Athletes' Yoga - Preventing and Treating Injuries

Dedicated athletes are constantly trying to find better ways to take care of their bodies to prevent injuries. Athletes yoga may be exactly what you need to complement your training. Too many athletes suffer from bad backs and knees, often forcing them to abandon sports altogether. You will soon see that a regular yoga practice will allow you to keep playing sports long and hard for many years to come.

The first way athletes yoga can prevent aches and pains is with its breathing techniques. When you engage in physical activity, the muscles in your body contract and can become very tight. Yoga will teach you to breathe with your stomach, ribs, and chest. When you learn to take fuller breaths during sports, you are increasing your lung capacity and VO2 max, sending more oxygen to your muscles. This allows them to expel waste products quicker and concentrate on recovery, and can prevent painful cramps and post-activity soreness.

Athletes yoga will also prevent pain by focusing on symmetry, alignment, and balance. Sports will almost always over-work certain muscles while neglecting others. This creates an imbalance in muscle strength around joints (the knee is a very commonly afflicted joint). The over-worked muscles become brittle and hard and cause painful strains and leave them susceptible to tears. Yoga, on the other hand, will balance everything out by evenly working all muscles around the joint and loosening them up. These hard, brittle muscles will become soft and relaxed, releasing any joint pain they once caused. They will also absorb shocks much better without the risk of a muscle tear.

Finally, the last way athletes yoga can prevent injuries is by increasing the range of motion of your body. A regular yoga practice will increase your mobility in the hips, back, shoulders, knees, just to name a few. By encouraging your body to move more freely, a sudden movement or twist during sports, which would normally cause a painful injury, can become something your body can easily do.

And finally, yoga can treat the injuries you already have. The practice will boost the body's natural healing process, producing pain-relieving endorphins and infection-fighting anti-bodies.

If you are serious about achieving your body's true potential, then athletes yoga is an absolutely indispensable tool. Through this practice, your body will loosen up and work more efficiently. And you can finally bid farewell to aches and pains; not only will you be preventing future injuries, but you can currently relieve pain caused by the ones you already have!

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