Tight Hamstrings & Calves: 12-Min Yoga for Rocks Stretch Routine

Mia is going to do wall dog, which is the down dog to the wall. So he will not get a lot of pressure into his shoulders, but I will. So down dog, I'm not going to go through the basics of down dog. I do that on yoga4bj.net.

But you can do it against the wall or you can do it against the floor. Just find a way to stretch your calves and don't start by static. Most of the times you want to start with dynamic to figure out your limits for the day and get into the right mindset. And then when you have done dynamic for a while, you can stop and do it static and then move on again.

You are trying to get a hamstring stretch. Most likely you are already succeeding. Mia has stepped one foot forward, so can I. You can have one foot supporting under your hips and then switching.

If you want to do this for a long period of time, if you do down dog like I'm doing, you're probably going to feel a lot of blood collecting in your face. So it will be a lot of pressure in your face when you do it like this. It's much easier to do the wall dog and you use the pressure from the wall to push into your heel to get a nice hamstring stretch. So almost any position can be moved 90 degrees.

So if I do a position like handstand with the leg out like this, I can do the same pose and suddenly it's a warrior three, a balancing strengthening pose. I can do it like this exact same pose, but in different angles. I can do the same pose on my back to strengthen the core. So any pose you struggle with, let's say you struggle with a pose like this, this is probably really hard for you.

Then you would do it like this instead. Same pose, just different angles, just a little nice yoga tip for you there. Let's move into the next pose. We were remind me the next pose we were doing was.

We were on our backs. Yes, correct. Lay down on your back, kick your left leg up, keep the knee bent and catch the hamstrings and pull like a sit up, sit up using your biceps and your core. Pull your forehead up as high as you can and then go down and then up again.

And while you're going up, stretch your leg and point your toes. So toes go up, yep, and then you lift and then bend the knee as you go down. So your head comes up and your foot lifts at the same time. You are most likely starting to feel this in the hamstrings.

If not, you need to lift the hands higher. So when you try to lift your forehead, this is actually a trick from my part to trick you into pulling the leg hard. You're trying to pull your forehead up, but by doing that, you're also pulling your leg back. So if you were pulling hard enough to get your forehead up, you would probably pull your leg back a lot.

And suddenly you are without realizing it, working your hamstring flexibility. Why are we not flexing our foot like this? Because that puts too much pressure at this point behind your knee. You don't want to feel the stretch around the joint.

This is a general principle. Don't feel the stretch around the joint. Feel the stretch in the middle of the muscles, the belly, we call it the belly of the muscles. So you want to feel the stretch in the middle of the calf, the middle of the hamstring, etc.

Switching legs. Start with, you can have both knees bent. There is no rule that says you have to keep the bottom leg straight. Start by just lifting up with a bent knee.

And if this is too hard for you, then call in sick at work and do nothing but yoga for eight hours a day until you can. This should be the starting point where your knee is bent and you can grab your hamstring and kind of do a halfway sit up. As long as you can start here, you're fine. If you can't start here, you have a serious issue and you should prioritize that and nothing else.

Harsh, but still honest. Start stretching your leg while you're sitting up. So you're bending as you fall back. You point and stretch as you pull up.

And your goal should be to move the hands higher and get as high as you can every time you do this. Grab as far up as you can and pull your head as high as you can and indirectly pull your leg toward. But if you were pulling your leg towards you like this, you would cheat too much. You really have to lift up off the floor.

It has to be intense for you to do the technique correctly. And on the website we have a hundred tricks. Keep doing it a couple of more, Mia, just because you need it. On the website we have many, many tricks using props, belts, blocks and smart techniques to help you with the poses.

Not bad, not bad. To help you with poses like this. And the value of a position like this, I probably don't have to explain it, but I will anyways. If Mia can't get further than this, passing his guard will not be very difficult.

If he can't move his hips and if his hamstring is limiting his hips, I basically just have to smash pass that. And if I would do something like this, I would absolutely kill him. But if Mia can get his knee to his chest and be here, it's hard to pass a guard like this. Maybe with some flip on you.

So this hasn't even begun to bother me. One of the benefits of being flexible is, look at his arm, look how exposed, by attacking me, he exposed himself. He thought he was going to end up here, but since he's overcommitted now, it's easy to turn the attack back at him. These are some of the nice surprises that you will experience as your mobility and flexibility starts to increase.

I'm not saying it's going to take three months, it's probably going to take a year, two years, three years, but stop your perspective and take my perspective instead. If you want to start from white belt and get to black belt, the average time is ten years. So why would you want to skip steps? Why would you want a black belt in three years?

That's stupid. Why would you want to pay someone to give you a black belt? That doesn't make sense. It's a big undertaking, it's a huge challenge.

So is this, but it's different and it supports the other journeys. So yoga for BJJ is not in any way meant to steal or replace anything else. It's meant to just help and compensate for the things that Jiu Jitsu is lacking, like just doing things on one side. You have your favorite guard pass.

We don't have our favorite side in yoga. We do things similar on both sides. Maybe I should have saved this for the outro, but it's worth saying several times. See you in the next video.

Puss.