Sebastian Brosche · 4 min · 755 words
Previously titled: Bulletproof Hamstring Strengthening
Hey guys, Joel Kreska, Sport Physiotherapist. Today we're going to go over some things to help bulletproof your hamstrings. And you may want to add this to the end of rehab if you've injured your hamstrings. There was a previous video that I put out on the process of kind of stepwise going through that.
This is a great exercise if you've had to go through that. Or if you just want to work on building strength in your hamstrings, I promise you this is one of the best exercises you can do specifically for jiu-jitsu because we're making sure that our core is active and it also really cinches in tight triangles. So this is like a secret little trick that you can use to make your triangles absolutely deadly. So what we want to do is grab a exercise ball and we're going to lay flat on the back.
And we're going to make sure that our hands are on the ground just to make sure that we have a nice stable base. If you've never done these, it's a little bit wobbly. Once you get used to it, it's really quite a breeze. You can choose to have your head lifted or down.
It really doesn't matter. But what we're going to do is tighten up our tummy, get our core nice and stable, making sure we've got a neutral pelvis. And we're going to have a straight line going between our heels and our shoulders. The next step here is we're going to try and pull the ball towards us.
Now, where people kind of screw this up is they will bend like this and then they're collapsing through the hips. And that is not helpful. That is not a move that we ever want to do in jiu-jitsu. Imagine if I have someone in a triangle and then I let my hips collapse like this.
I've completely lost control. So I want to make sure that I can lift my hips and so that I'm always maintaining that straight line between my knees and my shoulders. So it looks like this where I'm going to pull the ball and lift my hips at the same time. It's a little bit of stress to your neck, but most of us in jiu-jitsu should be comfortable with that.
And just make sure that you're putting pressure on your shoulders, not your neck. So again, I'm making sure there's this nice straight line. And then we lower down to here and right back up. And then as you get good at it, our goal here is to try and do this on one leg.
So what we're going to do is have the other leg sort of hover so that our knees are in line, making sure that we're not doing this. People do this a lot. And the problem with that is it encourages momentum to happen. And it also kind of gets this little bit of a torque through the pelvis.
So again, right now we're really trying to focus on neutral pelvis, not arching or flexing, and we're not rotating either. So we're going to be up here making sure it's nice and neutral, engaging our core, lift off here. And our knees are going to stay almost side by side as I pull the ball and lift my hips and back down. Now, when you're starting, you might want to use your hands to push into the ground to help lift your hips.
As you get better, you can obviously use less and less. And it's really important again when you're working at these. These are these seem not too bad. And then they get hard really, really quick.
So if you're going to be working on the single leg ones, I highly recommend that you start with a single leg, do, you know, two, three, five, ten, whatever you're going to do on both sides and then finish up with the double leg ones to kind of work on endurance. And what we want to try and the value of this exercise obviously is to coordinate our core with our hamstrings, but it really kind of helps get these hamstrings nice and strong so that when we do a triangle, we are absolutely rock solid. There's no budging. We're not sort of collapsing in certain positions.
So give it a try. I hope you enjoy it and I'll see you on the mat soon. Have a good one.
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