Sebastian Brosche · 13 min · 2,107 words
Previously titled: No Gi Cooldown 2020 06 06 14 56 37
Let's look at this cool down sequence that we call no-gee cool down just because it's assuming that you don't have a belt handy. You could of course do this one in a geek class and even people might be dripping from sweat after sparring. They should feel good doing this. Also if you have some friends and family sitting next to the mat, the class should be inviting enough for them to also be able to just jump in and join even though they didn't move at all in maybe 90 minutes.
So this is not an active class, this is a very passive gentle class mainly for the nervous system and for the joints and muscles but not at all in the same way that we have been doing in the active class. So this is something completely different. And also if you have people that they are doing the jiu-jitsu class but they for some reasons are not joining the sparring then they have the possibility to come back into the class and finish with this. Yes.
It should be an inclusive class. Everybody should like it. Starting on your belly, propping yourself up onto your elbows. The pose in yoga is called Svink's pose.
For some lower backs, I'm talking from experience, this can be really intense and painful. So you start everybody here and you tell them that if this is too much, walk your elbows forward, maybe grab your elbows or stack your hands and rest your forehead on the back of your hands. If you have really tight hip flexors, this is intense. The original pose with the elbows under the shoulders, you don't have to talk about rolling your shoulders back and stuff like that.
Just put people in the pose and tell them that they can either keep the head up or slowly relax the neck and get a nice stretch in the back of the neck. That's all you need to cue for something like this. And then instead of talking about the details, you just say, find a way to help them to relax. So maybe take a deep inhale and slowly relax and let the breath out.
Let the breath calm you down, for example. I would also because Svink's in this setting is a passive pose in vinyasa. This is an active pose. We push the floor away, activate the legs, the glutes.
This is not an active pose in this setting. So you could say relax your feet, relax your thighs, relax your glutes, relax your belly, just body part, just take out some body parts and tell them to relax those parts. You might think that saying relax your whole body cuts it and that's enough, but the brain doesn't work like that. If I tell her relax your toes, she might be relaxing her face, but it helps to kind of separate and take a deep inhale, relax your legs, just enjoy the pose, relax your fingers.
It creates a different vibe than just saying relax completely and being silent. Next variation of this one is pulling the knee, bend the knee and pull the knee to hip height. If you pull it higher, it's probably going to be really intense for the knee. So pulling the knee up to hip height, keeping the foot, it doesn't really matter how the foot is, but it's like the classic way to teach it is with the foot flexed, but of course taking account with the knee problems, your knee should not be hurting, you should feel it in the hip, but not the knee.
It's the same pose, just a variation with the leg. It's like the opposite of pigeon pose. Pigeon pose you try to stretch the glutes, so this is kind of a reverse pigeon, it's just the name I came up to remember it myself. I never used that name, it's just for me to remember it.
Same thing on the second side, nothing to talk about there. So this is for the lower back and the hips. Next one is counter pose. So whenever you've been more than a minute or two or three in a pose like this, like a passive pose, you need to counter it somehow and you need a pose that is not more intense than the one you did.
So the one we did can be intense, the next one should not be so intense. Turtle is a perfect counter pose to back bends and spinal things that we just did. So just ask them to come back into turtle, relax their shoulders and neck because many people tend to be stiff and tense in the shoulders. It's really important that you learn the term spinal things.
It's the clinical name, spinal stuff. Try to take three to five breaths here, just relax and counter the pose we did. You already know how to teach turtle, so use that knowledge. You know pigeon already, this is the next one.
You know how to teach it, just a super quick recap. You can do it from the square or you can ask them to fall down into S-mount. It's a good term for this. Thanks Martin for telling me that.
We'll try to find a good name. But S-mount, everybody who's done Jiu Jitsu for a while knows S-mount. So you're basically in S-mount and just figuring out how deep to go to get a nice stretch. Don't over complicate things.
People are so tired, you only have five seconds and then they will stop listening and just ugh. Same thing on the second side, so pigeon and then... And then it's on to our backs. Then it's down to the back.
No, it's not. On your butt. After pigeon, butterfly. So butterfly guard, feet together, knees apart, rolling to the front of your hips.
So people can choose how close the feet are to the hips. This is usually more intense. The further away, the usually easier. We could talk a lot about anatomy here.
We're not going to do that. And you can't do that in a cool down class either. You should not talk anatomy unless it's absolutely necessary, which it never is. So just ask people to find a good distance between the hips and feet.
