Ha! I'm quite happy to make an idiot of myself by putting Yoga out there in the big arena but I have often been met with a fair bit of ridicule or reasons made by the self appointed experts why yoga won't deliver so I thougth it best to withdraw as the posts were doing more harm for Yoga, as a whole, than good. I didn't want new folk to the website thinking yoga was the runt of the family.

I keep my Yoga posts to just offering suggestions to others' questions now and that has seen some positive headway. I was asked out there why I was being such a Yoga Evangelist. Well, I'm not but if I do Yoga, I'm going to talk about it if people ask what do I do and I'm going to seek to solve problems in the way of my own experience; yoga. People are not labelled evangelist if all they talk about is Heavy Lifting!

I look foward to a day when forums like this are more accepting and balanced. Until that day I'll keep whispering! (oh dear, it sounds like I'm having a rant, but I'm not ... Om Shanti!)

Yoga has helped to ease my shoulder/knee pain issues associated with squats, deadlifts, and shoulder presses. In addition it's broadened my range of motion on my supplementary isolation lifts. I wouldn't be surprised if the stretching leads to an increase in muscle mass due to a gradual broadening of the muscle belly.

This is supposed to be a myth - the idea of yoga students having long defined muscles and weightlifters having short, rounded muslces, but I have seen many cases that uphold the "myth". I think it is to do with the yoga way of stretching is to stretch actively - that is with the muscle you are stretching being under contraction; you physically stretch the muscle out while you are energetically (isometrically?) contracting the muscle in. This builds the entire length of the muscle rather than concentrating the effort at the muscle peak, giving it a shorter more bulky appearance.

Ah! Thank you for shedding some light on my hypothesis. I should have edited my post with a footnote that states 'my claims are supported by limited factual evidence', haha. I just presumed that the continual stretching Yoga emphasizes would help to gradually elongate the muscle bellies, facilitating a larger service area for blood aminos to swell/tear apart the muscle fibers under anaerobic strain. Either or, I hope we both achieve the results we've set out for.

Namaste.

I think there is limited factual evidence out there on both sides but the evidence is out there in a lot of classes to see. Genetics must play its part also and body type.

I have settled into just doing the daily practise to see how my body develops - a bit like slowly unwrapping an exciting mystery present!