How To Get Ripped With Yoga.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, yoga does not give you that same feeling of, oh man, I can't even lift my arms anymore or I just feel so pumped up. Look how big my muscles look right now. If it ever gets to a point where it's too boring, I'll get into something like a chair pose, like a squat hold, or like a plank, or like a low plank. But I'll just hold it until I feel like my heart rate starts to increase. It's a runner's lunge, but you're holding it for like two minutes and then you're going into another variation for another minute. It's a really simple exercise, but you know, when you hold an isometric exercise like that for a long time, it's just good really hard. You can't go into the other class and expect for the teacher to break down the pose from your head to your toes every time a pose is announced. In fact, most times she or he will announce the pose and they will expect you to be able to replicate the pose.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. We provide you with everything you need to know for total performance, fat loss, recovery, digestion, sleep, brain and hormone optimization. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you just want to shed a few few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And you've probably heard me talk about on previous podcasts how I am indeed a fan of yoga. And I've experimented with everything from hatha yoga in my backyard in the snow to Bikram yoga at the local hot yoga studio, to even like Diamond Dallas Page yoga with the wrestler who leads you through all these moves, including of course, his famous superstar move. So I've been all over the map when it comes to yoga and I've always wondered, like, if you could. And I've talked to people like this who claim this, that all they do to stay fit is yoga. And I've certainly seen some people who appear to be in pretty dang good shape, even though they say that the only real element of their fitness routine is yoga. And my guest today happens to be one of those people who uses yoga as their primary method of fitness. But he does not look like one of the skinny hippies pushing a grocery shop cart full of kale down the aisle of Whole Foods. He actually is ripped. I'll put a photo of him in the show notes for this episode. The show notes are over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Manyoga and my guest name is Dean Pullman. Dean actually has a background in yoga that he'll tell us about that does not consist of being a yogi. Since he was a baby, he's actually gotten to this relatively recently and developed a really cool yoga routine. Dean and I are going to talk about whether it's possible for those of you nervous about, like, the religious and the spiritual and the philosophical aspects of yoga to separate that from yoga practice itself. We're going to talk about how Dean's form of yoga is different from other forms of yoga, why the yoga industry has done kind of a poor job appealing to, like, the extreme fitness audience or, you know, even the male audience. We're going to talk about Dean's book, Yoga Basics for Men. And by the way, before I scare you ladies away, we're going to talk about a lot of stuff that ladies, if you want to use yoga for more than just, say, flexibility or lowering blood pressure, but you also want to use it for fat loss, getting some extra curves, stuff like that, you will benefit from this too. So don't walk away quite yet. Dean, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Thank you for that fantastic intro, Ben. Glad to be here.

You've got a little bit of an interesting story yourself. I was actually reading on your website about the first time you were out, I think, looking for a tailor and you stumbled into a Bikram yoga studio. That was like your first introduction to yoga. Can you fill us in on that story and how you got into all this in the first place?

Yeah. So I was home for winter break. This was back when I think I was a junior or senior in college and I was looking for a tailor. And so I was wandering through the complex where I knew this tailor was, and I literally stumbled into a Bikram studio. I was like, okay, where am I right now? It's really hot. I was actually on my way to go work out anyways. I had been thinking about trying yoga for years. It'd probably been three years at that point. I remember distinctly being in my friend's house and saying, you know what? I really want to get into yoga. I was finally here at a yoga studio and the class was starting in 20 minutes. And I said, all right, so I play lacrosse. I want to get a little bit more tone. I want to work on flexibility. And she said, this is perfect. I said, cool, let's do it. Then she told me that I didn't have to wear my shirt.

So Was it just you or was this, was there like a whole group of people?

It was just me. I mean it was with, it was a group class, but yeah, it was just me by myself getting into the studio. And I took the class. It was Bikram Hot 26. And halfway through the class, thought I was going to pass out. It was by far the hardest, the hardest workout I've ever done. It still is the hardest workout that I've ever done. That 1 day, 90 minutes, 105 degrees, 26 poses. And I got out of there and just realized how much I was missing out on with my current fitness routine and how much, you know, how much more I had, how much more room I had to improve. And I said, wow, I just wanted to keep doing it just because of the challenge of it.

So your first exposure to yoga was not necessarily like one of these kind of chill yoga classes at a health club or at a studio. It was full on 90 minutes of Bikram yoga.

Yeah, I think I messed that up because I think you're supposed to start with something like a 45 minute vinyasa beginners class. And I went straight into the 90 minute, you know, the 90 minute balls to the wall, really hot yoga. Push yourself to your limit until you break fast.

