Gentle on the joints, forgiving of injuries and other physical limitations, and deeply relaxing, swimming and yoga, when practiced together, unite their strengths, making for a more balanced athlete.

The minimal gravity effect of swimming is appealing to those who suffer from injury that precludes them from high-impact movement, as well as pregnant women, people with chronic joint pain, and the elderly. Logging laps in the pool undoubtedly provides physical and psychological benefits. But too much time spent in the water without counteracting or opposing activities can be detrimental, resulting in body misalignment and lack of bone strength.

Body alignment, integral to all sports performance, is often thrown off kilter in swimmers, says Leslie Sims, a former national swim coach who is currently a yoga teacher at "now YOGA" and head coach at Club Swim in Los Altos and Palo Alto, California. This is due to overdevelopment of the front of the body, which occurs from chronic overuse in three of the four basic swim strokes?butterfly, breast, and freestyle. Because a swimmer's pectorals are predominantly in a contracted state, the opposing fascia (where muscle attaches to bone) of the rhomboids is weakened. Because the backstroke can counteract some of the repetitive stroke motions that lead to such muscle imbalance, Sims instructs her swim students to perform the backstroke at the end of every workout.

Click here to read full article from Yoga Journal