The stigma surrounding males practicing yoga and why it ought to be broken
There was a time in sports when athletes would celebrate victory with a beer and a cigarette; interestingly enough, this is also how they mourned losses. Iconic black and white pictures depict a time when the dangers of smoking were unknown and any evidence supporting the dangers of smoking was ignored by the Babe Ruth’s of the sports world.
Today, the athlete has changed ten-fold. Athletes are bigger, stronger, faster, and taller. Their off-time is spent in gyms and in film rooms studying their opponent. The life of an athlete doesn’t end with the season, it is a 24/7/365 commitment that includes social media, endorsements, photo shoots, and public relation events that earn them those contracts that have more zeroes on the end of them than most computer codes.
Now, the athlete is evolving further, and the new next generation of sports icons will have a new weapon in their arsenal: yoga.
Earlier this month the National Post ran an article out of London that told the story of the Australian national rugby team that was in a Yoga studio in Manchester not even 48 hours after a victory over England in the League World Cup.
“It’s not just about lying around on a mat,” said Mark Bitcon, head of performance for the U.K. national rugby team. “It’s an intense physical workout which has numerous positive benefits. There’s a lot of work with weights in rugby, plus intense, competitive action. In the past, we tended to neglect the flexibility aspect, which is very important for a 250-pound athlete.”
Sports nowadays are demanding athletes be more dynamic in their physique and yoga has been front-and-centre in developing these dynamic athletes.
However, yoga still possesses a stigma around it for some male athletes.
“What happens is, a guy who doesn’t know about it associates it with things like Pilates or aerobics,” said Adrian Hummel, a yoga teacher in Maryland. “They think of it as a women’s workout…It’s almost a joke when guys say, ‘I don’t think I can do yoga because I’m not flexible,” Hummel says. “It’s like saying, ‘I’m too weak, so I can’t lift weights.”
Danny Poole, a yoga teacher and a former yoga trainer for the Denver Broncos, recognizes the stigma around yoga, “Athletes with big muscles take a regular yoga class and it kicks their butt and they tend not to come back…our egos are deflated because we can’t do some of the poses,” noted Poole.
The recognition of the stereotypes and stigmas around yoga forced Poole to adapt the activity to his clients, making sure not to begin with poses some big and muscly NFL players simple couldn’t do.
Poole is noticing results. In the year he spent with the Broncos, the ten players he trained in yoga avoided injury.
According to the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, preventing injury is one of many proven benefits to yoga. Yoga has been found to benefit patients being treated for diabetes, AIDS, post-traumatic stress and multiple sclerosis.
Ryan Giggs of Manchester United, a player some regard as being the greatest player to ever play in the Premier League era, has credited yoga and ballet as being the reason why, at 40, he is still able to play soccer at England’s highest level.
Poole did express that the key to getting men into yoga is tailoring it around their personalities and character. Men, for the most part, can do without the music, the chanting, and the awkward and intricate poses yoga is known for.
James Haskell, forward on the England national team, sums up the marketing strategy needed for yoga in order to attract a more diverse, but equally as important demographic, “I’m not there to get my chakras aligned — I use yoga to give me an advantage in my game and keep me on the field.”
So, lads, skip the chakras, the incense, and most of all, the stigmas. Yoga is here to stay, and if you want to sustain a dynamic and healthy life – yoga needs to be for you.