Full-Body Yoga Class with Spinal Twists: 60-Min for BJJ

But only bend as much as necessary, don't bend it all the way. Do a couple more. Nice. Knees together, arms out to the side.

Twist your knees over to the left, back to centre, twist your knees to the right. Keep going from side to side. Your shoulders and arms are in the floor, your hips are moving and your spine is twisting. One more from side to side.

Nice. Legs up, without grabbing the legs, rock up to one leg bent and one leg straight and then roll back and switch. So we're learning the pendulum motion, very important motion in jiu-jitsu to learn to pendle to sit up, creating momentum with the legs, pulling one heel in and using the other hamstring to come up. Very very important when you practice sweeps and playing sit up guard to go from inverted to seated.

Check your postures that you're not rounding but when you sit up you have a good posture. Do this a few more times. Sit up and put one leg in the ground and grab the opposite foot. So right hand grabs left foot, left arm goes back for a seated twist.

It is not important to have two straight legs but try to have a straight spine. Back to both post, balance on your butt, switching sides. Switching sides again. A little faster from side to side.

Now rock back to upside down guard and take three breaths here. Then place your feet in the ground, feet wider than your hips. Lift your hips, arms down and then place your hips down and your knees down to the left. So you're bridging up and then twisting your knees and lowering your hips.

Keep going from side to side. Lift and collapse twist. Lift and collapse twist. It's impossible probably to get both knees to touch the ground but that's the direction you're going for.

One more on each side. Now stop with the hips high. Right arm goes between the legs, the other arm goes over head so we're doing a big deep bridge. Then without touching the spine to the floor switch sides.

Keep your hips elevated with your head pressing down. Switch again. And switch again. On the next one maybe try to put the opposite ankle in and grab your opposite ankle so the right hand grabs the left ankle.

Keep lifting your hips and switch one last time. Grabbing the ankle is completely optional only if your proportions allow it. Slowly lower down. Kick your legs up.

Take a moment to reset your spine. And use the pendulum motion. Lift your hips and rock all the way up to a squat. Take one half moment in a squat and then roll back to upside down guard.

With good control use the pendulum as little as you need to to come up to a squat. Take a moment in a squat. And repeat this sequence one last time. Invert.

Pendulum to squat and this time five breaths in a squat. Try to get your forehead as low as possible and balance your forehead and your heels so that your weight is in equilibrium forward and backwards. One more breath in a squat. Step back to tabletop.

Knees down. Toes in the ground. Spread your fingers and turn your fingers backwards so that your palms are down and your fingers are facing backwards. So we're trying to stretch the wrists, the neck and the toes at the same time.

So drop your head, drop your spine and move backwards. If you don't feel the toes then move the fingers back so that you can get more weight into the toes. So static but not really static. Small adjustments all the time so that you balance the stretch over a larger area.

You don't want all the intensity to be in one spot. If you feel it too much in one spot then just adjust so that you feel more comfortable or uncomfortable in more places. Take another breath or two. And now fingers forward.

Switch the palms so that you can see your palms. Side arms. Bend your elbows. And then make fists with your hands.

I'm going to turn around so that you can see properly. Fist with your hands. Straighten your arms as much as you can. So basically you're wrist locking yourself.

And then when you release you do a push up. As you make fists you stretch your arms, wrist locking yourself. And then do a deep push up with the elbows flaring out. We'll do a few of these.

One of the reasons that wrist locks can be so effective is that the person getting wrist locks is never doing anything similar to what we're doing now. So this is healthy for the joints and good for defending wrist locks. Maybe you won't get injured as many times when someone goes total prison rules on you and wrist locks you. You might survive with less injuries if you do this regularly.

Shake it out. And let's go into tabletop. Fingers forward. Knees in the ground.

And stretch your right leg out behind you with square hips. So your right hip and your left hip are completely square. And what this does is we're working our internal rotation of the leg. This is very very important in all types of guards that you can internally rotate and externally rotate.

