Practicing yoga was the secret to Predrag Radosavljevic playing at the top level for another 5 years and winning the MLS Player of the Season award at the age of 40, while Gareth Barry set the record for most appearances in Premier League history with 653 games.
Yoga is becoming a trend in top European football. Photo: The Athletic
When her dream of playing for Sweden was ruined by injury, yoga provided Sharon Heidaripour with salvation and renewed motivation. Mohamed Salah celebrated one of the most spectacular goals of his career by replicating one of the most famous yoga poses. Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and even Antonio Conte are all devotees of the practice.
In modern football, as players look for more ways to improve their physical strength, the role of yoga is more widespread than ever. The Athletic spoke to those who practice, teach and believe yoga has changed their lives both on and off the pitch.
Playing for Swedish top-flight club Jitex BK, based just outside Gothenburg, as an energetic right winger, Sharon Heidaripour’s life has been about football. As a child, she dreamed of becoming a professional footballer.
That meant Heidaripour had to work hard to recover from a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and race against time to be back in time for the national team at just 19. “I trained twice as hard and tried my best, but one day,” she recalls. “I was taken straight to hospital and diagnosed with an ACL and it was devastating, football was over. I lost part of my identity and fell into a black hole.”
But yoga gave Heidaripour a way back. She moved to London, and between her time there and her return home to Gothenburg, she found herself yearning to work in the football environment she still loved. If she couldn’t play, Heidaripour would use her growing passion for the ancient Indian practice to help players develop.
After completing a degree in sports therapy at London Metropolitan University and a masters in football rehabilitation, Heidaripour went on to work at Premier League clubs Chelsea and Arsenal, treating young academy players and first-team stars. She then left to start her own business, combining both her passions, Football Yoga.
“At Arsenal, we were getting players back ahead of schedule,” says Heidaripour. She doesn’t teach yoga at the London club, but has started using some of its methods in her work. “It’s mainly for injury treatment, but I feel there’s a big gap between football medicine and science and how to help players more holistically,” she adds.
Heidaripour’s private yoga studio attracts clients such as Arsenal trio Robert Pires, Santi Cazorla, Laurent Koscielny, and is expanding. But when she tries to bring more of that to her role at the Emirates, Heidaripour is met with little response.
Heidaripour teaches Valencia's U.S. player Yunus Musah a yoga pose. Photo: Sharon Heidaripour
So Heidaripour left Arsenal in 2015 to undertake a self-funded year working with players, coaches, even agents and journalists, all over the world. The former Swede deepened her yoga studies in Mexico and even travelled to Costa Rica’s top club Deportivo Saprissa, where players return from ACL injuries in half the usual nine months in Europe.
"It's all about mindset," Heidaripour said. "The sun is always shining and injured players start things off with a smile and a positive mindset. Yoga really helps with that and you need to treat the body, mind and emotions of the players equally."
One of the first things Heidaripour adjusts when players do yoga poses is their breathing. “Most people don’t breathe properly,” she explains. “Their breathing is too shallow. Footballers are no exception. Through yoga and mindfulness, you can train your breathing. Breathing from the belly and diaphragm actually activates the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the network of nerves that helps the body relax after stressful or dangerous times, and also helps with life-sustaining processes like digestion when you feel safe and relaxed.”
Back in the UK, Heidaripour brought a new level of understanding to her Premier League clients as Soccer Yoga began to grow, starting by helping France international Koscielny, who suffered a serious injury playing for Arsenal just weeks before the 2018 World Cup.
"Koscielny ruptured his Achilles tendon in the Europa League semi-final against Atletico," she says. "It was May, and he was going to miss the World Cup in Russia, which France won. So it was devastating for Koscielny and his family. But Koscielny is a strong, humble, hard-working player, and after the surgery, when he was able to manage it, we started doing yoga again after training."
Heidaripour said the former Arsenal defender does two or three yoga sessions a week, to avoid overloading his Achilles tendon. She said breathing techniques help Koscielny heal from the inside, mentally, because the recovery process for such an injury is long and lonely.
"Koscielny came to training but couldn't join the team," Heidaripour added. "There was boredom and a lot of frustration but yoga helped him calm down and get into the mindset to come back stronger. Your emotions during that time really affect how you come back. Players are human beings with normal lives, affected by illness, bereavement and other issues. That inner calm is very important."
Heidaripour guides Kocielny through yoga. Photo: sharon_footballyoga
More than four years on, Heidaripour's ambition to spread yoga has not diminished. "I want to change the world of football," she says. "My goal is to get more academies, in Europe and the US, to incorporate yoga into their players' routines. As a young footballer, you can feel invincible. As they get older, young players can still have imbalances in their pelvis and hips. If they kick more with one leg, it can create an imbalance, and yoga helps with that."
Heidaripour, now back in Sweden, has hired a coach in England who can conduct group or one-on-one sessions, either designed by Heidaripour or via Zoom video, which the players can follow along with at the training ground or at home.
