Featured on the Olympic Channel: Hayley Winter on Yoga for Athletes and the Margins That Matter
- YSS Team
- Jan 31
- 2 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
As the Winter Olympics get underway, attention is increasingly turning to the finer details that support elite performance. Beyond strength, speed, and skill, it is often the smallest refinements — in movement efficiency, breath integration, and recovery — that make the difference. Sport-specific yoga, designed to meet the precise demands of athletic training, is now recognized as one such contributor, offering subtle yet meaningful performance advantages.
On International Yoga Day 2025, the Olympic Channel spotlighted this approach in an article exploring how sport-specific yoga can contribute to marginal gains for Olympic athletes. The feature highlighted the pioneering work of Hayley Winter, founder of the Institute of Yoga Sports Science®, whose research-informed methodology bridges traditional yoga with contemporary sports science.
With over 30 years’ experience, Winter’s work reflects a growing shift in elite sport: recognizing yoga not as a wellness add-on, but as a credible tool for performance, recovery, and resilience.
“There’s no guarantee, but if a sport-specific yoga practice helps an athlete find a more extension through the spine, integrated with breath, that can influence rotation, power output, and ultimately performance - that’s an example of what a marginal gain can look like,” said Winter.
For yoga teachers and movement professionals, these principles are not limited to elite sport. Through our 40-hour Yoga for Athletes online course, practitioners can learn how to apply the same evidence-based techniques developed through this work and bring them into their own teaching.
If you’re curious about how yoga can be applied to support athletic performance, recovery, and resilience and how to bring these principles into your own teaching - we invite you to explore our work.
Explore our 40-hour Yoga for Athletes online course and begin integrating evidence-based, sport-specific yoga methods into your teaching today.
🔗 Read the Olympic Channel article:
International Yoga Day: How sport-specific yoga is proving an area of marginal gains for Olympic athletes
