Stiff Upper Back? 12-Min Shoulder & Side Body Stretch for BJJ

Spread your hands. Make a solid foundation. Tabletop cat and cow which means you're stretching your back like a cat. And then you're arching your spine just like a cow.

And if you have ever, probably not, but if you ever see a cow that just stood up from sleeping, this is what they do. They drop the belly and push the jaw out and stretch the front body. And then cat stretch the complete opposite. Push your forehead into your navel.

And repeat in a rhythm that feels unnaturally slow. So the rhythm in which we do a normal average standard jiu-jitsu warm-up is way too fast to learn anything about your body. That speed is mostly to create heat which is great for but not for working with your weak spots and learning anything about movement. So we have to slow down.

We have to slow down if we want to learn and if we want quality in our practice. Do a couple more. Engage your neck, your back muscles and stretch the front. And then the complete reverse.

Engage the front and stretch the back. Nice. Turn, face the wall, Miha. I will turn to the camera.

Kick the right leg out sideways. Most weight is in the hands and the left knee, but some weight is also in the right leg. Right arm goes straight up and as much behind you as possible and you inhale. And then exhale, slide the right arm under the left arm until your elbow or shoulder touches the floor.

Repeat, inhale. This is a deep twist in our upper back plus we get some extra juice in the hips. Repeat, inhale up. Exhale, go under.

One more time. And stay down. Take three breaths. Maybe one day you will be able to relax your head to the floor.

Maybe not today. Patience. Both arms up. If your left knee is hurting, you should be padding it up with a jiu-jitsu mat.

You should have a yoga mat or a jiu-jitsu mat under you so that you don't have to care about nuisances like that. Arms out to the side. Let's do the same thing with it standing, but now we can also drop one hand to the leg. Big side stretch.

Hand to the floor. Big side stretch the other direction. And keep flowing between two extremes in your own rhythm. In jiu-jitsu we try to combine two techniques.

For example, from side control, amrkana, which is a submission, and then transition to mount. These two go perfect together. When you amrkana someone, they're going to bridge and then you go for mount. So whenever we learn techniques, we try to learn dual techniques that fit perfect together.

It's the same in yoga. We try to find two techniques, two poses that flow perfectly into each other and that complement each other. This is a perfect example of that. All right here.

Legs are staying, but your hands are moving as far forward as you can. Drop your elbows or drop your forehead or drop your chest to the floor. Go as deep as you can. If you hold your breath, you're going too far.

This is an asymmetrical pose, but you are doing your best to create an evenness, a kind of symmetry in the asymmetry. And that's true for every pose. One more breath. Hands in the ground.

Left arm goes towards the right leg. So you have to place your shoulder in the ground, catch your foot, your ankle, your calf, your knee, wherever you can grab. And if you fall over to the left, it means you have to widen the base. If you're here, you're going to fall.

If you're here, you're going to be fine. And if this isn't a pose that is relevant to jiu-jitsu, there is no such pose. This is a pose that everybody should practice in every jiu-jitsu warm-up for the rest of the history of the universe. Maybe not the history, but the future of the universe.

Anyways, this pose is something everybody should practice in their jiu-jitsu warm-up. If you cannot do this pose, there are many things that you will not be able to do that you should be able to do if you want to be proficient in your sparring and your competitions. Release. All fours.

One, two, three, four. And release. And release. And release.

And release. And release. All fours. Kick the left leg out to the side.

Let's repeat the sequence on this side. Left arm up. Left arm under. Until your elbow or shoulder touches the floor.

And inhale up. Exhale down. Exhale. Two more.

Last one. Both arms up. Side stretching. You did it once.

Do the same thing again. Find your rhythm. Most likely slow down. Inhale as you go up and exhale as you go deep.

All righty. Hands on the ground. Go forward as far as you can but don't move your butt forward. Your butt should stay over your right knee.

Get into an uncomfortable position. Breathe and deal with it. One more breath. Back to all fours.

Right hand catches the left leg. Right shoulder into the ground. Find a position for your left hand which supports the pose. These kind of challenging poses are my personal favorites because you get a lot of everything.

Which means you can find a few of these poses eventually and create your own super efficient practice. Maybe you have 10 to 20 poses that you can do every day that has the same effect as 50 normal poses. So this is the goal to find with my help of course but find positions that are perfect for your body. And that will be super efficient at helping you progress in your martial arts practice.

Release. Take a moment standing seated wherever you feel like. Take a moment and feel your upper body. Feel your side body.

My guess is that there is a huge contrast between before you started and after. What was this? 10, 11, 12 minutes. So very successfully efficient at creating some action in your upper body.

See you in the next video.