yoga vs mma

[zenducci]

looking to get into yoga or mma to strengthen core and upper body. which would be easier to do at home?

[Nick17]

Yoga is good for flexibility and is pretty much low intensity, whereas MMA fighting (assuming your doing a heavy bag) would be more cardio and explosive movements.  My suggestion for strengthening upper body and core would be resistance training.  If you don't have access to weights, I'd suggest resistance bands.  Doing a full body resistance workout will strengthen the core, but you would need to include some lower body exercises as well such as lunges, squats, deadlifts, etc.

[Jazzj]

Hi!

Yoga is easy to at home, or anywhere else, once you know what you're doing, but it really is worthwhile to have an instructor to help you learn the correct positions first, to ensure the stretches are correct, and the same for mma.

One exercise you could do at home alone to strengthen your core is the plank, starting at however many seconds you can hold it for, and gradually increasing, but concentrating on keeping your body straight

[LaTonya]

I'm with Jazzi, start with planks.

I'd take classes and instructions for the activities first to ensure I was doing them properly.

[Chance]

I would definitely recommend starting with yoga as it is low impact and good for building flexibility, balance and stabalization strength.  MMA is, as mentioned, good for explosive power and strength.  Many of the exercises will focus on building your core, however its easy to get discouraged if you are just starting out and don't have a trainer.

[slysam]

I wonder if you would like the exercise dvd system "Rushfit, GPS". I bought this once when it was on sale and was quite impressed even though I don't follow MMA so wasn't familiar with the featured celebrity. I think it would be good for general conditioning, though am not sure it is for absolute beginners, intermediate exercisers probably. I've only tried a few of the workouts... The flexibility one is fantastic and I use it a lot for a recovery workout. The strength and endurance one was also good, it was basically taking the exercises involved in a burpee as separate exercises then at the end you do burpees. I always felt a little wary of burpees because I never knew if I was doign them with good form (and tweaked my back once following a Bodyrock burpee workout), and this workout was actually quite helpful. It uses a mix of bodyweight and dumb bells and the whole system is quite core intensive. I think the whole system looks good for all-round general conditioning. 

[Jessica3]

Hello,

I use Rush fit videos by GSP....8 week dvd program.....