Side Plank Tutorial: Master Core Strength for BJJ (16-Min)

So you need to expose people to risk and you need to take risk for yourself in order to get stronger. You need stimulus and that stimulus can sometimes be a bit dangerous. But if you think yoga is dangerous, then you should try jujitsu and then you're going to be fine, right? Because jujitsu is, it provides different stimulus than yoga.

Let's look at side plank. If you place your knee on the line and the hand on that same line and the foot on the same line, here, side plank, what people do is they place the hands too far back so that it becomes painful in the wrist. So the first thing you want to do is to not have the hand directly under the shoulder, but having 90 degrees in the orbit, meaning that the fingers, the top of the fingers should be above the line on the head. So not here, there.

Much easier to plug the shoulder in correctly here. If the hand would be down here, look what happens to my shoulder. It's very difficult to pull it back. So the further the hand away is, the easier it is going to be for people.

The second thing is, of course, like in plank, to plug the shoulder in and not be here. There's a couple of ways I do that when I help people. I say, grab your lat and pull your chest up, because when you're here, the shoulder goes up. When I'm here with the chest, the shoulder can come back.

So I'm rotating my boobs towards the ceiling. Another thing you can do is to grab the shoulder and slap it and kind of pull the shoulder back to help them understand that that's where you want it to be. And if you're doing this for yourself, self-adjustment, pull the shoulder back, rotate up here, and suddenly you have good structural integrity. When you're teaching a class and you want them to learn just this, don't look at the hand, don't have the arm up, just place the hand there and just have them do this over and over.

And I read a nice trick that I like is to do it right, wrong, right, wrong, right, wrong, right, wrong. So don't tell people to don't do it. Encourage them to do it wrong, right, wrong, right. That's it.

I have my knee on the ground offloading some, like I can even lift my hand off. I can afford to do it wrong many times without getting injured. So creating a drill, a right wrong drill, that's yeah, I'm going to call it that. Creating a right wrong drill, what you really want to teach people or what you really want to learn is very good.

Okay? Wrong, right, wrong, right. Let's do 10 wrongs and 10 rights everybody. Boom, boom, boom, boom.

Because learning, I always learn when there is a contrast. This is absolutely wrong and this is absolutely right. Let's look at those. Let's compare those.

Let's try those. Let's contrast, creating that contrast between the two. White, black, white, black. Okay.

I can see it now. White and black. So boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Here we are.

If it's difficult for people again, you can rotate the hand, the fingers out. Creating external rotation in the shoulder is going to make it easier. If the fingers are pointing the wrong way, it's going to be hard to pull the shoulder back. Wrong, right, wrong, right.

There we are. This is a nice variation of the side plank. I call it the technical side plank because you can take some time to do the technique right. And then if you want to turn it into the full side plank, you just lift me off.

Relax, tense, relax, tense. Knees together, come up, boom. Very nice little drill. Fingers behind you, again, boom, boom.

Okay. That's how I would integrate technical side plank into some kind of flow where people get to be exposed, get out of it, be exposed, get out of it. Another way to do side plank is to start in a full side plank and let us step one foot forward. The top foot comes forward like a training wheel.

And then you move into that leg because the more I move into the leg, the less tension there is on the shoulder. So this becomes a nice hip stretch. And at the same time, we emphasize, I like to give people a vivid visualization in order to do something right. So in side plank, I say, grab a heavy kettlebell and push it as high as you can.

And if I imagine taking a big kettlebell, if someone has never experienced how it feels to lift a kettlebell, they really should. Because, and if you have people in class, you can come there and you can press down on top of their hands. You're standing here and then you're putting weight on top of their hand because that force through this arm forces them. Like if they don't resist, they're gonna collapse.

So either imagining you're lifting a weight or you're coming and actually helping them pushing down helps them push away into the floor and their body is smart. It just needs the right stimulus. And that imagined weight or that actual stimulus of your hand pushing them down is gonna put the shoulder in the right place. And I also like to slap on people's shoulder, like slap them where you want them to engage.

Like engage the leg, engage the shoulder. Nice. So I'm both pushing here and I'm slapping there. Okay, I get it now.

And here's the big thing. People are weak, which means that when they do it right and they engage correctly, what's gonna happen after two, three seconds? They're gonna be tired. They're gonna use up their reserves and they're gonna...

