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Cross Training for Athletes: Balancing Strength and Flexibilty,
a 2-hour Forrest Yoga Intensive class with Charmaine van Niekerk
Vigorous, demanding, and intensely mindful, each class is designed and sequenced with a specific focus area
in order to help improve strength, balance, flexibility, and mental focus. You will leave feeling cleansed, awake, and refreshed. Go to the Events page for more info...
Click here for Charmaine's race history and PR's.
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YOGA classes for RUNNERS - 2009
Join Yoga instructor and seasoned Marathon and Ultra-distance runner for a vinyasa (breath- synchronized) Power Yoga session that will create balance, strength and flexibility for the whole body, while enhancing mental focus. This class is designed to help improve your running and athletic performance. Yoga experience is NOT a requirement.
This 12-week session will be held one day each week, start date TBD. Submit the CONTACT US form if you would like to be placed on the waiting list.
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We ran the BIG SUR Marathon in California on April 26th, 2009!
Featuring rolling hills, Big Sur is the largest rural marathon in the world, winding through redwoods, paralleling ranches, and offering stunning views of the Pacific Ocean.
The Big Sur International Marathon is a non-profit organization that serves the community by providing a world-class marathon and related fun events that raise money to benefit local charities, while promoting health and fitness. Click here to read more...
Bib numbers 559 and 560, click here for our: BIG SUR Results! Photos coming soon...
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How do you experience Yoga and how has it changed you mind/body/spirit? How has it changed your outlook and the way you interact with people and the world around you?
Would you recommend that others take up yoga, and if so, why?
A male runner/triathletes perspective
Okay, I have been thinking about it and will try, as a novice, to express the benefits of yoga personally and from a male's perspective.
What caught my attention was your post in FBF, Yoga for Runners. I pretty much thought yoga was for women. lotus, chants, some light stretching and a great social "event". I did not want to attend alone, so I ask my wife to join me. Great to see another guy at our sessions.
I was also reluctant at first wondering where I would work it in with my real workouts (biking, running, swimming) but since Monday was my off day, it seemed to fit in my schedule.
First session was quite an eye opener wishing I had brought my sweatband, that's how much of a real workout it literally was.
By the end of the 12 sessions I learned:
- Yoga can be bust your male ego... luckily I am use to being a slow runner, cycler and swimmer so not being able to do poses well was not an ego buster, but fit in to my overall athletic ability.
- It helped reduce stress: I always felt psychologically lifted and calmer after the session, I think the same endorphin high you get from any sport applies equally to yoga.
- To breathe deeper: this was and is still difficult, so easy to chest breathe rather than use your diaphram. deep breathing improves my overall well being.
- My flexibility improved increasing my range of motion: an example is the ability to stay longer in an aero position on my bike. Usually I must sit up from muscle tightness after 15-20 minutes but on one ride I stayed in aero for 45 minutes.
- Yoga is a better way to stretch before and after running or cycling than traditional stretches.
- Add yoga as a legitimate cross-training activity for overall wellness.
- Be patient; I learned if the pose hurts to not push harder but do best you can and laugh when Charmaine goes into a pretzel type pose, knowing your best effort will fall short but marvel at what someday "could be". ~ Wayne June 2007 ~
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You love your sport but sometimes your body just doesn't move as smoothly as you'd like. Also
your breathing is labored and your energy low. So you train harder and just as you become fit, the injuries start and you're forced to back off training to recover. How are you going to improve performance if each time you ramp up your training, you get hurt? There is a way - more and more athletes are turning to Yoga. WHY? To increase energy through effective breathing, for protection against injury through correction of structural misalignment, and to remain active whilst healing when they do become injured. How does yoga work?
Yoga optimizes three key elements in your body: Breath, Balance and Flexibility:
Learn to breath correctly, replacing choppy breathing with smooth, steady breaths, thus improving oxygen intake and energy production. Yoga teaches full, deep inhalations and exhalations - calm, but energetic breathing. Yoga improves respiratory capacity by creating more space to breathe as the ribs; spine and surrounding organs and tissues become more elastic and flexible.
Yoga is based on a central principle of balance. The joints, when surrounded by balanced muscles, are free to move in their full range of motion. If you are even slightly off-balance, every running step you take forces your muscles to work harder in compensation, wasting energy. Yoga rebalances structural misalignment that lead to common runner's injuries.
Running is hard on the knees; lower back, hips, ankles and feet, so it is imperative that you keep your muscles and joints strong and supple, by increasing flexibility. When in-balance and aligned, the impact is distributed evenly. Health for a muscle is resilience. The body is meant to be springy - the foot and arch act as a springboard, the knees absorb impact, and the spine is designed like a big spring.
Injuries
While keeping the body balanced and flexible is preventative, injuries do still happen, be it from over training, or something quite unrelated. Yoga is used as a form of physical therapy to heal, effectively increasing blood flow to injured areas and strengthening the muscular infrastructure as injuries heal. The injured athlete can remain active while healing and getting stronger!
Performance
Yoga is a comprehensive approach to fitness that will improve performance and prevent common injuries by teaching the athlete how to develop body awareness, balance, strength, and flexibility, improve concentration, increase energy and manage stress.
To get started submit the CONTACT US form to sign up for classes, or to learn more. Your instructor has 18 years of distance running experience and remains injury free by practicing Yoga! Click here for her running history and PR's...
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