The Athlete Meets Yoga
The Athlete is about passion. Drive. The Zone. Whether you run, bike, swim, do gymnastics, play ball …. we are all the same. We work hard. We play hard. As good as our sports are for us, there are drawbacks. A lot of our activities are repetitive and tend to exercise one muscle group more than another, creating imbalances in the body. Another drawback is when you do have less than optimal bio-mechanics leading to bad form, the repetitive nature of our activities can lead to lower performance or even injury.
In walks Yoga. Yoga is about balance. Balance within a movement. Balance within the joints. Balance within the mind.
Yoga is a fun compliment to any activity that can improve performance and prevent or address injuries. In simple terms, yoga is a bucketful of poses done in different sequences that exercise the entire body, cultivating balance within the skeleton structure.
Through the consistent practice of yoga, the joints become SUPPORTED and ALIGNED as a result of appropriate strength and length within muscle groups. A runner’s knee pain may be the result of imbalances within the quads and hamstrings or as a result of weak hip stabilizers. Get on your yoga mat often enough, working towards a nice balanced Warrior III and you find that the hips get stronger, the quads and hamstrings reach equilibrium. The knee becomes quiet.
As you practice triangle pose you’ll learn to respect the limitations of your inner thighs and hamstrings, while using your quads to help the hamstrings loosen. You’ll find the back stretch coupled with the upper body strength to create a wonderful expression of strength and space. Each yoga pose has its challenges.
The fun comes in with the challenge of each pose, the music, the others in class with you. It’s an awesome way to do the work needed to keep the body working well and in balance. This happier body then plays ball better, runs faster, swims more efficiently, sleeps better, recovers faster and experiences less injury.
Play Hard. Do Yoga.
Was reading a magazine. They say training for the long races changes you. In a big way. In so many positive ways, in different aspects of my life. You learn how to embrace all that you are, find a rhythm, find equilibrium and go. And keep going. Not so much just pushing and clawing your way through, but climbing up…because you still can climb, you still have more.
To ensure nice steady breathing, I took a pre-race jog which was very nice and calming. The swim was wetsuit legal. So in the suit I went. Also part of my calm breathing routine was consuming some goo that had caffeine in it. Got some glide on, mostly around the neck and to race start I went with Jeff and Scott. I felt pretty calm. It was a real change of pace to get into the really MUDDY water. Most were doing warm up stuff in the water. ME…I was peeing. Though I got to asking myself…my wetsuit is so tight, why in the world did I walk out here to pee. You figure it out. So…ready to swim, got myself situated where I wanted to be. Mostly in the back of the pack. My routine is to start slow, get my breathing under control and then try and pick up the pace. Things were going really well. I felt in command of the swim when the next heat caught up to me. No biggie until someone hit the back of my head fairly hard and made my calves cramp up instantly. 
That was hard to deal with. I had to stop, stretch out my leg, praying to the Saint of swimming that my calves wouldn’t stay cramped. It went away. I started swimming again. It happened again, the bang on the head/calf thing. So after that I started to elbow/kick the swimmer that would run into me over and over. (Honey badger coming alive). I did decide to swim wide. And amazingly enough, I was swimming straight. So I finished up the swim totally crazy happy and proud of myself.
HAHAHAHA. I wonder if that would have been a penalty or disqualify. Anyway…my nutrition was pretty good. Beans. Some perpetuem. Some cliff bars. Some chomps. And a bit of banana. I was missing ONE thing though. A big thing.
I wasn’t doing too bad until about mile 2 and started to feel really bad. I’d drink more. And feel even worse. I’d try to eat and I’d feel even worse. OH NO. I was thinking to myself. 13 miles of this will kill me. I wasn’t until I got to an aide station when a (very) concerned volunteer said…”you need to hydrate”. And I’m thinking to myself as I stumble to a walking pace, “dude I am”. Then it dawned on me that I hadn’t taken ANY salt pills on the bike. AT ALL. Seriously, what a stupid (and harmful) mistake. More water was just making things worse. So I pop 4 pills right there. Well, actually it was one clump of mostly soggy pills from my fuel belt which thank goodness I didn’t choke on. After that…about 1/2 mile down the ride. All was right as rain. I found my rhythm and pace and the miles started to dwindle at a nice pace. I continued with the 4 salt pills at each aide station for awhile and I felt good. The songs that got stuck in my head. Black and Yellow. Wild Ones. Over and over and over for 13 miles. I tried repeatedly to get to Emimen ‘Till I Collapse but it was hot and my brain cells were dying off fast.
