Spine Health & Mobility: 11-Min Flow for BJJ (No Time)

We need our good food. And that's what yoga is. That's what stretching is. And that's why I've designed this program to go, okay, you know what?

Stretching isn't too bad because you cook the vegetables really well. They're not too bad, depending on the type of vegetable. Come to center. Place the right hand on the opposite knee.

My left hand will be a post. Reach the spine tall. Then turn towards the left. Think of your spine as being a pearl necklace.

Make the pearl necklace really long. And then gently twist. Other side. Come to center first.

Reset. Other side. Left hand on the ground. Reach the right hand up and behind.

And this might feel okay. Often the sitting twist of spine doesn't like too much, but it's really important for spinal health. On your hands and knees, cat-cow. So arch the spine towards the ground.

Think lower back, middle back, upper back, and round to the ceiling. And think of using that entire spine. And I keep talking while we're stretching because you're efficient. Ten-minute video means that you're efficient, I'm efficient.

So I'm going to talk while we're stretching. Arch the spine towards the ground. Think of using the entire spine, lower back, middle back, upper back. This is called cow.

Just notice how that feels, where the spine is. Round towards the ceiling. Lower back, middle back, upper back. This is called cat, like a cat that's pissed off and hissing.

Come to center. Side stretches. So make the spine like a banana shape towards the right and then towards the left. Some more side stretches.

You're going to feel really good. Come to center. Create that cat with the spine. Now step the right foot forward and come up, keeping that cat motion with the lower spine.

Okay, so we've slightly rounded the lower spine, torso up, and notice how that feels through the left leg. Stretching through the hip flexors because the hips is connected. The hips are connected to the spine and if the hips are really tight, we can't access the spine. And of course they're really tight because in jitsu, what are we doing?

We have guard, the legs are bent. We have mount, the legs are bent. Side control, the legs are bent. In guard, someone's in our guard.

The legs are always pretty much bent. So we need to loosen up those hip flexors. Oh, my quad video is so good too. So from here, just take a little moment and straighten that front leg because the hamstrings are attached to the back of the hips.

And again, if those are tight, it'll pull that pelvis out. So if you find that you are getting back pain or knee pain, could be because those hips are tight. Okay, all fours. Create the cat motion, rounding the spine towards the ceiling, specifically the lower spine.

You can even take the left hand, put it on your belly. Keep that rounding of the lower spine. Left foot up for low lunge. Lower spine stretch and torso up.

Stretching that lower spine and notice if you take away that cat stretch, totally takes away the sensation of everything. Takes away the stretch. So create that cat stretch. Hips to ribs, tucking the tailbone underneath, whatever you want to call it.

Torso up. Getting into the front of the hips. And knowing that you can press pause at any time if you need an extra minute, that's the beauty of online. Lengthen through the left leg.

Hands down. It can be nice if you need blocks or to bring the floor closer to you. You can put blocks, pillows, anything underneath or reach the hands down best you can. If you can't reach the floor, that's okay.

You can put your hand on your leg, on the wall, whatever you like. I just want to stretch the back of that leg. So from here on the hands and knees. So we've loosened through the front of the hips, the back of the hips, all the way down to your belly now.

Okay. All the way onto the ground now. And I'm going to keep my chest lifted so my mic is good. But hands beside the hips.

Lift up the hands. Lift up the legs. Pull the shoulder blades towards the spine and down. And don't neck crank yourself.

Don't look up. That's uncomfortable. Just comfortable neck, couple shakes. Shoulder blades towards the spine and down.

Notice the engagement. Middle back. Lower back. Release.

Zip up your legs. Hands under the shoulders and using just the arms, lift up that upper body just a little bit. So you feel that engagement through the back. Release.

Turtle. So hips to heels. Turtle. And this is nice to practice, lowering the hips down to the heels in case you are in turtle.

You need to be able to bring the knees close or if you're on your back, keep staying your turtle. But if you're on your back, working on defending the guard pass, nice to be able to lift those legs up. So we're really, this is the best compliment to my jiu-jitsu. It's absolutely incredible.

So from here, come to tabletop. We're doing this again all the way down to the ground. Hands beside the hips, palms down and lift everything. This is locust.

So feel that engagement. Upper back. Middle back. Lower back.

Release. Hands under the shoulders. Zip the legs together and lift any amount for cobra. You want to feel this upper back, shoulder blades.

Sometimes it takes a while to feel it there to wake up that upper body. And turtle. So to finish off, again we only have 10 minutes, but take more time if you need. On the ground.

Knees above the hips and send them down to the left side. It's called a spinal twist. Right arm is out to the right in a T position and this is one of the nicest postures, especially for that lower back. And you'll find that I'm doing more stuff than just that one targeted body part because I can't come to center and leave the other side always in front of myself.

But I've got lots to do. I've got lots to do. I've got lots to do. I've got lots to do.

Lots I want to show you. Legs down to the right side. Yeah, left hand out to the left in a T position because if you're doing an armbar or a triangle, your goal is that one move, that one submission. But there's a lot of stuff that's entailed in that.

You need to, you need body movement. You need breathing. You need the correct position. You need the correct timing.

There's lots entailed around that one goal. So to reach the spine, to target the spine, we need to loosen up other areas of the body. So target the spine. I know we had to loosen up the hips.

We had to loosen up the back. We had to get moving through strengthening the spine a bit. So there's different things that we need to do to be able to target that. And these are just short little videos, but it's basically introduce us to yoga.

Come to center. And honestly, you can finish class right here. Stay here for a moment. Enjoy how it feels or roll up to your favorite side.

There we are. So notice how good that feels. And if your back is sore, it might take a couple of minutes to settle down after this video. So if it's like feeling a little, a little, what sort I'm looking for, a little activated, then give it some time.

It means that it really needed this needs a bit of time to settle down. But if you do this every day, that'll keep feeling better. Because we did do that really important strengthening. OK, that wasn't too bad, was it?

No fatalities. I'll see you next video.