Back Body Program Day 3: 49-Min Intense Back Strength

All the way up, look up and stretch. Exhale Oscar pose. Inhale arms up, exhale fold all the way down. Inhale halfway, stepping back to plank on the exhale.

One breath inhale to prepare, stick your head forward and lower all the way down to the ground. Lift your chest, squeeze your elbows in and look up. Roll back to all fours, back to down dog. Let's roll five times from dog to plank.

So on your toes, inhale to prepare and exhale roll forward. So inhale back, exhale roll forward. Inhale dog, exhale roll to plank. Two more, inhale, exhale.

Exhale back to dog, take a breath. Feet five inches forward, squat down, lift your fingers and then your fingers are break. So when you jump forward, break with your fingers and land between your hands. Inhale, exhale fold.

All the way up, inhale, exhale hands down by your side. Flip the palms open so your palms faces forward. Chest up, imagine you're diving upwards with the chest first and then inhale arms up, exhale fold. Inhale halfway.

Try stepping back all the way to your belly so when your feet touches back, you lower down. Shoulders back, elbows in, cobra inhale, exhale to dog. Let's roll forward to plank and do three side planks on each side. Lifting one arm, inhale, exhale switching.

Arm up, inhale, exhale switching. Inhale up, exhale switch. Inhale up, exhale switch. One more round on each side, side plank, inhale, exhale.

Last round, inhale, exhale plank. Back to dog, put your feet quite wide, so as wide as your mat. Lift your toes and push your head down. Try to get your head maybe even down to the ground.

If that hurts your shoulders, just relax your head down. Lift the toes and push your butt back so that you can feel it straining a little bit all from your knees up to your sitting bones. So trying to actually push your thighs towards the back wall. Push, push, push and breathe.

Feet together, walk forward a little bit. Inhale lift your fingers and exhale break with your fingers when you're jumping forward. Inhale halfway up, exhale fold, fold, fold. Inhale all the way up.

Inhale interlace your fingers behind your back. Try actually squeezing your shoulder blades together so you try to pinch an object between your shoulder blades and look up. Arms releases, inhale look up, exhale fold. Inhale halfway up, this time step your right foot back and without placing the knee down Move backwards and forwards five times, quite fast.

Back and forth, back and forth. Keep breathing. And one more. Stepping back to plank, inhale, exhale lower down.

Inhale halfway up, cobra. Back to dog. Step your right foot forward between your hands, same thing here backwards and forwards five times. Inhale forward, exhale back.

Inhale forward, exhale back. One more. Stepping forward, slowing down again. Inhale, exhale fold.

Inhale all the way up, exhale hands down. Interlace your fingers behind your back, lift your chest, push your hips forward as if you were trying to reach your heels with the hands. Breathe. Keep your hands behind your back, fold forward with bent knees, take three rounds here.

Try to touch your face to your chin with bent knees. Bent knees help you protect the lower back and stretch it instead of straining it. Hands to the ground, inhale halfway up. Step your left foot back, place the knee down and walk the hands back and try to stay folded with your belly towards your thigh.

So start with belly to thigh and then you walk so far back that it's almost disconnecting, the thigh is almost disconnecting from your belly. Take a breath. Lean forward again and step back to plank. Inhale, exhale lower down.

Cobra, inhale, exhale back to dog. Take a couple of breaths in down dog. Step your left foot forward, back knee down, stay connected with your whole left side to your thigh and then lean backwards so far as you can go, flex the left foot and when you feel the thigh disconnecting, go forward again and try to find that perfect spot where you can lower your head and take a breath. One more second.

Stepping both feet forward, inhale halfway up and exhale fold. Inhale arms up, stay with the arms up. Just step your feet slightly wider on your toes, slowly squat down. So slowly, slowly squat down and then when you squat all the way down, unless your knees are hurting, then you can stay halfway up.

Move all the way up again and down two times more. All the way down as slow as you can go. All the way up. All the way down.

This time stay down here, move your arms forward and sit down to the ground as slow as you can go. Use your hands only if needed. Sit down on your butt, both pose. So grab your thighs, lift your chest, spread your toes and squeeze the feet together.

Stay here. So the trick with releasing your back body, your lower back especially, is engaging the core. And the core can be many things, but what I mean with core is that you're engaging your lower abdomen and the inside of your abdomen to give the back less work. So let's try a couple of exercises.

