Seven Toronto Argonauts are exhaling mindfully in a studio at the University of Toronto Mississauga.
The CFL football players are stretched out like frogs mid-swim: hands on their yoga mats, knees pressed to the floor, legs spread out behind them. This stretch is good for the groin, says instructor Jana Webb, who teaches “joga.” That would be yoga for jocks.
Webb reminds her hulking yogis to use their “Ujjayi Pranayama” breath. “This is a breath you can use immediately on the field to find instant focus,” she says.
It’s 4 p.m. and the Argos have been in practice all day, since 9 a.m. for some and 7 a.m. for others.
But Cory Boyd is smiling while he stretches. The star running back started yoga a year ago after hearing that yoga and Pilates were good for balance, breathing and overall health. “I decided to try it out one day,” he says later. “It was sore, it hurt, but at the end of it my body felt very well.”
Now, Boyd uses yoga breathing to stay balanced and calm when he’s “ripping and running” on the field.
“You might get bent up into some very unfamiliar positions,” the 25-year-old says. “Yoga helps you to stay in that position and also learn how to breathe without panicking. It sends certain triggers to your nerves, which help you stay relaxed in the middle of anything, any stressful situations.”
Webb, 34, began practicing yoga in Toronto after a car accident in 2000 left her with a shoulder injury. She had tried physiotherapy and acupuncture, but only yoga’s gentle stretches rehabilitated her shoulder.
She studied Ishta yoga in Japan in 2004 but her area of expertise — yoga for professional athletes — developed organically after she moved back to her hometown of Calgary in 2005. She was working at Innovative Fitness, a one-on-one fitness facility, where she taught yoga to high-powered executives, new moms, people with injuries and many athletes.
Although she missed a chance to work with the Canadian bobsled team in the years leading up to the Vancouver Olympics — she was pregnant at the time — Webb recorded some videos with Innovative Fitness in Vancouver, some designed specifically for golfers, triathletes and runners.
Before long Webb was working with high-performance athletes at Calgary’s National Sports Development centre, including the CFL’s Calgary Stampeders. This summer, she also worked with three NHL goalies.
“I think I’ve got what I’ve done down to a science,” says Webb, who moved back to Toronto four weeks ago. She says her programs take the biomechanics of specific sports into consideration. With football players, she says, the entire midsection of the body is tight — hamstrings, hip flexors, groin muscles — and needs to be loosened up. “Their muscles are working,” Webb says. “Now we have to almost un-work them.”
Toronto Argonauts’ middle linebacker Jay Pottinger can attest to that. “Toward the end of the season, you get really tight hips,” he says. “You get tight everything.”
Limber muscles aside, Webb says what separates exceptional professional athletes from the rest is not necessarily skill but rather the ability to control the mind and connect it to the body.
Charismatic Boyd is more than willing to help debunk any yoga-related stereotypes that might exist. “When people think yoga, they think, ‘Oh, that’s a girl’s thing,’” he says. “I’m letting them know, it’s not.”
For joga with Jana contact jana@jogawithjana.com
Three ‘joga’ moves to try at home
1. The side plank pose builds core strength, which reduces strain on the lower back. It also improves joint stability and mobility.
2. The wide leg pose is a restorative posture that releases connective tissue around the bones and the joints, improving range of motion and injury prevention.
3. The modified lunge pose increases flexibility in the hip flexors, the quadriceps and the psoas, muscles that are in constant contraction for athletes
