Yoga For Weight Gain: The Top Poses to Help You Bulk Up
Many people find that they gain a few pounds but then lose them again the next month. It happens to a lot of underweight people.
Genetics is one factor, but the most important factors affecting weight are nutrition, nutrient absorption, hormones, Metabolism, and rest. Fortunately, Yoga may assist with almost all of these aspects. A proper yoga routine developed by an expert instructor and followed faithfully will aid in maintaining a healthy weight.
Being healthy means taking care of our habits, behaviors, and lifestyle. Yoga is an excellent way to stay healthy because it is a holistic approach that takes care of our whole body.
How effective is Yoga for Weight Gain?
If you practice it regularly, Yoga can assist you in gaining weight. Yoga practice will not directly cause you to put on weight. Still, it helps with other things like Metabolism, appetite, and digestion. As a result, you will likely gain weight if you keep doing Yoga.
A study from 2005 found that people who did Yoga regularly gained less weight than those who didn’t. It was especially true for people who were overweight, to begin with.
Yoga can help you stay at a healthy weight over time. It is because sometimes your body doesn’t gain any more weight after you reach a healthy weight. Practicing Yoga may be the most effective way to maintain a healthy weight.
- Yoga can help you maintain the right body mass index (BMI). Researchers have found that at least 70% of people who practice Yoga stay within the normal BMI range.
- Yoga is a physical activity that can help improve your endurance and create healthy habits.
- Yoga can help you manage your weight in many ways. Yoga influences multiple biological mechanisms in your body, such as stress hormones, blood circulation, Metabolism, and more.
- Even studies done through research suggest that Yoga has a remarkable ability to normalize Metabolism and hormones.
Influences of Yoga Parameters for Weight Gain
A weight gain yoga routine consists of various poses that target the causes of weight gain. For example, Vajrasana enhances digestion and nutrient absorption, both crucial for gaining weight. Additionally, different Yoga poses impact distinct biological processes associated with gaining weight steadily and healthily. Finally, four parameters explain how Yoga affects weight gain: Metabolism, hormone management, nutrient absorption, and relaxation.
1. Improves Metabolism
Underweight people have a high rate of Metabolism. It means their body burns more nutrients when they are not active. Unfortunately, this results in fewer nutrients available for muscle growth. Yoga has been shown to help establish an optimal rate of Metabolism. This optimal rate eventually helps manage nutrients more efficiently.
2. Regulates essential hormone secretion
Yoga has been demonstrated to have an impact on hormone control. Yoga can influence the stress hormones in your body. It has been shown that prenatal Hatha Yoga can help with anxiety, cortisol levels, and depressive symptoms. And Yoga has been offered to help with digestion and thyroid function. All of these factors together increase your growth and mass gain.
3. Enhance nutrient Absorption
The main things that make you gain weight are nutrients. You can eat as much as you want, but your body can’t use it to gain weight if it can’t break the food down into its simplest form.
Yoga can help the stomach and small intestine to break down food better. It is essential for getting nutrients into the body. In addition, Yoga improves circulation in the body. The blood picks up the nutrients and takes them to different body parts. It is essential for piling on the pounds.
4. Promotes relaxation
It is commonly stated that relaxation is just as important as working out and eating well regarding growing muscle mass. The rest period is when our body uses it to repair our muscles and build new ones. Yoga eliminates insomnia, stress, anxiety, and depression to get a good night’s sleep. Additionally, simple resting yoga poses can help our muscles relax and heal.
Yoga Asanas for Weight Gain
If you wish to gain weight through Yoga, you must do it regularly. You need to follow the yoga poses and eat healthy foods. Once you start Yoga regularly, you will start living a healthy life and gain the weight you want.
There are six effective Yoga poses for gaining weight; practice them regularly to see results.
1. Konasana Supta Baddha (Reclining bound angle pose)
Supta Baddha Konasana is a straightforward pose that has powerful results. You must lie mostly on your back and make small movements with your arms and legs -this pose is easy.
