BJJ Stretching for Neck & Hips: 45-Min Full-Body Class

boom boom boom boom boom perfect hi everyone and welcome back today's class is about 30 35 minutes and we're attacking some of the problems that we discussed that is inherent for jiu-jitsu like the neck the rounded back and the hip flexors or getting butchered in jiu-jitsu not because we're doing jiu-jitsu wrong it's just the nature of jiu-jitsu so by doing this class we can solve many solutions in one go and one of the things that is most beneficial in my opinion for myself is the calibration and the kind of release of the nervous system so in order to make this a truly enjoyable experience you might have to go outside what you're used to in terms of breathing and you know how you put your mind you can't really be watching Netflix while you're doing this or you know hold your breath and trying to push hard because this is very different from strength training or jiu-jitsu sparring class we want to calm one nervous system down and activate the we actually activate the calmer nervous system by the way we move and the way we breathe so let's start try this lay down on your back like a starfish arms and legs out to the side make sure you're not lifting your chin try to lift pull the chin back so that your neck is not cranked and for some backs if your back is really round this might be difficult at first but just trust the process it will get better if you do this regularly so basically just lay down flat really relax and release your hands and feet and let the breath be natural when I was new to teaching yoga I said make the breath deeper and slower but having practiced for a while I started realizing that if I say deeper and slower that implies that there is something wrong with the way you breathe and there is nothing wrong with the way we breathe it's not that we're consciously deciding to breathe different it's more that we're taking on a mindset that indirectly makes the breath soft and slow the whole point of many of your classes here at your for BJ's to step out of the prefrontal cortex that part of our brain that is over activated the whole day and instead of doing the class kind of letting the class happen on autopilot even if you don't have a autopilot in the classic sense just let the class happen without taking conscious decisions all the time just try to take more intuitive decisions and let those happen naturally a couple more breaths here before we slowly start to move without trying to change anything just notice scan your body and see if there is something going on in a joint or in the muscle that you were unaware of before you started before we start reading a book we always see that there are acknowledgements in the start and we want to do the same when we start a class we just want to acknowledge what's going on in our body mind before we do anything else when you feel ready hug your knees in towards your chest who give yourself a hug around your shins or around your hamstrings and then rolling your head from side to side avoid lifting your face like this and lifting your chin pull your chin in and roll the back of your head back and forwards to the mat personally I prefer this kind of neck roll over many other neck exercises because the safety on the security of the ground being there makes neck muscles relax even if we activate and press the head down with our necks we can depend on that the ground doesn't move so we can probably go a bit further here from left to right then if we didn't have this support from the ground I really like it keep holding on to your left shin or knee push the other leg straight or release the right leg straight take a few breaths here where you're splitting the knees away from each other we're going to do this later in low lunge where the left knee goes forward and the right heel pushes back so try to separate your legs and then you can keep holding on to the shin or hamstring with your left hand and supporting your leg in big circles or slow big circles with the left hip big circles without any major effort almost as if you're trying to save energy here by not expanding any extra energy go the other direction big slow soft circles we're supporting the leg with our arm so that we don't have to use any extra muscle power now hug the knee in towards the armpit and lift your shoulder blades completely off of the floor and then keep them off the floor while you're doing kind of static sit-ups so your your chest is lifting maximum and then you're pulling the knee in towards your armpit so we're extending and shortening the hip flexors to the max without any resistance one of the points of this exercise two more make sure that the right knee is bent lay down relax and holding on with the right hand in the right leg circling the hips in big soft circles if it makes sense for you to slow down then allow yourself to slow down the more you hurry yoga the longer it will take it is the hurrying and the impatience that is the key to many of the problems we have with our body mind in jujitsu switching directions go the other direction and now same thing again but lift the shoulder blades off the floor but instead of holding on to the knee we're just doing bicycles and trying to push one leg straight and pulling the other one in maximum so now you're generating some force and using the hip flexors to really pull all the way in just as if we are playing guard on one side so pulling the knee in pulling the knee in and also stretching it when it goes out to the max one way and to the max the other way two more and then feet next to the hips like we're doing a bridge because we are in fact doing a bridge pushing the triceps down lifting the chest lifting the hips and if you take a quick look at me now you see that my ribs are flaring out and this is good if we're doing a back bend but right now we're doing a hip flexor stretch so activate and crunch up the front so you shouldn't see your ribs here you should see your hips so crunch up the front squeeze your butt and push your hips up up up you should feel it in the glutes when you're doing it right and should feel a nice stretch on the front maybe you're just feeling it on the back but try to stretch the front here without your knees going out there in and then lay down figure four left ankle on the right knee and then maybe scoot your hips to the right and lay down so that you're stretching you're trying to push your right knee down towards the floor the right foot