Snow and yoga: My next big adventure?

Over the past year, I’ve been getting rather hooked on yoga. And when I say rather hooked, I mean in a big way. It’s safe to say that before I started, I was a sceptic. I like my sport to be hard and fast, and I like to work to build up a good old-fashioned sweat. After much cajoling by a yoga-zealous friend, I went to a session with them – just to shut them up, to be quite honest. He (quite smugly) assured me that it wouldn’t be as easy as it looked, and that I’d definitely work up a sweat by the end of the hour-and-a-half. Quietly scoffing at his hippy twaddle, we went on our merry way to his teacher’s yoga studio.

After the first session, I was hooked. There was loads of stuff I couldn’t make my body do, and I was pretty awestricken at how demanding it was and at what people of all shapes and sizes were able to do. And there were abilities of all levels in the class – some good, some not so good, but all better at yoga than me. And what the teacher could do was unbelievable, to say the least.

So over the past year, I’ve wholeheartedly incorporated yoga into my weekly exercise regime, and I can already tell that it’s doing my body the world of good. Apart from having improved my flexibility, my yoga routine has helped to alleviate old sports injuries and prevent new ones bygreatly improving my muscular and core strength.

Strengthening my core has helped with my balance, which is crucial for any slope-centred sport. Having been going to dry slopes here in the UK, I’ve noticed that my body moves where and when I want it to move more readily, while I also feel that my spine is better-supported when I fall. Also, while my knees used to feel like they’d been under a lot of strain after extended periods on the slopes, yoga has helped me to readjust my centre of gravity, shifting a lot of my bodyweight from my poor knees.

As any snowboarder or skier will know, a holiday on the slopes can be really taxing on the body if it’s not properly prepped beforehand. Yoga training – which, by the way, is the perfect complement to any sport – builds strength, flexibility and stamina, and, by all accounts, will ensure that I won’t feel the need for another holiday after a week on the slopes.

Now, I feel the time is right to actually combine the two. My stretches are going to help gently wake up my brain and warm up my entire body, focus for entire days of slope-based fun, warm down, stretch out my aching muscles and relax to enjoy the evening ahead.

So now that I know it all (!), all I’ve got to do is decide where I’m going, how I’m going to get there, book it, and buy the best travel insurance money can buy (even with the best yoga preparation in the world, you never can tell what’s going to happen on the slopes).