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Yoga can have a lot of benefits for general health and physical conditioning. Does anyone have any comments about how yoga might help prepare a body for the rigors of vaulting? I heard someplace that Paul Sinatra does yoga and he feels it helps him avoid injuries. Can anyone verify that? Paul, if you happen to read this, I would be very interested in any comments you have on the topic. Of course I am interested in any and all comments from people familiar with yoga.
- master

Master, I am not an authority on the subject what so ever. I am very interested in answers to this question though. I have wondered this many times in the past year of training. For the reasons that you have mentioned, I think it would be very beneficial to us older vaiulters. Our body's are our biggest enemies in this event and I can't help but think that a yoga regimen would be very helpful. Question is, with limited time that most of us old timers have to train and do this, what would we replace to do the yoga? Great question. Later..............Mike

Well, from someone with a little experience in this topic, I can say that doing yoga wouldn't hurt you at all. If anything, it would be a great way to improve flexibility so that you'd be at less of a risk to pull/strain/tear muscles and ligaments while you're vaulting. I would recommend perhaps fitting it in at the very beginning or end of a day..just a quick 30 minute DVD or something that you could use to stretch and relax a little.

And I didn't know that Paul was on this board! How are you doing?! You haven't been down in forever!

Sami

Paul told me personally about yoga really helping him. He said he learned it from a video.

Well, perhaps this topic will be of interest to more people than I first thought. I have to confess, I have been doing yoga for about 6 weeks for exactly the reasons bvpv07 commented. And just like souleman indicates, it does take a fair amount of time, but I decided to trade some strength training for the possibility of more flexibility and body control. Only time will tell. Since this is a long term experiment, I was asking the vaulting community to offer their experiences to give me an idea of what I might expect.

By the way, I don't know that Paul reads this forum or that he practices yoga, I had only heard he did. I'm looking forward to hearing more comments, so keep 'em coming.

- master

I believe David Butler incorporates yoga into his trainning regimine. I believe in a conversation I had with him he mentioned it to me.

Yes; we do yoga, pilates, and ballet as part of our general strength training, in addition to bar, rope and med-ball stuff

flyingowl wrote:Yes; we do yoga, pilates, and ballet as part of our general strength training, in addition to bar, rope and med-ball stuff

Do you expect any specific benefits from aspects of yoga? Or is it more general balance, flexibility, coordination and some conditioning.

I'm almost 60 now and I'm expeciting it will help me in those areas and I really want it to help reduce my propensity for muscle strains. The yoga style I have been doing is "Bikram's yoga" sometimes known as hot yoga because it is done in a hot room (between 100 and 110 degrees). Each session is 90 minutes long. I'll tell you, that really gets the sweat going but your body definitely feels warm and ready for the stretching. As with a most exercise, it can be a real workout if you push yourself.