Sebastian Brosche · 15 min · 1,816 words
Class 4: inversion and criss-cross drills to build the spine and hip movement grapplers need upside down.
Welcome to the class. Let's start standing up. Stretch your arms out sideways and then roll your wrists under your armpits. And then interlace the fingers, stretch out and round tuck your chin to your chest and bend your knees.
And then take a big swimming motion like this. Inhale. And on the exhale, you rotate under and do the same thing again on the exhale. Again, inhale.
And exhale. Another one. And exhale. Nice.
Arms up, inhale. And on the exhale, touch your knees, your shins, your feet or maybe the floor. And then bend your knees and roll all the way up. Arms overhead, inhale.
Exhale, roll down. Come all the way up. And then cross your right leg in front of your left. Interlace the fingers, flip the palms, stretch as high as you can and then go towards the right.
So you're stretching the whole left side. Take a breath. And then keep your legs, but stretch the other way. And then center and then try to touch the knees, the shins, the feet, the floor.
Stop wherever you feel like you need to stop and then relax your head. It's okay that it's intense here, but try to stay there and breathe. Don't push further when you feel that you've reached the limit. Now roll all the way up, nice and slow.
Switching the crossing so that the left foot is in front. Same thing, interlace the fingers, reach up first and then go sideways. It's easy to compress and kind of lean forward here. Try to counter that by tensing up your back, opening your chest and then switching sides.
Keep the legs, but switch the direction where you're stretching. And then inhale up and exhale, touch the knees, ankles, feet, floor. Very nice. Sit down on the ground.
Cross your ankles. On the inhale, lift your chest and on the exhale, lean forward as far as you can. Inhale, come up without lifting your butt, go sideways and go as far down as you can. And then inhale center, exhale the other way.
Back to center, change the legs. Same thing, inhale, lift. Exhale, walk your hands as far forward as you can and take a full breath down here. And then come on up, go sideways.
On the exhale, come down and stay down for a full breath. And center. Last round, second side. Coming back up.
Stretch your legs out. Toes can touch each other, feet can be apart, doesn't matter so much. You can point, you can flex, but reach your arms up and use the back here. Don't sit like this, really go like this.
Inhale arms up, exhale, reach up, up and forward, up and forward, up and forward as far as you can. Try to touch your toes. And then lean back, round your spine now, just like I said that you shouldn't do. Now you round your spine maximum.
Come all the way down with legs up and then try to touch your feet to your hands. So reach your hands overhead and then come back down. So reach your hands overhead and try to touch the hands with your feet. One more time.
Nice. Now come on up to seated without placing your feet down, try to stretch the legs and touch your toes sitting on your butt like this. And then legs down, starting over. Inhale arms up.
Exhale, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach. Coming back, rolling down, trying to get the feet to the hands. And then rolling up, trying to touch the feet while you're balancing on your butt. One more full round, arms up, inhale, exhale, reach, roll back.
Feet to hands. And then come up to balance, touch the toes and legs down. Now roll back one more time. And then try to roll up into a squat.
For some of you this means supporting yourself with a whole hand or two fingers or just using a little bit of momentum you might be able to come up without the hand. Some of you will, some of you won't. But try to come up using as little support as you can. And then keep your butt back as far as you can when you're standing up.
So you're really hip hinging, you're not using your knees here, you're using your butt to stand up. All the way up. And as you're coming down stick your butt back, back, back, back, back. Coming down into a chest to knee squat before you sit down on the ground and fall back.
Same thing again, come up into a squat but this time knees together, lift your heels so that you're in a toe squat. From here using only your legs, not your butt, push all the way up to standing. And sit all the way down again. Rolling all the way back.
Coming up to your butt, left knee, left chin comes down. No hands in the ground, find a way to lift yourself off the ground. Stand all the way up and sit all the way down using only the power of your legs. Rolling back.
And back. Coming up. So right knee, right chin down, no hands in the ground. Coming up here.
