Yoga is a 5000 year old art form that is designed to bring a persons body, mind and essence into union. Through various challenging poses yoga provides a number of physical benefits, including flexibility, balance, strength, endurance, and improved respiration. Mental benefits include confidence, concentration, discipline, patience, clarity and peace of mind.

Athletes undertake many different aspects of training to keep up with, or get ahead of the demands of today’s competitive levels. In addition to mastering the physical skills and techniques of ones particular sport, athletes also have to devote a great deal of time to weight training, nutrition, and conditioning. This leaves little time for the two most important and often neglected areas of the athlete’s development: stretching and mental training.

Yoga is an art form that combines the physical benefits of flexibility, balance, strength, and the mental benefits of clarity, discipline and concentration. Yoga gives you the opportunity to identify and understand the strengths and weaknesses of your body and mind.

Good athletes need everything from fast reflexes to excellent hand eye coordination. Incorporating my yoga program, I will lead the athletes through postures that will stretch and strengthen key areas of their bodies, specifically used in their sport.

I address all these needs of all athletes into carefully choreographed yoga flow series’, as well as the needs of every player and every position, in every sport.

Imagine a bow ready to shoot an arrow, and imagine that the bow string is tight and not very flexible, when pulled back to shoot the string will most likely break. Now picture the bow string is only a little flexible, you could pull back the arrow only halfway, the arrow would probably shoot and it may even hit the target; but it would not have the force or strength necessary for a bull’s eye. Now, picture the perfect bow string and arrow, you load and pull the arrow way back behind your ear, the string has great strength and stretch and when you release, the force is extraordinary, the power is perfect and the speed reaches its capability, BULL’S EYE. Apply this thinking to the athletes’ muscles.

Physical Performance

• Flexibility: Many athletes have short strong muscles to generate strength and power-yet lack the fluidity and grace that comes with greater muscle length. The intense shortening that comes with disproportionate strengthening results in structural imbalance and thus more risk of injury.

Greater flexibility can reduce the risk of injury, expand the range of movement, and lead to more efficient usage, speed and power from one’s musculature.

• Strength: We have met athletes with “six-pack abs” and perfectly sculpted biceps who struggled with some of the basic weight bearing yoga exercises.

Yoga strength work reaches into much deeper muscle layers than ordinary weight training, so much so that advanced yoga practitioners can effortlessly lift their bodyweight off the floor into gymnastic arm balances.

• Lung power: Any sportspersons who has to complete athletic tasks at speed like running the 400m, swimming butterfly relay or running back and forth on the court can only get there as fast as their lungs permit.

By teaching individuals to breathe more deeply and oxygenate the blood more fully, athletes develop greater lung power and reduce the onset of one of their greatest enemies-breathlessness.


• Speed: As more of the body, musculature and nervous system are brought into peak performance through yoga training, the athlete will find that it takes less effort to generate a given level of speed.

This is because neural pathways are activated and unblocked by yoga and thus the impulses to incorporate extremities of the body into a sprint can be actualized more quickly.

• Symmetry: Any athlete who performs repetitious movements with one side of the body quickly develop imbalance in their structure.

Yoga systematically works the left and right sides of the body in slow, measured and even ways. Very quickly, individuals are able to identify the areas of their body where weaknesses and imbalances exist, and from there focus on developing more symmetry and alignment.

The end result of this symmetry is more power, decreased incident of injury. You often have your tires checked for regular wear and tear. As a result you have them balanced or aligned to reduce the usage on the most worn tire. If you do not tend to them the risk is increased damage to the overused tire until eventually it blows. The same premise hold true for an athlete and keeping their musculature in balance.

Mental Performance

• Focus: Athletic success requires total concentration and 100% channeling of an athlete’s willpower. Carl Lewis for example, used to prepare for his track and field events by utilizing a combination of yogic breath and stretch techniques as well as visualization.

