Dad yoga recommendations, please

July 20, 2020 1:27 PM

Can anyone recommend a very simple yoga program/guide/YouTube for me to add to my life for flexibility and core strength?

I am a middle-aged suburban guy who walks but doesn't do much any aerobic exercise. I am in reasonably good shape (6'1", 190 lbs.) and eat pretty well -- but I know my core is weak after thirty years of IT chair-warming. I would like to get my stretchiness and some strength back before I pass the point of no return.

I won't join a gym or pool, and I am not comfortable going out to work out at a yoga studio -- so it's the Internet or podcasts for me! My basement ceiling is low so I have no place for HIIT, but I can do standing things. Every morning I have the duty to walk the dog, but I can sneak in like ten minutes.

I can follow along on a screen or an audio guide.

Thanks for any ideas!

posted by wenestvedt to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (7 answers total)

Yoga with Adrienne is a (the most?) popular Youtube channel. I have no idea what real yoga people think, but as someone who finds it annoying but knows it's good for me, it works. There are a bunch of videos for all levels. Most are longer than 10 minutes, but she's not going to yell at you for walking out early. You generally don't need any equipment other than a space that's about 8' by 6' and a floor that's not hard - just toss a towel on the ground if it's not carpeted.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:46 PM on July 20, 2020 [6 favorites]

Seconding YWA, she also has a playlist of practices under 10 minutes.
posted by penguin pie at 1:51 PM on July 20, 2020 [5 favorites]

DownDog Yoga app is great for this! You can customize what area you want to focus on and can pick your music and narration style.
posted by assenav at 2:01 PM on July 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

I started with Rodney Yee videos from the library. Nobody ever seems to recommend him here, but it worked well for me. Personally, I’m not huge on watching videos, so what I did was to watch enough Rodney Yee to understand what the various poses were, and then created my own routine using what I’d learned. So like sun salutation > half moon > tree > sun salutation > toe touch > chair. Kind of like when you start playing guitar and you learn the open chords and start trying to play “your own” chord progressions. That gave me a bit of an intellectual challenge to keep me going even when I wasn’t feeling it physically. I eventually got bored and moved on, but I did it for a good year or so, and I still pick it back up occasionally.
posted by kevinbelt at 2:50 PM on July 20, 2020

I suggest you check out The Underbelly Yoga, run by Jessamyn Stanley. She's not the typical yoga body type and she's an excellent teacher. I can also highly recommend her book, Every Body Yoga. It has lots of clear photographs that show all the poses, some suggested sequences, and she discusses all of the basic stumbling blocks beginning yoga students have. Also, no woo.
posted by cleverevans at 8:01 PM on July 20, 2020 [8 favorites]

Ooh cleverevans I didn't know about her - just had a quick watch and I quite liked her! I don't really rate Adrienne, I would say she's more if you want to get into the daily/meditation/relaxation side but I'm not sure about her for strength and flexibility because she's young and flexible and relying too much on her muscle strength to get the poses done, so she's not focussed on alignment and working within your own body. [disclaimer I only watched a couple but I've been doing yoga for 10+ years] These two are really important for flexibility. If you just power it through you'll never learn how to work things better.

I don't know what your options are but I'd advise trying to find an Iyengar class because the focus here is on posture and alignment. I wouldn't go to one at a fancy studio unless it was an Iyengar studio - the ones here are very different to most yoga studios where you mainly get lycra-clad young-types. Iyengar studios here tend to me more old-tshirt-ratty-shorts. I know you said you don't want to go but having a teacher look at your poses will teach you so much more than you can get from doing a video.

But start with the videos to get going!
posted by london explorer girl at 3:19 AM on July 21, 2020

Response by poster: Late-breaking update: the Down Dog yoga app is now free to anyone with a connection -- no matter how tenuous -- to a school, through the end of 2020: https://www.downdogapp.com/schools

I checked it out yesterday, and it seems to have thousands upon thousands of possible routines...once you find the combination of the zillion options which works out to "I am a n00b and also very stuff in the joints."
posted by wenestvedt at 1:06 PM on July 23, 2020