What’s Athletes for Yoga? Where’s your studio?

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about who we are, what we do, and where we do it. Clearly it’s time for a rallying call.

As a collegiate basketball player — a gig featuring long hours on the court and in the weight room — I loved my sport, but found myself saying “Ugh” a lot. It wasn’t until a serious back injury sidelined me for a season that I realized that all the hard work required of competitive athletes doesn’t have to be so, well, hard.

This revelation came from an unexpected place: yoga.

While injured, my doc prescribed yoga. As someone who had never been into stretching (or saying “Ommmmmm”), I was skeptical of yoga’s potential to make me a better athlete, to say the least. But after a season of downward dogging, there was no denying it — I was faster, stronger, and had more endurance. I was way more fit because I had brought my body into balance by gaining some serious flexibility and core strength and, more importantly, I had learned to harness the power of my breath. In other words, I realized that you can go further physically and mentally not by gritting your teeth and going “Ughhhhhhhh,” but by taking a deep breath. In retrospect I’m like, duh. But at the time it felt like BOOM!

Athletes for Yoga?

After feeling how yoga changed my game, I was inspired to craft an accessible and relevant approach to yoga for both competitive (like NBA basketball players) and everyday (like rec soccer players) athletes. And Athletes for Yoga is just that — functional yoga optimized for your sport. And if you don’t consider yourself an athlete, don’t worry, this is super relevant to your desk jockeying or whatever it is that you do, too!

Arming athletes with the ability to balance effort and ease is what we’re all about — because the more balanced your body is, the less likely you are to get injured, and the more likely you are to play your best. Whether you want to prevent knee injuries or you just need to chill out, using yoga to bring yourself back into balance is what we mean when we say “hit reset.” Once more:

Hitting reset = using yoga to bring yourself back into balance.

That doesn’t mean our classes are easy, because seriously people, yoga is no joke. You’ll shake, you’ll sweat, you might even get annoyed at us for that bonus round of core work. But you’ll learn to recognize when less is more and how to truly rest easy, rather than ending up halfway tense and tight all the time. You’ll get up and feel as if you’ve hit reset, and then you’ll take that feeling of ease — and that integrated strength and flexibility — off your mat and into your sport… and your life.

Where?!

Athletes for Yoga is a mobile team of seven yoga coaches with the chops to make yoga relevant to your body and your sport. What does mobile mean? Basically I can’t be bothered to open my studio because my team and I would rather travel to you and meet you on your court, field or track — because Athletes for Yoga is about making you a better athlete, not turning you into a goji berry-eating, balloon pants wearing hippie (confession: I do love goji berries of the chocolate covered variety and have been known to rock some Birkenstocks). The point is, we keep it real and we keep it relevant.

So what are you waiting for? You’re not impressing anyone — especially not us — by moaning about how sore and stressed you are. And you’re definitely not impressing anyone by overtraining your way to an injury. Practice with our videos in the comfort of your jammies, drop-in on one of our classes around Seattle, book a series of classes for your team, or change your game with private coaching.

Together, lets start a reset revolution.

Erin + Team Athletes for Yoga