From Athlete to Yoga Sports Coach™: Finding a New Way to Work With Sport

career development yoga for athletes yoga sports coach™ yoga teacher development yss faculty yss history Jul 19, 2017

Bonnie Strati and Hayley Winter pictured with Monty, their trusted teaching resource, at the Yoga Sports Science® studio in New York, 2017.

Originally published 2017 · Written by Bonnie Strati

Editor's Note | Looking Back from 2026

When Bonnie Strati wrote this article in 2017, she was reflecting on a journey that had taken her from being an athlete and personal trainer to becoming an Advanced Yoga Sports Coach™ and Director of Operations at the Institute of Yoga Sports Science®.

Since then, Bonnie's professional journey has continued to evolve, including becoming an author.

Looking back, her story captures something important about the early development of YSS: how people from different sporting and professional backgrounds brought their experience into the study and application of yoga within sport.

We've revisited Bonnie's original article while preserving her voice, humour and the historical context in which it was written.

My journey to yoga came through being an athlete and a personal trainer.

As an athlete in my twenties, I was introduced to yoga through my chiropractor and mentor at the time. His insight and knowledge were years ahead of their time, and I completely trusted him as I ventured into what, back then, I considered ‘torture’.

I know many of you can relate to what I’m talking about!

My journey to yoga came through being an athlete and a personal trainer.

I know many of you can relate to what I’m talking about!

Learning to Slow Down

Yoga meant sitting still with myself.

That was a scary thought for a young athlete with a ton of energy who was being asked to slow down.

But because I trusted my mentor, I set my mind to it. I knew that, in the long term, yoga was going to benefit me in ways that I couldn't yet understand.

Yoga supported me on many occasions and became an important part of my personal journey.

For me, this wasn't about living in an ashram, wearing funky garments or changing who I was. Not my style!

It was about going deeper within myself and discovering more about the person at the core of me.

What made me tick? What made me laugh? What made me cry? What made me happy, and what made me sad?

What I had no idea about was how my life was going to change when I met Hayley Winter in September 2011.

Finding Yoga Sports Science®

Hayley is the Founder of the Institute of Yoga Sports Science® (YSS), as well as my dear friend and colleague.

It was Hayley who introduced me to what has become a lifelong passion: working with athletes and exploring how yoga can support their strength, flexibility, mobility, recovery and overall approach to training.

That journey eventually led me to become an Advanced Yoga Sports Coach™ and, at the time of writing, Director of Operations for YSS.

It also gave me the opportunity to connect with people from around the world as they began their own journeys with Yoga Sports Science®.

As a trainer, I had always focused on my clients as whole people, long before being a life coach was a recognized profession.

I played detective on a daily basis, helping my clients develop a better awareness of themselves, inside and out. It was important to understand where they were coming from and what they were dealing with in order to help them work towards their goals.

Then YSS came into my life.

Bringing the Pieces Together

Through Yoga Sports Science®, I began to explore how the practices of yoga could be considered in relation to an athlete and incorporated appropriately within their wider training.

The YSS approach also introduced a more structured process of observation, assessment and case-study research.

For me, this created a way to bring together so much of what I had learned over the years as an athlete, trainer, yoga teacher and coach.

And perhaps that has been one of the most valuable parts of the journey.

Yoga Sports Science® didn't require me to become somebody else.

It gave me another way to bring together my experience, knowledge and interests and develop an approach to working with athletes that felt uniquely my own.

About Bonnie Strati

At the time of writing in 2017, Bonnie Strati was Director of Operations for the Institute of Yoga Sports Science® (YSS) and had been an Advanced Yoga Sports Coach™ since 2012. She was also a 200-hour Registered Yoga Teacher and held a Level 2 Nutrition Coaching Certificate from Precision Nutrition.

Bonnie also became a member of the YSS faculty, contributing her practical experience and knowledge to the education and professional development of Yoga Sports Coaches™.

Where Is Bonnie Today?

Since writing this article, Bonnie has continued her professional journey and become an author.