cannot be far away or super close try to keep the knees in about 90 degrees every time we're doing static stuff allow your breath to slow down and take a more soft nature you never ever have to hold your breath while you're doing yoga we can to use it as a tool but if you notice you're holding your breath unconsciously then become conscious and stop holding your breath switching sides figure for the other side and let the weight of the ankle and foot push the knee down I really like having my hands behind my head here makes the whole trunk stretch in a nicer way two more breaths here and then back to center hugged in ease again and rock and roll roll a rock and find yourself in a seated position crossing the ankles and I always lean forward and try to scoot my butt back as much as possible before sitting up because when you're sitting you don't want to roll up and sit on your tailbone or your sitting bones the sitting bones are not for sitting on actually you want to sit as much as possible in front of your butt your butt your behind should be behind you and you're sitting more on the thighs yeah especially when we're doing this one because sitting here and moving around just makes you feel stiff and you are not as stiff as you feel or think you are you just have to do it right to feel a lot better so when you start when you start as far front as you can and then you sit up doing the Sufi circles classic yoga yoga thing moving freestyle moving around we're not doing it chanting or we're not doing any crystals in any of our bodily orifice so you can be sure that it's not too far out of line but just freestyle moving around moving your spine moving your shoulders I really like holding on to my knees here and letting the breath flow switching sides switching the crossing of ankles keep going and then find center where your head is nicely balanced on the rest of the spine and the spine is balancing over the hips so that there is no tension like if you were suddenly relaxing you shouldn't fall to one side or fall backwards or forwards try to sit in a place where there is no a lot of it there is no intensity or effort just holding yourself here from here sit on one hand just on the fingertips or the whole hand doesn't matter just find a way to sit on your fingers so that they don't hurt and then grab your opposite ear with your free hand and drag your hand down until you can grab your skull and pull a little bit and instead of sitting here and feeling pain I like to start over and kind of pull myself deep and really intense and then I start over and change the angle a bit because when you have a lot of tension in the neck like I do now doing it static for 30 seconds is just too much just going slow and progressive and then maximum intensity for like one second and then starting over is a nice way for me to train my nervous system that it's okay nothing is gonna break nothing is gonna snap nothing is gonna pop and it won't be painful I know this but my nervous system doesn't know it and that's why it's resisting and creating the tension and stiffness so I need to be on the same team with my nervous system if I want any kind of meaningful results out of this come back to center and just feel the difference between your left and the right side now I feel like completely awkward to one side because I just did one which is good because we just did it for 30 seconds and I already have a substantial result second side sitting on the hand pulling sideways not trying to go as fast as possible to a hundred percent being perfectly fine with starting at 50 and maybe stopping at 75 no need to get all the way to maximum intensity sometimes yes always definitely and change the angle so that you're going a bit forward a bit sideways a couple more and then back to center freestyle moving again damn that made a lot for my neck I got neck cranked and triangle last week and just that minute was enough for me to feel a lot better let's release the neck starting in plank pose so go to plank and then bend your knees and place your knee down knees down for we're not doing push-ups we're just setting up the spine here move the spine of it and then leaning back nothing to turtle but a kind of a mix between plank pose like keep the nature of the plank but go back to turtle with your toes in the ground do that a couple of times and each time engage your arms more and push into the mat so that eventually the knees are lifting so you're in a turtle position kind of a squatting turtle position with the knees off the ground and push your chest as far back as it goes like this push push your chest back and then straighten your legs I realize now that if I want to do a down dog I have to move my knees back a bit so this is the way we're coming into down dog today is not from plank to down dog but we're going through turtle first before we move into down dog so try this a few times boom because then we're training ourselves to not having to straighten the legs if we start with straight legs and go back into down dog this is usually what happens we're kind of stuck in plank and it's really intense I want you guys to start back here and then coming here maybe we can straighten one leg and straighten the other but I want you to focus on the neck now so release the neck and push back into down dog and allow your head to hang and dangle like a church bell from side to side no tension in the neck don't look up and look at the screen look at your feet move your hips stretch one leg stretch the other but allow the weight of your head stretch the neck just let the whole weight of the head hang in the neck and stretch the muscles there should be a nice release for your spinal column all the way from the hips up to your skull couple more breaths in down dog and then sit down on your knees shake it out your shoulders are hurting from the down dog take some time to move the shoulders and then we're doing a little sequence here for the hip flexors and for many things but hip flexors is a main part of it so stretch your right leg out behind you spread the toes and really push back like you're trying to push a door open behind you bend the knee and roll the knee to your elbow a couple of times stretch the leg back roll the knee forward stretch the leg back inhale roll the maybe pull it up into the armpit and go a couple more freestyling where you want to put the knee just use the hip flexor and try to tighten it completely tighten up and stretch it out right come