By Charlene Waldner
July 3, 2007 -- Maintaining flexibility and making the time to stretch can be a challenge for many triathletes. During the off-season stretching or yoga may have been a priority, but as the race season approaches, it is often the first thing to drop off. As the intensity of training, racing, and stress increase, maintaining a stretching routine becomes even more important.
Practicing yoga regularly will improve breathing, lengthen muscle tissue, increase flexibility, strengthen the core and improve balance and posture.
Yoga can help you focus on breathing to reduce pre-race stress and anxiety. Deep breathing promotes relaxation. Yoga can teach you how to connect the rhythm of your breath with movement. With awareness of your breath, you can bring postures into your biking, running and swimming. Breath work brings oxygen to over-working muscles under intense physical exertion.
Yoga can also help ease muscle tension and imbalance. For example, when riding a bike, a cyclist’s spine is in a state of flexion, hunched over the handlebars. In order to achieve overall-flexibility and balanced muscle groups, one needs to incorporate counteracting movements. For example, try back bends for elongating and stretching the over-used hip flexors and quadriceps. By using the alignment principles of yoga you can help restore balance to how you sit on your bicycle
Yoga is a form of meditation where the mind is still, calm and focused on the breath. Learning how to focus is a useful skill one can take into sport. The ability to be in the present moment during competition can enhance performance awareness by getting into the “Zone”.
Yoga can teach us how to relax. Tension sucks up power. A tension free body is vital to an athlete’s comfort and endurance. On a bike, French bike racer Bernard Hinault says, “you should feel like you can play the piano while riding your bike”. This means no death grips on the handlebars.
Yoga doesn’t have to be an hour-long session. In fact, it’s better to fit in 10 minutes per day than an hour per week. One of my favorite DVD’s is Rodney Yee’s ‘am/pm yoga’. The DVD consists of three 15-20 minute yoga routines that can be done morning, evening or anytime. It’s a nice way start your day or to help relax and unwind before bed.
When traveling, research your hotel facilities, local gyms or yoga studios for convenient times and locations. Some hotels and resorts now have complimentary stretch and yoga classes for their clients. Airlines with longer flight destinations have a stretch component video including some modified yoga postures on their TV monitors. If you’re really brave, take your yoga matt as a carry on.
Planning ahead, if you know you are going to have a long airport delay, you can always find a private spot in an airport It’s a great way to recover from extended hours of sitting and an excellent time filler. If you are driving long distance, a rest stop can be a perfect place to stretch out those tired muscles. Using a picnic table or a tree are good props for stretching out hamstrings and hip flexors. And of course, you could have your yoga matt handy for a few downward dogs to activate the mind and revive with a full body stretch.
With traveling can come jet lag, insomnia and stress associated with time zone change. A few minutes of restorative yoga postures can relax the mind and put the body back at ease. The legs-up-the-wall pose is a posture that will help alleviate tired legs and feet, relieve backache, stretch the neck and calm the mind. Using a blanket or bolster for support placed underneath the buttocks, start by lying on your back, buttock bones close to the wall, legs pressed firmly against the wall. This pose is great before bed or post-workout for exhausted legs.
For athletes with desk jobs, Desk Top Yoga is a perfect tool for someone spending hours at a desk or computer. This brilliant gadget is a helpful reminder to do a little stretch, yoga or deep breathing every few minutes. The Yoga Guru pops up every few minutes and will do a little dance to get your attention, and then click on the Yoga Guru for the next stretch. You need to download the desktop software. Soon, everyone in your office will become a Yoga Guru and will benefit by having a more productive and less stressful office environment. http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/desktopyoga.html?hl=en
The benefits of stretching can go a long way to help reduce fatigue, recover from workouts, improve performance in sport, reduce stress, and build a more toned and flexible body. A few minutes in the morning, throughout the day and/or evening can add meaning to your day and more balance to your lifestyle.
Charlene Waldner is a Lifesport coach, BCRPA personal trainer and sales consultant for New Balance Victoria. Charlene represents VMG racing and has 10 Ironman finishes with a 9:50PB. Contact Charlene for coaching at Charlene@Lifesport.ca