ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Risa Gotlib is a third-generation graduate from the University of Michigan, but she would be the first to say football isn’t her area of expertise.
As the owner and founder of Tiny Buddha Yoga, Gotlib spends her time studying the Ashtanga method and teaching classes at her two studios in Ann Arbor, not memorizing the names and faces of every player on the Michigan football roster. When a new student showed up with his mat a few months ago, Gotlib had no reason to recognize him. All she saw was someone eager to learn, a person who arrived at her studio looking for more than an Instagram selfie or an hour of relaxation.
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“I had no idea who he was,” Gotlib said. “He was super interested in yoga. He wanted to talk about everything — the physicality of it, the philosophy of it. After coming a few times, he was saying how much it was helping him.”
The first few times, Josh Ross showed up by himself. Eventually, a few teammates started to join him. By the end of the summer, Gotlib was teaching private classes for Ross and more than a dozen of his teammates. Some were more flexible than others, Gotlib said, but all were fully immersed in the experience.
“A lot of people when they first come to it, they get nervous,” Gotlib said. “Because they’re nervous and don’t know what’s going on, they are awkward about it. These guys were just super open-minded and amazing to work with.”
None of that would have happened if Ross hadn’t taken the initiative to show up one day for classes, Gotlib said. To understand what took him to the yoga studio, you have to imagine his state of mind after the 2020 season, a year that couldn’t have gone much worse for Ross or Michigan’s defense.
As a team captain and Michigan’s starting middle linebacker, Ross is a natural-born leader. He’s often the person in the middle of the pregame huddle, firing up his teammates moments before they take the field. When you’re invested in something to that degree, failure carries a particular sting. After a series of disappointments — first an ankle injury that cost him most of 2019, then the travails of COVID-19 and Michigan’s defensive collapse in 2020 — Ross understood that something had to change.
Change was happening all around him with the arrival of a new defensive coordinator and the shift to a new defensive scheme. To be the leader he wanted to be, Ross knew he needed to change, too.
“This offseason, it was literally trying to take some of the things in my game that I felt were the weakest points and make it a strength,” Ross said. “For me, that was my movement. It wasn’t like I couldn’t move, but I knew I needed to move better, and I wanted to move better.”
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The results have been evident during Michigan’s 5-0 start. Head coach Jim Harbaugh observed that Ross looks a step faster and more comfortable playing in coverage, complementing his strengths as a blitzer and a run-stuffer. Along with his team-high 32 tackles, Ross is a conduit for Michigan’s on-field communication, relaying calls and making sure the defense aligns correctly.
It wasn’t a given that Ross would have a major role in Michigan’s new defense, but five games into the season, it’s hard to imagine where that defense would be without him.
“(He’s) as good a leader as you can have and playing as good as any inside linebacker has played here since I’ve been here,” Harbaugh said. “That’s saying a lot.”
So how did he get here? It was a matter of clearing his mind, preparing his body and finding his voice after two trying seasons.
“Everything he could possibly do,” said Ross’ brother, James, “he did that.”
If James Ross seems like a natural in the coaching profession, it’s because he started early. From the time he started playing sports, James passed on what he learned to his brother, five years his junior.
Hockey came first, followed by football a few years later. Things James learned on his own came more quickly for Ross, mostly because he had an older brother to show him the way.
“I remember when I was younger, there were days when my brother forced me to go work out,” Ross said. “I hated it. He really forced me, like, ‘You’re going to work out.’ I remember being like, ‘Oh my God.’”
Attending high school at St. Mary’s Prep not far from Ann Arbor, the Ross brothers got an early introduction to Michigan football from their dad, a big Wolverines fan. James approached college with an open mind, but by the time Ross came along, the path to Michigan was pretty well established.
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“Josh, he was just kind of brainwashed from an early age,” said James, who is in his first season coaching linebackers at Hope College in Holland, Mich. “He would sit in those stands in East Lansing and have a disdain for green. He never really had a choice.”
James played linebacker at Michigan from 2012 to 2015, then returned as a graduate assistant after a year in the NFL. He was there as Ross established himself as a contributor early in his career, and he was there for the hard times in 2019 and 2020 as well.
Looking back on it, James believes the timing was meant to be. He’s 27 now, married with a wife and a young son. If he wanted to make a career out of coaching, it was time for him to go out on his own. But before he left Michigan, he had one more chance to coach his little brother through a difficult moment.
“Being the middle linebacker on a defense that’s struggling, it’s really tough,” James said. “You see guys not being successful, guys questioning different things — it’s really hard to be on that side of it.”
Ross faced a big transition with the departure of Don Brown and the arrival of Mike Macdonald, Michigan’s first-year defensive coordinator. For veteran players, those transitions can be difficult, offering a fresh start for some players while leading to diminished roles for others who contributed under a previous regime. James knew his brother’s goal was to play in the NFL, so he encouraged him to approach his fifth year at Michigan with the mindset of an NFL player arriving in a new city.
“It’s an awesome situation to be a part of, to get a breath of fresh air when things weren’t going right,” James said. “You look at how the NFL is, you don’t know where you’re going to go. You’ve got to pick up a scheme and play it at the top level, and if not, they’ll find someone else who can do it.”
If Josh wanted to be a different player in 2021, he needed a different approach to his offseason. Instead of bulking up in the weight room, he focused on speed and flexibility. He studied elite athletes like Tom Brady and LeBron James and tried to adopt some of the same lifestyle habits. The goal was to change his body, but the transformation went deeper than that.
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He also had to work with his mind.
In her studio, Gotlib has infrared panels that provide a different kind of heat than the typical forced-air system. That setup heats the body from within, allowing muscles to warm up more quickly. Raising the temperature is a way to achieve greater flexibility, but it’s also a way of training the mind to remain calm through feelings of discomfort.
“What it helps you to do is perform at a high level and be able to think clearly when you’re in a stressed environment,” Gotlib said. “In the west, there’s a lot of understanding that yoga is deep breathing and relaxation, and it’s so calm and chill. Really, the idea is that you’re facilitating a mildly stressful environment with the heat and moving in a different way than you’re used to and still being able to breathe deeply.”
Clear thinking under duress is an important trait for a middle linebacker. Everything happens in a few seconds, from the call to the snap to the action of the play. There’s a skill in being able to tune out the chaos, push through the physical discomfort and see what’s unfolding in front of you.
That’s a skill Ross clearly has. His ability to see a play before it happens, as he did last week in blowing up one of Wisconsin’s handoffs in the backfield, is one of the reasons for his success this year.
“His anticipation, diagnosing a play, is high-level,” Harbaugh said.
That comes from studying the game, Harbaugh said, and from a player’s own natural instincts. Maybe some of it comes from the yoga studio, too. For Ross, it’s all about the holistic process, getting the body, the mind and the voice to work together in harmony.
Right now, he seems to have everything perfectly aligned.
“The vibes are at the highest right now with everything,” Ross said. “It’s a blessing to be a part of the team, to be honest. All we’ve been through, all the vets … now we’re back to Michigan football, winning football. It’s a blessing.”
(Top photo: Al Goldis / Associated Press)