Foundation Week 1 for BJJ (With Belt): 40-Min Class (Day 2)

Lift your hips up. Push your thighs up. So you're squeezing the lowest part of your butt and really trying to push your leg bones upward towards the ceiling. And then hug your knees in and roll up and down again.

Rock and roll. And then roll all the way up to sit, feet together, knees apart and try moving your belly forward. So if your spine is round, flatten your spine out. Use the biceps now to pull your belly forward.

Take five here. Active stretching. And move up into a squat position. Warm up your ankles, knees and hips by moving around in a squat.

Your heels do not have to touch the ground. If you want your heels to touch the ground but you can't, roll up your mat so that you have the backside of your mat under your heels so you can put weight into the heels without something hurting. When you squat and you feel the pain on the front of your foot, you should never try to stretch deeper because that's your joint. You can't change your joint.

If you feel it on the back of the calf, go ahead and stretch. That's where you need it. We're going to do cat cow with flipped hands today. So turn the fingers backwards, out and back.

Stretch your forearms. Move your neck around. And we're going to do circular cat cows today. So the belly moves in circles sideways.

So you inhale when you go down and you exhale when your belly lifts. So just move around in circles with your breath. Reaching directions, but keep breathing out when you go up and inhale when you go down. And then sit on your knees, flatten out your feet, shake your hands and lean back.

So warm up the wrists and the fingers while you're stretching the front of your hips. I love hero pose before down dog because this one just goes together with down dog so well. So here you're engaging the core and your butt and you're contracting the back body which you will stretch in down dog. So you can always do a hero pose and stretching your fingers and shoulders before down dog if down dog is if you have issues with down dog.

So this is a nice prep. Spread your fingers so fingers point out and the heels point out in down dog. So fingers out, heels out, head down. So many of you are probably here with the shoulders forward.

Keep lifting your hips and moving your head down. Not too far down. Just try to get a straight line. Take five here and move around.

Stretch your calves, your hamstrings, move your neck around and breathe. And then walk your feet towards your hands. When you can't walk anymore on your fingertips and walk all the way forward. Inhale halfway up, back bend.

Exhale, bend your knees and fold. Inhale halfway up, back bend. Exhale bend and fold. All the way up, fingers up, inhale.

Exhale hands to hips and move your hips around in big circles. And when you have your hands on your hips like this, try to squeeze your elbows in towards each other to practice a good posture. So when your elbows are out, your shoulders round forward. So instead, try to squeeze the shoulder blades together and the elbows towards each other.

Go both directions if you didn't already. Just prepping for some sun salutation A's. We're going to do it with a bit higher speed today. So feet hip width apart, hands in front of your chest and try to follow my exact pace today.

Inhale arms up, exhale bend your knees and fold. Inhale halfway up, exhale plank pose. Inhale in plank, exhale lower down. Inhale halfway up, cobra pose.

Exhale down dog. Take one breath in down dog. Bend your knees, look forward. On your exhale step forward.

Inhale halfway up, exhale fold. All the way up, inhale, look up. Inhale mountain pose. Inhale arms up, keep going.

Exhale fold. Inhale halfway up, exhale plank. Inhale plank, exhale lower down. Inhale cobra, elbows in.

Exhale down dog. Huge inhale and bend your knees, inhale. At the bottom of your exhale jump forward. Inhale halfway up, exhale fold.

Inhale all the way up, exhale mountain pose and stop. So that's flow, you just flowed through two sun salutation A's with your breath. Good job. Interlace the fingers behind your back.

Today hips forward and lean down. Usually we always go up and back. Try today to lean down. So you really have to engage your core, squeeze your butt a little bit, 50% and engage your belly so you don't hurt your lower back.

Bend your knees, put your head between your calves, between your knees and lift your arms as high as you can. Take three here. Place your hands down and step your right leg back, knee down, three breaths. Lower the hips down as far as you can go and kind of squeeze your chest towards your thighs.

You're gluing your thigh to your chest and your upper body is pushing your left knee forward. I like to lift my bottom knee off the ground slightly here to get a more intense stretch. That's up to you. Step back into downward facing dog.

