DDP is Diamond Dallas Page and he's a former professional wrestler. Mike was actually the one who first brought this to my attention. Mike is a huge wrestling fan, as is another friend of ours. Mike has been wanting to do yoga for a while but he didn't enjoy the yoga class he went to with me nor did he enjoy any of the videos we did at home. He said they all made him feel too uncoordinated and that like yoga just wasn't for him. Also, some of them were a little too heavy on the spirituality when he really was more interested in the physical benefits of the practice.
That's when our friend mentioned DDP Yoga to him. She let us borrow one of the DVDs and Mike and I started doing it together. He enjoyed it so much that we went ahead and bought our own set. Before I get further into my opinions about the DVDs, I want to share a video from DDP's site about a gentleman named Arthur that they helped re-claim his health. This video is so inspirational and I definitely recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it.
Arthur was looking for assistance getting healthy and sadly, many yoga instructors actually turned him away. But DDP agreed to help and the results are spectacular. And Arthur isn't the only person that DDP assisted with his version of yoga. In fact, he has a whole page of inspirational stories on his website.
So what is it? Here is the information from the website. "DDP YOGA combines the very best of Yoga, Traditional Fitness, Sports Therapy and Dynamic Resistance to create one of the most effective fitness plans in existence today. It allows anyone to get an amazing cardio workout while improving muscular strength, dramatically increasing flexibility and strengthening the core in a single workout... all with minimal joint impact!"
As I mentioned above, Mike really enjoys the DDP yoga and I love that he's getting the physical benefits of it. He likes that it comes with a training plan that tells you exactly which workout to do on a certain day. There are three different training plans, beginner, intermediate and advanced. Mike likes that it is pretty much all about the physical benefits of yoga without the "woo" aspect. He likes that the beginning workouts truly seem like they are meant for beginners. There are multiple places where DDP says it's ok to shake, it's ok to fall, just pick yourself up, try again and you'll get better at it. He doesn't pretend it was effortless and he makes you realize that it's ok for this to feel like hard work.
In addition, the workouts are aimed at people who have no background or exposure to yoga and are meant to be attractive to people who might have felt uncomfortable at the traditional language of yoga. The original name of the yoga program was YRG yoga, which stands for Yoga for Regular Guys. He even goes so far as to change some of the names of the poses. Child's pose is "safety zone" and there are additional poses called things like "touchdown," "superstar," "lightning bolt" and "huddle up." I think you get the idea.
There are three different DVDs each with multiple workouts. Some of them are focused on a certain body part like abs or below the belt and some of them are focused on a certain feeling like energy or wake up.
So what do I think? I think these are very appealing to a certain demographic that may have felt that yoga was not accessible in the past. I love that it's spreading the physical benefits of yoga beyond the traditional demographic. I like that the models he uses are a variety of body types and always both genders. DDP's demeanor is very welcoming and comfortable and he really makes you believe that anyone can do this. Which is great because anyone can do this! The range in difficulty between the beginner and advanced workouts is really good. And even some of the workouts on the first DVD are challenging. There are a lot of squats, planks, and pushups! The things I don't like are mostly personal preference and because I am not the target demographic. I feel like some of the names are silly and it's strange to me to hear traditional yoga poses referred to in sports terms. And I can't figure out why some names were changed. For example, corpse pose is called dead man. Umm... is that manlier for some reason? And I also feel like there a lot of benefits to yoga beyond the physical. If you are looking for any of the mental benefits of yoga such as stress relief, this is not the place to find them.
But overall, I think this is a great workout program and the inspirational stories on his website are better truth than anything I can provide as to the effectiveness of the workout. If you haven't enjoyed yoga in the past or found it alienating, I would definitely say give this a try. And if you are just starting out, this is absolutely low barrier to entry. If you are already a yoga fan, this is probably not meant for you.
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