Yoga for the Slopes
Yoga is perfect for those who wish to make the most out of their time on the slopes and remain injury free. It could also assist with recovery after a busy day on the snow as it will help to ease those tired muscles.
Yoga is the perfect activity to prepare for skiing and snowboarding. It is also important to continue your yoga whilst in resort to reap the benefits and speed up recovery time.
Yoga could enhance your performance by improving the following:-
Agility and Coordination
Yoga postures mobilise the body and require plenty of coordination. By improving your agility and coordination you will enhance your technique and hopefully stay up right whilst enjoying injury free riding.
Yoga often conjures up an image of someone standing on one leg (usually in the tree posture). Yoga will greatly improve balance. It does this by helping you to discover your centre of balance and strengthening the muscles required for good balance.
A good sense of balance enables you to move freely, it will help prevent falls and injuries, clear and focus the mind and raise confidence levels.
Cardio Strength
Yoga increases cardio strength through performing yoga vinyasas or flowing yoga sequences. A vinyasa provides the perfect warm up for any sporting activity. Try starting the day with a Yoga Vinyasa.
Increasing cardio strength will improve your endurance and stamina it will enable you to get the most out of your trip and lift pass by allowing you to ski all day and tackle those long and demanding runs without tiring.
Core Strength
When it comes to skiing a strong core is essential to help prevent injury, enhance movement, increase power and provide stability. Our core muscles respond well to slow controlled movements so this makes yoga the perfect form of exercise to strengthen them.
Flexibility
Increased flexibility will help prevent injuries and muscular aches and pains during your valuable time on the slopes. Restricted movement will limit performance making it difficult to change direction quickly or adapt to different terrains.
Remember to perform a selection yin or restorative postures at the end of each day to help the muscles recover.
Leg Strength
Yoga will strengthen all of the muscles equally and make sure that muscular imbalances that can occur due to different sporting activities are minimised keeping joints strong and healthy. Balancing postures performed on one leg and warrior postures will strengthen the legs ready for the slopes.
Focus
Yoga improves mental focus and keeps the mind clear. Yoga is practiced mindfully. Being mindful during yoga and completely aware of different sensations within the body encourages practitioners to be mindful when performing other activities. By developing mindfulness on your yoga mat you can extend this to your time on the slopes and enhance your ability to concentrate and remain focused.
Improved focus helps you remain sharp to tackle challenges and reduces the risk of injuries.
This blog article was written by Sue Fuller creator of the Yoga 2 Hear range of audio yoga classes and yoga teacher training courses.
