Hips & Core Strength for BJJ: 54-Min Live Class

We will do some guard-specific movements today. And then something most of you don't do at all is backbends, side stretches, and twists that counters the hunched back that we have in Jiu-Jitsu. We will add some of those too. And you lazy bastards, you only drill and do your techniques on one side, which means that your body is really uneven after some years of Jiu-Jitsu.

So we make sure that we do things equally on both sides. And all these small things, they really stack up. A percent here or 5% there. When you add them all together, you can even feel 100% better after an hour.

Welcome, no worries for being late. No blame and no judgment. Hey. Brother, join me over here instead.

I'd like to see you. That's the price for being late. Have to be in the front row. Nice, now flip over to your butt and rock and roll a little bit.

So rock and roll. Yes. Try to touch your toes. Maybe add in a little bit of balancing on the butt.

Move your neck. And then grab your inner foot with your right hand. The left foot is in Butterfly. The instep, touch it a couple of times, push from behind, split the leg.

Same thing but a few times, instep each leg in front of you, double it a little, your leg comes back behind. And lift the half foot up to the back of the foot. Grab your inner foot with your right hand. The left foot is in butterfly The other leg is in K guard and then just chill out here and stretch a little bit So lay down and you can stretch your leg out until your hamstrings start screaming and then bend the knee all the way in And then switch sides And then keep the leg up and then just switch the hand so you're Catching across toward the opposite foot and then you're twisting that foot all the way to the ground for a spinal twist And Then keep switching the hands, but don't switch the legs you're going from side to side like a tick-tock motion With your leg and the hands keep switching Both of these movements are completely necessary When someone has broken through some of our defenses when we're playing garden Same thing second side switch legs Say good morning Say good morning and sorry to your lower back Now straddle your legs feet up in air arms out like a tee and Then move both feet together And then switch sides So both some flexibility but also a lot of trunk muscles core muscles If you want you can move your neck the opposite direction if your neck agrees with that Otherwise just move your legs If you want you can move your neck the opposite direction if your neck agrees with that Otherwise just look follow the feet with your gaze Feet in the ground lift your hips squeeze your butt 10 seconds in bridge Squeeze your butt even more We lift one leg in the air Squeeze the the butt that is down even harder use the hamstrings as well.

Nice and then switch sides Switch legs Nice and then start rocking and rolling again Arms up tilt the hips forward as much as you can. So do this. And then arms up inhale exhale reach as far as you can and Then inhale arms up exhale touch all touch the feet with your hands and Then inhale as you prepare and then try to touch the feet to the hands in upside down guard and then keep going So you're touching the feet in between each time It's nice to have a strong core, but if you can't use it in movement It's not very helpful. The main role of the core muscles is to stabilize So when we do balancing stuff that is also challenging for strength, that's great for our center of gravity So when we do balancing stuff that is also challenging for strength, that's great for our center of gravity One more Nice and then let's do some pole dancing.

This is the pole And you're gonna try to climb the pole as high up as you can go for it Really use your biceps to pull and use your hamstrings to resist try to get your head up as high as you can and Then do three switches one Ready to go And then do three switches one relax your head two three and then pole dancing Relax your head switch one two three climb as high as you can Switch one two three Nice and Then rock and roll up to your butt. No stay in bridge stay stay in bridge stay down lift your hips and then reach one arm down to an ankle and roll up on your shoulder and Then switch sides so touch the ankle and reach as far as you can Nice now when you reach flip over to your belly and Then wide hands starfish position And then move the forehead towards a wrist and then scorpion the other foot towards the hand Don't move the hands. Just move from side to side trying to Take the foot as far behind you as you can And from there from the scorpion flip back to bridge and then find a flow between these two positions So the bridge pose and the scorpion starfish Just figure it out So you're doing the bridge bridges and then flipping over into the back bend And then you're going to flip over to the other side Bridge bridges and then flipping over into the back bend There are so many different solutions to this problem all of them are valid All Right nice come up to seated Super wide legs One knee moves down making a split between the thighs and then the other knee moves down and taps and Then switch and tap Get your neck involved as well Now Push your chest up like a rowing and then when you're switching sides arms forward head down So we get this cat-and-cow motion in the spine while we're doing this Nobody is going to like this one This is one of the those that we need to do, but we don't want to so you're sitting here No support in the ground lift the back leg Kick it out turn it and then back Front leg lift it up kick it out Turn it and come back switch sides Lift kick turn Lift kick turn and switch two more on each side Nice And then stop Come up into pigeon pose if you go high It's better if you're stiff It's better to go high if you relax more Then you need more flexibility But the point of this one is not to be flexible but to get flexible if the foot is back here It doesn't help so much the foot needs to be it needs to be some traction with the mat So get to a position where you feel your butt protesting a little bit and if you bounce it can help Or if you're relaxed that can also help I prefer personally to do some spinal rolls here So that I don't create as much tension as I'm trying to get rid of If you want a flexible guard this is probably the position that you should do every day Perfect to do before bed Perfect to do before and after jiu-jitsu switch sides Perfect to do before bed Perfect to do before and after jiu-jitsu switch sides Nice squat We can start high really high And then go down until you feel a position where you can be stable without any meniscus pain or MCL ACL LCL all the usual suspects And then go down until you feel a position where you can be stable without any meniscus pain or MCL ACL LCL all the usual suspects If I want to relax completely I need to support myself under my knees. You probably have some way of squatting where it doesn't hurt so much Lift one heel and place the knee in the ground Combat base Is the name the other foot has to be flat because we're gonna flatten the foot out and sit down Stretch a little bit And then come up into combat base Smoothly switch back to a squat And then here's the thing if your knees are hurting you are doing it wrong You need to figure out where to place your weight to do this smoothly Yeah And if this is the first time doing a movement like this Then you have some catching up to do You need to learn how to Place yourself So that you don't hang in your knees Yeah And smooth slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

