Role of Yoga for Improving Muscles Strength in Basketball Players | Original Article

ABSTRACT:

Basketball is a dynamic and fast-paced game that requires an excellent level of muscles strength of limbs and abdomen along with other fitness and skill indices. This study explicitly confined to see the impact of yoga on muscles strength of the basketball players. A parallel group pre-post design was implemented on randomly assigned two groups of male basketball players viz., experimental group (n = 30) and control (n = 30) group, age ranged from 16 to 18 years. Standard tests were administered to measure muscles strength of limbs (upper and lower) and abdomen to record pre- and post- test data. In between pre- and post- test, specific yoga training was imparted to the experimental group for 30 minutes daily in the evening, 5 days a week for a total eight weeks. On the contrary, the control group did not undergo any yoga training but were involved in some extracurricular activities for 30 minutes. Further all the groups underwent a 10-minute rest followed by 40 minutes of basketball trainingpractice session and 10 minutes of cooling down exercises. Thus, total involvement work bout was 90 minutes per day. Data was analyzed using paired ‘t’ test. Results revealed that the basketball players of experimental group showed significant change (p<0.001) in arm muscles strength, leg muscles strength and abdominal muscles strength respectively. The findings showed that yoga training for eight weeks are effective in improving muscles strength needed to achieve success in competitive basketball.