The staff of the Seattle
Seahawks have now made it mandatory for their players to participate
in Yoga practice after a successful optional program last season.
According to ESPN, yoga is just part of Coach Pete Carroll’s focus
on the players’ mental health and overall happiness.
“I wanted to find out if
we went to the NFL and really took care of guys, really cared about
each and every individual, what would happen?” he told ESPN.
Carroll’s philosophy is to
care for individual players, by offering yoga and meditation
sessions, and emphasizing positive thinking, language, and actions.
There’s even a whole staff designed to look after the players’
well being, including a life-skills consultant/addiction counselor.
This departs greatly from traditional football coaches who motivate
their players by being tough on them.
Their offensive tackle
Russell Okung also views meditation as an important part of training.
“Meditation is as
important as lifting weights and being out here on the field for
practice,” Okung said. “It’s about quieting your mind and
getting into certain states where everything outside of you doesn’t
matter in that moment. There are so many things telling you that you
can’t do something, but you take those thoughts captive, take power
over them and change them.”
In addition to improving
mental focus and stability, yoga also has the benefit of improving
flexibility and strengthening the neuromuscular system. The
flexibility aspect is one of the main reasons athletes participate in
yoga programs, to reduce injury to joints and connective tissue due
to improperly stretched muscles. Weight baring poses also help
strengthen the neuromuscular system by challenging how the body moves
and hold positions which then transfers to strength training and
other athletic activities.
This is why Yoganic Flow
offers their Yoga for Athletes at B-Fit Detroit:
http://www.bfitdetroit.com/
The original source article
can be found here:
http://blogs.yogajournal.com/yogabuzz/2013/09/nfl-team-mandates-yoga.html
Namaste
Will
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