So if you point the toes down and in towards your other leg that's internal rotation. And if you point the toes out and up that's external rotation. Both of these are tremendously important in all types of technical guards. So it's very important to know those two.

Change sides and let's do internal and external rotation on the left side too. So try to not move your spine much. Keep your spine straight but kind of twist your hips without twisting your shoulders. So your arms, you're basically stiff arming both arms and twisting your lower body.

Now switch back to the right leg again. And then let's do a technical side plank. So flare out your left foot. Right foot in the ground.

Right arm up. So it's a side plank with a support of the left knee. Let's go big circles with the right arm. Just getting our juices flowing in the shoulder and the side body.

Side stretches are nice together with twists. So we do a couple of side stretches so that our twists become a bit less restricted. Let's just simply switch sides. Left side becomes long.

Big, slow circles. Just take a little extra time when the arm is behind you. The arms spend a lot of time in front of ourselves. Not so much time behind us so it's nice to take the time when you have the opportunity to really stretch the arm behind you.

Nice. Back to plank. Take a breath. Let's move into, oh yeah, this one.

Right leg out. Left knee stays where it is. Right hand moves right under your face. Left arm comes up into a very difficult twist.

Inhale here. And as you exhale, slide your left arm under yourself and try to get your shoulder down to the ground. Just repeat that. Inhale, lift the left arm.

Exhale, touch the left shoulder to the ground. Two more. Inhale. Exhale.

Last one. Inhale. Exhale, left shoulder down. Just leave your arm flat.

And I like walking my right arm over my head. I simply in yoga classes I call this the Jiu Jitsu twist because there is so much Jiu Jitsu in this position. Guard retention. Someone stacked you and is trying to pass you and you're pushing them away.

Getting your hips and legs between the two of you to retain guard. Very nice position where you're basically stretching every part of your body in different ways. Back to all fours. Switching sides.

Left foot out. Left hand under your face. Right arm up. Inhale.

And exhale. Go under yourself. Shoulder down to the ground. Again inhale.

And exhale, shoulder down. Inhale. Exhale shoulder down. Last one.

Inhale. And exhale shoulder down and stay here. Left hand moves over head. BJJ twist.

Don't worry about doing this perfectly. There is no perfect way to do this. One more breath. And then push yourself back to all fours.

And let's move into downward facing dog. So from plank lift your butt, stretch your legs, wiggle your hips side to side. Bend one knee and stretch the other leg. From dog move into plank.

And from plank lower down to the belly. And from the belly lift your legs and arms like this. Take a inhale. On the exhale strongly push back to plank and back to down dog.

Repeat this process. Rolling to plank. Lowering down. Floating cobra lifting everything and squeezing the back.

On the exhale push to plank. Back to down dog. And repeat the process. Stop in down dog and let's do the same process but now we stop half way down.

So roll to plank. Lower half way down. Maybe put the knees in the ground. Hold for a breath.

And push back to plank and down dog. So we are not going all the way down. Stopping half way down. Strengthening the triceps.

Do a couple more of those. Stopping down dog. Take a couple of breaths. Working our balance and our coordination.

Move forward to plank. Lift your left arm and your left foot for side plank. Pay attention to the system now. Left foot comes down.

Right foot comes out behind you. Left arm forward. So we are doing a two legged plank. Left hand down.

Lift the right arm. Lift the right foot. So when we go from side plank forward we don't put the hand down. We put the right foot down and lift the left foot.

And now we are switching the hands. Left arm up. So from side plank I am going to say switch the feet. And switch the arms.

From side plank switch the feet. Switch the arms. Switch the feet. Switch the arms.

Switch the feet. Switch the arms. Hold for a second. And then knees down.

Flatten out your feet. Sit on top of your flat feet. Right arm twists over to the left. Left arm grabs under the triceps and hugs in.

If you can grab your thumb or your pinky in any way. Do that and we are basically trying to Americana ourselves. But also today twist towards the left. Take a couple of breaths here.

