Dean Pohlman - Yoga for Athletes: 10-Minute Yoga Workouts to Make You Better at Your Sport

Im not a small person. Dont get me wrong, I hang out with some really huge athletes, so I know what big really is. But, Im still not small. Not small enough to sit for eight hours of lectures and presentations in a tiny plastic chair in a big conference hall. Like many of you, Im that guy who usually stands in the back of the room or sits on the floor. My CEO/wife would tell you that Im a little ADHD or that I hate organized fun, so being able to fidget or escape in the back of a packed lecture hall is really just who I am. (This aside will bear fruit; I promise.) But still, Im playing the big man card.

A few years ago, I was attending a large digital marketing conference with our staff and true to my pattern, I found myself in an out-of-the-way corner of the vast conference room and popped down to listen (blissfully untrapped by one of those crappy venue bulk chairs). As I started to get my bearings and look around, I noticed a quite jacked-looking guy sitting in a not too socially awkward middle splits position next to me. Clearly I was in the right place.

You can guess who that person was in the back. Thats rightDean. For the next few days, it was clear that our interests in this conference were aligned. We kept meeting in the back of the room like two Cheerios in a big bowl of air-conditioned, carpeted, fluorescent-light milk hell. It helped that I already knew "famous Dean from Man Flow Yoga, as I was already a fan. But is it too weird to say we found love in a hopeless place (thank you, Rhianna... )? You see, I already grokked Dean. I understood his model; the way he spoke and taught already worked for me.

Yoga is amazing. Has it also been co-opted a bit? Sure. Do I identify with most yoga communities? Not so much. I dont want to trigger you here if you are a bad-ass yogi. But, yoga is simultaneously a brilliant movement system that is not messing around, and an excuse to never get under real load. Look, people have been trying to solve the problems of the common human condition for as long as there have been, well, humans. But yoga, like running, is sort of an incomplete physical practice. Want to see how your standalone yoga practice is working for you? Here, carry this 100 pound sandbag up this hill. Yes, you have to pick it up off the ground...

If you speak pilates, Olympic weight lifting, kettlebells, Feldenkrais, or really any formal human movement system, then yoga makes perfect... crazy, intuitive sense. Yoga as a model to integrate breathing and foundational human movement shapes is at face value irrefutable. Think your secret squirrel strength and conditioning or fitness program is legit? Jump into a yoga program and test yourself. One, or zero. Yes, or no. You can stand on one leg or express hip extension and rotation, or you cant. Downward Dog is normative baseline hip flexion with the legs straight. And yes, if you have the dorsiflexion that every doctor on the planet agrees you should have when your leg is straight and your quads are flexed, your heels will be on the ground. Did you know Malasana is a fancy Sanskrit word for "squat." What do you mean you cant do yoga? Errrr, I mean squat.

So let me circle back to being a big guy that doesnt like organized fun. Oh, you mean a potential yoga class where no one looks like me? To me, this has been one of yogas big stumbling blocks. My wife and I sometimes drop into our local hot yoga spot with some friends on the weekend. I use it as sort of a truth test. If my fitness and physical practices are legit, then dropping into a class should be easy, right? After about the third or fourth time I went, the instructor grabbed me on the way out of the studio. Hey, tell me what you do? Me: Well, among other things, I have a breath practice, I mobilize, and I spend time in the sauna. Her: Oh, you are a yogi! I loved that response. Most of the time I dont feel like I can commit to going to a yoga studio three to five times week and, still lift, bike, paddle, run, etc. The tenets of yogabreath, positional competency, balance? Every day.

This is what makes Deans work so great. To benefit from his coaching and programming, you definitely dont have to be a yogi. In fact, Dean would probably appreciate it if you were a little more well rounded and could dead lift two times your bodyweight. But, Dean has taken what is essential to our bodies, brains, and minds, and created a model based on the principles of a yogic practiceyoga as means to own positions and expose our tissues in places and ranges where we could use exposure and tolerance was always the game. Dean understands this totally. You can drop this excellent book into whatever sport, practice, class, or activity you love, and it will make you better. I suspect that the majority of my professional career as a physiotherapist and performance coach to the world's best teams, organizations, and athletes would have been unnecessary if Deans book was part of the plan.

Yoga is a kind of unified field theory of human movement. Let me say it again: people have been obsessed with solving the problems of the human condition for as long as there have been human beings. What weve all been missing is a way to work it into our busy lives. What weve been missing is a way to deploy the tactics of a full-throttled badass yoga practice into the sports and activities we love. What weve been missing is a teacher. So please, let me introduce to you my teacher, Dean Pohlman.

Dr. Kelly Starrett

Im not a yogi posing as an athlete. Ive been an athlete my entire life. Yoga came later on when I began to understand how it could help me be a better athleteto be better at what I already did.

I dont want you to give up your other workouts and start doing five weekly 60-minute yoga sessions. I want to show you how just a few short yoga routines on a weekly basis can dramatically improve what youre already doing and teach you yoga in a way that makes sense. Yoga for Athletes is yoga on your terms.

Yoga found me when I wasnt looking for it. It had always intrigued me as something that could help me get stronger in new ways, but as a lifelong athlete and (at the time) a collegiate lacrosse player, I was already in excellent physical shape. I lifted weights regularly, conditioned on my own time, and was always first to the finish line in team sprints and agility drills. However, flexibility was something new to me. I didnt practice balancing skills. My idea of recovery was sitting on the couch and waiting for the soreness to go away.