EVIAN, France // In the macho world of international football, Germany have taken a more spiritual approach by employing a yoga teacher at Euro 2016, whose former pupils include western pop music stars Madonna and Sting.
“To my knowledge, I was the only yoga teacher working with a national team at the World Cup in Brazil,” Munich-based yoga teacher Patrick Broome said.
Broome is part of Germany’s backroom staff for major tournaments and puts die Mannschaft’s stars through exercises to relax them physically and mentally.
Former Manchester United star Ryan Giggs, who was still playing at 40, says yoga helped extend his career.
Germany manager Joachim Low is also a fan of the ancient Indian discipline.
Now the likes of Germany’s Thomas Mueller, Lukas Podolski and Mats Hummels are no strangers to yoga postures like ‘lotus’, ‘warrior and ‘cobra’.
“He’s been part of the team since Brazil, and he offers courses every day,” veteran Germany forward Podolski said. “We can decide for ourselves to take advantage or not. It’s not on the training plan that we have to go, but he does a good job.”
Broome has accompanied Germany to World Cups and European championships over the last decade, but he officially became part of the coaching staff only two years ago.
He offers sessions to help the footballers “improve flexibility, concentration and performance on the field”, which in turn helps keep them free of injury.
Broome holds daily sessions of up to 45 minutes to keep the players supple and help recover after games. Only three of the squad regularly decline to take part.
“Good recovery after a game is essential for the players to maintain their level of performance,” says Broome, who is in his 40s and has been practising yoga for twenty years.
It was Low’s predecessor, California-based Jurgen Klinsmann, the manager from 2004 until the 2006 World Cup, who first invited Broome into the German camp.
Klinsmann saw the benefits of yoga while living on the west coast of the United States.
Low then took it a step further by adding Broome to his backroom staff for Euro 2008.
Broome, who has two yoga studios in Munich, says Low showed “courage” to add yoga sessions to Germany’s training sessions 10 years ago.
“At the time, the German press made fun of the players when they were training with rubber bands, to increase their muscle strength, and yoga with ‘all this nonsense’,” Broome said with a smile.
At the players request, Broome accompanied Germany to the Euro 2012 finals in Poland and Ukraine.
Through breathing techniques and holding postures, Germany’s stars “can let off steam quickly” after a match, Broome said. “It also allows them to stretch and to experience a different physical experience,” he added.
Broome, who is now a leading figure on Germany’s yoga scene, puts the players through a “stripped-down version” of yoga, shorn of incense sticks or other far eastern paraphernalia. “With the players, I am much less into the spiritual side of the practice,” he concedes.
Mario Gotze, whose goal won the 2014 World Cup final, is a firm yoga convert and Broome says the spiritual side of yoga helps balance the day-to-day pressures on the players.
In our society of “ever faster, ever more efficient”, yoga is also a powerful remedy for stress management, he added.
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