Shoulder stretch and twist. Release the arms and lean back slightly. Before we do the second side. Left arm crosses over.

Right arm grabs the triceps. Drag your shoulders down and then connect your hands if possible. And twist towards the right. Don't just crank with your neck but try to use your muscles around your waist.

To twist the whole torso. This is a nice opportunity to notice how you are breathing. And try to improve the quality of your breath. If you can inhale for three seconds and exhale for three seconds.

That's a very good start. Hold for another breath or two. Nice and move back to plank and back to down dog. Kick your right leg out behind you.

Bend the knee. Lift your heel and then roll your knee to your face a couple of times. You don't have to move the weight into the hands. Just try to get the knee as close to your nose as possible.

And on the last one this time move forward and place your right foot between your hands. Left knee down, arms up. So we are not going deep here. We are going high.

So squeeze your butt, squeeze your core and push your hips forward without dropping them down. Place your toes in the ground and as we go up with the knee we twist the arms. Let's repeat that. Knee down, arms up.

Push your hips forward. Inhale. Exhale as you lift the knee and twist the arms. Look towards the right.

Three more. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

Exhale. One more inhale. Exhale. This time look towards the right and try to touch your right hand to your left heel.

That's impossible but go for it still. Twist back, back, back, back, back. Reach for your heel. Five, four, three, two, one.

Left hand down, right arm up. Make sure your hand is in front of the shoulder and not right under it. Take a breath here. Now you can drop your hips.

If you want to grab your back foot with the right hand, do that now. If not, stay exactly where you are. Release. Back to plank.

Lower all the way down. Lift the legs, lift the arms. And push back to plank. If you want to do one extra push up here, why not move back to down dog.

Same sequence, side two. Lift the leg, lift the heel. Inhale. Exhale knee to nose without moving the weight forward.

Repeat. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

Exhale. Two more inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

This time move all the weight forward, forward, forward. Foot between the hands. Low lunge with King Arthur legs. So like a kneeling knight, not going all the way down.

Arms up, take a breath and push your hips forward. Lift the knee and twist on the exhale. Inhale, go down. Exhale, lift and twist.

Knee down, back bend. Inhale. Exhale, twist. And lift the knee.

Two more inhale. Exhale. Last one, inhale. And exhale, stay here, squeeze the inner thighs and try to reach for your right heel with your left arm.

Five. Four. Three. Two.

One. All the weight into the right hand. Left arm reaches up. Big, big twist.

Drop your hips. Hugging your right shoulder back so that your shoulder is not next to your ear. Maybe grab your back foot. If you can't do this, do more yoga every day.

You will, 100% guarantee, be able to do this with consistent practice. Impatience kills every dream. Make sure you are patient when you try stuff that is really hard for you. Release.

Plank. Low push up. Down to the ground. Floating locusts.

On the exhale push back to plank. Maybe add an extra push up. And move back to down dog. Let's do a couple of test flights.

Grasshopper jumps. Jump up. And down. Up.

And down. Up. And land in a squat next to your hands. Take a second here.

And then on your fingertips straighten the legs. Inhale. Exhale. Squat.

So back bend and look forward. Inhale. Exhale. Squat.

Inhale forward. Exhale. Squat. One more inhale.

And squat down. Interlace your fingers behind your head. Without hurting your spine. Very slowly roll all the way to standing.

Keep your feet like you had them in a squat. Push your head back into your hands. Open the elbows. Push your hips forward.

Use your chin and lift it for inhale. And as you exhale squeeze your elbows around your head. And lower just to chest height. Inhale roll up and use force to push yourself up and back.

And then exhale relax. And roll a little deeper. Repeat. I call this exercise rolling good mornings.

A classic strength exercise with a straight spine. But this is a spinal roll from the good morning position. So the goal here is to go deeper and deeper until your elbows are almost touching the ground. Make sure you go with your breath.

