Summer Sports and Yoga | Hiking {Lakewood, CO}

The weather is warm and the sun is shining! But that doesn't mean you should be avoiding time on your mat! With all the fun summer sports and activities, it is important to complement these high-impact activities with some yoga! Yoga can help with injury prevention and provide a deep stretch after an intense physical activity. In this blog series, we will explore how certain poses can help strengthen and stretch different muscles in our body that'll benefit different summer activities. Today our focus will be on hiking! 

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Whether you're hiking a 14er or taking a walk around Sloan's Lake, knee stabilization will help you keep a smooth stride! Two poses that help stabilizing our knees are chair and bridge. Chair pose helps stabilize our knees by strengthening quadriceps which helps protect and stabilize our medial collateral ligament (MCL) and our lateral collateral ligament (LCL). Bridge pose strengthens our hamstrings which helps protect and stabilize our anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). 

After you're done hiking, it is important to stretch. This will help you not be too sore the following morning! Two poses to help us stretch after a big hike are ragdoll and pyramid. Ragdoll will help open up your hamstrings after a hard leg workout! Also, if you're backpacking or even carrying a day pack, ragdoll will feel great after your take your pack off as it'll lengthen your spine. Pyramid pose will help strength out your calves after they brought you up and down a mountain! 

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We hope you enjoy the beautiful summer weather and take advantage of it to go hiking! But don't forget to get on your mat!