Many people may not know that Lee Yang, the Olympic gold medalist, is also a loyal yoga practitioner!

Taiwan's badminton men's doubles "Lin-Yang match" Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin advanced to the gold medal match by reversing and defeating the Danish combination, 18vs21, 21vs14, 21vs10, in the semi-finals of the Paris Olympics on August 2nd. Lee Yang said, "I am very happy to be able to play like this in my last Olympics."

Many people may not know that Lee Yang is also a loyal yoga practitioner. In fact, from skateboarder to sprinter, many competitive athletes in various sports have a "secret weapon" for daily training to improve their athletic performance, and that is: yoga.

Four professional athletes share their experiences of how practicing yoga has improved their athletic performance.

Skateboarder Korahn Gayle:

"Sometimes I will spend eight hours practicing skateboarding around the city, and maybe try to do technical movements for two hours in a row. The next day I wake up, I will feel very sore and tight in certain parts of my body. Sometimes the hip and groin muscle are too tight to continue practicing technical movement. But after practicing yoga, I feel much more relaxed and can make the movements I want to make on the skateboard more fluidly."

WNBA player Alana Beard:

"If you want to be an excellent defender in the WNBA, you must be able to move your hips flexibly. Practicing yoga has a direct promotional and improvement effect on my defense on the court, because through the training of the triangle pose in yoga, my hips are more flexible."

Athletic fitness athlete Dennis Hartmann:

"I used to have problems with my shoulders, but yoga has greatly improved my body flexibility. I discovered this when doing the push-up squat movement. I used to often feel tightness in my hip muscles, but through hip joint stretching and breathing exercises in yoga, I have increased the range of squat motion. So the range of my squats is getting bigger and bigger, and the movement is still quite stable."

U.S. Paralympic track and field athlete Scout Bassett:

"The seated forward bend in yoga is very similar to the landing posture in long jump - the legs are straight, the upper body is fully extended, and the chest almost touches the quadriceps. It is great to have that level of flexibility. I believe that many people think that running is just moving all four limbs, but one thing is really important, and that is to stabilize the core and achieve excellent mechanical effects, which is the effect of yoga, and this is why yoga training has been added to the sprint training."

(Photos from left to right: Athlete Chirstian Coleman, WNBA player Alana Beard, NBA player Channing Frye, professional football player Christen Press, American professional rugby league player Khail Mack, NBA player Kevin Love, Paralympic track and field athlete Scout Bassett, and American professional rugby league player Larry Fitzgerald)

#Information from Nike official website