Roll through avinyasa. On your toes, roll forward to plank like we did yesterday. Inhale and exhale lower down. High cobra inhale but don't straighten your arms.

Exhale downward. Right leg kicks up. Try to keep your legs straight and on your toes. Inhale, exhale, roll the knee to your face and squeeze foot between the hands.

If it doesn't come forward on your fingertips, lower the back knee down, same pose, second side. Upper body is pushing the right knee forward. Take three. On your toes, on the back foot, moving into a standing split.

If you can catch your left foot with your right hand, do a standing split with a foot grab. Otherwise, just stand here, take a breath. From a standing split, stand straight up, feet down, arms up. Inhale, exhale, interlace your fingers behind your back again.

Move down as low as you can go. Inhale, exhale, fold, bend your knees. Hands down, left leg back. Place your right hand on your left shoulder and push your shoulder back as much as you can and lift your right arm for a variation of side plank or also called twisting lunge pose.

Shoulders in line so you're trying to get a perfectly straight line in your arms. If you don't know if it's straight, next time you have a camera, have someone take a photo of you here so you can actually see yourself in the pose. Take a breath here. Stepping back into down dog vinyasa.

Rolling forward to plank, don't miss your lower back. Lower all the way down. Cobra pose, inhale, exhale down dog and stretch your left leg as high as you can go. Right arms, straight legs, inhale, exhale, foot between your hands.

Place your left hand on your right shoulder and push it back, twisting lunge. Left knee forward, right heel back, left arm up, up, up. Moving into a standing split, lift your right leg high like Uchimata or catch your right foot with your left hand. It's easy if you move the ankle like a triangle first.

Catch the foot and point the knee up. I like lifting my left shoulder here as well so I get a deep twist. This is insanely stretchy for the hamstrings if you're stiff there. If it hurts your hamstring, bend your knee.

Let go of the foot and stand straight up, inhale, exhale hands to your hips, bend your knees for chair pose. Same thing with the elbows here. Squeeze the elbows together. I like placing my thumbs together on my sacrum and push my hands into my butt.

Take a breath in chair pose. Arms up, inhale, exhale squat down. Sit down on your butt for both pose, hands behind you and try to get a perfect V shape with your back and your thighs. So no sad feelings here.

Lift your chest and stretch your legs. Take a breath here in both pose. Roll back and up to a squat again. Crow pose, hands like in plank.

Bend your arms and lean forward, feet together and squeeze your toes off the ground. So feet together, together, together. Grip the mat so your fingertips go white and then jump back and don't land in plank, land on your belly. Go!

Cobra or upward facing dog. If you do up dog, engage your legs like crazy. Inhale and use the power of the legs to propel you back to down dog. Sun salutation B, right leg up, inhale.

Exhale knee to your face and squeeze. Inhale foot up, exhale squeeze. Last one, inhale, exhale squeeze and place the foot between your hands for warrior two. So on the midline of the mat, lift all ten toes, stretch your left arm forward first and then push up into warrior two.

Palms facing up, your right knee points straight forward. If that is impossible, you have to move your left foot out slightly, but I want your right leg to point straight forward. Palms up, lift your chest, take three. Your head should not be in front of your body, pull it back so it's on top of your spine.

Bend the right knee a bit more and straighten the back leg. Look up and inhale, touch your hands. Exhale, fold and low push up. Cobra or up dog with super strong legs.

Exhale, lift yourself back to down dog. Second side, left leg up, inhale. Exhale knee to your face. Inhale up, exhale squeeze.

Inhale all the way up and inhale all the way forward, foot between the hands, lower the back heel down and stretch yourself as long as you can first. Using the transitions to double the effect of the class. Stand on the midline of the mat, so the middle of your feet should be on the same line like this. Palms up, your hips are leveled, so no pointing forward, hips leveled.

Engage your feet and pull your feet together as if you want to kind of curl the mat into a... Just squeeze your legs together. Look up, inhale, touch your fingertips and exhale, low push up. Up dog, straight arms, straight legs, inhale.

