Prop Workshop: How to Use Yoga Props for BJJ

Put everything down. Then we'll do it the other way. Lift everything up, squeeze the block, feed it to the right hand behind the back all the way into the left. Squeeze the shoulder blades, lift the chest for breath and then feed it to the left hand all the way in front.

Take a lift and then all the way down. So just a really good warm up for back bends and makes everything easier to connect, especially for newer students. And also for warm ups for sun salutations, we have different ways to use the block. So you can come to the top of your mat with a block.

And as yoga teachers, you've probably heard before the cues roll the thighs back or engage the inner thighs. So a way to have people do that without having to say anything is to feed the block between the thighs and just a cue to squeeze the block. So sun salutation with the block will be just block between the thighs. Inhale, arms up, exhale fold, squeezing the block.

Inhale, half lift while squeezing the block. Exhale, plank pose, small jumps or one jump back to a plank pose where you squeeze the block. Low push up or belly where you squeeze the block. Cobra or up dog while you squeeze the block.

And down dog while you squeeze the block. So it's just an easy way to get the connection that we sometimes really try people to understand in the yoga practice. Another thing in the sun salutations is to step forward with the leg that a lot of people struggle to. We have an easier way is to have blocks underneath the hands.

So hands on top of blocks and then reaching one leg out behind, rolling the knee forward. It will create more space for the foot to land between the hands. More challenge would be to put a block underneath the chest on the low or medium height and then roll the knee and get the foot over the block and between the hands. So it's just giving you something to see and to get the leg over with.

It can be really helpful. That's one. Yes, and also in the transition back and forth. Same thing.

You will have a block behind the feet so you can work on leaning into the hands and do a float up and back over the block. Also forward. You will bend the knees. You will have the block either the low, medium or high, depending on how much you want to challenge people.

And then working on floating back and forward. Yes, so also when we're speaking of the sun salutations, what we talk about a lot, what we see a lot is the shoulder dipper. So the shoulders are too weak. So you just collapse.

So a way to get people to understand that and not have to keep people in the low push up because that's impossible is to put a clear obstacle in front of the hands. I would always start on the hands and knees because it's hard for people to hold a plank for a long time while you're talking. And then finding the distance of the block, asking them to shift the weight forward and then just tap the front of the shoulder on the block. Notice if their elbow is in line with the wrist and the shoulder and then push off the blocks and come back.

And for those who want to try can now just tuck their toes, lift their knees and see if they can come into a low push up without the shoulders rounding and dipping forward. That's another great one for sun salutations. And let's see what we have more here. Yes, when we finish with our warm up and our sun salutations, we can come up to some standing poses.

And a really fun way to use the block in standing poses is adding some core into our standing poses. So if you step the right leg, it's easier to see. Say you're in Warrior II, you pick up your block and you take the block between the hands, arms straight and arms overhead. And now you keep pushing the hands into the block and you just start to lean over your right leg in side angle, side angle with core.

So pushing into the block, turning the chest to the side. This is a lot of core. So I would do dynamic inhaling, coming up, keeping the bending in the knee, exhaling, leaning to the right, inhaling, coming up, exhaling, coming to the right. That's a great one.

Another one is triangle. So you'd have the legs straight. And you will, you can use it the same way as you've always done, like just push, put the block on the floor. And now you can use the block to push your arm into and the top arm is reaching.

And now you will just feed the block to the top hand and see if you can hold that top hand up and just have the block bouncing in your top arm. So it will also help engage the top arm and then feed it back to the bottom arm. That's just one easy way up and down. So getting people used to the pushing of the bottom arm and the reaching of the top arm.

And now if you want to add, Sebastian was doing it now, like we were doing in Locust and Cobra, feeding it to the hand in front of you. So we'll add the side angle variation with the triangle variation. More core, but also getting the push and the lift. I would have a breath where you stay in triangle, a breath where you hold the block and a breath where you hold the block on top.

OK, and we'll do the same thing, only taking the block behind the back. So the Locust variation that we did, you will feed the block to the opposite hand behind the back and get the nice stretch. Yeah, it's easier if you have the back to them so they can see the block. So you can get the nice stretch and then you will release into triangle.

Take a breath. Feed the block to the top arm again. Take a breath. And then we can add again, feeding the block behind the back to the other arm.

Squeeze the hand, squeeze the shoulders. Take a breath and release the block to the floor. Triangle. Take a breath.

