Yoga Sports Science at Cambridge University Sports Centre
Hayley Winter and Kate Crouch in the Strength & Conditioning area at Cambridge University Sports Centre.
On Thursday 20th February we held our first Yoga Sport Science Clinic for 11 athlete members of the University of Cambridge Sport Centre. We were lucky enough to have the session taken by Hayley Winter - the owner and founder of Yoga Sport Science who came down to the Centre and was amazed at the fantastic facilities we have here, and the session was assisted with help from the Centre's very own Yoga Sports Coach - me!
We were very lucky and had a huge variety of sports represented with the athletes: a Runner, a Heptathlete, a Triathlete, two Powerlifters, a Modern Pentathlete, a Cyclist, a Rower, a Cricketer, a Gymnast, a Real Tennis player and our own Fitness, Strength and Conditioning Manager, Tristan!
Hayley took the athletes through a range of techniques involving breathing, mobility techniques, stretching out the shoulders, activation of muscles and poses specific to the areas the athletes had identified they wanted to improve such as shoulder flexibility, improving range motion, and assisting recovery during intense training weeks.
The session gave each of the athletes techniques that they could take away to use in their own training, that would be beneficial to their sport, and the areas they wanted to gain advantage.
All of the feedback we have had so far has been really positive – some have gotten over their fear of Yoga (!) and will be joining me in my weekly Yoga for Sport class on a Thursday, some have really found the ‘take home’ techniques to be of real benefit and are looking forward to using them in their training and others found a real psychological benefit to the session, and found it to be really beneficial to use the techniques prior to their training session that followed.
Thank you to Hayley for leading the sessions, and thank you to the athletes who attended! I am hoping to run them in the future and have some mixed sessions, and maybe some more sport specific ones for teams such as Netball, Cricket and Rugby so look out for these in the future and get in touch with me if you are interested in finding out more!
By Kate Crouch, Yoga Sports Coach™.