Point your toes, stretch your feet just an inch above the ground, arms forward, round your back and lower down to your lower back. Lift your feet a little bit and rock back up. Grab your knees and hollow out your body so that you're round. Flex the feet.

So this is called, I call this just a hollow or round position. We can call it hollow. And now point, straighten the legs, lower down. Alright, so point, sit up, hollow.

Point, lower down and hollow. Point and hollow. Two more. And hollow.

We will add on to this one, but for now just roll back, roll all the way up to a squat, coming through an arm balance crow pose. On your toes, all the weight into the fingers, lift one foot and lift the other foot. Three. Two, squeeze the elbows in with the help of your knees.

Down, stepping back to a straight plank. Inhale, exhale, lower down. Cobra pose, inhale, exhale, down dog. Take a breath here.

Right leg up, bend your knee, open the hips and keep pushing your thigh back. So imagine you're pushing your leg back, back, back, but keep engaging the front. So you're engaging your thigh as if your brother were going to punch it. So just keep the leg tense, push the hips back and lift the back knee.

Do not point your knee out to the side, point your knee up. Point the right toes and pull your heel to the butt. And from here, knee forward, warrior one like we did yesterday. Engage the feet, lift your toes, back leg straight, arms up, but today hook your thumbs and maybe make two rings and open up with bent elbows, lift your chest.

So stretch the front side of your body. We will add on to this one as well. Inhale, look up and exhale, hands down. Plank inhale, halfway down, exhale.

Cobra or up dog, inhale, back to down dog, exhale. Left leg up, point the toes, bend the knee completely and open up the hips and push, push, push, push, push the leg back. Lift the bottom toes, your right toes, lift them up. Engage your right quads, the front of your thigh and push the knee not out to the side, up.

So imagine you have balloons in your left knee, pulling it up to the air, a big ass balloon with helium, pulling your knee up and you're gluing your left heel to your butt. This pose only works if you do it with all your attention. Roll the knee forward, step up to warrior one, engage the back leg, hook your thumbs, lift your chest and bend your front knee. Inhale, look up, exhale, hands down.

Plank inhale, push up, exhale. Cobra inhale, exhale, down dog. Bend your knees, look forward. Let's take five jumps where you claw your fingers into the mat for breaks and then kick yourself in the butt with the heels.

Four, three, two, one. On the next one, just land between your hands. Inhale halfway, exhale, fold. This time feet hip width apart, bend your knees and step your hands under your feet.

So you might have to squat down here. If you squat down, if you bend your knees, drop your head and now try to straighten the legs without your hands slipping out. So start with bent knees, drop your head, breathe and straighten half an inch. Breathe and maybe re-bend and straighten again.

Two more. One more. Now squat down, sit back to your butt. We did the hollow, we did the point down.

Now we're going to add one to point up. So lift your chest, point the toes up, stay with balance and try touching your toes. So point up, lower your legs, point low and sit back to hollow with flexed feet. And we're going to alternate.

We're going to go low, up, low, hollow. So point up, go low, hollow and then go low again. So point up, go low, hollow it out and go low again. Okay, let's do it.

Point, low, hollow, low. Point we should add some music to this. Low, hollow, low. Two more rounds.

Point, low, hollow, don't give up, low. One more point. Low, hollow and stay low for seven, five, six, three, four, one, two and relax your head down, lift your hips up. Take five breaths into your belly to stretch out the core.

One more. Hug your knees in, rock all the way up to a squat. Back to crow pose but this time try to keep your feet together so stay on your tippy-tippy toes and then if you find the balance, if you have learned how to break with the fingertips, so when your head wants to fall forward you actually break with your fingertips to not face plant and die. Stepping back to plank, inhale, exhale lower down.

Now after we did a lot of core it's nice to take a few extra breaths in up dog, no knees down, lift your knees and push the belly forward to stretch. Knees down, take a cat and cow on all fours. And move back to a down dog. Let's do another round, right leg up, inhale, exhale right knee forward.

Warrior one again, so lift your toes, arms up, interlace the thumbs, hook the thumbs and lift up. We will add on to this, interlace your fingers behind your back, push your knuckles towards your back, heel, lift your gaze, take a breath. Lean forward 45 degrees, engage your back leg and then try to put your solar plexus, your chest on your knee and drop your head. Do not slack in your back leg, keep your feet engaged, lift all 10 toes, push your back leg back and if you feel extra flexible today you even slip down on the inside of your knee.

