Yoga For Walkers: Why Years Of Walking Left One Yoga Teacher Stiffer

By Chris Lalor, Certified Senior Iyengar Yoga Teacher and Certified Yoga Therapist, and Dr Stuart McGill, Yoga Teacher, Flametree Yoga Darwin

Can years of walking leave you stiffer? One of us found it did. Walking is one of the best things you can do for your health, and it builds strong legs. But it leaves your arms, upper back, spine bones and the top of your hip bones with very little work, and in our experience it never takes the limbs to straight.

Yoga for walkers, meaning regular yoga classes alongside your walking, adds what walking leaves out: upper body and trunk strength, load on the bones walking misses, a more open chest, straighter limbs and a calmer mind. This page shows how: a walker’s story, what our kind of yoga is, the studies, the kinds of poses that help and why, and the easiest way to start, in Darwin or live online.

Yoga for walkers in short: keep walking, and add what it misses

Yoga for walkers is regular yoga and pranayama (yogic breathing) classes that build the strength, bone load, posture and flexibility walking does not. You can do it in our Darwin studios or live online from anywhere in Australia.

The whole page, in short:

• Walking is good for you. In a study of 47,471 adults, more daily steps went with a much lower risk of dying.
• Walking alone did not change bone density at the spine or forearm in a review of 10 trials in women around and after menopause.
• Walking does not load the top of the thigh bone below the hip ball much, and that part thins with age.
• In trials, yoga improved the upper-back curve, balance and walking speed, and in several studies weight-bearing yoga went with better bone measures.
• Standing poses straighten and strengthen the legs. Poses that bear weight on the arms load the arms and wrists.
• One class a week helps, and more helps more.
• Start with 2 free classes and 2 free ebooks, or just come along and your first class is free.

Yoga for walkers in one picture: keep the walk, add the rest.

What is Iyengar yoga, the yoga we teach walkers?

Who was Mr BKS Iyengar? Iyengar yoga is the style developed by Mr BKS Iyengar. In the 20th century he did more than anyone to set down traditional Indian yoga, through his books and his teaching, and he pioneered the use of props such as chairs, blocks, belts and the wall. His style is sometimes called modern classical yoga. It’s the style we teach at Flametree, in Darwin and live online. More in Why Yoga Works For Sport.

Is it just about being flexible? No. Yoga builds strength and flexibility at the same time, and you need both. In a held standing pose your own body is the weight and your muscles hold it there, and that muscle pull loads the bones too.

Can walking make you stiffer? One walker’s story

Dr Stuart McGill, one of the two of us who wrote this page, found that years of brisk walking left him stiffer, not looser.

In his own words: “I walked actively for several years in Melbourne. I found that it actually made me stiffer because it builds up leg muscles in a way that makes people stiffer with forward flexion. I found that, in order to be truly flexible and use yoga to build up strength in general as well as bone strength, I had to reduce my walking and balance it with yoga activities.”

That is one person’s experience. We could find no study that has tested whether walking stiffens the forward bend, either way. Today Stuart does at least an hour of yoga and an hour of pranayama every day. Chris practises between one and three hours a day, and does pranayama almost every day.

A long-distance hiker who added daily yoga

Rafael “Horsecake” Mujica is an American freelance writer and long-distance hiker. When he started the Pacific Crest Trail in 2019 he walked 30 miles a day without yoga, and four days in his knee hurt so much he had to leave the trail for a week. He writes that once he added his daily yoga routine, he was able to carry on. He has practised yoga nearly every day for five years, and says he could not string together 30-mile days without it. With some work using a strap, he can now reach behind his back and “shake my own hand”. (Garage Grown Gear, 12 January 2022. His own account, told in our words. He is also a yoga teacher, and he does not endorse Flametree.)

Yoga for walkers: standing poses that straighten the legs

Want to try it? Start with 2 free classes and 2 free ebooks, or just come along, at the studio or online, and your first class is free. Registering gets you more. Every option is in how to start, further down.

What does walking do well, and what does it leave out?

Walking does a lot well. Keep doing it. In a review of 15 studies of 47,471 adults, people who took more steps a day had a lower risk of dying over about seven years. Those in the top quarter (about 10,900 steps a day) had about half the risk of those in the bottom quarter (about 3,550 steps). The benefit levelled off at about 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day for people 60 and over (Paluch and colleagues, 2022). This was an observational study, so it shows a link, not cause and effect.

What walking leaves out, in our experience as teachers:

• Upper body and trunk strength. Walking works the legs. The arms, shoulders and trunk do very little.
• Bone load where walking gives little. The spine, the arms and wrists, and the top of the thigh bone below the hip ball. The studies are below.
• Posture and the chest. Many walkers we teach have strong legs, a rounded upper back and a contracted chest. That is what we see in class, not a trial result.
• Flexibility and range of motion. Walking moves the legs through a short arc, over and over. It never takes them to straight.
• Calm. A walk can clear the head. Pranayama (yogic breathing) trains a slow, steady breath that you can call on anywhere.

