my favourite things about teaching yoga is watching how people’s bodies adapt over time and there’s a pattern I see over and over again.
When someone first starts yoga, they’re often concentrating incredibly hard just to work out where everything goes. Which foot is forward? Which arm is reaching? Should my hips be facing this way or that way? They’re learning a completely new language of movement, and because so much of their attention is focused on remembering the shape of the posture, they often appear wobbly or uncertain. It’s completely normal at this stage, they’re simply trying to work out what on earth I’m asking their body to do!
3-4 weeks in…
After 3-4 weeks, something begins to shift. The names of the postures become familiar, the transitions become smoother and they no longer have to spend quite so much mental energy working out where they’re going next. That frees up a little more attention to notice how the posture actually feels rather than simply trying to get into it.
2-3 months in…
Then somewhere around the 2-3 month mark, I often notice a big change. People suddenly look stronger, their balance improves, their foundations become steadier and they seem far more comfortable supporting themselves in positions that felt impossible only a few weeks earlier. It’s one of my favourite milestones because it often happens without them even realising.
It’s about so much more than stretching
If you ask most people what happens in a yoga class, they’ll probably say stretching. And they’re absolutely right — flexibility and mobility are huge parts of the practice. We spend time lengthening muscles, improving the range of movement around our joints and gently undoing some of the stiffness that modern life creates. But stretching is only one part of the picture. Strength is just as important, even if it’s not the first thing people associate with yoga.
I realised very early on when I became a yoga teacher that I am very strength-driven in the way I teach. I often find myself cue-ing students to press firmly into the floor and to draw strength up through the body from their foundations. It’s not because I’m trying to turn yoga into a strength workout, it’s because I’ve learned that when we feel strong and supported in a posture, everything else becomes easier.
When our body feels supported, we can soften our jaw, relax our shoulders, slow our breathing and become curious about what we’re feeling. We can close our eyes if we choose, notice subtle sensations and really inhabit the posture. If we’re using every ounce of concentration simply to stop ourselves falling over, our minds are occupied with thoughts like, “Please don’t let me wobble!” It’s much harder to experience the quieter, more mindful side of yoga when all our attention is being spent just trying to hold the shape.
That’s why, for me, strength isn’t separate from stillness – it’s what allows stillness to happen.
Your body is learning to work more efficiently
I was listening to a podcast this week by Jason Crandell that explained what happens in the body when you first start doing yoga. During roughly the first 10-12 weeks of learning a new physical activity, your body isn’t usually making muscles bigger. Instead, your nervous system is becoming much better at using the muscles you already have. It learns to recruit more muscle fibres, coordinate different muscle groups and switch them on at exactly the right time. Exercise scientists call this ‘neuromuscular adaptation’ (what a great phrase!).
When I heard that, it immediately made me think of my students because it’s exactly what I see every week. People aren’t suddenly developing enormous leg muscles after a couple of months of yoga. Instead, their whole body is learning to work together more effectively. They’re finding strength through better coordination and more efficient movement rather than building bigger muscles.
So what kind of strength does yoga build?
The biggest contributor is something called ‘isometric strength’. An isometric contraction happens when a muscle is working hard but isn’t changing length – in other words, you’re creating force without movement.
Every time you hold Warrior II, Chair Pose, Plank or Tree Pose, your muscles are working continuously to keep you stable, even though you aren’t moving anywhere. This type of strength is incredibly valuable because it develops muscular endurance, joint stability, balance and postural control. These are qualities we rely on every single day, whether we’re carrying shopping, standing in a queue, climbing stairs or simply maintaining good posture at our desks.
What about concentric and eccentric strength?
Yoga also develops concentric strength (to a lesser degree), which is when a muscle shortens as it creates force. You’ll experience this whenever you rise out of Chair Pose, lift into Bridge Pose or press from Downward Dog into Plank. These movements ask your muscles to actively generate force to move your body, however, because yoga typically uses your own body weight rather than heavy external resistance (eg. weights/resistance bands), the stimulus is usually less than you’d experience in a traditional strength-training session.
The third type is eccentric strength, where a muscle lengthens while remaining under tension. You might notice this as you lower from Plank, descend into Chair Pose or lower your hips back to the floor from Bridge. Eccentric strength is especially important because it’s how our bodies absorb force and protect our joints. In many ways it’s the braking system of our muscles, helping us move with control rather than simply collapsing into position. As with concentric strength, yoga offers some eccentric strength but not as much as you’d get from resistance training.
So can yoga build muscle?
To some extent, yes. If you’re new to exercise, yoga may well stimulate a little muscle growth because your body is adapting to a completely new challenge. However, if your goal is to build significant muscle size, resistance training with progressively heavier loads is generally much more effective.
What yoga offers instead is something many of us arguably need even more: strength that’s integrated with balance, coordination, mobility, breathing and body awareness. It teaches us not just to produce force, but to support ourselves efficiently and move with confidence.
Strength for life, not just for on the mat
Perhaps that’s why the improvements people notice aren’t always about the yoga itself. Maybe you find carrying shopping easier, feel steadier walking upstairs, get up from the floor with less effort or notice your balance improving in everyday life. Those changes don’t happen because we’ve been chasing bigger muscles, they happen because the body has quietly become stronger, more coordinated and better at working as one integrated system.
There’s a lovely yoga philosophy that sums this up perfectly. Patanjali wrote that our postures should be both ‘sthira and sukha‘ which translate as steady and comfortable (I wrote a blog about this a few weeks ago which you can read here. Notice that steadiness comes first – we first create a posture that is supported and stable, and from that strength we find ease. Once we no longer have to fight to hold ourselves there, our attention is free to settle on the breath, observe our thoughts and experience everything else that yoga has to offer.
So yes, yoga absolutely builds strength – it simply builds a different kind of strength to the one most people imagine. And from what I’ve seen in the cabin, it’s often this quiet, functional strength that makes the biggest difference — not only to how we move on the mat, but to how we move through everyday life.
See you soon in the cabin!
Michelle ❤💪
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