Competition Prep Part 3: 22-Min Power Flow for Fight Day

We didn't do this one last time, so drop your back knee down and try catching your foot and pull the foot in towards your butt. Keep lifting your left chest up away from the left hand. And also drop your right knee out a little bit so that you're sinking in towards your right foot. And pull the heel in towards your butt.

Exhale. Now release the foot and move your hands back towards your left foot. Bend your left knee and go from side to side. If this is too much, then move forward so you have more weight into your arms.

If it's not enough, you can grab your ankles and stay low from side to side. Keep going. Prepare your body to fight. Hands forward, lift your right arm again and step back to plank pose.

Side plank pose, sorry. Right arm up, roll your top hip forward and lift both hips up. Contract your left side and breathe through your right side. Slowly rotate back to plank pose.

Inhale in plank. Exhale halfway down. Inhale cobra or up dog, stretch your body. And exhale back to down dog.

Take a big breath here. And exhale. Lift your left foot up, bend your knee, open your hips and look under your right armpit. See if you can see your left foot in the air there behind you.

Keep pushing your chest back towards your thigh. Inhale, stretch evenly through both hands. Lift your heel and inhale on your toes. Exhale knee to chest, hug your knee up towards your chest.

Inhale, stretch it up. Left knee, left elbow, left triceps. Inhale up. Exhale right triceps.

Inhale up. Exhale knee towards your forehead. Foot between the hands, low lunge. Keep your legs and your feet and your thighs engaged.

Fingers, armpits, chest and nose look up. Lift and breathe. Calm and composed focus. Fingers down, extend the pyramid, stretch both legs.

Lift your toes on your left foot, flex the foot, square off the hips. And try to get your forehead towards your right knee. So your chest is moving back. Bend your left knee, inhale, look forward.

Exhale, stretch. Inhale, sink your hips down. Exhale, lift your hips. Inhale.

Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, move forward and lift your left arm up to twist.

So twist your left shoulder up towards the ceiling. Pull your right shoulder back. Bend your left knee and straighten your right knee. Drop your right knee down, catch the top of your foot.

And pull your foot in towards you and let your left knee fall out. Your hips are sinking but your chest is lifting. Slowly release the foot and walk your hands back towards your right foot. Bend your knee, bend your right knee and stretch your left knee.

Move from side to side. Today if you want you can hold on to your knees. And do it extra slow and keep pushing your knees out away from each other. So kind of a sumo stance with the hands.

So pushing your knees out, moving slowly from side to side. Working both strength, flexibility and mobility at the same time. Couple more from side to side. Keeping your base, your foundation really strong.

Place your right hand forward, left arm up, back to the twist. Then step back, stacking your hips and your feet inside plank. Make sure your hand is a bit away from you so your shoulder is not straight over your wrist. You have a 90 degree angle from your chest to your arm.

Take a breath here, roll the left hip forward and lift your hips. Rotate back to plank pose, inhale, exhale low push up. Inhale back bend, exhale down dog. Immediately roll forward to plank and lower down on your belly.

Interlace the fingers behind your back. Stretch your arms as much as possible. Wide legs, lift both legs up, lift your chest and survive. Lift your hands away from your butt, stretch your shoulders and work your butt and back.

Spread your toes, lift your heels, lift your chest, breathe, breathe, breathe. Lift more, lift even more. Push back to plank, back to dog. Sit down in a squat, take a short break.

Pretend you're fixing your belt, looking towards your coach, trying to decrypt what he's talking about. And if he's right, if you agree with him, make your quick game plan, a three second game plan. Just how am I going to get to the next point, how am I going to not get taken down again, what's my strategy? Just a three second strategy.

I am going to do that. Now, stand up, forward fold, walk your feet about one leg width apart. Inhale, look forward and exhale, fold. So now you're working your legs but you're relaxing your upper body.

We can pretend we're in a pose here, let's pretend we are in close guard. And you've been standing up and you hold your hands on your opponent's biceps, squeezing your elbows in so he can't set up any arm bars from here. Placing your head in his throat and putting pressure into him. And it's not like we're going to stand here in a fight for a minute, but let's just freeze here and get comfortable in this position.

So you are putting pressure with your head into his throat. You're controlling his shoulders and biceps with your hands. You're squeezing your elbows in, almost lifting your heels, leaning all the body weight into your head. So you're not the person in trouble here, so you don't have to stress out.

He's stressing out because you're almost choking him with your skull. So just get used to this position and feel comfortable here. This is a position I use when I can't sit up in someone's guard. When they're constantly breaking my posture and I can't really push up and do a normal pass.