The water was really ROUGH. 2 to 3 foot swells. IT WAS AWESOME. I started out, didn’t panic, worked to keep calm, felt fine, just couldn’t quite get the the rhythm of the freestyle. Without drinking a ton of water. I got pretty good at getting a nose full of water and snorting it out. So I did a lot of breast stroke. Found a rhythm. Found a way to ride the waves a bit. Stopped drinking so much water. In the back of my mind I was aware that I needed to get around the buoys faster. So I’d go back to the freestyle, where I managed to find this feeling of moving through the water better. Then I’d drink some more water. And move back to breast stroke. I was getting there, slowly. The chic I was keeping up with was pulling away. I was getting a little nervous. Then the guy in the kayak told me I had 12 minutes to get in. I had three more buoys left. I said “F$CK”, measured the distance, concluded that I wouldn’t make it. And said “F$CK” again. I start to sob a bit. WHAT??? CRYING IN THE LAKE???
At the point, I had resigned to not getting in on time. And I wanted to finish this $250 dollar swim strong. If this was the last of my race, i wanted to do it well. So I pressed on. Hard.
That was the only time someone passed me. For about 30 seconds.
Starting the 13 miles was hard. My legs felt ok. It was just plain HOT. And the run was so incredibly boring. The highlights of the run: Running with Glen for a bit. Seeing Dan a bunch. Seeing Ashlea’s rockstar @ss. Kelli on her last bit, getting myself an “another lap to go kiss”. The honey badger sign at the aide station. She recited the video to me, so that was cool. “He’s so NASTY…He doesn’t give a SHIT. He just takes what he wants!” The water hoses. And the seasoned triathlete that said this was a really hard race.
I passed a lot of runners. I tried not to walk. I walked more on loop one. Average pace was 12:20. Loop two got better. ALMOST DONE. Pace quickened to 11:00. Still feeling pretty good.
We center ourselves. Turn on the power. Start driving down the road we feel drawn to.
David Phillips, M.D. graduated in 1984 from Harvard University where he earned academic honors and was an All-American swimmer. He received his medical degree from Wright State University School of Medicine in Dayton, Ohio. After practicing as an emergency room physician, Dr. Phillips shifted his focus to sports medicine. He has competed individually in national and international triathlons including the 2005 Ford Ironman World Championships, and qualified as a member of Team USA at the 2008 International Triathlon Union World Championships in Vancouver.
Yoga is about balance. Balanced action. On the physical level, joints that are SUPPORTED and ALIGNED. Strong hips muscles and loose hip muscles. Long hamstrings and strong quads. Strong back and strong abs. Injury comes when something gets out of balance, then a joint experiences too much wear and tear. Yoga is about warming up the body and muscles, then stretching and strengthening, a big key in injury prevention. Warm muscles stretch and work better. Yoga is about consistent activity leading to consistent results. Muscles have memory, so that short hamstring will want to stay short for a while. Consistent and nurturing stretching will encourage the hamstring to remember longer, not feel like it’s being abused which can lead to rebellion and injury.
For example, in your triangle pose you’ll learn to respect the limitations of your inner thighs and hamstrings, use your quads to help the hamstrings loosen. You’ll find the back stretch and the upper body strength and mobility to align the body in a wonderful expression of strength and freedom. Then when you have that down, you could progress to really deepening your core strength by using your own power to align. What does that mean…barely touch the floor or block with that bottom hand. Lengthen that bottom side. There will always be room to grow. Each yoga pose will have it’s challenges. It’s a super cool thing to find the openings and the strength which leads to a new level of body and mind awareness.
On other levels, yoga will help with mental focus and breathe awareness. This is where a deeper, more steel like ability comes into play. And wisdom. Remember balance. We learn how to stick with it and when to pull back. We learn more about our bodies, where we are in space and how to be solid in some of those crazy poses. It can get real juicy. It’s always a dance, but when you learn to dance well, your performance goes up and your injuries go down. And you feel like a ROCKSTAR!