Yeah, no, totally. I remember my first bikram yoga experience and it certainly pushed me way outside my comfort zone. I use it now every time that I've gone down to do Ironman Hawaii or I've gone to compete in the triathlons over in Thailand because both of those are really hot, humid locales. I've stepped up my bikram yoga to two to three times a week. We have a local studio here in Spokane, Washington, Arrow Yoga. And I'll go over there to do that. Or if I can't make the 20 minute drive over there, I'll literally just set up one of these giant radiating heat fans and a humidifier in my little office and jack up the temperature and then walk away for an hour, come back when it's nice and hot and humid and throw down a yoga routine. But yeah, Bikram is certainly one of those things that I think certainly anybody listening in who wants to kind of jump from the frying pan into the fire like you did, that's a pretty good place to start. One thing, something I should note about Bikram by the way, Dean, before we keep going and maybe it'll be interesting to hear what you found in terms of calorie burn, but I think a lot of people overestimate the number of calories that they burn in something like a Bikram yoga class because the heart rate gets so high. And a lot of heart rate monitors or Fitbits that are calculating your calorie burn based on your heart rate don't realize that a big part of that increase in heart rate is just shuttling blood flow around to cool the body. And so you get this huge cardiovascular effect and this big buildup of like heat shock proteins and nitric oxide and brain derived neurotrophic factors. Another one I know that gets released during these hot yoga classes. But I think some people overestimate the number of calories that yoga, especially like hot yoga, actually burns. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I've had some people tell me before that, okay, you weigh 100 and this is back when I weighed 180 pounds. So you weigh 180 pounds. So you're probably burning 1200 calories per BCRAM session. I don't think you're actually doing that much. I mean I get, when I'm in a yoga, when I'm in a Bikram yoga class in particular, this doesn't happen in the other yoga classes. But all I really feel is just a huge need for sugar at the end of it. I just feel completely drained. But it's not the same. I don't finish it and I think, oh wow, my muscles are super tired and all I want is protein right now. I really just feel drained energy wise. So I think there's a big difference there. And yeah, I agree, you're not really burning as many calories as you think you are just because the heat factor is involved. If you were to do the same workout just in your room temperature living room, it wouldn't be anywhere near as difficult. But the added heat helps you get into levels of flexibility that you otherwise wouldn't be able to reach without the heat. And also it adds that mental factor. You have to tough it out. Just the instructor will remind you sometimes. Yeah, it just takes focus to breathe through it.

So after you got done with this Bikram yoga class, you obviously didn't just move on and never do yoga again because now you've got and we'll put plenty of links in the show notes for those of you listening in over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Manyoga but now Dean's got man flow yoga and he's got DVDs and Dean, I know you're teaching at international retreats and online now with yoga, so what happened between that first time you walked into a yoga studio and now.

A series of events leading me to where I am now, I started doing yoga consistently after that first class. I think I did about two or three classes a week, maybe even more than that. And at the time, I was actually the conditioning coach, strength and conditioning coach for my lacrosse team at the University of Wisconsin. And I made them do yoga. So we started doing yoga together, and they liked it. They liked the way that I presented it. And that was my first testing ground for, okay, I can teach yoga to people in a way that people look at it and they're like, oh, okay, this isn't for girls. This isn't something that's just spiritual or religious. This is a workout. So that was my first exposure to that, where that first happened. And from there, I eventually created a Facebook page, a YouTube channel, Twitter, all that stuff, all the social media for it. I started uploading videos to YouTube. And the original intention was just to have this YouTube channel and to have, you know, to funnel people to the YouTube channel with social media. And from there, you know, I made a website a few months later. And then I was doing some stuff professionally that I really wasn't that enthusiastic about. And when I found myself between jobs because I took a job that the job offer actually fell through and quit my other job in the process. So I ended up jobless. And I said, okay, if I could do anything right now, where I needed to support myself, what would it be? And I already had this following of I don't know how many thousands of people, but I already had a following on social media and I already been teaching. So I went into the manpool yoga thing, started doing group classes, started doing private training, started teaching via webcam for personal training. And, yeah, it just took me to where I am now.

My question for you, because I've messed around, I've done some of the routines on your site. I'm always one of those guys, and I know a lot of yogis will scoff at this. And don't get me wrong, I understand the concept of mindfulness based meditation. I understand the concept of, of breath work and lowering stress and a lot of the things that, like, a typical kind of flow yoga class can do for you. But at the same time, a lot of times when I'm doing yoga, I'm looking to scratch that fitness itch too, right? Like, the productive part of me wants to say, okay, not only have I improved flexibility, lowered blood pressure, learned how to breathe properly, but I've also kind of made myself a little bit more hella fit from doing this particular yoga routine. So for you, can you explain your take on yoga, like your style of yoga, what you've adapted yoga to become for you, and how you've twisted yoga to actually allow you to do things like get ripped and maintain pretty high levels of fitness?

Yeah, well, I like that you use the term twisted yoga because I'm not taking, you know, I'm not just doing yoga. What I'm doing is different from traditional yoga and I get a lot of flack for it. But I am giving something that other that's. I am providing a niche that a lot of people are looking for. So my take on yoga is that it's a calisthenics workout you are using. It's a series of body weight exercises that go through your full range of motion while taxing your endurance that require extreme attention to technique, to proper core engagement, neutral pelvic alignment. And I see no reason why it has to incorporate the philosophy or the traditional spirituality, meditation, or even borderline religion that sometimes that usually accompanies yoga. For me, that would be like looking at a weightlifting workout or doing like a CrossFit workout and then at the end of it doing a meditation together. I see no difference between it because I think one of the reasons why yoga uses meditation at the end, the reason why it works, is because people are just meditating after they have all these endorphins going from the exercise, so they're able to achieve these new insights or to accomplish something or to feel a certain way and also to connect with other people in the room because they've all been in there together for the last hour doing the same workout and bonding, whether or not they realize it. So my thing is you don't. You're just working out, you know, it doesn't have to have the. Anything else that goes with it. And I really enjoyed that.

