Healthy Knees for BJJ: Flexibility & Strength Guide

But what we want to go for here is extension and rotation. We want to twist to the right so we don't want to push us this way. If we do that we get a nice shoulder stretch. But what we're looking for here is to get traction in the right arm.

So if you pull on the belt you're going to automatically twist to the right. So what we've done here is connecting the foot to the shoulder and by that we get a little bit of support when we lean back and lean forward. So it doesn't matter where you have the left hand but try to ease into this position. Maybe you're here easing here.

Maybe you're here easing here. Take a few rounds of breath and just feel how this affects your legs and your hips. If you feel any knee pain when you're stretching, for example if I'm super inflexible here and I press the knee down I'm probably going to feel it behind my knee. Then I'm overdoing it.

I'm over killing. Then I should put the hand under the knee, put something under the knee or just back off a little bit and do an easier variation of that stretch. You never want to feel knee pain while stretching. Make sense?

Very good. Let's move forward. Next stretch. Let go of the belt.

Stretch the right foot out and put the left foot on the outside of your right knee. Wrap the belt around you. This time wrap the other arm, the left arm around and feed your belt to your left hand. The belt is around the ankle.

I want to be able to sit up straight here. The belt is helping me to put support on the lower back. From here I push the foot down. Maybe I pull the knee and twist to the left.

The usual variation for this pose is this one. This is usually where people sit. What we want to do here is this. But this is not possible for most of us.

So instead we grab the belt and roll the shoulder plexus to the outside of the knee. So lift and extend. Slow the twist and adjust the belt until you find just the right spot for your shoulders, your hips. You want to sit down equally on both sitting bones.

So both buttocks to the ground. The right arm can be working. You can pull the knee in but you always want to pull in the left arm so your chest opens. Because there is really only one way to actually get more flexible hips.

That is stretching and breathing at the same time. If you are stretching and not breathing you are not going to be in the pose for long enough to feel the effect. I hope that makes sense. So if you can breathe you can stay there for longer and you will get much more out of the pose.

Next stretch. Lay down on the floor. No sorry this one first. Next stretch.

Put the left foot out in front of you like the traditional one is here. But we want to put the foot far out and feed the belt. First put the belt in the left hand and then grab the belt with both hands as close as you can. And the shoulder.

I am going to twist so you can see. The shoulder works back and the chest works forward. I feel it a lot here. Maybe you will feel it more in the hamstrings.

But we want to connect the arms and wrap the arms around the legs so the upper body and the left leg is connected completely. And from here we want to lean forward and drop the head. If you feel pain in the hip flexor just move the foot out some more. Experiment with moving the foot around.

Moving your weight from side to side. Maybe even coming down further down. Make sure you are breathing. And get back up.

Ok let's lay down on the floor and do this one that we did before. Ankle on top of your thigh. Wrap around the thigh or around on the front of your shin. So this is the normal variation where you maybe support the inside of your thigh with your left arm.

If you have been doing this and you don't feel that much in this pose this can be a nice variation. Put the right foot down and hook your shin with your arms. If you are a guard player and you want to stretch the outside of your hips and your booty this can be a really nice one. And just like in triangle where you never want to triangle over the foot.

You want to triangle over the ankle and flex the foot. This is to protect the knee and make the triangle tight. To protect the knee here we flex the foot and make sure we engage the muscles around the knee. Make the legs stiff but try to at the same time relax the part of your hip that you are stretching.

This is difficult the first time to try but eventually you will get the hang of it so you are not either on or off but you can turn some muscles on while you are at the same time relaxing other muscles. Two more deep breaths wherever you are. And slowly stretch the left leg. Put the ankle back on top of your thigh and grab with your hand on the ankle or if this is not accessible just wrap the belt around and move your foot to the ground.

So you are laying on the right side and you are putting the foot firmly down on the ground. This is a super intense stretch if you push the knee away and roll the left sitting bone down. For me this one is super intense. We don't have to be here for so long but it is actually a really comfortable place for the upper body so you don't have to go super intense.

You can just slowly push the foot down, roll the left hip down and back and gradually move the knee further away. So here I don't feel anything, here I start feeling something and here it is too much. So find the golden middle. Maybe lying down here and imagining how crazy of a guard you will have and you will never have knee pain if you do stretching like this every day.

Every millimeter that you can increase your mobility in the hips helps you to get so much. Just a little bit in the hips makes a big difference in how far the feet can move. If you stretch your booty, hips and thighs one millimeter each, maybe the foot will sink down two more centimeters in upside down guard and that will be enough in many cases to defend a guard pass. It is consistency and it takes time but it is so worth it the day you didn't get passed and you won the final.

