If you think yoga is difficult? Here's a new twist. At the New York Health and Racquet Club the ancient art of yoga is being combined with weights.

The idea came from nationally ranked tri-athlete Anthony Carillo. He was the first to use weights with familiar yoga poses.

Like many well-trained athletes, he wanted to challenge himself even further.

"I was in a warrior two pose and as I'm in this pose I'm thinking, OK, what weight training exercise that I normally do in the weight room can I add to warrior two. So it just made sense that if I'm holding dumbbells, one arm could do a lateral raise and the other arm could do a bicep curl. And I went through my normal power yoga routine with the dumbbells just adding a weight training exercise to practically all my power yoga poses and that's how iron yoga got started," Carillo said.

Carillo started to pump up the yoga over a year ago and these days similar programs are popping up around the country.

Dozens of health clubs have begun offering yoga classes with weights, bands, balls and other resistance tools, all designed to draw a wider range of participants.

"Some people who are very serious into the weight training and circuit training and body sculpting they sometimes feel that a yoga class won't give them the challenge. And I think now with this new dimension of adding dumbbells and adding weight training exercises to yoga it's been able to attract that audience," Carillo said.

With iron yoga, every movement is controlled with the breath and slower movements help achieve shaping, toning, and sculpting.

"Everything is super safe because it's super slow. We're taking 4 to 5 seconds working concentrically working positively, we're taking 4 to 5 seconds working eccentrically working negatively," Carillo said.