Yoga for Football Players?

Yoga is no longer just for women and health enthusiasts. Football and basketball teams all over are incorporating yoga moves into their training regimes.  Here are a few ways that yoga can help advance your fitness journey: 

IMPROVE FLEXIBILITY

The stretching in yoga is beneficial to increasing the range of motion in your joints. This allows athletes to put more explosiveness in their movements to jump higher, throw further, and step wider. Athletes that train often tend to build up high levels of lactic acid, therefore getting a thorough stretch is the best way of reducing these aches and pains.

STRENGTHEN MUSCLES

Yoga is a more balanced way of doing strength training. It permits the body, in a low impact way, to gain strength without the stress of weight training. Instead of focusing on one muscle at a time, yoga also trains your entire body, giving you a connected feeling.  

PREVENT INJURIES/QUICKEN RECOVERY

The fact that yoga lengthens and relaxes muscles, more blood is able to flow throughout the body. By allowing more oxygen to travel through your body, the muscles are more easily helped in the healing and growing process.

RELAX YOUR MIND

The mental benefits from yoga are limitless. Regularly practicing yoga allows you to take an hour to focus on yourself and block any chaos from your day.  Because most styles of yoga involve meditation techniques, this is a great way to keep you composed and centered. With deep breathing and inward thinking, yoga can bring calmness and reduce stress.

Every year, yoga is becoming a bigger trend as more professional athletes are finding ways to implement it into their regimes. LeBron James is an example of such athletes finding the benefits from doing yoga, as he states "Yoga isn't just about the body, it's also about the mind and it's a technique that has really helped me."