Want to amp up your yoga results? Adding weights may be a good option – here are 3 reasons why…

Once you’ve been practicing yoga for a while, you may be thinking of stepping things up a bit. Obviously you can always progress to more advanced poses, but adding weights to your yoga practice can be another way to intensify the challenge that yoga provides.

Using weights while doing yoga can add extra resistance to each pose, and increase its strength training potential. However, there are a few considerations to keep in mind when using weights during yoga. For one thing, you should make sure not to choose weights that are too heavy. For most people, 3-5 lb will be plenty.

Here are 3 reasons to add weights to your yoga practice:

• Improve the health and longevity of your bones

Bones are living tissues and respond very well to healthy stress. Adding hand weights increases the load we bear on our bones and therefore helps the bones in their ability to remodel…

• Strengthen and improve the efficiency of the heart

In order to strengthen the cardio muscle tissue of the heart and to increase the efficiency of the cardiovascular system, it is recommended to perform thirty minutes of cardio exercise three times a week: jog, cycle, row, dance or other aerobic exercises such as these.

In addition to strengthening muscles and bones, anaerobic resistance training (carbohydrate-burning exercises that resist gravity, such a lifting weights) also offers many cardiovascular benefits. By increasing the weight a joint has to propel through space and time, the heart is challenged to increase the blood flow to the active muscles, which makes the cardio muscle tissue stronger. A strong heart has to work less (in each beat) to pump blood which equates in lowered blood pressure.

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• Increase core strength and joint stability

As we age we lose more and more muscle mass…by the age of 70 we can lose as much as 30-55%! The good news is that by lifting weights we increase our muscle mass, which in turn increases our muscles’ ability to protect, support and stabilize our bone and joints.

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Read more at EkhartYoga.com…