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| Picture Credit: CrossFitLouisvilleEast |
Benefits of Cross-training with Yoga:
Research shows that individuals most prone to injury are either too flexible or too tight. Flexibility causes laxity in the joint where tightness causes loss of range of motion and pulling on the musculature and skeletal structure causing improper alignment.
Through yoga, CrossFitters can grow stronger physically and mentally, leading to better performance results, speedier recovery and safer movements. Additional benefits include:
Flexibility: Stretching a tight body in new ways will help it become more flexible, bringing greater range of motion to muscles and joints. Over time, expect to gain flexibility in your hamstrings, back, shoulders, and hips.
Strength: Although CrossFit classes focus on gaining strength, many yoga poses require you to support the weight of your own body in new ways. It is critical in your overall strength training to continually challenge your body and introduce new movements. Some yoga exercises require you to move slowly in and out of poses, which also increases overall strength.
Pain Prevention: Increased flexibility and strength can help prevent the root cause of some types of back pain and other injuries. Yoga also improves alignment, both in and out of class, which helps prevent many day-to-day types of pain and injuries.
Better Breathing: When was the last time you paid attention to your breath? Or realized you had been holding your breath for several seconds. Yoga breathing exercises, Pranayama, focus the attention on the breath and teach us how to better use our lungs, benefiting the entire body. Certain types of breath also help clear the nasal passages and even calm the central nervous system, which has both physical and mental benefits.
Body Awareness: Doing yoga will give you an increased awareness of your own body. Nearly all of the skills involved in CrossFit require you to have finely tuned kinesthetic awareness. In Yoga, subtle movements are used to improve alignment. Over time, this awareness will increase your level of comfort in your own body.
If you practice Yoga & are a CrossFit athlete, I would love to hear what some of your favorite yoga poses are to build upon your flexibility as well as where you've seen the most difference in your CrossFit performance as a result of Yoga.
**If you live in the Louisville area and are interested in CrossFit and Yoga, please visit my teaching calendar here. You can also sign up to receive the Louisville Yoga Newsletter on updates of when and where I am teaching.**
So quickly involved in Louisville ! Well done !
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