Recover Faster After Training with these 10 Stretches Featuring Sebastian Brosche
Posted by Fanatics Authors on
We talk a lot about how critical it is to warm up before a BJJ session to reduce the risk f injury and wake your body up before you begin loading it with strenuous activity. Everyone seems to have their own warm up routine. Some enjoy movement-based drills and stretching while others prefer a more static style of loosening up. Whatever works for you, is the right way.
Though warming up is an essential aspect of taking care of the body, so is stretching after you train. At the close of a good training session, there is a window of time where we can take advantage of the loosened, warm state of the body and finish out training session with a good stretching routine. This might be an overlooked period of opportunity to stretch, but make no mistake, it is an important one. It could have an enormous effect on how you feel going in to your next training session.
Sebastian Brosche is an authority on yoga and particularly how it can benefit your BJJ. He has entire programs designed for all different types of practitioners and levels of flexibility. If your incredibly stiff, he can help you begin to open up and start healing your body with the power of yoga. If you’re already a limber BJJ player, he can challenge you as well.
Let’s take a look at some stretches that we can perform after training, that can assist us in feeling a little better the next day, so that we can return to the mat fresh and energized to train. In this video, Brosche shares an after training stretching routine with us. Check it out! Actually, try it out!
- Brosche begins in a straddle position and begins working from side to side. You will feel this immediately in your side body as well as your hamstrings, and probably the groin area. Since I began BJJ, my side body has been one of my biggest trouble spots for soreness. This particular movement helps tremendously with side body tightness.
- Next, Brosche puts his legs together and folds forward, Stretching his back and neck. If you’re like me, you’ll probably feel this the most in your hamstrings. Notice the breathing. In through the nose and out thought the nose with the mouth closed. I like to breath in as I rise up a little with this one and exhale to go a bit deeper in tot eh stretch.
- Now resting on the knees, Brosche folds backward, catching himself with his hands on the floor. This will stretch and elongate the front side of the body, loosening up the quads and the front of the shoulders. From this position,
- Brosche rises up by placing his toes on the mat and interlaces his hands behind his back. He then puffs his chest out a bit and arches his back. This is one of my favorites poses to combat the closing effect jiu0jitsu has on the body. Here, we can fully open our chest, belly and shoulders, while also getting a quad stretch and a stretch in the toes as well.
- Now to a squat, Brosche uses the wright of his arms to stretch the back of the neck. If you haven’t done any research on how good squatting is for your body, look it up. The benefits are enormous. It’s something everyone should be doing.
- The next one is my absolute favorite yoga pose. The pigeon pose. If I only had time for one stretch, it would be this one. Brosche places his shin in front of him and extends the opposite leg back behind him. He adds an extra element here by turning the hands backward and giving the forearms a stretch as well. The front and back of the hips, the belly, and even the throat all get love from the pigeon pose.
- Utilizing a belt for this next segment, Brosche keeps the arms up and around the head and shoulders and invites us to freestyle with some movement, lessening up the shoulders. Find your grips on each end o the belt and begin to make different kids of movements in aback and forth and circular motions.
- Describing this next one as kimura and amereicana stretching, Brosche now lets the belt fall behind his back as pulls upward and downward mimicking the kimura and americana over and over again and getting deep in to the shoulders. This is fantastic for mobility as well.
- Returning to the floor, Brosche begins o wind down with some spinal twists. With his knees together he rolls to one side, keeping a flat back. For added intensity he can straighten the top leg. These fell amazing in the back and hips!
- For the final pose, Brosche lays on his back in shavasana, a traditional final pose in most yoga practices. Here he can feel the effects of the work he has done and calm the mind before finishing for the day.
Adding this routine to your schedule will have massive effects on your recovery. If you like to train hard daily, you’re asking a lot of your body and it will greatly appreciate you making some deposits instead of only withdrawals. Give this a shot for a week and see how you feel. It may dramatically improve your BJJ performance!
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