"Yoga is good for injury prevention as well as rehabilitation," she continued. According to Heidaripour, when recovering from an injury, a player is often assigned a physio. But when returning to the squad and training normally, that extra work is not always available. Once back, the player will ideally still need to do rehabilitation for the next 18 months to prevent re-injury. The most common feeling players have after a yoga session is "liberation" on a psychological level. "My vision has always been to bring it to the academies first. It can be a tool for them to use when they need it in their lives, to calm down. Look at how many players have a hard time when they are released by their clubs, it's really helpful," Heidaripour added.
For Radosavljevic, the former Everton and Portsmouth midfielder, yoga came late in his career as he considered retirement at the age of 38. The Serbian was playing in MLS for the Kansas City Wizards, now Sporting Kansas City, where he won the MLS MVP award in 1997 but felt his body failing him towards the end of the 2001 season.
“One day I came home from training and told my wife that I had had enough,” Radosavljevic said. “It took me two days to recover from a hard training session. It was September and the season ended in October. She wanted me to try yoga and I said, ‘What the hell?’ I laughed at her, but decided to give it a try and see where it would take me.”
“The first time I did yoga I wanted to cry after 20 minutes,” the former Everton midfielder half-joked. “I was the only guy there and while the rest of the women were doing amazing things with their bodies, I was shaking in the corner. I wanted to leave but I was stubborn, then after the session I had a shower and felt lighter. I started going three times a week and the impact on me was amazing. By pre-season I was doing twice a day and I felt like I was 22 again.”
Radosavljevic in Kansas City colours at the age of 40 - when he won the MLS MVP award in 2003. Photo: MLS
Thanks to yoga, Radosavljevic played four more years in MLS and was named MVP again in 2003. "Soccer is about what you do off the field," he said. "I wish I had started yoga when I was younger. When you have that flexibility, you feel like you can do anything. I play on Saturday, take Sunday off, do a hard yoga session on Monday and another session on Wednesday." However, Radosavljevic also stressed that yoga is difficult. Some of his teammates tried it and gave up. "After a 90-minute yoga session, you sweat twice as much as you do in soccer. You're holding the pose for 45 seconds and as men, we can get tight hips, which is painful," he added.
Radosavljevic, now 59 and assistant coach of MLS side Seattle Sounders, said traditional soccer training helps shorten and develop muscles, while yoga helps lengthen and tone them. “I think the game will be even faster in the future if young players do yoga,” he predicted.
Barry has a similar career in the Premier League. The England international started yoga while at Aston Villa and continued the habit while winning the Premier League title in 2011-12 at Man City and during his time at Everton and West Brom.
“My career started at a transitional stage in sports science,” Barry says. “It was, ‘Do what you’ve always done or try something new along the way’, and I would try anything. Yoga definitely helped towards the end of my career, but I’ve been doing it since the early 2000s. Towards the end of my career at West Brom, I was still doing yoga once or twice a week, and they used me as an example to get the younger players involved. Some would try it and enjoy it, while others would skip it. Footballers are superstitious and if they do well after a yoga session, they’ll continue, and vice versa.”
On game day, Barry will start stretching with yoga poses at home before heading to team training. “Yoga educates you about your body and what you can get out of it,” he says. “I’ll incorporate yoga into my routine before kick-off. Then yoga sessions during the week give you a moment of calm where you breathe and clear your mind.”
Barry (blue shirt - middle) during a yoga session at West Brom Club. Photo: expressandstar
Nedum Onuoha, another former Man City player, also believes in the value of yoga and the similar, more intense Pilates. "Ryan Giggs, who played for Man Utd until he was 40, inspired me to do it," he said. "The way it extended Giggs' career was remarkable and it started a new level of preparation for players. Instead of showing up for a 10am training session at 9.45am and leaving at 12am, players started doing extra exercises, like yoga and Pilates. It makes you stronger and more flexible. I started doing it at Man City and then at Sunderland."
Sheila McVitty is a teacher who has worked at a number of clubs in the north-west of England, including Everton, Wigan Athletic, Blackburn Rovers and Manchester United Women. For her, the yoga revolution has been a quiet but important one.
“I see young players in academies doing yoga at school, even before they start football training. It’s fantastic, because they understand the benefits early on and appreciate how yoga can help their health,” says McVitty. “If you’re a footballer, you’re often doing a lot of linear training, like running. That means their hamstrings can get really tight, their quadriceps (thigh muscles) can get really active and that can cause problems. It’s important to loosen up the restrictions that come with the sport. I work with ballet dancers as well and although it’s very different, they’re often very flexible, so you’re still essentially helping them overcome the restrictions. With dancers, in a way, you’re trying to restrain them and improve their stability so they’re not too flexible and their joints become unstable. Footballers sometimes need to be more flexible.”
Like Radosavljevic, McVitty is familiar with the general sentiment when it comes to players stepping onto the yoga mat. “If I had a dollar for every coach or former player who said they wished they had done yoga more or earlier in their career, I would be rich,” she says, laughing.
Hong Duy (according to The Athletic )
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