Inner Thigh & Hip Opener: 12-Min Yoga for Rocks Class for Grapplers

Ancient motherly wisdom right there. Let's move towards the left leg and turn this stretch into a deeper butt stretch. Hands in front of you, move the other way Mia so that the left knee is forward. Oh yeah, we're doing it, never mind.

So left knee points forward, you're in a plank pose but the left knee is carrying a lot of weight and from here the more you release, the more you let go, the more intense the stretch will be. So we're not going from plank, boom, done. We are taking our time to slide back slightly, keep the arms engaged, the more weight you have into the hands, the less of a stretch there will be. So just like you are a professional in your shower at your home, to adjust the heat and the cold of the water to an absolute perfect, accurate intensity or heat, the same kind of subtlety you have to develop when you go into a pose like this.

Not too fast, not too slow, not too intense and if it's not intense enough it will be boring so you have to find this perfect spot and take a few breaths. I wouldn't say that it takes a lot of hard work to get big improvements in a Yoga for BJ practice but it takes consistent work over a longer period of time, usually longer than we expect. Usually we're going for the instant gratifications and the fast rewards and the shortcuts but unfortunately no money in the world will be able to buy you progress, only effort and consistency will buy you progress in this. Ok, switching sides.

So now the right knee is forward and the left knee is back. Half swastika position, switching between moving back into the back leg and the back hips and doing a push up on the front hip. There should be a certain level of pain here, good pain, not sudden crippling pain but kind of a nice juicy aching pain when you go deep into the pose. Find your rhythm and most likely you will have to slow that rhythm down 5-10%.

Really good news, your body is the most adaptable thing in the known universe. The human body can adapt to almost any situation. Even your crazy schedule and the stupid ergonomic angles of your work chair, your body is super malleable and adaptable. This is great news because if you push it through a practice like this for long enough it will adapt.

Not to every pose but to most poses, the poses that matters. Move this into a plank pose with the right shin under your belly so the heel is more or less under the left hips. It doesn't work if the foot is under the right hip, you need a certain angle to get into your right ass cheek. And what's counterintuitive is that the more you force down into the ground the less intense there will be, the more you are able to relax, the more intense the pose will be.

It's a weird correlation but when you get the hang of it the reward of being able to relax will give you more sensation, more intensity. Three more breaths. Every millimeter that you can go lower here over the process of weeks and months, every millimeter will improve your guard, your lasso and your open guard, an order of magnitude more than the effort you put into the yoga. That is why this practice is so damn efficient for Jiu Jitsu because you don't need a lot of time in yoga to see massive improvements in Jiu Jitsu.

Yoga progress takes time but Jiu Jitsu progress is much faster. I would say in this specific pose we're taking the back, putting hooks in. Right, good point. Me I will do this kneeling, I will do it standing.

My proportions let me do poses like this with ease and I get more efficiency out of doing it like this. Me I does it like this. So I go from side to side with the elbows touching the inner thighs, kung fu stretching like this and Me I goes one leg out moving back and forwards. Inner thighs, inner thighs.

Crack, crack, says the hips and knees. Switch sides Me I. So we are intentionally doing different things, Me I and I, because Me I is slightly stiffer than I am and I also want to show you where the goal is to be in a stretch like this. This is the start but this is the final goal, to be able to go deep into your hips, sit down with ease, come up with ease and this you're either born with this gift or you have to work really hard to be able to do a physical feature like this.

But there is no way to measure it, there is no way to compete in it. This is just one of these things that will be very very good for your jiu jitsu progress but of course also imagine being 85 years old and still be able to do the stuff that the 20 years old can only dream of. That is a super power that we could all work hard on achieving. Alright, see you in the next video.