Yoga for Runners

This afternoon I participated in the inaugural session of Tokyo's Yoga For Runners. Micheal Glenn guided David Motozo, David Halle, Keren Miers and myself through an hour of what Michael described as beginning ishita yoga.

I have attended several other hatha yoga classes in the past, and found today's class more strenuous as well as seemingly more beneficial. As Michael noted runners like myself tend to have muscle strength imbalances such as the outer thighs being stronger than the inner thighs. Moreover I am inflexible to begin with and endurance training has only excacerbated this problem. I knew this before today's class. What surprised me was my limited core strength and my general imbalance. I toppled over during several yoga poses. I used to be so good at situps and on the balance beam as a kid.

I have spent less time stetching in recent years after reading numerous studies showing that stretching has not been shown to reduce the incidence of general overuse injuries in runners. However, now I am becoming convinced that I could benefit from increasing my range of motion in certain muscle groups, and by stetching certain muscles that are unnaturally inflexible.

Furthermore the research appears unanimous that improving core strength and balance helps everyone, especially as we get older, and especially for triathletes.

Unfortunately, that said, I will likely be unable to attend many of the Yoga for Runners sessions over the next two months, but I am hoping that Michael will be able to continue this program.