back to tabletop with the right leg out behind you and then try to push back into down dog from here so no down dog but three-legged dog so you're in tabletop lifting the left knee lifting the right leg and then bend the right knee so we call this one the peeing dog the three-legged dog which is trying to pee really high so drop the right foot lift the right knee and allow your head to relax take three deep breaths here and on the next exhale roll the knee towards your nose and curl up so on the inhale back to three-legged dog and on the exhale curl up moving your spine and your hips one more and on the last one try to step your foot in between your hands I like to come up to my fingertips here placing the foot in between your hands placing the knee down and now look forward chest comes forward so when your chest comes forward your hips are dropping and from here lift your left knee straighten it completely and now push your right knee forwards you're splitting the knees away from each other just like we did on our back and then when you place the knee down place it back like quarter of an inch back and then do the same thing again lift the chest lift the knee and push the right knee forward splitting the legs placing the knee further back so most of the time people are here look there's where here's where people are people are I want I want you to go as deep as possible into the split first before we're going to lizard so when you place your right hand on the right knee now you're really deep you're not here you're here and this is the key if you ever want to grab your foot you cannot grab your foot here when when you have this distance you have to do this activation and get really low first look it's not that I'm flexible or have long arms that I'm doing this is just that I don't have my hips here so we're doing this yeah I like to grab the top of my foot like this when I grab the foot like this the shoulder goes in and I don't get a nice chest opener when I grab the foot from there with a thumb up then it's I don't have to be here I can be here and I can breathe we did so much work to end up here so let's stay here for a while and then release come back into plank pose then slowly from plank lower down on your belly prop your elbows up chest forward shoulders back you're not trying to lift your head here you're trying to draw your chest forward so you're pulling your elbows back drawing the chest forward shoulder blades together we're supposed to do this one before we did the last sequence but that's fine we do it now and then we combine it with the next one instead so take another breath here and then lower down same thing again with a chest but interlace your fingers behind your back and try to lift up here and if you can't do this grab on to your shorts or take a jiu-jitsu belt or something and you can drop your head here or you can lift it but don't crank it so either you relax it or you lift it but don't tense it up there is no need to tense the neck here you can lift your head without tensing your neck and then slowly lower down take a breath and then pushing back up to all force back to turtle with its toes in the ground maybe drop the top of your head a lot of people do turtle like this but you can use your arms to push yourself back and then lower the head and if the shoulders aren't agreeing just take wider hands and then pushing back up to all force let's do the same sequence on the second side so left goes out behind you stretch in the left leg and then bending the knee and curling the knee in towards your triceps a few times all right a couple more and then stretch your left leg out behind you lift the right knee off the ground and push back into three-legged dog bend the knee and open the hips so don't stay here the knee pointing down you want your knee to point up towards the ceiling pull your heel in towards your butt and now roll the knee all the way towards your chest and face and armpit three times on the exhale curl up high inhale swoop back one more and on the final one step the foot in between the hands chest comes forward knee comes down chest forward knee down okay lift the back knee push the left knee forward engage the back leg and slowly lower it down don't not so far down that your knee goes back here so you want your knee to stay where your left knee to stay where it is but you're trying to do a tiny tiny adjustments to get the right knee further back which means that your hips are getting lower we're trying to get the hips lower chest forward right heel back knee down one more when you have it in the right place you can grab the foot or you can hold on to the knee and push into the knee so that your chest is kind of falling in towards the knee you don't want to stay square here we're not doing any active standing up intense stuff here so you can allow yourself to drop in and maybe turn the foot out like this and when you have the setup right grabbing the foot it's not that big of a deal for most people you can grab the the jiu-jitsu pants or or if you can just grab the heel you grab the heel you don't have to grab the toes it's all good but I don't like doing it like this I prefer getting the opening of the chest so that I can take long soft deep breaths and really sink into the pose three more breaths and then release stepping back to plank lowering down to the belly so first we did this one the Sphinx pose with our elbows and then we did the locus pose where we interlace the fingers now let's try this arms out behind you bend the knees slowly don't fling the foot but slowly see if you can catch the ankle or top of the foot and then slowly on the other side if you can't you need to lift more and roll your shoulders back because you can't reach it if you're here so you have to de-round the shoulders and then drop the head and lift as high as you can lift everything except your head pull everything in towards the middle and lift up without holding your breath look down lift up and then release take a breath one more round lift the chest roll the shoulders back one foot slowly reach pull reach pull reach and this time lift your head as well without neck cranking yourself push the feet away lift your chest up roll your shoulders back three two one release good stuff I forgot to mention in the start that we need a towel or a jiu-jitsu belt so I'm just grabbing whatever I can find there I'm grabbing a shirt doesn't matter as long as it's long enough so a hoodie works any kind