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Is it good for you or just torture?

I came out of a 90-minute hot yoga class the other day. Drying off and cleaning my mat a gentleman stopped me and said, "I don't know how you do it." My response was that of some surprise, but I responded politely "Well I've done one Ironman and never was there a straight 90 minutes as hard as that class just was."  A lady piped in and said, "I did that class once and came out limping, after a chiropractor visit, I was told that Hot Yoga is terrible for you and you can over stretch, pretty much just plain torture!" I promptly agreed and discussed the failure study of athletes using saunas*, and compared the Hot Yoga to it. The lady was disturbed that I would want to put myself through self-torture, and the gentleman was simply impressed.

It was an interesting conversation, I had to reflect afterwards on my Ironman to think about whether or not I was exaggerating, and the more I think about it, it was far from an exaggeration. While of course the Ironman was tough, very tough, I don't recall having 90 straight minutes of questioning my continuation. Heat and Humidity does something to your mind. (And apparently blood volume) While an increase in blood volume seems like the logical test conclusion on the test that I am referencing, I would also like to point out that there is a significant psychological effect to heat exhaustion. While I don't have tests to prove my theory except myself, I know that I, at times of utter failure dig deep to find that last bit of energy and my mind references hot yoga and the failures I experience. Thus giving me a reference to my own failure threshold and it far surpasses anything physically demanding like cycling. I simply wussie out, my mind is weaker than I am physically. Therefore, the Hot Yoga does more for me mentally than physically which happens to be my and more than likely your bottleneck!

What it comes down to is simply this, your mind will fail before your body will, my theory is Hot Yoga and sauna's train your mind first then help your body by supplying more blood.

*http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16877041

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