Practicing yoga every day can help you obtain real health benefits like controlling high blood pressure, increasing flexibility, and improving heart/cardiovascular health.
Hot yoga is comparatively new, and it has been surpassing its predecessor on providing maximum health benefits. Hot yoga helps you burn more calories by improving metabolism compared to traditional yoga.
Hot yoga classes last around 60 to 90mins at 105degrees Fahrenheit, and remember, it is not for everyone. Hot yoga helps you build muscle, gain flexibility, and also help you lose weight safely. However, calories burned and weight loss in hot yoga depends on several factors except some on your control.
Currently, many individuals are practicing hot yoga because it involves performing a conventional arrangement in a workroom with 105-degrees Fahrenheit with a 40-percent humidity rate.
It is an extreme workout that involves a lot of sweating and not suitable for the faint-hearted individuals. The hot yoga founder says that practicing yoga at high heat can increase blood flow, help the individual practice deeper stretching, and remove toxins through sweat with the lymphatic system. However, you should know that some of these claims by the founder are yet to be certified by research.
Table of Content
What is Hot Yoga?
Hot yoga is a yoga style performed in a heated room. In this 105-degree heated room, you can perform any yoga style, but Bikram yoga is the only one that needs heat. The most famous style of yoga performed as hot yoga is vinyasa yoga.
Types of Hot Yoga
Most people consider Bikram yoga as hot yoga, and Bikram Choudhury created Bikram yoga style in 1970. Each class of this yoga style takes 90mins, and it includes 26 postures performed in a heated room heated to 106-degrees Fahrenheit. The sessions are intense, and the founder refers to the yoga sessions as “Torture Chambers.”
However, not just Bikram Yoga is considered hot yoga, but many other yoga styles are also referred to as hot yoga. Any yoga type performed in a heated chamber is considered as Hot Yoga. But, not all these yoga styles burn the same number of calories required for weight loss.
The power yoga called Baptist power yoga performed in a 90-degree heated room and other power yoga styles practiced in heated rooms allows you to move the entire duration of the class and involves challenging sequences and postures that increase the heart rate.
This yoga style helps you burn a considerable number of calories in 90-degree heated classes. The other classes performed in heated chambers, like restorative or yin yoga, do not increase enough heart rate to burn the calories that can help you lose weight.
Calories Burned in Hot Yoga
People who want to lose weight must do intense exercises that burn more calories. For instance, jogging can help you burn more calories than walking; similarly, sprinting helps you burn more calories than jogging. But, it interlinked with other factors that include how long you practice, your fitness level, current weight, and gender involve how many calories you can burn.
Though many yoga styles are referred to hot yoga, nothing works like Bikram Hot yoga class. This is because Bikram yoga involves an intense series of postures that can help you burn a thousand calories in one session. But you should know that the claim of yoga style is not supported by scientific research.
The study conducted by Brain Tracy, a lead researcher at Colorado State University in 2014, shows that on average, women can burn 330 calories, and men can burn 460 calories in one Bikram yoga class.
How Many Calories Can You Burn in an Hour of Hot Yoga Burn?
Each session of hot yoga can help your burn between 400 and 600 calories per hour. Form postures to temperature, there are many variances between different types of hot yoga, so the caloric burn and benefits also vary.
One-hour yoga class of Bikram style will help you burn around 475 calories, whereas a hot vinyasa yoga class will help you burn 600 calories in a one-hour class.
There is more inconsistency in hot yoga classes that are not Bikram yoga style as these depend on what postures are done and the pace of the sessions.
| Yoga Type | Calories Burned per one-hour |
| Power Yoga | 595 calories |
| Hatha Yoga | 190 calories |
| Hot Power Yoga | 625 calories |
| Hot Hatha Yoga | 475 calories |
Can You Lose Weight from Hot Yoga?
Practicing yoga every day can help you maintain good physical, and if you can perform intense hot yoga, then it can help you lose weight safely. Practicing hot yoga regularly will help you lose excess fat, gain flexibility, and build muscles.
Performing hot yoga for an hour can help you burn between 400 and 600 calories in each session. If you are doing yoga to lose weight, then make sure to check your weight after performing yoga for a week.
But remember sometimes, your weighing machine weighs less due to loss of water in your body but not fat, so to lose fat, you should also follow a strict diet like eating only nutritious foods and avoiding more calorie intake.
Conclusion
Hot yoga is safe if you practice it properly. You can take guidance from yoga instructors, and when it comes to safety, verify that the yoga class and the instructors are authorized and tell them before you join the class if you have any health conditions and injuries.
Though hot yoga is very safe, there is a possibility that you may strain or pull a muscle due to overstretching. That is why it is very important to understand your body and listen to it during class.
Practicing yoga in extreme heat can also affect the internal temperature of your body. In some extreme cases, heated room yoga can cause dehydration, or sometimes it may lead to heatstroke. That is why it is important to keep hydrating yourself during sessions.
