How Yoga Will Improve Your Game

Yoga cannot only improve your golf game, but it will take your game to a level that you previously only dreamed about. Why do I say that? Because the biggest and most important piece of equipment you have is your body. After all, the club is just an extension of your body, and the weaknesses in your body will show up in your golf game. Because of the demands the modern day professional golfer puts on his body, it is important that he keeps it in peak shape. Many times golfers have to withdraw from Tournaments or play with an injury . Strong Core muscles are essential to a powerful golf swing and some Yoga poses will bring strength to the deeper core muscles such as the Transverse Abdominal. Weak core muscles can cause the back muscles to take over causing soreness in the back. The right Yoga exercises can bring strength to your entire body by awakening and strengthening the supportive muscle groups. Incorporating the core muscles with the rest of the body, the swing becomes controlled and strong. You begin to fire on all cylinders. Adding flexibility and balance, you not only allow for more rotation, but your entire body will begin to perform as intended, flowing with less effort.

In "The Inner Game of Golf" by Timothy Gallwey, he says "the single most common physical cause of error in golf and perhaps in all sports is over tightness" When the muscles are tight, the swing breaks down, and the golfer loses his smooth, fluid swing. By applying pressure to a tight muscle, it releases it's energy, resulting in a flexible, lengthened muscle. Yoga poses do exactly that . Different balancing poses re-educate the muscles to take a more supportive role in your body, letting the bones support it, therefore creating more efficiency, which leads to more control.

In 1975 Herbert Benson wrote a book called "The Relaxation Response", and in it Benson talked about "flight or fight" which is the body's reaction to perceived danger. Perceived, because the body only knows what the mind tells it, so the danger could be a wild animal attacking, a deadline at the office, or a difficult golf shot. When we are in fight or flight, the muscles become tight and the breathing becomes labored and shallow, making it tougher to make decisions. Benson discovered there are ways to shift the body from "fight or flight" ,to what Benson calls "the Relaxation Response", the body and mind in a state of ease. One of those ways is Deep Breathing. Yoga practice uses the deep breathing with the poses to trigger the "Relaxation Response" whenever it is needed, such as just before that difficult golf shot. Before we talk more about Yoga and Golf, I would like to share how I got to this point.

HOW I FOUND YOGA

About twenty years ago, I was playing golf or softball every weekend. One day, I was warming up before a softball game when I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. The next day I could barely sit up. After a month of therapy, the pain subsided, but would return when I least expected it and put me on my back. A Little thing, like getting into my car became major and golf, became a real challenge. I had a time bomb on my hands. On the average the back would go out about twice a year. Sometimes I would take a chance and go play golf and sometimes I could do it. On one occasion a friend of mine and I, drove about 2 hours to a course we had heard about, but never got a chance to play. The first hole went good, but on the second tee, as I finished my swing, I felt a sharp pain in my back, and that was the end of my golfing for that day.

I spent the next few years trying different therapies, nothing was off limits except Surgery. I understand sometimes surgery is necessary, but surgery was out of the question for me because I believed there were more natural ways of healing the body, I just had to find them. One day a friend told me about inversion boots, which was a method of hanging upside down from a bar that was attached to the frame of a doorway. As I thought about the idea, I started to envision the muscles along my spine lengthening, then my spine lengthening and releasing any impingements . It seems like an idea worth trying, but when I started to invert, the blood rushed to my head and made me dizzy. I moved onto other therapies. Then one day I thought about a golf strengthening club I used, which is based on a very old principle. A little bit of improvement over a long period of time will produce big results. I would swing the club for a few reps, then the next time I used it, I would add just one ounce of weight, and the next time another once, and on, and on, and after a period of time I became stronger. Since I knew the club worked, I decided to try that principle with inversion. I started out with just 30 seconds a day, then moved up over to 1 minute, 2 minutes and so forth. After about 9 months of inversion, I felt a release and my back felt better. This lasted for a couple of years until one day I was in the weight room, squatting with a lot of weight, when I felt shooting pain down my leg, and I was right back to the misery I thought I had left behind.

Sometime after that, I heard about a Yoga class starting at my local YMCA. I signed up because I realized the same principle I used In inversion, applied to Yoga, and that was lengthen the muscles, and the spine would lengthen. I found this to be true with Yoga, but I also discovered Yoga had many more benefits and my journey into Yoga began. Over the next five years I would experiment with many different types of Yoga,doing many different workshops, doing different classes, and doing Yoga from tapes in my home, until finally finding a Yoga style for athletics. It is called Power Yoga and it addresses all of the muscles. I have continued doing and teaching this style of Yoga to this day, adding my own variations, based on what was occurring in my body and what seemed to make sense. Even to this day after 8 years of doing this style, I continue to add strength, balance, and flexibility to my body. A well known instructor once said "It is like peeling an onion, one goes through layers and layers of improvement. Today, the back problem that plagued me all those years is a thing of the past and it has been 15 years since I started doing Yoga.

BRINGING YOGA AND GOLF TO OTHERS

I have always wanted to offer Yoga to people who were not comfortable going to regular Yoga classes or studios and I reasoned, if I could connect Yoga with some other activity, people would really see a measurable difference in their performance and would have to give the credit to Yoga. One day I was surfing the web and found a web page called Yoga For Golfer www.yogaforgolfers.com, which turned out to be a program run by Katherine Roberts in Scottsdale Arizona. I signed up for her Teacher Training Program, and was soon on a plane to Scottsdale . When I arrived for the training, I discovered Katherine had done a great job of putting together a very user friendly program, that connected both golf and Yoga in a smooth, seamless fashion. We looked at swing flaws, worked with a golf pro and build a strong relationship between the sport of golf and the discipline of Yoga. We practiced teaching in English, eliminating the often confusing Sanskrit, the official Language of Yoga that is used in the studios. When I came back from Arizona my head was spinning, full of new ideas I had gotten from Katherine's program. It took a while for it to make sense but I eventually sorted it all out and put together my program.

I now offer Yoga to Golfers who are qualified to take this program. Golfers who not only want to avoid injury , but are motivated to take their game to a whole new level. This is a one on one intensive training program that is demanding, but will return great rewards. I personally will work with you either in person if travel permits, or on Skype if it does not. If you are ready to live your dream, or have questions or comments about this article, or would just like to tell me about your game, please contact me at iyogaman@new.rr.com. It would be great to hear from you.

Imagine yourself on the tee Box, next year, in a championship match. You get set, then send the signal to your body to begin the golf swing. The club head starts to move back and you begin to coil like a California Rattlesnake getting ready to strike, at the same time building up power along the way like a steam powered locomotive. At the top of your swing, you pause briefly, then signal your body to move to the downswing and it responds moving effortlessly toward the ball, building momentum, every muscle engaged. As your hips continue to turn, your body unwinds and you feel the power coming from the feet up through the legs, through the core, the arms and down the shaft of the club into the club head. At impact the ball explodes off the tee, then soars toward the target with a laser like quality, and you feel on top of the world.

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