Studies Examine Calories Burned With Yoga, Pilates
June 1, 2006
After enjoying a few Memorial Day cookouts, you might be ready to burn off a few – or a few hundred – calories.
Yoga and Pilates are two of the hottest fitness trends, but how many calories will you burn off if you spend time doing the downward dog? Maybe not as many as you think. More than 11 million Americans practice yoga. It can improve flexibility and balance. Pilates conditions muscles and strengthens core stability. So it's a real calorie-burner, right? "No, it's not unless you're working at a really high intensity, and that's not what Pilates is about," said Pilates fan Kristie Spalding.
Shes right, although yoga and Pilates can be challenging.
"If you really are concerned about aerobic conditioning and burning calories, you need to supplement your Pilates and yoga workouts with more conventional cardiovascular type workouts," said Cedric Bryant, Ph.D. New studies from the American Council on Exercise show that 55 minutes of yoga burn 144 calories. Two, 50-minute Pilates sessions burn about 250 calories.
"An advanced type level workout would really be equivalent to a comfortable walking pace," Bryant said.While study participants thought it was a tough aerobic workout, average heart rates fell below the American College of Sports Medicine recommendations. "The heart rate responses really don't match the true effort that you would see, say, with more conventional aerobic activities like running or cycling or stair climbing or exercising on an elliptical cross trainer," Bryant said.
The bottom line? Mix it up. Complement yoga or Pilates with a half-hour a day of traditional aerobic exercise.In the studies, there were benefits to both workouts.Women who did yoga for eight weeks increased their flexibility by 13 percent. As for Pilates, women doing it felt they were working hard, and they were. They worked their muscles, not their hearts.