Yoga to Target Problem Areas

You probably have certain areas of your body you will want to work on. For example, you may want to increase your core strength. Yoga can provide you with exercises to work on your core strength. You will start by conditioning your abdominal area, and continue on with your obliques. By strengthening your abdominal area they will help strengthen and support your lower back. These exercises is beneficial to you as a golfer because it will stabilize your body, strengthen your back, give you more power and give support to your spine which help the spine to stay at the proper angle through your golf swing. Because this is an upper body workout, you will build more strength in your chest, shoulders, arms, hands and wrists. Breathing is an important aspect of these exercises. By focusing on your breathing you will assist your body in maintaining its energy and strength.

Yoga can also provide exercises to give your hips more flexibility. Hip flexibility is another avenue of exercises you will want to start on. Hip flexibility is important when performing your golf swing. Your golf swing involves correct hip rotation to create power, speed, and balance from your hips. The condition of your lower back and stamina on the course are connected to your hip flex and strength.
The yoga positions are designed to increase strength in the group of muscles supporting your hips. It is important to the golfer to be able to maintain correct during the forceful phase of the golf swing. The way to determine this is by your ability to maintain correct posture and your core strength.

Your lower back can be painful when injured. To reduce the possibilities of an injury use the yoga exercises to strengthen your lower back. This year Americans will spend billions of dollars on back pain healthcare costs. Many professional and amateur golfers will play with a back injury. This will go to prove just how important it is to get your body in shape to play golf as in any sport.

With yoga, breathing is an important part of the strengthening process. Any time you experience a stressful situation on the golf course or off the golf course, it causes your heart rate to accelerate and your breathing to become erratic. When you learn to control your breathing during a stressful time, it will help keep the mind calm and the body relaxed. With the yoga breathing exercises you will expand your breath and increase the amount of energy in your body. Breathing is such an important part of yoga, without the focus on your breathing yoga is nothing more than just stretching exercises.

Breathing is a natural response and is part of our nervous system, but we can control our breathing in the same way we control movement such as your golf swing and yoga exercises. Your breath can also be controlled.

There are three basics characteristics in breathing – the inhaling, the exhaling and the withholding of breath. Withholding your breath is an important part of expanding your breathing and stimulating your nervous system. In yoga you will only focus on the inhaling and exhaling of your breathing.

The yoga exercises designed to work on your upper body flexibility will help you build strength by uses your body’s weight against gravity for resistance. They will also incorporate the use of strength tubing and weights to stabilize your core.

Your posture is another area yoga exercises can enhance. There are several different factors attributed to poor posture, aging, an inactive lifestyle, and ineffective methods, which can cause an imbalance in the body. Poor posture is sweeping the country in adults and children and is directly linked to billions of dollars spent every year on back pain related healthcare

Here is a way for you to evaluate your posture.

Stand facing a mirror and let your body to fall into its natural stance. Look at the line of your shoulders and upper back. Is your upper back rounded and your shoulders turned slightly inward? If so, you need to work on your posture.

Your natural posture (the way you sit or stand when no one is looking) is your base you will use to build your dynamic posture. Just as in a house, the foundation has to be strong enough to handle the structure of the house. Your natural posture is your foundation in this case. You will want to start with the strengthening of your core and then work your way up to the posture exercises. Yoga is a lot like working a jigsaw puzzle; each piece has its own place. On its own it is nothing, but when added to its proper place it helps complete the whole picture. With yoga, you cannot put your cart before the horse, as my grandmother used to say.

Now we are going to look at using weights to improve you golf game. You will be using weights as resistance training, which has been designed just for golf. The golf specific weight program uses moderate weights with medium repetitions, and in a 30 to 45 minute time frame. This golf specific program was created to improve your strength and endurance for golf swings, etc. It is not designed to build muscle

Weak muscles are tight muscles and resistance training will increase the blood flow, which will work through a range of motion to maintain flexibility and strengthening the tendons and ligament to protect and support the joints of your body. Coupled with stretching exercises the training will improve your flexibility