This winter, the football team incorporated yoga sessions into their eight week offseason conditioning schedule.
The team practiced yoga on Wednesdays for 45 minutes, and because of the large size of the team, there were two sessions with about 40 guys in each.
Yoga was suggested by some football players during last year’s winter conditioning, but head coach Keith Otterbein said that there were two problems with the suggestion- “time and space.”
The “time problem” came from an NCAA Division II rule that limits team members to eight hours of workout time per week between seasons. In order to have team yoga sessions, something had to be cut out of their packed schedule.
The program that was discontinued to allow for yoga was 3D conditioning, which ran for the past two or three years on Wednesdays.
“That [3D] was good; it worked on our balance and core, but it was a little too strenuous. I wanted something where we were gaining some positive impact on the guys without beating on them physically,” Otterbein said. “Yoga was a perfect fit because it has a relaxed atmosphere. I can’t imagine anything else that would fit in that Wednesday slot any better.”
And the players agreed- yoga was relaxing.
Sophomore Gabe Starkey, who had prior yoga experience from P90X workouts, said that for the majority of the guys, their favorite part of yoga was the 15 minute relaxation component at the end of each session.
“Some guys would fall asleep and we’d hear snoring,” Starkey said. “That was always pretty funny.”
The other problem the team had to fix before being able to implement yoga was finding adequate space.
“I was really concerned about finding the right space,” Otterbein said. “The dance studio didn’t have enough room, and we couldn’t use the gym floor because part of the yoga thing is the calmness and serenity and becoming centered, so it needed to be a nice, quiet environment.”
The team ended up having the yoga sessions in the Curtis Dining Hall. Otterbein
said this worked out perfectly because it was open and lacked distractions, but that they ran into problems when the Grewcock Student Union flooded and Curtis was needed for actual dining; however, they were able to use the Dow A&B for that week.
The yoga classes were taught by Rhonda Carrier, who goes by “Yogi Rhonda.” Carrier has taught yoga at her business, Rhonda’s Every Bodies Yoga, for the past five years. She had two years of training in yoga before opening her business.
Carrier started yoga to help her train for marathon running.
“I was looking for balance in my training,” Carrier said. “I wanted a more static as opposed to dynamic stretching.”
Carrier stressed the importance for athletes, especially football players, to practice yoga.
“The challenge with the football team is that they do a lot of lifting and pressing so their muscles become short and tight; yoga helps to lengthen those muscles,” Carrier said.
Otterbein said that stretching was a main component of what he wanted to address on Wednesdays.
“From the time they come back in January until we are done with our early morning conditioning is the time we’re really working on getting bigger and stronger and we’re up in the gym doing speed and agility stuff before we go in the weight room, but we need to make sure that we remain flexible, keep our hips flexible, keep us as athletic as we can be while they are getting bigger,” Otterbein said. “We’re hoping this will help reduce the amount of injuries.”
In addition to flexibility and core strength, another benefit that yoga will hopefully bring the team is enhanced mental focus.
“Nobody’s ever done anything athletic without having to involve the mind and the body and yoga is a mind-body connection type of practice,” Carrier said. “It teaches you to focus and concentrate instead of just movement.”
Junior Sam Landry said this mind-body connection will be helpful for football.
“When you’re in the heat of a game and everything’s going crazy, being able to calm your mind down and calm your body down- I think that’s one of the most beneficial parts of yoga,” Landry said.
Otterbein said that he received good feedback on the sessions from a lot of the guys and that he will look to bring it back next year.
“I think it was a hit. It was everybody’s most exciting time of the week because you’re stressed out all week with school and football and this is an hour of your time where you get to relax and have fun and not think about anything,” Landry said. “If you looked at your Twitter around one till four on Wednesdays, all the football players were always tweeting about yoga.”
