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Yoga for Sports & Sports Fitness
by Marianne Woods Cirone, M.S., Certified Yoga Teacher
Football players and golfers doing yoga? PGA golfers,
Olympic champion divers, and NFL football players are just a few of
the athletes now practicing yoga. Whether you're a biker,
hikers, paddler, equestrian, surfer, golfer or aficionado of another
sport, there is a yoga book or video, tailored just for you.
Famous yoga instructor Rodney Yee has developed a highly acclaimed
yoga video entitled
Yoga Conditioning for Athletes, which is a great overall program
for all types of athletics, as is Yoga
for Athletes. Sports yoga books and videos are often a
great introduction to yoga for the sports enthusiast because the
books incorporate the yoga techniques and their benefits directly
toward the particular sport, although once introduced, one may wish
to delve further into yoga studies.
Yoga for Sports: The Secret to Limitless Performance by Alice
Christensen is an overall guide to using yoga to enhance and
complement athletic performance.
Yoga for Athletes: Secrets of an Olympic Coach, by Aladar
Koglar, Ph.D. (shown at the right) who has coached athletes to Gold
Olympic medals, World Cups and NCAA championships offers tips for
success through yoga. There are often some great tips specific
to each sport in the sports yoga books that your average yoga
teacher would not know (for example, the
Yoga for Equestrians book cautions readers not to do a the
"woodcutter" pose in front of the horses, as it tends to "spook"
them.) Another interesting book to try is
Kundalini Yoga for Relaxation II Sports Yoga.
Yoga for golf is a hot topic as golfers
look for ways to improve strength and flexibility while calming
the mind and increasing mental focus. Improve Your Golf with Yoga Techniques
by Ashok Wahi, et al, has written a book which golfers claim has
taken six strokes off their game after one session (we're not
quite sure where they had started, but it IS a definite
improvement!) This book is spiral bound which is very
helpful when using the book as a guide to do poses or movements.
One reader remarked, "If golf is the most mental of sports and
yoga is the most is the most mental of exercises, then it makes
sense to fuse the two." It makes sense to us too.
Yoga has been shown to help athletes improve their performance by
improving strength, flexibility, mental clarity and mental focus.
Katherine Roberts has a series
of products developed for the golfer who wants to improve their
game and reduce stress. Roberts has a DVD (shown left)
called
Yoga for Golfers, and two other DVDs called
PAR Level Yoga For Golfers and
BIRDIE Level Yoga For Golfers. In addition, she has book
entitled
Yoga for Golfers : A Unique Mind-Body Approach to Golf Fitness.
She has founded a television show called Yoga for Golfers which
airs on The Golf Channel. Roberts works include yoga
postures specifically selected for a golfer's needs, proper
breathing techniques, mind-relaxation methods, injury-reducing
stretches and visualization tools for success on and off the
course.
The Runner's Yoga Book
by Jean Couch, et al is a highly regarded book by yoga
teachers and runners alike. This book contains over 400 photographs
and 21 yoga routines for runners
and aficionados of other sports as
well. Couch originally
published this book in 1979, and revised it
1990 after she had done more training in Iyengar yoga, the type of yoga
focused on precise alignment. Runners who may be plagued with tight
hamstrings, joint problems and underdeveloped upper bodies will find
resolution within the pages of this book. Any
discussion of yoga and running would be incomplete without a mention of Power
Yoga for Runners, (link shown left) by Beryl
Bender Birch and Thom Birch. Beryl has taught yoga at the prestigious New York Road Runners Club for over 20
years, and Thom is a world class runner and a yoga teacher. This is
a 30-minute video (available as VHS or DVD) in the Ashtanga style
of yoga. While not specifically developed as yoga for runners,
similar videos are the Power Yoga
videos by Bryan Kest and Baron Baptiste's Journey Into Power, Level 2. However, runners may have enough high
intensity from their running practices and a more soothing style of yoga
may balance out their routines more fully.
A
highly acclaimed yoga book for horse riders is Yoga for Equestrians
by Linda Benedik and Veronica Wirth. I was impressed with this book
when one of my students who raises and rides horses brought this book into
class one day, and lent it to me. She found the breathing techniques in
the book to be especially valuable, using them to calm her own
breath and consequently calm a very high strung horse. Readers
unanimously give this book the highest ratings.
Sleeping Bag Yoga: Stretch, Relax and Energize for Hikers, Bikers and
Paddlers by Erin Widman is a creative book that suggests doing yoga on a sleeping
bag while camping. After spending a day hiking up a mountain side,
biking for hours or paddling a canoe, you are sure to feel muscles that
you didn't know you had, and yoga can be the perfect antidote. One
reader commented that he will no longer sit inside his tent waiting out
the rain when he can be doing a yoga routine inside the tent.
Surf Flex: Flexibility, Yoga and Conditioning Exercises for Surfers
by Paul
Frediani is a very popular book with surfers, skateboarders and
snowboarders. This book contains conditioning exercises uses a Swiss ball, plus yoga stretches at the beginning and end of the workout. |
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Yoga for Golfers
