Yoga for Athletes is a sixty-minute yoga DVD led by Kimberly Fowler, a California yoga teacher and studio owner. Fowler is also a former lawyer, a brain tumor survivor, and a Nike spokesperson.
Fowler's style is very straightforward, and the yoga sequence she teaches on the DVD is suitable for intermediate and above practitioners. Her pacing is great and her alignment tips are right on. To its credit, the DVD feels like a real yoga class, with Fowler leading five students (including three men) in a realistic yoga studio setting, albeit one in which the students wear matching Yoga for Athletes tops, sip water from Yoga for Athletes bottles and wipe their sweaty brows on Yoga for Athletes towels.
The cover of the DVD proclaims the slogan “No Chanting. No Granola. No Sanskrit.” This approach may appeal to Fowler’s target audience of people who fear yoga will be too touchy-feely, but it may also serve to alienate those who already know better. Her desire to present yoga primarily as a beneficial physical pursuit is done a disservice by this overly aggressive marketing, which seeks to sensationalize what is actually quite commonplace. It’s not difficult to find yoga without chanting or granola these days, and everyone knows yoga isn’t just for hippies. I do feel a prohibition on Sanskrit is limiting – Fowler is left without anything to call Chaturanga, for instance. She does allow herself one slip up however, thanking her students with a Namaste at the end of their session.