Now, kind of a rabbit hole here. Before we jump into your poses and your exercises. Do you meditate? Like, do, do you have any kind of religious or philosophical followings that you particularly adhere to? Or do you follow any type of yoga that involves a spiritual or philosophical component? Or are you pretty much this hardcore man flow yoga?

You know, I, I used to be hardcore manful yoga. No meditation, no spirituality. This is, I'm a man. I seal off my emotions from the world. And then I realized that was extremely unhealthy and I started meditating regularly, probably within the last six months. But I don't do it in a Yogic style. My influences for meditation, Tony Robbins actually and his whole priming process, that was something that I took into account. Practicing gratitude, which isn't one you are a guy but something that tons of people do. Visualizing what you want to accomplish specifically. And I've done some reading actually was on the Huffington Post and I got the chance to interview the author of 10%. I can't remember his name right now. Dan Harris, ABC News correspondent yeah, and he wrote a book on meditation except he from a normal person's, forgive the term normal persons, but someone who hasn't been exposed to yoga from their point of view. I was like, oh, okay, this makes sense now. I can understand this. But my influences are, yeah, it's pretty mainstream and Tony Robbins and just people talking about why yoga is beneficial. But I haven't really been, haven't really tailored my meditation practice to any spiritual or philosophical following or influence. If that answers your question.

When you do your yoga routine, are you starting or finishing with any specific breathing practices? The reason I ask is, for example, one of the things that I learned when I went down and did the Navy SEAL fit training was this whole concept of box breathing. The four count in, four count hold, four count out and four count hold. And now I actually do that before my key workouts, before my key difficult workouts that I'd normally just have jumped into and started jumping around like a muppet. Now I just sit there cross legged doing this box breathing for five minutes, visualizing the workout and visualizing like the internal warrior that I want to be able to rely upon for strength during that workout. Do you do anything woo woo like that before or after your training routines or even these yoga sessions?

I think that's super badass. I think visualization like that is very powerful. But I usually don't. What I will do sometimes is end with a short kind of two minute or five minute, just okay, you just worked out and now what do you have going on today? And just kind of compartmentalize my brain for the day. But I don't do. I used to, but I don't really do too many breathing techniques at the end. If I do any, it'll be at the beginning and it'll be just counting in four, counting out four, counting in five, counting out five. So now what about when you're going. That's about the extent of the breathing I do.

When you're going through the exercises or the poses that you're going to tell us about in a little bit, that kind of comprise some of the crux of, like, man flow yoga. Are you doing what you'll find in most yoga classes? Like, you inhale and then you exhale into a pose, and you inhale, then you exhale into the next pose. Do you actually do conscious breathing like that?

Yeah. So, I mean, the inhale and the exhale are linked with my movements. So typically in yoga, you'll exhale to deepen, you'll inhale to lengthen, and I use the breath to go deeper into poses. And once I'm in the pose, I'm very focused on controlling my breath, no matter how much my heart is racing or how much my body is shaking, but very much focused on maintaining that even inhale, even exhale for as long as my breath can be.

Gotcha. One last random question before we jump into kind of like how your yoga routines are set up for getting fit with yoga as a primary form of fitness. Do you ever use totally random question, because I do this all the time. Do you ever use an elevation training mask during your yoga sessions, like one of these airflow restrictors?

I have not. I've. No.

You got to try it out, man. I'm just telling you.

I would love to. I think that would be badass.

It'll turn even a foam rolling session into a workout. So it's pretty intense stuff. All right, cool. Well, I've asked enough kind of skirting around the main issue type of questions. I want to hear now about kind of how your actual yoga routines are set up. Can you tell us about some of your more popular routines and how they actually go?

Yeah, sure. So there's a few things that really separate what the yoga workouts that I do from other workouts from other yoga sessions. One of them is founded. One of the things that I do is founded on the principle that people aren't as flexible as yoga instructors think they are and they need more time for warmup. So I'm an athlete. I'm used to doing my lap around the field before stretching out, or I'm used to warming up before I stretch. So usually before I do anything, there is some sort of static or dynamic warm up. And if I'm doing a static warmup, it's just a simple squat hold. So going down a chair pose, for example, except without the arms overhead, so there's less flexibility involved to warm up your body before you start to stretch the muscles. And then there's a brief period where you're doing static poses that don't involve a lot of flexibility to warm up the body. So you're moving from poses that require less flexibility to poses that require the utmost flexibility.

So are you starting off when you say you're starting off by warming up the body and then doing some of these static exercises? Would that be, for example, like a set of, like, body weight squats followed by isometric, like squat hold or lunge hold type of positions?

