Every gold medal tells you that at the highest level of sport, you often train for 1 percent better than yourself, your previous performances, and your best. competitionThey also take care of the finer details of education.
It’s a lot to manage. On managing emotions and expectations and relationships. On top of managing everything else that life throws at you.
Yoga is about non-control. Which can be scary for athletes. Scary, even. And it might even contradict some research on the importance of attentional control in sports and high-performance endeavors. But only on the surface. Instead of curbing our hands attention So strongly, yoga asks us to allow what is, so that we don’t waste energy suppressing thoughts or feelings we don’t want. Which is very important for sports performance.
Practicing yoga doesn’t have to mean the poses you see on Instagram. This does not mean any poses at all. Practicing yoga can take many forms, which may or may not involve what you do with your physical body.
You don’t need a board. You don’t need anything beyond your intention, the intention to be here, now, with what is in this moment. And maybe you chose to move your body at this point. You may choose to attend to your breathing. There are many ways to do this, and we’ll talk more about some of these possible actions in a future article, but for now, let’s talk a little more about what research has shown about the relationship between yoga practice and athletic performance.
There are at least six interrelated and empirically validated mechanisms through which yoga improves athletic performance. They are:
1. Increase efficiency and recovery
Studies have shown that regular yoga practice can improve flexibility, balance, and core stability—all important elements for most sports. For example, a 2020 study on Journal of science and sports medicine found that college athletes who practiced yoga twice a week for 10 weeks showed significant improvements in balance and flexibility scores compared to a control group.
2. Mental focus and stress management
Research shows that yoga mindfulness components help athletes manage related competition stress and anxietywith sleep quality and emotional regulation during high events. Yoga also helps to reduce cortisol and optimize the state of metabolism. Anecdotally, Olympic athletes who have incorporated yoga into their training have also reported better emotional regulation in high-stress situations and improved sleep quality.
3. Injury prevention
Numerous studies have shown that yoga can help reduce injury rates among athletes. This is related to improved body awareness (proprioception) and better movement patterns. Studies with professional basketball players have shown that those who practice yoga have fewer injuries than those who do not.
4. Breathing and recovery
Pranayama (breathing) practices in yoga have been shown to improve breathing efficiency and recovery. Studies with endurance athletes have shown improved VO2 max and reduced recovery time between workouts for those who practice specific yoga breathing techniques.
5. Flow mode activation and energy management
Each task in sport requires a specific level of activation for each athlete, and each athlete must discover their “optimal” level of activation for the tasks they must perform. They also need a routine to effectively guide their bodies to this level of activation. Yoga helps athletes learn nervous system and what they need for more or less activation and how to navigate that activation easily and directly.
6. Image and neural networks
As in a previous articleimages change your brain. Imagined movement activates the same areas of your brain as actual movement, strengthening neural networks to increase the efficiency of physical movement in complex and unpredictable environments. Yoga supports seeing from within—a clear, vivid understanding of how your body moves and how your nervous system responds to movement—enhancing your visual experience. And studies have shown that consistent imagery practice can improve an athlete’s performance by 20 to 25 percent. This will go a long way towards the 1 percent you need for your gold medal.
Sports and important competitions to read
Now about that “allowing”. There are many ways to practice yoga. Yoga is not poses. This is not a YouTube channel. It’s not the hashtag-yoga photos you see in it Social media.
Yoga is connecting to the life force – the life force of you, your colleagues and your competitors. It is a connection to your inner self wisdom. The wisdom that is always within you is unbreakable. But our minds and the things we have to manage—not to mention the stimuli and stresses of modern life—are often so active that accessing this inner wisdom is difficult.
So yoga is there, and has been there for thousands of years, to help us let go and listen. To let go and be fully free to experience who you are – this can be a gold medal! And the benefits are much (much!) greater and much more valuable than any medal or result.
