Study Highlights Benefits Of Hot Yoga For Enhancing Athletic Performance

21 June 2019      

For those who are into fitness and health, you most likely have heard of (and perhaps even taken part in) the sport of hot yoga. Hot Yoga sessions typically consist of an hour to ninety minutes of dynamic movements and stretching in a purposely temperature elevated room. This promotes perspiration and perspiration is the body’s natural way to cool itself and to purge toxins. Science tells us that, yes indeed, hot yoga offers numerous health benefits.

Obviously, the main ingredient for hot yoga is, you guessed it, heat. Getting the body to perform in temperatures sometimes in excess of 100 degrees is proven to provide a positive benefit on physical abilities as well as give practitioners a positive psychological effect. The Globe and Mail reported on a study that was published by scientists at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. It was tested on the women's national field hockey team during their training for the 2018 Olympic Games. The challenge for elite athletes (unlike us mere mortals) was to add heat to their routine without disrupting the rest of their training regimen. The study found measurable performance benefits.

Exposing the body to heat is going to trigger it in various ways all meant to help it to adapt to the hot and sweaty environment. This will, in turn, boost the body's endurance capacity in general, including during training in rooms with a normal temperature. What actually happens in is that the levels of blood plasma going through the veins increases. Athletes continue to reap the benefits from the exercise long after their session ends.

Walking on the stair master in an enclosed 40-degree room (as if cardio didn't already feel like a punishment sometimes) would most likely drain a fitness fanatic of all energy and leave them struggling to both perform and enjoy the physical activity. This is why hot yoga can be an excellent addition to your workout schedule. It provides the opportunity to perform dynamic movements and stretch out muscles under ideal circumstances, without messing with a weekly leg day or Zumba class.

If you are an athlete and would like to reap the body conditioning benefits of yoga to improve your game performance, contact Answer is Fitness.

Source: thetalko.com