YOGA CAN IMPROVE YOUR GAME
From pro-football players to professional golfers, athletes from all walks of life are discovering the key benefits of incorporating MARK BLANCHARD'S PROGRESSIVE POWER YOGA into their exercise routine. Whether you are a serious basketball player, marathon runner, or a fitness enthusiast of any kind, power yoga helps to improve your game by providing greater strength and mental focus . In fact many male-dominated professional sports teams have incorporated this practice into their workouts, thus supporting its importance to physical fitness for athletes requiring optimum health and peak performance.

Veteran yogi and leader in the power yoga movement Mark Blanchard believes that athletes have the most to gain from Progressive Power Yoga. "The combination of stretches and resistance exercises in yoga are designed to increase muscular strength and flexibility, improve concentration, and reduce stress" says Blanchard. He has worked with a number of professional athletes throughout the year, including Cincinnati Bengals Wide-Receiver TJ Houshmanzadeh, All-Star NBA Player Steve Smith, Two-Time PGA Player of the Year Fred Couples, and many other members of the NBA, NFL, and Major League Baseball.

Here, he shares some of the key physical and mental benefits of power yoga for athletes.

CORE STRENGTH Regular yoga practice will improve core strength, which is essential to sports performance and injury preventions. A variety of yoga poses such as plank, chaturanga, and chair pose increase strength overall, including core strength. It adds a new form of resistance training to one's typical machine-based workouts.

FLEXIBILITY OF RANGE AND MOTION Engaging in frequent yoga exercises will make the spine more flexible and muscles more supple. Yoga routines offer the steady increase in flexibility and range in motion that are ideal for athletes which can drastically decrease any risk to injuries. It lengthens the entire body and release joints, thus adding to the overall improvement of one's game.

BALANCE Balance exercises are often overlooked by athletes, but it is actually one of the most effective ways to correct muscle imbalances mechanical problems in the body. Athletes often tend to perform repetitive motion exercises that focus on a group of muscles while the others are ignored. Yoga helps to fix these imbalances, as well as imbalances in the mind.

RELIEVING CHRONIC PAIN Regular training is often accompanied by chronic aches and pain, something athletes are far too familiar with. Practicing yoga helps the muscles to release chronic pain and allows players with mobility and agility and play more efficiently.

FOCUS One of the most important aspects to successful playing is mental focus. A player's mental approach will ultimate dictate the outcome of his or her performance. The principals of yoga offer complete mind and body awareness and heightens mental focus, a crucial aspect that vastly affects any athlete's ability to perform.

Progressive Power Yoga combines breathing exercises with swift movements that WILL give you a complete workout comparable, if not better than, to cardio exercises. It is a complete total mind/body exercise.

UPBEAT, CARDIO, MAKES-YOU-SWEAT EXERCISE REGIMEN Mark Blanchard's Progressive Power Yoga is an upbeat, cardio, make-you-sweat exercise regimen that will help you get your body into the best shape you've always dreamed of. Sculpt long, lean muscles, decrease stress, look and feel younger, increase your energy, lose weight, boost confidence, rev up your metabolism, increase mental focus and clarity, enhance your immune system and increase your longevity with the first total mind/body fitness regimen.

An introduction to this form of yoga will literally bend your misconceptions and physique into and indomitable, healthy, stronger, and better you.