Can Yoga and Strength Training Coexist?

The Spine’s Paradox

On a Tuesday morning in Sioux Falls, a patient steps into a chiropractic clinic with a familiar story. She’s been devoted to yoga for years “I thought flexibility was always good” yet now finds herself with recurring low back pain that seems to flare after deep forward folds.

This paradox flexibility as both a blessing and a burden sits at the heart of Stuart McGill’s life’s work. McGill, professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo and author of Low Back Disorders (2016), has spent decades dissecting how spines fail. His conclusion? The spine doesn’t thrive on limitless motion. It thrives on stability.

“The spine is not a ball-and-socket joint like the hip. Its job is to bear load and protect the nervous system. The more we push it into extremes, the more we erode its resilience.”—Stuart McGill, Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance (2014

Why Flexibility Isn’t Always a Blessing

Yoga promotes movement to the end ranges of flexion, extension, and rotation. For hips and shoulders, this can be beneficial. For the lumbar spine, it’s risky.

McGill’s lab studies have shown that repeated spinal flexion and extension can damage the annulus of intervertebral discs, leading to bulges or herniations. The very moves that earn admiration on a yoga mat—wheel pose, deep forward folds—can over time compromise the tissues designed to stabilize, not stretch.

In Sioux Falls, chiropractors often see this first-hand: patients trying to “stretch through” back pain, inadvertently aggravating the source of the problem.

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The Case for Rigidity in Strength Training

Step into a powerlifting gym and you’ll hear a different mantra: “Brace. Stay tight. Don’t let the spine move.”

This isn’t aesthetic obsession—it’s biomechanics. In heavy squats or deadlifts, the spine is safest when rigid. Muscles around the torso create a corset-like brace, allowing force to transfer through the body without bending the spinal column.

McGill’s research highlights this protective stiffness: the strongest athletes don’t let their spines wiggle under load. They build what he calls “proximal stiffness for distal power.” In plain English: keep the spine locked, and the hips and shoulders do their job.

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Can Yoga and Strength Training Coexist?

The question isn’t whether yoga and lifting are enemies. It’s whether we’re asking the spine to do conflicting jobs.

McGill offers a framework:

• Spine → stability.

• Hips and shoulders → mobility.

When yoga focuses on the hips, shoulders, and controlled breathing, it’s a complement to strength work. When it drives repeated spinal flexion, it clashes with what heavy training—and spinal health—demand.

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The Chiropractic Angle

Here in Sioux Falls, chiropractic care often sits at the intersection of these two worlds. Patients come in sore from yoga or stiff from lifting, unsure which path led them astray.

The role of chiropractic isn’t to push the spine into extremes, but to restore neutral alignment and improve joint mechanics elsewhere. Once alignment is addressed, clinicians often teach McGill-inspired stability exercises—bird dogs, side planks, carries—that build resilience without demanding contortionist flexibility.

This approach allows patients to keep the best of both practices: the mindfulness and mobility of yoga, the power and confidence of strength training—without sacrificing spinal health.

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The Investigative Takeaway

The evidence is clear:

• The lumbar spine does best with stability, not excess motion.

• Flexibility is valuable, but in the right joints.

• Chasing both extremes—deep spinal yoga and heavy braced lifting—without understanding biomechanics invites injury.

For those in Sioux Falls navigating back pain, the solution isn’t choosing yoga or strength training. It’s integrating them wisely, with chiropractic care and McGill’s spine-stability principles guiding the way.

In the end, the spine isn’t asking for endless freedom. It’s asking for protection. And protection comes not from extremes, but from balance.

Have a wonderful week,