Yoga for bodybuilding and martial arts

Yoga is a holistic approach of uniting one's body, mind and spirit. It also means union with god and letting go of one's ego, but that’s on a philosophical note. I would like to say yoga is a beautiful combination of art and science. It’s science, because it teaches you the methods to control body and mind. It becomes an art when it’s practiced spontaneously. However at this point we focus on hatha yoga, which are bodily postures. Hatha Yoga is about mastering the energy in the body and focuses on health and purifying the body. Its world renowned, that yoga has numerous health benefits and helps relax from stress and rigors of life. 

Hatha yoga is like the yin-yang, which is always opposing energies like the fire and water. It teaches the practitioner to balance the mind and body through body postures also known as 'asanas'. These asana’s teaches us poise, balance and strength. Hatha yoga has six limbs which are asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, Samadhi. You can find numerous articles on these postures by the yoga experts on the web. My emphasis of this article is to add yoga to your arsenal, be it in body building or martial arts to reap benefits and excel.

Yoga can be utilized in bodybuilding and martial arts specially to prevent injuries and to help quicker recuperation from your workout fatigue. Yoga stretches are apt for muscle groups that don’t respond to weight training exercises. It helps strengthen tendons and thus helps in expanding its reflex threshold which otherwise contracts and leads to injury. Yoga helps you not only to build abdominal muscles but also helps in having great control over your body which is quite essential in posing. Certain poses like legs up the wall can relieve chronic soreness experienced post lifting heavy weights. Virasana, aids knee joints.

As for martial arts, yoga can be very beneficial in terms of flexibility needed to do the high leaps, kicks and to help dexterity. It is very efficient for grappling and strengthening ligaments and tendons. Apart from helping in physical combat its greater benefit lie’s in mental warfare. Stress situation will be at its peak in a fight if you don’t know how to control and calm down, be it in a combat sport or a street fight situation Yoga helps you to focus more and controls the body’s reaction to stress. 

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