Improve Sport Performance with Yoga

In a glance, yoga may seem like just a light muscle stretching activity with all those delicate moves. But in fact yoga is really not that simple to perform. Those slow moving stretches could give a huge impact on a person's body in a good way. Not only for average people, but for professional athletes like Serena Williams, Pete Sampras and even NFL team members from Miami Dolphins and New York Giants are practicing yoga to improve their performance on the field.

yoga for sports

Yoga is believed to be able to help these athletes increase their strength, stamina, focus, flexibility and balance out their bodies after a long hard physical training that sometimes causes imbalance as a result of over stretching and over strengthening.

Below are some of the main reasons why yoga is being practiced by professional athletes and also highly recommended for sports addicts in order to improve their performance:

Improving Focus

When playing a competitive sport you have to be active outside but need to be calm and stay focused on the inside. This is easier said than done. Try doing that in a football field when running towards the end of the line waiting for a pass, while a bunch of mean big guys running after you trying to crush your bones, now that's what I call a difficult situation to stay in focus.

However yoga can make it possible for you to stay focused even in the most difficult situation through its breathing technique. With yoga it is possible for you to feel relaxed under all kinds of situations thus will make your mind become more still and centered. Increasing your focus means better concentration, which leads to overall stability of mental states, and that's exactly what is needed by an athlete to win a game.

Increasing Balance and Core Strength

In order to preserve the balance in your body, you must strengthen the core, which is the center of your body. The human body is divided into two major muscles groups, the upper body muscles and lower body muscles. The core is the one that has the duty to balance these so they can work synergistically, therefore, it has to be strengthened. Perhaps there is no better way of understanding and achieving this other than practicing yoga.

Increasing Flexibility

No doubt that yoga is the best way to increase flexibility. Flexibility is very much needed for an athlete to be able to jump higher, hit harder, reach further or run faster. Sometimes in order to achieve the desired results an athlete would force their bodies to an extreme training which can cause the muscles to become too tight. Yoga can help to loosen these muscles and make them flexible again.

Help Connecting the Mind and Body

Perhaps a better way to describe this is you have to be able to communicate better with your body in order to bring out its best potentials. As your self awareness grows, your body will be stronger. An athlete should also be able to listen to their body by paying attention to the signals given by it and respond to it properly, and yoga is the best way to help you doing this.

Decrease the Risk of Injury

Injury is the worst enemy for an athlete. It could make an athlete miss an important match or competition, or even worse it could end a great career. By practicing yoga, the increased flexibility can help to decrease muscle strains, which can reduce the risk of an injury, therefore athletes can play more safely in whatever sports they are participating.