Sebastian Brosche · 10 min · 1,607 words
Previously titled: Start up Program #Day 2 Tutorial
Hi guys and welcome back to day two of the Startup program. Today we will look at down dog, up dog and how to step or jump backwards and forwards in the Sunset Lutation. Let's start with the most important transitional pose in Vinyasa class, that is what we're doing Vinyasa yoga and that is Downward Facing Dog. And the position of the hands is the most important for strong Jiu-Jitsu people because most of you have inflexible shoulders, strong shoulders but inflexible shoulders and at least if you're big guys your shoulders are typically kind of much wider than an average person who never does any physical exercise.
So you feel wide and if you have narrow hands when you're in down dog it's going to feel super awkward. So the first thing I want you to do is to find the perfect parallel arm distance like you had in plank pose yesterday and then from there move maybe one centimeter to each side. So two centimeters wider or maybe even three centimeters wider than normal. So that's step number one.
Step number two is start with maybe 11 o'clock and one o'clock. Turn your fingers out because what that does it makes external rotation in your shoulder. It makes it easier to externally rotate your shoulder. So if you have internal rotation then you're going to be tight in the shoulders and you're going to want to bend your arms and it's really hard to relax and do transitions from down dog if you have internal rotation.
So help your shoulders by turning your fingers out to turn your shoulders out. The goal is to get the elbow to point back as much as possible. The more you can do this and engage your lat the easier it is going to be to relax your neck and your spine because in down dog you want the outside of the body to be strong and the midline the back and the neck and the tailbone you want that to lengthen and relax so you're pushing down and back but you're still relaxing the inside. Let's try it.
Stand up from plank pose. Hands as wide as your shoulders and a little bit wider. Turn your fingers slightly out and feet as wide as yesterday hip width apart. Push your butt back and bend your knees slightly.
Drop your head so you're not tensing you're not looking at your fingers just straighten your arms and look between your feet. If your spine is very round here then you probably need to bend the knees more so you have to work your arms and legs a lot in order to relax your spine. But try to push your butt back and drop your head at the same time so you're both pushing your floor away and you're moving your head towards the floor so your arms are strong your armpits are strong but your trapezius your traps and your neck is free and loose. Try to find a down dog that you can survive for five breaths when you do this so when you start in down dog try to survive for five breaths don't hold your breath just stay there for five breaths and then you move on.
If you can do five then you have a good enough down dog to improve it because there is no such thing as someone nailing the down dog in the first try. It takes years to figure out all the small minute details and then when you master down dog it's still a constant work every time you wake every day you wake up and you're stiff and tired when you move into down dog you still have to go through all of these small little quirks and get it all out of there but that's the beauty of yoga it's there for you every day just like a vitamin the body needs it and it absorbs it and it just feels so much better after you've done it. So down dog strong on the outside relaxed on the inside and just try to lengthen your spine and work your arms and legs. Upward facing dog is like the cobra but it's more like a plank so you can approach the up dog from two different ways you can either do a cobra first and then lift your legs off and lift forward like this so it's not backwards it's a cobra that is higher so you're lifting up so it's only your feet and your hands connecting with the floor and the power comes from the legs up through your lower back and all the way through your neck so it's not bending and trying to put your head on the butt the 12 year old gymnast girls can do that not for us we just try to get a nice exponential curve like this okay you can approach it from the plank too so from plank you can flatten out your feet and then just slowly lowering your hips and you're you are engaged in the belly but then you're releasing that the more you lower your hips down the more you're releasing and lifting your chest through your arms imagine the arms are like poles a gate and your chest is trying to move through the gate so like this your chest is moving forward and your arms are staying in place you're not moving your arms forward the arms are moving back and the chest is moving forward this is a really nice strong aligned up dog you don't have to be super flexible to do it but if you start doing it with engagement and focus you are going to loosen up all those knots and stuff that are are restricting your your ribs when you're trying to bend backwards and backbend is one of the best things we can do as jiu-jitsu and grappler jiu-jitsu players and grapplers because we are always contracting we're always doing strength stuff and we never the only time we are in a deep back and this when someone is submitting us from a rear naked choke or something so it's super healthy for us to work the back bends as much as we possibly can we did down dog we did up dog two of the most essential poses in a vignasa class let's look at how we can step or jump backwards and forwards in the sun salutation so we did a forward fold we lift it up when we step back to plank pose you can just step but that doesn't improve your flexibility what you can do instead is step back like this and lower your hips and then just stay here for half a second and then step back so you can use the opportunity of stepping back to really go down and get a deep kind of split stretch when you're stepping back so it would look like this in real time inhale look forward exhale step back that's actually a really nice thing to do if you're if you didn't start jumping yet and still there are some salutation a b and c and in some salutation c we're not going to do this in this course but then you use this stepping a lot to get the flexibility in the front and the back of your thighs so stepping like this stepping back like this and of course stepping forward like this that's really old school yoga that's how they used to do many many years ago and you can still do it and it has a purpose to take a long step and lower your hips is good for your flexibility i prefer most of the time i prefer jumping jumping inhale look forward exhale lower down that's kind of an advanced move so for you i want to break it down and make it accessible like this inhale look forward exhale step back slightly and squat down and then jump back with your feet but jump forward forward with your head like this so it's a quiet soft landing you're not jamming your feet into the floor that's why we're stepping back if i start jumping from here it's going to be a big impact when you jump back so when you jump back step back and then bend your arm slightly and lean forward like this so you're practicing the power of your arms head forward and just placing your feet back and if you have super strong biceps you might even lift and kind of just place your feet in the ground some guys are really strong like that i'm not one of those guys but a little bit of floating action is really nice when you do the sun salutations because this short moment of power just is such a nice makes a nice flow with all the stretching exercises in a sun salutation same thing when we're jumping forward when i say step or jump from down dog to forward fold this is not what i'm talking about but this is what i'm talking about step your feet slightly forward inhale exhale from down dog so either step or jump inhale look forward exhale fold okay so now you have two different ways of getting back and forward from forward fold through a vinyasa to down dog and forward again let's connect these three things the down dog the up dog and the stepping and jumping in our sun salutation see you in class
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