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I was just reading The Legendary Jon Gilson‘s latest post, which is essentially a transcript of a phone conversation Jon had with Greg Everett.

It’s lengthy, but I gotta say, I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with an assessment of Yoga more than I do with this one:

Yoga around here, that’s a bad word.  That’s the Y-word, and reason being is it’s flexibility for the sake of flexibility.   If that person is going just for stretching and yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, it can get you some strength and stuff like that.  But I say oh, come on, and I hate to be a dick about it and I know I’m  such a cynical asshole when it comes to Yoga and I piss a lot of people off saying this stuff, but, if you want to be flexible for your sport, train for flexibility for your sport.

Yoga is its own little spin.  It’s its own sport.  If you go to a Yoga class, your Yoga instructor doesn’t give a fuck what you do when you walk out the door.  All they want you to do is to pigeon pose and this weird, fucking, you know elbow-handstand and this other thing over here.  And you know what?  If that’s your thing, that’s great.  I’ll support you.  I won’t go to the class with you but I’ll pat you on the back and say, “Hey, did you have a good time?” when you walk out the door.

But, if you’re one of my athletes or someone who is asking me about flexibility I’m going to tell you “No, don’t do Yoga.  If you want to fuck your knees up and not make any real progress where it counts, then yeah, by all means, go ahead.  You know, if you want to go to Bikram and be like fucking go sweat with bunch of hippies in a big Petri dish, then be my guest.”

Greg Everett: you sir, are a genius in your comments on Yoga.