Exhale, down dog and place your elbows down into the ground. Amputated down dog aka dolphin pose. Push your head down and your chest back. If this hurts your shoulders, then interlace your fingers instead.

Make sure your neck is relaxed. You can bend your knee, but if you do that, push your chest even more back. So don't bend your knees to lower down, bend your knees to push even more back. Nice shoulder stretch.

Come up on your toes and roll forward to your knees. Interlace your fingers behind your back and lean back, maybe even put some weight into the hands. If this hurts, then just float the hands off the ground. Squeeze your butt and engage your core and stretch the front again.

Let's do one more full round of sun salutation. So first into down dog. Take a big breath with your fingers pointing slightly out and your heels pointing slightly out. Bend your knees, look forward and take three jumps and kick yourself in the butt.

One, two, don't fall over. Three. On the next one, try to land softly between your hands like this. Inhale halfway up and exhale fold.

Bend your knees and sit down into chair pose, into both pose, I am sorry. So either hands behind you to lift your chest or if you can, balance on your butt and keep lifting your chest. Go ahead, take a breath. Roll back to build momentum and into chair pose.

Hands up today, this time arms up, chest up, butt down. Lift your gaze and lift your toes and spread your fingers. Hands down for crow pose. If you want to play with lowering your head and lifting your feet and touch the ground with your head, go ahead.

Otherwise, just squeeze your elbows together as if your defense depended on it. And then jump back and land on your belly or place the feet down and jump back. Cobra or up dog depending on your lower back. Exhale down dog.

Again, right leg up, inhale. Exhale knee to nose and stay here. Slowly lower the knee down and touch the ground. And then quickly squeeze the knee up and place the foot forward.

Warrior two again. Left arm up, straighten your left side. Roll up into warrior two and let's try a different arm variation. Right arm up, grab your right elbow with your left hand and reverse your warrior with some help from the left hand.

So this is a reverse warrior. But today we grab the elbow and lean back, not back bend, side stretch. So bend your right knee and stretch from your right hip. Stretch your lat, your armpit and make sure you're not bending forward.

Side stretch. One more breath. And then low push up. Inhale and exhale down dog.

Left leg up, inhale. Left knee forward, stay here. Slowly touch the knee to the ground and then with speed left foot forward. Stretch your right arm far and use the transition to build flexibility.

Warrior two. Left elbow up, grab your elbow with your right hand. Don't lean back or forward. Imagine you're doing this standing towards a wall and using the wall for support.

When you practice on your own, you can actually do that. Not in the flow, but when you want to practice the pose itself. Use the wall to get the perfect two deep pose. Inhale.

And exhale, low push up, last vinyasa. Up dog with straight arms and shoulders back. Downward facing dog. Elbows down to the ground again.

Interlace your fingers if you need that. Let's try the single leg dolphin. One leg up, go as high as you can. Do not make funny faces.

Do not moan and grunt. Breathe evenly. If you can breathe evenly here, you can breathe evenly when someone is triangling you. It's the same practice.

Switch the leg. This is a weird position, something we find ourselves in in BJJ all the time. Unknown weird positions. If you can breathe there, you will excel in your progress in BJJ.

It's much faster. Feet down, roll over your toes. One more hero pose to stretch out the front. If you can walk your hands back and squeeze your elbows together and bend your elbows, you're going to get a shoulder stretch here as well.

But keep squeezing your butt and your core to stretch the big muscles on the front. If you're a rock and you're still doing this flow, good job by the way. One foot and just do one foot at a time. The pause button is always there if you need to take a few minutes here.

We're going to finish with one big go and then we stretch it out. So plank pose. Squeeze your knee to your elbow and then switch. Ten, nine, eight, seven, five, six, five, four, three, two, one.

Place the foot down on the outside of your hand. And now use the legs as much as you can. You can even be on your fingertips here. Switch ten, nine, eight.

Use your legs. Seven, six, five, four. Focus on your legs. Three, two, one.

One more. Zero. Right knee down, left foot forward. You can turn your fingers around.

