Dr. Suresh Devrao Ingale
Associate Professor & Director of Physical Education and Sports
MVP Samaj’s Arts and Commerce College, Taharabad
Tal- Baglan, Dist. Nashik
Abstract:
Yoga and meditation have been around for over five thousand years, even though it might seem like they are the new trendy practices just now hitting the mainstream. The two go hand-in-hand with meditation being a core element of yoga. Practicing yoga and meditation will help develop a better sense of self and help you be more in tune with your mind, body, and spirit. From increasing flexibility to building mental resilience necessary for competition, yoga offers a wealth of benefits for athletes. Read on to learn about some of the research supporting the benefits of yoga for athletes, how to come up with a routine, and the advantages of working with a yoga professional. Present research paper has suggested that yoga improves flexibility, balance, coordination, and lung function. It can also help athletes effectively manage stress, an often forgotten but key contributor to recovery and performance.
Keywords: Yoga, athletic, mental resilience, meditation.
Introduction:
There are over 100 styles of yoga. During your yoga journey, you will experience slow-paced classes like Yin Yoga and Restorative Yoga, or you will have an opportunity to take things up a notch with styles that have a heavier emphasis on strength and endurance like Vinyasa Yoga or Hot Yoga. While yoga trains your body, meditation trains your mind. Meditation has the ability to help manage anxiety, stress, and other feelings of well-being. Similar to yoga, there are a variety of ways to practice meditation, from guided versus unguided to focusing on your breath through breathing techniques. Regardless of the types you choose, you are bound to experience the many benefits yoga and meditation bring, both physically and mentally.
If you are looking for a creative way to get strength and resistance training while improving range of motion and balance, yoga may be a good addition to your workouts. Yoga may be the perfect cross-training method for athletes of all sports. Yoga can help athletes develop better breathing techniques while it improves balance, flexibility, core strength, and even endurance.
What is Yoga?
The word ‘Yoga’ is derived from Sanskrit root yuj which means ‘join’ or ‘unite’. This may be taken as the union of body, mind and soul, and is used in the literature both as an end as well as means. As an end, yoga signifies ‘integration of personality’ at the highest level. As means, yoga includes various practices and techniques which are employed to achieve the development of such integration. These practices and techniques are means in the yogic literature and are also referred collectively as ‘Yoga’.
Benefits of Yoga for Athletes
Practicing yoga regularly can help improve your sports skills and overall fitness.
Develop Deep, Relaxed Breathing
If you participate competitively in sport or simply join the occasional fun run on a whim, you are aware of the impact breathing can have on performance. Deep, relaxed breathing is the foundation of reducing performance anxiety and improving concentration. Yoga will help you develop a habit of breathing correctly. Yoga practice integrations the mind-body connection and athletes can benefit from this combination of skills training.
Increase Core Strength
Yoga poses are all about building core strength. The slow, focused movements require a strong midsection and the isometric contractions of many exercises will add a new form of resistance training to your typical machine-based workouts.
Increase Flexibility and Range of Motion
Yoga routines incorporate slow, steady flexibility exercise that is ideal for athletes. Frequent yoga training may increase flexibility and range of motion while relieving muscle tension. Whether you are a runner or a golfer, improved range of motion can often help improve performance.
Improve Balance
Yoga is a perfect way to incorporate balance exercises into your training routine. Balance exercises are often overlooked by athletes but are one of the most effective ways to correct muscle imbalance or body mechanic problems. With most sports and weight training routines, you tend to perform repetitive motions that develop some muscle groups while others are ignored. Yoga can fix these imbalances.
Use for Cross Training
Yoga is a great low-impact way to cross train. Cross training is necessary for athletes who do the same sport or exercise routine year-round. Adding new exercises can help reduce injury, relieve training boredom, add variety and help you recover from hard aerobic or strength workouts. Yoga can be done at a high or low intensity and there are hundreds of postures that can provide a workout for any athletic need.
Choose from Many Styles
There are many styles of yoga that range from very dynamic, active, movements that go from one posture to another (and result in a thorough aerobic workout) to more slow-paced practices that hold postures for several minutes and form an intense strength training and balance workout.
Practice Safely
While yoga is an excellent exercise option, it isn't without risk, so you need to learn how to prevent yoga injuries.
