If you heard the name, Ulrich Alexander Fox, you may not know who that is. But if you heard the name Ulrich goes by, Rick Fox, you'll remember the three-time NBA champion, all-star and actor.
In his post-NBA career, Fox has had recurring roles on VH1's Single Ladies and Tyler Perry's House of Payne, OWN TV's GreenLeaf, and acted in a number of films. Now 54, Fox still keeps busy with his numerous projects, yet still finds time for family and staying healthy.
In fact, it was video games that led him to bridge a broken gap in his family.
"My mom would wear my dad out about taking me out on a Saturday, because he had a business. She'd tell him 'you need to spend time with your son.' His idea of spending time with me was taking me to a bowling alley and dropping me off with $20. And I'd bowl and then I would play Midway games like Pac-Man and Galaga and all the different games at the time."
"So I spent hours on end playing games; that was my time with my dad and he wasn't there. That was the reality of it.
In my own life, my son lived on the East Coast and I was under contract with the Lakers for six years. He and I spent summer and spring break with him coming out to LA, and we picked up World of Warcraft together when he was about 10, and it first came out. We started to play the game together, and in playing the game together we created a character. It was also one of his first ways he could be online often and we could both affect character growth and have something to talk about and work on it together. I started teaching him life skills through our character. That's kind of how we bonded for eight or nine years through his high school and middle school years."
Fox believes in staying healthy so that he can be around for his family. Lately, Fox's health & fitness routine consists of doing body detox cleanses, working out with family and friends and engaging in yoga--hot yoga to be exact.
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Hot yoga, sometimes called Bikram yoga refers to yoga exercises performed under hot and humid conditions. What is Hot Yoga?
Hot yoga can refer to any yoga class done in a heated room. The room is usually maintained at a temperature of 95-100 degrees Fahrenheit. Most often, hot yoga tends to be a flowing, vinyasa style of practice in which the teacher instructs a series of linked poses. As you can imagine, a vigorous yoga session at high temperature promotes profuse sweating and makes the body very warm.
Bikram Yoga is slightly different. Living yoga master Bikram Choudhury created a set series of...
... 26 postures, including two pranayama exercises, each of which is performed twice in a single 90-minute class. Choudhury, who was born in Calcutta, India in 1946, was a yoga champion in his youth, as was his wife Rajashree. In 1974, the Choudhurys founded the Yoga College of India in Beverly Hills, California, to teach his method, which soon became one of the most popular styles of yoga asana practiced in the west. In 2002, Choudhury successfully copyrighted his series of 26 poses done in a hot room and has since been involved in a number of legal disputes, both over the unauthorized use of his name, and, more recently, the use of his method under a different name.
In summary, Bikram yoga is hot, but not all hot yoga is Bikram.
Rick says, "After one class I felt...energized and cleansed internally...along with a sweaty t-shirt... lol."