Lower Back & Spine Mobility for BJJ: 14-Min (10-for-30 #2)

This is really nice for the hips and spine and those two are like intimately connected with so much muscles and tissue and bones connecting to each other. So when you move the lower back and the spine together, for me, that's one of the nicest releases. This is one of my absolute top three favorite exercises to do. Switch directions.

So go the other way. I like to do this one quite fast, but you can slow down if you feel like you have stuff going on in your hips and lower back. Slow down 50% and try to really go super slow past that spot that hurts and then you can speed up again. If you're completely new to yoga, you really have to play the game of getting your muscles and your body to trust you because when you're hurt, your body has like shut down a part of one section of it.

You don't have access to this part because you obviously don't know what you're doing. So I'm just going to take care of this myself and just protect it. And that's why you're so damn stiff around the injury. Lay down on your back, arms out to the side, bend your knees and go with knees from side to side.

Press the back of your head down. So this might feel like a core exercise, but this is more just to get more mobility in the lower back. And with bent knees, it's not that hard. So you get a lot of movement in the lower back without putting any pressure there.

Do a couple more from side to side. And then stop with the knees over to the left. It's completely okay if both knees doesn't go all the way down. What I like to do here is like beach pose, place my hands behind my head and just try to breathe into the right side, the side that are facing the ceiling.

So never mind if the knees are not touching the floor, just try to relax them. But try to, we call it in yoga, we have a word for it, we call it elongate, which means trying to make the spine longer without using force or pressure. Like you just try to lengthen and I do that with my breath. So try to make your spine long without using muscle force and breathe at the same time.

Let's take three deep breaths here. Get back to center, arms out to the side again. Try with straight legs this time and only go to 45 degrees so you can feel your core activating. And if you can go deeper, you can go all the way down and bend your knees at the bottom and then straighten when you go up.

So we're still working the mobility in the lower back, but we're also engaging all the muscles around our spine and our belly, so core muscles all through your waist girdle are being activated. And when you activate a muscle, it's much easier to stretch it later. Couple of times from side to side and then stop with your legs over to the right. Doesn't matter if both knees are not touching the floor.

You can do beach pose again. Just take five breaths into your left side. And then get back to center. Put your knees close to your belly, catch your hamstrings and then use your heels to rock yourself up and down.

So you're kicking with your legs to roll on your spine. If you feel like interlacing your fingers or catching a wrist, you can do that. Just try to roll up and down in smooth rolls. This was the exercise that sold me to yoga.

I didn't really believe in yoga when I started, but when I did this one for five minutes, this was the first time in years that I could feel the mobility of my lower back increasing. Just rolling on your spine might seem like no big deal, but for me it absolutely was a huge deal. Nice. Roll all the way up to your butt, bend your knees and give yourself a big old hug around your legs.

So catch the wrist, catch your forearms, catch your elbows, catch as deep as you can and try to first squeeze in so that there is no gap between your upper body and your legs and then drop your head and slide your legs forward, but not so much that you lose the connection with your chest to your knees. Drop your head and your goal here is not hamstring flexibility. Your goal is to relax your spine and try to slide into the pose when it happens naturally. Don't push your feet straight, don't push your feet away.

Relax your neck, relax your lower back and relax your arms. If you're slipping, just keep slipping, don't try to resist it. You can help relaxing your lower back by breathing deeply, deeply, deeply, as far down in your lungs as you can. Take three more deep breaths.

All right. All fours. One of my favorite poses that I teach in class is the cat-cow. So we're in tabletop, we arch our spine like a cat and then we drop our belly down and hang with our belly like an old cow.

Okay, so exhale cat, inhale cow. Exhale. Inhale. Keep going, spread your fingers and work your neck and shoulder blades as well.

So move your neck and shoulder blades as much as you can. Try to really get alive in this exercise. Try to really get into it. Two more.

Nice. Sit down on your knees. If you can't sit on your knees, you can stand up as well. I'm going to sit.

Cactus arms and then gentle twist from side to side, super slow, not forcing it. You want to do it so gentle so that the muscles around your chest can relax because you feel when you go to the edge, there is muscles that fire automatically and try to stop the movement because the body knows fast movements can mean injury. So you need to do a few repetitions until the body is like, oh, well, there is no danger here so you can keep going and relaxing more. If your shoulders get tired, just place your hands on your head.

It makes the twist even softer. And if you want more leverage, you can straighten your arms. Then you have to go slower, but you also get more momentum. Stop in center, place one hand down in the ground.

Actually sit, let's sit down on our butt, cross our ankles and then go from side to side like this, just stretching your whole side body because this is one of the most underrated stretches when you stretch your side from your armpit to your hips. This is the muscles that I think for guys, strong guys, this is one of the most limiting areas of our body that we there are so undervalued to stretch. Side stretches are hard because it's hard to breathe when you go deep into it. But when you start relaxing these ones, you feel so much better when you start rolling.

Let's do two more on each side. Nice, sit down on your butt, close your eyes and just feel your spine from your tailbone to the top of your neck. Just close your eyes and take three breaths and just visualize your spine. Feels good, doesn't it?

See you tomorrow for the next body part. Ousss