ARKANSAS FOOTBALL GETS INTO YOGA

WHERE FLEXIBILITY IS YOUR NATURAL STATE

By Spencer Hall@edsbs Feb 28, 2018, 3:08pm EST

IT’S HARD TO BREATHE DEEP AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEC WEST BUT ARKANSAS IS GONNA TRY

Yoga and football conditioning has been a thing for a while now, or at least since Eddie George somehow managed to tuck his massive thighs into a Crow pose back in the turn of the century. Eddie George not only managed to do this with legs the size of beer kegs, but also has 20 IMDB credits, married a member of SWV, and survived being beat on by Ray Lewis regularly for years. Note: We probably don’t talk enough as a culture about the achievements of Eddie George in general.

The SEC team going hardest—if “hard” is possible as a concept here—with yoga this year is Arkansas. Chad Morris is big on it, both because he’s got an assistant strength coach who is a certified yoga instructor (Marc Soltis) and because yoga generally helps with flexibility and injury prevention. The Razorbacks undoubtedly worked on flexibility before, sure. Assuming that Bret Bielema was not a huge yoga enthusiast, though, feels like the safest bet this side of “Nick Saban does not wait well in lines.”

Still: Yoga remains at least an odd sell to young football players, even after pointing out that NFL players do it all the time. A tailored sales pitch might be necessary. For Arkansas, there are two important angles.

The first: Little Rock’s own Joe Johnson has played in the NBA for forty-eight seasons. He will likely get a max contract at the age of 71 and put down a 20/10 season thanks to the power of a regular yoga practice. But Joe Johnson isn’t a top five player in the league! Yes, but let us point to his longevity, and also to the multiple contracts, and also his big, beautiful truck. Yoga will get someone a feature on Arkansas Business dot com, and we don’t know a greater indication of success than that.

The second: Custom Razorback yoga poses.