Free Yoga for Men: Increase Flexibility, Build Strength & Reduce Pain
Yoga For Men Series
The Yoga for Men Series is a series of workouts designed specifically for men who are new to yoga. These 30-minute routines help you learn the basics of yoga in a way that’s guy-friendly.
Men and women are built differently. When you see your standard yoga picture of a woman doing some impossible stretch, it’s easy to be put off. However, these postures include modifications that work for guys (no matter how inflexible you might be)
The free yoga workout videos are technique-focused so you do each pose safely and effectively, and the workouts are challenging enough to help you get stronger; but easy enough for beginners to follow along without issue. This allows you to focus on improving flexibility while still working on your strength, enabling you to work on every aspect of your fitness from the comfort of your own home.
Yoga for Men Series - Workout #1
Yoga for Men Series - Workout #2
We start off with a variety of basic balancing exercises to strengthen your hips, ankles, and core and then move to full body exercises to build strength, endurance, and mobility. These postures target your hips, but you’ll get plenty of spine, back, and shoulder work as well. I recommend having 2 blocks and a strap. If you don’t have those, you can easily use a stack of books, foam rollers, or two water bottles for the blocks, and a belt or dog leash for the strap.
Yoga for Men Series - Workout #3
This routine starts upper-body, core, and spine work, and then moves on to balancing postures to build lower-body strength and improve balance. You’ll learn proper technique, understand target areas, what to feel (and what not to feel), and much more in this 30-minute yoga for men workout.
Yoga for Men Series - Workout #4
This is a great routine for overall back health, hip strength, and posture. We go through a variety of yoga postures to leave your entire body feeling stronger and refreshed.
Yoga for Men Series - Workout #5
This workout is a beginner-friendly upper-body focused yoga workout for strength and mobility. This is a great workout for beginners, combining familiar upper-body exercises such as plank with yoga postures to help you build confidence in your ability to practice yoga safely and effectively. You’ll need a yoga mat, 2 blocks, and a strap for this routine.
Yoga for Men Series - Workout #6
Want to increase your flexibility through passive stretching? Here’s a great routine for increasing flexibility in your hips, shoulders, and spine. You’ll also be learning the basics of how to increase flexibility concentrating on your breath, which you’ll be able to apply to any other yoga workout.
The Strength Foundations Course
The Strength Foundations Course is a meticulously-designed program to build strength and mobility essentials. There is very specific attention to technique, helping you understand exactly what to feel and what not to feel. This program combines isometric exercises, yoga postures, and basic (but essential) movements to help you build a solid fitness foundation. It’s the most transformational program in the Man Flow Yoga Members’ Area, and it’s a cornerstone of the Man Flow Yoga fitness philosophy.
The Strength Foundations Course is a full-body, comprehensive program that addresses overall strength, mobility, flexibility, and balance. It targets common weaknesses and muscular imbalances that we have as a result of our daily lives (think sitting in a chair all day). This program helps to undo those weaknesses, restoring the natural movement patterns of your body, and helping to take you to the next level of fitness.
Core Exercises &
Strength Training
Breathing and Muscle Activation Basics (SFC #1)
In this workout/lesson, we cover the basics of breathing, core engagement, and hip muscle activation. Develop your core awareness and pay close attention to your breath as move through these exercises. Remember to move slowly and focus on developing mind-body awareness. Do your best to notice something differently in your body. This workout requires a block.
Strength for
Stability
Breathing & Movement with Balance Essentials (SFC #2)
The second workout from the MFY Strength Foundations course continues to focus on breathing and core activation, while building on top of the exercises in the first lesson. Concentrate on merging breath with movement and developing your muscle awareness. You’ll also practice in-depth proper technique, so make sure to pay extremely close attention and so you make the correct minor adjustments for maximum benefit from each exercise. We’ll finish off with a basic balance integrating each and every one of the muscles worked throughout this work out.
Glutes + Core
Strengthening Exercises
Glute Strength & Movement Basics (SFC #3)
This workout is an intensive core and hips workout, with a strong focus on active muscle engagement. Remember that the warm-up IS the workout, and push yourself from start to finish. You’ll develop the muscle strength and activation of your hips, core, glutes, and thighs as you build up to practicing essential yoga postures with active muscle engagement. It’s as hard as you want it to be, so make sure to push yourself the entire time.