It's really smart to do this slowly I'm going to repeat myself, but mobility for me is movement ability the ability to move with little effort Injuries are of course an obstacle but not an excuse for staying still Nice stop in a squat and then collapse the knee inwards like this now you can support yourself with the hands And if you want to try to collapse both knees and we sit down into 1990 and then up again You have long legs. This is extra hard, but you can use some momentum You can use some support and move your feet a little bit because if your feet are in the wrong place This is much much more difficult And if you're a crazy cupcake you might want to try without the hands at all Maybe too early in the morning for that One more on each side Nice on your knees Okay Push your hips forward two options keep your hand on the butt keep your hands on the butt or interlace the fingers And stretch your arms From here hop squat sit down and try to get your legs as high as you can Go for it So And then squat same thing Right Nice, okay sit down straddle your legs Time for some morning pilates Okay, hands in the ground lift one leg Two more times Second side And now both heads up Maya again One more hold for five four three two one awesome job Grab your elbows Lift your chest lift your elbows and then lean forward Again come up lift your armpits lift your titties and forward Forward four more times Don't round keep looking up keep lifting your chest. Yes three more Final one if you want stretch your arms Hats off Nice hands behind you squeeze your booty Lift your chest lift your head lift your face lift your nose Nice and sit down that was the prep now the real work knuckles lift your butt five four Three two one shake out the hands second side lift five Four three two one sit down The great finale Lift the butt or lift everything Five four three two Oh all fours spinal rolls Nice stand on up I want to move the camera. I want to get you guys on camera.

You're looking good Nice straddle Hands down touch one knee to the ground and come back up One knee to the ground come back up the problem With you doing it is that you don't have enough weight in the hands We want to load the hands and arms and chests and shoulder So that our legs can move more freely White belts in jiu-jitsu Are horrible at moving because they have all the weight in their lower body all the time you need to Support your lower body with your upper body and move the weight into the arms Stand on up again if you have knee problems i'm pointing at you If you have knee problems and had the countless surgeries I Strongly encourage you to support your knee with your hands when you're doing stuff like this and then as you're sitting down As you're sitting down Support yourself and come on up Make sure that the straight leg is supported by that hand if you do it the opposite way. This is extremely difficult Much better to create a triangle And support yourself behind you, yes And if your toes are hurting good it's good for you good for you Yeah Okay, look now we're going from here placing the knee down do it So Lift your hips push it forward then the opposite arm. So left foot right arm Right foot left arm reach for the heel back bend If you want to feel great in this pose don't do jiu-jitsu This is one of those poses that after hours of sparring we don't feel great in switching sides so Nice come back up to straddle combining these sitting down on the butt hands behind you doing a push-up And then you come all the way up to this one then switch sides look I sit down do a push-up I come up and do this one and switch sides one minute your turn go Smooth effortless movement ability. That's the goal.

It's not reality, but it is the goal So So Very nice now come back up to straddle We're gonna do a full 360 so hands down Walk your hands towards the ocean And then place the back knee down We're in a deep low lunge make sure that the foot is on the same level as your hands Your foot cannot be under you your foot needs to be on that on the outside of the hand You cannot be here. You have to be here Yeah now If the right foot is forward take the right arm up if the left foot is forward take the left arm up And then reach back and try to catch the toes If you can't touch the toes, it's a sign of spiritual and moral impurity Now that was a yoga joke. It doesn't work in this crowd. I'm sorry Then release walk let your head hang Over to the other side catch the foot with the other hand the other foot with the other hand So And then switch over again from side to side The transition is not getting from point a to b as quickly as possible the transition is the exercise Nice Stay there and and see what happens when you grab the foot from the outside now you can do more of this Relax your head too.

