I had a conversation with a professional rugby player. He was both delighted and surprised that a yoga teacher was following him on instagram. "Why not?" I said. After all, we both get very early in the morning and yogis and athletes both are very disciplined. "I am not very flexible" he pointed out to me.
Well of course not. In this case, you need body mass to perform tackles and scrums. Low body mass is simply not going to cut it. The mesomorph body type is best suited for rugby while the thin and lanky ectomorphs seem to be best suited for yoga as they tend to have more range of motion in their joints.
The problem is, i pointed out to my new friend, is that you get a lot of yoga types who are very flexible and have no muscle tone and muscle dev
elopment. They can do contortions and almost any yoga pose you throw their way b
ut their bodies are not very balanced. They tend to be hyper-extended in a lot of their joints and often times display instability in those joints. They are attracted to yoga because they are good at it but what they could really focus on is strength training. Go to the gym once a while to get the muscles to protect the joints. This could, in the long run. prevent arthritis and repetitive strain injury.
Meanwhile, our rugby man could use some of the flexibility training in yoga. Stretching out those muscles could probably help them recover faster. Put it this way, two people in the same yoga class - one super stretchy person who feels nothing in the postures and can do all the postures absolutely well and another person who is less flexible, can't touch his or her toes but is feeling a good stretch in every pose. Who do you think got more benefit from the yoga class? Plus, who doesn't want some peacefulness after a long day of tackling?
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