Yoga can help you snowboard for longer and avoid injuries. Just like snowboarding, this will require plenty of practice
Unless you’re lucky enough to be snowboarding in Japan, where you can soak in a natural hot spring bath or staying in a hotel with a spa with a sauna, to soothe your tired muscles.
You’re going to feel sore, like an 80 year old rice farmer (can you tell I live in the countryside of Japan).
Pro snowboarders practice yoga too! Olympic champion Jamie Anderson (I was in a yoga class with her in Australia, no biggie) and Christy Prior, another amazing rider (I did the housekeeping for her hotel room in Aus) is a yoga teacher herself.
Terje Haakonsen (its not just for the ladies, boys), one of the most influential snowboarders in the history of the sport, also practices yoga:
“Yoga just keeps me straight so I can keep living my active lifestyle.”
Yoga helps to connect your mind with your body, an element that is missing from working out and sweating at the gym. These athletes need mental strength as well as physical strength. Calming the mind, stretching the body leads to a more focused state of mind, which you need on a competitive level.
If you’re beginner, you’ll most likely fall (quite hard) and scared a lot of the time. Experienced riders will also be pushing out of their comfort zone on the mountain or in the park. In both situations you’ll have to push past this to get to the bottom of the mountain and back on that chairlift.
With a regular yoga practice, you’ll have a deeper awareness of your breath.
If you breathe slowly and mindfully, your heart rate slows down BING this sends a message to your brain, it thinks you’re in a more peaceful state of mind, stimulating the parasympathetic (yes big word) area of your nervous system.
Instead of the usual fight or flight reaction (or crying because you’re scared shitless on the mountain), this will bring you into a calmer state of mind and you’ll be able to get past what is stopping you.
Personally I have used this method, since being more into yoga and breathing. Myoko (in Honshu, Japan) gets a crapload of powder, I’ve been incredibly stuck in snow, like you’re in mud, but in cold temperatures, in the trees and your friends have long gone past you.
You could panic but your goggles will fog up from sweat and you may get more stuck instead. So breathe, slowly, think “This isn’t bad, I can get out” and slowly get out of being stuck (unless you’re lucky and someone comes to help you).
A regular yoga practice will introduce a different type of strength to working out and lifting weights at the gym. Not that I lift weights or go to the gym, there isn’t even a gym where I live.
I have noticed that through practicing yoga, I have become stronger its inevitable when your holding poses that hold your own bodyweight while targeting specific areas of your body. With a stronger core and body, you’ll be able to improve your balance and recover better on the slopes.
I’m not flexible enough to do yoga! Erm can you breathe? Yes? Well I hope so or you’d be dead. So you can breathe you can do yoga! Yay!
I don’t really think you need to do the splits to be able to do yoga or to snowboard. It will 100% help if your muscles are a little more warmed up, so that if you fall (inevitably you will), it will hopefully not lead to an injury.
I also like that yoga is good for not gym going, sporty type people. You can do it at home, if you’ve got anxiety and don’t like being around other people.
Now that I’ve sold yoga as a way for your snowboarding to become amazing, I’ve listed a detail of each of the 4 postures to help you before you go off snowboarding and a video as well.
Let me know if you use yoga before or after going riding?
Here’s a detail of the stretches below:
Stretch and release tension in your feet
1. Toe Squat
How to: get into a tabletop position, with your hands aligned with your shoulder and your knees hips width apart in alignment with your hips. Slowly come up onto just your knees (any knee pain, back off completely), if this is already intense in your toes stay seated up high. If you’d like a deeper toe stretch, bring your bum down over your toes. To also warm up your wrists, press your palms into each other and hold the pose for 5 Breaths.
Benefits: Releases tension in the toes
Cautions: If you have bad knees, please try this pause with caution, any pain and back away.
If you have any past issues with your toes, please see where your limit is, always listen to your body first.
Stretch the whole of your body in this pose
2. Downward Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svānāsana)
How to: start on your hands and knees. Make sure that the hands are shoulders width apart and that the knees are hips width apart. Pressing on your palm bring your upper body up, your bum high up in the air and press firmly through the shoulders down towards the back legs. If this is very tight on your hamstrings, the back of your legs, just bend those knees slightly. 5 Breaths here.
Benefits: A full body stretch, this will get your body warmed up first thing before snowboarding and get your blood circulating.
Cautions: If you have wrist issues, this would be best to avoid this pose and use your forearms instead, like in a dolphin pose.
If you’ve got Diarrhea, its best not to do this pose.
Avoid if you have a headache or high blood pressure.
Lengthen and stretch your quads in this pose
3. King-arthur’s pose
This pose is a little intense for beginners but you don’t have to have your back leg so high up, as long as you can feel it in the quads that’s more than enough stretching.
How to: start on your hands and knees, with your back facing the wall. Place your right knee back, in a low lunge, get stable, as there is a little balance involved in this pose. 5 Breaths.
Benefits: This pose will stretch your quadriceps and your hip flexors. Which are muscles that are very much in use while snowboarding.
Cautions: Any knees pain at all, just back away immediately.
Release tension in your hips
4. Supine Pigeon Pose
How to: lie on your back, knees bent and the soles of your feet on the floor. Cross your right foot over your left knee, with your right knee sticking out to the side, keeping the right foot flexed up towards the sky. Reach your arms behind the back of your left thigh, in a hugging it towards your chest. If this is too far to reach, use a towel or yoga strap to wrap around your left leg, to feel the same benefits without tensing. Repeat on the other side. 5 Breaths.
Benefits: Ease tight hips by lengthening the IT band in this reclined pigeon pose and feel that yummy stretch in your butt muscles.
Did you find the postures useful and did your snowboarding feel different, let me know in the comments below?
Don’t forget to share this blog with a friend, if you found it helpful!
Want to ride / ski better, for longer? Get access to free yoga sequences, to help you, warm up and relax before an amazing day on the mountain.