Reaching Your Peak: Real Men Do Yoga

Unlike the routine stretching exercises that men find so boring, yoga offers both variety and athletic challenge. Even a 90-minute class passes quickly when you're switching constantly from one pose to another, and the toughest workout animals are sometimes shocked at how strenuous yoga can be. They discover that holding the most intense asanas, or positions, builds strength--not the brute strength of a power lifter but the tensile strength of a martial-arts master. "It's an endurance thing," says Tennessee Titansrunning back Eddie George.

George, who has practiced with Lindsay in Nashville for five years, is one of a growing cadre of pro athletes going yoga. "As a running back, you're basically using your body as a battering ram," the Heisman Trophy winner explains. "And I end up pinned in some really awkward positions. I thought if my muscles were more flexible and had experienced some of those stresses beforehand in yoga, I'd be less likely to get hurt." The strategy is working for George: he hasn't missed a game due to injury in his seven seasons. Other top yoga jocks include Broncostight end Shannon Sharpe, Oakland A's pitching ace Barry Zito, NBA superstar Kevin Garnett and PGA standouts Ty Tryon and David Duval. Golf pros say yoga-flexing gives them greater range of motion in the hip and shoulder joints, which generates extra power and distance.

Pros aren't the only ones with something to gain. Weekend warriors often back into yoga--they take it up because their backs are killing them. Nashville real-estate broker Rick French, 49, used to see a chiropractor "at least a couple of times a week," but the lumbar pain he had endured since a college skiing injury always returned. The misery ended when he turned to yoga to stretch and align his back. He now survives tennis games and five-mile runs without a hint of pain. No matter what draws them into yoga, recent converts marvel at how energized they feel on the way out of a session. Bob Eriksen, 52, who works in real-estate development in Capitola, Calif., is up to five or six morning classes a week. "I get a glow that lasts all the way to the evening," he says. "I feel like my body's waking up, that my circulation is better. It's like you've finally found out how your body should feel."

How do we know yoga really works? Research, much of it done in India, suggests a wide variety of health-positive effects--for arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, coronary-artery disease and asthma, among other things--but many of the studies are limited. In a U.S. study involving 287 students (both sexes), researchers at Ball State University found that 15 weeks of yoga training brought a 10 percent improvement in lung capacity, but no control group was used. Dr. Dean Ornish has found evidence that yoga can help fight cardiovascular disease, but his protocols have included other lifestyle changes, such as a low-fat diet. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, is currently supporting research on yoga, including its use for insomnia and chronic lower-back pain.

Beyond all the body work, there's a yoga bonus: the way it sharpens your mental game. Athletes like Zito and Garnett say the meditative breathing calms their nerves and hones their focus on the job. Gross gets a mental boost, too--both in bond trading and on the golf course. "At this year's AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach," he says, "I had a six-foot putt on the final day. My partner and I were near the lead and this putt had to go in or we had no chance. I told myself, 'Step back for a moment. Breathe deeply. Focus and relax, like you've learned to do in yoga.' So I did that, and the putt rolled in."

On the eightfold path--or the eighteenfold path--that's nirvana.

Capouya is the author of "Real Men Do Yoga," to be published by Health Communications, Inc. (HCI)

© 2003