Yoga for Athletes: Programs, Benefits, and Solutions

Workout Programs Combining Yoga, Weight Training, & Exercise for Athletes to Build Strength & Stamina, Improve Sports Performance, & Complement Your Training

Yoga for athletes is specifically designed to complement your other workouts such as weight lifting, running, boot camping, rock climbing, sports, or crossfit.

Not every type of yoga fits the needs and demands of the fitness-focused. Some types of yoga can actually do more harm than good. Read on to learn about yoga for athletes and which yoga workout programs will fit into your current routine.

This page covers:

• Benefits of yoga for athletes and incorporating fitness-centric yoga into your routine.
• Common weaknesses and challenges you might be experiencing.
• Main types of people using Man Flow Yoga to improve their performance.
• Real success stories from people using our programs.
• Results you can expect in 1 and 3 months.
• A summary of Man Flow Yoga’s Yoga for Athletes programming recommended for YOU (Get started immediately!)

You are

• Fitness-oriented and self-motivated
• Overall, you are in excellent or pretty good shape
• You have built up your strength and endurance, and are able to workout regularly
• You aren’t regularly doing workouts focused on mobility, balance, and recovery
• You’re interested in using yoga to improve your performance in the activities and sports you already enjoy and practice regularly.

You most likely identify as one of the following:

• Endurance athlete
• Weight-lifter
• Runner
• CrossFit or functional fitness
• Rock climber
• Sports athlete

Common Challenges

• Lack of flexibility/mobility – not enough attention to this type of exercise
• Not enough recovery work – feeling sore often, exhausted, sometimes dreading your next workout
• Discomfort/pain during exercise – knee pain, shoulder pain, or back pain
• Excessive soreness in certain areas after your workouts – usually caused by muscular imbalances or poor movement patterns
• Noticing that certain movements are not as easy as they used to be or you are avoiding certain movements

How Man Flow Yoga’s Yoga for Athletes programs can help:

• Addresses common imbalances that lead to injury
• Improves flexibility, range of motion, and overall mobility
• Decreases risk of injury from overtraining and reduces overall soreness through improved flexibility and more focus on restorative training

Specific results you will experience as a result of Man Flow Yoga:

• Strengthen/prevent injury in your joints and soft tissue – shoulders, knees, spine, and ankles
• Move more fluidly (less joint popping or clicking, more range of motion)
• Reduce or eliminate excessive soreness
• More efficient movements to get more done with less energy
• Improved performance in existing activities/training modalities
• Increase overall strength, mobility, and power
• Improve muscle quality – strength, mobility, ability to recover, & growth rate

What’s required from you?

• Incorporating strength-focused and restorative-focused Man Flow Yoga workouts into your weekly routine.
• 2-3 Man Flow Yoga workouts per week, starting at 30-45 minutes per workout.
• Continue doing what you’re already doing, but you may need to scale down other workouts to make availability for yoga. The good news is that your other workouts will get better when you do this and your results will be more significant.

Results

After 1 month of Man Flow Yoga, you can expect:

• Be stronger in new ways – waking up muscles previously neglected and using the body in
• new ways
• Noticeable increases in flexibility and mobility – reduced clicking/grinding in joints
• Noticeable improvement in other activities – more fluid movement, better muscle activation, more overall strength
• More body awareness – improved posture, increased attention to posture
• Improvements in physical feeling – joints feeling healthier, less muscle soreness, and overall feeling better on a day-to-day basis.

After 3 months of Man Flow Yoga, you can expect:

• Greatly improved flexibility & mobility
• Significant improvements in other activities
• Greatly increased body awareness, muscle awareness (activation)
• Significant progress in correcting muscular imbalances
• Improved movement patterns (which translate into other activities)
• Greatly improved posture & postural awareness
• Greatly increased muscle activation & strength in hips (glutes, hip flexors, adductors), core, ankles, and shoulders
• Greater understanding of one’s body – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities
• Intermediate understanding of yoga postures – comparable to the skill level of somebody who has been doing yoga for 12 months at a local yoga studio.

Looking for A Program?

If you’re still skeptic then we have a FREE challenge for you. It’s 7 days of yoga that will help you feel better, be stronger, and develop more flexibility. Sign-up below to try our 7-Day Challenge!

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We genuinely want to help you move better, feel better and play harder, which is why we’ve taken the guesswork out of incorporating yoga into your routine. We’ve mapped out the course of action for you. Here’s a summary of the programs we recommend you follow to take the next step.

Summary of Programming

Program 1: The Strength Foundations Course

Identify muscular imbalances, improve movement patterns, & increase mobility – not to mention much more!

Program 2: Yoga Strength for Resistance Training

Builds off of the Strength Foundations Course. Continue to focus on yoga for strength and build muscle that will benefit your other workouts and day-to-day fitness.

• ~30 minutes per workout, 3-5 workouts per week, 2-4 months

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Program 3

Option 1: Yoga Strength For Resistance Training (Intermediate)

Continue where program #2 left off, but with more challenging workouts and more advanced postures to build more strength and more mobility.

• ~40 minutes per workout, 2-4 workouts per week, 2-4 months

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Option 2: Flexibility, Mobility & Joint Health for Inflexible People

Ramp up the intensity of your other workouts and use this program to focus on your mobility. You’ll continue to get stronger while also gaining more energy to focus on your non-yoga workouts.

• ~35 minutes per workout, 3-5 workouts per week, 2-4 months

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Additional Resources

You might be interested in relieving neck and shoulder pain, strengthening your glutes, or learning how to decompress your spine, so check out these 3 blogs!