If not stay on top of the knee but drop your head. Take two more breaths here, don't check out. Gaze up, release your arms, warrior one, inhale, exhale plank, inhale, exhale lower down. Inhale back bend, exhale dog, left leg up, inhale, roll the knee forward, warrior one, engage all 10 toes, right knee on top of left ankle, hook your thumbs, take a breath, interlace your fingers behind your back, push your knuckles down towards the heel, engage your back leg, slowly fold forward, chest to knee, arms up, neck relaxed, lift the toes, you should be able to see the arch under your back foot and your left butt is not sticking out to the side, you're squeezing towards the midline with your hips.

If it's impossible to interlace your fingers just hold your wrist down at your butt but try as much as you can to straighten the arms. Warrior one, arms up, release and inhale, exhale hands down, stepping back to plank, inhale, exhale lower down, inhale cobra, turtle position, take five breaths, relax. Back to dog for one last round, right leg up, inhale, knee forward on the exhale, warrior one, inhale, exhale interlace the fingers behind your back, inhale, humble warrior, same thing we did the last round, knee meets chest or head goes as low as you can go, stay here for one and then release your hands down and move into a standing split like we did the first day, lift the back leg, now open your hips, open, open, open your hips and bend the top knee, so it's the same as the three-legged dog but now we stand with the foot as close to the hands as possible. If your arms are short on your fingertips but I want your head to meet your ankle and your left knee to point up, relax your head, you might even look up towards your back knee, stay here, if you feel kind of flexible you can wrap your right arm around and kind of figure four in your leg with your arm, if you keep staying with straight arms stay here, now step back to a low lunge, so the left leg is back, now try to inch your front foot as far as you can go, as far as you can go, as far as you can go and then do some push-ups, split push-ups, five, four, three, two, one, step back to a down dog, on your toes roll forward to a plank, inhale in plank and slowly lower all the way down to the belly, interlace the fingers behind your back, push your feet down, lift your chest, so we're actually squeezing our butt and working our lower back so that we can release it later, three, lift more, two, one, hands down, inhale cobra, exhale down dog, last round, last round, left leg up, inhale, roll the knee forward, exhale, warrior one, inhale, exhale, interlace your fingers behind your back, inhale, engage your toes, exhale, lean forward, chest on your knee, arms up or grab your wrist behind your back but I want your the front of your shoulders to release as well, so squeeze and do not think about giving up, it doesn't help at all, relax your arms down, move into a standing split, so back knee points up, stay high on your fingertips but drop your head as low as you can go, gaze at your top knee, open the hips as much as you can, maybe wrap and figure four your left leg with your left arm, step back to a split, feet as far away from each other as they go and push-ups, five, four, three, two, one and down dog, bend your knees, look forward, jump forward to a squat, stay here for five, push your knees away and then try to squeeze your knees in towards each other, so sit in a squat and push your knees into your hands so that your chest is lifting, sit down, let's do our first seated forward fold for this week and two tips, the lower back should not be like this, it's only like this because your legs are straight, if you bend your knees look what happens, so it's the same pose, just you can actually start from the boat pose, so start in the boat and from here just tilt forward, you want to keep this connection between the thigh and the belly when you bend the knees and from here you have two options, they're doing the same thing but try both, either slide your heels forward or walk your butt backwards and when you feel the disconnection between the legs and the belly then you know you're risking lower back pain, so we do not want to get more pain, we want to get a release and there is no release in this kind of position, it's when you bend the knees and you take some time here that you actually get a release, so hug your legs, bend your knees, let's sit for two minutes, two minutes is nothing but when you're new it feels like eternity, don't push it, don't resist it, relax and see what happens, actually you just have to focus on one single thing, breathing in and breathing out, so if it's too much don't hesitate to start over, just come back to where you started, start from scratch, sometimes that can be nicer than just sit at a position that is too much, it's better to start over, half a minute more, now sit back up and just do a reverse tabletop to counter that forward fold, take five breaths lifting your hips, lifting your chest, and sit down, let's look at another variation of the forward fold that actually takes pressure off of the hamstrings, a couple of years ago I tried to do a stupid thing, I tried to do intense hamstring stretching every day, first thing in the morning with straight legs like this, so I was like this for 10-15 minutes in bed but then I got meniscus pain in both knees, so my knees actually hurt a lot, I had to stop for a week for it to pass by, but that way I figured out another way to get the benefits of the forward fold without straining the hamstrings so