This collection of yoga workouts will leave you feeling sweaty, powerful, and ready to rock. Inspired by traditional calisthenics and martial arts, our yoga workouts will challenge your body to move in new ways that build strength, stability, and athleticism.
What are yoga workouts?
There is a subtle difference between a yoga workout and a traditional yoga class. Here are a few ways yoga workouts differ from your typical studio-style class:
- More intense. Since it is a “workout,” it may focus on aerobic and sprinting activities to burn more calories.
- Skill oriented. Many of our workouts are filmed workshop-style to help develop specific movements, like arm balances and animal locomotion.
- Strength focused. Whereas traditional classes focus on specific postures to build flexibility, yoga workouts prioritize static (still) and dynamic (moving) exercises to build strength through specific ranges of motion.
Components of an effective yoga workout
At Yogi Panda, we use the following structure to ensure every yoga workout is safe, challenging, and effective.
Workout Intention. At the start, we’ll define a specific intention for the workout. This clarifies our purpose, focuses our efforts, and yields greater productivity. Your intention will guide you when things become most difficult, so remember to return to your intention as needed.
Workout Warmup. Next, we’ll begin warming up the areas of the body we’ll be working out. Wrist warmups before arm balances, leg warmups before sprinting/jumping workouts—you get the idea. Pace will increase as we transition from the Workout Warmup to the Challenge Sequence.
Challenge Sequence. This is the peak of the workout. During skill development workouts, this is the portion dedicated to learning and applying technique. For high intensity workouts, this segment will focus on pushing your aerobic and/or anaerobic threshold. And if we’re strength training, this part of the workout will leave your muscles feeling totally torched.
Yoga Flow. It wouldn’t be a yoga workout without a little bit of Vinyasa flow. Here, we’ll slow things down with a smooth yet challenging series of postures designed to stretch and cool everything we worked during the Challenge Sequence.
Progressive Overload: The secret to every yoga workout series
Each of our yoga workout series is designed to achieve a specific goal. From learning handstands to burning fat and toning up, each series shares a simple secret that will maximize the time you spend on your mat: Progressive overload.
Progressive overload is a physical training technique that strategically increases the amount of stress exerted on a specific muscle group. By increasing the workload—or demand— placed on your muscles, they are forced to adapt and grow stronger.
Our yoga workout series leverages the science of progressive overload to gradually increase your strength, flexibility, and stamina over time. As your performance increases, you will get more and more out of each new workout. Each series contain 3 to 5 classes that grow increasingly difficult, ensuring you make incremental progress on whichever workout you select.
Benefits of taking a “workout” approach to yoga
Yoga has many benefits. In fact, a 2010 comparison of more than 80 different studies found “…yoga interventions appeared to be equal or superior to exercise in nearly every outcome measured except those involving physical fitness.”
In other words, yoga seems to be incredibly effective when it comes to building range of motion, and managing stress, emotions, and perceived quality of life. Depending on the style and class format, however, yoga may fall short when it comes to improving other measures of physical fitness.
Our solution: Take a “workout” approach that uses the principle of progressive overload.
By taking this approach to yoga, we leverage things like calisthenics and explosive sprinting movements to capture the best elements of every bodyweight fitness modality. Plus, workouts that utilize progressive overload techniques have been shown to reduce body fat, increase metabolism, and improve muscular strength, power, and endurance.
Most Popular Yoga Workouts
Below are our most popular yoga workout videos. As always, the first class in ever series is free to stream. Forever. To unlock full access to all yoga workouts, as well as all premium Member content, visit the following page and join our Tribe!
