Yoga, a discipline of strengthening, stretching and breathing exercises and poses, has been on the rise as a training technique for many footballers.
Many different forms of yoga are being applied to a weekly regiment to improve flexibility, especially legs, hips, joints, and hamstrings, all problem areas generating severe inflexibility and tightness for many football players.
Benefit:
- Core strengthening
- Opens shoulders
- Creates space in thoracic spine; decompresses lower back stretches back extensors, ilia-psoas, thighs
- Develops balance; strengthens and releases and lengthens gluteus medius
- Hip opener
- Releases Hamstrings, thighs, calves, Achilles
- Relaxes and focuses attention inward
At B1 Soccer Academy, staff incorporates a sequence of postures weekly as part of the “Injury prevention microcycle”
“Our players are like rocks! They lack crucial mobility in many areas of their bodies which in part result in a decline of proper execution of actions with the ball and may result in injuries down the road.”
Staff Marina Schachowskoj experienced a variation of serious injuries early in her career but through yoga was able to help loosen chronically tight muscles in her legs and back, and credits training with yoga as an important tool for body maintenance and injury prevention.
She comments, “I see many of same tightness and mobility issues in our players that I experienced myself as a player, a result of not taking care of the body properly. Naturally, our muscles tighten up from constant concentric and eccentric actions. Thus, over time if we neglect tightness/mobility our body begins to compensate, and we suffer from it over time.”
Below are several yoga poses Marina guides the players in:
- Downward Facing Dog
- Chair Pose
- Warrior I
- Pigeon Pose
- Wide Angle Seated Forward Bend.
There are also the mental benefits that yoga offers—learning to stay present, managing stressful situations with the breath, centering all focus on releasing tension to the part of the body being focused on.
Through yoga and deep stretching we can train the brain while bringing balance to the bodies muscles!
