Inverted Guard Yoga for BJJ: 21-Min Class (Day 5)

So if you didn't do it before you're in for a treat. Take half a minute here and let your chest open. You can bend the arms 90 degrees and if your arms aren't really touching the ground completely don't worry just find a comfortable angle so your chest and your belly is open. Three more.

Lift your hips up and move the padding to under your lower back so not so much under the hips more under the lower back and grab your hamstrings and pull the knees close to the armpits so hug your knees close and this is for sure a prepping pose for playing guard because you're spreading your knees apart and the less distance you can create between the thigh and the ribs then the guy has less space to enter and pass your guard so the inner thigh absolutely it's very important if you want a big wide guard in order to defend yourself but what we're going to work from here is also the reach of the guard because the longer you can reach your foot out to the side the more he has to pass around to pass your guard so if you can hug your knees in and then stretch one leg out and then the other this is a great exercise because our hips are elevated so it's realistic because that's usually what it is you when you roll back to defend the guard then your hips are lifted it's really difficult to do this when the hips are in the ground but you use your hands your she tear and pull the knees in so you don't have to actually use your hip flexors to defend you're helping the hip flexors with your biceps but you're working the hamstring flexibility in a real life really grappling scenario this is exactly how it is when someone is passing you and you need to put your foot there in order to spin around back to guard so just with some padding under the lower back maybe you need to move the padding further up the back or you need more padding but just hug your knees in and stretch the leg from side to side let's go half a minute more here for more each side all right and get back up to seated sit up on your padding feet together knees apart just flap your wings from side to side up and down and then walk as far forward as you can with your hands so either hands on the ankles feet or ground make sure you're not starting by tilting your hips back and rounding your head forwards tilt your hips forward lift your chest and from here if you can stay here for a few breaths then you're allowed to cheat and round your spine a little bit but cheating comes last posture comes first to start with posture and then as you breathe out seven eight ten times each out breath allows you to cheat a little bit more drop your chin to your chest let your head hang and breathe deeply up and down through your nose so three more breaths okay we're ready to work lay down on your back again legs up arms down your side so you can grab the floor with your hands of course keep your knees bent as much as you need to the more straight your legs are the more work is going to be for the core so i absolutely recommend starting with bent knees and then as you do this every day or a couple of times a week then you can start straightening your legs but what we're going to do is look to the right and lift your hips towards your shoulder look to the left lift your hips towards the left shoulder and then you just keep going like this lifting as much of your spine as you can over the shoulder all right so up and down down and up switching sides all the time so you build a little bit of momentum but the arms are keeping you from falling sideways so what you want to do is roll back on your shoulder not your neck your shoulder keep going three more each side one more four and then place your feet down the ground lift your hips and belly breathe here to stretch out your belly and the front of your hips so what we just did is a very realistic inverted guard prep because something you don't want to do is this you don't want to roll back and stay here because this is not a good position to be and you want to avoid this you only play the upside down guard you only invert when you're in trouble and you're not supposed to be there for long so when we learn to do this do a few more on each side when we learn to lift the hips sideways and be comfortable with the weight on our shoulder we don't actually have to injure our neck or our spine so you can go here even if your legs are up if you get used to not having the weight in the neck then you might be able to invert even though you're not super flexible you might be able to invert and then push back so you can go up and down but you need a lot of core strength and you need a certain amount of flexibility on the back side in order to do this so it's almost like you're rolling back and getting up to your knees but not quite you're just rolling up and down up and down and if we had arms or something to grab onto it would be easier to pull our self pull our legs in so when someone is pushing down on you don't push them away hug them in and try to catch something with your foot a leg an arm or a gi so when you roll back you catch and you just go into the upside down guard in order to hook an anchor it's like you're a thief and you're throwing one of these hooks over the over the wall so you can climb yourself up so you're kind of throwing it and hooking throwing it and hooking so before every session you do you can do this exercise as a kind of reverse sit-up so instead of working lifting our upper body we just lift our lower body up and down all right sit back up on your knees we're going to stretch this out so place something under your