Sebastian Brosche · 15 min · 1,949 words
Class 5: belt-assisted stretches to safely deepen flexibility in the hips, hamstrings and legs. Grab a belt or towel.
Welcome back to class. Today you need a prop. You need a towel or a martial arts belt or something that you can wrap around your foot. Lay down on your back in a warm and cozy place where you don't freeze.
Start with the right leg up and hook the middle of the foot. This is called sickling, where we see the underside of our foot. We don't really want to do that much. We want to pull a little bit more on the outside so that our foot is more or less flat.
And then the other leg, the non-stretchy leg, it can be flat or bent depending on how much stretch you feel in the lower back and the thigh. But we want to focus on the backside here. If you have really tight calves and you want to focus on the stretch there, you move the belt up higher like this and you pull more on the toes. But you want to feel not just stretch behind your knee.
You want to feel a little bit in the hamstring and a little bit in calves. But for me, my calves is not a problem. So I'm going to focus on the hamstrings here. And a couple of things that people do here is that they pull with the biceps.
I find that unnecessary. It's better to do a sit-up, grab as far up as you can. And then when your head drops down, you kind of let go and you slide until your arms can be completely straight. And it's more the shoulders that are pulling instead of your biceps.
So with those details out of the way, you find an angle where the upper body is hanging on the hamstrings and back of the leg to do the stretch. So less of this, more of this. And if it's really intense, there is of course a couple of things that you can do. One is to back off a little bit, just a little bit.
That can be difficult because you either feel it or you don't. It's hard to find that dial in perfectly. You can climb the hands up or down. You can also grab the belt with one leg and kind of give yourself a little rub.
That can really help to relax the muscle. You can also resist it a little bit and you push into the belt like if you're trying to break the belt and then relax it. And after you've done that a couple of times, you kind of send signals from the brain to your muscle that it's okay, nothing is gonna happen. You can actually relax much more than you think and the muscle will go eventually like, oh, I guess so.
I don't really have to protect the joints so I can let go and relax a little bit. And another big thing that you can do that really helps is to breathe slower. So with the nose, inhale. Hold the breath for two or three seconds and then even longer exhale.
Another thing you can do is to not increase the intensity too fast but actually allow yourself to be more flexible in the same position and kind of start feeling a little bit bored before you try to increase the intensity by moving the hands or stretching the other leg out. Most people, including you and including me, tend to go fast and we have to constantly remind ourselves that when we're rushing, we are countering the effects of the stretching. We really need patience, it's our best friend when we're stretching. If you're rushing it, you are tensing up more.
All right, let's move on to the next position which is very similar. We're just grabbing the right hand around the foot as close as our proportions allow and then I actually, I'm grabbing with both hands here and then I'm letting the leg fall out to the side. If my leg is long and heavy, I'm gonna flop over to the side, that can be fine. You can also support your knee with the hand like a self frame here, just like we would do in Jiu Jitsu.
It's also okay to release the belt so that the foot goes really far down but you wanna feel a stretch somewhere on the inside. Some people wanna do like this, other people wanna do like this. Whatever works for you. I feel instinctive like putting my hand behind my head here because that feels really good for me.
But be satisfied wherever you are now. Don't keep fidgeting for two minutes, just find a place where you can be and relax. I think you're gonna like this great feeling right there. Rich Meditation, or even more British meditation.
I think it's called, I'm going to just move up sc officials so your Lastpi introduction for size seven, very fast and curly like you would do when thinking about if there is Nice. And then come back to the first position, switching hands. So now the left hand is grabbing around the belt, the belt is still on the same foot. And then you go the other way.
And you have a few options here. The foot can come all the way to the ground and then the arm is hanging. Or the arm can be down and the foot is hanging. Or you can release the belt a little bit so that you get more of a QL quadratus lumborum lower back kind of stretch.