So inhale as you go up and exhale as you roll deeper. Reprogramming your own nervous system to be able to do new movements like this. One more all the way up. And try to go as deep as possible.

And try to go as deep as possible and stay here for two moments. Hold here for one more second. And then again roll all the way up. And release the arms.

Relax for a second. And lift your right leg out behind you. Right hand down left arm up. Try to touch the ground without bending anything.

Hold here for three seconds. And then hands down and do three tiny handstand jumps. Just one and two and three and stand all the way up. Simple as that.

Switching sides. Left leg out, left hand down, right arm up. Try to keep everything straight. Three, two, one.

Hands down, standing splits. Use your left leg to pendulum up and a little hop. One, two and three. Step back to plank.

Lower all the way down through low push up. Add a little cobra. Maybe look forward. Hands and feet down, push back to plank.

Maybe add an extra push up. Back to down dog. Let's get our juices flowing properly with some fast twists. So all fours but lift your knees off the ground.

And then kick your right leg out and have all the weight into your right hand and the left foot. So you're kicking sideways. Go back and kick towards the left. So start slowly.

Straight leg. Make sure you're not kicking backwards but 90 degrees out. And the recoil is as important as the kick. So you're kicking and then you're returning.

Bop. Bop. So you're twisting but your body is following the twist. This is mimicking the twist.

This is mimicking guard passing. So this is a perfect exercise to learn how to twist when you're doing knee slides. Let's do a few more. Maybe speed up a little more.

Kick the right leg straight. And either turn your knee in or turn your knee out. Whatever works best for your knee. Touch the ankle or foot.

And breathe. So this was a little bit more fast paced. Next sequence will be slower. Flowy but slow flow.

Let's kick over to the other side. Back to all fours. Back to down dog. Kick your right leg out behind you again.

But this time one moment I'm just going to... God damn it. Right leg out behind you, bend the knee and open your hips. Drop your left elbow to the ground.

So that you get a big stretch in both legs but in different parts of the leg. Hold here for a second. And then both arms straight. Lift the heel and roll the knee slowly towards your face.

And place the right foot between your hands. Don't go fast now. First on your knuckles. So it's like a plank pose with three arms.

And then go on the fingertips. Most of the weight is into the right foot. Look forward and bring your arms back. From here only using the leg muscles to push yourself up.

And then you add on the circle of the arms to take you into open hips. Warrior II. Arms straight and the knee just like when we're breaking the lahiva. We're pushing the knee out.

Shoulders down, arms straight. Perfect posture in the right leg and the left leg is helping us pushing forward. So whenever someone is trying to birembolo that leg you want to be pushing that leg out hard. From here do a deep squat into the left leg.

So first you're moving back and then you're squatting down without touching the floor in any way. Only the feet are touching the floor. Hold here for a second. And from here back to Warrior II.

Kicking the left knee forward and grabbing the knee. So just like we did in both poses. Either hold the foot and stretch the foot or hold the knee and twist. Balancing in the twist.

And then keep balancing in the twist but now we're switching sides. We're going back to that pose we did in reverse half moon. Where you're kicking the leg back and switching the arms. So left arm down, right arm up.

And now we're reversing the whole sequence. Switch the arms first and go back to Warrior II. We're going to repeat this several times. First squat down as deep as you can.

And then back to Warrior II. Leaning forward, balancing. Grabbing either the knee or the foot for a standing twist. Try to breathe.

Reverse half moon. Leg goes back. Left arm comes down. Twist.

Switch the arms. And return to Warrior II. One more round. Squat down.

Warrior II. Standing twist. Reverse half moon. Switching the arms.

And back to Warrior II with straight legs. Turn both feet to point to the left so that you're straddling. Arms up. And on your next exhale hands down.

Drop your head. Make your head as heavy as possible so that your head is pulling your spine longer. Now just like in plank pose place your hands under your face but place them together so that they're touching each other. Right hand comes to your lower back.

Posture up. Twist your spine towards the right. But you can let your hips twist but don't start with twisted hips. Start by twisting your spine.