You can drop the left elbow or you can just hug your left knee with your arm and stretch. Let's take 30 seconds here. Drop your head and breathe. Three more breaths.

Three more breaths. Three more breaths. And switch sides. Right leg forward.

Any variation is okay. If you keep your hand and your feet too close together, it's going to feel weird. The wider base is always better here. Everything that can drop, drop it.

Make sure to not be a sensation hunter. If you don't feel anything, that is also tremendously valuable. Do not hunt for sensation. Time for pigeon pose.

Down dog. Left knee forward. Put your belly above your calf. If this hurts the knee, just lean slightly over to the butt like this.

And instead of doing it forward, you do it sideways toward your thigh. If it doesn't hurt your knee, then try to slide your back knee back and in. Elbows down. Rest your forehead on your knuckles or a cat or anything that's close by that you can use.

Relax. If you know how to fall asleep, then you know how to practice this kind of yoga. Because if you try hard to go to sleep, you can't go to sleep. If you try hard to do pigeon pose, you're not doing pigeon pose.

If you relax and give up and tap and surrender and submit and quit, that's when it works. So you cannot win if you don't know how to lose. You cannot find strength if you don't know what giving up really means. So if you surrender here, just let go of your ego and tap out.

Then pigeon pose starts working its magic. Relax. You are not alone in your stiffness, your frustration and your body aches. You are a jiu-jitsu brother or sister and we're all in the same boat.

We all know exactly how it feels, the feeling you have in pigeon pose. If your hip is hurting, your hip is hurting with a million other hips. Switching sides. How many times has someone showed you a technique when you wear a white or blue belt or when you were a beginner?

And you tried it a few times and you just didn't figure it out and you just dropped it for a year or two. And then when someone showed it to you again or you kind of, quotation marks, invented the pose or the technique during sparring, suddenly it made all the sense in the world. It's the exact same thing with yoga. So if you hate pigeon pose and you don't do it for a while but you do a lot of similar stuff, when you come back to pigeon pose in half a year, pigeon pose is going to feel so different because you're different.

The pose is the same, it's just your attitude and your perception that changed. Yoga increases your awareness if practiced right. It changes your point of view and your perception. Sit up.

Two alternatives. Straddle pose like this, wide legs, hands forward. If this is impossible, do the same pose, standing up, use gravity as your friend to fold forward. You start on your hands of course and you resist with your arms and when your arms get tired, then you know you can safely go down.

So always when you use gravity as your tool to stretch, resist with the arms and when the arms are tired of it, then your body will be ready to fold. So keep standing up or sit down and stretch for ten. Two more. Lay down on your back and twist your knees towards the left.

So lay on your left side first, make sure your spine is straight and then get both shoulder blades to the ground. Don't bother too much about the top knee, just place your hands on top of the knee and let the stretch come of itself. Don't push the stretch. Practice in this pose breathing up and down your spine.

So visualize your spine and breathe up and down the spine. Switching sides. If you're doing this at the end of the day, then prepare for sleep. If you're doing this in the morning, good job and prepare for your day.

Not in your head but just mentally, emotionally, physically prepare for the day. Lay down on your back, place your knees together, right hand on the belly, left hand on the chest. Take five breaths and really breathe into your hands. Breathe in.

Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in.

Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in.

Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in.

Breathe out. And then a couple of minutes in Shavasana. Surrender completely. Give up and relax.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in. stretch your arms overhead and inhale and exhale relax wiggle your toes and spread your fingers make some fists and rock back up to seated the reason why yoga is so damn good when you practice jiu-jitsu is because we don't we don't practice yoga in a way that gets your adrenaline going and that exhausts you we want to practice in such a way that we really work deep without using force so in a way even though we're spending a lot of energy on the yoga mat we are practicing in a way that we get more energy from it so the more yoga this is my absolute religious belief the more yoga you practice the more jiu-jitsu you can practice so if you practice yoga every day I think you can add on one jiu-jitsu session a day and be perfectly healthy that's what I believe see you tomorrow for the next foundation week video