Yoga and Its Benefits for Runners

Yoga promotes muscle pliability, proper body alignment, controlled breathing and mindfulness. All of these qualities can help to improve a runners performance. Muscle pliability and proper body alignment can not only improve their performance, but it can also help their body heal after a strenuous bout of exercise. Promoting proper body alignment helps to reduce the stress the body experiences on a run. Running is very hard on the body, but with proper body mechanics, overuse injuries can be prevented. For example, proper mechanics and increase pliability can help prevent shin splints, which is a very common overuse injury experienced by a runner.

Mindfulness is more the ability to focus your mind on the task at hand. When you are running, this is known as the being in "the zone." When you are in the zone, nothing else matters, nothing else is on your mind, other then your running. Being in the zone helps to promote controlled breathing. If you are focused on running, you are focused on controlling your breathing. Controlled breathing is essential to be a competitive runner. If you are unable to control your breathing, you can end up hindering your performace. This is because oxygen is essential to promote ATP formation in order to fuel the body's energy systems.

Participating in yoga even if it is only 10 to 15 mins a day, can help the athlete gain these benefits to help improve their performance. Runners are always looking to gain that competitive edge, and yoga just might be what could help them find that edge.

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New Development in Anti-Inflammatory Drugs

This finding could change how doctors may be able to change the way we all take care of the inflammatory response. So far doctors are prescribing a steroid to treat inflammation. However, treating inflammation with steroids causes harmful side effect on individuals ranging from muscle weakness, immune weakness and high blood sugar. Having high blood pressure as an athlete is a negative response of the body. Meaning if there is high amount of sugar in the blood, insulin will be released, causing the blood pressure to drop. This sudden drop in blood sugar can lead to the athlete crashing. An interesting topic the article brought about is that steroids are often prescribed to cancer patients to help with their treatment. They are being subjected to the high occurrence of the side effects of the steroids, but if researchers are able to develop this new anti-inflammatory drug, hopefully it will not only help to fight cancer, but also will help to prevent those patients from being subjected to difficult side effects. In accordance with athletes and athletic trainers it is very important to be familiar with new and improved ways of treating the same issues always seen in the world of athletics. The world of the athletic trainer is always changing and is a big reason as to why athletic trainers need to continue their education.

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