Back Body Program Day 4: 26-Min Yin Stretch with Belt

Just slowly wiggle from side to side. Dingle dangle pose. And if you find the right amount of bend in your knees and if you point the toes slightly out to the side, you get a nice lower back release here. So the weight of your torso and your arms and your head should pull from the hips so that your lower back decompresses.

Breathe slowly and as deep as feels comfy. Squat down, point your toes out, walk the hands forward, relax your head down. Just a little bit of passive hip stretching. I can't show you, but if you have something to hook your belt in, like around a pillar or in a door knob or something, you can grab the belt and lean back so that the belt is pulling your arms forward so that you can almost sit down.

This is one of the best back releases I know. Just hook your belt into something, hold on to it and stay for a minute. Take some time to unwind, de-stress your system from all work and hard training. Sit down on your butt, take the belt again around your left foot.

Let's try to experiment. What we want to do here is combine a hamstring stretch, which is kind of the boat pose we did one of the other days. So you kind of sit in boat pose and lift your chest and pull your foot closer to your head until you feel an intense hamstring stretch. And then just for a second, do that.

And then bend your knee, lean back and stretch the side. Stretch the muscles between your shoulder blades. So spread your shoulder blades and push through the belt. And then go back to the first one, stretch your leg up and pull the leg closer.

And then you can bend your knee if you need to and kick the leg away from you and spread the shoulder blades and stretch the muscles in your upper back. Let's do a few more hamstrings and upper back. Hamstrings, you can keep the knee bent if you need to. Upper back.

Hamstrings. Upper back. Hamstrings. Upper back.

Release the foot, but keep the belt just rock up and down a few times. Just to release. And then other foot, left leg out, right leg up. Start slowly.

Hamstrings. Shoulder blades. Hamstrings. Shoulder blades.

Hamstrings. Try to really hollow out your body when you stretch the shoulder blades. Hamstrings. Shoulders.

One more hamstrings. And shoulders. Release the belt, rock back to upside down guard. So on your shoulders, try to keep most weight away from the neck, but a little bit of weight into the neck.

But this should, you should feel this from your lower back up to your neck. So mid back, neck and lower back stretching. If your feet cannot touch the ground, then do this to a wall so that you place your feet in the wall and maybe even support your hips with your hands here. We're all built slightly different from each other, so we cannot all do the exact same variation of the pose.

Stay here for a minute. If you have neck pain, then just place the fists under your lower back and do this variation instead. This way you will get more leg stretching. So if you flex your feet and push through the heels, you will still get the effects of a forward fold without actually hurting your neck.

It really helps your jiu-jitsu to get comfortable in this pose. Remember that the stiffer you are, the more benefits, the more obvious the benefits will come. And rock back up to a seated. Straddle your legs wide and this might be an issue for you.

You're probably sitting here, but that's okay for today because we're not going forward. We're going sideways. So hook your left foot with a tool and then beginners variation first, grab as close to the foot as you can with the left hand and then pull yourself kind of away from the foot. So first you go towards the foot and then you pull yourself away from the foot.

So you have a bend through the side body and if you kind of hollow out your body here, you will feel a nice stretch through the right side. So this is the beginner's variation. Take a few breaths here. So you're actually trying to create space in your left side here to stretch the right side.

So you're kind of hollowing out the body again sideways. Press your neck two more breaths. And let's switch sides. Hook your right foot, grab close to the foot and then round the other way.

So you're kind of trying to get everything to move left. Can you do this kind of stretching without warming up? Yes, absolutely. When you stretch cold, you work more your fascia, your connective tissue around the muscles more than the actual muscles, which is very important and very delicious if you find the perfect intensity.

Two more breaths. Now let's amp it up a bit. Hook the left foot again and switch hands so that the right hand is grabbing the belt and the belt is around the left foot. Now place your left hand on the outside of the leg and now again grab as close to the foot as possible and then you might slide out a little bit to create an even stronger bow through the right side.

And this is probably stretching your lat, especially if you slide out a bit and kind of move the elbow up. The full variation would look like this. It's kind of advanced. So start the closer you start to the foot and the more you just stretch the side, the easier it is.

Because the more you open up, the more you have to engage. You can't be sloppy and lazy. You have to really work it if you want to go for the full variation. Take five breaths.

Round the spine sideways. Pop your head and breathe. So resist the temptation of getting your head to the knee. Instead you're actually trying to sit up here.

So your foot is resisting and pushing away and you're trying to pull back up to seated. All right, switching sides. You can feel it, right? Left hand, right hand on the outside.

Push the hand down, push the foot away and try to pull your left side all the way up to sit. If you want to try the open variation with the elbow up, go ahead, feel free. Keep the rounding and keep pushing down through your right hand if you do. I advise you to start low and go slow.

When you get accustomed to this stretch, you increase the difficulty level. Two more breaths. And release the foot. Move closer to a wall and place both feet into the wall.

So feet to the wall, find the right distance with your butt from the wall and place your left ankle on top of your right knee as if you were doing a triangle. So ankle on top of thigh, arms out to the side. And if you want intensity, then you crawl closer to the wall and start high with your hips and then the weight of your hips will push your right knee into your shin and you can feel it on the outside of your left hip. But again, I don't recommend you to start at 100% intensity.

You start at 60 and then you slowly, slowly increase as you become more relaxed. Don't get distracted. Try to enjoy this part of training. This is a very important part of your jiu-jitsu, the restore and relax and restoration and healing part of your training.

Take a deep inhale. Open your mouth and sigh it out. Sighing sides, right ankle, left thigh, relax your butt down. Try not biting your teeth together.

Nice, sit back up and let's do a twist. So instead of a laying down twist, we will do this today. Knees over to the side, hands behind you as if you were doing plank on the back of your mat. So a seated twist and in this one you can get more leverage than in the laying down one because there is nothing stopping you.

You can just keep twisting here. If you feel good, stay here. If you need more, get down to your elbows and turn your chest to the left. Don't start hard.

Start slow and increase intensity as you can relax and breathe. Try to increase the twist by 1%. Knees over the other way. Find the right spot.

And if you want to go down again on your elbows, go ahead. What I do when I twist is I mix and switch between a straight spine and an arched spine. So I kind of move my spine around so I can figure out which part of the torso and the back needs the most attention today. And when you find the golden spot, you stop and breathe.

And sit back up. Stretch your legs out. Remember what we did yesterday. You can point your feet out.

You can bend your knees, arms up, inhale, exhale, forward fold. If you can't reach your feet, you can grab your belt around your feet and pull yourself down. Let's stay for a minute. Sometimes I like to suffer and I interlace my fingers behind my head and pull my head closer to my knees.

Insanely intensive for the upper back. Keep breathing. And sit back up. Come to your knees.

Sit on your toes. Finish your session here. Take a couple of minutes stretching out the soles of your feet. If you need a shavasana, lay down and relax.

Thank you guys for today. See you tomorrow for the last session. Hoos.