Downward Dog Tutorial: Perfect Your Down Dog for BJJ (9-Min)

So when the butt comes over the heels, we're transferring the weight backwards. But the main idea of the down dog is to use the arms and legs in order to Support us and then we can relax the spine. So from the tailbone down to the neck the spine lengthen. Let me show you.

Plank all arms Down dog 50-50 arms and legs and now I'm pushing into the legs and arms Dropping my head. Look the difference now. I'm not dropping my head and Now I'm dropping my head So the arms are doing work the legs are doing work, but the spine elongates it creates length and becomes relaxed So that's the idea. How do we actually do that?

Well, first of all, you probably have your arms too narrow and fingers turning inwards That's very common that you're kind of doing like a bent arm Version and then you have a lot of tension in the traps. So it's better to have the arms wider and turn your fingers out Because this is a position where you're you're not supposed to lift your shoulders You want to protract your shoulder blade as they call it in the professional circles You want your shoulder blades to connect with your ribs and suck them in a little bit and that's much easier to do when you're doing External rotation meaning elbows are pointing back. So try that When you're doing down dog wide look at my arms My arms are as wide as this wide yoga mat and fingers are pointing out and this gives me more space to move my neck compared to Like I can show you this way compared to here Where I don't really have space to move my head and there is more tension along the spine Okay Heels can go down towards the floor if you want the down dog to be a stretch for the calves and hamstrings So you can do down dog as a as a back leg stretch position But don't get be limited to that most people that do yoga They think that you need to dig the heels down in order to do that. But look what happens when I do that Like now I'm in a really nice and Loose down dog and now as soon as I dig my heels down, it's very difficult.

Look at my hips I can't really move my hips and now when I lift my heels I can move my hips a lot It's hard to move the hips and move the spine consequently when the heels are pushing down So if you want to push yourself back and get a good stretch, that's fine But when we're gonna start moving in and out of down dog and doing transitions It's better to have the knees a little bit bent and lifting the heels that gives you more options and When you find a nice down dog You should be able to take ten breaths there if you can't take ten breaths like a minute or minute and a half in down dog You start feeling tension in a particular place. Then you still haven't really Got it well enough to be able to master the basics basics. You stand there for ten breaths and you feel pretty good As soon as you reach that level one of being able to take ten breaths The next the first and most important exercise from down dog that you want to do is the rolling the spinal roll and the spinal roll is basically An extension and a flexion but instead of just doing it boring like this. We're going from back here Starting with the tailbone.

Look at my table. I'm tucking my tailbone Rolling through the lower back and then through the upper back and neck and then on the way back arching my back Like this, so just look at me for five seconds This is one of the best exercises I know and You learn it on all fours first But when you when you master the down dog when you have understood the basics of down dog Which is basically just stand there for ten breaths without feeling tension so much tension Then you try the spinal roll. So that would look like this Lift the heels Tuck the tailbone roll forward the plank put your knees down and arch on the way back and Straighten your legs so I'm rolling forward Placing my knee downs and then I'm basically in a turtle and from turtle I'm squatting up to straight legs So it's a circle like this That's that's the that's the goal that's a that's a keeper for life that exercise over and over and over you can do it Five ten twenty times a day and your spine is gonna love every rep of it So you have we just learned two ways of getting into down dog. You can get from down dog from plank Back to down dog and you can get from down dog from turtle Squatting into down dog.

So if you just lower your knees and straighten them we call that down dog squats So every time you start doing down dogs first time in class Go in and out from plank a couple of times bend your knees a couple of times and have different those two different entries Into down dog is gonna warm up the body. So a position isn't better than the transition the position is one thing and the movement is another thing and My personal opinion is that both are equal equally important So stand a breath in the pose or two and then move in and out of the position a Breath or two and that's much better than either one of those static is good Movement is good both together are better Anything else I want to say about down dog? No, that's the basics and you have a million details But it's better for you to learn those details in your body because I could Talk for hours about it, but I don't want to talk about it and it's not very helpful for you to listen to me Talk about it for hours Because the things I talked about is usually the things people miss most of the stuff 70% of the stuff that We're doing is stuff that you're eventually gonna figure out on your own but if you don't figure out the essentials the basics the the the tricks the secrets the hacks Then you can waste years of doing it nothing correctly, but insufficient so try this When you get started with down dog, and I promise you it's gonna save you a lot of time