Inverted Guard Prep for BJJ: 26-Min Yoga Class

And also for many Jiu Jitsu skills require you to base using your head. Okay. Shake your head out a little bit. Now we're going to fall from side to side.

I'm going to turn my butt to face you. My apologies. Keep holding on to your hamstrings and fall to the side. The feet are staying, but you just collapse to one side.

And then you use your elbow and your hips to prop yourself back to all fours. And then collapse down to the side. Practice this collapsing using your forearm, your elbow to frame and slow down the movement. Notice how my shoulder and my elbow is controlling the movement and helping me come back up again.

Couple of more times from side to side. Nice. Relax a little bit. And now this position that we're going to learn now I call the caltrop.

C-A-L-T-R-O-P. Go to Google if you need to figure out what it means. But I call it the caltrop because it doesn't have another name. So we're going to come into caltrop from exactly that position.

You're falling down. And then you lift up and lift your leg. So it's the same position we were. But instead of feet in the ground, we're lifting into a high straddle here.

And then coming back to the no hand down dog. And then lifting the leg into caltrop. Back to center. Caltrop.

So notice how my hand is supporting my thigh and my elbow is helping create a triangle base with my foot and head. So elbow, head and foot is the base. The other foot is lifting. I can bend it.

I can straighten it. But I need to learn how to get into this position in many different ways if I want to be able to invert safely and effectively. All right. Shake your head out again.

And then sit down on your butt. Straight legs. Point your toes away from you like this. And then flex your feet.

Point. And flex. And now add the rocking motion backwards and forward. So when you're going far forward with your nose, you point.

And then when you flex, you can round a little bit. So point and reach straight back. Flex and round. Five more.

So the chin is going towards the feet and then the forehead towards the knees. OK. Now grab your shins or calves or ankles and then go feet completely turn out and then spinal rolls here. And then feet up.

Grab your pants or your ankles and pull really hard with your biceps. So pull your chest forward. Three, two, one. Come back up.

Feet out. Spinal rolls relaxed, soft, smooth. And then pull really hard. Five, four, three, two, one.

One more round. Feet out, relaxed flow. It's really important to have hamstring flexibility when we try to invert. Otherwise it becomes hard or even impossible.

So we need to work our hamstring flexibility every day and especially right before we are planning to invert. One more grab wherever you can grab and pull really hard. Six, five, four, three, two, one. And here's a quick hack, life hack for you.

If you're trying to stretch, you also have to tighten those muscles and strengthen them while you're stretching. So we just stretch them. So look now, lift your hips in reverse plank. And then my lower back is a bit funky, so I need to do some movements here.

But we want to get as high as possible. And then lift one leg. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Relax, forward fold.

One more breath. And then same thing, second side. Lift the hips, lift the other leg. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

Come down, straddle position. Wide straddle, hands behind you for support or forward to stop a little bit and take five breaths. Okay, grab your left ankle and roll back down. Use the other leg to swing up and then swing as far back as you can, balancing on your shoulders.

And then you're switching legs. You're rocking up here into like an L-boat, would be the L-leg boat would be the yoga name for it. But you're rocking back, switching, rocking back up, finding the balance and trying to use the grabbing of the ankle to arch your back. So look at me, less here, more here.

And then you're rolling back, switching, rocking up, arching, arching, arching. Rolling back as far as you can and roll up to arch. Two more each side. One more.

All right. And then straddle the legs again and go as far forward as you can, pancake pose. If you can't pancake, grab your elbows, lean forward with engagement. If you need to support yourself and drop here, we're going to stay here for 20 seconds.

And then same position upside down, support your lower back or your hips with your hands. You can have your legs really high like this, spread the legs or drop them down low. Wherever you can support yourself is good. If you want to practice this one and you really can't do it, you can move towards a wall and rest your lower back against the wall.

But let's stay here for 30. Some of you might be able to put the feet in the ground, some of you eventually. If this hurts your neck a lot, you could do this on the edge of a mat so that you have one inch elevation from the floor for your shoulder blades and your head. That helps a lot.

Nice. Let's roll up to seated and then drop down to your elbow. Come up again from side to side. Simple.

And then drop all the way down to the shoulder and use the leg to kick up. Elbow shoulder kick up. Couple of times from side to side. Keep holding on to your hamstrings with your hands.

And now let's get into caltrop from here. Slowly first you drop down to the elbow, bend your knees and then push up where the shoulder is in the ground and the head could be lifted up. So I can lift my head off. And then you come back up.

