Volleyball is a sport that requires you to dive low and jump high, while fully involving your shoulders. Since it is a full-body sport, you need the strength and flexibility of both the upper and lower body with quick as well as balanced reflexes. With a strong core and coordination, you will be able to move around the court more effectively and efficiently, while less prone to injuries. Volleyball involves repetitive motions, which cause imbalances to the body, pains, and can lead to injury. To counterbalance this, you need some kind of practice, and this is where yoga comes into the picture.
Yoga has all sorts of benefits to beach volleyball players, and that’s the primary reason so many athletes have reached their highest level have incorporated it into their regimen.
Yoga Benefits to Athletes
Improved Balance
As mentioned earlier, beach volleyball has a lot of challenges in both single-arm and single-leg movements.
As such, it’s imperative to have great balance and overall body awareness, both of which yoga practice focuses on.
Increased Strength
Volleyball players are always trying to find their body alignment, which results in a robust foundation, allowing the muscles to work optimally. Yoga can ideally help with this.
Other benefits include increased flexibility, complement mental training, and injury prevention.
Top Yoga Poses For Volleyball Players:
Threading The Needle Twist
This is a pose that’s excellent for shoulder flexibility and torso mobility. In beach volleyball, you rotate one way a lot and the rotation of your torso can be limited in the other direction, which can result in injury.
This yoga pose opens your shoulders, upper back and chest, minimizes tension, and increases the flexibility of your hip.
Dancer
This is a pose that helps with single leg balance, stability, and hip mobility. Beach volleyball players usually struggle with round shoulders and tight hip flexors. It’s imperative not to hyperextend the knee or arch your lower back when doing this pose. This will affect how well you can stretch the targeted regions.
Plank
This yoga pose strengthens your abdominals, thus increasing explosiveness and control on the court. It ideally builds strong arms, breeding nice open forearms and wrists for a more relaxed set or serve.
Reverse Plank
This is a pose for anyone, particularly beach volleyball players who wish to add strength to their core.
It ideally helps strengthen the lower chain, hamstrings, lower back, and glutes. All these regions are vital for volleyball players, and it is essential to keep them strong and well-stretched.
Wide-legged Squatter
When playing beach volleyball, it’s imperative to stay in a low, squatted position numerous times during a match. This pose boosts the flexibility and balance that you need. It works targeted regions like the calves, hamstrings, calves and the back.
Pigeon Forward Fold
This is an excellent way to stretch as well as calm down during pre-practice and post-game. It helps you stretch and add flexibility to the lower back, hip and lats. Your lower back can be quite vulnerable if it’s not stretched correctly. With the pigeon forward fold, you can help prevent injury to the region.
Deep Stretch for Athletes Yoga Class
Yoga is an excellent combination of strengthening and stretching that helps keep your body in shape regardless of age. Beach volleyball players can benefit from doing these yoga poses as they help enhance the ability to perform during the match. Coaches are realizing that their players’ overall physical, mental and inspirational well-being improves as a result of adding yoga to the workout regime. So, consider doing so, and you will undoubtedly notice an improvement in your beach volleyball game. All the best!