Hit Reset: Revolutionary Yoga for Athletes: Revolutionary Yoga for Athletes

by Erin Taylor

HIT RESET offers athletes new ways to find more speed, power, and endurance. Yoga coach Erin Taylor’s HIT RESET program uses yoga to solve the specific problems you face as an athlete. Her revolutionary approach to yoga can improve functional strength, flexibility, muscle recruitment, breathing and focus, core strength, and durability.

HIT RESET starts by defining 10 problems that hold athletes back and the yoga solutions that can fix them. Each chapter shows you how your body should work, how to self-diagnose flaws in your movement and functional strength, and how to apply just a few specific yoga poses so you can “hit reset” and get back to athletic form. The yoga solutions in HIT RESET take just a few minutes before or after your workout, and you won’t need a mat or studio classes.

Armed with these key, highly effective yoga fixes, you’ll begin a radical redefinition of balance that can make you a healthier, stronger, and faster athlete.

HIT RESET can help you

Yoga can help you in your sport, but only if your yoga is solving the problems you face as an athlete. HIT RESET offers a yoga revolution for athletes by making yoga work for you. Join the HIT RESET revolution and you’ll find a no-nonsense approach that will make you a stronger, more resilient athlete.

Genres: Nonfiction, Fitness

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2016

About the author

Erin Taylor is an international leader in yoga for athletes and founder of Jasyoga, a revolutionary approach to yoga for athletes. Her mission is to help as many athletes as possible use yoga to achieve their goals, and become more balanced and resilient along the way. She shares her approach in Hit Reset: Revolutionary Yoga for Athletes and Work In: The Athlete’s Plan for Real Recovery and Winning Results.

It was her own experience of being sidelined by injury as a collegiate basketball player that first showed her how yoga can be the “Reset” that brings athletes back into balance. Erin founded Jasyoga to equip athletes with powerful skills to prevent injuries and enhance recovery, optimizing performance in sport and life. Over the last decade, she has infused meditation, functional anatomy, and physical therapy techniques into her practice. Now accessible anytime, anywhere via her online video platform and Hit Reset and Work In books, Erin’s approach has been widely embraced by athletes ranging from recreational to elite, and can be configured to help anyone achieve their goals.

In addition to privately coaching sports teams and athletes, she hosts yoga-for-athletes certification programs and writes a popular blog at jasyoga.com/blog. She lives in London with her husband and daughter.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love yoga and have noticed that regular yoga practice helps my running, however I have always treated them as separate: I do my yoga class, I do my runs. I like that this book helped me see the connection between the two in a way that has brought more body awareness to my running in an effort to *hopefully* improve my biomechanics. Plus so many of the stretches feel so good!

Another bonus of this book is that my 5 year old daughter likes doing a lot of the poses with me so the photos of the poses are helpful to us both!

[KT · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great reference guide for athletes!

[Tara - runningnreading · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of yoga, especially as it relates to recovery and injury prevention for runners. I've practiced yoga, off and on, for ten years, thanks to an introduction by a college professor who was also a certified yoga instructor and invited her students to a class as part of a project we were working on.

After just one class, I was hooked; I wasn't sure exactly what I was hooked on, but I knew that I wanted to experience that mind/body connection again as soon as possible. This was in 2005, and I attended classes with her regularly until she moved away from the area and, since then, I've bounced from place to place; my desire to maintain a regular practice has never faded.

Thanks to a swell in both its popularity and accessibility, one can find yoga just about anywhere; my struggle has always been in finding a teacher in whom I trust to guide me properly and help me understand why certain connections, poses and breathing patterns are important. In addition, as a runner, I want to ensure that I'm not doing anything to jeopardize my training efforts; I would like to enhance and supplement my running with my yoga practice.

Enter Jasyoga, my yoga studio of choice; it is, most wonderfully and conveniently, a mobile studio. For a nominal fee of $4.99, I can practice whenever and wherever I choose with Erin Taylor who is an athlete's yoga instructor. Having discovered yoga after an injury as a collegiate athlete, Erin knows what it means to bridge the gap between performance and recovery, goal-orientation and balance.

In addition to the online, studio-quality classes that she and her team put together, Erin has recently published a book wherein she shares her philosophy on yoga for athletes as well as very specific prescriptions for various imbalances that many of us have discovered and/or struggled with throughout our training.

