Why more and more sport people – cyclists too- practise yoga, is not only a fancy fact or really have benefits on performances and helps as stress reliver?
First of all, yoga is very similar to cycling because it takes time and constancy before you can start to see and feel results. When you start cycling, the beginning of the ride or the first month of practising is not easy.
Similarly, when you decide to practise yoga at the beginning is difficult, but certainly in a short time, keeping practice, it’s easy to get addicted to the energy and the strength it can give, even without practising so much.
Benefits of Yoga for cyclists
Certainly, it works very well to combine cycling, on any level, professional cyclist and leisure riders, because it gives benefits on two important levels: physical and mental. Above all, to explain, just in the beginning of the series of blog spot where we will talk about yoga and cycling, yoga, for sure, is a physical practise, so, it makes the body stronger.
Consequencely a stronger body makes a stronger mind.
A very famous latin quote says “Mens sana in corpore sano”, it means that an healthy and well working mind can be only in a healthy and well working body.
Phisical benefits
Talking about physical benfits of yoga, is of mainly importance to say that yoga is first of all a stretching exercise and stretching muscles make them more flexible and longer. This gives them strength and is a big injuries prevention. Yoga helps also to set your body at the best on the bike to avoid all the pain and stress that can come from long rides. Because is of primary importance have a comfortable position on the bike, to not stress too much arms, wrists, shoulder and back.
Mental benefits
The other level of benefits is the mental strangeness.
Yoga teachers always try to teach to make breathing and movement combined, like a perfect dance, to control breathing is not easy but can give a lot of calmness once that you learn. During the effort, our instinct make us breath with the mouth, opening it, because this give us the idea of taking more oxygen possible, but that’s wrong. Yoga helps to control the breath, using your nose to inhale and exhale air during the effort to make possible last it for more time.
The nice thing of cycling is that the first challenge is against yourself, your lazy self, being strong minded helps to overcome the bad moments during the ride, because they are gonna come, you just have to welcome them and strong mind let you understand that they will pass.
Life is like cycling…
Life is like cycling, when you are climbing and suffering, just keep going, late or later you are getting on the top of mountain.
This is only a little introduction to the world that mix yoga and cycling, a world to discover, slowly, step by step to improve not only performances on bike but also the comfort during the ride.
Tommaso
Dicembre 2019
update may 2021: new yoga & cycling retreat