Notice how my elbow is a key player here. Here. And come back up. I'm going to give you a minute to practice getting into caltrop from seated.

So we're in seated and then caltrop. Seated and then caltrop. Keep going. One more from side to side.

Nice. And then shake it out a little bit. Now let's remove the hands from the thighs and just have the arms behind us. So I'm reaching the arms behind me and then I go shoulder lift.

Coming back up to seated. Shoulder lift. Okay. So no framing.

Three times from side to side. If you still can't do it, it's because you're not bending the knee enough. You need to bend the knees first in order to lift up and kick high. Nice.

Take a break and straddle. Move your neck around a little bit. And then hands behind you straddle. Lift high.

Lift your hips as high as you can for 30 seconds. Lift, lift, lift, lift, lift. Dig your heels into the mat. Point your toes and lift higher.

Flex your feet and lift higher. Point your toes and lift higher. Flex your feet and lift even higher. Five, four, three, two, one.

Shake out your arms. And now rock and roll. Grab your knees and rock up and down. And now frame with your elbows.

Frame with one elbow like this. So you're coming into cow drop from rolling backwards. Rolling backwards into cow drop. One more from side to side.

And now the full circle. We're rolling over to our belly into Superman like this. Cow drop. And then sliding into Superman hold for three, two, one.

And then on the other side, turn your head towards the other side. And then into cow drop and roll up. And we're back where we started. So we're in straddle, rolling into cow drop.

Over to Superman. Hold for five, four, three, two, one. Move the feet and drag yourself up to cow drop. And then kick over.

And we're back. We're going for one minute. The reason why we're adding in the back bend is because when we invert, we do too much of the front side and not enough of the backside. So we need to counter with the Superman and the bow pose type exercises.

Just inverting is a really bad idea for your body. One more. Nice. Okay.

So sit down on your butt. This position that we're in now is called panda. So it's not a straddle and your elbows are tucked on the inside. Yes.

From here, from here, come into this position that we were in before when we collapsed to this side here. And then come into headstand and do a cartwheel. Okay. So again, I'm here in panda.

I'm coming down, collapsing. Coming up into headstand and doing a cartwheel. And then panda on the other side. One more time.

I'll show you. Fall down, headstand, cartwheel, fall down, panda. Your turn. Side to side.

Collapse, headstand, cartwheel, collapse, panda. Go. So this is one type of inversion where you are not folding over your neck. Many eutectic techniques demands you to have the height from the floor and base on your head when you're inverting.

Not all inversions are folding yourself up into a pretzel. Final one. All right. Sit down and relax.

Now, this has been the build up to the full invert. So we're going to use caltrop and the supported upside down guard that we did before. Remember this one? We're going to use this one from the seated.

So no framing. Arms behind you or just one arm behind you. Look. Arm comes down.

You're here in the collapse position. You come into caltrop. And then you support yourself with your hands. Then you flip over to the other side.

Again, arm behind you, collapse, caltrop. And from caltrop it's easy to come here and then over to caltrop on the other side and then up. See? Boom, boom, boom, boom.

Go. One minute. Obviously, if you don't need to support yourself and you have the hamstring flexibility, you don't need to support yourself here. You can just roll over all the way.

We have just spent the better part of 15, 20 minutes to work ourselves up to this. Instead of, like many of us in doing jiu jitsu, we expect too much too soon. Instead of preparing your body to do it over 15 minutes, we just jump straight into it and get hurt and feel miserable. Your body is capable, but you need to give it time and you need to teach it to do it right, break it down step by step.

Okay, we're done. Belly down. Catch one ankle. And I don't mean on the foot.

Below the ankle on the shin. And then lift up high. And then you go for the other one. Keep working until you get it.

And then let's say for 40 seconds. Five more breaths. And then starfish position. Open your foot to your hand and take seven breaths here.

Switching sides. Nice. And then flip over to your back. Shavasana, two minutes, relax.

Okay. Okay. Take a deep breath. Sit back up.

It takes determination, willpower and some grit to do this kind of practice. So I salute you for not having paused and quit. Let's follow it through to the end. And I ask of you one more thing.

Get goddamn consistent. That's one thing. Four words. Get consistent with this because one class is not good.

It feels good now, but it's not good enough. You need to do this consistently. So these classes that we put together or if you just take this class, do it consistently every week, every day. As long as you do it consistently, I guarantee that the results will be incremental and maybe even exponential to some extent.

So please do it more often. Do it regularly. And I guarantee magic will happen. See you in the next video or see you in the mat.