Yes, I’m just starting a relaunch of this site’s focus, and I’m going to complain about injuries. Go me.
But, then again, I’m injured. I have been for a while, and I’m not completely sure what the problem is. My right shoulder gives me a little twinge when I do certain things like pulling. Not massive, but enough to let me know something isn’t right.
So, since it started during a workout a couple months ago, I did the sensible thing. I stopped lifting.
However, the injury hasn’t really gotten any better. Again, I’m not sure why, but it is what it is and I have to deal with it.
So, for a little while now, I’ve been thinking about something that I was a little hesitant to try: Yoga.
Yes, yoga’s reputation is about as far from this site’s focus as you can get. Yoga comes with a lot of woo-sounding stuff about energy and centering and stuff like that, and that doesn’t appeal to me.
But not all yoga.
A couple of years ago, a friend sent my wife the first disk of DDP Yoga. DDP Yoga is a kind of yoga–though I’m sure some yogis may dispute that–where the mystical aspects of Yoga are removed and instead it focuses on the workout portions.
It was created by former pro wrestler Diamond Dallas Page. An injury pulled him out of the ring and he couldn’t lift anymore, but after he was finally talked into doing some yoga, he liked it and made it his own.
He refers to it as “Yoga for regular guys,” and there’s a definite masculine vibe, though plenty of women practice it and seem to love it. There are also videos of Page bringing some of his old wrestling buddies to his house to stay and do yoga as part of their rehab process.
Seriously, it’s kind of inspirational in a way.
Since I couldn’t work out with the weights, I decided to try the DVD out. After all, DDP Yoga has a lot of stories of injured people rehabbing their injuries with the program, and I need some flexibility anyway, so what the hell?
DDP Yoga uses dynamic resistance in the moves to create tension in your body, thus giving you a resistance workout. It also means you can “scale” it up as you go because you’re always creating tension.
I started with the workout called Diamond Dozen, which is an introductory workout that’s really more of a lesson on how to do the various positions and work with dynamic tension.
You know what? It wasn’t a half bad workout.
To be clear, my shoulder felt like lead after a bit, but that was more of a case of use than actual pain, yet I still felt like I got a semi-OK workout. Not a great one, but I suspect that will come with some of the other workouts.
How strong can you get with yoga, though? Does it work as our foundation of strength from the Warrior Pyramid? That’s kind of hard to tell. Many of the people who say that yoga can build muscle aren’t exactly walking around jacked. Some have decent physiques, but the strength built with yoga appears to be mostly from bodyweight, which does build at least some strength, to be sure. However, I don’t know if you’ll ever get a 300+ lbs benchpress with yoga alone.
That said, since I kind of have to take it easy anyway due to my shoulder anyway, I’ll give yoga a shot for a little while. I don’t feel like I’ll be denying myself the training I need, and I may keep it up after I’m good to go with lifting again. After all, flexibility is a good thing.
Still, it’s a trial at this point, but after the first day, things look pretty bright for DDP Yoga.
