Our feet haven’t touched the ground since returning back from last month’s New York Yoga Journal Conference!

We been getting requests to see some of the video footage taken during our time there. Here’s a little montage!

There’s still time to apply to join us on our next course this month.

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We particularly like this comment from Rich, ‘In my opinion, EVERY athlete – irrespective of sport or discipline – has the potential to enhance his or her ability by adopting a consistent yoga practice. I’d go so far as to say that if you’re not practicing yoga, you’re competing at a disadvantage and missing an opportunity to enhance peak performance’.

He also says, ‘don’t underestimate the extent to which yoga can change your life — you just never know. Looking for an athletic edge? This (Yoga) is it. So get on it, before your rival does!’

To read the rest of Rich’s article and find out more about him – click here.

If you want to learn how to give athletes the performance advantage -

APPLY TO JOIN US TODAY!

Trainee Yoga Sports Coach (YSC), Harry Jennings, recently joined the rest of the YSS team at last months Yoga Journal Conference in New York.

Harry’s currently working with his case study athlete and researching how the benefits of the Yoga Sports Science approach can improve performance in football.

Harry is among a growing number of students training with YSS from the US.

It’s an exciting time for Harry and his athlete – we wish them well!

If you want to learn how to bring these benefits to athlete’s, get in touch: info@yogasportscience.com

Our next course starts on the 26th of this month.

Applications will be closed by 19th May

CLICK HERE TO APPLY!

YSS caused quite a stir recently in New York at the Yoga Journal Conference! It seems that the high profile discussions on the future of yoga means that there’s never been a better time for science and yoga to work together.

The hype around YSS really kicked off when William J. Broad, Senior Writer at the New York Times and author came to the stand to engage in a discussion with Hayley Winter.

He’d been following us on Twitter as part of the research for his book. He was keen to talk to Hayley about the new contemporary wave of yoga which is evidenced based and how YSS was leading the way in researching the benefits in athletic performance.

Take a look at the video for an extract from their talk.

Want to to be a part of the future of yoga training? Get in touch!

There are only a few remaining places on our next course starting at the end of May – applications will be closing in 2 weeks.

The YSS Team are just starting to wind down after what’s been an amazing Yoga Journal Conference!

The reception for Yoga Sports Science has been incredible! We released a Free Online Taster Experience at the NY Yoga Journal Conference for people who wanted to find out how our courses work. If you’d like try us out for free too, then get in touch: info@yogasportscience.com

We’ve made many new friends and met lots of lovely experienced people who are interested in our unique approach to research based application of yoga into sport.

A great way to end the show was a visit to our stand by William J Broad, New York Times Senior writer and bestselling author of ‘The Science of Yoga – The Risks and the Rewards’. We’ll be posting William’s thoughts on YSS soon.

William’s book will be included as part of our recommended reading list for the Level 1 Yoga Sports Coach training, starting 26th May 2012.

More videos and interviews to follow. We’ll keep you posted!

If you can’t join us in person then follow us online to keep up with all our news.  We are going to be releasing an exclusive offer to experience the way we train so make sure you don’t miss out!

With yoga now firmly in the mainstream in America sports, we’re looking forward to plenty of opportunities to discuss and debate the future of yoga. We’ll be bring you all the news, updates and analysis – so stay tuned!

For exciting and exclusive updates, interviews, pictures and more, follow us on Twitter @yogasportsci and Facebook.

Or if you’re ready to take your career to a whole new level, get in touch with us today and find out how training with us gives you the professional edge and delivers the performance advantage.

The Yoga Journal Conference be held in Midtown Manhattan at the Hilton Hotel, New York, 1335 Avenue of the America’s, NYC 10019 (6th Avenue between W. 53rd and W. 54th)

Come and see us – we’re exhibiting in the Yoga Journal Marketplace.

After the YSS visit to the Yoga Journal Conference in San Francisco in January, we’ve decided to go back for more! Not only will we be attending the Yoga Journal Conference in New York next week, 12th – 16th April, but YSS Director Hayley Winter will be delivering a world first, one-off lecture whilst in Manhattan.

It’s going to be a small and exclusive presentation showing examples of some the revolutionary research that YSS has been gathering over the past few years, so if you want to get in touch to find out when, where and how you can listen to the lecture, then either get in touch with us: info@yogasportscience.com, or keep following us and we’ll keep you posted!

With yoga now firmly in the mainstream in America, we’re looking forward to plenty of opportunities to discuss and debate the future of yoga. We’ll be bring you all the news, updates and analysis – so stay tuned!

For exciting and exclusive updates, interviews, pictures and more, follow us on Twitter @yogasportsci and Facebook.

Or if you’re ready to take your career to a whole new level, get in touch with us today and find out how training with us gives you the professional edge and delivers the performance advantage.

See you in N.Y.C!

The Yoga Journal Conference be held in Midtown Manhattan at the Hilton Hotel, New York, 1335 Avenue of the America’s, NYC 10019 (6th Avenue between W. 53rd and W. 54th)

Come and see us – we’re exhibiting in the Yoga Journal Marketplace.

