When you feel muscle soreness after a workout, it can seem like a sort of a badge of honor. It’s a kind of reminder that you’re following your plan, you made time for exercise, and you pushed yourself. But if you’re still feeling that same soreness a day or two later, should you still work out again?

Muscle strength is about how much force a muscle can generate in a single, maximal effort – think of an Olympic weightlifter pressing 1,000 pounds overhead. Where muscle strength is about force production, muscle endurance, on the other hand, is about time – meaning for how long a muscle can continue to produce force.

One illustration of muscle strength versus endurance is with running. A 100-meter sprint is all pure muscle strength; whereas running a 26.2-mile marathon is about muscular endurance.

Have you ever tried yoga? If not, perhaps one or more of the many misconceptions about this 3,000 year old practice have held you back from giving it a try. Or perhaps you tried a class once, and something about it wasn’t right with you. In this article, I share what yoga really is, and also dispel some of the biggest myths and inaccurate perceptions surrounding it.