Yeah, exactly. So, like, think of like a chair, think of like a wall set. For those of you guys, those of you who listening who don't do yoga, think of a wall sit to warm up, and then starting to stretch and then starting to do something like a lunge that requires some flexibility.

Gotcha. Now, are you doing the, like the static holds prior to jumping into your actual yoga session to build up lactic acid in the muscles or to increase the heat within the muscle? Or is there a specific reason that you choose isometrics or static holds as kind of part of the warmup?

Yeah, I think it's for both of the reasons you mentioned you want to. I want people to feel that lactic acid buildup before they start really starting to stretch, because that means your muscles are warming up. So feeling your muscles warm up, feeling your body warm up before you start to stretch. And that also helps keep the workout intensity higher, I feel like. So once you get heated up and your muscles are warm after you've done that kind of intense isometric hold, then the rest of the workout feels more intense. It feels like you're getting more done. So, yeah, that to answer your question.

Okay, gotcha. So we've got our body weight movements and isometrics that we use as like a warm up. And then what do you move into from there?

From there, it's moving into the traditional yoga posture, the Warrior one, Warrior two, standing side stretches, chair poses, lunges. But I make the poses last a lot longer, and I pay a huge amount of attention to detail. One of the things that bugged the crap out of me when I was in the yoga class was that we would transition to a pose and then 10 seconds later we'd be out of it. And I wouldn't have had a chance to correct my form to make sure what I'm doing was right, to make sure that I was actually getting deeper into the pose. So instead of going into a Warrior two pose, for example, let's just call it a modified lunge for those of you who aren't familiar with yoga. And holding it for 10 seconds. Go into it and you hold it for a minute and you talk about the Technique involved the whole time and what to pay attention for all the way from your feet up through your head.

Now, when you're holding a position for that long, you're obviously not just inhaling and then exhaling, you're breathing multiple times, I would imagine, through that one minute.

Right.

You're not doing all that on one breath, right?

Yeah, that's definitely not on one breath. Unless. Unless you've trained yourself to that point.

A beast when it comes to lung control. For that, which you heard about, these yogis that will do something like take eight breaths in a day, they'll do this box breathing where they'll breathe in for a 10 minute count and then hold and then out through a 10 minute count. And you hear these crazy anecdotal stories about things like that. But for you, you're actually breathing as you hold each position for what it sounds like is significantly longer than what you experience during a normal yoga class.

Correct. So the yoga class that you're referring to is going to be called a flow or vinyasa class. And typically those classes are one breath, one movement. What I'm emphasizing with manifold yoga is getting in the pose and staying in it for a few breaths so you have time to refine the technique to go deeper so you're actually building flexibility. And also get to that point of muscle fatigue, muscle failure, when your muscles start to shake and you actually get stronger instead of just a stretch.

Yeah. Are you familiar with Jay Schroeder at all? He's a guy who works with NFL athletes and he'll do entire workouts made up of only isometric positions. I actually was able to hang out with him at one of Dave Asprey's bulletproof biohacking conferences. And he would go as far as to not only have you do something like a workout, for example, would be a 5 minute squat hold, 5 minute push up hold, 5 minute plank hold, 5 minute lunge for the right, 5 minute lunge for the left, and then almost like a door frame hang. But he would, in addition to that, sometimes even use electro stem. So actually put electrostim electrodes on the muscle that you're holding. So not only are you jacking up, up ungodly amounts of lactic acid from simply holding a muscle in a position without allowing yourself to pump blood in and out of it, but then you add electrodes to that, and so you're actually getting the electro stem and grabbing even more muscle fibers. And it's a crazy workout in terms of its intensity and its difficulty. But it sounds to me like you're relying upon some of the similar physiological advantages of just like holding positions for long periods of time.

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I'm doing. I mean, electro wow, putting that into it.

You should try it sometime. There, there are units like. Well, the Compex is an example of an electro stem unit that isn't quite as expensive as like the. I think it's like a 8 to $10,000 unit that Jay uses. But you can have a pretty good effect. I mean, if you put that thing in strength mode or power mode and then try and go go through a series of isometric holds, you might get a kick out of it with your man flow yoga technique.

Oh yeah. Man flow yoga with that.

So you've got your dynamic warmup and then some isometric holds to start the actual routine. And then you're holding each move of a flow move. Like sounds like a sun salutation series, except you're holding each position for like, like 60 seconds, for example. What else, what else is unique about the form of yoga that you're doing?

One thing that I try to emphasize with my yoga is more upper body and more upper body holds. So very rarely will you do an updog for more than one breath or very rarely will you do the second part of a vinyasa or what we call what you call yoga chaturanga. But it's really just a push up the lower part of there. So where your forearms are perpendicular to the ground, you're in a plank, but your upper arms are parallel to the ground. So 90 degree hold. So I'll emphasize a lot more upper body with that and I'll also emphasize more back engagement. So the poses are very similar. It's just what do I put more of in there? So there's more planks, there's more upper body stuff. Because with the guy in mind, with Nan flow yoga in mind, guys do want to develop upper body strength. They do want to develop the chest and the arms. And typically with a yoga workout, you don't target that, you just target the lower body. So that's another difference with manpul yoga is that I put in a lot more upper body.

