Strong yoga in Maui
Find your strength and steadiness.
Strong classes ask your muscles to work. Power yoga, Ashtanga, dynamic vinyasa, and mat and reformer Pilates all sit here. You hold, lift and repeat until you feel it.
No classes scheduled in the next two weeks.
What Strong does for you
You build a steady, grounded kind of strength that shows up in how you stand and carry things. Long holds and controlled transitions teach you to stay with effort and keep breathing. Many people like the clear physical feedback: shaking legs, a burning middle, then a solid calm afterward. You leave tired in the good way.
It suits you if
- you want to feel your muscles work
- you like clear structure and a challenge
- you want strength without a gym
- you enjoy getting better at something over weeks
Read the full guide to StrongWhat a class is like, your first time, history and the words you will hear
What a class is like
Classes run 45 to 90 minutes and keep a steady pace, with long holds in standing poses, plank work and arm balances in yoga, and controlled repetitions in Pilates. The facilitator cues alignment and often counts breaths or reps. You will sweat, even in an unheated space. Ashtanga follows a set sequence; power yoga and Pilates classes vary. Expect little chatting and a short final rest.
Your first time
- Bring water and a towel, and wear close-fitting clothes.
- Eat lightly a couple of hours before, not right before.
- Pace yourself in the first half; strong classes often save the hardest part for later.
Good to know
- Strong classes often assume you know the basic poses, so try a gentle or first-class option first if you are new.
- Arm balances and long planks ask a lot of wrists and shoulders; skip what does not feel right and tell the facilitator about injuries.
- If you are pregnant or have recently given birth, check with your doctor or midwife before joining, and look at prenatal or postnatal classes instead.
Where it comes from
Strength-focused yoga is largely a 20th-century development. Historians such as Mark Singleton have shown that modern posture practice absorbed a lot from European physical culture and gymnastics, and Krishnamacharya's dynamic classes at the Mysore Palace in the 1930s gave it a vigorous form. The Ashtanga system that came out of Mysore, with its fixed series and jumps between poses, became the template for athletic yoga in the West.
In the mid-1990s the Americans Beryl Bender Birch and Bryan Kest, both Ashtanga practitioners, separately developed and named power yoga: Ashtanga's intensity without its fixed sequence, aimed at a gym-going public. Pattabhi Jois objected to the name in a 1995 letter to Yoga Journal, and gyms and fitness chains adopted it quickly.
Pilates runs in parallel. Joseph Pilates, born in Mönchengladbach in 1883, developed his method, which he called Contrology, in the early 20th century and taught it in New York from the 1920s. Its focus on control, precision and the center of the body made it a natural partner to strong yoga. In Berlin, strong classes range from early-morning power yoga to reformer studios and Mysore-style Ashtanga mornings.
Words you will hear
- Chaturanga
- A low plank with elbows bent close to your sides.
- Bandha
- A lock: a gentle muscular engagement, for example at the pelvic floor or lower belly.
- Vinyasa
- The linking sequence between poses, usually plank, upward dog and downward dog.
- Powerhouse
- Joseph Pilates' word for the center of the body: belly, lower back, hips and glutes.
- Reformer
- A Pilates machine with a sliding carriage, springs and straps.