My personal favorite? Ahh...some amazing hip helpers! I have a significant leg-length discrepancy and completely lazy glutes, so my hips need all the help they can get to be strong, remain mobile and stabilize my body on the run. Erin has written an entire chapter with specific sequences...just for me! Okay, that may be a stretch; I know many other people who struggle with this issue.

Having said that, there is something in this book for everyone; I can't imagine anyone who would not benefit from Erin's experience, knowledge and expertise after years of work with elite athletes, professional teams and weekend warriors. Knee problems? Check! Hold tension in your shoulders and upper body and need some relief? Check! Foot pain? Hamstrings holding you back? Check, check!

Erin's descriptions are extremely easy to follow, there are detailed pictures to guide you along, she provides recommendations on the optimal timing for these sequences and what (if any) props you will need. Whether alone or as a companion to your Jasyoga online subscription, Hit Reset is a fantastic resource for all of you who are interested in creating a little more balance in your life, a little less tension and lot more flexibility and recovery.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being a non yoga person, I found this book easy to use. Step by step instructions, photos, and explains what poses to use for what problems. It also has weekly routines set up with photos. The first time I did one of the programs (I have tight IT band)...relief!

[Douglas Lord · Rating 5 out of 5]

Are you one of those dudes who runs, bikes, skis, plays a little ball, maybe a wee bit of golf? And do you hate to stretch and viscerally detest yoga? Especially the “woo-woo” breathy stuff and mystery chants uttered by the impossibly chirpy flexi-person at the front of the room? Then you need this book, big fella. It’s easy to comprehend and has a clear purpose, and holy goodness does it help out a tight old man like you. Your muscles are like a Bit-O-Honey—they’ll snap under stress, so be sure to keep them warmed up and limber. Consider something you probably don’t consider much: imbalances in your body, like a runner’s gait that has slowly mutated over time with one hip higher than the other to compensate for road grade. You don’t feel it, but pretty soon your hips are out of whack and your athleticism—maybe your overall movement—is limited. Same for other sport/life injuries: the knee you blew out in college, that rotator cuff thing, that meniscus surgery. Taylor’s strategies help bodies reset from these changes and adaptations by covering lower body balance, tight hamstrings (which affect every damn sport), shoulder looseners (physiological terminology is, thankfully, eschewed), even mental focus. Taylor didn’t write this for yoga-ers; she’s a coach helping athletes achieve goals. Also, this is great for visual learners because photographs and diagrams show 90 percent of the activities involved; easy to use, very little guesswork. VERDICT Think LeBron James doesn’t stretch his muscles? Course he does. This shit works. Your hamstrings, back, shoulders, neck, Achilles—name your body part—will thank you.

Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.

[Elizabeth Nordquest · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found out about Jasyoga through Oiselle (of course) and by extension Erin Taylor's book Hit Reset. I'm not a yogi, nor have I participated in a yoga class. I've done some free yoga before a 10k and tried to follow YouTube videos, but I don't keep up with it even though I've enjoyed it in the past.

This book is a great collection of pre- and post- workout stretches. They're quick, easy, and effective. I don't often have time to find my zen, so it was nice to pick up the book and get going. There are great descriptions and introductions, but my favorite part of the book is the full-color photo-based layout. I appreciate the work that went into getting various athletes (and the author) to demonstrate each move. I also like that it's divided into regions. So far, it's been a great guide for someone like me who has a casual interest in periodic deep stretching.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really like this - simple, focuses on the key areas athletes need to worry about - and who doesn't love a book with the awesometastic Lauren Fleshman vouching for it by being IN it?

It could have a *little* more explanatory text (maybe in lieu of the worksheet pages), but I love that I - with a cranky shoulder/arm - opened it right to a page on rotator cuff exercises/stretches and they were in line with what my physical therapist was recommending.

Also loved the correction on hamstring stretches, which I've been doing wrong.

Keeping it a little longer while I decide if I want to buy it or just get a few more tips and call it good.

[Cecilia Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never have I found a more detailed and productive way to stretch, relax, and reset after a run. Jasyoga has been incredibly useful in keeping my runner's body healthy and happy, and I use this book daily to balance my my mind and body.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Will use this all the time, though I'll have to write small so I can go back and re-test all the time.

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seriously thrilled to use what I learned in this book - and I HATE yoga. Powerful book, user friendly, hits home with this damaged runner.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for athletes looking for ways to increase their flexibility!