Why do straight limbs matter for flexibility?

What we find is that flexibility comes from extending your range of motion, and that means straightening the limbs. Until the legs and arms can go fully straight, people do not get enough flexibility.

Most people who play sport, or train in the gym, at Pilates or at CrossFit, cannot fully straighten their legs or other limbs. They are moderately muscle-bound, and they never get straight enough. Walkers are often the same. On top of that the hips are often stiff, from muscles and tendons that have stayed short and tight. That is our experience over many years of classes.

The good news: straightness can be built, at any age. In Iyengar yoga the standing poses ask for straight legs and straight arms, with props so a stiff body can get there safely. Strength and flexibility grow together.

Is the top of your hip bone getting thinner?

For many of us, yes, and walking does not do much about it. The femoral neck (the short neck of the thigh bone, just below the hip ball) is where a hip usually breaks.

In a study in The Lancet, researchers used CT scans to measure 77 upper thigh bones from people who had died suddenly, aged 20 to 95. With age, the thin outer shell on the top of the femoral neck became much thinner. In women, it thinned by about 6.4% a decade (compared with age 60), and its ability to resist buckling in a sideways fall dropped by about 13% a decade. Men showed the same pattern, but less. The authors say this happens because walking does not put much load through the top of the femoral neck, and that this weak zone may need strengthening with well-targeted exercise (Mayhew and colleagues, 2005).

The way we put it: on top, the wall of the femoral neck can end up thinner than a credit card. Underneath, where every step presses, it stays thick. Bone thickens where it is loaded.

The good news: bone answers load, at 40, at 55 and later. Standing poses on one leg, with the pelvis held level and the muscles on the outside of the hip working hard, are the kind of targeted load we teach for this area. That is our teaching, built on how bone works. No trial has yet measured the femoral neck wall after yoga. Our bones masterclass material lays it out in full: Yoga For Bone Strength and Yoga For Bones And Balance.

What does the research show about yoga for walkers?

What The Research Shows

No trial has yet randomly split healthy walkers into walking, yoga or both. But there are good studies on what walking does for bones, and on what yoga does for posture, balance and bone. Here is what each did and found.

Walking and bones

• Walking alone did not change bone density at the spine, forearm or whole body. A review pooled 10 trials of walking in women around and after menopause. Walking made no significant difference to bone density at the lower spine, the forearm or the whole body. At the hip (femoral neck), bone density rose only in programs lasting more than six months. Ma and colleagues, Menopause, 2013. Read the study

Weight-bearing yoga and bones

• A 12-minute daily yoga routine, and bone density rose in the spine and thigh bone. 741 volunteers were recruited online and followed for up to ten years; 227 kept up the daily routine of yoga poses well. Their bone density scans after starting yoga were compared with their own scans before. Bone density rose in the spine and the thigh bone (femur). The gain at the total hip was not statistically clear. No serious yoga injuries were reported. There was no separate comparison group. The routine was devised by Dr Loren Fishman, a medical doctor who trained with Mr Iyengar. Lu, Rosner, Chang and Fishman, Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation, 2016. Read the study
• Six months of yoga with weight-bearing poses, and the spine bone score improved. 30 women aged 45 to 62 with osteoporosis did six months of fully supervised yoga, including weight-bearing poses, breathing and sun salutations. Their spine bone score (the T-score from a bone density scan) improved from -2.69 to -2.55. There was no comparison group. Motorwala and colleagues, International Journal of Yoga, 2016. Read the study
• Twelve weeks of weight-bearing yoga, and less bone breakdown. 33 women aged 50 to 60: 19 did weight-bearing yoga three times a week for 12 weeks, and 14 carried on as usual. A blood marker of bone breakdown fell by about 27% in the yoga group and about 1% in the others. The yoga group also improved on physical functioning, bodily pain, general health and vitality. This measured a blood marker, not bone density. Phoosuwan and colleagues, Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand, 2009. Read the study
• Eight months of a flowing yoga series: a bone-building marker held up, bone density did not change. 34 women aged 35 to 50 were randomly split; 16 did an Ashtanga-based series twice a week for eight months. A blood marker of bone building held steady in the yoga group and fell in the comparison group. Bone density did not change. The authors suggest longer and more frequent yoga. Kim and colleagues, Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 2015. Read the study

