The YogaFit Athlete: Up Your Game with Sport-Specific Poses to Build Strength, Flexibility, and Balance

by Beth Shaw

Bring the strength and breathing power of yoga to the sports you love—and seriously up your game!Yoga routines designed specifically for swimming, running, cycling, golf, tennis, baseball, football, volleyball, basketball, skiing, snowboarding, weight lifting, kickboxing, boxing, CrossFit, and more!   “Your body can either help you achieve your goals or get in the way of you living your best life. By practicing yoga and meditation, you can make your body work with you, not against you.”—Beth Shaw   Whether you’re a professional athlete, a weekend warrior, or a pick-up game enthusiast, yoga can dramatically affect your athletic performance and improve your alignment, balance, core stability, strength, flexibility, agility, endurance, lung capacity, and mobility. In this motivating and practical guide, celebrated fitness expert Beth Shaw provides short, sport-specific yoga routines designed to help counter tight muscles, overuse injuries, and musculature imbalances. By adding a quick yoga routine to any workout, you will increase your overall strength and health, and achieve your personal best.   Inside you’ll find • fully illustrated, sport-specific yoga routines that engage the core, enhance your play, and reduce the risk of injury • essential warm-up and cool-down movements to complement any athletic endeavor • simple breathing exercises to steady your breath and calm your nerves during competition • meditation techniques to help clear your mind and bring laser focus to your goals • guided imagery and visualization exercises to improve performance • strategies for coaching yourself and others

Genres: Fitness

329 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 5, 2016

Reviews

[Carol]

Overall a rehash of the previous material Beth Shaw has published. I have to remember this book is for athletes that are perhaps not daily practioners of yoga. However, I have been able to find more yoga poses for specific sports on line than found in this book. In addition, her original book provides flows for specific sports which is better than 3 - 6 poses per sport. I did like the balance and core pose review. The addition of how to add weights to yoga poses was the only thing new and different for me. Lots of repetitiveness which could have been addressed with a chapter on a few universal poses. I expected more.

[Klarysa Crape]

While I enjoyed the small sections about the importance of breathing and how practicing yoga complements an athlete's workout regimen, the overall core of the book displayed well-known, basic yoga poses specific for athletes to practice in their individual sport. Aspects of focus, concentration, discipline, and clarity improved by practicing yoga were touched on and connected to the athlete's need for these skills during games, practices, and competitions. However, I was hoping to see yoga flows specific for certain athletics, such as good flows to practice for bodybuilders or swimmers. Instead, a large portion of the book focuses on descriptions of basic yoga poses and why specific sports athletes should incorporate them in to their daily stretch and workout routines. Overall, as a lover of weightlifting and yoga, I was disappointed by the lack of applicable content in this book, especially since the title seemed all too fitting for my lifestyle.

[Emily]

I won a copy of this book through Goodreads giveaways. All opinions are my own.

I am glad that I won this as a giveaway and didn't purchase. The title tells you all you need to know. It is to help with other sports and activities, not general Yoga.

[Bookworm]

Recommend flipping through before borrowing/buying. It's a book that is supposed to utilize specific yoga poses to enhance/supplement/compliment your workouts. Goodreads says: "Yoga routines designed specifically for swimming, running, cycling, golf, tennis, baseball, football, volleyball, basketball, skiing, snowboarding, weight lifting, kickboxing, boxing, CrossFit, and more!" I'm not a hardcore athlete and I haven't even tried most of these sports. But it sounded interesting.
 
It's not. I found this book very disappointing for what it purports to do. There are pictures plus descriptions of what the pose is, how to perform it, how to modify it, etc. And there are some that are assigned to particular forms of exercises. That's about it.
 
As a beginner of yoga, I had hoped there would be more to it. You can find most of this information online if you don't already know it. There is no specific table of contents that tells what poses go with what particular exercises (you find them as you go along in the book). If you're new to exercise as a whole or perhaps to the particular form of exercise you're interested in then it might be helpful.
 
But otherwise I was not surprised to read that the book is a rehash of previously published materials by the same author. I wasn't familiar with her or her work before picking up this book from the library but I was disappointed.
 
I wouldn't really recommend it unless you're a true beginner/am just getting into exercise, want ideas on how to integrate yoga with your other workout routines, etc. And even then I'd recommend you flip through this book first and compare with her other works to see which book is a best fit for you. Borrowed this one from the library and am glad.

[Ian Yarington]

Because I won this as a giveaway I have to preface that I'm not exactly a yoga guru. (see what I did there?) But as a former athlete, at least played multiple sports throughout my youth, I could see how the poses related to sports. I actually really enjoyed this book and it has me thinking about yoga as a fun way to exercise and stay limber.