butt lean back if you have a wall behind you lean towards the wall and first breathe through the belly and stretch out the belly because we used it a lot in the last exercise you probably can feel that ah now engage the belly again and stretch the front of your thighs if you can get the the quads the hip flexors and the belly to work together in sync be synchronized with your breath then guard playing is going to be much easier especially if you can also loosen up the back side as well but it's not only the back side you don't only have to get flexible in the hamstrings you loosen up the whole back side and you strengthen the front side and make it work together with the breath and you probably have to do a few hundred or a thousand repetitions before things start making sense so imagine i was going to the gym with you and you were going to teach me deadlifts you would be you would think i was a complete fool as i said let's go for 300 pounds immediately you start with just the we just the the what do you call it the thing that you lift i don't remember the name in english but you start with that one and get the technique right and then you need a few hundred or a thousand lifts before things start happening so maybe in a month two months three months i can expect to actually see the difference or feel and see the weights like when i add on weights i can actually start to see the gains and it's the same thing here you need a few weeks a couple of months before you can expect results so don't jump into this and think you're gonna get immediate results because you're just gonna get disappointed you have to be consistent and you have to get through this pain and and disappointment before you get any results all right let's do a few more step the left foot forward right leg back inhale lift your chest and exhale try touching your face towards your knee so inhale push the chest forward exhale try to touch your head towards your knee keep going back and forth three more three next time you're forward move the hands on the inside of your left foot and if there is no space there just move the foot out to the side and try to really get your groin area down as far as you can go so your hands are bearing weight so that it's not too intense but if you need more intensity just move the weight around slightly and find that sweet spot where you can engage your right butt and push the hips down and take five here and switch sides right foot forward hips down inhale look forward exhale touch your face towards your knee inhale lift your head exhale lean back inhale exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale next time you're forward move your right foot out to the side get down as low as you can go and engage your left butt and push your hips down to the ground and take three step back to all fours walk the hands back and squat down and mix the down dog with a squat so it's a squat where you lean 50 of your weight into your hands so squat down as low as you can go and if you have knee problems then you can do this you can place something under your hamstrings so you're kind of squeezing an object between your calves and your hamstrings this can feel really good for the knees especially if you have meniscus problems drop your head and try to get your belly between your knees so really go as low as you can go maybe even the head touches the ground maybe not doesn't really matter but just try to get between your legs so you're again decreasing the distance between your chest and your thighs exhale and release all right so what have we have we learned from these five days well we have learned that it takes time to stretch out big thick strong muscles that are resisting like crazy so just as when you're a skinny person going to the gym it takes time and effort and dedication to build the muscle mass luckily for you you already have the muscle mass i don't think i don't believe that you're weak i think you're very strong most likely because i never seen a rock that is soft rocks are hard and thick and that's good news because that's gonna protect your body but when you do jitsu and when you play guard and start inverting it's gonna hurt your neck because there is too much resisting so if you loosen up the backside and if you learn to work the front side and if you learn to breathe and if you avoid actually rolling back over your neck which is just a stupid thing to do and you learn to use the angles instead and if you can stretch the hamstrings enough to get your foot enough to get an anchor then you can kind of start cheat playing the inverted guard together with the spider guard and not actually go into the double folded position which is like i said not a good idea anyways so i hope you enjoy this program even if it felt like a complete disaster i beg you do it if if that's the case if this was just horrible for you but you endured five days then do it four more times and then tell me it didn't work that you still feel like you have no idea what's going on there and you believe you're never gonna make it well maybe you need to get more willpower or maybe you need a few months because if i'm if i'm a 120 pound guy who never lifted anything else in a computer mouse you have to give me like three four years in the gym and on the jiu-jitsu mat before i'm gonna kick someone's ass and if you did jiu-jitsu you signed up for jiu-jitsu which is the hardest stuff you can ever do this stuff is easy you just have to give it time okay thank you rocks for for yoga and with me today thank you for doing the complete program see you in the next one or do this one again