Yoga, posture and balance

• Yoga improved a rounded upper back. 118 women and men aged 60 and over, each with an upper-back curve of 40 degrees or more, were randomly split. One group did hour-long yoga classes three days a week for 24 weeks; the other went to a monthly lunch and talk. The yoga group’s upper-back curve improved by 4.4% on one measure and 5% on another. A third measure of the curve, physical performance and quality of life did not change significantly. Greendale and colleagues, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 2009. Read the study
• Iyengar yoga improved balance and walking speed. 54 people, average age 68, were randomly split. One group did Iyengar yoga focused on standing poses, twice a week for 12 weeks; both groups got a booklet on avoiding falls. The yoga group improved on standing balance, did the sit-to-stand test 3.4 seconds faster, walked 4 metres half a second faster, and stood longer on one leg with eyes closed. Attendance averaged 83%, with no serious adverse events. This was a pilot trial, run in Sydney. Tiedemann and colleagues, Journals of Gerontology, 2013. Read the study

Walking and yoga side by side

• For low back discomfort, yoga worked fast and walking worked later. A review of 31 trials with 3,193 people with long-term low back discomfort found yoga gave larger gains in the short term, and walking helped more over the medium term. The authors suggest the two together might be valuable. Nduwimana and colleagues, Medicine, 2020. Read the study

What has not been tested yet: yoga in healthy walkers, yoga and upper-body strength in walkers, and yoga and the femoral neck wall. Not yet studied is not the same as not working. The bone studies tested several styles of yoga, and only some were weight-bearing. Weight-bearing yoga, with the body held up by the legs and arms, is what bones respond to. Why style matters: Yoga Or Iyengar Yoga?

Walking keeps you going. Yoga fills the gaps.

What kinds of yoga poses help a walker, and why?

Seven kinds of practice do most of the work for a walker: standing poses, poses that bear weight on the arms, balance work, twists, supported backbends, seated and hip work, and restorative poses, with breath work alongside. We name the kinds here. Your teacher shows you the poses themselves in class, adjusted to your body.

• Standing poses straighten and strengthen the legs. Walking never takes the legs to straight. Standing poses do, while the thighs, hips and ankles hold your weight, so strength and flexibility grow together.
• Poses that bear weight on the arms load the arms, wrists and shoulders. Walking leaves them almost idle. With your hands on a wall, a chair or the floor, the arms and wrists carry part of your weight.
• Balance work, with a wall or chair, works the hip on one leg. With the pelvis level, the muscles on the outside of the hip work hard. That is the area walking loads least.
• Twists keep the trunk turning. Walking faces straight ahead. Twists turn the spine both ways and work the trunk muscles that hold it.
• Supported backbends open the chest. Over a chair or a bolster, the upper back lifts and the chest opens, the reverse of a rounded walking posture.
• Seated and hip work frees stiff hips. Short, tight muscles and tendons around the hips ease over time.
• Restorative poses rest tired legs. With props holding you, the legs and back can settle after long walks.
• Breath work (yogic breathing) calms the mind. A slow, steady breath steadies your attention. Yoga poses and yogic breathing both produce mindfulness. Read Yoga And Mindfulness.

That is our teaching, known from practice. Every pose is done on both sides, with props so a stiff body can do it well.

Exercises for walkers: poses that bear weight on the arms

Yoga and walking: open the chest, lift the upper back

Iyengar yoga for walkers: strong arms, a lifted chest

How much yoga does a walker need?

One class a week helps, and more helps more. This is Flametree’s view as teachers, from many years of classes:

• One class a week works.
• Two or three a week work better.
• Five or six a week work better again.

The same holds for pranayama classes. Regular classes are the point, not a quick routine after a walk. The posture trial above ran three classes a week, and the balance trial two.

Which classes should a walker start with?

Start with a beginner class, then add others. These suit most walkers (Darwin time, from the beginner timetable updated 12 November 2026):

• Beginner 1 classes: every day of the week, at Woolner (19B Bishop St, near Parap) and Coolalinga (Shop T31, Coolalinga Central), and some live online. Standing poses, balance work, twists and more, set for your body.
• Gentle Yoga: Fridays 10.15 to 11.15am, Woolner and live online. Slow and easy, with plenty of props, for stiff bodies.
• Yoga For Backs: Wednesdays 7.15 to 8.15pm, Woolner, open level. The whole back, from the lower back up through the neck and shoulders.
• Restorative Yoga: Saturdays 4 to 5.15pm, Woolner and live online, open level. Supported poses that rest and restore.
• Restorative Yoga and Immune System Yoga: Thursdays 5.45 to 7.15pm, Woolner and live online, open level. The timetable asks for 3 months of yoga first, or your teacher’s OK.
• Pranayama (yogic breathing): once you have some beginner classes behind you, your teacher will tell you when to add one.

See every class time.

Is there yoga for walkers in Darwin?

Yes. Flametree teaches yoga for walkers in Darwin at Woolner and Coolalinga, and live online. A class fits easily around a morning or evening walk.

A word on Darwin heat. Pace yourself on hot, humid walks, and stop when you need to.

