If you’re looking for a way to drop your body fat then it is okay to feel confused at times. The sheer number of methods, workouts, and advice available can be overwhelming to choose from at times.
If dropping some fat is your priority, then Pilates and yoga are your two effective options. Which eventually might arise the question, is Yoga or Pilates better for losing weight?
Both Yoga and Pilates are well-known for their weight loss benefits. However, in terms of being the better calorie burner, a special type of yoga called vinyasa yoga takes the crown for being able to burn more calories per hour than any form of Pilates.
Pilates and Yoga might share the same advantages of helping you lose body fat and provide a mind to body connection. However, they are both unique and different methods of looking after your body in their respective ways.
In this article, I will be strictly putting the focus on both pros and cons of these two workouts and help you attain a better understanding of them.
Pilates – Pros and Cons
Originating back in the 1920s, Joseph Pilates came up with a method that strictly focuses on balancing, stretching, and strengthening the body.
The German physical trainer Joseph wanted this to be achieved through special specific exercises and a focused form of breathing.
Pros
Some types of Pilates are also well-known for using a mat and reformer. Pilates is also used in different forms of physiotherapy in the medical industry.
Pilates helps form a strong mind to body connection. They also increase endurance, fix posture, bring balance to your body, and focus on amplifying core strength.
As Pilates focuses on executing each form of exercise with a controlled balance of breathing, it starts the contraction of your core muscles.
Ailments like arthritis, joint pain, back injury, and urinary troubles can also be sorted out by Pilates.
As mentioned above, Pilates consists of really strong and intense exercises that will push your body to its limits. Pilates will keep your mind focused on your body and the intense workouts will keep your heart rate high as well as burn calories alongside.
Pilates will require your body to do work and doing so would require energy which will cause you to lose some calories. Its main focus isn’t on making you lose weight, rather tone up and build better muscle resistance, however, it’ll still manage to get some pounds off from you.
Though the fat-burning won’t be specifically targeted towards certain areas of your body you will notice an overall body fat reduction. This will require you to be consistent and have a calorie-controlled healthy diet.
A 45-50 minutes long beginner Pilates workout session can burn around 175 calories. If you keep up a 45-60 minutes advanced workout then you can lose around 255-375 calories. You must keep doing Pilates 4 days a week to effectively burn calories in your body.
Cons
Although Pilates is proven to help with losing weight, they are still not specifically designed to burn calories rather strengthen your body more.
As your core muscles and strength are primarily focused on, you will not notice much reduction in weight. Stretching workout times or overdoing Pilates could cause injury and might be more than you might be able to handle.
Pilates also requires special equipment and many other extra costs like a professional trainer to be kept for best results.
They may build a mind-body relationship, they still, however, lack any background philosophy or lifestyle stances, unlike yoga.
They might put your body to work but not just as much to make it as flexible as yoga may be able to make you.
Yoga – Pros and Cons
This thousands of years old Indian method needs no introduction in terms of its spirituality and several health benefits.
Yoga has been popular for a while thanks to its numerous stress-relieving exercises and practices that help you find inner peace, flexibility, and stress relief.
Pros
Yoga is as fluid as it can get with many variations in styles and implementations available. Yoga allows you to better bring balance to your body as you learn to combine and synchronize your breathing with your movements.
This is an excellent reducer of stress and hence makes itself stand as one of the best ways to fight your enemies against relaxation.
Yoga can also help loosen your muscles up and slow down your de-aging process especially for those already in their middle ages. Yoga also builds a better heart and has a bigger and more active community.
In terms of weight loss, consistent yoga trainees are less likely to gain weight regularly. A 50 minutes Hatha Yoga class can help you burn about 145 calories whereas a power yoga workout can burn as high as 250 calories.
Yoga helps relax your stiffer and less used muscles to further tone your body and increase flexibility.
As you are made to use muscles that are usually relaxed in day-to-day activities this encourages the burning of calories.
Nevertheless, just like Pilates, the phenomenon of weight loss happens in an overall fashion and must be achieved through consistency and dietary changes.
Cons
There are a lot of yoga styles and types available like vinyasa yoga, hatha yoga, power yoga, etc. Each of these types has its respective ways of helping your body and hence, you might have to research a lot before coming up with the right yoga method.
To start doing yoga, it’s best advised that you consult health experts before choosing a specific yoga. Some yoga-like Dahn Yoga or Bikram Yoga are known to be bad for your health and are not optimum enough to be practiced.
Some yoga exercises like headstands and muscle straining ones could at times injure you if done wrongly. So it’s better to always have a yoga trainer at your side when you’re just starting or perhaps join community yoga classes.
Which Is Better For You? (Pilates or Yoga)
Which one’s more close to your main agenda is what I advise you to ask yourself first. You first need to know what exactly is the goal that you hope to achieve through implementing a new habit in your life.
Both Pilates and yoga will require you to stay true to your commitment and do a lot more for yourself than just lose weight.
Yoga and Pilates are effective ways to lose weight but they aren’t targeted to do just that. Both yoga and Pilates have their separate strengths and weaknesses.
While yoga will give you a calmer yet more stress-free mind. Pilates will heavily increase your strength and make your muscles more active.
Yoga on the other hand is a much more relaxed and less-straining form of exercise that will achieve the same effect in terms of weight loss.
If weight loss and being flexible is your aim, do yoga. A non-stop intense session of yoga can burn as much as 500 calories in an hour if done right.
If you keep up healthy low-calorie diet plans and stay consistent with your yoga sessions, you can easily lose a lot of weight way faster than you would with Pilates.
Pilates is mostly suggested for people who have been out of touch with their muscles for a while. It is good for your posture, achieving balance, and your core.
Any patients who have been on bed rest for a while are usually suggested Pilates as means of physiotherapy rather than yoga. Pilates is not an alternative for gaining muscle mass doe.
Pilates only make your muscles more active but won’t help you gain any, you will still need to follow other workouts for that. Pilates does not act as alternative cardio either as though it may keep your heart-rate pumping it still won’t be as effective as a treadmill session.
So to better amplify your heart’s condition you will still need to consider cardio alongside Pilates. Yoga, however, does a significantly better job at managing your heart all by itself compared to Pilates.
Yoga is heavily reliant on philosophy and firm belief in an ancient meditation technique, Pilates is simply a series of exercises aimed to build muscle resistance.
Some forms of Pilates will require special equipment and training. Yoga has a lot more variations that are different in styles, effects, and learning.
Other than having weight loss in common, there are other drastic benefits that only one of Yoga or Pilates can provide depending on what you’re hoping to achieve.
Hence, in the end, if you’re aiming to lie at other benefits than just reducing weight, try figuring out what is it that you want to help improve in your body and act accordingly.
That’s all that you need to do and the rest is up to you signing up for your classes and getting ready to train!
Final Thoughts on Yoga vs Pilates
So, is Yoga or Pilates better for losing weight? Both the excellent methods of losing weight and improving your health. But, which one is better for you solely depends on what you need. After going through this article, I’m sure you have somewhat of an idea of which to pick.
I hope this article was of help to you and wishing you the best of luck with your new workout.
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