All the way up. And all the way down. Okay? Now criss cross time.
Right chin in front of the left. Coming up here, maybe using a finger or two but as little support as possible. Coming up, standing up. Feet stay in the same place but we're rotating on our feet at 360.
And then coming down, sitting down, rolling back. Again rolling up. Left chin in front of the right. Coming up.
Don't support yourself on your knees. If you need support, put a finger in the ground and come up. This is functional practical mobility and this is one of these exercises that is a direct predictor of how long you're going to live. If you can't do this, you probably have a shorter life span.
Let's do one of each on each side. So roll up. Spin. Sit down.
And roll back. Last round. Roll back. And sit on your butt.
Very nice. Lay down on the back and hug your knees. Take a few breaths. Try to round your spine as much as possible.
Tense up your front. Stick your legs out at a 45 degree angle, arms overhead. And then without hurting your lower back, tense up and tap the heels to the ground. And then get your knees to your triceps.
Let's do that again. Stretch out on the inhale. And on the exhale, try to get your knees as high to your armpits as possible. Three more.
Inhale. Exhale. Lift the hands. Squeeze the knees.
Two more. And last one. Really connect the knees to your elbows or armpits for three, two, one. Relax.
Take a breath. Nice. Come up to all fours. Sit on your chins.
Hands in the ground. Try to get your knees on the same level as your wrists. You're on the same line here. And then lean forward.
Push into the floor and lift one knee to your chest like this. And then sit down. Shake your wrists on the inhale. On the exhale, lift the other knee.
Do a few of these. Lean forward so that your wrists and shoulders feel it. Two more. Last one.
Nice. Sitting down, relaxing. Take a break. Let's stretch the wrists out.
So either wrists backward like this or upside down. Whatever you feel like. Maybe just roll the wrists. This is my personal favorite.
Okay. We're going to tick and talk back and forward. The higher you are, the harder it is. So if you're brand new, wide hands, wide knees.
Start with the head back. If you're brand new, wide hands, wide knees. Start with the head really close to the ground. And when your feet lift, your head bumps down.
See? I'm really wide and my head is really close to the ground. That's beginner level. You need to find a place where your knees and your elbows connect.
If you're slipping and sliding here, it's very difficult. You need to bend your elbows and it doesn't work back here. You can't balance from here. You need to walk forward, far, in order to be able to balance in crow.
If you have the strength in the legs and the arms to go narrower and lift higher, do that. But we want to come down and lift up again. Sit down in a squat and shake it out. Find your way of doing this.
Let's spend a full minute working on coming down, coming up, and stretching it out. So even if you can bench press 600 pounds, it doesn't help you to use that strength if you don't have the coordination and mobility. So this is one of the exercises that everybody in the world that don't have injuries in their joints should be able to do. This is one of the absolute things, non-negotiable things that we need to aim to be able to do for life.
Even if you're 90 years old, this is doable. And if you can't right now, it's okay for now, but it's not okay for the long term. This is something that you need to be able to do. Maybe not today, but eventually.
Take a moment in squat, shake it out. And then lay down on your belly. Get the arms out sideways and see if you can place your left foot close to your hand. Don't move the hand down.
Just keep your arm where it is and twist on the belly like a T and then get the opposite leg to the hand. So left foot to right hand. Take three here. And switch sides.
And come back to seated. It's not how much we do, it's how often we do it. And if you do this type of class every day, you will have the same results as if you did 20 pull-ups every day. If you did 20 pull-ups every single day, you'd have a strong back.
And your mobility will improve extremely quickly because it's much easier to fix mobility issues than weakness and injury. And we will prevent so many injuries when we become mobile. Not only when we're really old and we don't want to fall and break our hips. Right now we will prevent a lot of injuries when we get consistent.
So please make sure that you do this every single day. It's 15 minutes. You can afford 15 minutes. Just find a way to make it consistent.
Plan for it now. And I guarantee you that you will have great results. Thank you for practicing. See you in the next one.
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