Then you twist your hips. And if you may stretch the right arm straight up. But more of the weight should be in the left hand than the right foot. So you're not pushing all the weight into your right foot.

Try to push more weight into your hand instead. Hand down. Same slow sequence on the other side. Left hand towards the lower back.

Posture up first. And then you twist your hips. And then you twist the hips. And add on the arm just maybe.

Switch to the first side again. A little more flowy this time. And the second side. And the same slow sequence on the other side.

Left hand towards the right. And then you twist your hips. Nice. Walk the hands forward so that you're in plank with the right foot forward.

And then kick your left leg through so you're sitting in a pistol squat. And from pistol squat sit down on your butt. Into boat pose. From boat pose we're swinging our legs over to the right.

And then without touching the ground move into pigeon pose. Back to boat. Don't touch the ground with your hands. Swing your legs into a balancing pigeon pose.

Again. Find the flow from side to side. It's like a capoeira jinga on the butt. Butt jingas.

Ding ding. I love capoeira. It's awesome activity. When the right leg comes back next time stop here.

And then place the hands down. And walk your hands as far to the left as possible. For a weird hip stretching twist. Switching sides without touching the ground.

I failed. Hands down. Move as far to the right as you can. Lay down on top of your right thigh.

Nice. Back to down dog. Let's do a quick vinyasa plank. Half push up.

Down to the belly. Push up. Extra push up. Back to down dog.

Same sequence. Side two. Left leg out. Bend the knee.

Lift your heel. And then drop your right elbow down. For a big big stretch. And then in slow motion step your left foot between your hands.

First on the knuckles. Then on the fingertips. Then arms back for perfect posture. Then and only then do we circle up to an open hip warrior two.

Take a moment. Feel all your little jujitsu joints aching. Drop down into your right hip. Go deep.

Back to warrior two. Into a standing twist. Grabbing the foot or the knee. Depending on what works best for you.

And from the standing twist. Circle your arms for reverse half moon. Switch the arms. Bend your knee.

Return to warrior two. Repeating the process. Deep squat. Warrior two.

Warrior two. Standing twist. Reverse half moon. Switch the arms.

Warrior two for the last round. Deep squat. Warrior two. Standing twist.

Reverse half. Switch the arms. Warrior two. Straight legs.

Turn the feet. Interlacing your fingers behind your back. Going for a big posture back bend. And then in your own time touch your head to the floor.

Metaphorically speaking you don't have to touch the head to the floor. Just drop your head. And breathe. And then you can do the same thing.

Wiggle yourself deeper. If you think this is hard imagine someone having back mount on you and trying to tilt you over. But you are just refusing to fall down. So you are standing here with someone choking you and back mounting you at the same time.

Thinking about that makes this a lot easier. One more breath. Hands down. First do a couple of kung fu stretches from side to side.

And then we do the kung fu re stretches. One of the best movies on YouTube. Sit down and get up again. Kung fu stretches.

Sit it down. It's what I call kung fu re. If you haven't seen that 30 minute movie. Enjoy every second of it.

If you can't do this. Work every day until you can do this. This is very important for every aspect of your life. I promise if you learn this movement you will make a lot more money.

Hands forward. Kicking the right leg through. Sitting down into a boat pose. Switching the legs without touching the floor.

Seede Jhinga. Pigeon pose from side to side. And I want to spend more time on the next part of the class. So we're not doing the forward fold twist on this side.

We are going back to plank. Sit your knees down. But keep the toes in the ground. Lift your hips.

So it's like you were low in a close guard. And then you're pushing your hips forward standing up. So really practice to have good posture here. And then one hand reaches back.

And maybe only your fingertips is touching the top of the heel. Or maybe you're grabbing the heel. But your hips should not be moving back. You must be able to keep your hips where they are.

This is not allowed to happen. Right arm up for a twist. Switch sides. We were not doing this for long.