Yeah, see beautiful nice switch sides again in your own time Very nice One more And Then let's meet let's meet in standing straddle Interlace the fingers behind your back again And then fold as far as you want Great classic yoga pose that never goes out of style And this is not one of those poses that are supposed to feel great while you're doing it But as soon as we get out of it, we feel great Seems kind of pointless to do it at first but you'll get the hang of it Inhale and hold your breath. No stay down stay down inhale and hold your breath And then exhale and actually relax when you exhale see do that again inhale And exhale wider legs wider legs and then just release the arms release the arms And let your arms hang down. See that's it. This is where you want to be nice Come all the way up Hands on hips push the hips forward lean back as far as you can stay here for 10 seconds And come back up sit all the way down on the ground again A couple of tricky guard challenges catch the opposite foot like we did before sit on your butt Balance and then catch the other foot And release the first one And now do this same thing but on your back keep lifting your shoulder blades off the floor Weaving the lasso over And now as i'm weaving the foot over I'm switching to the elbow side to the hand that i'm grabbing i'm switching over and supporting myself with the elbow And then as I throw the lasso over to the other side, I self frame and then I go from side to side like this And if your guard recovery is so so And if your guard recovery is so so this is probably your homework, right?

Hip mobility core stability and keep lifting the shoulder blades off the floor And let's keep going for 59 58 No jokes jokes. These are yoga jokes. They're not meant to be good Okay Okay, sit on up just observe me for one moment, this is very very difficult to explain same grip Twist and then do not touch get your foot through And then twist Get your foot through don't touch and then twist your turn Okay Yeah Normal spinal twist And then get the foot through without touching it. Don't don't cheat and go through and grab it Really get the foot through using just the hip flexor and inner thighs And since the since the joke didn't work before i'm gonna tell the joke again if you can't do this it's a sign of Spiritual and moral impurity now.

It was funny now. It was funny. Yeah Yeah Two more on each side this looks good. It looks funny at least to me.

It looks really funny Okay, sit up just forget it ever happened Grab your shins and do a full 360 just roll around like this And then roll the opposite direction You're about as graceful as eggs Okay Graceful egg jitsu Okay now the ultimate challenge No grabbing just move sideways. Yeah, you know it you know it you hate it that's why we do it Yeah, everybody move towards the ocean to avoid the frontal collisions, yeah stop Now the real challenge flip over to the belly Catch your ankles Lift lift lift filip don't be a lazy bastard lift nice And then arms forward superman And then don't touch the ground with the arms or legs flip back. What man? And go this opposite direction Whoops, uh, whoops, uh, whoops, uh, whoops, uh And then flip over do the same thing We have 30 seconds guys 30 seconds of your life you can endure absolutely anything for 30 seconds if you just Decide to lift guys.

Don't be lazy lift lift. Yes, and now superman Flip over no touching the ground One more full round. Oops. Uh, oops.

Uh, oops. Uh. Oh, yes Oh, yes And then flip over one more time Catch the ankles not the feet catch the ankles and then pull your toes towards me Move the fingers down so you're holding on to the ankle not the foot and then flex the foot towards me toes towards me Yes Lift up up up up up superman flip over final round And we go we should have had better music for this Rata ta ta ta ta rata ta ta ta nice one more bow pose flip over Catch the ankles the shins And then push the feet up use your legs to lift higher. Yes, that's it Yeah, you can even catch down there and then do this with your feet.

Yes And then die relax I apologize. I apologize All right sit up I went to camp in malaga last week and one guy is like Give me three positions That I can do every day for hip mobility. I'm like just three like yeah, how many minutes do you have like six minutes? Every day.

I'm like, okay, then you have to be really effective. So this is like uh, We many of you did it before but I think this is one of the the best ones if you do it slowly So let's do it together. This is homework for hip mobility. It's a full three six everybody do this arms out The arm goes all the way the other one works.

All now we're going to do the same thing But with the legs so from straddle start by swiveling your legs It's completely straight knees It should hurt medium medium pain And now slide into 50 50 catch your knee and your foot and come up and bounce in pigeon pose And then come all the way up and swivel the foot under so now we're in half straddle And you're not going to come back now you're going to do the opposite you're going to take the foot out And then slide the foot out. I'm sliding the mat really smart. Yeah Then sit down we call this one soccer stretch because they do stuff like this in soccer. I don't know why And then we're back in straddle So really quickly we did this came up and then Slid out again, and then we did a full 360 try if it looks Awful, i'm gonna coach you more but try try on your own Coming all the way up swivel under And then sliding out maybe touching the foot So This is just as difficult as a arm bar sequence from close to guard like there are so many things you need to figure out To do it correctly So Well, I believe I truly truly believe that it is because we don't do things like this that we get injured most of the time We can have ego and not tap in time.