Yoga Essentials for
Core and Hips
Core & Hip Muscle Engagement in Yoga Essentials (SFC #4)
This workout starts off with exercises to isolate specific muscle groups and cause muscle fatigue, to help you build endurance and get stronger. From there, we move the more essential yoga postures, integrating the activated muscles from the beginning of the workout into full body exercises. As always, pay close attention to your form. Avoid “going through the motions”. The point of this course is to help you develop new strength, and that doesn’t happen by doing things the way you’re accustomed to. Remember to push yourself the entire time. Try to learn something new about your body.
Essential Thoracic
Spine Workout
Twists, Planks, Core, & More (SFC #5)
This workout is a challenging one designed to strengthen your core in multiple ways. Increase core and hip activation while practicing basic exercises in new ways. The focus today is on slow, controlled movement. As always, be MINDFUL of movement. If you’re familiar with the exercises in this workout, try to do them in new ways. Learn something new about your body. When doing twists, focus on pulling your belly button to spine and building core strength through twisting. Enjoy!
Beginner’s Series for Strength Balance, & Flexibility
Great for anyone looking to get started with and experience the benefits of yoga!
Our Yoga Beginner’s series offers easy to follow workouts to help you build strength, flexibility, and balance. You’ll notice the difference at the end of every routine.
These yoga workouts are focused on helping the yoga beginner work on common problem areas and get noticeable results. Improve posture in your shoulders, get rid of joint pain in your knees or back, strengthen your core, and see that yoga CAN be a challenging workout.
Best Shoulder Workout
for Shoulder Mobility
and Flexibility
Shoulder Flexibility & Mobility for Beginners
Here’s a 27-minute workout designed to help beginners improve their shoulder flexibility and mobility. It’s especially great for guys who are more inflexible, because we start with stretches and modified poses to help you open up your shoulder, and then move on to yoga postures (still with modifications for inflexible people) to build flexibility and strength in your shoulders & upper-back. It allows you to initially increase your flexibility before getting into yoga postures, which makes it way easier if you’re not that flexible yet. You’ll need a yoga block, strap, and a wall for this workout. (If you don’t have those, you can use similar equipment for the same result.)
Knee Stretches for
Pain Relief
Easy Stretching, Flexibility & Pain Relief for Knees
Here’s a gentle stretching workout focused on flexibility for the knees, just about 30 minutes in length. This routine is very beginner-friendly, with modifications for guys new to yoga or who aren’t as flexible as others. For more experienced users, this is a great routine to help with knee pain relief caused by muscle tightness or inactivity.
Full Body Yoga Workout
for Beginners
Gentle Beginner’s Workout for Flexibility
Here is a true beginner’s Man Flow Yoga workout to help you increase flexibility and learn yoga postures. You won’t need any flexibility or yoga experience for this one – grab 2 blocks, follow along, and do your best. This workout targets your entire body – hips, spine, shoulders, ankles, and wrists. Give it a shot!
Yoga Essentials for
Core and Hips
Beginner’s Workout for Core Strength & Awareness
This is a 30-minute for beginners to build core strength and awareness. All exercises are on the ground, so you can isolate your core to develop core muscle awareness and specifically build core strength. And instead of just targeting your abs, this core workout builds comprehensive core strength – your hips, your abs, and your back. Doing this workout regularly helps to increase overall core strength, but also to build core awareness for functional fitness or daily movement. You’ll need a yoga mat, a block, and a wall (or similar support) for this workout.
Members Area Favorites
Follow along to some of our members’ favorite workouts from the Man Flow Yoga Workout Library! These free yoga workouts include routines to relieve back pain, wake up with energy, improve your posture, and more!
These workouts are the most popular routines from our paid Members’ Area & App, but you can watch them for FREE on this special page. Do these just 3x per week and you’ll notice your body feeling healthier, moving better, and you’ll feel more confident with your fitness.
When you take care of every aspect of your body, you’ll find you feel healthier and will be able to work towards your specific goals more efficiently.
Restorative,
Stress-Relieving Yoga
This is an all-purpose routine to relieve soreness, stiffness, and aching in your body.It’s great for the day after a tough workout, relieving pain from sitting or inactivity, or easing weird kinks and aches in your body. You can also use this immediately after you finish a workout to help speed up recovery and reduce soreness the next day. Strap or similar(a belt, an old t-shirt, etc) required.
Morning Yoga
for Energy
A quick morning routine that’s great for helping you start your day. Starts easy and builds up to more energetic poses. A nice combination of strength and flexibility. Enjoy!.
