Half Guard Mobility for BJJ: 23-Min Flexibility Class

Go the other direction. If the dojo is cold, maybe this gives you a nice butt warm up from the friction I mean. Nice, okay. Now feet off the ground, stretch the bottom leg out, put it down and then turn all the way like this.

So you're pulling your butt towards your heel and then you're switching. Lift both legs, other leg stretches, pulls and switches. So only one leg in the ground. Look bottom leg in the ground, bottom leg in the ground.

Yes, don't go fast early. That's beginner mistake number one is going fast before you actually do it right. Make sure that you do it right until the point of it being boring, only when it's boring and maybe even a little past that do you start adding speed. You're just programming a faulty movement pattern when you go too fast too soon.

This is called wisdom of someone who has done this mistake for a million years. Check out your arms. The last stage of this is we're putting the foot out and then we're adding the other foot on top of the heel and we're stepping down on that heel so you're lifting your actual butt here. You're lifting your hips off and then the power from the top leg pushes the heel down and turns.

So step, stretch, step and lift your hips to switch. John Wayne style. This is the foundational movement of the John Wayne sweep. And if you don't have this hip control, doing movements and sweeps like this will be hard or impossible.

We need to learn this smooth transition where you're placing your foot in the right place, stepping on it, switching the hips without so much effort. If you're getting super tired from this, it's a perfect sign that you're not used to it and that you should do it more. Nice. Stretch your legs and straddle.

Just stretch your arms and hamstrings a little bit. Now we know a little bit better how to move the hips. Let's focus on the shoulders. I'm going to turn straight towards you so that you can see.

Do a couple of sit ups first, straight sit ups. Now come up into a sit up and then angle your shoulders 45, your whole spine 45 degrees without moving your hips like this. And then back to center, 45 degrees. So as far as you can to the side.

Back to center, 45 degrees. And then if you want to skip the center and go straight from side to side, do that. But you're going to notice that when you do this, you're going to start sliding out. So you need to activate the hamstrings and constantly pull yourself back as you're doing it.

This is a small but crucial detail in half guard that you need to be able to pull yourself closer to your heels with your whole body. There are small adjustments that need to be learned in order to do this well. Hips up, take a break. Take five breaths.

Expand your belly, stretch your core. Now short lesson. When you're under inside control and half guard, you need to be able to get here. When you're flat, you're essentially dead.

You need to be able to come up here. So let's practice the sit up. Sit up, get the shoulder in. And now switch back to center and then other shoulder in.

Center, shoulder. Center, shoulder. And even if someone has control of your hips, you should still be able to come here even if they're putting a lot of pressure. When you get here, you create space and you have more options.

Back flat, few options. Shoulder in the ground, more options. Simple as that. Go from side to side.

One more on each side. Nice. Lift your hips. Maybe put your hands under your lower back or hips if you want or can.

Take five breaths. And now the final stage. Gable grip. Gable grip.

And then get your elbow under. So you're coming up all the way and getting your elbow under yourself. Even if they're smashing down, the elbow under will help you build up. So from here, do a full matrix move to the other side.

Don't stop in the middle. And then momentum. And as you can see, when I come up, I'm using my elbow to get some height before I change. So building up.

Imagine someone smashing your face while you're doing this. You should be able to go against that and then switching sides. No matter how much pressure you feel, create space for the movement and do the movement quick without holding on to the breath. Okay, nice.

Lay down and relax for five breaths. And now lay down. Hands on the inside, elbows on the inside of the knee. Don't put your elbow in the mat.

Use the one leg, the top leg, go to one side and use the top leg to kick up here where it's super tight. So there is no hook coming in for the back mount behind you. And then you're coming up here, stretching out, coming down, back to where we started. Elbows on the inside.

Kick to come up. Face up, come down and reverse. Elbows on the inside. And reverse.

Back to the reset. Two more on each side. Okay, good. Now keep the gable grip or the thumb grip and use your elbows to not fall over and then straighten your legs for a lockdown.

So this is half guard with a lockdown. And then you pendulum the legs as far as you can sideways and look, my elbow is keeping me from falling over and collapsing. Pendulum straight, other side. And you can notice now that I'm constantly moving in this direction because when my legs are coming back, there is a couple of centimeters of movement that the hips do.

The momentum takes me this way constantly. This is a very important half guard movement that you need to master. If it's too hard with straight legs, then bend your knees. But you want to be able to eventually be so strong that you can do this with straight legs.

