Not Your Mother's Yoga: Coaches Think Outside the Box to Train Players

By Nancy Savoth, Special to Touchline

When 15-year-old Margaret Murray's club soccer coach told the Nether Nightmares they would be starting a regimen of training in yoga, she had doubts; it almost seemed like a bad dream. She'd seen her mother do yoga.

"My mom had her mat to do poses and stretches, and I think she even did some of them in a chair," recalled Murray, who felt her team was in a different league.

Under the coaching of head coach, Doug Crowe, and assistants, Pat Wijtyk and Jake Wilson, the U15 Nightmares, of Nether Providence Athletic Association (NPAA), prepared for the Guthenburg Cup in Sweden. The determined group of young women – many of whom had played together since the age of seven — raised $11,000 (as of May) for travel expenses to represent American girls' soccer in Sweden in July.

Murray and the rest of The Nightmares trusted their coach, Crowe, who knew that training in various forms of yoga was benefiting a great many professional athletes and college teams in a variety of sports. In addition, Crowe had learned that, locally, The Swarthmore College Garnet coach, Eric Wagner, had hired yoga and Budokon instructors Adam Marcus and Gwen Soffer of Enso in Media, Penn., to train his men and was pleased with the outcome. Crowe knew the benefits of team building off the field, but he was anxious to see if yoga could take the girls to a new level both physically and mentally.

"You get that full-body training," says Crowe, who was recently quoted in a Philadelphia Inquirer article on yoga training for athletes. "Yoga just helps you perform better in everything you do."

Some of the physical benefits to yoga are stretching, flexibility and fewer injuries. Beyond the physical, players build body awareness and control, as well as confidence.

The Swarthmore Garnet players were put through serious paces – eight weeks of 75-minute (weekly) classes in Budokon, the combined practice of power flow [fluid, constantly moving] yoga and eastern art movement.

"They thought it was going to be nice and restful, and since they were strong athletes … not difficult at all. They were shocked at how hard it was," Crowe says.

Like coaching, yoga training for younger athletes involves a high level of teaching.

"I did some research to teach yoga to teen girls," yoga instructor Soffer recalls. "Having one myself, and having been one myself, wasn't enough. I needed to understand how they learn. The first class was so different than any class of adults I've ever taught. There was a tremendous amount of energy in the room and I needed to help them harness it and use it. Besides building them together as comrades, I tried to integrate the power of feeling dignified, proud, having good posture and being strong women."

"It was incredible. I loved it," said Murray of the class. "At first we were competing with each other about who could do which poses better but then we started understanding that if we used it right and improved each day it was going to help us as individual players. Our coach said it would help focus, but it also helps build a lot of different muscles and the balancing is really good for control. I could see it really being helpful for goalies. We all love the relaxation time at the end. You feel so good when you leave."

Soffer and Marcus have been spreading the life benefits of yoga to all age groups and types for the last year at their studio, Enso, on State Street in Media. They find that age and gender do not lesson the misconceptions people have of yoga.

"To almost all people it's very humbling at first," Soffer says. "The yoga training we do is physical and extremely athletic, and there's balancing and holding poses, which involve mental focus and control. It's hard, but just learning how to breath in difficult moments can make a person more calm and assertive on the soccer field, or anywhere."

In addition, the process of working together as a team on something other than soccer has unifying effects for understanding and trusting teammates on and off the field. For the Nightmares, they have worked to plan and raise the funds to finance a trip to Sweden and have completed two eight-week sessions of yoga training.

"I teach them to breathe together as a team," explains Soffer. "Posing on one leg is difficult for anyone new to yoga … I use ‘tree pose' and have them do it in a straight line so they can balance by putting a hand on their teammate's shoulder. I tell them there's more strength in a forest than one single tree."

For more information about Enso, contact Adam or Gwen at 510-892-YOGA or visit their website at www.experienceenso.com.