Yoga for walking groups and bushwalking clubs: a group class for your members, at our Woolner studio or live online, is a simple way to try it together. Details are in the offers below.

Can I do online yoga for walkers?

Yes. You can join our live interactive online classes from anywhere, with a teacher who can see you and guide you. Walking groups and clubs can book a live online group class too.

Live in a regional or remote area? Many towns have no good yoga nearby. Online, Iyengar-trained teachers can come to you. See our live online classes.

How do I start yoga for walkers in Darwin or online?

Come to classes, learn more about yoga, and build your strength, fitness, flexibility and mindfulness. Then you can see for yourself whether it works.

1. 2 free classes, plus 2 free ebooks. New to Flametree, or back after 3 months or more? Choose 2 free ebooks (the sport and men’s book is Stay In The Game) and get 2 free classes, live online or in our Darwin studios. Claim them here
2. Or just come along, at the studio or online, and your first class is free. New to Flametree? Come to any beginner class and your first class is on us. See class times
   That is one free class. Register first and you get two free classes and two free ebooks, plus a few short reminders and tips to help you get started. So registering gets you more, and walking in is always welcome.
3. Then the half price beginner 10-pass with 2 free. 10 half price classes plus 2 free, $59.50. That is 12 classes, $4.96 a class, in our Darwin studios or live online.
4. Then the unlimited beginner weekly pass, to come as often as you like: studio, $17.95 a week; studio and online, $21.95 a week; online only, $10.95 a week.
5. A private lesson: private class pass, $109, or 5 private lessons at 10% off. Talk to us to set a time.
6. For walking groups and clubs: group class, $149 a session, at our Woolner studio or live online. Book 10 sessions together for 10% off: contact us.

See the timetable and book here

Once you have started, learn much more. Our 2027 Masterclasses with Chris Lalor start on 28 December: six masterclasses over four months, in Darwin or live online, on how this yoga works for arthritis, sleep and energy, pelvic floors, backs, wisdom, and anxiety, upsets and anger.

Start free, then pick the option that suits you.

Yoga for walkers questions, answered

Is walking enough exercise on its own?

Walking is very good for you: more daily steps go with a lower risk of dying. But walking alone did not change bone density at the spine or forearm in a review of 10 trials, and it does little for the arms, upper back or the top of the hip bone. Yoga adds those.

What does the research say about yoga for walkers?

No trial has yet tested yoga in healthy walkers. In other trials, yoga improved a rounded upper back in 118 people over 60, Iyengar yoga improved balance and walking speed in 54 older people, and in several studies weight-bearing yoga went with better bone measures.

Does walking build bone density?

In a review of 10 trials in women around and after menopause, walking alone made no significant difference to bone density at the spine, forearm or whole body. Hip bone density rose only in walking programs longer than six months. Bones respond to varied load, including load through the arms.

Can yoga help my posture if I walk a lot?

In a trial of 118 people aged 60 and over with a rounded upper back, three yoga classes a week for 24 weeks improved the upper-back curve by about 4 to 5%. Supported backbends open the chest, and standing poses lift the upper back.

Why do I feel stiffer even though I walk every day?

Walking moves the legs through a short arc and never takes them to straight. What we find is that flexibility needs range of motion, and that means straightening the limbs. Standing poses build that straightness, with strength, at the same time.

How much yoga does a walker need to notice a difference?

One class a week helps, and more helps more: two or three a week work better, and five or six better again. That is our view as teachers at Flametree. The posture trial ran three classes a week, the balance trial two.

Where can I do yoga for walkers in Darwin?

At Flametree’s studios in Woolner (19B Bishop St, near Parap) and Coolalinga (Shop T31, Coolalinga Central). Walking groups and clubs can book a group class at our Woolner studio or live online, at $149 a session.

Is there online yoga for walkers outside Darwin?

Yes. Our live interactive online classes work from anywhere in Australia, with a teacher who can see and guide you. Your first class is free if you are new, or register for 2 free classes and 2 free ebooks.

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More for sportspeople: running yoga, golf yoga, and the whole Yoga For Sport section.

Sources: Paluch and colleagues, Lancet Public Health, 2022; Ma and colleagues, Menopause, 2013; Mayhew and colleagues, The Lancet, 2005; Lu, Rosner, Chang and Fishman, Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation, 2016; Motorwala and colleagues, International Journal of Yoga, 2016; Phoosuwan and colleagues, Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand, 2009; Kim and colleagues, Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 2015; Greendale and colleagues, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 2009; Tiedemann and colleagues, Journals of Gerontology, 2013; Nduwimana and colleagues, Medicine, 2020; Garage Grown Gear (Rafael Mujica), 12 January 2022. Research via PubMed. Stories are people’s own accounts, not proof. This page is general information.