Pilates vs Yoga: Which One is the Best for You?

It’s almost time to be showing more skin! As the heat becomes more intense, it’s only but natural to see more people shedding off more layers of clothing to stay cooler. As a result, more people are thinking about getting on a crash diet and workout to death to achieve the weight loss and tape cuts they’re aiming for.

The Battle Between Pilates And Yoga

More and more people who are contemplating on getting into these workouts are also asking how to remove wrinkles with either yoga or pilates.

When choosing between these two workouts, you need to consider at least 7 major differences between the two. Here are 7 facts you need to consider to help you determine the better workout that will give you the results that you want to see:

1. Yoga integrates three elements in its poses — mind, body and spirit. On the other hand, pilates brings together your mind and body only. Nevertheless, both activities highlight the need to strike a balance in your life.

2. Both forms of workout train your mind and body different skills. In the case of yoga, the learning involves the mind too, that is, by learning meditation. Yoga has very ancient origins that is closely linked to the practices of two of the world’s oldest religions, Buddhism and Hinduism. With constant practice, yoga teaches you proper relaxation, balancing your health in all three aspects, enhances your optimism, and teaches you better ways to manage stress and your life as a whole.

Pilates, on the other hand, is focused on attaining core strength. Over time, you can expect to achieve better mind and body coordination, and better focus.

3. Yoga treats all parts of your body equally and trains all of it intensively. Yoga focuses on training you to support your own body weight and in strengthening all of your body parts using only your body as a tool. Pilates, on the contrary, is focused on strengthening the abdominal area, using your body but also crossing it with tools already widely used in the gym for stretching purposes like the balance ball and elastic restraints.

4. Both exercises build your strength. Except, yoga builds on your stamina, and we mean the full menu of it, that is, the power of your body, mind and spirit. On the other hand, pilates builds on your endurance as these movements involve raising your heart rate with rapid movement repetitions such as leg raising and crunches. An important question you need to ask yourself, therefore, is what will you be working out for? Obviously, you don’t have the energy to target them all.

5. Both workouts build on your balance. Yoga helps you achieve better control of your muscles. With every pose, yoga strengthens your muscles to enable you to achieve a proper center of gravity with every movement, and give you better confidence in your movements by strengthening each muscle group.

Pilates focuses on correcting bad posture and in attaining proper body coordination that will help you avoid possible injuries.

6. Yoga involves meditation. Yoga has a full set of philosophy attached to it, and that includes harnessing the power of the mind through meditation and mantras. It emphasizes the attainment of balance in your ch’i which can be achieved only by finding your true purpose in the universe and deliver what you came into this life to pursue.

Pilates, on the other hand, can be thought of more as the modern day equivalent of Jane Fonda’s aerobic exercises. The movements will deliberately push you to breathlessness.

7. Both exercises can help you relieve stress. If you spend your day sitting in tensed meetings and want to exercise to relax and de-stress then, yoga will be the more appropriate activity for you. The slow and gentle stretching movements help you achieve that. However, if you want raised intensity in your movements then, Pilates is your better match. Don’t worry because both exercises will teach you how to remove wrinkles simply by staying active.

Conclusion

If you can’t choose between Pilates and yoga, you can always make room for both, supermodel Behati Prinsloo does both to prepare for fashion shows. For the non-believers in the power of workout to improve your skin, Cameron Diaz writes in her second book, “The Longevity Book, “aging isn’t just about your face…it’s about your whole body. And how you take care of your whole body will affect each and every one of your parts, inside and out.”