Upside-Down Guard & Plow: 11-Min Balance Series for BJJ (Part 8)

So the breath, if you want to cue it, it's always inhale when you open up and exhale. But it can be hard to cue the breath with the plow series, especially on the next drill, which is the pistol drill. So here if you talk too much on the next one, you call it the penetration step. So you're actually just going through pistol into a penetration step.

So if you talk too much here, people are going to use too little momentum probably and they're going to get stuck. So if I'm like, so you bend the right knee and then you try to come into pistol, and then they maybe come into pistol and they have the leg straight. So have your leg, and then I'm like, oh and now you're going to bend the, it's impossible. So you have to do it in one motion to actually help people to get into it.

So they come back into plow, bend the right knee, sorry, bend the right knee, and then use as much momentum as you need to roll up through a pistol into penetration step. So it's like a really tight lunge, low lunge. The left hand moves to that right heel, right arm moves up behind your head. You can gaze down towards your left hand.

So in this flow, we separate between the rounds. So in the first round, you look down, it's more of a twist. And in the second round, it's more of a back bend. Okay, so let's look at the way back.

So here, use your arms, reach them forward for balance. This is a lot of toe and ankle mobility again. So you roll back onto your right heel, try to straighten your left leg and see how slow you can come through pistol again, back to a plow. So we tried on the left side, again, you want to have some speed here to help them.

So bend the left knee, use your momentum to roll forward through that pistol into the penetration step. Right hand moves to the left heel, left hand behind your head, gaze to the right heel. So we're still on the first round. And we don't want to miss the opportunity on the transition again here, because if I don't say anything just back to plow, this is probably what he will do.

And he missed the whole opportunity to again create mobility and awareness in the feet and also in the core and hips. So here, okay, release arms, stretch arms forward to help with balance. See if you can maybe push back, straighten the right leg, come through your pistol. And then when the hips come down, roll back into plow.

Okay, we're doing the same again with a back bend. So bending your right knee, rolling through that pistol into penetration step, left hand to the right heel, hand behind your head. This time you gaze up, chest up, breathe, and work the transition back. So now you don't have to point out all the steps, they know it.

So just work the transition back into plow. You probably, so it's the same on the other side. So you'll probably have people get stuck in this transition where they're not able to roll up through the pistol. That's fine.

They can use their hands. So it's nice to maybe the first round. So if he's in plow, we're doing the first round, I would say bend the right knee, roll up, try to use your hands to push up through the pistol and then keep going into penetration step, left knees bent, right knees on the floor, left hand to the right heel, right hand behind your head, gaze down towards your left heel, right heel, take a breath. And then again, working the transition, maybe you want to use the hands in the floor to walk yourself back, try to find balance and then slowly back.

So if you see a lot of people struggling, maybe you just do that on the second round too. If you people are pretty capable, you will say, okay, next round, we tried without the hands. Yeah. And sometimes you just have to accept that people are shit right now and give up.

But then before the next class, or maybe in the end, after you finish the class, let's say you're on to a warmup and there's not a jitsu afterwards and people come talk to you, then you show them this or you address it separately before or after class because you don't ever have time to explain everything so that it looks perfect. So when you see someone struggling a lot, but you know that the solution is simple, they can basically just do this and they solve the problem. Yeah. But either their ego or their lack of self-confidence stops them from believing in themselves.

Then they need a little bit extra help, but you'd basically almost never had time to do that while teaching the class. So you just have to look at the issue, accept it for now and then fix it in another. Yeah. And also it's the level two warmup.

So it should be a step up from level one warmup. And in level one, we have the rolling up, trying to find balance here and rolling back again. So this is just a tiny, literally a step further. So you just do this.

So it shouldn't be a big problem if they've been doing the level one warmup and you've been adding the pistol roll up. And now the next one, we do two of the S-mounts, two of the penetration steps and then the last one we roll up into a crow. So into the arm balance. So you roll up into a squat, place your hands down, you make a shelf with the elbows.

We all know this from level one. And you try to bring the knees on the triceps or into the armpits. If people are really comfortable here and they have healthy necks, I will always say, if you have a healthy neck, you can try to bring the top of your head to the floor. Just make sure you keep lifting the shoulders away from the ears.

If your neck feels solid here, maybe even lift the knees off the arms. Make sure you're not swaying in the back. Keep the core strong. And then from here, bring the knees back to the arms.

And now let's all meet back in down dog. So you jump or you walk back to down dog. So pretty simple. And you don't want to keep people there for too long.

Two, three breaths and then you keep queuing the next move or next transition. So the option one is just staying in crow. Option two is what we call the clown, where just the head goes down, but the knees stays on the arm. So clown is this where the knees are still attached to the arms.

And when you take the knees off the arms, it's a headstand. But it's nice to actually keep have them keep bending the knees when they're moving their legs up. It's when they straighten the leg, they tend to fall over. So just to keep the class safe, it's nice to have a bend in the knees.

And not say for the people that fall over, you should never hurt yourself, but sometimes they fall on other people. Other people in front of them. So especially if there's a lot of people in the room. Okay.

So to sum up this series, it's you start just rolling back in a control matter. Into plow or upside down guard. And you do the flash dance or the S mount. You do two times on each side.

And then it's the pistol into penetration steps, two times on the right side, two times on the left. The only difference is the first time you gaze down a little twist, the second round, you gaze up, lift the chest. We finish out this section with rolling into squat and into crow pose. Option to do the clown or the headstand.

If you do the headstand or clown, you try to come back into crow. So it's actually hard to lift the head for a lot of people. What a cue that is helpful here is to drop the hips down towards the heels so your head can lift. If the hips stay over the head, it's impossible to lift the head.

So hips have to move back and down so the head can lift. And then back down dog. Anything you want to add? No.