This pose is safe and can be done by people with joint stiffness and pain. Besides weight gain benefits, this pose also stimulates the urinary and ovarian systems. It also relieves tension in the groin and thigh area.
- Lie on your back. Relax your head, shoulders, back, hips, arms, and legs. Let everything rest on the floor.
- Extend your arms from the body, and keep your palms facing the ceiling. Do not tense up your hands or arms.
- To achieve the Namaste position, bend your knees and bring your feet together.
- Bring your feet towards your body, making a butterfly shape. Don’t touch your groin with your heels. Leave a space between your heels and groin.
- For about 5 minutes, you may unwind in this stage.
Caution:
Try to open your groin and touch the floor with your knees while resting. Allow your knees to be a couple of inches above the floor. Rest your knees on a cushion or blanket roll.
2. Vajrasana (Diamond pose)
The diamond pose is a yoga pose that can help with weight gain. It aids digestion after you eat. Vajrasana is a yoga pose that allows your Metabolism. Vajrasana affects your stomach and intestines, which helps digestion and release gas. This Yoga also flexes your thighs, knees, and ankles.
- Begin by getting down on your knees. Bring your inner thighs together till they are almost touching.
- Extend your feet, so the bottoms face up and toward the ceiling.
- Bring your feet together, forming a right angle between them.
- Lean forward and sit on your heels carefully. The heels will relieve the pressure on your body weight as you sit on them. Allow your feet to rest outside of your feet on the ground. Keep your sitting bone on your heels while sitting.
- Begin by remaining in this position for one minute. Increase the duration you spend in the posture gradually as your heels and ankles adjust to your body weight.
Caution:
This pose has the potential to cause knee or ankle injury. So as you start to sit, take the support of the floor with your hands. It will assist in evenly distributing your body weight between your knees and hands. Then, while sitting on your heels, place a thinly rolled towel beneath the top of your ankle to protect it.
3. Virabhadrasana 1 (Warrior pose I)
If you like to build muscle in your upper body or legs, Virabhadrasana can help. This pose works on your thigh and calf muscles, leg joint ligaments, lower back, lower abdomen, chest, and shoulder blades. This asana works on most of your muscles which can help you gain weight. This asana can also help increase your appetite.
The warrior one pose is designed to stretch out our entire body and activate muscles that we don’t use as often. It will bring relief to many muscle-related injuries.
- Stand with your feet hip-width apart. If you want to, you can widen your stance by a foot.
- Turn your left foot in by 45 degrees and your right foot by 90 degrees. Keep both heels in line with each other.
- When you turn, do not restrict your body. Let it turn naturally, too. If you limit it, your thigh muscle will pull from abnormal angles. It will increase your knee pain.
- Lift your left heel and rotate your toes to match your right foot.
- Turn your upper body to the right to align with your feet.
- As you lower your left heel to the floor, keep your back straight and your head in line.
- Flex your right knee and extend your left leg in front of you. Keep your body weight evenly distributed on both legs.
- Finally, raise your hands and join them above your head. Hold it for 15 seconds, then repeat the pose by reversing the leg roles.
Caution:
When practicing, it is essential to place your left heel down completely. It can pull your calf muscle and hamstrings or injure your ankle ligament. To help raise your heel, use a yoga block as support.
4. Matsyasana (fish pose)
The fish position is an exercise that can help you grow and tone your muscles. It is also suitable for your inside organs. This asana will stretch your upper body and relax your muscles. Muscles that are soft and flexible are always favorable to muscle growth.
The fish pose influences the thyroid hormone, which is responsible for weight management. Hyperthyroidism can often lead to a high metabolism rate and being underweight. Matsyasana helps keep the thyroid hormone at an optimal level, maintaining a balanced metabolism.
- Lying on your back, arms at your sides
- Bring your legs and thighs together and keep them straight. Point your toes and press your heels down.
- Place both hands, side by side, under your hips.
- Press down on your heels, hands, and elbows while arching your back. Maintain your head tilted back until it hits the floor.
