For more and more sports stars, from the collegiate to semi-professional to professional levels, yoga is becoming a common part of their preparation and workout routines. Confronting the long-held principle that yoga holds no advantage for performers involved in ?hardy? sports such as football, basketball, hockey and even boxing, many institutions are including yoga into their training programs, while some of today?s leading sports stars separately have made yoga part of their off-season training as well.
For many decades, athletes have put their faith in weight conditioning and vigorous cardio programs to keep them in top form for the rigors of their particular activity. The gentle stretching of yoga (as no doubt observed on television) seemed to lack the work they assumed their body required to get them prepared for the demands of their sport.
But that misconception has been altered as teams and sports performers have began investigating yoga more closely and have realized the discipline of body and mind that is required to perform some of the more difficult yoga positions.
Numerous famous sports stars have used yoga to help in their conditioning, from NBA legends Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Robert Parris, Maurice Lucas and Bill Walton; tennis greats Guillermo Vilas, Yannick Noah and John McEnroe; ex-NFL star Dan Marino and golf legend Gary Player were among the first to practice yoga in the ?70s and ?80s. And that movement continues today as stars such as tennis? Serena and Venus Williams, pro basketball?s Shaquille O?Neal, pro football?s Shannon Sharp and Jon Kitna, boxer Evander Holyfield and entire franchises such as the Los Angeles Lakers and Chicago Cubs have tapped into the knowledge of yoga trainers to add a different and much-desired facet to their regimen.
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So what is the benefit of adding yoga to your workout?
Most likely of most interest to athletes is the evidence that yoga can improve overall strength. For a lot of athletes, increasing strength and power is the key to performing better at their sports, regardless of whether it?s baseball, swimming, track and field or football. But weight lifting, which a vast majority of athletes swear by, can only work one or two groups of muscles during each exercise, which means they must spend many hours in the gym to get the results they want. Yoga and its connected poses incorporate all of the muscles in the body to attain stability and strengthen the relationship between the muscles as well. The result? A body that is stronger and works as one cohesive unit.
Secondly, yoga works to build a stronger core, from most of the power the body needs in sports originates. In sports like baseball and tennis, the power to hit or throw begins in the torso. In football, the core helps the body make the sudden turns and twists that are needed in the sport. Getting this section of the body in condition is one of the main advantages to adding yoga to your athletic routine. The movements and stances of yoga served to improve the posture, help align the body and assists in the overall operation of the body, which can make athletes faster, more powerful and toned.
By adding muscle and balance, yoga also helps increase responsiveness in athletes, another major point. By combining enhanced strength, mobility and balance, yoga can increase agility that can be useful in virtually all sports.? And as an added benefit, athletes who improve their mobility through yoga can reduce the possibility of injury by conditioning the body to the repetitive motions that can have harmful effects (think carpal tunnel syndrome).
And finally, yoga can enhance the relationship between the mind and the body. For many sports performers, there are ?head games? involved in athletics: psyching out an opponent, visualizing success, predicting an opponent?s moves before he or she makes them. These decisions, sometimes made in mere seconds, depend upon a clear mind, a state that can be achieved through the meditative exercises of yoga. Through the breathing routines, meditation and mannered postures of yoga, athletes can learn to keep their mind and body working in unison even during the most intense moments of the game, when an emotional state can result in tight muscles, lost flexibility and inferior performance.
Thanks to their discovery of the benefit of yoga, it has now become a welcome part of the training program of many athletes on all skill levels. By exploring the diverse forms of yoga and their unique characteristics, athletes can find the perfect style of yoga to fit the needs of their specific sport.
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