Muslce & Fitness: Can you describe how wrestling affected your body over the years?
[[{“type”:”media”,”view_mode”:”media_original”,”fid”:”32913″,”attributes”:{“alt”:””,”class”:”media-image media-image-right”,”style”:”width: 400px; height: 456px; float: right; margin: 5px;”,”title”:””,”typeof”:”foaf:Image”}}]]Diamond Dallas: I worked broken all the time. My career took off in ’96, and I was 40 at the time. When your career takes off in wrestling, you work 270-plus days every year because all of a sudden you’re in one main event or another, so your travel schedule becomes insane. When you’ve worked so hard to get there, there’s a part of your mind that can shut off. I don’t think I’ve ever walked in a ring and felt amazing, like, “Oh, my god, I feel unstoppable!” But that’s how I feel today.
What did you do to get up for a match? Was it just the adrenaline?
Yeah, that, and I did a shitload of maintenance: chiropractic, applied kinesiology, deep muscle- massage therapy, organic juicing, clean eating. Then of course DDP Yoga came on the scene in ’98 and ’99. (DDP was able to introduce many other wrestlers, including Chris Jericho, to the benefits of his brand of yoga.) I spent three years doing that every day.
How did you feel by the time you retired?
Leaving professional wrestling—when you stop, your body’s like, “Oh, my god.” It’s like everything just shuts down. Both shoulders had rotator-cuff tears that required surgeries. Both knees, I rehabbed them after surgeries. My back, neck. My right hip from the Diamond Cutter.
Who was the toughest guy you ever got in a ring with?
The most physical was Goldberg. The art of professional wrestling is to make it look like I killed you, and I didn’t. When people saw Billy wrestle, they were like, “F—k, he looks like he took his head off!” He did. He didn’t wanna hurt you, he was just that physical.
To play devil’s advocate, why would I pick your yoga over hundreds of others?
Let’s take you through. First, I sell the program as a DVD. I don’t sell the program as a class. There’s no yoga that will jack your heart rate up and get you in the fat-burning zone anywhere near as fast as this. My yoga has a much different attitude, too. Most yogis—not all, but most—will say things like, “Reach your arms to the heavens so the universe smiles back at you.” We’re not gonna be doing that [laughs]. We’re going to be engaging and flexing muscles. And that’s not even talking about how much fat people can lose. It’s not designed for fat loss; it’s just a nice side effect.
What’s the next thing for you in yoga?
We just had a retreat in Mexico with 80 people. Next year we’re doing two of them. It’s an amazing way to eat really good, get strict on your workouts, whether it’s one a day or two—but we also party! A lot of people don’t drink, and some do every day. What’s nice is the ones who do drink every day maybe realize they don’t want to drink every day.
