May 14, 2010, Newsletter Issue #291: Yoga Makes You Better At Other Sports
Tip of the Week
Many sports, including running, biking, and swimming, keep you fit and healthy, but they have the side effect of making you less flexible in certain areas, and causing some muscles to become stronger than others, which creates an imbalance that can lead to injury.
Attending a yoga class or doing a yoga workout at home as little as once a week will improve your flexibility and work muscles that don’t get used during other sports. This combination of improved flexibility and muscle balance will reduce your risk of injury, and improve your performance in other sports by building core body strength and by strengthening muscles that you might ignore.
For example, Ashtanga yoga improves shoulder strength, and while this may not sound like it matters to a distance runner, the shoulders get tight while running, and improving shoulder strength helps reduce fatigue during a long run. Also, runners tend to have tight hamstrings and hips from the repeated motion of running many miles, and yoga can counteract this imbalance. Conversely, serious cyclists tend to have overdeveloped quad muscles and shorter, weaker, hamstrings, and yoga can balance this imbalance, too.
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