Doing yoga to improve performance and lengthen NBA careers is nothing new to the Boston Celtics, with Hall of Fame big man Robert Parish pioneering the practice in the league before most of the players on the team now were even born. "My first yoga class that I went to, I was so embarrassed," recalledParish in an interview touching on the subject. "There were older women that could touch to their toes and I could not. I'm like, 'I'm a pro athlete. How could I not touch my toes?'"
"And these are weekend athletes," he added. "These are civilian, weekend athletes. They were touching toes and doing the splits and all of that. And I was struggling just to grab my shins." Now, a new generation of Celtics are picking up the practice and learning its benefits,
as point guard Payton Pritchard recently shared. Asked if he was part of a group yoga session the Celtics used as part of their camp routine for the coming 2026-27 season, Pritchard shared that the whole team took part.
"It was good," said the Oregon native viaCLNS Media. "It was good. It was a nice little 15 minutes, right off the plane. It was good. Probably make that part of the routine."
"It wasn't mandatory before, so many people didn't do it," said Pritchard, sharing the team used the hotel weight room for the session. "I wasn't one that really did it before; there's a lot of benefits to it. It's cool that we all did it together. So hopefully we'll continue it (…)."
"I think a lot of guys are getting used to yoga, Pilates, and different stuff like that. But I think it's good."
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This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: Boston Celtics rediscovering yoga as training tactic, per Payton Pritchard
