The Benefits of Yoga For Athletes

One of my goals this winter was to improve my flexibility. My main reason for wanting to do this was to be able to get myself into a more aerodynamic cycling position. Down here in New Zealand, I have access to a yoga school that is run by a teacher with triathlon experience as well as other sports (running, biking and rugby). This made it a little easier to head on over. I expected to find a room full of ladies bending themselves in half - reality was far different. Everybody was pretty cool and friendly.

Mark offers a private practice option for his students. We started with a private session where he set up a personal program for me. It was then up to me to bring the program into my life. I decided to attend three classes per week. When time permitted, I would warm-up with some floor work before heading to class. I'd also throw in a little home practice. My average flexibility investment has been 5-7 hours per week since the start of November. What follows are some observations from my experience:

• Being able to control the intensity and structure of my sessions is critical for me. Some days I am totally whipped; if I had to follow a group program it would leave me deeply fatigued. Running my own sessions makes a huge difference to me.

• Frequency - If I don't have a class then I don't stretch. I need to get out of my house, away from all distractions and into the yoga school. Once I am there, I get right into the session and can train for two hours very easily. However, when I am at home, the best I can manage is about an hour, and that's pretty rare.

• Yoga is more effective because it is a focused, integrated process, rather than goal oriented. When athletes "stretch", their goal is to "work" a particular muscle. Yoga is not like that. Yoga is about relaxation and movement. By taking the time to properly warm-up, I am far more flexible. There is no right answer with yoga and I know that I am making progress whether or not I am "touching my toes".

• Recovery - There are a lot of factors that work here. Yoga warms my muscles, promotes circulation, gets me away from my desk and places different stresses on my body. It also appears to increase my overall energy levels by opening up my body. This runs against much of Western thought, but my experience is that 7-8 hours of yoga per week actually increased my overall energy.

• Breathing - At first I thought the yoga folks were a bit weird because the experienced ones breathe REALLY heavy. Then one day (gasp) I caught myself doing the same thing. As I learned how to hold various stretches (safely, gradually, without pain) - I noticed that I could hold a much deeper stretch if I used my breath to move the energy of the stretch around (using yoga language here, but you'll understand what I mean if you try it). TIP - never hold any position beyond where you can comfortably breathe. If you can't breathe then you need to back off. The same is a good guide when receiving deep tissue massage.

• Propriception - All of the basic and advanced yoga positions enhance body awareness. All of the standing positions promote improved propriception particularly in the ankle as well as teaching the muscles of the upper leg (front and back) to work in partnership. I believe that this is very beneficial to athletes and runners in particular (half moon pose is a favourite).

• Muscle Use - I shared my thoughts on above with my teacher and he commented that I was "learning to use my legs". I like this description because it is a good summary of what happened for me. While an improved range of motion is a benefit of yoga, for an athlete, another key benefit is learning new movement patterns. I believe that the more movement patterns we can teach our bodies, the less energy it will take to move through any movement pattern. Similar to how non-freestyle strokes can help our swimming - I believe that additional movement patterns can enhance overall body awareness and therefore economy.

• Strength - Coming out of the improved pelvic/hip range of motion, I found that I became very strong this winter. There are many factors that come into strength gains and I managed to achieve a life best in terms of compound leg strength.

• Arousal - When I started yoga, I expected the total workout to be based around reducing arousal and promoting relaxation. While certain sequences will promote relaxation/recovery - there are a number of active sequences that can be used to increase energy/arousal levels. During my max strength lifting phase, I used a number of yoga poses to increase my arousal before and during my squat sets (handstands, lunges and dog pose, mainly). This worked well for me.

• Balance - Yoga has taught me to moderate my approach to my body. Last summer, when I saw that I needed to improve my bike position, I started out by cranking my hamstrings. Through my yoga practice, I learned that a well-rounded approach is not only easier, but results in the fastest results.

Probably the best part about the yoga practice is that it has improved my overall quality of life and things were pretty good to start with as well!

See you at the races,
gordo

References:
The Runner's Yoga Book, Jean Couch, Rodmell Press, Berkeley, California
Yoga Mind Body & Spirit, Donna Farhi, Newleaf, Dublin