Yoga For Sports Training

Kayaking ... Running ... Football ... Rugby ... Judo ... Swimming ... Climbing ... Cycling ... Any Sport!

If your sport requires you to have balance, strength, flexibility, focus ... you could benefit from yoga.

Top sportsmen and women are increasingly using yoga to complement their regular training programmes. Any intensive sports training is likely to produce imbalance within the body as some muscles are worked more than others. Tension within the body makes muscles and joints more prone to injury and is likely to cause the immune system to be suppressed. Regular yoga practice can encourage balanced strengthening of muscles, improve breathing technique leading to improved cardio-vascular function, and promote relaxation and positive thinking as well as improving flexibility, balance and concentration.

An important difference between many sports and yoga is that the same set of muscles needs to be used over and over again to achieve certain movements in many sports, while yoga ensures that using a set of muscles is balanced by a movement in the opposite direction. In this way, yoga can assist athletes by exercising their underused muscles. With this increased overall mobility and flexibility, yoga can make a difference to sports performance.

Benefits of Yoga Compared to Conventional Cross-training
(Source: Health Benefits of Yoga article by Trisha Lamb for the International Association of Yoga Therapists)
Yoga
Cross-training
  • Parasympathetic nervous system dominates
  • Sub-cortical regions of brain dominate
  • Slow dynamic and static movements use muscles more effectively and safely
  • Normalization of muscle tone
  • Low risk of injuring muscles and ligaments
  • Lower calorie consumption
  • Effort is minimized and relaxed whilst effects are maximised
  • Energising (breathing is natural or controlled)
  • Balanced activity of opposing muscle groups
  • Non-competitive and process oriented
  • Awareness is internal (focus is on the breath, the moment, and the infinite)
  • Limitless possibilities for growth in self-awareness and self-belief
  • Sympathetic nervous system dominates
  • Cortical regions of brain dominate
  • Rapid forceful movements often using momentum at the expense of effective muscle activity
  • Increased muscle tension
  • Higher risk of injury
  • Moderate to high calorie consumption
  • Effort is maximised
  • Fatiguing (breathing is taxed)
  • Imbalanced activity of opposing muscle groups
  • Competitive, goal-oriented
  • Awareness is external (focus is on reaching the toes, reaching the finish line, etc.)
  • Boredom factor
Whilst cross-training often reproduces some of the negative results of the sport an individual is training to improve performance in, yoga complements in a balanced way. This has the result of keeping motivation for both activities high, improving physical performance, and reducing the chance of injuries.

Please contact me to discuss how yoga can contribute to your sports training.