So when you do that and they fail to do it, they didn't look good enough. So you put the responsibility on to them. In a pose like this, even though the pose is supposed to be relaxing, this is a type of pose that you have to start with them active. So you ask them to lift up, create length and posture.
And then they can stay here with the hands behind them and drop the head. Take a break in talking. And then say, if you feel like trying to go forward without grabbing your shins and using your biceps to pull yourself down. And the reason I say this is just to catch all the crazy people in the room who think it's about holding the breath, pulling deep, just like they're doing like a personal best in lifting weights.
So I tell them not to pull themselves down, but let the weight take them deeper into the pose. When I see people shaking and holding their breath in a position like this, which is it helps if they just did the 60 minutes of sparring because they're not going to have the energy to fight themselves anymore. I tell them to support themselves and kind of keep them away from going deeper by pushing into the floor. This for me, this feels really good when I'm super stiff.
Option to place the elbows in the feet, stacking your face palming. So face in your forehead in your palms is an option that you might teach or of course, stacking the fists or everybody should be able to have get the forehead to the feet. Otherwise, you're a bad person is something I would say here. Jokingly.
So butterfly after butterfly rolling down to the back. And this is a counter to butterfly because butterfly was a real round when you lay down on the back, the back is straight. So it's a nice counter. Stacking the knees over each other.
So stacking the thighs actually try to grab somewhere along the knees, shin, ankles or feet. Just grab anywhere and pull in without lifting your hip. If you pull in so much that you lift the hips, it's not a passive pose. It's supposed to be a passive pose.
So ask them to have a long relaxed spine and grab somewhere that gives leverage so that you get a nice hip stretch. And it took me a long time to figure out how to do this so that it fit my body and nobody was able to teach me this because it's so goddamn individual. The right hip is different from the left hip and where you grab it can take a long time to figure it out. And don't say that.
Just tell them find some kind of grip on your legs so that you get a nice stretch but keep your spine relaxed and keep your neck long. That's it. If it takes them five years to figure out how to do it, that's no problem. People have no rush.
This is first. Yeah, and this is you just first do one side. We do two poses on one side before we switch because they just go really well into each other. So this and this.
Oh, yeah. So from the cow face hip stretch on the back, you go into the you grab one knee, do a hip escape and do the spinal twist with the knees together or with the knees separate. We talked about the spinal twist before. We're not going to go over it again.
So cow face on your back into spinal twist on your back. Then you switch sides. And you should have done all your talking in the first round, which should be minimal. But now you're not going to talk at all.
Just tell them take a deep inhale, maybe close your eyes, exhale, enjoy and relax and STFU. Twist on the other side. Same thing here. Don't say anything otherwise other than to just help them get into the pose.
And then final pose, legs up in the air. If you have an academy with wall space, if people can place their feet up the wall. This is one of my favorite yoga poses of all time. Deeparita Karani means legs up the wall.
The gravity keeps the spine straight. The wall keeps the hamstrings stretched without you doing a thing. If you don't have a wall, you can stack the back of your wrists under your fleshy butt. And that way you don't need your core and hip flexor so much to keep the legs up.
So if you don't have your hands there and people are really stiff, they might be here and they're doing core, which is not very relaxing. So stacking your forearms under your hips, just keeping your legs up and relax as much as you can. You can't relax completely, but this is a lot better than doing nothing. Okay, so that's the cool down sequence without the belt.
Let's do a quick recap. Starting on your belly, Sphinx pose, stacking the palms and forehead. Maybe one knee up, maybe the other knee up. Then coming up into Turtle, countering that.
And then it's pigeon time. Pigeon or S-mount. Pigeon or S-mount second side. And then Butterfly, finding a comfortable position of the feet.
Starting active and then slowly folding forward. Breathe, relax, breathe, relax. Then down to the back. Cow face on your back into Spinal Twist.
Cow face on your back into Spinal Twist. Legs in the air or legs up the wall is the kind of Shavasana. So you don't do a Shavasana after this. Legs up the wall is the Shavasana.
And to summarize how long you should do each pose, between one and three minutes, depending on how much time you are. If you have 12 minutes cool down, then you would do one minute in each pose maximum. If you have 20-25 minutes, you would do more. And you have to figure out how long you should be in each pose to fit your time slot.
That's it for the Nogi cool down. Thank you for watching.
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