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Looking for a key performance tool for your next race? Try yoga!

By Robin Miller

You are dedicated to your training program and pay close attention to your nutrition, and rest, but how do you deal with those days you just don’t feel like going out? How do you overcome the chronic tightness in your hamstrings or low back? This is where a consistent yoga practice can help you overcome the intangible obstacles, the ones that traditional training doesn’t address.

Could yoga really be the key to enhancing your game? Let’s take a look at some of the qualities known to increase athletic performance. First of all, long muscles are strong muscles. Because muscles can only shorten to perform work, a longer muscle has more area to contract, allowing for greater strength. Our modern age has made our bodies slaves to repetition, resulting in chronically tight and short muscles. The brief stretches we do here and there are not enough to encourage our muscles back into their optimal state. A balanced yoga practice works the entire body, balancing the left and right sides, and increases flexibility, allowing for longer, stronger muscles and greater joint ranges of motion. One of the most important yet overlooked physical benefits of practicing yoga is the heightened sense of body awareness. This creates better proprioception (the brain’s ability to detect the body’s position in space) of the muscles, which helps your body react quicker, assisting you in preventing injuries. In addition, a regular yoga practice leads to a milder cardiovascular response after a given exercise, suggesting better exercise tolerance¹. What this means is that you can go longer and harder without as much stress on your cardiovascular system.

The greatest athletes are legendary for their focused concentration. Picture this – it's race day. Your training plan was laid out and executed to the T. Your body is in prime condition to win. But… your mind is on the fight you had with your significant other last night. You are thinking of the meeting you have on Monday with the accountant. Instead of slashing your personal record, you end up adding 5 minutes. Your head just wasn’t in the game and it called for an entire mind/body mutiny! Yoga cultivates a strong focus and powerful concentration. The next time you are practicing Bakasana (crow pose – an arm balance), try to focus on something other than your breath. That bird will most certainly crash during take off. This powerful focus can easily transfer from your mat to wherever your sport takes you.

I am not writing this because it sounds good. There is scientific evidence. A study conducted which measured the effect of yoga training on visual and auditory response times, hand grip strength, and physiological responses such as breath holding time and maximum inspiratory (inhalation) pressure found that a regular practice for 12 weeks results in significant decrease in reaction times and a significant increases in breath holding time, inspiratory pressure and hand grip strength².

Let’s just recap why yoga is a great addition to your sports training program:

• Helps lengthen and tone muscles
• Improves flexibility
• Pranayama helps with breath and anxiety control
• Promotes right and left body alignment and balance
• Increases overall balance
• Meditation helps focus the mind and movement

The next time you or someone you know is looking for a leg up in their sports training, look no further than your yoga mat.

1. Indian J Physiol Pharmacol. 2004 Oct;48(4):461-5.

2. Indian J Physiol Pharmacol. 1992 Oct;36(4):229-33.

Next article: You can be a cyclist without a hunchback: poses for optimal cycling performance

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