The Importance of Yoga

If you open a book on fitness, kinesiology (which is the study of human movement), personal training etc, most of them will stress the importance of flexibility to health and fitness. Many describe it as a puzzle where strength, cardiovascular health and flexibility all fit together. Most people think of yoga as just increasing your flexibility, where in reality it will help with all three. Anyone who has done the P90x yoga DVD knows that it is a big time strength workout because you are holding your body in the various positions for anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute. You are doing a lot of push ups in the beginning and as Tony Horton puts it you are "in a tiny little space and sweating like hell." When you first start the program you will probably be huffing and puffing through the first 50 min or so as well. My first exposure to yoga was about 8 years ago in a yoga studio. A couple of my coworkers wanted to try out a class at the new yoga place that opened up in town and we all took the beginner class. I immediately loved it. Some of the poses I found to be easy, and others were very hard for me, but it is about doing as much as you can, and improving over time. Then I started getting some other yoga DVDs that I would use on my own as opposed to spending $80 for a 6 week class. When I started P90x I found its yoga workout to be very challenging. As I said yesterday (and really the main complaint you will hear about it) is that it is very long. If you do the entire thing it clocks in at a little over an hour and a half. I think your first time through the program it is good to do the workout in its entirety. As you get into a second and third time around though you can cheat a little bit with it. There are times I swap yoga out with x-stretch or the recharge workout from Chalean Extreme (which is about 25 min or so of yoga) or one of my shorter yoga DVDs. Other times I will do P90X's yoga workout but I will only do the first part of it. It just depends on how I am feeling that day. The bottom line. Work it into the program. Don't skip it, but make it work for you. Namaste!