Making Race Day Easier with Yoga

News9.com

OKLAHOMA CITY -- If you are joining the fitness challenge to walk or run a 5k this year, or just looking for some racing tips, yoga is the one exercise you should be doing to make race day easier.

If you think yoga is just about relaxing and finding your inner peace, think again. Yoga is one way you can strengthen your core, your abdominals and back muscles, and in the process make it easier to walk and run or just make it through the day.

"It is for injury prevention. Plus the fact that it helps balance, especially as we age. It's essential to staying out there on the road both uninjured and flourishing," said yoga teacher Mark Bravo.

Bravo teaches yoga, writes motivational books and coaches both elite athletes and new runners. For all runners, he said it's essential to make sure your middle is strong.

"You tend to follow habits you've created, so if from the get go new runners buy into thinking about the core., you can literally...late in an endurance and intense effort, let other areas of the body rest," Bravo said.

This training means you can walk or run further faster.

"Most every motion, right foot out, originates through the core," Bravo said.

And while yoga can be part of that core work, you don't have to take classes to get stronger. Bravo said the most important exercise you can do is the plank pose which many think just works the upper body, but uses almost every part of your body.

"If you do it every day, it's unlike lifting weights. You don't need days off. You will see vast benefits in a few weeks and then it's all started," Bravo said.