5 Reasons why yoga is an important addition to athletic training

If you’re an athlete, it’s likely that you’re all-too familiar with the injuries, aches and pains that go along with putting your body through the intensity of games, workouts and endurance tests. However, adding one-on-one yoga instruction to your training program may be just what you need to improve your flexibility, balance, strength and game –and that’s not to mention what it can do for your mental outlook. 

Why Yoga for Athletes?

As athletes, we may look at yoga as something which benefits the mind more so than the body, which may be at least partially true. However, let’s consider this for a moment: even if it were 100% correct, how is that a bad thing?

In fact, an important aspect of being a competitive athlete is maintaining the mental strength and confidence you need to be at the top of your game, which yoga can help with. 

And while there are types of yoga which do focus almost entirely on the mind, most incorporate body poses, stretching and strengthening activities along with meditation to achieve both mental and physical enlightenment. 

For athletes, this not only means a more confident, mentally strong approach to the game, but reduced risk of injury along with increased flexibility, balance and strength. (1)

Yoga’s Physical Benefit for Athletes

Training to become a better athlete not only involves improving your strength, endurance, flexibility and balance, but avoiding injury as well. However, while we mostly consider our work in the gym and on the playing fields to be where these goals are met, complementing your gym or field work with yoga sessions can take things to a whole new level. 

This is because yoga helps:

• Increase flexibility—Most types of yoga involve static stretching and poses which allow functional stretches to be applied for better all-around flexibility
• Improve balance—Most forms of yoga involve balance poses that increase stability and reduce your risk of falls and injury
• Core strength—As an athlete, your core is where your strength, balance and stability are generated, and nearly all yoga activities improve your core strength
• Stabilizing muscles—While hitting the gym works just fine for strengthening your large power muscles, it does little to strengthen the small supportive muscles which stabilize and hold joints together. However, yoga picks up where the gym leaves off and enhances these small-but-all-too-important muscles to further safeguard your joints from injury
• Injury prevention and recovery—Of course, when you increase your flexibility, improve your balance and strengthen your core, you reduce your risk of injury. However, in the event of injury, yoga can also be used as effective therapy when repairing and re-strengthening damaged tendons, joints and muscles. (2)

Yoga helps in all these areas and more, and a personal yoga teacher specializing in the needs of athletes can help further by customizing sessions to your specific requirements. This includes both your physical and mental approach to your game or training goals, which altogether can help you achieve new levels of competitiveness, keep you uninjured and on the field longer, and even help you enjoy the game more. 

Start your practice today by following this 30-minute video “Yoga for Athletes” from your home or hotel gym.