That's one type of injury But wear and tear injuries as well as moving incorrectly at the wrong time injuries are extremely common So I believe that this this is what your hips need in order to protect the knees from ligament damage One more So Nice and then sit down in straddle Reach with one hand or the other hand just from side to side Nice So we just did the one one of the three exercises that I recommend doing Every day if you only have three six minutes and three poses, this is the other one Let's rock and roll So And then sit up into a figure four position So from crossed ankles you put one foot over Support yourself up into a kneeling figure four From here you spin around And then you squat down into figure four on the other side and really take your time to lean here lean so that you Get a deep hip stretch And then release roll back And do the second side Yeah, so again So This is called a dragon squat and the dragon spin easier to remember Now instead of rolling back we add in what we did in the beginning so from the figure four we step back into 50-50 No, 1990 And then we switch sides Step forward into figure four Then we do a spin And then we step back into 1990 switch over to the second side and now we're doing full 360 movements This is the second exercise that I think Will help your hips tremendously There is some flexibility in here but lots and lots of movement ability challenges Yes And you're supposed to feel clumsy you're supposed to feel bad because it's the first time doing it This is jiu-jitsu without an opponent your stiffness is the opponent keep going Do the second round do do the other direction as well So Now speed it up a little bit let me see you do it a bit faster Smoothly the figure four the honest answer you don't Nice okay beautiful Now Learning the moves one by one that's technique and drilling How do you actually have fun with this imagine doing jiu-jitsu without ever rolling? Yeah, that's what how I think about yoga it's like you don't get to experience it So take a few minutes And let's say four minutes and try to connect your favorite moves With some of the moves you have learned this weekend tomorrow the class tomorrow sunday We just be a flow and stretch not a class like this It would be like 30 minutes of chill movement and then 30 minutes of stretching It's gonna be like a goodbye class much more chill So the stuff that you learn this weekend Try to put them together into a freestyle flow Just do jiu-jitsu with yourself self shadow jiu-jitsu And if you don't really have any idea what to do just look at me I'm gonna do it slowly and you can copy just look around or just close your eyes and feel your way forward okay, so spread out a lot and then four minutes of just Getting into the flow state just like shadow boxing, but jiu-jitsu just move roll over the shoulder Play guard play top. Okay, let's do it go Freestyle flow Oh So You Uh Two more minutes Um very nice Hey So Last minute what a way to start today Oh Nice Settle down cross your cross your ankles Just walk your hands forward and relax So If you're feeling demotivated or overwhelmed I apologize That's on me because I add in everything I like to do and that I want to share In one class, which is a really bad idea. It's like teaching eight techniques in one jiu-jitsu class It's not really fair.

But If you have a good attitude You might be able to hand pick some of your favorites and add that in Into your movement repertoire And I am certain that your lower back will be really grateful for that Come on sit up switch the crossing of the legs Same thing just add a little bit of a twist So I think you can get away with one really hard strength session every week and have lots of Of the physical benefits from that But you don't get away with doing one mobility session a week You need to do at least 15 minutes a day in order to have a chance of surviving jiu-jitsu Jiu-jitsu And if you are smart enough to replace your warm-ups your jumping jacks and your burpees With these types of movements instead You're doing yourself and your students a huge favor Let's do everybody's least favorite the frog so on all fours feet out If you feel it in the hip joint in the front you're doing it wrong move forward or backwards until you feel it in the inner thighs And if you're an efficiency fanatic then squeeze really hard for five seconds and relax for 10 That's kind of the the turbo boost to the stretching Everything you want to stretch activate it hard and then relax it So Move forward onto your belly This is reading a book on the beach pose Chest forward pull your elbows back. Don't push and lift into your lower back rather try to stretch your sternum Away from your pelvis So you're trying to really stretch the front body If you need to pee Don't go too hard. You can't relax and do this at the same time if you have a full bladder And after some intense stretching of the front When you're done do a low plank and kind of curl your tailbone under you And then back to the first exercise we did And Just close your eyes and feel the difference between doing this now and at the start of the class You don't need to label it, but if you can find some labels to define the experience it could be helpful Here My goal with this class for you was that you should feel Better waking up an hour earlier than sleeping in sleep is good But I hope this was better than sleeping Okay Last pose butterfly So Grab your chains and lift your chest arch your back like crazy And then relax Thank you each and every one of you for coming this morning, I'm really really appreciated and I hope your Shoulders your spine your lower back your hips and your knees also enjoyed it. Thank you very much