Yoga For Shooters
Submitted by divine_sysop on November 18, 2009 - 05:38
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Try holding any 3.3 Kg. object for one hour. No aiming, no standing still. You can walk around. Just hold it in your hand for one hour. Then imagine doing that 5 hours per day, 7 days a week. Quite strenuous, isn’t it? Well, this is what an average professional shooter does during his training and practice schedule. It is quite grueling for them. They are exposed to stress much more than the average individual. Besides the everyday stress from work, study, family, and personal problems, they have tremendous daily training loads which both physically and mentally exhaust the body. Another source of stress overload comes from the high pressure to produce constantly top results, from stressful competitions, and from the anxiety of losing and its consequences.
Shooting is about tranquility, relaxation and mind control. It requires maximum accuracy, hitting power and close co-ordination between eye, brain and muscles. It is as much a matter of positioning the body as that of the mind. The physical qualities required by shooters are flexibility, strength, postural control and stability, and total body balance and awareness.
Flexibility and strength go hand in hand. You need to have good range of movement about each joint, but that movement must also have suitable levels of strength throughout the range it can move. The movements required for shooting must be easily achieved and require the least amount of effort to do so. Having a good postural control and stability, especially in the trunk and shoulder region, is essential for the shooter to lift and hold a pistol/rifle/gun into the firing position many times over many days of training and competition. Lack of this contributes to several posture related injuries.
The skill of total body balance and awareness rely on the way our body understands what it is doing. This quality influences the ability to catch and throw accurately; to kick a ball, to line up the site of the pistol/rifle/gun with the target and to maintain a stable position whilst performing a task. This skill can be developed and enhanced by the balance activities such as standing on one foot to enhance the feedback the muscles send to the brain of the body’s position to allow it to become more conscious of itself in these positions.
A good yogic programme can increase the shooter’s fitness level in each of the foregoing qualities and significantly improve the performance. The human being is a psychosomatic unit. There is no mind-body separation. The mind influences the body and vice-versa. Shooters are no exception to this rule. A holistic approach is required when aiming for top competitive results. In this respect yoga, because of its holistic nature, is a very effective means of training. It affects the mind/body simultaneously and harmoniously.
One feature of yoga which may be of special interest for the shooters is the breathing exercise. As the shooter is required to hold the breath while performing, the pre-competitive anxiety, a normal phenomenon, associated with increased breath-rate further hampers the breath-holding capacity of a shooter. This renders the shooter to gasp for breath in between the two shooting rounds. This gasping distracts the shooter’s mind from concentrating on the target and disallows the person to give his best performance. Thus breath control plays an important role in successful shooting performance. By controlling the act of breathing, one can efficiently control the various motions in the body and the different nerve currents that are running through the body. So more the control over breath, more is the steadiness of mind and better is performance.
Shooting is a one-sided sport and has an uneven effect on the different organs of the body. This one-sided training load results in muscle dysbalance which can be corrected through yogic exercises because of its overall harmonization of the organism.
Yogic module for the shooters:
For Limbering and Warm-Up:
For Flexibility and Strength:
- Virabhadrasana 1
- Utthita Trikonasana
- Parivritt Trikonasana
- Shasank Bhujangasana
For Postural Control and Stability:
- Naukasana
- Lolasana
- Akarna Dhanurasana
For Balance and Concentration:
Breathing Exercises:
For Tranquility and Mind Control:
- Yoga Nidra
- Antar Mouna
