Warmup on Back: 9-Min Gentle Opening Flow for Grapplers

They're not looking up. They're not looking stressed and not knowing what's going on. So I say grab the right knee, stretch the other leg out and take a moment, take a deep breath. And now I say lift the shoulders off the floor and use your biceps to help you in a sit up.

Stay here but switch the legs. So pull the left leg in and stretch the other leg out and repeat that a few times. So this is not to build strength. This is not to perform or test yourself.

This is just movement and a little bit of engagement. I watch the people doing it and when I see them doing the first side I say one more, stay on the left side so that when I observe them I can time my cueing so that it makes sense for them. And then keep this knee but lay down and relax and take another moment here. Nice.

And then stretch your legs straight and take a moment here. So I say lift the shoulders off the floor, straight up into the air, feet over hip, roll your ankles. If you want to roll your wrists and neck you can multitask. I don't order people to do many things at the same time but I tell them to do one thing and then option to do more things.

So moving, creating the movement in your smaller joints always feels nice. I like to tell people what they should be feeling. They should be feeling a nice feeling. So I say this should feel nice and then we are suggestible, the mind is suggestible so maybe they didn't feel so nice but now that I said that it feels nice they feel nice.

And then twists, so knees together, feet in the ground. Look what happens if she doesn't put the feet in the ground and just twists over to the side. Yep. You can't see from that angle but this is the perfect angle to show it from.

The hips are here and the spine is here. So there is, it's not just a twist, it's also a kind of side stretch and it's off center. And this can feel good if you're warm but when you're not warm it doesn't feel good. So what you want to encourage people to do is place the feet in the ground, lift your hips, do a little hip escape over to the right so that your butt goes to the right and then twist your knees over to the left and take a moment here.

Three deep breaths in a twist. So you always encourage people to do a, cue the hip escape. So we're hip escaping the hips over to the right, knees going to the left. You want the whole class to do the same direction otherwise your cue doesn't really make sense.

And then you have them take three breaths and then you say okay back to center, let's do the second side, hip escape over to the left, knees to the right. And then you will see people struggling with the left arm. Some people will have the arm far off the floor and when you see this inevitably you can say your left hand can be anywhere where it feels comfortable and helps you twist. So some people will use the arm as leverage because they're so tight they need that leverage to get a twist at all.

Some people it's too much, they can place the hand behind the head. You will find ways to help people do the pose that it feels nice. But when you babble like I did now, three breaths goes like this so it's best not to babble too much and at least give them one breath in silence before moving on. Let's see, next one, yes, one of my favorites.

Back to center, feet hip width, lift the hips and lift your arms overhead. Take a big inhale here and then as you exhale peel your spine down vertebra by vertebra, lower your hands as you exhale, repeating. Inhale, peel the spine off the floor, lift your arms, inhale, exhale, roll down vertebra by vertebra, lowering your hands and then keep doing this, keep going and really focus on the spine here, spine and breath. So time your movement with your breath but also focus on getting movement in your spine.

This is what happens when you don't focus like this. When people just go up and down they lift the whole spine up and down and they don't really get connection with their core and hips and that's really what we need in a warm up is connection with the warm up. So do one more sloppy one Stine, and then do one really good one. You see how she peeled the hips off first and then the lower back and then the top.

This really helps you breathe in a nice long smooth way and it takes your mind into a completely different place than just going up and down. So a few of these, three, four, five of these, not three, four or five of these with the breath and people get used when you teach this one to move with the breath which is coming more into focus later. Last one, windshield wipers. This is what happens if you don't teach it at all, just knees from side to side, people go really fast, jujitsu warm up style, yeah, boom, boom, boom, boom.

It's better than doing nothing but this is how you can do it the yoga way. So wide feet, turn your knees over to the left, engage your right butt so you're pushing the hips forward and pushing down into the foot. Take a moment and then switch sides so you're not taking three breaths on each side, you're just taking a moment but you try to look the difference. This is where she is when she engaged, disengage and suddenly she's there.

So you have so much more potential to stretch the inner thigh or hip flexor or people are stiff everywhere. So give people an opportunity to feel how stiff they are and do something about it instead of just wah, wah, wah, wah from side to side. So two on each side or something like that, just go from side to side. People go at different speeds so you can't really give them a set number but make sure they do equal on both sides and then you move on.

The last, last one is pull the knees in, grab your hamstrings and then rock and roll up and down, small rocks and then eventually rocking all the way up the seated, rolling back on the back. As small or big movements as you like, this is not rocket surgery so don't tell people exactly how to do this. They do jiu-jitsu, they should know how to rock up and down and if not, give space for that and just let people explore and experience. That's it for this section.

Anything I forgot that you want to add my love? No? See you in the next one.