While much of the benefit of yoga practice is still based on subjective feedback from participants, more research is looking closely at positive health outcomes from yoga. Studies reported by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes of Health have linked yoga practice with decreased low back pain and less reported chronic pain from arthritis, headaches, and carpal tunnel syndrome, as well as lower blood pressure, heart, breathing rates, and reduced insomnia.
Benefits For Athletes – Mind And Body
Yoga is more than “just stretching” and moving from one pose to the next. Consider it a type of therapy for your muscles. Practicing yoga can make every form of training more effective and efficient by improving not only flexibility, but also posture, body mechanics, and awareness. Yoga gives the body an opportunity to naturally return to its optimal alignment. By doing so, the body can transmit force much more efficiently and perform better across the board. This sets athletes up for even greater success. Other benefits of yoga include injury prevention, faster recovery, and better endurance. What athlete wouldn’t want to take advantage of these benefits?
NBA stars like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, LeBron James, and Kevin Love have all reaped the benefits from a regular yoga practice. LeBron James has practiced yoga for nearly a decade and has credited it as one of the reasons he has had the ability to remain healthy throughout most of his career. The NBA even has a go-to yoga teacher named Kent Katich, who has played a huge role in the growth of the practice off the court.2 Players have seen an increase in endurance, power, flexibility, and focus because of their yoga practices. Training off the court is just as imperative as training on the court.
Other key components of training off the court are meditation and breathing, whether through yoga or practiced on their own. The importance of breathing techniques is sometimes overlooked for athletes. Focusing on your breath and centering your mind can get you relaxed, focused, and ready to go for that next effort or stressful situation during competition. Proper breathing can transform your health and athletic performance for the better. Combine yoga and meditation with breathing exercises and you’ll find your power in the practice and your power in the game. Everything translates back to your breath.
The Power of Your Breath
Something that appears so effortless, yet is so powerful. Your breath carries you through your day. Your life quite literally depends on it. Regularly practicing controlled breathing techniques with meditation can improve many areas of your life for the better, from calming the mind and removing brain fog, to boosting the immune system and increasing energy. The formal practice of controlling your breath in yoga is called pranayama, which translates to the control of life force and is known as the extension of your breath.
Breathing exercises allow you to downregulate the sympathetic nervous system and manage strong emotions such as fear and anxiety. Your heart rate increases and your breathing becomes shallower and all over the place when you feel yourself starting to become stressed. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to regain your sense of calm and focus.4 Here are a few examples of controlled breathing exercises that you can do anywhere, anytime:
· Diaphragmatic breathing technique: This technique, also called belly breathing, is beneficial if you are stressed or anxious. According to the Cleveland Clinic, the diaphragm is the most efficient muscle of breathing. This form of breathing teaches you how to strengthen your diaphragm. Maybe you are stressed out about your game or anxious about an upcoming meeting. Sit in a comfortable position or lay down on your back. Place one hand below your rib cage and the other hand on your chest. Take a deep breath through your nose and allow your diaphragm to fill with air. Keep the hand on your chest as still as possible. Slowly exhale with pursed lips. Continue this cycle of breaths for about 5 to 10 minutes. Slow diaphragmatic breathing is one of the best ways to relax your body and calm your mind.
· Alternate nostril breathing technique: In yoga, this breathing technique is called Nadi Shodhana. This technique is focused on lowering stress, increasing alertness, and improving cardiovascular function. Sit in a comfortable position. Place your left hand on your left knee while your right-hand lifts to your nose. First exhale, and then use your thumb to close your right nostril. Inhale through your left nostril. Close the left nostril with your fingers. Open your right nostril and now exhale through the right side. Complete this cycle by opening your left nostril and exhaling through the left nostril. Make sure to rotate between both nostrils during each cycle of breath.
· 4-7-8 breathing technique: This technique is ideal for bringing your body into a deep state of relaxation. Focus on regulating your breath, rather than on all of the outside noise in the world. Press the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth and exhale. Close your mouth and inhale through your nose for 4 counts, hold your breath for 7 counts, and then exhale very slowly for 8 counts making a whooshing exhale – this should sound oceanic as you work through the cycles of inhaling and exhaling. A new cycle of breath begins once you inhale again. 4 full cycles are recommended.