So it's just a really fun way to do the familiar poses like side angle and triangle. A little bit more interesting. And what we all need is a little bit more shoulder strengthening and also shoulder stretching. So we get both in just one.

So you can blend them in any standing pose, side angle, triangle, warrior two. And warrior one does also work with the squeezing and the feeding. Balancing pose. Warrior three, we can rest the block on to our back, low back, hip, not just in the low back, but both hip and low back.

And leaning forward and you will be revealed if you open your hips too much. The block will fall to the floor. So if you have a class and you want to focus on even hips instead of just saying over and over what they should rotate and where their legs should be, where their hips should be pointed. You could just have them put a block on the low back and upper or top of the hips.

Half moon. We all seen sloppy half moons. So if you want to have a strong half moon, again, we can do the block feeding. So pushing into the block is modification.

Easy way to use prop in half moon. The easy way is to feed the block to the top arm and hold the top arm with the block. And yeah, also gaze changing with the block is another challenge as you gaze for the block, change the hands. The bottom hand gets the block, gaze down, the top hand get the block, maybe gaze up, maybe fall.

It's just different ways to use it. Easy way, harder way. Yeah, you can do what we did in triangle in half moon, but it's going to be really hard for people, I think. But it's an extra challenge maybe for those who want it.

That's our balancing poses and blocks. We also have crow with blocks. So how to help in crow with blocks would be to have the blocks in front. You can also actually have bolster on top.

It will have it will make it easier for people to wanting to try because what people tend to fear in crow is to fall on their face. So putting something soft and high so they can lean their head towards the bolster and the pillow. This is not an arm balance workshop, but let's just say that what's really common that won't get people off the floor is that they don't lean enough forward. They just stay with all the weight back.

So it's too hard and too heavy to get the hips up and the feet up. So having something in front that they can lean towards, come back down. If I place this right in front of him, it's not going to help at all. Try to put your head and get into crow here.

So it's not going to help. It has to be in front of him. He has to have something to travel towards. So leaning forward so he can not be afraid of falling on his face.

It has some support and he can get the feet up. That's a way to help people into crow if they're struggling. If you want to find another way without the pillow in front to get the feet on top of something. So the hips already is a little bit higher is also a way.

So helping with the feet and then you can just flex one and one foot and you're actually flying in crow. That's one way to use the blocks in crow. Let's move over to some straps. So obviously we did the block in Warrior III.

Another thing we can do in Warrior III is the strap in front of one thigh. And the opposite foot will push into the strap. So it's a little bit weird. You have to get one leg in.

So just stand up so they can see because this is a little bit confusing. So one leg, one hip comes through, one leg comes through. So you have it in front of the thigh and the opposite foot will have will push into the strap. So one leg through one foot in the strap.

From here is just leaning in Warrior III. And then it's easy instead of having to say pretend your foot is pushing into something. The foot is actually pushing into something. But you want to adjust the strap so it's not too slack and not too tight.

But just so you can get the nice straight leg and feel the resistance in the strap. And from here we also have just hands down and standing split with the neutral hips. So if you want to work them in standing split, pushing into something without opening the hip too much. This is a great one.

And also really helps here handstand. Really helps to have something to push into. So if you have the flopping top leg going on in the people in your class, this is really great. Because if they bend the knee too much, the strap will fall off.

And this also really helps to get people in the transition into handstand. Again, this is not a handstand workshop. But if you're working on Warrior III standing splits, you can do like small little floats up and down. Without focusing on the inversion, just the transition and keeping the legs active.

This is a really great one. Let's see. Yes, and while we're at the straps, should we in front of the hips, should we just do the one on the back? Yeah.

So it's the same thing. You will have the strap, one strap in front of the hip and one foot pushing on the strap. This can be really good, but it's twice as good to have a double variation. If you have two straps available for people or just for yourself at home, if you have two straps, mix the hammock where you have the head.

Make sure the strap is not on the neck, but on the back of the skull. So you have the support of the back of the head. So strap behind the head and one foot in the same strap. Same leg that goes up has another strap in front of the thigh and opposite foot in the strap.

Yeah, we start from start so you can see. Put the strap on the foot, thread the whole opposite leg through so you have the strap in front of the thigh and opposite leg reaches out. That leg gets another strap on top and you place the head in that strap. What do we call this?

Hammock heaven. Hammock heaven is a perfect name. So this is just the hammock. This is hammock heaven.