Warrior Pose
Flow
A quick pick-me-up! Strengthen your hips, increase flexibility in your spine & groin, and get a nice full-body flow with this quick, efficient flow. No equipment required.
Gentle Spine Pain Relief
& Strengthening
AKA The Scott – This workout was specifically designed for a friend of mine suffering from lower-back issues. This workout is all about relieving stress in the spine caused by sitting. It focuses on stretching the hips (the muscles that connect to the spine), correcting posture, and gently strengthening your core.
Thoracic Mobility
Workout
Here is a quick workout to help improve your thoracic mobility. This is a fast-paced workout – we move quickly to get in as many movements as possible in under 15 minutes! Great as a warm-up or as a standalone workout when your time is limited. Improve your thoracic mobility for more range of motion in your back for deeper twists, forward folds, backbends, and less pain in your neck and lower-back.
Quick Stretching for Hip
Mobility & Relieving
Back Tightness
This is a quick workout designed to release tension in your back by focusing on your hips. We’ll stretch your hips in almost every way possible to open your groin, stretch your hamstrings, release your sides, and get rid of the tightness in your back that makes it difficult or annoying to perform basic day to day movements. You’ll finish this routine feeling 100% better, and ready to go about your day without anything holding you back.
Try Man Flow Yoga for Free with a 7-Day Trial and Increase Flexibility, Build Strength & Reduce Pain
Frequently Asked Questions
The main benefits of yoga for men are strength building, increased flexibility, improved balance, and greater body awareness. It also helps with breathing, breathing awareness, and mindfulness.There are countless other proven benefits as well, including weight loss, improved sleep, improved posture, relief of back pain, relief of joint pain, recovery from back injury or surgery, injury-prevention, as well as the mental benefits of yoga such as stress relief, decreased anxiety, and being more calm. There are two resources in particular that do a good job of explaining the benefits of yoga for men, both by Dean Pohlman (yours truly):
And check out our men’s yoga blog to learn more.
Yes! Yoga has been proven to help you lose weight, and for multiple reasons.
- Yoga is exercise, and exercising on a regular basis helps you lose weight. Not just because of calories burned, but because exercising regularly causes you to think about your health more frequently, and to make healthier decisions.
- Yoga helps with stress relief and mindfulness, which can curb stress-eating or other unhealthy practices that lead to weight gain.
- Yoga – when practiced with an emphasis on strength – can help you build muscle, and this helps you burn more calories when you are at rest by increasing your basal metabolic rate. (Not all yoga helps to build muscle though, which is why Man Flow Yoga is extremely effective in this regard.)
That being said, everybody is different, and depending on your genetics, stress, and many other factors, results vary from person to person. It should also be noted that not all yoga for men is the same, but Man Flow Yoga has been proven to help you lose weight and build muscle through its strength-focused approach. For best weight loss results, a yoga workout program should be combined with (1) healthy eating (diet), (2) high-quality sleep (usually 8 hours per night), (3) consistent stress management, and (4) certain supplementary exercises, like cardio and strength training.
I can’t speak for all yoga workout programs, but Man Flow Yoga workouts with a 4 out of 5 level or higher have been proven to burn 700-800 calories in just one hour. This all depends on the amount of focus you put into the exercises. If you are doing the postures passively, you probably won’t burn 800 calories in one hour. But if you’re doing an intense workout actively and follow along witho the instructions, you will burn a high amount of calories – especially when compared to a typical yoga class. If you’re interested in whether or not yoga burns calories because you’re trying to lose weight, I encourage you to change your way of thinking. The amount of calories you burn during a workout doesn’t really matter in the overall scope of weight loss. That’s because you’re never going to outtrain a bad diet. And if you burn a lot of calories during your workout, your body is going to want to consume more calories to make up for those lost calories, and overeating and overindulging is where people really tend to gain weight. Exercise is not a punishment for what you ate. It’s a celebration of what your body can do.