By learning such techniques of concentration and singular focus through yoga, athletes can develop their “inner game” and thus strengthen the inestimable mental component of their art. The mental game of baseball is just as important as the physical prep. Yoga training helps this area tremendously. With the average game lasting two plus hours, the ability to concentrate for prolonged periods of time is the key, and could make all the difference. The practice of yoga demands that you stay present in the moment, without judgment, to perform some of the more challenging balancing postures. This translates beautifully to the demands needed on the court. Yoga teaches the athlete to be in the NOW. Not to focus on the past defeat, missed play, or the fact that they may have lost the last 5 games. It teaches the athlete to take every minute as a new opportunity for success.

• Anger-management: The breath control techniques of yoga have a second vital benefit-namely an athlete’s ability to control the explosion of their temper when provoked in a competitive match.

This not only reduces the number of injuries sustained through vengeful challenges and scuffles, but will also help cut down on the number of yellow and red cards as well as disciplinary fines.

• Relaxation: It isn't always easy to perform at a competitive level in front of tens of thousands of people. Though athletes rarely give external displays of any nerves, things are often unsteady within.

By learning yogic breath and mind control techniques, athletes can dissolve energy-sapping nerves. The ultimate goal of yoga after all, is peace of mind and athletes, as well as ascetics, can benefit from yoga’s tension releasing tools.

• Visualization: It is increasingly common these days for athletes to be taught to visualize their success in their given endeavor before going out on the court. Visualization facilitates muscle memory. The athlete “sees” himself connecting the ball in the basket, next time they are in that situation the brain recalls the memory.

Neuro-linguistic programming or self hypnosis techniques that do this, depend on individuals learning to relax themselves enough to become receptive to positive suggestion.

A one hour yoga session naturally and effortlessly leaves the participant in a relaxed “alpha brain wave” state where they can focus on and connect properly with their chosen visualization of success.

Rehabilitation

• Accelerate healing: By improving blood flow, quickening toxin release and expanding oxygenation throughout the whole body, yoga reduces the recovery time from injury and illness and stimulates the immune system. Regular practitioners of yoga are known to be less susceptible to colds and flu for example.

Yoga is also particularly helpful in speeding up the healing process of joint, bone and ligament injuries either through creating more space in the joints or by bringing increased blood flow into the injured area.

• Repair nerve damage: Most competitive team sports involve a certain number of collisions and falls. The result of repeated knocks can be a deadening of the nerves in that particular part of the body. This is ultimately not the best thing for peak performance.

Yoga has a profound revitalizing effect on the nervous system and very quickly opens up neural pathways in muscles that have deadened due to such injuries. The benefit is a return to peak levels of response time and greater athletic speed.

• Heal back injuries: Yoga has been proven to improve the health of the spine and be curative of back injuries not only for athletes but also the less active amongst us.

However, if one's livelihood and reputation depend on performing effectively in the athletic arena, it can be essential to know that yoga speeds up the healing time of back injuries more quickly by relieving compression in the vertebrae, freeing trapped nerves and creating healthier, stronger more symmetrical back muscles.

• Heal shoulder Injuries: As mentioned earlier, sports such as tennis, basketball, and baseball create undue strain on one side of the body. Athletes in these sports are particularly prone to damage on their favored sides through the sheer repetition of movement.

A rehabilitative yoga regimen will include a number of stretches which isolate and focus on the lower back, arms, shoulders and necks. These postures can be applied to injuries in these areas and will dramatically quicken the recovery time.

Yoga is a form of exercise that could theoretically be done everyday, since you are only working with your own body weight. However, for the athlete I recommend two 45 minute sessions a week. Consistency breeds results, yet again if you miss a couple of weeks it does not bring you back to ground zero. It is my hope that the athletes would take with them several stretches they find most beneficial to them and practice them daily on the road. It is my intention to develop specific routines for your basketball players that most efficiently fit into their training year. A pre season yoga class would encompass different needs than an in season pre or post game day routine.

In conclusion, I will show each player how to do each pose. I demonstrate and actually guide each player into each pose with hand on direction. I show several variations, including examples of what not to do, as well as how to go deeper if a particular pose is too easy. Hence, nobody will outgrow yoga. Their will always be options, regardless of what level and athlete finds themselves in. I am adamant that each athlete works through their own bodies issues, needs and demands, which change daily. Yoga is not the place to compete or find your ego. Everybody should be able to find success using these techniques, no matter what their entry level, building confidence right away.