Should Athletes Do Yoga?
Yoga stretching poses are incredibly beneficial for athletes and can help round out a training routine. Aside from sport-specific practice, you likely devote time in your workout schedule to cross-training such as weightlifting or HIIT. While strength and endurance are important, so is lengthening muscle fibers, increasing mobility, and aiding recovery, which is why yoga flexibility exercises can benefit athletes.
“The best way for an athlete to incorporate yoga stretching poses into their routine is to use it as a tool for better understanding your body and your breath. This can be a morning stretch routine, a pre- or post-workout ritual, or an evening wind-down,” said Natalia Perez-Segnini, a yoga instructor for Tone House, the premier athletic training facility in NYC. Follow her 10-minute yoga flow for athletes to develop your mind-body connection and lengthen, strengthen, and mobilize your muscles.
Whether you’re a yoga newbie or have done your fair share of warrior poses, this yoga for athletes flow is right for any skill-level. If you’re unsure whether these yoga stretching poses are right for you, Perez-Segnini has some good advice: “There isn’t a prerequisite to practicing yoga. Your body doesn't need to be flexible enough. All you need is time, space, and a desire to better understand your body's capabilities, to better understand your breath. Yoga is an opportunity to get to know yourself better. Show up on your mat and see what you discover."
Seven Yoga Poses for Athletes
01 Child’s Pose with Side Stretch
Child’s pose is hugely beneficial for opening your hips and lower back, as well as relieving tension in your shoulders, knees and ankles.
How to do it:
- Start in a tabletop position with your feet together and your knees about shoulder width apart.
- Push your weight back towards your heels and bring your forehead to the mat, extending your hands out in front of you.
- Walk your hands to the left to feel a stretch through your right side-body, breathing in and out. Then walk your hands to the right, again breathing into the stretch.
02 Cat Cow
Cat cow is a classic yoga pose and an ideal stretch for maintaining a healthy spine and a strong core.
How to do it:
- Raise into tabletop position, bringing feet and knees hip-width apart and your wrists under your shoulders.
- With your core engaged, breathe in while dropping your belly into cow pose, looking up toward the sky to open your chest. Breathe out as you bring belly button to spine, arching your back and looking down for cat pose, feeling a stretch through your back.
03 Puppy / Dolphin
Puppy pose stretches your shoulders, back and arms. Moving into dolphin pose strengthens your arms while offering a deeper stretch through your shoulders, back, hamstrings, calves and ankles.
How to do it:
- Puppy: In a tabletop position, step your hands forward to extend them, lowering your forehead to the mat. Keep your hips up in the air, feeling a big stretch through your chest, shoulders and back.
- Dolphin: For a more intense stretch, move into dolphin pose by putting your weight into your forearms and lifting your hips into the air, straightening your legs so you’re in a downward dog position with your forearms on the ground.
04 Low Lunge to Half Split
This stretch is perfect for lengthening the hamstring, hip flexor and quad muscles.
How to do it:
- Low lunge: From downward dog, bring your right foot forward in a low lunge with your heel in line with your knee. Have your left leg extended behind you, with your knee on the ground. Inhale to sink deeper into the lunge and get a deeper stretch.
- Half split: Exhale while shifting your hips back toward your heel. Straighten your right leg and flex your toes to the sky. Keep your back straight as you lower your torso, imagining meeting your chin to your toes.
- Rock between the low lunge and half split, breathing in and out, then return to tabletop and switch sides.
05 Lateral Lunge
This pose opens your hips and lengthens your hamstrings and adductors, which are notoriously tight for athletes.
How to do it:
- From a low lunge, shift to the left and stand into a wide-legged forward fold. Bend your left knee into a half squat while keeping your right leg straight with your foot flexed. Keep your hands on the mat while keeping your spine lifted to get a nice stretch through your hamstrings and hips.
- Shift your weight through center and over to the right, bending your right knee into a half squat.
06 Malasana (Yogi Squat)
This is a great way to open your hips while stretching and strengthening your ankles, calves, knees, groin, and glutes.
How to do it:
- Stand with your feet about hip width apart, toes turned out about 45-degrees. Gently bend your knees to squat as low comfortably possible, sinking your upper body between your thighs and keeping your palms together or centered in front of your chest.
- Lengthen your spine and open your hips by using your triceps to push against the inside of your knees.
- Take slow, deep breaths while in this pose to maximize the potential of the stretch.
07 Supine Spinal Twist
This twist will stretch out your back while at the same time helping your posterior chain loosen up. It’s a great stretch to improve your lateral movements in any athletics.
How to do it:
- Sit on your mat, extending your legs out and lowering down to lie with your back on the mat. Bend your knees, keeping feet and shoulders flat on the floor.
- Shift your knees to the left side, lowering them to the floor as far as is comfortable. Extend your right arm out straight and turn your head to gaze at your right hand, feeling a stretch through your torso and right-side glute.
- Return to center and shift your knees to the left side to repeat the stretch.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Type of Yoga is Best for Athletes?
Athletes will reap benefits from any yoga flexibility exercises, but there are different styles that might suit what you’re looking for. Vinyasa yoga will be more active and strengthening, whereas Hatha yoga will be slower and more focused on breath while holding poses longer to increase flexibility. You can find yoga poses for athletes that engage muscles for specific sports, like our yoga flow for basketball players.
What Are the Athletic Performance Benefits of Practicing Yoga?
“Yoga can help you improve your performance as an athlete in aiding and improving your mobility, especially in the end range of motion. In the game, we don't have time to think about what our body is doing. It just does it because it knows our sport,” said Perez-Segnini. “Using yoga as a way to help you improve your mobility will give extra attention to your joints and your tendons, which are responsible for helping your muscles exert that power, strength, and drive in your sport.”
We hope you enjoy this routine and come back to it whenever you need, perhaps regularly incorporating it into your weekly training schedule. Find your flow with more yoga for athletes like a yoga workout for runners or this yoga flow for hip opening.