Yoga can be a great sport. Practising yoga not only provides you with a supple body, with regular practice, one can achieve an optimum benefit recommended by sports experts which is the four aspects of fitness: cardio respiratory fitness (fitness of the heart, lungs and blood vessels and the maximal oxygen intake), muscle fitness (strength and endurance of your muscles), flexibility fitness (range of motion) and body composition (percentage of fat). Hence, it is an ideal sport that would benefit both the young as well as the old.
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Studies show that an eight week training in yoga helps to increase cardio fitness by eight percent, strength by as much as 30 per cent, muscle endurance by 55 per cent, and flexibility by as much as 180 per cent.
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A Yoga practitioner will find that this art can be gentle on the joints, ligaments and tendons, which act as a complement to other sports activity. It also helps to maximise one's sports performance and helps avoid sports related injuries.
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Yoga by itself is a great sport. You will enjoy the flowing movements of asanas combined with powerful yogic breathing techniques which make it all the more an interesting and challenging sport.
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A Kryoga Sun Series is a wonderful experience. You have a goal that starts with Sun Series I and then after a few months of training you move to the next level and so on. Each series is a progression to the next level that is always a little more challenging in terms of flexibility, strength and speed.
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Other special classes would include Moon Series, Vinyasa Yoga and Kryoga Dynamics. Each one is a 60-90 minutes class that is practised by hundreds of people. Although these classes are very challenging, at the end of class one would feel that they have run for two hours or played a four-hour game of tennis, leaving them energetic, rfelaxed and vibrant.
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The benefits of doing yoga as a sport are different from other sports. Yoga is a complete training that trains your mind, muscle, joints, systems, organs, glands etc. Yoga is a balanced workout. Apart from physical and mental benefits it also benefits emotionally. For example, if you choose running or jogging as a sport it means you are working more on just the cardio vascular fitness and less on muscle strength and endurance. If you are just doing weights then you are working more on muscle strength but less on cardiovascular fitness. Apart from that you will need to spend at least an hour to stretch and warm up otherwise it will result in injuries in back, knee and/or shoulder problems in the future. This is not the case with yoga. It is the safest sport with a great goal in life. You work all the four aspects of fitness recommended to be fit and healthy by doing 60 to 90 minutes yoga training. More and more people are realising the benefits of yoga and are turning towards yoga as a sport or to enhance their sport performance.
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