I've heard of offensive line coaches having players take yoga classes to help with flexibility concerns, but the Dallas Cowboys installing ballet bars in their football facility is a new one for me to wrap my head around, but according to the Dallas Morning News, there's some very good reasons for the addition.
Last year the Cowboys nearly led the league in injuries, so this off season they looked at changing some of their training program to address those injury concerns. Instead of wholesale changes, the staff decided to add a few stretching adjustments and some additional workout equipment this fall. That equipment included the installation of ballet bars.
Last season, 12 different players on the roster suffered some type of injury to the thigh or hamstring, so in order to address that the team installed ballet bars just outside of the locker room. That's just one of the rather interesting changes around the facility that head coach Jason Garrett and the staff have made to make sure players have the equipment needed to for a healthier 2014 season.
“We’ve put a big emphasis on addressing, as an organization, some of the injuries that we’ve had. Just an emphasis on stretching, giving our players the opportunity, whether it’s with ballet bars or V-sits or back systems, whatever things we use, we try to help them get into routines that can help them be flexible and avoid some of the injuries we’ve had." Garrett told the media last week. "It’s always been an emphasis for us. We have to look at ourselves and what we’re doing to help our players stay as healthy as possible.”
Garrett also noted that they'll be moving from a static stretch routine, to a more dynamic warm-up.
“Typically, we’ve done kind of the old team stretch, and we’re experimenting with dynamic warm-up stuff that I’ve done in my past, other coaches have done in the past. You try to be innovative, you try to evolve, you get feedback from the players, you get feedback from the coaches."
Teams have been doing dynamic warm-ups for a decade plus now, so that's not exactly what I think of when I hear Garrett say "innovative", but the ballet bars are certainly an interesting, and innovative, addition.
In my opinion, offensive and defensive lineman using those ballet bars to stretch out before smashing faces in practice might be the most polar opposite situation in all of sports. But if it works, we'll all look at the Cowboys as the trendsetter.