While such fears are natural, they shouldn’t keep you from pursuing yoga. It is true that in recent Western history, yoga has been practiced more by women than by men. However, throughout the history of yoga, many of its practices, particularly the physical postures of hatha yoga, were reserved exclusively for male practitioners. An increasing number of men today are discovering and embracing the vibrant power that yoga has offered men for thousands of years. And frequently to their surprise, they are finding that yoga can provide a complete workout for body, mind, and spirit that can enhance their performance in other physical activities.
Indeed, no less an icon of virility than Richard Gere, once named “Sexiest Man of the Year” by "Time", has reportedly traded in the workout bench for a yoga mat. You don’t have to go to the extreme of giving up your everyday athletic activities to benefit from the strengthening, toning, and centering benefits of yoga, though.
How Yoga Can Help You Make the Most of Your fitness activities.
Most sports activities tend to use certain body parts or one side of the body rather than all parts of the body equally. For instance, a runner may emphasize the use of the legs and feet; a boxer, the hands, arms, and upper body; and a tennis player uses one arm, hand, and shoulder more than the other. Such tendencies can result in imbalances in the strength and tone of your musculature, which, in turn, can translate into postural imbalances leading to injuries.
Avid athletes who injure themselves turn to yoga as a last resort alternative to mend and restore their bodies. While yoga can help you to recover from a sports injury, you don’t have to do yourself bodily injury before you can benefit from it. In fact, yoga is one of the best fitness activities to help prevent injury from occurring in the first place. Yoga practices can help you enhance your performance in nearly any physical activity by preparing you for the activity beforehand, guiding you with mindful awareness through its performance and helping to restore you afterward.
In addition, it can help you strengthen yourself further by helping you to compensate for areas of your body that are not exercised by your sport so as to have full and complete overall body strength and vitality. Yoga can help you to prepare to engage in your fitness activity or sport by strengthening, stretching, and toning your overall musculature. Practicing a basic yoga session can help improve the functioning and tone of all the muscles of your body, as well as increase flexibility and range of motion in joints, improve circulation, and promote optimal functioning of your internal organs.
Thus, you’ll be better prepared to practice your sport with much less risk of injury, as you benefit from enhanced muscular and joint strength and flexibility, and perhaps even improved breathing capacity. Once you practice your sport, yoga can help you to stay present and aware during your activity. With increased attention, you’re bound to perform better. You’ll be more aware of your movements and be better able to remember—and learn from—any shortcomings in your performance.
Once you’ve finished your sports activity, yoga stretching can help in the elimination of toxic waste substances that your body builds up during exercise, as well as lengthen and restore muscles to their relaxed state following peak exertion. This can help in any sport, including weightlifting. In fact, studies have shown that muscles that are stretched are able to lift more weight and actually become stronger as the result of the stretching. By being aware of how you are using your body, you can consciously tailor a yoga program to fit your specific fitness needs while simultaneously stretching and toning all the major muscle groups of your body.
Finally, incorporating yoga into your fitness practice may actually help you achieve a level of overall physical conditioning that is more complete and more balanced than which you may be achieving by practicing your particular athletic activity on its own.
Yoga for Sports
If you’re already practicing yoga or are being drawn to yoga out of a driving fascination, then you don’t need to be convinced that it is for you. But if you’re like a lot of men, especially of the “macho” variety or a guy who’s addicted to weightlifting or vigorous athletic sport, you may be a bit skeptical or even apprehensive about approaching a practice of yoga. You may feel that it’s a practice for women, wimps, or spiritual escapists.
Or you may feel a different kind of apprehension, a fear that you won’t be able to do yoga postures as well as other men who have been practicing for a long time, or will be viewed with contempt as a yoga “outsider.”