In his father's first season at Duke, former men's lacrosse player Matt Danowski kept encountering the same question from his teammates.
"What is your dad, a hippy?" they asked. "A freak?"
Turns out, men's lacrosse head coach John Danowski was neither a hippy nor a freak. He simply believed in the athletic utility of yoga-and his new players had no idea what they were in for.
"It was brutal," sophomore attackman Zach Howell said of his first time doing yoga. "It was honestly one of the most challenging things I'd ever done. And the funny thing was the yoga instructor told us she was taking it easy on us that day."
"[There were] a lot of painful stretches-a lot of moaning going on in the background with weird positions going on," fifth-year senior Chris Loftus said of the team's first go with yoga.
But the lacrosse team is not the only one to start doing yoga in recent years. Non-traditional workouts, such as yoga and Pilates, have become the norm for many of Duke's squads, which, like their professional counterparts, have embraced the cross-training method that became popular with women in the late 90s.
Reaction to unconventional practice
Yoga was not de rigeur at Duke until the turn of the century, even among the undergraduate masses that haunt Wilson Gymnasium. Lisa Jindra and Denise Worden, Duke's only full-time group fitness instructors, both had yoga training, but their roots were in the Jazzercise era.
Women's golf head coach Dan Brooks was the first to introduce yoga into his team's workouts, Jindra said, but other coaches soon followed suit.
For the fencing teams, it is a regular part of their workout. The men's and women's squads-in athletic garb, not yoga pants-line their practice space with yoga mats. Ethereal, New Age-y music fills the air.
"The response has been mixed," women's fencing captain Jessica Hancock said. "Some people think it's silly. But in the end, it helps."
For other sports, like Danowski's lacrosse squad, yoga is not part of the regular schedule. Danowski said he wishes the team had the time to do yoga at least once a week. But NCAA regulations limit the amount of time players can spend practicing and working out, so it becomes more of an exception to the regular routine-something that happens in the offseason or on rainy days.
"They use it as a treat because they look forward to it," Jindra said. "They enjoy the stretch. They enjoy the relaxation. You're using it to help them recover, and they like doing it as a team-building thing, too. Like with lacrosse, we always say they're out their beating on each other-at least they can come in here and be quiet together."
And the players agree. They look forward to the deviation from the normal training methods, even though it's not necessarily less arduous than taking a pounding in their pads.
"[Danowski] is really into doing different things, trying things out," senior midfielder Ned Crotty said. "Guys actually get a little excited when we do something different."
Although neither instructor works with the spiritual side of yoga, both introduce relaxation into their sessions.
Jindra said that she's even seen players fall asleep during the relaxation portion of her sessions, which Danowski said is "terrific."
"She puts on this music and everyone just lies down in the fetal position and you fall asleep," Crotty said. "It's the best part."
The coaches on the mats
Jindra and Worden stretch the abilities of Duke's athletes.
In addition to the fitness and physical education classes they teach, the two lead yoga sessions with many of the University's varsity athletic programs. Jindra and Worden work regularly with the men's and women's golf, fencing, lacrosse, rowing, tennis, track and cross country teams. The wrestling and both basketball teams have also dabbled in yoga, but Mike Krzyzewski's squad uses external instructors.
Because yoga is based on stretching, it develops flexibility in athletes. Worden said most athletes do not stretch enough, and yoga serves largely as a pre-habilitation exercise that has been effective in preventing injuries.
But it's a long-term process.
"We all want instant results and instant gratification," Worden said. "The benefits of it are very slow. It's very incremental. It's something you have to stick with."
Both instructors tailor their routines to the team they are working with, focusing on the most repeated motions and common injuries for each sport. In fencing, for example, Jindra said she addresses the team's lunging. For lacrosse, she works on their shoulders.
"I told her what I was looking for and she was able to adapt it to that," said Danowski, who has also done yoga with Jindra. "She was really able to make the guys understand what they were stretching and why they were doing it."
And as more coaches become aware of the benefits of yoga, more jump on the bandwagon. Because there are only two full-time instructors, yoga is still not a mainstay in every team's workout regimen, but it is growing in popularity-and it's working.
Just ask Worden, who overcame a serious personal injury by introducing yoga to her own workouts.
"All of the things they say yoga does, I believe it did that for me," she said.
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