Golfers Find that Yoga Improves their Game

THURSDAY, 29 MARCH 2007

Dog up, warrior one and dead bug are three things that you seldom hear on a golf course.

Birdie, tee-shot and sand trap might be more common, but the golfers at Nebraska have had to add some new terms to their golf vocabularies.

Following the recent trend of athletes dabbling in alternative athletics, such as NFL stars doing ballet and major league baseball players meditating, the Cornhuskers have been using yoga to improve their games for the past two seasons.

However, it hasn't been the oriental music and incense version of the ancient Hindu art of meditation, but more of a crash course whose main goal is helping the players to loosen up their bodies.

The team was split on whether it was beneficial getting up at 7 a.m. to do the exercises, but many members got over their initial speculations and found that it actually helped improve their games.

Flexibility and being loose are two things that golfers desperately need while walking sometimes up to 36 holes a day. The physical strains of slinging a 50-pound bag across your back while simultaneously walking up and down the hills of a 7,000-yard course twice in a day can put some strain on even the most physically fit athletes.

To help with the physical burden, as well as doing yoga, the team also engages in many different types of lifting and cardiovascular work that aims to help ease the minds and bodies of the players.

With a focus on putting the two aspects together, the Huskers have no doubts that a win is in the near future and hope to rely on the experienced minds and bodies of their four senior leaders to use the yoga training and the rest of their regiment to put them at the level they believe they are capable of competing.

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