Diamond Dallas Page wants to make you superhuman with DDP Yoga
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}WWE legend Diamond Dallas Page may be more famous for his incredibly DDP Yoga workouts than for his wrestling career, and he's perfectly fine with that.
Page, born Page Joseph Falkinburg, didn't start wrestling until later in life — and his career was almost cut incredibly short after injuries took their toll on his body before he began his training program.
"My career took off when I was 40 which is in 1996 — '97, '98 I was on top of the world," Page, now 62, told Fox News. "That's when I ruptured my L4 and L5 and I had three different spine specialists told me my career's over. It was the worst thing to ever happen to me. But in looking back it was actually the best thing that ever happened to me because that's how I started to develop with what today is known as DDPY or DDP Yoga."
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He added, "When it comes to professional wrestling, one thing rings true: You can't fake gravity. Gravity gets everybody, and the wear and tear to your body takes professional wrestling — I tore both rotator cuffs, I tore my meniscus and my cartilage in my knees; I ruptured my L4 and L5 in my back so severely that they said my professional wrestling career was over."
Page explained that within three months of combining yoga with physical rehabilitation techniques and calisthenics "done with a slow burn movement" focusing on certain muscles, he was back in the ring and became heavyweight champion of the world at 43 years old.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Page thinks if he'd started wrestling when he was younger, his outcome may not have been so promising.
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"It was like, 'Oh my God, you're starting at thirty-five and a half!' The positive side was ... I was much smarter than I would have been if I was starting at 22," he said of his start in the industry. "And that's when I tried to do professional wrestling, but it didn't really work out for me, but if I kept at 22, 24, 25 I would have done things that were even probably crazier. There's so many crazy bumps you take in professional wrestling, and when you're younger you just think, 'no pain no gain.' At thirty-five and a half I trained smarter."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Page says he introduced icing the body to pro wrestling and that he combined that with muscle massage therapy, kinesiology, clean eating, organic juicing, and cutting out GMO products to achieve peak health. However, it's not just Page's own accomplishments that inspire him to keep going — it's helping others achieve their own goals.
Diamond Dallas Page shows off some DDP Yoga moves at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
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"This week we're going to be signing a partnership with the NFL alumni, and that's super cool for me because now I can take guys that I grew up watching that were my heroes ... and helping them get some mobility back, helping them get some strength back, helping them change but own their lives again," he revealed.
Page says that seeing strangers' transformations is particularly inspiring, with one sticking out in his mind the most.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"After I saw disabled veteran Arthur Boorman and what happened in his transformation, I knew that if people just put the work in and really had some sort of consistency that anything could happen," he said.
Page penned "Positively Unstoppable: The Art of Owning It" to accompany his DDP Yoga Now app and cooking shows to help his followers get closer to their personal goal posts in terms of their health and fitness, and he uses a term that WWE fans may find especially helpful in helping to remember his methods.
"What I'm trying to do with the people who actually get the book and put the work in is try to reboot their brain," Page told Fox News. "I teach you how to set goals and I use as an acronym, SMACKDOWN theory: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Compatible, Keep it going, Do it, Own it, Write it down Now."
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"I was the guy that was doing all the things to hold back the hands of time, and now at 62 years young I reap the benefits on a different level because I am healthier than most 30-year-olds and I have the stamina still today," Page boasted. "I'm still a Ferrari at 62 years young. But I've also got 999,998 miles on me. So bottom line is I have to treat myself with care. But I can still do things that are almost superhuman at my age."