You can make this stretch in many different places. Just decide for one that feels yummy today. As you're doing this more often, you're going to find hundreds of little tweaks and variations on your own that feels good. But if you feel horribly stiff here, then I would roll a little bit to the side and not bother so much about the arm helping to create leverage and more kind of just pushing my hips away a little bit and trying to create some space around the top area.
The super advanced version here is to grab the bottom leg and do this. The reason I say super advanced is because 95% of people do not feel good doing that. So find your version for today. And don't forget to breathe.
Don't forget to breathe. A couple of more long and soft breaths. And then lay down in Shavasana, meaning flat on the floor. Just feel the difference between your right and left leg.
If there is any kind of difference between your legs, it means that there is an effect and it works. Same thing second side. Left leg up, hook the leg and breathe. I like silly stupid metaphors that makes you think.
So let's do one of those. Stretching your body is a little bit like baking a cake. If you want the exact result, you have to measure everything and follow the recipe perfectly. So if you wanted the perfect stretch, you would need to do it exactly as you're supposed to to do it right.
But if you were really hungry, it wouldn't really matter. Just throw together whatever and I'm going to eat it anyways. That's where your body and most bodies are. It doesn't really matter what you do.
As long as you do something, it's good enough. Stop worrying about perfection before you have consistency. For me, it's only perfect if I pull a little bit extra here. But the reason I know that is because I've been doing it for years and years and years.
For you, it can feel really bad right now as long as it's not hurting. It just feels really weird and wonky. That's fine. You're learning something from that weirdness.
So no matter how shitty your cake is today, at least you're baking. That's the attitude that's most helpful, I think. A couple of more breaths here. And then grab the belt with left hand and let your leg fall out to the side.
And again, if you have really long, heavy legs, laying next to a wall where the wall is supporting you could potentially be helpful. If you need to bend the knee a little bit, that's also fine. When you're bending the knee and straightening the leg, you're stretching different muscles normally. So whatever works right now is good enough.
Inhale through your nose. Holding the breath. Exhale through your nose. For those of you that are super flexible or have no problem doing something like this, the next time you do this, you could grab your foot and point the knee down.
For me, this is a great front of the thigh stretch. That's just there for those that need it. Come back to center. Switching the arms.
Right hand grabs around the foot. I really like pushing my thigh out and rolling the thigh out like this. Because then when I roll to the side, I have a lot of space in my lower back. We tend to be a bit crunched up here on the top.
So doing this a little bit can feel really nice. I also like more to have a bent arm than a straight arm because this is too much for me. Find out what works for you right now. If you want a really nice shower, you need to take the time to tweak that turn into the exact tenth of a millimeter precision where the water is just warm enough.
The same can be true here. If you want the perfect stretch, you have to take the time to adjust until you feel that is great. But most likely it's good enough. It's a lot better than nothing.
So don't be a perfectionist until you have lots and lots of experience. Take three more deep breaths here. Then come back to center, lay down in Shavasana and feel your hips and legs be a bit more even. Now I'm going to give you a couple of options.
So this one is called the hammock. If you have a long enough belt or a strap, you can make a loop on your strap or belt. And then this one is really short. You would hook around your head like a bandana and then hook the foot through.
This is ridiculously short. It should be up here. But the point is that you want the weight of the head to pull and stretch the hamstring. You both get a neck stretch and a hamstring stretch at the same time.
This one is called the hammock. When it's about here, it feels really good. This doesn't feel super good, but that's fine. That's one I really like.
And then a variation. Instead of holding with this hand, you could hold with the other hand like this so that you're stretching your side. So this leg is helping stretching this side. This one is one I really like for myself.
Love this one actually. And then like I said, grabbing this foot here can be super, super stretchy and intense. But just staying here for a couple of minutes gives you basically a full body stretch. So you can experiment with some variations.
But I would say if you have the discipline to do 15 minutes before going to bed or even in bed before you go to sleep, this is going to both improve your flexibility and mobility and also make you feel really good and sleep much better. So thank you for doing the class. See you in the next one.
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