Sebastian Brosche · 14 min · 1,664 words
Class 1: back bends and side stretches to open the spine and sides. A foundational mobility class for grapplers.
Hello everyone and welcome to class one. Start on your knees and stretch your arms out in front of you and then go back as far as your knees and hips allow and rest your forehead or the top of the head in the ground. You want to let your elbows come down and try to relax here so that you can breathe and take between five and eight deep breaths. Two more breaths here.
Nice and then press into the floor. Look between your thighs as you're rolling forward coming into a push-up position with your knees down and then slowly lowering down. Hover your hands above the floor and inhale look forward and lift up and when you exhale squeeze your elbows in and then hands down lift up a little bit. Inhale and then exhale coming all the way back to where we started in turtle.
Let's do that again. Rolling forward, hips come down, chest come down and lift your chest. Inhale, hover the hands. Exhale, squeeze and lift.
Hands down, inhale lift and exhale push all the way back. One more round just like this. Rolling forward, coming down, hover your hands, inhale, exhale squeeze and lift. Lift your chest higher, inhale and on the exhale stop here and then look over your right shoulder and then look over your left shoulder.
One more right shoulder and left shoulder. Nice rolling all the way back to all fours. And here on all fours just do a couple of ups and downs, arches, rounds. We call it cat cow right?
Just cat and cow a couple of times and then straighten your legs coming to plank and lift your butt up and back. Moving your hands as you need, we want to stretch out the shoulders a little bit so if your elbows are out and you feel like this, look at me now, this is not how you want to stand. You want to be able to get your head in between your shoulders and lean back. If that means lifting your heels and bending your knee, that's fine.
Take a couple of steps here where you lift one heel and lower the other. And then lift your right leg up and back, really open your hips and try to push back so you get a nice stretch in the other leg as well, the left leg. And then step the right knee forward, place the foot in the ground and help it all the way forward. Eventually we might be able to put the foot down without any help.
Left knee in the ground and then come on up and grab your elbows. The right hand comes in front of the left arm and then pick yourself up in the elbows and try to lift your elbows as high as possible. Drop your hips a little bit and then elbows back. So lift up and back and drop down a little bit.
Take a couple of breaths here. Don't crank your neck, try to keep your head relaxed. And then right forearm to the thigh, grab your head and use the head to lean sideways so you get a big old stretch through the hip and the sides and the ribs here. Nice, hands down.
Come all the way down to the ground. And from here lift your legs as high as you can three times. One, two and three. And then hands in front of you, lift up as high as you can using your fingers on the inhale.
And then on the exhale squeeze your elbows back like this. And then on the inhale lift them as high as you can. And exhale. And exhale down.
Two more of those, inhale lift up. Exhale squeeze the elbows back. And then inhale as high and far as you can. And exhale down.
One more of those, inhale lift up. Exhale squeeze back. Inhale high. And exhale down.
Do a push up, come back to dog, take a breath. And then same sequence on the other side, left leg out. And then roll your knee to your chest and place your foot between the hands. Right knee down, left arm in front of the right.
Pick up your elbows as high as you can, lean back and drop down. Again pick up, lean back, drop down and take three breaths. And then left forearm to left thigh, grab your head with your right hand. And side stretch over to the left side.
Nice, hands come down, plank inhale. On the exhale lower down. This time on your forearms, right hand stays where it is. Left arm reaches forward, up and back.
Bend your left knee and catch the foot on the outside. So you're grabbing the ankle and pushing the foot back like this. I'm tensing up my leg so that my leg is pulling my shoulder up. Taking three breaths here.
Engage the toes and feet and really press back with the foot. And then release, same thing on the other side. Right arm forward, makes a big circle. Bending the knee, catching the ankle and using the leg to lift up.
So I'm not down here, the leg is lifting me up, tensing up. Nice, releasing, doing a push up, coming back to dog. From the dog lift the right leg out again and open the hips. And then from here come up on your fingertips on the right hand.
And then slowly fall back so that your right foot touches the ground. You're not standing with the heel down, you're standing on your toes. Take the right hand behind your head and lift yourself up as high as you can. Lift the chest and press into the feet and take a breath here.
Nice, coming back to three legged dog, right hand comes down. Foot come all the way forward. Left knee comes down, arms overhead, the same position again. But instead of bending now, we're going to turn sideways.
So left arm comes forward, right arm back. And then lean back until you can touch the heel on the back foot. Maybe you can come down further with the palm, maybe you're just touching here. So you're twisting and bending backwards.
I call this one the hipster twist. Maybe it has another name, but I particularly like the name hipster twist. Nice, circle your hands down to push up. Inhale, push up, exhale lower down.
Bend both knees, arms forward on the inhale, on the exhale elbows back. Arms back. Inhale, stretch the arms forward. Exhale, lift and reach.
One more inhale forward, exhale back. Hold for a breath. And then hands and feet down, pushing back to a plank, back to a dog. Same thing, second side.
Left leg out, bend and open, slowly falling back into a side plank with a training wheel. Grab your head, open your chest, take a breath. And then coming back from where we started, three-legged dog, knee to nose, foot between the hands. Low lunge, right arm forward, left arm back, reaching for the back heel.
Hipster twist. Nice, circling back to the top of a plank. Take an inhale and on the exhale lowering down. Two options now.
Interlace the fingers behind your back, lift up and release. Interlace the fingers behind your back, lift up and hug your heels in. Option two, reach back, grab the ankles and push back with the feet lifting your chest. So if you can't grab the ankles yet, punish yourself a little bit by really trying to squeeze the heels in towards your clasp hands.
If you're getting cramps here, more magnesium, more water. One more breath. And relax down, coming back up to your knees. And then come on down to your back.
Feet as wide as your hips, elbows pushing down, lifting your hips up, working your shoulders in. Two options here. Interlace the fingers so that you're balancing on your triceps. If you can get your knuckles or your palms to your hips and stay here, do that.
So either here or here. Take three deep breaths. And slowly release. Coming on up to the wall.
So move towards a wall. If you're standing to a wall and you cannot even touch the wall because you're that stiff, then turn around, catch the wall and then go as deep as you can there to get both a shoulder stretch and a rib cage opener. If you can, bend your knees a little bit, lift your chest, engage the backside and then place the hands in the wall, maybe placing the head in the wall and then coming into your deepest version of a backbend. This is a very supported backbend.
But go as far down as you can. You should still be able to breathe and swallow. If you can't swallow, you went too far. And when you've had enough, slowly come up, hands to knees, try to not faint and then slowly release and hang for a moment here.
Dingle dangle from side to side. If you want to give that another go, press pause and do another round of the wall stretch. Otherwise, come down to your back, lay down on the left side and then your right arm over to the right for a twist. Taking five, six, seven breaths here.
And then switching sides. Very nice. Coming back up. And this was it for class one.
Well done taking the time throughout your busy life to prioritize yourself. You are never going to regret doing that. And take the time right now to plan in the next session into your calendar and set a reminder because life tends to distract us and we forget how good we feel right now. We need to actually create space for that.
So plan in the next class in the calendar and see you then.
This is the transcript. Become a member to watch the video.
Watch now →.avif)