You don’t have to do yoga every day in order to get the benefits, but you should do yoga at least 2-3 times per week, usually for 20-30 minutes per session at a minimum. Our recommendation is that you try to do 100 minutes of yoga per week, and you can space that out however you want. If you’re looking for a program with a schedule of workouts, including recommended frequency and how to fit it into your other programs, Man Flow Yoga has hundreds of at home workouts for men that are effective and safe. I’ve already written a comprehensive blog on this topic, and you can view it by clicking here: How often should you do yoga? (Blog)
For most people, yoga for fitness is enough to keep you fit. There are tons of physical benefits of yoga, but when combined with a healthy diet and good sleep, an effective, fitness-centric yoga program helps you build muscle, improve body balance, increase strength and flexibility, and improves your overall wellness. However, I do recommend adding pulling or rowing exercises in order to keep your shoulders healthy, or you could risk injury. If you are looking to build significantly more muscle mass or improve your performance for sports, you should also do sport-specific training and resistance training.
For most people, yoga for fitness is enough to keep you fit. There are tons of physical benefits of yoga, but when combined with a healthy diet and good sleep, an effective, fitness-centric yoga program helps you build muscle, improve body balance, increase strength and flexibility, and improves your overall wellness. However, I do recommend adding pulling or rowing exercises in order to keep your shoulders healthy, or you could risk injury. If you are looking to build significantly more muscle mass or improve your performance for sports, you should also do sport-specific training and resistance training.
This is one of the biggest concerns from people who have not done yoga before, but it doesn’t have to be. Yoga helps you increase your flexibility; it doesn’t require you to be flexible. The problem is that most yoga classes are structured in a way that makes it impossible for people who aren’t flexible, and don’t have yoga experience – but Man Flow Yoga isn’t like that. Most yoga instructors or online based yoga classes don’t provide the modifications or appropriate postures for beginners who are not flexible. Man Flow Yoga, on the other hand, teaches you the modifications and postures for beginners you need to do the pose in a way that works for YOU, instead of somebody who is more flexible and more experienced. This way, you can get the same benefits as somebody more flexible. Man Flow Yoga has tons of beginner yoga workouts with gentle yoga stretches. Is lifting weights and yoga a good idea?
Yes! Yoga and weight training is a fantastic combination of exercise. Yoga for strength and flexibility will help your flexibility & mobility, increase strength in your stabilizing muscles, improve balance, and aid with recovery; while weight training helps you build more muscle mass and develop strength. Man Flow Yoga in particular also helps to develop improved muscle engagement (aka body awareness, mobility, motor control, etc), which allows you to increase your overall strength potential by increasing muscle fiber recruitment. The bottom line is that yoga and weight lifting help to build strength in different ways, but you will get better at both yoga and weight training if you include both activities in your weekly workout routines.
Stretching (passive stretching, as well as active stretching) is just one part of yoga. Yoga also involves (1) isometric exercises that build strength and mobility (poses/postures), (2) slow-moving, dynamic exercises that help build body awareness and control, (3) an emphasis on breathing to help you improve your body-mind connection, (4) balancing postures to help you develop your strength and improve balance, and (5) a much greater emphasis on proper technique. Stretching is casual – it’s something you can do while watching a TV show without too much focus. It helps you release muscle tension, lengthens muscles, and relieves joint pain – but it has no lasting effects. The benefits of stretching are mostly temporary. A good strength and mobility-focused yoga program – even one that is yoga for beginners – has much more long-lasting benefits. It improves your focus, increases flexibility and mobility, builds strength, improves balance, increases mindfulness, and much, much more. It involves much more focus – it is something you are completely involved in and demands 100% attention.
Man Flow Yoga is 100% fitness-focused. The yoga workouts and programs we make our designed to be as effective as possible in order to increase your functional fitness and improve your longevity. The workouts emphasize proper technique; what you should and should not be feeling in your body, proper alignment, modifications for people who are inflexible, and explain the benefits of each posture. Workouts are focused on helping you build muscle and increase your strength, in as little time as possible. (Most of our workouts are 25-30 minutes.) We also emphasize active mobility (instead of passive stretching) to help improve your functional range of motion. It’s easier for for people new to yoga and men (and women) who consider themselves inflexible, and provides yoga modifications to make the poses work for people who aren’t as flexible as a yoga instructor. Structured programs deliver specific results, to deal with specific issues such as back pain, posture improvement, performance for running, injury-prevention, and so on. To sum it up, Man Flow Yoga is fitness-centric, non-spiritual yoga created to help you achieve your fitness goals. Traditional yoga is a part-spiritual, part-fitness, and usually does not address specific fitness goals.
A home yoga practice is easy and requires minimal equipment. All you need is a yoga mat, a block, and a strap. If you don’t have a block or a strap, then you can use a stack of books and a belt or dog leash.