Even the highest level athletes (like Lance Armstrong) are starting to see the benefits to practicing yoga and incorporating it into their serious training schedules. If you’re wondering if it might help you in your sport, here are a few tips to cross training with yoga.

1. Identify the area you need help in. If your sport has already made you flexible, you might not see the benefit of that side of yoga practice, but if you’re looking to improve strength you’ll certainly see benefits. Yoga might help you develop muscles that your sport leaves out. Being stronger all over will help you in any sport.

2. Think about starting a yoga practice if you do a sport that tightens your hips and hamstrings. Yoga will help loosen your hips and get your hamstrings back to normal flexibility. You might tighten them back up the minute you do your sport again, but it’s always good to stretch those areas in between sessions.

3. Remember that being an athlete is about balance and overall physical fitness. To be a well rounded athlete you should be strong, fast, controlled, powerful and focused. Yoga is a great way to diversify the ways in which you strength train. Yoga is a great way to quietly think about how you’re controlling your movements and focus on the particular muscles you’re training. It also will help with your mental awareness, body awareness and overall fitness.

4. Yoga isn’t just about getting flexible. It’s a common misconception that the primary goal of yoga is to become flexible. It’s also about strength. You might see someone come into yoga class that is already flexible. It doesn’t mean they’ll be good at it. You’ve got to be strong to do well in yoga. Sometime someone that is flexible needs to get stronger in order to be able to control and stabilize themselves in both yoga and other sports.

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