Then I resort to this where I lean into him so much that he starts pushing away and then I can explode up and thrust my hips forward. But we're not going to do that, we're just going to stay here and feel comfortable in his closed guard. So even though on paper he has a better position now, we are turning the odds against him by being really comfortable in a normally awkward position. Take five more breaths here.

Make sure your inner feet are not collapsing in, but you're pushing out through the outer feet, your pinky toe. Stretch your arms, look forward, inhale. Walk your feet closer and bend your knees. Alright, one little flow that's going to go like this.

Kneel down and stretch your feet under you, so you're sitting on top of your toes. Lean back until your knees lift and your fingers are touching the ground. So squeeze your butt, you can separate your knees and go as low as you can here. So you're hovering your knees off the floor and you're dropping your chest down.

Really squeeze the lower part of your core, so hug the muscles under your navel in really hard and then try to bend down as deep as you can. And from here slowly come back up into a squat. Deep squat, try to get your chest really low, so your chest is moving down between your knees. Again, if your squatting is not this deep and you feel pain you can rock forward a bit, so you're more in a mix between a squat and a chair, a tabletop position.

So like a table squat. Next pose is a forward fold, so lift your hips and push your head down and your chest down. You can bend your knees but really try to get your head in between your calves. Take another breath.

So this will mimic a more technical fight. Spread your fingers, bend your elbows and your knees. Rock into a crow pose with your toes in the ground. So make sure your hands are quite wide here.

Look straight down towards the floor and try bending your elbows more so that your feet are lifting and your head is touching down. Squeeze your feet together in a variation of headstand pose. Take three breaths here with all the weight into your head. Imagine the guy has back mount and you are doing headstand to try to shake him off.

You're protecting your neck and you're lifting your hips to try to shake off his hooks. Take another breath here. And then try to push back up to crow pose. Sit down on your toes and let's start from the beginning.

So knees forward, bend backwards, try to get your shoulder blades down to the floor. Impossible but keep trying. And then with precise movements, squat. Hands in front of you.

Forward fold. Protect your chin. Lift your shoulders up to protect yourself from being choked. Lean forward into crow pose, getting all the pressure into your hands.

Imagine passing the guy's guard with all the weight into his hips or his chest or his legs. Head down, lift your feet as high as you can. Maybe lift one knee out behind you and straighten the leg. If you did that, switch legs.

Otherwise just stay in the headstand. Knees back, feet together, lift back up and start from scratch. Knees forward, shoulders down as far as you can go. With precise movements, squat.

Forward fold. Crow pose. And then try to push back up to the floor. And then try to push back up to the floor.

Crow pose. Place the top of your head down, maybe try to squeeze the knees together and lift your hips without straightening your legs. Stay here. Squeeze feet and knees.

And elbows. Back to crow pose. Take five breaths here. Squeeze your elbows in and lift your feet if you can.

Place the top of your feet down, wide knees, elbows down, clasp your hands, you're in mount. Squeeze your biceps and your chest down. Try to arch your back like in cow pose. So push your chest down, separate your knees and put all the weight into your chest.

So you have your hands under his armpit or his head and you're just pushing your chest down and keeping your base with your knees. Trying to just stall here. You're leading on points and there is half a minute left and the guy is struggling and breathing like crazy. So you just have to do the opposite.

You have to calm down, be heavy, relax where you can relax and squeeze where you have to squeeze. If he's working on your right foot, then engage that and push your knee down and squeeze your right foot. If he's working on your right foot, then engage that and push your knee down and squeeze the foot into your butt. If he's working on your throat and your arms, then squeeze more and be heavier and really push your chest down.

That's the key. Just stay here, stretch your knees, engage your upper body for ten more seconds. Just double check the clock so that you're not losing on points. Then it's too late.

And sit back up. Sit on your butt, cross your ankles, hands on your thighs, relax your shoulders, fight is over. Stay present. Stay relaxed.

Stay composed. Stay relaxed. Open your eyes. Just quickly let's talk about a very important subject that most people overlook, snacking.

When you're at a competition and you run out of snacks and you're hungry, you're an idiot. You have to get more bananas, more water, more juice, more whatever it is that you eat, bars or whatever, than you can possibly eat because if your best friend asks you for a banana, you can't say no, you shouldn't say no. So you should always have spares and you should have enough for you to finish all five, six fights in your weight class and as many in open. So bring food for 12 fights.

So if you brought one banana, bring 12 bananas because even if you try to eat it all, you shouldn't be able to do it. So always remember the importance of snacking. If you run out of energy, you have only yourself to blame for not bringing enough food. All right, tomorrow we're going to stretch it out with a belt.

So thank you guys for today and see you tomorrow. Oss.