- Hold the pose for 5-10 breaths before gently releasing.
Caution:
It can be tricky to do the spinal arch for beginners. It would be beneficial if you tried not to rush and instead took time. If you move quickly, you might get injured. Another thing that can help is using a yoga block to rest your lower back. You can also use someone’s help to press down on your legs, so they are flat against the floor.
5. Bhujangasana (cobra pose)
The Cobra pose can help you gain weight. It does this by increasing your appetite, aiding digestion and Metabolism, and stimulating the adrenal hormones that help grow and rest.
Cobra pose will help you gain weight and give it shape. This pose is an essential inclusion to your weight gain routine. It might be a bit hard to do at first, but with some practice, you can do it accurately. To do the Cobra pose, you must arch your spine from your torso to your head upwards while lying down on your front. The main challenge is that our lower back is more flexible than the upper part. So, as a beginner, it is easy to over-stretch the lower back.
However, the key is to arch your spine evenly. You will need good body awareness and control to do this. Once you understand how to use your abdominal muscles to guide your spine, the cobra pose will provide numerous benefits for weight growth.
- Frontally lie down with your legs and thighs united, and your toes extended.
- Bring your hands to the sides of your chest as if preparing for a push-up.
- Press your hands to the ground and slowly raise your upper body from your hips to your head. Remember to maintain contact with the ground from the thighs to the toes.
- Make the arch carefully and slowly. Try to achieve parity. Increase the tension in your abdominal muscles. Extend it gradually to the abdominal muscles, followed by the chest muscles. Allow this slow shift of muscular tension in the front of your body to direct the arch of your spine.
- Maintain the position between five and ten breaths.
Caution:
Do not try this pose without previous help, as it risks injuring your spine. Arching is key to preventing any stress on your elbows and shoulders. You may initially need someone to give you a tiny boost to concentrate on the arching itself.
6. Savasana (corpse pose)
This position establishes harmony inside the body by harmonizing several physiological systems. Savasana’s corpse affects bringing your hormonal system back into balance. It’s astonishing how valuable such an essential activity can be. If you focus on the Savasana, you reach new dimensions of awareness and consciousness.
This asana can help improve your nervous system, digestive system, organ and muscle healing, immunity system, anxiety management, blood circulation, and more.
- The instructions for this Yoga are pretty simple. However, the execution can be quite tricky.
- It would help if you lay down comfortably on your back.
- You may keep your hands close to your sides and your legs hip-width apart. Alternatively, you can widen the distance between your legs by one foot and extend your hands.
- And then you must unwind. Consciously concentrating on every area, organ, and muscle of your body. It would be helpful if you resolved everything.
Caution:
The issue with Savasana is that it is challenging to relax every muscle. Our subconscious mind remains vigilant, causing some portions of our bodies to stay stiff. Even being aware of these areas requires years of effort, much less focusing on relaxing them. Therefore, this asana poses no risk of harm. Still, at the same time, there are no support systems available to complete this asana. The best course of action is to practice and concentrate on relaxing in these areas.
Frequently Asked Questions About Yoga For Weight Gain
There are many athletic benefits to doing Yoga. People who are too skinny will gain muscle and begin eating better as they become more in tune with their bodies. Yoga also helps reduce stress, increase concentration, and brings unhealthy lifestyles under control.
Yoga is an excellent method for improving health and becoming in shape. Yoga can help with weight problems by enhancing your Metabolism, reducing stress, increasing your appetite, and helping with digestive issues.
You can do Yoga for weight gain in the morning or the evening after 5 pm. Research shows that our bodies are more active after 5 pm, which is a good time to do workouts. And as for mornings, some yoga-like Surya Namaskars should be done only in the early mornings.
Yoga is an excellent way to unwind while exercising your body and mind. Yoga can help you lose weight, improve muscle tone, and be more flexible.
Resistance training routines are the best for increasing muscle growth, such as deadlifts, squats, barbell rows, bench presses, bar dips, and pull-ups. The goal is to target the larger muscles in your body so they can grow and add muscle mass.