Sunday, September 5, 2010

The Best Yoga For Athletes – 3 Ways It Can Help You Improve Your Performance

Dedicated athletes are constantly trying to find better ways to take care of their bodies to prevent injuries. The best yoga for athletes is a perfect complement to any athletes’ training. Too many athletes suffer from bad backs and knees, often forcing them to abandon sports altogether. You will soon see that a regular yoga practice will allow you to keep playing sports long and hard for many years to come.

The best yoga for athletes will help keep you healthy with its breathing techniques . When the body is in a contracted state during physical exertion, the muscles are tight and you have limited range of motion, leaving you in an injury-prone state. Proper breathing technique allows the body to loosen up, and increase lung capacity. While you are expelling CO2 at a higher rate, your body can concentrate on recovery instead of on waste products resulting from CO2 accumulation. Oxygen inflow is increased, keeping your muscles and joints saturated in nutrient-rich blood, both protecting them from injury while enhancing performance.

The best yoga for athletes will also prevent pain by focusing on symmetry, alignment, and balance. For example, regular running often stress muscles unevenly, causing imbalances in the body. You can develop uneven muscle strength around the knee, creating acute knee pain. Yoga will evenly work the upper, lower, inside and outside muscles, forming a more stable support for the joint. Furthermore, unaligned hips can cause strain in the anterior ligaments in the knees, resulting in even more knee pain. And finally, if you are off-balance when running, your body compensates by working harder and less efficiently. The compensating muscles get tighter and weak muscles weaken. Those tight muscles, that should ideally be soft and supple, become brittle and hard, leaving them susceptible to tears.

Finally, the best yoga for athletes will aid the healing process of your existing injuries. Oftentimes a sore lower back is merely the result of tight hip flexors that are causing hypertension in those back muscles. This back pain can easily be alleviated through some simple hip-opening poses. Other yoga postures focus on squeezing and releasing joints, thus encouraging active nutrient-rich blood flow to those areas. The practice will also boost the body’s natural healing process, producing pain-relieving endorphins and infection-fighting anti-bodies.

If you are serious about a sport and achieving your body’s true potential, then the best yoga for athletes will be an indispensable tool for you. Through this practice, your body will loosen up and work more efficiently. And you can finally bid farewell to aches and pains; yoga will not only prevent future complications, but will actually heal the injuries you currently have!

Colleen Jennings has been practicing yoga for over 5 years and is on a mission to spread the word about what the best yoga for athletes can do for your athletic abilities.

You can also read about all the different benefits of yoga for athletes and how it will dramatically improve your performance: YogaforAthletes.info.

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Post from: Yoga Blog | Everything about YOGA!

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