I enjoyed being part of the Chelsea medical team but my approach & my inner work was starting to diverge greatly from their mechanistic, reductionist model. I started to add a more holistic approach to all the conditioning work I was prescribing & amazing results followed..

A wonderful Dutch player & one of the stars of the team, Arjen Robben, was very prone to injuries. He was explosive and a devastating player for the team so when he got injured, the manager wasn't happy. During our rehab sessions, any type of game I introduced he would launch himself into until he was the best at it. Woe betide I introduced any scoring system, as I wouldn't be able to stop him doing it and this could negate his rehab.

One game I introduced was bucket ball. I made it up on the spot using a bosu ball, a half swiss ball on a stable platform for improving proprioception of joints and a waste paper bin and& a ball. High tech I hear you saying. We started off with him standing on one leg and him having to throw the ball into the bin. I quickly understood this was nowhere challenging enough and introduced different scoring opportunities, bounce before bin, 2 points. Of the back wall 3 points up to 5 points, off floor, side wall. Back wall and in.

He wouldn't get off until he was ranked number one on a make chart above my desk. The commotion brought in fit players who wanted to knock him off the number one ranking. Pandemonium ensued but great fun and for me a fundamental objective was achieved. Removed the mind and& his over thinking away and out of his injury. He was pretty obsessive in everything he did and this was why he was so good but also this came with a negative side of slightly neurotic about outcomes especially when it came to any niggle in his body.

I remember an incident with Arjen and Jose, the manager, that has stayed with me decades later. Arjen was on a physio table getting treatment on his injury when Jose marched in after training. The room fell silent as Jose’s face was like stone. He walked up to Arjen and& told him, “you are weak.” “That is why you are here.” Arjen was shocked and tried to explain but Jose turned and left as abruptly as he had arrived.

This story spread around the club and it was discussed at length by the medical team, some understanding, some finding it harsh. I personally couldn't understand why he had said it but I knew Jose understood human behavior and I chewed over it for some time trying to figure it out. Arjen on his side took it and reacted by getting better fast, he spent less and& less time in the medical room and I grasped that there was something magical in Jose's approach.

I started to train not only Arjen's body but his mind too. His sympathetic nervous system was dominant meaning he did everything quickly from football to eating. He was like a cat always on edge. So I prescribed him yoga and qigong movements to stimulate his parasympathetic system which is calming and restorative. Within 10 minutes he was calmer and smiling. Arjen had the lowest amount of injuries of his career whilst with us.

Working with Arjen showed me how detrimental the mind could be on a player's body. Arjen desperately wanted to be fit but there was so much prior conditioning in his thinking that he could get injured at any time. This created a feedback loop where he was fearful when he was playing & fear tightens the body. The body when in this state starts to send out pain signals too quickly & too loud, like an overprotective parent constantly telling their child to be careful. Arjen was getting these pain signals from his hamstrings or calves & perceiving them as injuries but they weren't.

I saw the manager force him to override this protection system & “toughen up”, this was very enlightening for me & showed me the tough love approach. I also learned how important it was to balance the high intensity work on the field with gentle internal energy work combined with the breath. Doing less to do more. Balancing the yin with the yang.

from my upcoming book.