Aug
04
Performance Yoga
By
(an interesting book by the way and I’ve used this in conjunction with Stretch To Win and Anatomy Trains)
Back in May I ran an introductory post on the potential benefits of Yoga and I promised a follow up from my good friend and colleague Mark Jarvis (MMJ Training). Mark is a great S&C coach (he stepped into a large pair of shoes when he took over from me as the lead S&C coach at the EIS in the WM’s) and he is now overseeing the S&C for West Brom in addition to his duties at the EIS. He’s a busy fella and that probably explains why he’s taken so long in getting his follow up piece over to me to share with you!!!
Anyway, read on and enjoy.
Yoga – what exactly is it.
A posh stretch, exercise for girls or a total waste of time? Whatever your view, yoga is probably the most misunderstood and underused physical preparation tool available to the S&C coach or well educated athlete.
Whilst most of us would shiver at the thought of using single-joint machine exercises as the core of our strength training programmes but can we really claim that our stretching routines are that much more advanced? Yoga takes us away from these archaic methods (which ironically are much newer than the ancient poses) and shows us how to stretch the myofascial slings (if you haven’t heard of these you need to read Anatomy Trains asap). These reflect the way the body TRULY works rather than how it looks in text books.
Far from being just an advanced stretch though, yoga offers a whole host of other benefits towards athletic preparation. The fact that the “poses” are generally performed actively means it’s a great way to develop postural strength (hips, trunk, shoulders and all the rest). By performing all of these things at the same time also gives great density to your training. This leaves either more time for other training or just get out of the gym and get on with the serious business of recovery (see numerous excellent Nick Grantham articles).
Yoga has been around for around 4000 years though so why does it continue to flirt around the outskirts of sport? The answer is partly because being a yoga instructor of good quality is seen as being a way of life. Consequently the best teachers have a great understanding of yoga but don’t understand how athletes truly work. They end up working to a generalised model of how movement should look which is the same as an S&C using “cookie cutter” programmes. Not effective at all.
This is where Performance Yoga at MMJ Training (www.mmjtraining.co.uk) comes into its own. By combining expert S&C knowledge with a yoga expertise we have been able to unpick the poses to evaluate exactly what they offer. These can then be systematically applied to the athlete’s needs using our cross referenced database. See the example below of how the simple Downward Dog can be deconstructed to give a whole host of benefits.
They key thing to understand though is that we are not here to sell the yoga bible. I still use barbells, still run my athletes and still do all the other regular stuff. This is just another area which influences me and another addition to the toolbox. The point is, the better you understand what your tools can give you, the more precise you can be when using them and that is the essence of good programming.
Whilst Mark is a great S&C coach he is the worlds worst salesman (even worse than me!) so I’m not going to apologise for giving his Performance Yoga courses a shameless plug. Mark came up to see me when I was working at Middlesbrough Football Club and he delivered a fantastic in service training session to the sport science and medicine team. The blend of S&C and Yoga works really well and it was a real eye opener. If you think Yoga could be of benefit to you or your team the I would get in touch with Mark.
About.
Mark Jarvis runs Performance Yoga as part of MMJ Training consultancy (www.mmjtraining.co.uk). Group workshops are available as are bespoke seminars to sporting organisations and medical teams.
