Yoga for Ruggers: Body Awareness

No, that's not me.

I've written before about the most obvious benefits of yoga: strength and flexibility. But there are other benefits for athletes, and I plan to make a study of those, too. My first article on what yoga you should actually do (it's going to be about hips) is coming up soon; I'm just waiting for my gracious assistant to return from the National All-Stars Championship in Pittsburgh so she can model some poses.

In addition to flexibility, which is what you probably think of when you consider yoga, and strength, you also stand to gain body awareness. Not sure why that's important? I'll show you.

Some athletes evade tacklers with ease. They slip through holes in a defense like they're made out of silly putty. They're also likely to catch themselves in odd positions (they never fall, they only almost fall) and prevent breakable objects from shattering on the floor at the last instant. They are not what you would call clumsy. You may think of them as obnoxiously coordinated. They possess exceptional kinesthetic awareness. Body intelligence, you might call it.

Not all of us who love sports were born possessing that natural ease. Some of us grew up knocking things over and falling down. A lot. Some of us were klutzes. Some of us were clumsy. But kinesthetic awareness, body intelligence, can develop with time. How do you go about doing that? So glad you asked.

Yoga practice (at least the way I teach it, Iyengar style) requires you to align your body in very precise positions and then hold them. Initially, you get into the right position by looking at yourself in the mirror and (ideally) having a teacher who will keep adjusting you until you get the pose right. But the eventual goal is that you feel the proper position, and assume it without thought.

You know. Kind of like how you shouldn't have to think about which foot you're stepping with in a tackle, or what your body position is when you're passing.

As you practice yoga, as you learn the positions and (more importantly) learn in your muscles how each one feels, you'll become more aware of how your body moves in other contexts. I'll never forget the first time this happened to me; I was walking up the stairs, and for the first time felt my quadriceps actively contracting to extend my knee. I'd never connected with what it took for my body to move me around, before.

On the field, this will translate to you better using your body. As you become more aware of where your limbs are in space (this is called proprioception), you'll find that your body responds more quickly and precisely to what your brain wants to do. You might catch a bad pass that you couldn't have recovered previously. You may experience an improved ability to dodge a tackle, or to stay out of touch on a run up the sidelines. Yoga has the potential to give you those seemingly superhuman abilities.

Demigods.

And if your proprioception already borders on the demi-godlike? Practicing yoga will have you challenging Olympus.

(That means you'll be even more like the gods.)

We'll explore how next week, when we introduce yoga for your hips.