In this video, Wim Hof conducts a breathing and cold‑water exposure workshop for Burnley FC players, coaches, and staff. The participants describe an immediate, euphoric response to the breathing exercises, noting heightened adrenaline, a sense of control over their vascular system, and a collective buzz in the room. Club staff emphasize that the method is being explored as an additional tool for player health, recovery, and mental resilience, aiming to address stress, motivation, and overall wellbeing beyond tactical training. They highlight how the practice fosters trust, personal security, and team cohesion, which they believe can translate into improved performance. While expectations are modest—no radical overnight changes—the session is seen as a promising layer of skill‑building that could complement existing recovery protocols.
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I always knew that once the lads tried the breathing, because I knew the effect it had, I knew that there's instant buy-in because like anything, once you try it and it works for you, you're like, "Okay, I'm gonna do that again." We sometimes get people up from outside in to speak to the group to stimulate, you know, thoughts, feelings, emotions within the group to help us be better at what we do.
This is potentially a way to maybe help them be a bit healthier, to help them with their recovery, but find, you know, another tool on top of all the tools they already have.
We're looking beyond, as you understand, tactics and actual team play. We're looking into people, you know, and how you feel about yourself, how your stress levels are, how your motivation levels are, how you're dealing with the enormity of what it can sometimes become as a professional footballer, you know, because because they are human beings. There's a lot of stresses, they're stretched in many different ways. So if we can add just a kind of skill set or a kind of belief system that can help with that and make them feel more secure as a person, then it's bound to affect performance.
I believe in the method, yeah, 100%, yeah, because I feel it, so I know it works for me. And then it's a case of everybody else trying it, maybe seeing if it works for them. When everyone sat down at the start, they don't know really what to expect. I had an idea of what to expect because we know Wim's a crazy guy. Crazy with passion about what he knows.
Take them on fully in, breathing, no mind it, just do it. Winning begins by having trust within yourself, and that makes you not only be able to be the best of yourself, but to be it together, because you're going to radiate that energy. And it's going to affect your team player. And if that binds all together, you become invincible. Now we are going to test it inside the freezing water. Let's go do this.
The breathing techniques we did before were out of this world, something I've never experienced before. And the boys are all in there talking about it now. It's a great feeling. I think even when we just did the breathing upstairs, the sort of feeling through your body, that sort of adrenaline that he talks about. Incredible, really. Not something I've ever had before. And just to do that through breathing is unbelievable. I think you have to be open-minded with it, I suppose. And some of the lads going into the meeting, obviously we didn't know what to expect, so they might have been a bit closed-minded to it. But once you've experienced that, I think it was euphoric, really. It's such a good feeling that I think all the lads are buying into it now.
This is resetting the vascular system. Bring it under your control. Well done.
By the end of the session, Everybody's buzzing, you can feel the energy in the room and it was, it was a real positive day for sure.
We're not expecting radical return, we're not expecting in one session that we learn everything about the work that he does, but I think it'll give an insight and enough layers of detail where the players can go away, explore it further, and we can explore that with them.
Guys have got tools now to be able to deal with decluttering the mind and getting themselves in a good position as Wim Hof showed them to do. Yeah, looking forward to what the future holds and I Hopefully, you know, Wim's message gets out there because I think if people are open-minded and use it, they'll certainly see a benefit, I think, not only in the personal life but definitely in the professional life.
