Sebastian Brosche · 13 min · 1,394 words
Previously titled: Video 7 - Wrists and Ankles
Hi guys and welcome back to the 10 in 10. Today we will focus on the smaller joints of our body, the wrists and ankles. And we're going to multitask. So sit down on your knees with your butt to your heels.
If this is impossible for because your knees hurt, then just put a pillow under your butt or even put a pillow also under your ankles so that you can lean forward slightly. But if you're fine like this, just sit with your ankles flat, interlace your fingers and start rolling your wrists around like this. And while we're at it, why not also move our neck around? Because multitasking like this, where we don't really have any other objective than to lose and up the joints or not really loosen up the joints, but lubricating our joints, then we might as well do several things at the same time.
So move your neck and your wrists around and try to breathe. Inhale and exhale through your nose and try to not think about 200 things at the same time. Just be present and just enjoy doing what you're doing. It doesn't matter if we do it for one second or for 50 seconds.
Try to make those two the same experience. No difference between doing it for just a moment and for a while. Right now, arms out in front of you and shake the hands really fast. Like shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it.
And then up and down like flappy wings. Nice. Nice. Okay.
Palms flat on the ground. Step into all fours or what we call tabletop and then turn your fingers backwards. So out and back. So the thumbs are pointing out and the fingers are pointing back.
Drop your head down and just move from side to side. Try to put 80% of your upper body weight into the right arm and into the left arm. Try to relax your fingers and if you feel that one part of your wrist is painful, then just try to move slightly away from that specific point and try to get every other point activated. So if there is one angle out of 360 degrees, then you just avoid that one and focus on the other 359 degrees.
It's as simple as that. The worst mistake I see people do when they practice yoga is, okay, if I can't do everything, I'm just going to find something completely different to do. That's not the right attitude. If you want some results to show for, then you actually have to accept that things are not perfect and you will probably never be 100% completely injury free ever again if you're more than 15 years old.
You just have to learn to live with the aches and pains and try to work around them. Breathe again through your nose because we tend to forget. Now turn the fingers in towards each other and flip the palms over so that you can see your palms. So you're placing your body weight into the back of your hands and I find it really hard to straighten my elbows here.
So bend your elbows like a gorilla tabletop, so elbows out to the side and then start making fists with your fingers. So make fists and then release. Fists and release. And if you want to make this more intense, when you make fists, you also straighten your arms slightly and then release.
So fists and straighten, bend and release. Do that a few times. It's like we're wrist locking ourselves but we try to find that perfect spot where it's slightly painful but in a good way. Five more times.
Nice. Fit, flat in the ground, squat down. I have a really steep angle in my ankle so for me it's super easy to get my heels down to the floor. That might not be the case.
You might have super stiff calves or you might have a really narrow angle in your ankle. So it might happen that your heels will touch the ground one day or depending on your physiology and your skeletal structure, it might never happen. Doesn't really matter. Just go as deep as you can and stay here for a minute.
So now grab the wrist with one hand and then move the hand around like this. So you're supporting your wrist with a grip and then you move your fist around. So this pressure around the joint is a really nice decompression. And the way we can do this, if we have problems with our wrists or if we want to protect the in training if we compete or have really hard sparring, then you can accomplish this decompression by taping your wrist just between the hand and the forearm.
You can tape three rounds of sports tape. Can make a really nice decompression for the wrists, especially if you have sore wrists or are injured. That's a really good idea. Same thing if you're doing a lot of handstands, you can also use that same trick.
If you haven't already switched hands, switch hands, decompress the wrist and move your fist around. This is what we're doing today is not necessarily you don't have to do this as yoga practice. You can do all of these mobility exercises whenever you find the opportunity, like when you're sitting on the bus, when you're watching your friends spar at work, try to get as many sessions in during the day as possible. And one session can be one minute.
So if you I would rather if you have really stiff ankles and wrists, I would much rather prefer you do 10 different sessions for one minute during the day than one 10 minute session because that it creates the habit and the habit is really what makes things work out in the long run. So get these movements in as many times during the day as possible. Shake everything out and let's sit down on our knees again. At this time with our toes tucked under.
If it's one thing I see that is limiting our flexibility in our knees and ankles, it's having really tight soles. So the under part of your feet are usually really stiff and this is probably feeling super painful for some of you. And that's why we're just going to be here for a couple of minutes. So sit down on your heels and stretch your toes like this.
I like this exercise a lot. You place your palms together and then you roll your wrists around like this. So you're moving your elbows and shoulders and you're trying to roll. You keep contact with the wrists all the time.
You're pressing the wrists in towards each other, the back, the inside, the side and the back. Just keep rolling like this. Great mobility exercise for our wrists. Take five more breaths here.
Now shake it out. Shake, shake, shake, shake. And sit down on your butt. The toes, man, the toes.
Okay, take your thumb and try to find just over the elbow. So from the elbow go up maybe two inches, five centimeters to the forearm and then dig your thumb in there. That attachment of one of the forearm muscles, if you use your grips in jiu-jitsu, which I bet all of you do, then use the side of the thumb to press into that muscle and just give yourself a super sadistically painful massage there. Just squeeze and hold and then move your thumb around slightly.
This is so damn painful. But it's also really good for you to soften up that spot because it's really bad for the elbow and the wrists to be that stiff in the forearms. Take five more breaths. Switching sides, second side.
Dig your thumb in there. I'm not using the nail part of my thumb. I'm using the side of my thumb, so the inside of my thumb. I use it to dig into that forearm muscle attachment.
This is one of the worst trigger points in the upper body. Take five more breaths. And release. Hallelujah.
That's it for today, guys. See you tomorrow for some core work.
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