Hamstring Stretches: 15-Min Flexibility Flow for BJJ (Part 3)

Like I said the bent knee is fine but make sure you're not sickling your foot so that your big toe is closer than your pinky toe so try to keep the foot flat as if you were standing in the ceiling with your foot and don't use the power of the arms again but rather use straight arms and fall back so the body weight is stretching not your arm power. If you don't want to train your grip here you can also wrap the belt around your wrists if you're going to stay here for a long time that can feel even better. Close your eyes and breathe in and out through your nose five times. Take one more breath here and a bonus breath and then release the belt and stand up on your feet.

Find legs like this straddle pose and catch your chins with your hands. If you have really inflexible inner thighs and if your arms are shorter than your legs then it might be hard to place your hands in the ground but if you can find your hands to the ground keep them there or stay with your hands on your chins. Let's do some push-ups here so inhale lift your chest look forward and exhale drop your chin to chest and relax down. So inhale up exhale down.

Let's do five more in and out. In and out. In and out. In and out.

Nice sit down on your butt. So those were two different ways to practice. First we did a static long hold and now we did the dynamic up and down thing that they work together they complement each other really well. So we're going to try the same seated.

static pose so bend your knees and hug your legs as much as you can. If you can catch your elbows fine if you can catch your wrist that's also okay but make sure that your chest is connected to your knees and that you can relax your forehead and head and neck down. Try to be as sloppy as you can here so no tension in your back your lower back and your upper back should feel like those muscles those muscles should feel like they don't have to work at all. Try to breathe so deep that you can feel your muscles stretching when you inhale.

Try to relax completely and if you feel that your heels are slipping forward that's absolutely perfect that means that your hamstrings and your lower back are letting go and releasing tension. If not just close your eyes and keep breathing. Let's take three more breaths here. I refer to this pose as a bent knee forward fold.

Alright let's sit up. So this stretch where you try to touch your toes if you have really inflexible hamstrings this tactic this strategy is a really bad one because now you're trying to be efficient by stretching both hamstrings. You have two hamstrings right you're trying to stretch them both at the same time. This means that you have twice amount of the resistance in your hamstrings than if you would be doing one at a time.

So let's try this bend one knee and relax the knee down if this hurts your leg just place your foot in the ground. Now let's try to do some dynamic stretching for the right hamstring so inhale lift your chest and exhale forehead to knee inhale up and exhale forehead to knee inhale up and exhale down. Let's do two more inhale and exhale. Last one inhale and exhale stay down here for three breaths.

And sit back up. One quick thing if you didn't feel this in the hamstring that's okay because if you're here in your lower back then that is what automatically is prioritized in your body so you might think that your hamstrings are the tightest part of your body but if you do exercise like this typical hamstring stretch and you don't feel it there perfect keep doing it until your lower back opens up enough for you to actually feel it in the hamstring. Let's do the second side switching legs. So lift your chest good posture inhale forehead to knee exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale.

Two more and stay down here for three breaths. And let's sit back up. Let's do one final exercise the splits. When I say splits you probably immediately get the picture in your head that you want to get your legs straight away from each other with your hips all the way down to the ground something like this.

So instead of trying to start there and blow out our hamstring attachment let's start in a low lunge which is your foot let's take the right foot between your hands and then drop your hips down as much as you can. This is a stretch for the front of our hips something we're going to work tomorrow or in the next video but we can combine the front of our hips with the back of our hips like this. You stretch your front leg as straight as you can engage your quads and flex the foot like this pull your toes towards your knee and then lean down so you feel a nice stretch in the calf all the way up through your hamstring and then we do it dynamically so we go forward inhale drop your hips down and when you exhale you walk your hands back and try to get your toes to your face and your face to your knee. Inhale forward this is called the half split so we're working a few thousand repetitions with this exercise before we get all the way down to the floor so this is the way to start your journey towards the full splits but inhale forward and exhale engage your leg but relax your neck so inhale and exhale inhale and exhale and if you feel like your hands can't touch the ground if you feel like you can't even be close to the ground with your fingers grab something some books or whatever you have around your pillows to reach down to the floor because if you're that inflexible that you can't touch your hands to the floor then you will have really fast development in the beginning because you aren't really that inflexible it's just your nervous system that is telling you this like it's so unused to do stuff like this so after a few hundred reps of this you're going to feel a tremendous difference your hands are going to get down to the floor much faster than you think switching sides left foot forward just go slowly back and forwards inhale when you move forward and exhale back so getting all the way to the floor with your hips is going to take a long time but getting your hands to the floor is going to be quick but don't try to be quick try to be super patient because the more you stress the longer it's going to take the more you hurry the longer you will have to wait so the more patient you can be the quicker your results will come let's do two more and sit down and that's it for today I gave you some new tools you can use the belt you use the dynamic stretches up and down and you use the static stretches and that any tool doesn't matter how good of a tool you have if it's just there in the toolbox you don't get any work done so you actually have to take these tools that you learn today and apply them you actually have to put in the time ten minutes every day from now on indefinitely like if you can put on they have the discipline to actually put off these ten minutes in a day that's 24 hours ten minutes is one six one six of one hour of 24 hours it's not much time in a day so you just have to put in the discipline to do these ten minutes and you are gonna be amazed at the results after you make it a habit see you guys tomorrow we're gonna stretch the quads tomorrow