Yoga For Swimmers

Yoga can help with your stamina in the water especially during summer when the hot days are calling everyone to the beach. Swimming like any repetitive exercise brings about excessive use of certain muscle groups and the under use of others. However, if you participate in a variety of strokes as opposed to one type, you can lessen this concern. With swimming, people tend to only engage the upper body primarily the shoulders and back when swimming while yoga can help engage all parts of the body. There are many yoga poses that can balance your body and help with breathing, which is vital to swimming.

Swimming and yoga have a great deal in common, both of which focus on moving while inhaling and exhaling in a rhythmic way. Early yoga text reveals that a "pranayama " (breathing in) practice must be done on a daily basis. This text also suggests that an unconditioned person should also swim in combination with yoga to improve breathing and body balance. In the course of yoga for swimmers, the primary focus is on breathing, in which afterwards, the focus of the exercises then unites breathing with movement. You can exercise on your own by doing the movements of swimming strokes while on land and focusing on the way you breathe. Our own yoga exercise demands breathing inside and out of the nose while our swimming breath is inside and out of the mouth. Thus, practicing these two together will definitely help with your stamina in the water.

Here are some yoga postures for swimmers:

Chest Expansion Standing - Interlace hands behind the back; raise ribcage up, breath into filling up the lungs. Pull hands from the body. This powerful pose opens the chest, pectorals, as well as shoulders before and right after the swim.

Knot Poses - Lying face down, pull right arm around left side of body and left arm across right. Arms must be right below the chest muscles. Switch sides after ten deep breaths. This particular opening posture produces space in the deltoids as well as scapula.

Camel Pose - On knees, reach hands to seated muscles (glutes), press tight and press forward, lift chest and experience an incredible anti-aging back flex. Release right after five deep breaths into a forward fold Child's pose.

Abdominal Exercises - Our movements in and out of the water originate from the midsection. Making our center strong only enhances our movement through water. While lying on your back with your feet on the ground, interlace hands at the rear of head and slowly and gradually rise on the exhale, release in the inhale and like a wave, allow your strong centered breath raise you up and down. Maintain your abdominal muscles contracted all the way through.

Super Person Pose - Lying face-down, lift your arms and legs from the floor, maintain this position for 5 breaths and do it again five more times. This back strengthening pose produces great posture muscles in and out of the water.

The above-mentioned moves are built around focused breathing and visualization. The final move that you should try begins with your hands on your belly, knees bent, and feet on the floor. Breathe into your belly. This basic exercise provides time to picture yourself moving through the water - staying relaxed and concentrated - uniting breaths along with movement so you get a total body/mind exercise. Thus, incorporating yoga in swimming could be a complete exercise.

Yoga Fit has a lot of very informative advice in all aspects of yogafit.com yoga poses, training, and everything else. She also has a number of yogafit.com yoga conference meet ups several times a year and is a known yoga guru and mogul around the world.