The Yogafit Athlete: Up Your Game with Sport-Specific Poses to Build Strength, Flexibility, and Balance

Shaw (YogaLean), founder of the yoga instructor training company YogaFit Training Systems, provides clear and useful advice for athletes in this guide. According to Shaw, athletes who don’t practice yoga are “competing at a disadvantage.” As each sport strengthens particular parts of the body, imbalance and weakness in other areas can occur. To counteract this effect, Shaw prescribes yoga. The book provides sport-specific yoga sequences (with accompanying photos) for, among others, football, volleyball, baseball, hockey, running, golf, CrossFit, cycling, and kickboxing. Shaw explains how each pose benefits the particular sport; for example, the revolving chair pose trains torso rotation for an effective tennis or golf swing. Sections on breath control, visualization, meditation, restorative yoga, weight training, and core and balance poses round out the program. (Core, in the author’s words, is the “epicenter” of total body strength, and balance is “the root” of movement.) The text offers a sensible route to enhancing productivity and longevity in one’s preferred sport. Shaw’s straightforward approach will appeal even to athletes who are new to yoga or skeptical about how the ancient practice and mainstream sports can team up. Agent: Will Hobbs, CAA. (Apr.)