And the problem with this is that they're gonna assume that they did it wrong because they were able to stand there for a long time doing it incorrectly because they didn't engage correctly. They could cheat. Basically, we can call it cheating. They were cheating and doing it wrong to save energy.

Just like when you're standing up. When you're standing like this, it doesn't take much energy. People always go over with a path of least resistance. And that's why they're getting weak because they're not using the muscles.

So doing it correctly many times will make them use more energy and they're gonna assume, this is the problem, they're gonna assume that they're doing it wrong. So you need to train yourself to understand that, I'm getting tired, not because I'm doing it wrong, because I'm weak as shit. I always joke in my classes that, yeah, you guys are awesome, but you're weak as shit. And you can find ways, more and less diplomatic ways of saying this, but people need to understand that they need more exposure.

They need more physical exposure in order to become more athletic. The goal of yoga is not just to find your inner peace. It's also to become more athletic. If you can be peaceful and become an athlete at the same time, that's awesome.

So you need to help people understand that when they get tired, they're doing it right. The side plank is a perfect example of that. So people are inside playing for five seconds and they start shaking and this can't be right. There must be something wrong with the pose because it can't be anything wrong with me.

I can't be that weak. I couldn't even stand there for five seconds. And your job is to convince them that yes, yes, everything, there is nothing wrong with the pose. Everything is wrong with you because you're weak as shit.

And this is why it's difficult to be a yoga teacher. And this is why it's difficult to learn yoga is because these realizations aren't so much fun. Okay. Let's look at a couple of other variations.

Here was one. Here was one. One that I really like is to go down here, sit down on the ground and reach for the foot. Super nice stretch.

And then come up all the way and push my weight into the foot. And basically just try to stand up on top of the foot, reaching for a moment. So deep, deep side stretch and deep, deep side stretch. And now I get to relax this wrist, elbow and shoulder so that I can do more reps.

Boom. This is a way to get people to move through their extreme range of motions, getting through the position that is the main position because this is for sure a side plank drill, but we're only getting through side plank, staying there for a brief moment and getting down. But when you're teaching a drill like this, you begin by teaching them side plank first and giving them exposure 10, 20, 30 seconds to feel that the essence of the movement is the shoulder. Like when we're doing this, we don't talk about this foot and that foot and how you touch there.

That's irrelevant. This is the only thing you should focus on because that's what people need to learn. The rest is they can figure that out. A drill to kill people and they need to be killed is the high plank, high side plank, the low side plank.

So we're side plank here, left elbow comes down, right arm up, right elbow down, left arm up, left hand in the ground, high side plank, high side plank, low side plank, low side plank. What's so good about this, this is good for several reasons. People need to learn how to move with flow and have their body just adapt to the movement and they need to be exposed to it over and over. And this is like, you can, when you tell them like, we're just going to do a few reps of exercise here.

We're not isolating. We're using the whole body. The legs are engaged, the hips, the core, the back, the shoulders, everything is engaging the arms and they're going to start collapsing after a little while. And if you can do a few of these reps, it's pretty obvious that you're really weak.

It should be obvious. There's nothing wrong like this. We're just doing side plank, side plank, low side plank, low side plank. But this is like a good, I think this is a good reality check.

And you can always put it into a class to get people's heart up. And for yourself also, like just do four high side planks on each side and four on the elbows. And you're going to feel like, it's a good workout. You don't have to shame yourself for being weak.

It's a very good way to get strong really fast. So that's a perfect side plank. And you're not exposed. You can do many reps because you're only there for two or three seconds before you switch sides.

So it's never going to be overdoing it, even if you do many reps. But if you do in a class, after that, have them come down to the belly or have them completely relax the shoulders for a while. Never go from that straight back into down. A lot of yoga teachers do that.

They do a lot of exposure to the arms and then they put you in an arm position to rest. That's not good at all. So when you get people or you do this yourself, get a nice long stretch for the shoulders afterwards. I think this is everything I have to say about side plank.

Again, these tutorials need to be long because there is a lot I want to say. And I want to say it because I've seen it be important and really make a difference for over 13 years of teaching. So take my word for what I say in these tutorials. I have many good reasons to say what I say.

And if you don't understand it now, come back for it later. And eventually you're going to see that there is good reasons behind my ramblings.