Sarah Ramsden is a yoga teacher at Manchester City and Manchester United Football Clubs and has a wealth of experience working with athletes and students who may not count flexibility as their biggest strength. On 6th October she will be leading a workshop on this topic: short, stiff + tight: how to work effectively with really inflexible students. We ask Sarah a few questions to find out a little more about this day-long event.
Who is the target audience of the workshop?
Yoga teachers and enthusiastic-but-stiff yoga students.
What is the percentage of yoga to discussions?
It will be around two thirds practical and one third more formal learning. The day will include working in small groups, hands-on activities, question and answer sessions, sharing ideas and then finally putting it all into practice.
What are the key takeaways a student can expect from the day?
- How best to sequence / vary and adjust really stiff students.
- How to know which muscles areas are actually short, and what you can do about it.
- The role of connective tissue in inflexibility and how you successfully change fascial response.
- How long you should you hold stretches for inflexible students and when to make it shorter.
- How to make teaching this teaching fun, interesting, engaging and compelling.
What will I learn as a student?
You will learn practical and functional-anatomy based poses to successfully work with highly inflexible students (or to incorporate into your own practice).
How will I benefit from the workshop?
You’ll get the understanding, teaching skills and confidence to make a real change to yourself and these students – all in a safe, interesting, engaging and successful way. I guarantee you’ll enjoy it and your students will want to come back!
Who can attend, beginners or advanced students?
The workshop is aimed at yoga teachers and stiff-but-enthusiastic students of all levels.
What drives you to teach this workshop?
A growing number of people arrive at my classes because they are stiff, tight and feel that their bodies are going wrong somewhere. However, working with inflexible students – who may be athletes or simply less mobile people – is a specialist area that much of our regular yoga repertoire and approach simply don’t apply to.
What do you love about this workshop?
I love working with these students. If you are bendy then yoga can come quite easily, but for the stiff, tight, battered and slightly broken, yoga is quite a journey. I love making yoga approachable, enjoyable and meaningful for these people and seeing the immense difference it makes. Most of all, I love seeing people being able to go on doing the activities in life that they really love because their bodies are starting to move better again.
Sarah Ramsden’s course – short, stiff + tight: how to work effectively with really inflexible students – will be taking place in Soho on Saturday 6th October. For more information and to book, click here.
She is also running her 80-hour teaching training programme – yoga for athletes + sports – in Camden and Soho starting 23rd February 2019. For more information and to book, click here.
