According to StopSportsInjuries.org, more than two million injuries are sustained annually by high school athletes in the United States due to overuse, year-round play and antiquated training methods.

Softball involves quite a bit of twisting, during which the lower body stays grounded and still while the upper body rotates. Twists are involved in batting, throwing, and even trying to steal a base.

Those movements can lead to injury and one group feels there’s a better training method to prevent softball injuries through a growing practice that has helped professional and Olympic athletes already.

“I was an athlete and am now a dedicated yogi,” says Molly Pearson, one of the key leaders of Maximum Performance Yoga (MPY), based in the San Francisco Bay Area, “so I know the benefits of using yoga to prevent injuries.”

MPY was founded by Nathan Friedkin, who coached his two boys’ sports teams and saw first-hand the opportunity the help athletes reduce injuries and speed up recovery time through the use of yoga.

“Yoga is about facing the weakest part of ourselves,” he says. “For women, that sometimes means coming more into the strength of their core and for men sometimes that means sometimes coming more into their flexibility. Either way, balancing the two is how we’re going to reach maximize performance, we’re going to have the least amount of injuries in our sport and we’re going to recover from the injuries that we have the quickest.”

To combat the increasing number of injuries in the sport, Pearson says that there are specific exercises to strengthen the areas that are key.

“A stable foundation in the lower body (strong glutes and thighs) and flexibility in the spine are the keys to executing a safe and healthy twist, which are not only important in a strong performance but in preventing back injury.”

She says yoga postures such as the Revolved Crescent Lunge promote leg strength through isometric muscle contraction and spinal flexibility through a sustained twist.

Yoga is also helpful in maintaining both strength and flexibility in the shoulder girdle, which are incredibly important in pitching. A good pitch requires not only a great deal of power, but an extensive range of motion in the shoulder joint.

By stretching the shoulders in postures such as a wide legged forward fold with interlacing the hands behind the back, and strengthening them in postures such as Chaturanga Dandasana (essentially a narrow-arm push-up), yoga may be helpful in improving pitching performance and reducing incidence of injury.

If you’d like to learn more about Maximum Performance Yoga, which works with athletes primarily in California and Texas, click here to go to the company’s website.

And don’t be surprised if in the near future you hear about more and more softball players at all ages – youth to pro – who are using yoga off the field to improve performance and durability on the field

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According to MPF, here are some key postures for preventing injuries for softball players:

• Four legged staff pose (chaturanga)
• Standing Bow Pulling Pose
• Chair Pose
• Half Lord of the Fishes
• Standing Head-to-Knee Pose
• Seated Head-to-Knee Pose
• Eagle
• Triangle
• Revolved triangle
• Balancing stick
• Supine hand to foot
• Headstand
• Revolved side angle
• Prayer twist
• Wide legged standing forward fold with bound arms
• Cow face pose
• Half pigeon
• Eye of the needle
• Side plank
• Boat