The purpose of the present study was comparing the effect of 5 and 10 weeks of aerobic, yoga and aerobic-yoga exercises on female students’ physical self-concept. For that reason, 76 sedentary female students with mean age of 20.49±1.32 years from Ferdowsi University who had not had any experience about selected training modes were voluntary selected. They were randomly and equally assigned to three experimental groups (aerobic, yoga and aerobic-yoga) and one control group. The experimental groups participated in two 60-minute sessions per week for ten weeks in certain related programs. During this period, the control group did not engage in any organized exercise program. In order to collect data, Physical Self-Descriptive Questionnaire was used at three different times of the program (at the beginning, in the middle and at the end). This questionnaire has been validated in Iran and its reliability was 0.94 which had been done in a pilot study in the present research. For data analysis, the mean scores of physical self-concept derived from subtracting posttest and midtest from pretest for each group was calculated. One-way ANOVA and post hoc Duncan test showed that at the end of 5th week of exercise there was a significant difference between physical self-concept means of experimental and control groups (F=3.634, P<0.05) . By assessing means differences, it was cleared that there is a significant difference in physical self-concept of yoga and aerobic-yoga groups in comparison with control group (P<0.05). However, this difference was not significant between aerobic and control group (P>0.05). The same results were gained at the end of 10th week of exercise (F=6.383, P<0.05). In addition, for assessing the differences within groups, Paired-Sample T Test showed that in yoga group there was a significant difference between physical self-concept mean of subjects in 5 weeks and 10 weeks of exercise (P<0.05) but this difference was not significant in aerobic, aerobic-yoga and control groups (P>0.05). These results show that 5 and 10 week exercise programs in yoga and aerobic-yoga group has caused an increase in female students\\\\\\\' physical self-concept, but this exercise period in aerobic group could not bring about remarkable increase in physical self-concept. Examining of physical self-concept mean of subjects between 5 and 10 weeks of exercise indicate that increasing the exercise session number after 5 weeks in yoga, aerobic and aerobic-yoga groups has been respectively associated with significant increase, decrease and non significant increase of physical self-concept. Therefore, the significant increase of physical self-concept in aerobic-yoga group at the end of 10 weeks of exercise can be attributed to effects of first 5 weeks. Overall, it can be concluded that physical self-concept improvement and its relative stability respectively in yoga and aerobic-yoga groups are due to the motivational effects of yoga exercises that agrees with literature.

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