Now how do you approach some of the pulling muscles, right, like the scapular retractors and the leather scapula and the rhomboids. Like that's always a tricky part about yoga. And that's actually, I gotta tell you that a lot of times when I'm doing a yoga session, I'll finish up with like 25 pull ups or some inverted rows or something that hits some of those pulling muscles. I didn't really get a chance to work. How do you get around that issue?

Yeah, that is the big issue with yoga. There's not a lot of pulling exercises you can't simulate. You can push the ground away from you, but you can't pull the ground forward. So what I try to do with that is squeezing your back muscles together. I mean just taking your arms up to goal post arms and contracting your back muscles, squeezing your shoulder blades together as much as you can, like you were doing a row or when you do a cobra, inserting cobra rows. So pulling your elbows back as far as you can, releasing and then doing it again a few more times. But ultimately you have to, I mean you can't just do yoga with it. You've got to insert in some, you know, using resistance bands, just hang them on a door frame and do some of those afterwards or like you do, do some pull ups. I think that yoga is fantastic. But yeah, like you said, those pulling exercises, it's hard to get. Now there's some other things you can do is focusing on engaging those back muscles whenever you possibly can. So for example, in Down Dog, even though there's a lot of emphasis on your lower back and your hamstrings, emphasize getting your shoulders pulling back and engaging those scapular muscles to stabilize and pulling your shoulder blades in to your body rather than letting them open up. That can also be very effective in helping to counterbalance the large amount of pushing with your upper body found in yoga.

Yeah, it always seems like yoga is a little bit push centric. And I've even found that if I don't focus on, focus on doing something to keep the shoulder blades retracted, I can get shoulder pain or pain if I'm doing too many of these like sun salutations or plank holds or the type of push up like activities that you'll find in yoga. So yeah, it really is something important to think about. And I did notice in a couple of videos that I saw on your site how you are emphasizing some of that shoulder retraction, which is good because a lot of people don't think about that during yoga. Now we talked a little bit about the isometric holds, your focus on some of the upper body positions and making sure you're not overloading the legs which happen so often in many a yoga class. What else are you doing in your man flow yoga that is unique?

So this kind of goes back to what I said Earlier. But assuming that people are not flexible, I'm providing modifications that I even know about or that a lot of instructors don't know exist. Because I started yoga as 180. I mean, I started yoga, I'm 5 10, and I started yoga when I was 180 pounds, probably 10% body fat, but just really bulky, really bulky muscle wise, and not a lot of flexibility. So I had to come up with these exercises or come up with modifications to poses that worked for me, that other instructors, they would say, okay, try this. I'm like, I can't do that. So I had to come up with modifications that would work for people who are inflexible. So these are what I use to make mantle yoga a little bit unique. So if people can't interlace their fingers behind their back, it's using a strap. If people can't wind their arms together in eagle pose, it's squeezing your forearms together. If people can't lift their arms overhead, it's taking your arms to goal post arms and engaging your back muscles instead of trying to lift your arms overhead and just flaring open your chest and arching your back. So it's modifications that make it different modifications to the standard poses that apply to more inflexible people. And rather than making that the hey, okay, let's go to this pose and then if you can't do this, do this, it's just go to the modification instantly.

What would you say to the people, though, who would argue that that lack of mobility or that lack of flexibility is not necessarily brought on by the inability to hold some static stretch pose for a long period of time, but is in fact due to, like, fascial immobilities, like, like cross linking of fibers and things that would better be addressed via like lacrosse balls and foam rollers. Do you incorporate those at all or what's your take on addressing that other element of mobility rather than just, well, I'll ask you this. Have you heard about this analogy of like taking a rope that has a knot in it, pulling the rope on both ends as you would during a static stretch, and just making that knight even or that knot even tighter?

Yeah, I've actually used that. It's funny you brought that up because I use that rope analogy a lot to explain what muscle knots are. And I actually work with a lot of my, A lot of my remote training clients, my people that I train via webcam. I usually within five lessons, we talk about. And we do something with foam rollers, the lacrosse balls, because like you said, you can't just keep pulling on a muscle. If there's a knot there, it's not going to get it out. So lacrosse balls are absolutely very important to what I do. And I put some stuff about that on the YouTube channel and on my website. I use foam rollers, I use the cross balls. And I actually had the same issue. Like I was doing yoga a lot, like five. I mean I was doing it three or four times a day. I was actually teaching and doing all the classes that I was teaching and my shoulders were just getting torn up because I wasn't doing the proper deep tissue, the soft tissue manipulation that lacrosse balls and foam rollers would have helped out with. And actually I had to stop working out for. I had to stop doing any pushing exercises whatsoever for two whole months. And all I did was lacrosse ball, foam roll, hang on a bar.

Yeah.

So yeah, lacrosse balls are something that I do incorporate into it.