much, which is feet apart, so heels together but toes fall out to the side, so get as much turnout as you can, you can keep bent knees for the lower back but when you kind of flop the legs away from each other you can go much further forward and you get this lower back and head release, you can put a pillow under your head, let's try to sit here for two minutes and see what happens, if you feel like you're getting nowhere place your arms in a downward facing dog so that your shoulders, arms and head is in the downward facing dog and then every three or four breaths or so just walk your hands forward an inch or two, relax your forehead, relax your face because we're not doing strength training for the face, there is no need to tense it up, relax your face, relax your face, relax your face, strength training for the face, there is no need to tense it up, if you do not know what to do, inhale and exhale and you're quickly becoming proficient at this, exhale, five more breaths, so sit back up, bend your knees and windshield wipe your knees from side to side, ten times five on each side, let's look at one more seated position, this is actually much trickier than it looks because you have to be so engaged in order to relax, you need to have a lot of focus for it to work, knees can be problematic in jujitsu so if you have any knee pain just do whatever it takes, place your foot out to the side, place something under your knee, just bend the left knee and pull the foot as close to the groin as you can, all right so if this hurts the knee figure out a way to do it, sit up straight, think the Oscar pose or the mountain pose again and then twist your body towards the straight leg and then do not round, straight forward fold so as you see when I round I can go deep, when I straighten I can't go deep at all, when I'm straight I have to stay really upright, straighten the leg, flex the foot, imagine this is a standing pose, you're standing on the foot like in a weird standing splits, breathe and lift your chest so it's almost like the boat pose where you lift your chest and straighten the leg, if you have a towel or a belt you can wrap it around your foot to get even more pull so that your chest is moving forward, so this is the foundation of the pose, you're sitting down, you're raising up and you're leaning forward and from here you can slowly start cheating more and more so you start straight like a rock, I don't know if a rock can be straight but straight and hard as a rock and then every second breath or so you can relax the shoulder, you can relax some other shoulder, you can gaze down, you can relax the left side, the right side, you can drop the chin to the chest, and you can inch your hands forward and look down at your knee and from here you can start with your back leg, your left leg, you can push the left butt more into the ground so you get more of a side back stretch and now you probably see too much so let's start over one more round let's start over one more round straight first and then twist, lean forward, stay straight and every exhale find a way to cheat yourself down as low as you can go so kind of slowly wiggle and trick yourself down low, go from a straight spine to a round spine and when you're at the bottom for you what bottom means for you that's when you start over, all right second side left leg out, right leg in, any variation with the right leg that fits your knee straighten up, twist so that your chest faces the knee, flex your foot, engage and lean forward if you have something nearby to grab your foot use whatever object you can find unless it's a cat don't use a cat for stretching and slowly start cheating the elbows, the shoulders, the neck, sides of the body you might even bend your front knee to get as low as you can go but staying down here in this cheated version has little to no effect that's why we start over so come up straight again start straight and engaged and it's actually the cheating down at one point you will find a sheet that is just about the right amount of cheating and the right amount of engaging that's perfect but there is no way for me to know what works for you so your mission and your strategy for finding the perfect Janus Sirsasana which is the classic name for this pose which means head to knee pose the only way for you to figure out the perfect spot is to start super engaged slouch all the way down to a seated worthless position and then find the golden middle and sit back up lay all the way down to your back happy baby pose grab your feet or your ankles spread your legs apart push the head down into the ground squeeze your shoulder blades under and stay in the same position if you don't feel perfectly comfortable try switching the grip try using a belt around your feet if you feel comfortable try to feel more comfortable by relaxing your face and your shoulders light breathing Cross your left ankle over your right thigh, sleeping pigeon, just a little stretch for the outside of the hips.

We could count it as part of the back body. The butt is part of the back body, so stretching the butt counts. If you want to focus specifically on the hip muscles, then you should do hip-weak, which is another good program with a specific purpose on this website. Switching sides, right ankle to left thigh, interlace the fingers around the shin, relax.

Twist knees over to the left, take five breaths. Changing sides, go slow. Back to center, shavasana, heels as far away from the head as possible, shoulders under, spread your fingers, take a last inhale, and exhale, relax.