Yoga for strength

The general opinion seems to be that yoga is mainly for flexibility training, and never considered for strength training. The truth is that during yoga practice you are putting your body in positions and orientations that you ultimately have to support with your muscles, constantly working with your own body weight. Like Pilates, yoga is an excellent toning tool, and beginners can make significant strength gains. For women in particular though, the older you get, the more you will have to include a weight training sessions in your schedule. Because of dipping hormone and activity levels, a woman typically starts losing about half a pound of muscle a year during her perimenopausal years. That loss can jump to a pound a year once she hits menopause. You can read more at this link on this topic.

However yoga is a more well-rounded approach to fitness and strength training. 

A regular yoga practice can reduce your risk of injury and condition your body to perform better at things you have to do every day: walk, sit, twist, bend, etc. A form of functional fitness, yoga moves your body in the ways it was designed to move to help ensure that it keeps functioning properly.   

Yoga tones muscles all over your body, in balance with each other. Weight training exercises typically isolate and flex one muscle or muscle group at a time.

Yoga relies on eccentric contraction, where the muscle stretches as it contracts, giving the muscles that sleek, elongated look while increasing flexibility in the muscles and joints. Weight training relies on the opposite physical principle of concentric muscle contraction, which means the muscle gets smaller as it contracts.  

Yoga increases muscle endurance because you typically hold any given pose for a period of time and repeat it several times during a yoga workout.

You can read more about the benefits of Yoga replacing strength training here. 

Namaste