With his recent use of yoga lessons for his players, Paul Baranowski could become the guru of local basketball coaches. Coaches and athletes have been known to try unorthodox methods to gain higher levels of performance: An NBA team once used ballet lessons, as did the Pittsburgh Steelers. Individual athletes have used visualization techniques to try to gain an edge in their play. Now, Baranowski is replacing one afternoon’s basketball practice a week for his boys team at La Jolla High School with a yoga session at the Jewish Community Center in University City, where he is general manager of sports, fitness and membership. The players’ positive feedback “has led me to do it more often,” says the 30-year veteran coach, in his fourth year at the helm at La Jolla. “We’re now doing it once a week.” It began two months ago as a two-time-a-month exercise. Some coaches, holding to a traditional view that “practice makes perfect” so more practice makes more perfect, would look at Baranowski’s subtracting a practice as counterproductive – if not downright heretical. But judging by his players’ unanimous yeas for yoga, it’s a wrap.
Bijan Hashemi, a senior reserve guard: “Actually, I like it. In your senior year, there’s stress. You can chill out.”
Quinn Rawdin, a sophomore guard: “It’s relaxing. It’s just like a nice break.” Nick Hammel, a junior guard, says the same thing.
Tony Coan, senior reserve guard: “I think it’s great. In practice, it’s hard on your legs. My sophomore year, I hurt my leg. I would play at the La Jolla Rec Center. I blew it out. The yoga teacher asks what you want to stretch.”
The setting and the lesson present an interesting combination: a traditionally Eastern practice, at a Hebrew institution, under the supervision of a Gentile coach. Baranowski talks about “respecting the sanctity” of the sessions.
But that’s Baranowsk — looking to equip his team members the best he can, using all the resources he can.
“I don’t know how much they realize this is useful for them far beyond high-school basketball,” he says. “It’s a chance for them to practice mindfulness. I don’t know at their age how much they’re able to concentrate on one thing at a time, to connect the mind and body.”
In fact, that is his third goal in holding the sessions for his team: developing focus. The first two are to “lengthen out” (stretch) and to give them a time together without their coach present. The yoga is led by someone else.
“We started in December, Baranowski explains. “It was about the same time we were playing three and four games a week in tournaments, and I thought of it as a chance for them to relax.”
It’s not designed as a day off from hard workouts in the gym. “They come out sweating,” he observes.
Charlie Gal, 16, a 6’5″ sophomore forward new to the varsity this year, talks about the relaxation. “At the end of every session, we have a chance for reflection to meditate and be calm,” he explains. “I think about all the things I have to do – like basketball or homework. It helps you get organized mentally. I like it a lot.”
Hammel, 16, puts it this way: “It’s like a slowdown – a relaxing time. Instead of practice every day, (it’s something different to do).”
Daniel McColl, 17, a junior forward, plays football and basketball. He has shot up from the lower 200-pound range last year to the mid-200’s in the past year through weight training. “Lengthening,” as his coach terms it, is helpful, but it takes work. “The stretching is tough,” says McColl. “You have to concentrate on the stretch. I’m not very flexible. Going in there and working on my flexibility helps me out.”
Reed Farley, 17, the junior point guard, has an interesting take on the yoga sessions. He could very well go further than high school in basketball, and he has an analytical mind cultivated through the game since he began travel ball in a private academy in sixth grade.
“We’re still in high school,” says the quarterback of the team. “We have stress from studies. We have so many things we have to do.
“Anything you have to relax the mind and the stress from the body (is a help). So it’s not necessarily yoga to be better at basketball but to be better at life.” He has been listening to his coach’s pitches.
Would he incorporate it into his team’s regimen if he becomes a coach in the future? Very possibly.
The Vikings started Western League play with two losses by wide margins to Cathedral Catholic and Mission Bay. “Coming off the kind of bad first week of league we had, yoga was a good change of pace,” he says.
Another positive is the building of team cohesion. Says Farley, “It’s a good team-bonding kind of thing. You have an hour to be loose and not playing basketball.”
“It brings the team together,” says Rawdin, the only sophomore on the squad besides Gal.
Explains Hashemi, 17: “You go in there and they turn out the lights. They have you concentrate on your breathing. (You think) of something you love to do. Like a day at the beach. Relaxing, calm.
“The instructor tells us to let go of anything at school, et cetera. She says to let it go. You might be tensing your face.”
Says Rawdin, 15, “Our teacher asks what we have that’s tight, A hamstring or hip flexor.” Then they have a chance to stretch that area specifically.
Coan, who turned 18 on Jan. 30, says, “It’s really quiet. She has some background music. There’s no talking. It’s peaceful.”