Benefits Of Yoga

Yoga has definitely made its way into the workout routines of athletes. Athletes, as well as trainers, have become more open minded and are willing to try anything that can improve performance. Yoga can definitely accomplish this. It increases balance, strength, flexibility and muscle tone. It also teaches focus and relaxation, integrating mind and body. Endurance athletes know all too well the importance of mental and physical strength.

Endurance athletes use yoga as part of their strength training routine. This is key component to avoiding injury. Yoga also is a nice break from high impact training sessions. Yoga will help in loosening up tight muscles and joints.
Some athletes use short yoga sequences as warm-up and/or cool-down. As most of us have been told or read in the past, breathing exercises center the mind and steady the pulse. Stretching increases range of motion, which supports and stabilizes the skeletal system, further preventing injury. Quiet meditation allows the athlete to focus on the task at hand.

The yoga workout that is recommended and used by our athletes comes from the P90X at home workout series. It is 90 minutes of love it or hate it fun. It focuses and everything, strength, balance, core, flexibility and relaxation. This is definitely not an easy routine and will take some time to get use to, but the benefits are well worth it. Also, the workout is broken up so that if you don’t want to do all 90 minutes at once, you can do the first 45 and come back later for the last 45. There are plenty of take aways that can be used before a race as well. There are plenty of breathing, relaxation and flexibility exercises that would allow you to come up with your own pre and post race routines.

Go outside your comfort zone and reap the benefits that yoga can have on your performance.

Namaste.

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joe@eeathlete.com