Saturday, August 6, 2011

Hot Yoga

Someone I know from the gym invited me to attend a free hot yoga session, and I took her up on it.

Hot yoga is something that draws many divergent opinions. Some of the yoga folks I know think it's a great and beneficial workout, others think it's unwise at best and dangerous at worst.

As you can infer, we practiced yoga in a really hot room. They say it's 105 degrees. It was definitely hot but to me it felt more like 95-100 degrees -- but I could be wrong. Of the handful of guys who attended (it's a mostly female group), I was also the only one who kept his shirt on, which probably made me hotter. But I'm modest and I don't think too many people want to see me shirtless. (Of course, my T-shirt was about 98% water and sweat by the end.)

Either way, it was very hot and a challenging workout. Long, too -- 90 minutes. I brought water with me to keep myself hydrated. I felt myself losing steam toward the end, but I made it through.

My opinion: mixed. To me, hot yoga is like the sausage that street vendors sell outside the ballpark -- tasty but you don't want to see how it's made  I definitely felt like hot yoga was a great workout, but I'm not sure I want to go through that routine to get the great workout. The good news is I survived with no adverse effects.

Maybe if I get asked again I'll do it. Not sure I'll do it on my own initiative, though.  

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