Welcome to YOGA FOR FOOTBALLERS
Whether you are a professional or a regular Sunday League player, Football Yoga will help you play better and go on playing for longer. You will injure less and recover faster. You will feel lighter, freer, easier, sharper. Niggles and chronic injuries will subside. You will become a better football player.
“Yoga was key to prolonging my Manchester United career”. Ryan Giggs
About me
In my role as a Personal Trainer I have helped many clients across the UK, Ireland and Australia reach their fitness goals.
How is football yoga different to traditional yoga?
Sequences are designed for the complex needs of football players. Traditional yoga can sometimes contain moves and poses that will do more harm than good if continuously repeated.
Football Yoga was designed by Sarah Ramsden to deliver programmes that will help footballers play the game better and improve their performances. Sarah has a very impressive background in the industry and has worked with many professional players at clubs including Manchester United, Manchester City and Derby County. Her most committed client being Ryan Giggs. She now trains health and fitness professionals in her craft, some are already working at top level football clubs, including Liverpool, Sheffield Wednesday and Port Vale.
Benefits of Football Yoga
Agility: Yoga will lengthen out muscles that become short playing football. Longer hamstrings help with sliding tackles; more mobile hips help you turn faster or kick overhead more easily; better shoulder movement helps with throw-ins; more mobile ankles help transfer power when sprinting and jumping. You will become more athletic, more dynamic and that little bit more gymnastic in your movement.
Efficiency Gains: A supple body needs less energy to make each movement. Put the other way you are fighting your own body’s tightness that consumes energy and slows you down. Yoga will help you feel lighter on the pitch and feel that every movement is just a fraction easier and quicker.
Stamina: Fatigue kills performance. Yoga will help build your core muscles which will keep you more upright and able to transfer power through to the legs for longer. And those efficiency gains mean you fatigue a little later!
Focus: Yoga helps you concentrate for longer and keeps you calmer under pressure. You will be able to regulate your breathing better and stay calm and focused on the pitch when emotions are kicking off all round you.
Injury Prevention: Yoga will help you injure less and make rehabilitation faster. Football will injure you through collisions, bad landing, tackles, over-use and over stretch. Groins, quads, hamstrings, calves get torn; knees suffer meniscus and ligament damage; ankles fracture. Yoga will help with any lower back issues and any nerve pains. Yoga will give you longer muscles, good core strength and better movement patterns (e.g. better knee-ankle alignment and less stress to your lower back), all of which will help you injure less and recover faster post-injury.
Recovery: Yoga will help your post-training and post-match recovery. Good recovery is the most important factor in you being able to play. Most injuries happen towards the end of training, in the second half of a match or towards the end of the season when your body can’t recover fast enough from the accumulated stress and fatigue. Yoga will help you recover faster and stay better recovered throughout the season. All that slower movement in yoga coupled with slower, deeper breathing will help you shift metabolic waste from your muscles, speed up repair, boost your immune system, and improve your sleep.
Longevity in the Game: You know this one already – if you want to go on playing for longer, then do your yoga! Years of playing football makes muscles tight and short and that slowly impacts your speed and skill: your positioning sense and ability to read the game may be better as you get older, but that doesn’t help if you can’t get to the ball. It is no coincidence that so many top players credit yoga for helping them play at the highest level well into their thirties.
Why footballers don’t do yoga?
Many footballers believe that yoga contains too many complex moves and that they would feel embarrassed in a class. In addition, many feel they can’t find the time for yoga within their busy training schedules.
Football Yoga Instructors have become experts in the functional movement and flexibility needs of footballers. No need to feel embarrassed as all the sequences and moves are simple to execute and contain no complex poses. 2 x 45 minute sessions per week will give results in only a few weeks.