Tight Back? 10-Min Cat-Cow Flow Stretches for BJJ

Just keep moving. Almost like someone's holding the top and the bottom of a slinky, and they're just moving it round and round, and the middle's just doing its own thing. Okay, good. Switch direction now.

How does that feel? Switch direction again. Really good. Okay, let's move the hands forwards now.

So keep your hips where they are. So my hips are staying above my knees, they're set. My hands, just going to take a step forwards. Now I'm going to drop my chest, look towards my hands, then lift my chest, look towards my hips, little crunch, drop, and lift.

One more, and lift. Okay, bring your hands back under your chest, bring your feet back into plank position. Just set that plank with a little bit of a crunch in the core. If you feel like your hips are too high, just drop your hips, lift your head a bit.

Feel that plank. Good, let's bend the knees now. Hips go towards the feet a little bit, then turn your hips up towards the ceiling. Lift the down dog, but keep your knees nice and bent.

Good. Take three breaths in down dog. Don't focus on straight legs, focus on a straight back here and tilting those hips up towards the ceiling. Okay, let's come forwards to plank now.

So start to move everything forwards, shoulders over your wrists. Feel that plank. Now bend the knees, lift the hips again. Good, into dog, forwards to plank.

Bend the knees, lift the hips to dog. Just keep going from plank to dog, bending the knees, lifting the hips. And as we keep moving, we're going to start to exaggerate that movement. And I want you to find a cat and a cow between dog and plank here.

Okay, so if we're going back to dog, as I come forwards to plank, I'm going to look towards my hips, lift my chest through my spine, come forwards to plank. Then when I bend my knees, I'm going to lift my hips, look up almost, I can go in a cat, and keep just flowing with that. And back. A few more of these as long as your shoulders are okay here.

It's like we're rolling back to plank from dog, and we're diving back to dog from plank. Good, one more of them. Come forward to the plank. Now drop to your knees.

Good, sit back, just give your wrists a rest for a second, maybe shake the hands off a little bit. See how you feel, see how your back's feeling. Okay, let's come forwards again one more time. Keep the hips above the knees again, walk the hands forwards, but come to your fingertips, drop the chest and open out the front, open out the belly, the chest, the armpits.

Take two breaths. Really good. Come back to all fours now. Just bring your knees towards your wrists, cross your shins and just sit back.

So we're sitting cross-legged. And then lay yourself onto your back. All I'm going to do here is lift my right foot, my right foot is going to go over my left knee, come down, then I'm going to focus on getting my right foot down towards the mat. So I'm turning, I turn onto my left side, now my right hand is going to point up towards the ceiling.

I'm going to look up towards my right hand, then I'm opening it out to the right. If your right knee comes off the mat, that's fine. And if your right shoulder is off the mat, that's fine. You're just focusing on opening diagonally here, so your right knee and your right shoulder are just opening away from each other.

Let's take some slow breaths here. Okay, that right hand now is pointing towards the right, lift that up, looking towards that, turn onto your left. Now you can use that to push yourself back onto your back. Now I want you to switch, so right foot comes down to the floor, left foot comes up over the right knee, clamps down, now we're getting the left foot on the floor, so turn to your right.

On my right side now, my left hand is going to point up towards the ceiling, open out towards the left. If your left knee starts to come up, that's fine. All we're doing is focusing on opening out here. So slow your breath down, take some nice calm breaths.

Last inhale. Now exhale, bring the hand pointing up towards the ceiling, turn onto your right, now push onto your back. Good, keep your back nice and straight here. Okay, so if your chin is pointing up to the ceiling, tuck your chin, get a nice straight neck, all the way through your back.

And I want you to focus on keeping your tailbone on the floor. Okay, all I'm doing now is lifting my knees off the floor and I'm going to bring my knees towards my chest. If as I do that, my tailbone or the bottom of my back starts to come off the mat, I'm just going to ease down so that stays there. Okay, wherever you get to there, now hug the front of your knees and just focus on your knees coming down to the mat without your hips lifting or your tailbone lifting.

And just breathe here. If you want a little more of a stretch here, you can bring your feet up towards the ceiling, bring your arms inside, your legs and grab your ankles. Again, if your hips start to come up here as you do this, ease off and go back to what we did before. If you find him, want a little more, grab the outsides of your feet and just relax.

Really trying to keep, as I keep saying, your hips on the mat. Last inhale. Exhale, just drop your feet down to the floor and then sit yourself up. Good.

So just a quick stretch for the back, a bit of movement, just to wake up, just to feel really good. I hope you enjoyed it and I will see you in the next video. Thanks guys.