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3 Stretches To Improve Your Hip and Hamstring Flexibility

I’m want to share with you 3 stretches that have dramatically increased my hip and hamstring flexibility.

But before I get into that I want to share two flexibility concepts that have helped develop my flexibility consistently.

The first concept is let your body tell you how long you should hold a stretch for.

Instead of forcing a stretch for a specific amount of time, let your body relax into a position and every time you relax increase the stretch further. Keep doing this until your at the maximum range of movement. I found this has greatly improved my flexibility and it far less damaging to my body.

The second concept is even simpler; stretch whenever and wherever you can. I know the importance of flexibility and training but I find the idea spending an hour just stretching mind-numbingly boring.

So when I tried to stretch like this I would keep putting it off. I no longer try to do this.

Instead, I spend a few minutes stretching and mobilise before and after classes and I stretch whenever and wherever I can. For example, if I’m watching TV I stretch or if I’m writing an email like this I stretch (yes, I’m stretching as I write this).

Try to stretch pretty much any time you can. It may only be for a few minutes at a time but over the course of a day that all adds up and this will allow you to continually improve your flexibility.

Now for my favourite hip and hamstring stretches. I learnt these from Rob at Elite Flexibility.

In fact, the first time he showed me the hamstring stretch I instantly felt the benefit. My back and hamstrings kind of sighed in relief. Check out the video below to learn these three simple stretches.

https://youtu.be/KYyVQpk-G24

Try these stretches and tactics out for the next 30 days and see how they help you.

Follow Rob at Elite Flexibility for more information about flexibility training. Either visit http://www.eliteflexibility.com/ or follow him on Instagram @eliteflexibility

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3 Ways To Prepare Your Back For Jiu Jitsu

Back injuries suck. But I didn’t really understand how much they sucked until I had one. Putting my socks on became a challenge and a sneeze would drop me in spasms of pain faster than a Mirko CroCop head kick.

Injuring my back was also the first time I’d ever had to take time off training. And it kept me out for around 6 months. During that time, I spent all the monies and saw all the specialist trying to figure out to fix it.

But it wasn’t until the initial pain had subsided that I discovered what had caused it.

Years of martial arts training had created imbalances my body and tightness in my hips. Which is bizarre as I could almost do the splits at the time. Once I realised this, it allowed me to start the road to recovery.

A big part of that was understanding how to relieve the tensions of Jiu Jitsu and increase my hip and hamstring flexibility. This video covers two ways I prepare my back for training and the best way I’ve found to relieve the tension created by Jiu Jitsu.

https://youtu.be/ARRCHrMeyEw

Follow Rob at Elite Flexibility for more information about flexibility training. Either visit http://www.eliteflexibility.com/ or follow him on Instagram @eliteflexibility

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Lesson’s Learned From Revenge (& Two Cool Submissions)

When I first started, Jiu Jitsu professional BJJ competitions were a dream. Honestly, I never expected them to become a reality, let alone be invited to fight in them.

So, when I was approached by the guys at the Tuff Invitational I jumped at the chance to compete in a professional Sub-Only competition. Plus I would get to settle a score with an old rival, Paul Bridges, after nearly nine years.

The Arm Bar

Paul is one of the pioneers of UK BJJ, and I had the pleasure (or misfortune) to fight him under MMA rules back in 2006 on a UKMMA show.

This was really the early days of the UK MMA scene, and the competitors were nowhere nearly as well rounded as they are today.

Side note: Paul and I’s fight took place in one of the first cages in the UK. If you watch the video closely you’ll see there is a 3-inch gap between the cage and canvas, and the canvas was actually canvas, it hurt like hell when you grappled on it and left you with severe friction burns. Fun times!

At the time, I was primarily a Kickboxer, although I had done a fair amount of grappling and wasn’t afraid of the ground or to wrestle.

Paul, on the other hand, was already a purple belt and one of the top guys on the UK BJJ scene having won most of the comps available at that time.

It was a classic striker vs. grappler match up, that unfortunately for me, went the same painful way striker vs. grappler matchups go.