of rope or whatever is fine lift it overhead and then slowly sit on your knees and slowly go back all the way down if you have to go one side and then the other you need to release the grip and go higher all right you don't have to take it all the way into the front just go as far down as you can all the way down and then all the way overhead and if you can adjust so that it's more narrow that's fine too but we're not going for super pressure we're going for maybe 80% we're stretching the the pec muscles because they are part of the problem they are one of the usual suspects for these rounded shoulders that we don't want for good breath good posture means good breath and we have to be around the shoulders and puff up our chest in the right way if we want space for the breath all the way to the top of the lungs because you don't want your your torso to lay down on top of your lungs and your diaphragm then you're never going to be able to take a really deep full breath so we need to create space down at the bottom and at the top of the lungs and that space is created by good posture and correct activation and you can't have pecs if you want that to happen you need to do this if you want a complete full breath right that's enough with that one let's come into all fours and do pigeon pose so left knee comes forward to the left wrist and then scoot the foot in like this and slide back I don't like to grab the foot and pull it forward instead I like to I'm gonna do it from this angle so you can see I like to do this so I'm sliding back until if the foot slides then then it's you know it slides into the right position so I'm going back and then it kind of slides in where it fits if you're really stiff it's gonna slide further but don't grab the foot and try to hold on to it just let it land where it naturally lands and from here you can go up and down slowly for me it's fine to stay on the elbows but we're staying here for a minute when we click something online we click it because it's interesting and this interest can become addictive to the point where everything that we do has to be interesting and by interesting we really mean you know quick gratifications and have a lot of content and IDs and humor or whatever it is that that we find is interesting and pigeon pose isn't that interesting just being quiet and staying here for a minute isn't interesting which means that it can instead seem boring in contrast to what we're usually feeding our mind with but to say that a pose is boring because nothing is happening is kind of like saying that the surface of the ocean is boring because it's just surface it is surface but it is a lot of other things too but you can't see it if you're just looking for interesting stuff on the surface my metaphors are getting better switching sides that's a deep metaphor literally figuratively deep pigeon pose on the other side so if pigeon pose seems boring to you it's not because it's boring it's because you probably have the wrong definition of what is interesting unhealthy definition of interesting and then sitting back up splitting your legs hands behind you if you need to if you can place your hands in front of you do that if not just sit here for a moment and feel whatever is going on in your legs allow yourself to start slowing down properly we're setting up for a guided relaxation where I'm kind of guiding your attention in towards your own body so when you're ready lay down on your back in starfish or Shavasana so starfish arms up Shavasana arms down but your shoulders and hips should be relaxed don't feel you shouldn't feel any friction or tension towards the ground just flop down on the ground and stay still let the next breath be deep hold your breath at the top maybe breathe in a little more and slowly release start moving your attention down towards your toes don't think about the toes just notice maybe they're cold maybe they're hidden by socks move your attention to the soles of the feet move their awareness into the joints of the ankle and foot try to see the bones in your feet with your inner eye and like you're filling with water from the bottom and up notice the bottom of your ankles slowly slowly move bit by bit your awareness up legs feel your calves touching the ground feel your jiu-jitsu knees being in a relative relaxation feel the meat of your thighs front back inside and outside feel your groin area your hips feel your lower back and your belly feel your diaphragm as you're inhaling and feel your chest as you're exhaling jump your attention to the fingertips your outer knuckles your top knuckles that are maybe broken from playing spider guard feel your wrists feel your forearms and elbow feel your shoulders and the shoulder blades towards the floor feel your neck that you have worked with stretching and releasing in this class now place the attention in the middle of your forehead imagine placing a finger there and pressing down really hard just notice that point in your forehead while you're feeling this point in your forehead notice what the movement and lack of movement by the end of the class has done to your mind compared to say watching screens for 40 minutes imagine the cumulative effect of doing this 40 minutes every day compared to watching a screen for 40 minutes just replacing screen time with yoga time imagine what that would do to your body and mind after say a year just stay with that vision for a moment your next inhale is a bit deeper and you can sigh it out come back up to seated how are you feeling i'm feeling soft and strong i'm feeling calm and confident and i feel like whatever is happening for the rest of the day i'm gonna handle it and it's not because i have inherently good self-confidence i was pretty stressed out before i started recording this but the movement and the breath works the same on everybody we feel it differently but it works the same on everybody you are not the exception i am not an exception we don't need to find some special kind of rules or systems or plan or structure that works just for us we can all start with the same thing and just find small tweaks to make it our own and i truly value and appreciate you for doing this with me i look forward to see you in the next video or see you on the mat but also whatever comments or thoughts or ideas you have they have more value than you think so please send them my way i love criticism i love applause i love feedback so see you in the next one or see you on the mat