In this high intensity, fast paced sport, the smallest error can mean the difference between life or death. So how do the F1 drivers ensure that their own physical and mental performance, matches the performance precision of their cars?

Jenson Button, who was dominant in last weeks race, is fully aware that it’s about, ‘keeping it all together and not making mistakes’.

For the driver, keeping it all together requires a high level of aerobic fitness and the physiological demands on the body in Forumla 1 are tremendous.

So what are those demands for an F1 driver and how can Sport-Specific Yoga help them gain the performance edge?

We asked Tim Newenham, Performance Advisor to YSS, to give his insights on the demands of the sport. Tim’s extensive experience includes working with the winning Le Mans motor racing team.

G-Force

‘Firstly consider that with each turn when the driver is breaking and accelerating, the body is absorbing a G-Force of 5 times gravity. In order for a driver to withstand this he has to have developed a high level of muscular strength. The muscles of the neck will be under incredible strain having to not only cope with the wrenching forces of 5G, but with the additional weight of the helmet.

The neck muscles must maintain a good head position. You don’t want the eyes away from the horizontal line. Vision works best when it’s level, as opposed to one eye above the other. You can be fooled with your vision and at high speeds on bends you can easily make mistakes.  The idea is to keep the head level at all times and you have to fight the the effects of G-force with every turn. Consequently muscles in the neck and shoulders can get extremely tight’.

Circulation

‘The other effect is that the drivers can get a pooling of the blood in the feet, because unlike a normal car where you’re accelerating and changing gear breaking with the feet, in Formula 1 a lot of it is hand control, so there’s minimal movement of the feet which means that the high level concentration of good oxygen supply with blood pumping effectively, could slow down. So your decision making and vision could be impaired.

So some of the physiological demands are counteracting the G-Force, counteracting pooling of the blood, maintaining good vision as well as the stress of competition where cars are all around you – so you’re always looking for an opportunity to overtake and not be overtaken. To maintain that high level of concentration, reaction and clarity of thought, means you have to be extremely fit’.

So How Can Sport-Specific Yoga Help an F1 Driver?

Hayley Winter, the Director of YSS adds, ‘the work we do with athletes at YSS is very specific. We work closely with the athletes’ coaching and medical teams to ensure that our programmes fit easily into their training’.

Postural Support

‘As Tim has mentioned in a sport like Forumula 1 the demands on the body during a race mean that there’s a high level of muscle strain and stress, particularly in the sternocleidomastoid muscles of the neck, the deltoids muscles forming the contour of the shoulder and the trapezius muscles of the middle and upper back. Sport-Specific Yoga training can help alleviate the muscle tension experienced by the driver by lengthening the muscle groups which are tight, improving circulation, as well as developing muscular strength to areas which are weaker. The aim is to provide more structural support and improve postural alignment which is necessary to counter balance the weight of the head and neck at force and high speed’.

Improving Respiratory Efficiency

‘Yoga can help provide a good oxygen supply which in turn helps with concentration. One of the first things we would do is to assess the drivers breathing and look at how their breathing responds in both low level and high level intensity conditions. There are some great techniques to help drivers develop a breathing strategy to cope with stress both on and off the track. Breathing is so often overlooked in training and yet it’s one of our most essential performance tools!’

Relaxation

‘Helping the driver to relax is key to helping them perform better. A Restorative Training programme enables them to benefit from relaxing both the mind and body. This type of training also helps the driver to improve on their reaction times. The demands of the sport mean that there’s a high level of mental fatigue, so by giving the driver specific techniques offers them a chance to restore the mind and replenish the body in preparation for the next race.’

Throughout this Formula 1 season we will be making some of these techniques available for you to download.

If you want to learn how improve athletic performance, then train to be a Yoga Sports Coach. Find out how – here.

This is not the first incident of its kind. Clive Clarke, a former West Ham defender, suffered from the same problem during half time in a 2007 match. He is now an ambassador for a charity which helps to raise awareness to these risks and encourages young athletes to get checked out.
How is it that these young athletes are struck with severe cardio problems? It appears that their fitness levels are not the issue. Since the 19th century over 80 footballers have been victim to a deadly disorder known as HOCM, (Hypetrophic Obstructive Cardiomyopathy)

Dr Tom Riddington, writing in this week’s guardian, comments that these, ‘young, fit athletes have hearts that are a little different from most people. Their well-exercised heart muscle has been reshaped to adapt to the stress of regular, vigorous training’. He goes on to say, ‘this remodelling of the heart is useful, as it helps to pump blood more effectively round the body. But in HOCM, a genetic abnormality causes the muscle wall of the heart to grow far thicker than it should. Repeated training makes the problem worse.’

Overtraining is a common problem for all athletes. Every athlete wants to find that extra percentage to improve their performance and often they push themselves too far in the hope that the increased training intensity will give them an increased performance gain and often this is not the case.

YSS Director Hayley Winter, has seen this many times over the years. ‘Often close to an important match or competition athletes will step up their training, but actually in my experience, they can benefit so much more from doing a Restorative Training programme. Our Sport-Specific Yoga programmes enable the athlete to still be in training mode and with careful guidance do less to gain more’.

If you’re interested in learning how to help athletes get more from their training by doing less, then get in touch.