Check out the fight below:

This fight and Paul’s beautiful armbar are the main reason’s I got so heavily involved in Jiu Jitsu. I realised if I wanted a future in MMA I’d need to develop my BJJ skills to avoid situations like this happening again.

However, along the way I developed a love for Jiu Jitsu that overtook my desire to compete in MMA and be punched int the face. The rest, as they say, is history.

Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to compete against Paul again. He was always ahead of me in belt rank, and by the time I’d caught up he was focusing on his academy.

I thought I’d never get to test myself against him again.

So, when the guys at the Tuff Invitational asked me who I’d like to fight, Paul was the first person I thought of, and thankfully he agreed.

The Rematch

My preparation for the match against Paul was a little strange. I’d just competed and won the No Gi Worlds for the second time and was in good shape. But I had a distinct lack of high-level training partners and it was still a 6-weeks out from the event so needed to stay in shape.

So, I did what I could and I found a few great people to train with around Devon (which meant a lot of travelling but hey-ho). And when I couldn’t roll, I supplemented with more strength and conditioning sessions.

By the time the fight came around, I was in the best shape I could be in and I had a solid game plan.

That’s an important lesson, many people miss. When you’ve done everything you can in preparation for a fight, you will feel more confident. This is why training camps are essential for creating many people’s positive mindsets.

So, how did the fight go? Well here’s a complete breakdown of the match

The Lessons

Personally, there’s tonne of things I took away from this event, including: not rolling for 40-minutes before a match, fighting on a platform feels like a deathmatch, and several other things.

And there are also a couple of important lessons you can take away from this it too. Here’s four of the most important:

1. Don’t keep driving forwards if you head gets caught during a takedown attempt. Instead, shuck your head out by turning towards your head towards the body. Here’s Braulio Estima demonstrating the technique:

2) Don’t wait when you’re passing guard. Instead, immediately go on the offensive and start to pass. This forces your opponent to defend your pass not whatever you did to get there.

3) Put yourself in a position where your opponent is forced to defend multiple things. Your opponent can only really defend one thing at a time, so if you have two attacking options, they will have to give you one.

This is the reason I was able to submit Paul. I forced him to defend the armbar, Sucuri, and his neck.

You may never have seen this submission before, it’s a little unusual but the Sucuri is incredibly painful. Here’s how to perform it:

4. Do your best to prepare for a match. Even if you don’t have a lot of time, or training partners, or whatever, the knowledge you’ve done everything you can to prepare for an event is incredibly beneficial to your mindset when competing.

If you enjoyed this article, please leave me a comment or share it with your friends. It would make my day. Until next time.

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The Submission Transition Game

One of the first instructionals I got was Erik Paulson’s Game Development. This short instructional covers 8 ways of training to develop your grappling.

One of those ‘games’ was attacking by transitioning from submission to submission. The idea being if you master this you’ll create an inescapable web of destruction for your opponent.

Throughout my Jiu Jitsu career, I’ve regularly practiced this game (and the other 7) when sparring, and it’s greatly helped my understanding of submission and how to connect them.

Along with improving my understanding of submissions, there is another benefit to developing this skill.

If your opponent refuses to tap you can transition to another submission without causing injury.

This is incredibly important in training, as you get to develop your technique safely even if your opponent is being an idiot or doesn’t realise the danger. To give you an example of how this looks, check out this short video.

In the video, you’ll see I catch my opponent in a triangle, he defends and I transition to an arm bar.

That arm bar is on, but as my opponent doesn’t tap, which leaves me with two options: push harder and risk injury or transition to a tighter submission.

I chose option two and switch to a K-Arm Bar. At that moment my opponent knows there is no escape and taps.

This is a great example of training smart and training safely. Give this training method a try next time your sparring and let me know how you get on.

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Scramble Athlete Review

Buying a new Gi is serious business for most BJJ players. Inevitably, some important questions will cross your mind.

How much will it shrink? Will I look cool? Which one is best for competition?

To try and help you make an informed decision, in this video, I compare the three versions of Scramble’s latest Athlete Gi (The Athlite, The Athlete, and the Athlete Pro).

Enjoy and if you want to get one of these awesome Gi’s, they’re available at https://scramblestuff.com/