What Robin Lund Says About YAX Online
We are so grateful we got the chance to speak to Robin Lund, the pitching coach at the University of Iowa, and hear his thoughts on how on-demand yoga is benefiting his athletes.
Watch the video or read the transcript below!
Read the Interview
My name’s Robin Lund. I’m the pitching coach at the University of Iowa. I coached for baseball in the 90’s, and the early 2000’s and then I switched out of that career. I went and got a PhD, and I was a professor for almost 20 years at the University of Northern Iowa, and then I hopped back into coaching. This is my fourth season at the University of Iowa.
What made you to decide to incorporate recovery into your training program at Iowa?
My background is in science. All of my coaching, everything I do from a coaching standpoint, it always starts with science. So I feel like I’m a scientist who just kind of happens to coach pitchers.
There was that study done by Steph Armijo and Ben Hansen. The results of that study were pretty obvious and glaring that yoga does benefit pitchers. So, we just started there. We were doing it, but it wasn’t great. It was just, okay. I was pulling stuff off YouTube on the internet. Then I chatted with you guys at ABCA, and we had a really nice discussion for about 30 minutes, and we decided to pull the trigger on your product.
What’s your favorite thing about using yoga, breathwork and meditation for your athletes?
Our guys, they get really wound up. I mean, college baseball is extremely competitive. If you’ve ever gone out and watched a game, I mean, you can count on your hand, the number of times that you’ll be in a blowout game. You’re either receiving, getting blown out, or really beating somebody bad. Usually the games are extremely competitive. They’re really, really close, and they’re full of high leverage situations. So when the game is over, the central nervous system is just on, you know, the foot is fully on the gas. So getting the guys to be able to put their foot on the brake, and get a little, you know, vagal motor tone, get a little parasympathetic system activation is really important, and this is probably one of the best ways to do it.
They want it, they yearn for it. We do it at least twice a week. And when I ask guys, especially even when we’re on the road, even after a flight, like a long flight, or a long trip. My phone will be blowing up. “Hey, can we do yoga? Can we do this? Can we do that?” And I’m like, “Absolutely.” So we’ll get it set up and we’ll do it that way.
What benefits have you seen with your athletes since using YAX Online?
The recovery piece is really big for me. But it’s more so than just the central nervous system, and getting them again, out of that fight or flight response and then do a little bit of rest and digest.
But in addition to that, the range of motion, and we’re not measuring that, we’re not specifically measuring changes in range of motion. But I know the study’s been done. I read the study. And so again, I’ll just re-quote that study by Steph Armijo and Ben Hansen. There were about six or seven different variables that showed significantly improved range of motion when compared to a control group, you know? So doing yoga for about an hour the day after a stressful pen, or a stressful outing, or just, you know, after you pitch. The day after significantly improved a bunch of range of motion outcomes.
So the goal is just to get guys into that recovery cycle as soon as possible, and get them bouncing back as soon as possible. Specifically in the shoulders, so that you can you can get them on the mound again.
Why did you choose YAX Online as opposed to other yoga alternatives, or other yoga videos?
I’ve done yoga in the past. I’m terrible at it. I’m not very good at it. I don’t have the time to learn that particular skillset. What would be great is if I just did it myself, and taught it myself. And I considered it, and I did a bunch of yoga last summer to see if I could get myself into that position. Because like I said, we were just doing random online stuff, and it was just okay, it wasn’t great.
Then at ABCA, I stopped by your booth and we chatted. You showed me your product and how you have all of those videos that you’ve already queued up just for baseball and softball, for all the different situations. And I basically kind of roasted you guys a little, not roasted, but I asked you guys, you know, a hundred questions, “Do you have this, do you have that, do you have this.” And you had all of that. And I even said, “Well I would like to see this.” And you guys went ahead and made that video. I saw it, it was a new one that came up after I had requested it.
So just knowing that if there’s something really specific that I want, and that I can kind of request that from you guys. And you guys will go ahead and do that for us. Just as part of being a subscriber to your services was all I needed to hear.
Would you recommend this platform to other coaches?
Sure. A hundred percent, without a doubt.
Any tips you have for other coaches who would try to get started with this?
Yeah, I would just say, you just got to jump in and get them going. Because once they start doing it, they’re going to want to do it, because it makes them feel good. Our guys, all they know is they feel better, you know? They’re pulled, they’re busy. They’re being constantly pulled in lots of directions, and we don’t have a lot of time with them. We have 20 hours a week that we have with them. And that includes everything they do in the weight room as well. And so every minute is really, you know, is sacred. And we don’t want them doing things that they don’t feel is useful as well. Because it’s just a waste of time. They won’t buy in. But this is one of the things that they request. They ask for it. And it’s across the board, the whole team.
The one that’s most popular actually is the lower back one. We do that one when we get off the plane, when we get off of a trip, or they’re in the bus for a long time, because we have a lot of 6’4, and 6’5 guys, you know? Those pitchers are tall, they’re big dudes. They’re cramped on the bus, or cramped on the plane for a trip. So that one gets requested quite a bit. B
I’ll just quote a little James Clear. If you can build an environment where it makes it easy to do yoga, they’re gonna do it, and you’re gonna do it as a coach. So, just creating an environment that makes it easy for you to do that. Have some things that you can bring on the road that they just stuff in their bag, and then they have all the equipment that they need to do it. Because again, once they start doing it they’re going to want do it.
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This course will give you a better understanding of the importance of yoga and how to apply it to the athletes you currently work with.