Benefits of Yoga on Sports Performance
· Mental Health: Let us first begin with the benefits of Yoga on mental health. After all, good mental health is of paramount importance for being healthy physically as well. As advised above, breathing technique forms an integral part of Yoga. Do I hear you asking ‘how?’ It really is very basic – by breathing deep and right, something that you would be doing when you practice Yoga; you are inhaling more oxygen and allowing the cells of your body to have access to that oxygen for a longer period of time. A common practice in yoga is to breathe only from one nostril at a time, while holding the other one closed with the tip of your finger. Medical research has shown that this boosts increased activity of the opposite side of the brain, leading to better cognitive performance and tasks associated with the other side of the brain. Regular yoga practice helps children with attention deficit disorder and people suffering from anxiety, depression and mood swings. It also helps keep the mind calm and reduce stress and thereby increase the general well-being of the person.
· Strength – Asanas: Ever wondered, why so many of us, after a hard day’s work, come and plonk ourselves, on our home sofas, with very little energy to even fetch a glass of water for ourselves. This is caused by lack of inner strength. Certain asanas of the yoga help generate inner strength. Inner strength is essential in doing day to day activities and in preventing you from injuries. This is especially useful, as we grow old and need more energy and strength to do the same activity.
· Flexibility – Asanas: The popular notion that you need to be flexible in order to do yoga is incorrect; it is really the other way round – you should do yoga so that you can be more flexible. If you have a flexible body, you find it easy to do tasks. A lot of poses in Yoga concentrate on stretching and improving your flexibility. With yoga, not only the muscles of the body, but also the softer tissues of your body are worked out, resulting in less build-up of the lactic acid, which is responsible for stiffness in various parts of the body. Yoga increases a range of motions of the less used inner muscles and helps in lubrication of joints. The result is a more flexible body, able to perform tasks easily.
· Cardiovascular – Pranayama: Yoga has a lot of positive effects on the cardiovascular system of our body. A healthy cardiovascular system is responsible for preventing heart attacks, strokes and hypertension. Heart disease is a problem which has roots in an improper lifestyle, faulty diet and negative thinking. Our thoughts, emotions and feelings affect our body and negative emotions/thoughts send a series of complex and unhealthy chemical processes throughout the body, giving alarms that something is amiss. Yoga tends to control these by bringing in fresh life-giving oxygen. The antioxidant properties of Yoga help in preventing the negative emotions and promote a general well-being in the body.
· Memory Improvement – Dhyanam: Yoga helps in retaining information better and for a longer period of time due to its focus on concentration and meditation. By breathing right, concentrating and meditating, more blood flows to the brain, making it supple and ready to accept more information and reproduce that information when required.
Conclusion:
Yoga offers new learning possibilities to a wider group of students than traditional sports or fitness curriculum, making it a valuable addition to any educational program. Additionally, adding yoga to a school's curriculum will help provide a quality physical education program as modification of traditional physical education yoga in sports as important as other think it helps us in different ways and different levels in a sports men life. Yoga can play a key role in cultivating mind control and concentration which helps a sportsperson to perform at their game. It offers children and adults an opportunity to experience success in physical activity, which can help build a foundation of strong of life. However, curriculum specialists, teachers, trainers and students should know and analyze seriously the real challenges of yoga education in classroom settings and real life as well as highlighted above, researcher find out that yoga in sports as important as other think it helps us in different ways and different levels in a sports men life. We have improved our performance by daily yoga practicing in order to perform a sporting action efficiently and effectively, a person needs to have a high degree of concentration and focus with a mind that is calm and controlled, Yoga can help a sportsperson to have evenness of mind and control of their thoughts even during stress and/or adversity. Yoga can play a key role in cultivating mind control and concentration which helps a sportsperson to perform at their peak leaves and yoga helps us a lot.
References:
· Lloyd-Billington, Michael. “6 Athletic Performance Benefits of Yoga & How to Achieve Them.” Onnit Academy, 22 Jan. 2012, www.onnit.com/academy/6-athletic-performance-benefits-of-yoga-how-to-achieve-them/.
· Willis, Zack. “Why NBA Players Like Andre Iguodala and Blake Griffin Do Yoga.” Sportscasting, 17 Oct. 2013, www.sportscasting.com/why-nba-players-like-andre-iguodala-and-blake-griffin-do-yoga/.
· “Pranayama Exercises & Poses.” Yoga Journal, 3 Apr. 2017, www.yogajournal.com/poses/types/pranayama.
· Shakeshaft, Jordan. “How to Breathe Stress and Anxiety Away.” Greatist, Greatist, 9 Mar. 2011, greatist.com/happiness/breathing-exercises-relax#3.-Progressive-muscle-relaxation.
