Athletes and Yoga
Incorporating yoga into your sports routine isn't just a trend, it's a necessity. Yoga can improve a player's flexibility, balance, strength and endurance, as well as reduce stress and anxiety, allowing athletes to stay in their best condition. Yoga can also benefit sports teams by fostering a sense of unity and cooperation among teammates, leading to improved communication and overall team performance. By integrating yoga into your sports routine, you'll be taking an important step towards optimizing your performance and achieving your goals.
The Benefits of Yoga for Athletes of All Disciplines
Flexibility
In addition to poses that challenge strength and balance, a complete yoga practice includes poses to increase flexibility. Joint and muscle flexibility play a key role in range of motion. A greater arc of motion allows more force to be exerted during exercise movements like a golf swing, swimming stroke, or a baseball pitch.
Endurance
From opening posture, yoga significantly increases respiratory capacity; in fact, many have overcome asthma and other respiratory conditions through regular practice. Obviously, this is invaluable to athletes. Yoga has also been proven to dramatically enhance circulation, digestion, and efficiency of motion, which all further improve energy and endurance.
Balance
Balance and coordination are essential for improving exercise performance and prevention of injuries. Flowing through yoga poses enhances balance and coordination, as well as concentration. By improving balance, you can reduce the risk of falls and improve technique when exercising, leading to better performance overall.
Mental Focus
Yoga acknowledges the importance of mental training alongside physical training. Even if meditation is not for you, yoga includes various other techniques that can help improve mental focus for sport or exercise. For example, many yoga poses are most successful when breathing matches movement. This can be beneficial for endurance athletes like runners, cyclists, or swimmers.
Recovery
A little-appreciated but significant benefit for athletes is improved recovery. By enhancing circulation and lymphatic flow, yoga not only increases strength and endurance but also allows muscles to process metabolic byproducts more quickly, powerfully speeding healing time and re-growth.
Injury Reduction
Yoga is a great low-impact way to cross train. Cross training is necessary for athletes who do the same sport or exercise routine year-round. Adding new exercises can help reduce injury, relieve training boredom, add variety and help you recover from hard aerobic or strength workouts. Yoga can be done at a high or low intensity and there are hundreds of postures that can provide a workout for any athletic need.
Yoga prevents injury by:
- Improving flexibility
- Addressing muscle imbalances
- Strengthening movement patterns
- Aiding recovery by fighting inflammation and increasing oxygen flow
Benefits For Sports Teams
Yoga: The Secret Weapon for Building Strong and Resilient Athletic Teams
Step up your game!
Yoga can be part of sport-specific athletic training. Certain poses, for instance, may mirror the types of movements you’ll be doing in that sport. For example, leg extension lifts and holds resemble a kicking motion that you’d do in soccer. You could do the leg extension machine or hip adductor machine at the gym to build muscle and enhance the movement that way. But you aren’t going to be working on joint flexibility and balance like you would doing it in yoga.
A vinyasa flow can promote fluidity of movement patterns. A common yoga flow is a sun salutation. Instead of static stretches, vinyasa classes encourage constant movement as you stretch beyond a normal range of motion (ROM). This exercise helps to elongate muscles and build muscular endurance and stamina.
Yoga improves alignment, ROM and muscle fiber recruitment. This strengthens the kinetic chain of movement, which results in boosted performance, whatever your athletic sport or your status as a beginner or pro.
why Yoga for Athletes-even the professionals are doing it!
Football
NFL players also practice yoga. Most of their football practice is spent lifting weights and practice drills, but a key focus for football players is to prevent injury and handle stress. Yoga does both of these things.
A recent 2021 study examined how many football players get injured. Over the course of four NFL seasons, 3,025 injuries were reported. It’s evident that injury prevention is vital to maintain and improve performance as a football player. That’s why the Seattle Seahawks mandated yoga as part of training.
Basketball
Legendary basketball player LeBron James has advocated for yoga as a way to improve athletic performance. Basketball players need to be agile, flexible, and coordinated to avoid injury. Yoga can help each of these components for basketball players, from beginners to all stars.
A study published in 2013 in Pedagogics Psychology Medical-biological Problems of Physical Training and Sports examined yoga and basketball. The researchers asked a group of college basketball players to incorporate a yoga practice into their training routine. They went to classes four times a week for nine months. The outcome was a significant increase in key performance markers such as vertical jump, free throw, three-point shots, tactical execution, speed and speed endurance, and balance.
Soccer
Successful soccer players have mastered the art of continuous movement in different directions, while maintaining balance. Extending your hip flexors beyond a normal range of motion (ROM) as you leap out to tackle requires core strength, coordination and balance, an important skill in soccer. Otherwise, you’d fall over. Yoga can help soccer players (or footballers) achieve and refine this skill.
In a 2016 study published in the International Journal of Yoga, researchers asked a group of college soccer players to add in two yoga sessions per week to their regular training for 10 weeks. The researchers reported improvements in flexibility and balance and an increase in joint mobility and ROM.
That’s why world-class soccer players have revealed their love for yoga, praising its ability to work hamstrings, groin, quads, calves, glutes, lower back, neck, sides and core. Yoga can also help to prevent injuries, especially as athletes age.
Soccer
Field hockey
Researchers in a small 2018 study Trusted Source examined the effects of hot yoga as an alternative heat stress technique for 10 elite female field hockey players.
The researchers found that hot yoga can enhance cardiovascular performance and plasma volume percentage, which has a positive effect on how your body regulates temperature during exercise.
athletic performance benefits of yoga: 7 forms of movement
Standing Poses
Balancing Poses
Balancing Poses
Build leg-strength as well as flexibility in the hips and hamstrings
Balancing Poses
Balancing Poses
Balancing Poses
Increase body awareness, stabilization, and proprioception.
Forward Bends
Balancing Poses
Backward Bends
Promote health of posterior chain and help balance autonomic nervous system.
Backward Bends
Backward Bends
Backward Bends
Improve posture, respiration, digestion, and elimination.
Arm Balances
Backward Bends
Arm Balances
Build core and upper-body strength and improve balance/body-awareness.
Inversions
Backward Bends
Arm Balances
Improve immune function and enhance circulation in the legs.
Twists
Twists
Twists
Improve posture, shoulder-mobility, respiration, digestion, elimination, and health of spine and nervous system.
breathing techniques for optimal performance
Deep Breathing
If you participate competitively in sports or simply join the occasional fun run on a whim, you are aware of the impact breathing can have on performance. Deep, relaxed breathing is the foundation of reducing performance anxiety and improving the quality of concentration. Yoga will help you develop a habit of breathing correctly. Yoga practice integrates the mind-body connection and athletes can benefit from this combination of skills training.