Yeah. So in terms of a couple of like missing components that you'll see a lot of people complain are not present in yoga. How are you introducing these? The first would be strength, right. Like the ability to actually subject the body to a load that allows you to build significant amounts of bone density or even to say add muscle. How are you able to work those kind of moves into yoga? What are some examples?

So there are, I mean, so putting your body on one leg and that. So instead of doing a chair pose with both legs, doing a chair pose with one leg, or doing something resembling a pistol squat, or let's see here, we've got side planks. You can do the low plank, which I talked about before, going into a low push up and holding it. And that gets pretty taxing for almost anybody who's unfamiliar. So I can do that with most people and they won't make it past 15 seconds. So using, I mean, just being kind of innovative with yoga like that can help address that issue. But there are things like the pulling exercises that you have to do outside of yoga, you have to do it with. You have to get a pull up bar involved or you have to go up on your arms and do a handstand or do a crow pose. So there isn't any way to get around the lack of a pulling.

One of the things. And I know I brought it up almost like in jest earlier, but I actually thought it was kind of cool in these Diamond Dallas page yoga videos. Know the ones I'm talking about? Have you seen this?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he'll have some moves where, for example, you'll reach up, wrap your hands around an imaginary pull up bar and pull your elbows down really slowly, engaging in a, in a conscious full body contraction of the lats just as though you were doing a pull up. And you know when you're going through like a three minute set, right, of like 10 of those really slow like basically imaginary pull ups. I gotta say my muscles are shaking and my lats feel just like they would have after I'd done a set of pull ups when I do something like that. And so, you know, I, I can't say I've seen any research that shows that like a very super slow or isometric contraction of say like the lats is going to elicit any type of muscle hypertrophy or satellite cell reaction compared to say like doing a real pull up or say even doing a deadlift. But I think that you can achieve quite a bit with yoga.

Well, I mean, how does it feel? What is your body telling you when you're doing that?

It feels great. But I still feel guilty that I'm not lifting right. Even today, even this morning I was like, I'm going to interview Dean so I'm going to get pumped up. And I went and did yoga with my elevation training mask. So I did a half hour of yoga in my front driveway. But then afterwards, yeah, I went downstairs to the gym and I did five by five on the bar with the deadlifts and then I did 25 pull ups just because I felt like I still needed to tap into that. And that's just, you know, maybe part of that is mental. But you know, I still feel, I personally feel, and I know that your message is, is primarily that you use yoga as one of the main means to get fit. But I, I still have, have that mentality of really wanting to add in actual weight as well and feel like I get a better workout when I do that.

Let me tell you that there is nothing that will ever replace the feeling of satisfaction of killing a weight workout. Yoga does not give you that same feeling of oh man, I can't even lift my arms anymore or I just feel so pumped up, look how big my muscles look right now. There's nothing that replaces that feeling of finishing a weight workout, but it is balanced out by the fact that you finish your workout and the next day you wake up and you don't step out of bed and say, oh no, leg day was yesterday, I'm not going to be able to walk upstairs today.

You certainly bounce back more quickly from the heat.

You feel sore but you don't feel dehabilitatingly sore.

So in terms of your own routine, how often are you doing yoga versus traditional cardio, like running versus weightlifting?

I haven't lifted weights in a long time. I think I'm gonna get back to it eventually just because I just want to keep it exciting, keep it changing up. So I do yoga about, usually at least once, but probably twice a day. Anywhere from a 30 minute session to a 60 minute session. Usually on my own or while I'm working out with my clients or one or two times a day. As far as cardio goes, I'm not doing too much cardio apart from taking my dog. I just got a dog about a month ago, so I'll be starting to do some 10 to 15, 15 minute jogs with him. It's not something that makes up a significant. It's not something significant enough where I'll count it as a workout. But strength training, as far as that goes, I will use resistance bands, I'll use pull up bars, it's all bodyweight stuff. But I do that probably twice a week or two or three times a week maybe. And that helps to offset, I mean that helps to address the inequality of pulling exercises that are found in yoga. But I really want to, I'm probably going to diamond don't sue me or anything, but I think I'm going to start doing those pull ups you talked about.

Tm. Just make sure you reference them. They're the Ben Greenfield post pull up yoga that I've trademarked or post yoga pull ups. Another question that I have for you is cardio, right? Like how do you get to that point where you're gassed, where you're breathing really heavily during a yoga class? Do you have moves that you'll put into your yoga routine that allow you to tap into that part of the physiological stimulus that you might be missing with a yoga class?

No, I really don't. I do not address that in my classes. It's one thing that I've felt doesn't really jive with what I'm doing. With manful yoga, the emphasis is on slow, controlled movement. And so putting in something like cardio in the workout, it would just change it up too much.

Do you ever measure your heart rate to see how high your heart rate gets?

I have not measured my heart rate. I have a pebble, but I've never, never measured my heart rate in one of my own workouts to see. I do have people who have done that and I think I don't know what their heart rate was, but I think they got up to in an hour, they were burning 800, 900 calories.