One more from side to side. Nice. Come up into camo and stretch your belly. Nice.

Okay. Let's build all the way up. Pay careful attention. Go slow and really learn this.

This is absolutely, it's great, it's terrific when you learn to do it right. Catch the triangle. So half guard with a triangle. First come up, first move your upper body a little bit to the side so you can get up on the shoulder.

And then get the elbow under you. Come up here. Hand comes out, not under because it can be grabbed. Hand out, build up here to a pyramid.

And then from here lift up and stretch. We're going to add on from here into more different variations. But now when you're coming back, hips, elbow, elbow under, come back. So triangle, sideways.

It's very difficult to come up when the knees are here. So you need to stretch out first. Stretch the hips out and move away so that you can come up on the shoulder. And then even if someone is smashing you, you want to be able to build up here, here and stretch out.

Hips, elbow, come down, reset. Again triangle. Move the upper body first, stretch the hips out. Now when the hips are straight, it's so much easier to come up than here.

Elbow, hand out, build up, come up and stretch. All the way down. Triangle, elbow, build up. Don't forget to reset in the same order, important.

Stretch, build up. Now let's add on. Come all the way down to reset. Triangle, stretch out.

Now catch your foot, the top foot and stretch. And then turn over until you almost fall over. And then all the way down. Triangle, catch, open, push the foot, kick the foot into the hand, be active here.

Try to rip the grip apart with your shin. And then let go, fall down. And then the other side. Now we can start going faster, just to test.

Even if you're still not proficient at the movement, try a couple of times to feel how it would feel to go fast. See how difficult it is to get it right when you don't know the movement. This is why we're going slow. Okay, one more.

Relax. Okay, relax. Now, one of the most challenging bits. Cross the ankles, hands behind your head.

And then go completely sideways like this. Over to Superman and then use the elbow to push yourself back into a crunch and do the same thing on the other side. So the elbow helps me to rock me over into a crunch. And then over to the other side.

I think this is a good simulation of how Jiu Jitsu can feel when you're completely tangled up with an opponent, with a gi, with sleeves, lapels, worm guards. This is the type of body control that you need to develop and the micro strength in the weird transitions that makes a huge difference and that keeps you injury free. Sit up, relax, take a rest, lean forward. One final move.

One final move. Lay down and take an underhook on your leg. Imagine this is an underhook and you catch it on the opponent. If you want to go buggy, you can go buggy.

From here, build up fast to full side plank. But this time the elbow doesn't come inside. Sometimes it's not possible. So you go zombie, arm overhead like here.

And then you build up to full side plank. And then step over to lizard and come all the way down. Underhook, arm overhead, sideways, build, build, build, build, side plank, step over and fall down. Underhook, zombie, lizard, back, second side.

And now one more on each side. Last round. Okay. Sit up, 1990.

One final poses. 90 degrees, 90 degrees, 1990. And then from here, lean back. So you're pushing your hips forward a little bit and then you're leaning back into it.

It's more of an internal hip with a back bend, countering a lot of the half guard damage that we experience. The half guard players that I know, which is many, all of them have the same tendencies and problems, which is they have a favorite side for half guard, usually the right. So they have a lot of pain in one side, either side of the lower back because they're not doing it evenly. And they don't, they have poor posture because they don't stretch their front.

They just squeeze and tighten up and curve and they don't do the counters. That's why yoga for BJJ is a good idea because yoga does a lot of back bends and do things evenly on both sides. So switch sides. 1990, stretch the hip flexor, bend the back backwards, make it uncomfortable to the perfect degree and percentage.

66.935% uncomfortable. These exercises that we're doing, I'm coming up with them as I'm teaching, practicing and remembering yoga and jiu-jitsu because none of these moves exist in yoga really, but they are hybrid combinations of jiu-jitsu moves with yoga poses. And yoga feels amazing to do when you do it regularly with a good system or a good instructor. And jiu-jitsu feels amazing too for a while.

But when we combine them in this way, I feel, really feel subjectively, I haven't done any science on it, but I feel like it's a very, very sound idea. There's a very sound basis for the thesis that I'm coming up with for what we're doing. So I think it's generally a good idea. Even if I can't prove it, the subjective experience should be enough.

Let's take 10 breaths in Shavasana. Just let it sink in. One more breath. Deep.

Hold. And exhale slow. And sit up. Thank you very much.

See you in the next video or see you on the mat.