Nick KrugIt’s a late-July morning inside the Kansas football team’s training facility on the bottom floor of Anderson Family Football Complex. A few grunts reverberate off the ceiling.
No clangs or thuds follow, though. The weight plates, dumbbells and machines remain a static backdrop for the Jayhawks, laid out nearby on a 25-yard patch of artificial turf.
“Find your core.”
“Lengthen your spine.”
“Listen to your breath,” a calm voice instructs periodically.
Nick KrugIt’s an active recovery day — as the man in charge, Zac Woodfin, likes to call it — in KU’s regimented summer strength and conditioning schedule. No screaming nor intense feats of power today; just bodies stretching, twisting and bending, occasionally provoking a distinct “ugh” into the atypically tranquil space.
Take off your shoes and put on your KU football T-shirt, complete with a “Savage Mindset” slogan on the back that contradicts the vibe of the space. It’s time for Wednesday morning yoga.
Woodfin, the program’s first-year director of strength and conditioning, began believing in yoga’s football powers years ago as an assistant strength coach with the Green Bay Packers. Generally, when players find out the discipline is part of their preparation, Woodfin says, they’re open-minded. But one question tends to pop up.
“How will this help me?”
Any skepticism tends to dissolve once players experience the resulting rejuvenation and flexibility that come with their yoga classes.
Nick Krug“And then you get the buy-in,” Woodfin says.
The Jayhawks, who completed this past Wednesday their seventh and final summer session with instructor Brad Elpers, concur.
“It was hard at first,” sophomore offensive lineman Hakeem Adeniji admits, “all the movements and stuff that he’s doing, certain positions that are like, ‘We can’t. We’re big.’ But we kind of got used to it. He adjusted to us pretty good.”
To ensure KU players maximized their weekly hour-long tutorials, Woodfin conversed routinely with Elpers, who manages Yoga Six, in Leawood. Before organized workouts began this summer, Woodfin, for yoga purposes, split the roster into two categories: big men and everyone else. Offensive and defensive linemen, the most massive Jayhawks, would begin their lessons at 8 a.m., with a modified instruction period for smaller, more elastic players to follow at 9.
It wouldn’t be fair, after all, to ask a 300-pound lineman to balance on one leg like an 180-pound skill player.
Nick Krug“It’s a little more entry-level with them,” jokes receiver Ryan Schadler.
To achieve their potential, linemen need more than strength. Their might has to remain effective within a large range of motion.
“What we want those positions to do is create power and transfer force on someone else really quick from that position,” Woodfin says, snapping his fingers for emphasis. “If you can’t get into that position well, you won’t be able to transfer the force well.”
So linemen use their body weight to open up their hips, backs and ankles, giving them more mobility and efficiency out of a three-point stance.
Sophomore center Mesa Ribordy estimates sophomore tackle Antione Frazier might be the offensive lineman with the most yoga ability. Starting left tackle Adeniji, though, says he possesses the greatest prowess.
“I’m a lot more flexible than when I started out this summer,” Adeniji adds. “That’s a huge key, for sure.”
“It’s not going to happen,” Elpers forewarns a room full of KU’s most nimble players as they stretch their legs upward, awaiting his instruction. “But imagine taking your foot through your forehead.”
For receivers, running backs, defensive backs, linebackers, quarterbacks and specialists, such direction is routine by now. And their bodies respond far more effortlessly than they would have two months earlier.
“At first when I was doing it,” sophomore receiver Chase Harrell says, “I was sweating a lot. But it’s more soothing now. At first I didn’t know how to breathe right, do little things like that.”
More importantly, the Jayhawks feel their bodies becoming even more useful when they play football. Redshirt sophomore quarterback Carter Stanley says Woodfin’s entire regime is about not only adding muscle, but also mobility and flexibility.
“And then when you add in the yoga it just makes all the difference. It’s incredible. We’ve all seen it,” Stanley explains. “We’ve been doing the same workouts — and you see yourself as the weeks progress, you’re so much more further. You just have so much more capability in moving.”
By the third week of June, Elpers told the Jayhawks they had different bodies, because he saw them accomplishing postures that seemed impossible 14 days earlier. Consequently, the meditations took on further importance. Receiver Jeremiah Booker won’t claim it became competitive.
“But I’d say everybody’s on their toes, trying to make sure we do the movements right,” Booker, a junior, expounds. “When we started off it was a struggle. It was new to us. Now we’re getting more comfortable with it and we know how it translates to on the field, like recovering and taking care of our bodies.”
Recuperation and mental clarity within competition are cornerstones of making yoga practical for football players. Woodfin breaks up the strain put on his Jayhawks Monday through Friday in weightlifting and conditioning drills with structured midweek relaxation.
In the past, Ribordy says, some KU players practiced yoga to keep bodies limber. But this is different. Everyone on the team is involved now, and they have an actual yogi shaping their every movement.
Summer respite days used to be a free-for-all. Players could sleep in; do as they pleased.
“Whenever we did have that day off and we didn’t do anything I would be tired during the day,” Harrell says, asserting yoga eliminates that issue for him.
Adds Adeniji: “It helps us push through the last couple days of the week.”
Moreover, the idea is sessions will acclimate their minds to jettisoning would-be distractions amid intense competition. When Elpers directs them to focus, he reminds them the breaths they take now can condition them to concentrate during the chaos of games to come.
“You have to really tune in. I think that’s something key,” Adeniji offers. “It’s something that you don’t think about, but it does help.”
The team’s yoga veteran, Schadler used to tinker with the exercises because his mother, Donna, taught classes on the side — “It kicked my butt,” he adds. The junior receiver could tell during seven-on-seven sessions the past two months this deeper dive into the training paid dividends.
It sounds simple, Schadler acknowledges, but improved posture and respiration make it easier to sprint several routes in a row.
“I catch myself, especially when I’m feeling tired, breathing a lot and squeezing my core,” he says, echoing phrases used by Woodfin and Elpers.
Booker thinks improved focus gained through yoga will help during “anxious” points of a game.
“Being able to just breathe, relax and focus on the task at hand,” Booker says, should help players better settle down their bodies.
“You press the body down into the earth,” Elpers tells a roomful of folded-over Jayhawks as another class nears its close, and he eventually bids them adieu with “Namaste.”
The awareness and flexibility attained over the course of two summer months, Woodfin hopes, will double as some of the countless building blocks needed for Kansas to win more games in head coach David Beaty’s third season leading the program.
In fact, Woodfin and Beaty are discussing the idea of keeping yoga available to athletes during the season, on a recovery day such as Sunday or Monday, following the brutal wear and tear that accompany college football Saturdays.
After all, one can’t spell “Savage Mindset” without the letters comprising “Namaste.”
http://www2.kusports.com/photos/2017/jul/26/318214/