Okay, gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, like, I'm not a huge fan of the accuracy of those calorie burn meters and don't necessarily think of cardio intervals, as I don't think of their primary benefit as being to burn calories. But as far as building up a bigger cardiovascular engine, I can tell you that if it's hot and I'm going through a series of difficult moves, and even incorporating some of the strategy that you've talked about is kind of interesting. It sounds like you and I, even though we haven't talked before, have come to some of the. Some similar conclusions when it comes to how to make yoga more difficult. But when I'm holding those isometric positions for long periods of time, or I'm even doing something that requires a little bit more full body contraction, right? Like an inverted pose or a pose where you're supporting your body with your hands or something like that, I've found that I'm able to get my heart rate pretty close to what my predicted maximum would be. I mean, I can get to the point where my heart feels like it's pounding out my chest and I'm breathing hard, and I can get there even faster when I'm wearing, for example, one of these training masks. But you have to make some definite modifications. And I have to admit, and I'm curious about your thoughts on this. Sometimes I will stop in the middle of a yoga routine that I feel isn't challenging me as cardiovascularly as it could. And I'll just do like 30 burpees or something, you know, or a set of jumping lunges or something that jacks up the heart rate. You don't ever do anything like that?

I think that, well, usually I'm controlling the workout. So if it ever gets to a point where it's too boring, I'll just. I'll get into something like, you know, like a chair pose, like a squat hold, or like a plank or like a low plank. And I'll just hold it until I feel like, you know, my heart rate starts to increase. So I do kind of make a distinction between heart rate and breathing. So even though my heart rate is going up, I'm really focused on controlling my breath to make sure that it's never getting to the point where I'm breathing quickly, but at least breathing in control in and out of my mouth, even if my whole body is shaking. And my heart is pounding. So I think, I think. I guess, I guess I must be then. I mean, I guess as long as you're.

It sounds like you're getting there primarily through the isometrics, which, you know, like I mentioned with that, like Jay Schroeder protocol, you know, extreme isometric stuff, you can certainly get the heart rate jacked up pretty high from that type of thing. And I think it depends on your goals too. Right. Like, I am still trying to stay on the pointy edge of fitness for things like Spartan racing and triathlon, where I just have to have. Have a bigger VO2 max. Then I'd probably be willing to settle for a little bit less when it comes to oxygen capacity if I were just training for, say, general fitness or I guess golf or something like that. No offense to all you golfers out there. So you've got videos that range from 10 minutes or less all the way up to 25 minutes or more on your site. And each of these videos, like ones like Upper Body Yoga Workout Intense, Lower Body Yoga Workout Intense, your Man Flow Yoga Pyramid, you've got one called Death by Warrior. If you were to take what you would consider to be one of your more difficult workouts and just like in, you know, in one to two minutes, describe what that workout would actually look like. Can you. Can you give us a pretty good idea? Help us wrap our heads around, like, what would be like, one of your more favorite or difficult yoga routines that you've invented?

Sure. I mean, so the way the yoga workouts are sequenced, doing counter pose to pose to counter pose. So if you're doing something with your legs straight, you're going into something where your leg is bent. The way that I keep my yoga workouts really intense is that I'm going from something that requires you to bend your legs to doing a squat, going into something that requires straight legs. But both of these exercises are very difficult, so it's pretty much constant the whole time, minus the break that traditional yoga classes would have by inserting in deep vinyasa or inserting in that plank to up dog to down dog movement and then the rest in down dog. Everything's trying to make it so that you're never taking a break, which makes it a little bit different. More than that, you're also staying in the pose for a much longer time. That's really the basis of my upper body and my lower body workout, the Lower Body Workout Intense, and the Upper Body Yoga Workout Intense. On the website that you'll find I also have an 18 minute core workout which is extremely difficult, very popular, which just keeps pedal. I mean it just keeps the held to the floor the whole time.

What would you say are the toughest three exercises in that core workout that make it so hard and the core.

Workout what makes it so hard is just the, it's a runner's lunge. It's just a basic lunge but you're holding it for like two minutes and then you're going into another variation for another minute. So it's a really simple exercise, but it's just when you hold an isometric exercise like that for a long time, it just gets really hard. That and the low plank where you hold it with your arms at a 90 degree bend, those are two of the most difficult exercises that you're going to find in there.

So I know that you've got a ton of these routines on your site and man flow yoga that are just free. But then you've also got this book that you wrote called Yoga Basics for Men. Why would someone want to read that versus just grabbing what's on your site, what's in the book?

The ebook I wrote that last year, it got number one on Amazon in four categories and it has a ton of information on poses most likely utilized in manful yoga workouts. Sample sequences, key concepts both mental and physical to keep in mind while you're doing yoga. But the reason why it's so useful to beginners is because you will never go into a yoga class and expect. You can't go into yoga class and expect for the teacher to break down the pose from your head to your toes every time a pose is announced. In fact, most times she'll just announce the pose and expect she or he will announce the pose and they will expect you to be able to replicate the pose without any instruction. So what my ebook does is it explains the poses, it says, what's the target area of this pose? What's a practical benefit of this pose? Like if I do this pose and I'm a baseball player, what does this help me do? It also goes through very easy to follow an in depth technique explanation of the pose. So building from the feet up to your head, what is my back leg doing? What's my front leg doing? What should I be doing with my core? Where is my chest in relation to my legs? Where are my shoulders in relation to my hips? It just makes it a lot easier for someone to learn yoga more quickly as opposed to them just going to a yoga studio and learning slowly as I did. It's a hack for learning yoga. That's what it is, right?

