Breathe in deep… and get ready to perform! Yoga is increasingly being adopted by top athletes looking to take their performance to the next level. Sidelines explores why…
Far from being a hippy or cop-out form of exercise, yoga is becoming a training tool for athletes in tough performance sports. Turn your nose up at your peril – it carries a whole host of benefits for athletes, as Sharon Dooley, 52, a sports yoga teacher and athlete in masters athletics, explains.
“Everyone thinks of yoga as just stretching, but in reality, it’s strength, breath, focus, recovery, all the things elite athletes rely on,” Dooley says.
She explains that progressive, slower movements help target muscles physically while also assisting players mentally: “The guys at the top of sport make minuscule tweaks to their movement. Yoga enables that side of it.”
Dooley takes the example of sprinting, where the benefits of yoga on breathing and posture can translate into athletic performance.
“Breathing is massive. You’re teaching your body to come out of fight-or-flight so you can recover and go again.”
In sprinting, it is typical for athletes to hold their breath during the most intense moments. Yoga teaches control over that instinct.
“I know guys who trained with (legendary British sprinter) Linford Christie who’d hold their breath for nearly the whole 100 metres,” Dooley says. “With yoga, you override the body’s automatic rhythm. You learn to create your own breathing pattern.”
Similarly, Dooley draws on her own experience of marathon running and athletics to explain yoga’s benefits for posture in runners.
“When you’re exhausted at the end of a sprint, your posture goes. But in yoga, you learn to hold through discomfort. That carries over,” Dooley says.
Yoga is about far more than flexibility. Strength-building through controlled movement is one of its most underrated features.
“You’re lengthening the body and then loading it with your own weight. It builds real strength.”
The combination of breath control with physical effort results in athletes developing a more efficient recovery system. Alongside the connection between mobility and muscle efficiency, it demonstrates clear performance benefits.
“By slowing the breath, you activate the nervous system that helps your body rest, digest and repair,” she explains. “Yoga creates longer levers, and longer levers mean more power.”
Another key focus in her teaching is balance, something athletes rarely train deliberately but rely on constantly.
“Most sport is done on one leg at some point. If your balance is off, you land heavy. Improve it and you move lighter,” Dooley says.
The physical and mental benefits of yoga means the stigma around its use in sport has changed dramatically. Dooley says public figures have helped to change the idea of yoga as a namby-pamby exercise..
“There used to be this idea it was a bit soft. But athletes like Ryan Giggs started talking about it, and that changed things.
“Once people realised someone at the top level was doing it and not just doing it but crediting it for their longevity, it gave others permission to try it too.”
Her time working with athletes opened her eyes to the true benefits of yoga.
“I worked with some rugby players and big guys who found it really hard at first. But they stuck with it and realised it let them train longer and perform better.”
But it is not only through teaching yoga that Dooley sees benefits. Her own athletic training that has improved too. She has adapted her own yoga practice depending on her training load, combining styles like yin and hatha yoga to support sprinting and long jump sessions throughout the week.
“I just stepped over the high jump bar to get third place,” she says. “People said, ‘I couldn’t do that, I’d pull something.’ That’s yoga.”
When asked for advice for any younger athlete who may have misunderstood the true benefits of yoga for their mental and physical well-being, Dooley advises them to go to a professional.
“Don’t go straight to YouTube. You need someone to adjust the small details at first. It’ll change everything.”
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