We're rather moving from side to side. So only one or two breaths on each side. This is a back bend. A side stretch and a twist.

All baked into one. So it takes many repetitions to make this comfy. Personally I prefer shoulder circles as well here. So circling the shoulder all the way around.

Makes it more flowy, less static. Nice. Sit down into a kneeling position. Maybe one hand on the belly and one hand on the chest.

Close your eyes. Take a second. Nice. Sit on your butt.

Stretch your legs out. Beginner's forward fold looks like this. Grabbing around the legs on the inside and then the front of your chin. If you can do it with straight legs, do it with straight legs.

I always do because this comes natural to me. Find your level where you're not tensing the back. Everything should be half relaxed, half tensed. But one part of your body should not be more tensed than any other part.

Equilibrium is the word I was looking for. Symmetric pain everywhere. Nice. Lay down on your back.

Hug your right knee in, stretch your left leg out. Then roll completely over on your left side so that your whole left body is touching the floor. Keep your right knee in the ground, right hand behind your head. And only twist the elbow away from the rest of the body.

You're not looking up. You kind of keep looking towards the left, but the elbow is creating a big stretch. If you feel that this is tweaking your lower back, then you lift the knee and the elbow is trying to be as heavy as each other. So you're creating a balance between the two.

If this is too much for you, hug the left knee under to support your right knee. Or maybe just stretch the right arm up. Just find a way to twist that is not too intense. You should not be feeling like your neck cranking your lower back.

We're not going to do the second side immediately. First, roll back, both feet in the ground. Do a couple of hip lifts, small bridges to reset the spine. And then hug the left knee in first.

Roll completely over on your right side. Keep the knee in the ground. Elbow behind the head and only twist the elbow. So we're starting with kind of the most strict, where we push the knee into the ground.

Maybe perhaps just realize how impossible that is. Then you lift the knee and you suddenly feel more options, more freedom, more release. But now we're probably learning that this again is too much. Then you hug the knee up and you can suddenly feel that you can go deeper by modifying.

In yoga, modifying to go deeper is the same as adding steps in jiu-jitsu. When you're a blue belt, you try to skip steps and just do everything at the same time. Doing six steps in one, just to be as quick as possible and pass the guard, for example. As you grow more experienced, you realize that you have to add these small extra steps, both for you to have time to know what the hell you're doing, but also to give the guy an opportunity to react incorrectly.

So by adding steps, you kind of make the progress much faster than instead of skipping steps. In yoga, the equivalent is modifying the pose to make the pose more accessible and thereby being able to go deeper. The biggest mistake in yoga is that you try to go too deep too fast. Let's play some open guard in Happy Baby.

Hug your knees in and grab your feet or ankles. Stretch your inner thighs. Push your butt down. And if you do some rounds of sparring today or tomorrow, you're probably going to feel that, for example, hi-slides are going to feel much easier when you're able to twist up, maybe one leg Louisowned or T repro, and then a second leg for the motion of the hip or the knee is going to feel easier For example, knee slides are going to feel much easier when you're able to twist your spine or maybe your side control defense will be much more on point since you can turn those extra couple of millimeters to get the foot in or get the knee in or push away half a centimeter longer.

These small things accumulate and are huge in BJJ. Yes, for a moment, arms and legs down. Marinating our cells in serotonin. Feel free to stay here for as long as you like.

Please turn off the video and stay here or pendulum up into a seated position. Take a moment to let it metaphorically sink in what we did so that we can release it. And by not overdoing it today, we will probably feel more inclined to do it tomorrow. If you push too hard today, you will feel like you have to pick up where you left off tomorrow and that's going to discourage you from continuing.

So rather going a bit too little than a bit too much, that helps consistency. Thank you guys for completing a full 60 minutes class. That was awesome. And this was the twist focused one.

We will have a back bend and shoulder opening focus and side stretching focus. It's the same class, the same setup, but just a different variation. So make sure if you like this class, check out the other two classes. Thank you for today.

Usu busu busu.