Gotcha. That one's called, what's the name of it again? Men Yoga.

Yoga Basics for Men.

Keep wanting to say Man Yoga. Yes, Yoga Basics for Men. And then your site is Man Flow Yoga. And again like these are, you know, that's one of the things that I mentioned that I do, you know, for better or for worse is I look for yoga routines that really challenge me. Like I still feel relaxed at the end after I focused on the breathing. And usually you've got a lot of like body mindfulness and mind mindfulness that you're working on during the session to where I feel a drop in cortisol and I feel a. And I've worn the heart rate variability. So the increase in heart rate variability happens and it's higher than what it would be after a normal workout. That beats me up. But then I get the increase in my breath control the drop in blood pressure. And so I think it's okay to have yoga routines be able to kind of kick your butt, but also give you some of that same relaxation and mobility benefit that yoga yoga can give you as well. And your routine is among others that I've found that actually push me outside my comfort zone when it comes to this stuff. And again I still will do things like the elevation training mask and the post yoga pull ups or deadlifts and we'll even throw in the burpees here and there. But ultimately I like your routines and so if you're listening to into the show you can check out any of Dean's routines. A bunch of them are free over there@manflowyoga.com I'll put links in the show notes to the stuff we talked about and also Dean's book Yoga Basics for Men along with a couple of photos of Dean so you can see just how ripped he's gotten with doing Yoga over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Manyoga Dean, anything else that you want to share with us?

Yeah, so we talk a lot about yoga and stress relief. And the thing is that you don't have to talk about it, you don't have to describe the philosophy, you don't have to describe what's going on in the mind. I think that the fact that you're just moving mindfully and breathing and linking your breath with your movement just creates that stress relief all on its own. So whether you know it or not, not you're getting the stress relief benefits just by doing just by doing yoga, whatever form it happens to be.

Right, right. Yeah, that makes sense. And yeah, I mean, as far as stress relief and working this kind of stuff in goes, I know a lot of people kind of complain that, oh, it's just one more thing that I got to squeeze into whatever my treadmill and my lifting and my, my rock climbing and everything else that I'm trying to do. And what I would say is, for me personally, I've incorporated most of my yoga into 10 to 15 minutes in the morning, really super short routines, more like the 10 minute or less routines that you have on your site. And then about once a week, sometimes twice a week in the off season, I will do a harder yoga session, like 30 to 60 minutes that involves some of these longer holds that you're talking about, that you're talking about that involve some of the burpees that involve wearing an elevation mask or doing it in a really cold situation or really hot situation or even going to the dry sauna and doing yoga. And so I use it as. Not necessarily as an addition to a lot of my normal workouts, but as a replacement or just as part of my morning routine when I'd normally be kind of doing something relaxing anyways. So there are ways that you can squeeze this stuff in, right?

Yeah, I mean, well, if there's one thing I had to say. Other thing to address when you just said you have to do your strength training, you have to do your rock climbing and your running, What I try to do with mample yoga is make it a yoga workout that replaces your body weight or your weight training workout. It's a workout that will tax your muscles to the point of muscle failure while working into the full range of motion in your body. That's at least that's what I try to do.

And for anybody who wants to see what that full range of motion feels like, once you're holding a position for one to two minutes, you definitely feel a pretty intense increase in your mobility and your ability to be able to get into that position. Which is important too, when you're looking at something like how a lunge lunge simulates the same position you'll find yourself in a run. Or a squat simulates. An isometric squat simulates a huge amount of strength and lactic acid buildup and can develop power and strength. So there's a lot of kind of cool crossover benefits here. And we could obviously talk for a long time, but we're pressed for time now. I know. So again, I'll link to some stuff. If you want to go check this out over atBen Gray greenfieldfitness.com Manyoga and Dean, thanks for coming on the call today.

Yeah, thank you Ben. It was a great conversation. Thanks for being a good interviewer. It flowed pretty well despite this being our first in person conversation. Thank you.

That's okay. I do my best. It usually involves copious amounts of coffee pre interview along with some yoga. Right. Some innovation training mask. My coffee this morning was actually mushroom coffee with cordyceps. So from this company called Four Sigma Foods that they make like reishi and maitake and shiitake and all sorts of extracts. But one of the things they have is mushroom coffee. So that was my beverage of choice this morning over ice with some chocolate stevia. So there you go. It's about as foofy as it gets.

Gets sounds very good.

All right. Well folks, thanks for listening in again. Check out BenGreenfieldFitness.com Manyoga for the shownotes and until next time, this is Ben Greenfield and Dean Polman from manflowyoga.com signing out.

See you.

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