Perfect for the last part of the class. And it's really good if you don't have time to walk around and give everyone a really nice adjustment. This adjusts especially the outside of the hip, the whole pulling of the hip to the side. And obviously do both sides on that one.

And last one is we can do on the back. I really like this. The block, it's not the same as the hammock heaven, but you will lay down and you will put the block on the sacrum. So not in the low back, just the hard part on the low back.

And then you will pull one knee to the chest and lower the other leg. So it will give a nice stretch. This is also good for the last part of the class. Give a nice stretch to the front of the hip and also a little tiny, tiny back bend.

So this is just many, many ways to use props in the different places in the class. So you have some for warm-ups. One I want to add for warm-ups or you want to add for warm-ups. I have just show really quick.

It's just so simple that I tend to forget to show it. But I would definitely if I do prop focused work, I would definitely just do something simple like this. We've all seen it. We've all done it.

But we forget how effective it is and how needed it is, especially from all the office people. Just taking the strap and taking the cat-cow motion in the torso. It's just perfect for warm-ups, perfect for back bends. And Sebastian has a little one that he wanted to show with the strap.

It's a bit complicated for people when you have to show it several times. You have to do this right, otherwise it has the opposite effect. So you take a long strap, it has to be really long, and place it under your shoulder blades, under your armpits. And then just throw it over the shoulders, not in front of your throat, but over your shoulders.

And then you have to grab the opposite one. So you have to feed the right one to the left and the left one to the right. And it takes some practice, but it's definitely worth that practice. Because when you get it right and you get the strap right on top of the ball of your shoulder, then you can use force in the arms and push the hands down, and that force will pull the shoulders back.

Because this perpetual rounded posture with the shoulders forward, this is kind of a super quick fix for posture. So you push down and then you automatically get pulled into a really nice position, a posture that you can walk around, breathe, and enjoy life. You get happy immediately when you get into this posture, and like, oh, this is how I'm supposed to feel. And if you want to give people more of an experience, like to stay there longer, you can actually help them.

You need to help them to get it right. It's very hard to do on yourself, even for me to do this yourself. But when you put them in this position, it's impossible to slouch. Like the strap is hurting my skin when I'm trying to slouch.

So this is a really nice one if you have five minutes to help people who are suffering with... Like this is not something I would do in the middle of a class because it takes a long time, but it's perfect for people that come up after class and like, I don't understand with the shoulders and the rounding, and I feel like my posture is not perfect. This is a perfect prop use to give them. But you need a long strap.

You can't use a medium one. You need the longest possible one for it to work. But this is... everybody loves this that get to spend some time in it.

Yes, and I almost forgot the best one. You will need... you can do two blocks, but four blocks is ideal. If you are working on foreign balance or anything that you want people to understand, to connect to the front body and straighten the back body, if people are banana backing in a lot of poses, it doesn't have to be foreign balance.

It can be any pose you're talking about where people are not getting the cues about connecting to the core. This is a forcer. It will force them to. So you'll have people place their elbows onto the blocks on the front of the mat.

So like so, taking the hands up and taking the elbows onto the blocks. And this is important... oh, I hold the mic away. And this is important.

The blocks has to be over the knees, not on the knees. So like low thighs. They can also, if people want to make this super hard, be on the ankles. But it's really, really, really heavy.

So I would advise front thighs, not too high, just above the knees. And from here, ask people to push into the blocks and lift the whole torso and hips off the floor. So you see this will make a straight line. If you're getting people upside down in any way, like this will be what they're looking for.

But it can be really hard to cue everything. So this will give you everything. Pushing into the elbows, pushing into the thighs, lifting the hips, lifting the torso. A fun way, if you're having people that are maybe not too comfortable in inversion, this can be like playtime also, getting that connection.

I'm not going to summarize the whole class because this is mostly Stina's class. But I feel as a student with this, it's so much nicer to get the challenge from the props and not from the teacher's cueing. And from a teacher's perspective, it's so frustrating to not find the perfect right words for everybody to understand. But a block between the thigh can be better than a thousand cues, basically.

Yes, and also what we all struggle with, with the rolling knees. We really want people to push the floor away. We really want them to pull the knee in. And to give all these cues in one breath, it's hard.

If you just put the block there, they have to do all that work on their own and they have to figure it out on their own, which can be really healthy and really helpful. So hopefully you can use some, if not all of these, sprinkled into your classes here and there to keep them interesting and easier for you and for your people in class. Okay. Thank you for being with us.