For Core Strength, Pilates Beats Yoga

The New York Times kindly answers a question that many women, and some men, have been asking for years: which is better for developing strength: yoga or pilates? And the answer is….Strength where? Gretchen Reynold reports on recent (and very small) study of nine sedentary women who did Pilates for 36 weeks, and bulked up their abdominal muscles by as much as 20 percent. Impressive, but wait, there’s more. Reynolds also cites a 2011 study published in the Asian Journal of Sports Medicine that found that after six months of almost-daily sun salutations (a multipart yoga pose shown to the left) and no other resistance training, people could bench-press significantly more weight and complete far more push-ups and pull-ups than at the start of the study. So the answer is “yes,” and “where?” Read more in the New York Times.