Let's do the other side. Just check how those both sides feel. Do you feel any difference? I know I do.

Stretch the right leg, wrap the belt around your right foot, wrap the belt around you and feed the belt to the left hand. Place your right hand anywhere you like. Press the lower back against your forearm. If you pull in the belt you will twist to the left and if you lean towards your right you will open up your lower back, your hips and you will stretch the back of your leg at the same time as you get a shoulder stretch.

This is everything happening at once. So if you can find a place where you get a bit of stretch everywhere, that is the best place to be. Two more deep breaths here. And slowly get out of the pose.

Put your right foot on the outside of your left leg, wrap the belt around, feed the belt to the right hand, put the foot down and grab right hand. If you can't do this, you can do this. Feed the belt to the right hand, put the foot down and wrap around your right knee with your left arm and try to lengthen the spine. Look to the right and pull the knee towards you.

So the left arm is working but the hip is relaxing. The right arm is working but the chest, the neck and shoulders can relax. As a white belt in your first competition you use 100% of your muscle power all at the same time and you get a blackout and you get cramps and you get blackouts, you get a cramp and you get lactic acid in your muscles. But the more you practice and the more you compete and especially the more you do yoga, the more economy, the more preservation of power and stamina you will learn to develop.

So learning to engage some muscles and relax others is invaluable to your GH2. It's going to improve your GH2 so much just to not overusing your power. Get out of the pose, put your right foot out to the right, wrap around, grab the belt, find that even. So if you're sitting like this, try to move the right foot so you can sit on both sitting bones.

So as you can see I'm super different, I'm really different on this side, I'm super imbalanced in my hips. But the more we stretch the more balanced we become. I can actually grab my hands around here. So if you want to grab your fingers you can do that or if you just want to sit here that's fine too.

But find a place where you can be comfortable but when you're feeling the effect over time. So if you feel intense effect over 5 seconds it's not going to help so much but if you feel the effect becoming more and more profound in a minute that's what you're looking for. So if you can sit in a pose for a minute and you can really feel yourself sinking into it then you know you're doing it right. Make sure you're breathing into your belly.

And two more stretches. Lay down, ankle onto your thigh, interlace your fingers. This is the classic one that we did in another video. The variation is hooking like forklifting your shin with your arms.

And if you would happen to be super flexible you could extend the leg here and there but for me this is too intense I'd much rather be here flexing the foot. And feel the stretch on the outside of my right hip. So when you see Eddie Bravo and all their rubber guard players it's not that necessarily that their knees, the knee joint is loose but their hips are super flexible. Their thighs are really able to extend a lot.

So this is what you're looking for. You're not looking for softening the tissue around your knee but being able to extend the thigh muscles more and having the tissue in the hips to be more loose because that's going to help everything. If you stretch the tissue around the knee it's not good for your knee in the long run. Nice, last pose.

Ankle back to thigh, grab your right ankle with your left hand or put the belt around. Put the right foot down to the ground. Place both shoulders down. And press the right foot down and move the knee slowly away from you and the right hip down to the ground.

So doing this little sequence that we have done now for 20 to 30 minutes a couple of times a week. If you had knee pain before like medium knee pain it is possible that it's going to go away. And if you prefer to play on top and you start doing stretches like this regularly maybe you're going to start liking guard playing. I was a 100% top player but the more my flexibility increases the easier it is for me to play on bottom too.

So if someone sweeps me I'm okay with being on the bottom and paying back, maybe sweeping back or maybe even doing a submission from the guard. So it's not that guard is bad for top players that have stiff hips, it's just a matter of stretching the hips a couple of times a week, maybe more but start with a couple of times a week to do a stretch like this. And I think you're going to experience a big difference especially in defending guard passes. Oh, check it out.

So for me before I couldn't even put on socks because I had so much pain in the lower back and my hips were completely locked and so stiff. I couldn't even put on socks. I had to really lay down and help myself to put on socks. But I'm not far away from getting the foot behind my head now and my guard game has gotten several hundredths of a percent better.

I'm so much better in guard now from doing a couple of years of stretching so that's why I want to share stuff like this with you guys. I want you to have the same opportunity to heal from injuries and improve your jiu jitsu with simple things like this. It's not rocket science, it's your body. So taking care of your body is, if you want to do jiu jitsu for the rest of your life, taking care of the body is top priority.

So I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thank you for watching. See you in the next one or see you on the mat.