Half Split, Lizard & Hip Mobility: 12-Min Flow for BJJ

So that's two variations from the half split flow. The first one is just you untuck the back leg, so the knee comes off the floor and you just move back and forward like the original one. And the second option, arm moves up and you try to touch your back leg as the front leg straightens. So just a couple of things to pay attention to when you cue is sometimes when the people, when they come forward, the knee is off the floors, but they disengage their legs, so it becomes just heavy and not engaged.

So you want to have them keep engaging the back leg. You want to keep reaching the chest forward. So this is a strong pose. If they want to tap their back knee, it's still engaged.

So they're not just dropping their knee heavy to the floor, you're still engaged. When you move back, I think Sebastian is really flexible in his hamstrings, but for the people who are not, fingertips is a nice option or stay on the knuckles. When the arm moves up, so when you inhale the arm up, it's the same thing as in side plank. You want to make sure they're really pushing the floor away and they keep the shoulder nice and stable.

So when you reach the arm for the back leg, just notice if they're overly turning their hips to reach the leg. So they're almost moving their hips into a warrior two to try to reach their legs. So a nice cue is to pull the outside of the left hip back while you reach for the back leg, if you see that happening, because we want to have the stretch in the front leg. So just a couple of tips there.

But these are two really nice variations that you can add to your warm up in the half split flow. So now we have the lizard foot grab option. So the original one is that we just circle the arm back, we bring the back leg into the hand and we catch the outside of the foot or the ankle. A variation is that you grab the inside of the foot, thumb down, and then you start to turn your chest forward and down.

You look down and you pull the foot towards your hip as you just keep reaching your chest forward and down. So it's just another stretch for the shoulder, another stretch for the thighs. So really nice option, but for some people, they're not able to yet grab their back foot. Of course, one option is if they have belts, they can use their belt to grab the foot.

If you don't have the belt, you can make this a really active pose so you punish them for not being flexible enough to grab their foot. So you do the same thing, you inhale the arm up, reach for your back leg, activate the back of your thigh, try to bring your foot towards your hand. You can't reach your foot, keep activating your back leg, keep drawing your foot towards your hand, keep reaching your hand towards your foot. So they really have to work.

So the carrot here is to become more flexible so you can relax more in the pose by grabbing your foot. So two variations here. One is you can't grab your foot, you just keep working. You keep reaching the hand for your foot, you keep bringing the foot to your hand, or you use your belt.

The other option is instead of grabbing the outside, you grab the inside, thumb down. Okay, so that's our lizard foot grab. Now we have the half squat. So the half squat, the original one, we have the option to stay up or bring the hands down, maybe walk from side to side.

It's a really nice one. You can also make it more active by sitting back down behind your own foot. So instead of sitting on the heel, you lift your hips up and you place it behind your own foot. And then you push into the legs and you bring your hips forward as far as you can go, and you bring the hips back again.

So it's a more active variation. It can be really nice, especially if people are really tight and they're too tense to just sit, they can work here. So another variation here is more for the upper body. So you are sitting in the half squat and here you get to learn left from right.

So in variations like this, it's best to do it with the group because even though you've been doing left and right for 10 years like I have, things can happen. Like I can look at Sebastian and even if I said right and left, he might do the other one and then I look at him and I get confused. And then I say, oh, right under left, no, left under right, and then I confuse the whole room. So it's nice to just do it with your own arms so you know, so you're sure you can't really trust the room knowing left and right.

So this variation, you're in half squat. If you have your left foot forward, see already confused. So he has his left foot forward. And then we can bring the left arm underneath the right arm.

So you try to bring the right arm as high up on your left arm as you can so you can easily bend your elbows. And then your left hand wants to try to grab the right thumb or even better, the inside of the right palm. Then you want to Americana yourself. The left hand wants to Americana the right arm.

So it pushes into the palm. And then you can take your head the opposite direction. So the left ear to the left shoulder. And you slowly push your right arm to the right.

So you're trying to lift the right elbow up and breathe here. Let's do the other side also just to cue it one more time. So the right foot is forward. You're in the half squat.

Staying in the half squat. Now you take the right arm underneath the left arm. You try to cross them as tight as you can so you can easily bend the elbows. The right hand tried to grab the left thumb or the inside of the left palm.

You pull the elbows away from you. And then the right hand starts to push the left hand to the left. And then your right ear moves toward your right shoulder. So it's a lot of left and right, but it's nice if you want to try something with your cueing and just see when you do it on yourself.

It's easier to see the arms. I know this is my left arm. I know this is my right arm. And here, of course, people can stay just here and breathe.

Or it's also nice to move up and down with what we in yoga call the eagle arms. So this is a nice variation in half squat in addition to the first one that we did going behind our own leg, lifting up. So that's our two variations in half squat. So we moved through the half split, back knee up, and also the variation with our arm up and underneath our body.

We did the lizard foot grab with the hand on the inside, chest forward, and without grabbing the foot, staying active. We also did the last thing, the half squats with going back and forth or the tricky left and right eagle arms. I have one thing I want to add, and that is consistency about how you instruct because you only have two types of teachers. The teachers who says right arm over left or left arm under right.

It's the same thing, but you say it in two different ways. Never mix up those two. But you have to decide, am I going to always say right arm on top or am I going to always say left arm under? These are small things that can create a lot of confusion.

So in some places, you just have to decide, I will always teach it like this. It's much easier for you to remember and easier for the room to follow. It would be confusing for you if I said with the right foot forward, I said take the right arm over your left arm and you do it. And on the other side, I say take your left arm underneath your right arm.

Then you would confuse yourself and also your students. So always be consistent with your cueing.