Martial Arts Stretches : Martial Arts Butterfly Stretches

Our next set of stretches is going to be more of a relaxed floor stretching routine, that Jabaree is going to go through for you. It's going to be a little bit easier for you to kind of hold the stretches, for a longer period of time. Some people like to do them, while they're doing things like reading or possibly watching television. Now, Jabaree's first stretch is going into, what we call, a butterfly stretch. You snug the feet in, nice and tight and hold onto the ankles, or the tips of the toes, like what he's doing and use your elbows to try to press the knees outward and downward, just like that. And his goal is to try to breathe slowly and deeply and through the nose and out through the mouth and that's sort of a relaxation technique to get the body to sort of loosen up, a little bit. Another variation of this, would be for him to slide back and put his lower back against the wall. Some people like, I find that at times, my back can be tight, some people have a harder time doing the stretch, out in the open, so he can sit back, like this and the wall does some of the work for him and he can stretch that down to the ground. Notice he's able to get his knee down, just a little bit lower to the ground when he does this. It's also a great way where, if he wants to actually stretch his hands forward, it actually is a good, sort of, starting position where he can try to get, into that stretch. This next stretch we call a figure four stretch because the body kind of makes the shape of the number four. He's got one knee that's bent right here. Some people are huge about this knee being flat, some people like it up, that's a preference thing. Basically his head is down, his eyes are closed and he's relaxed and some people are going to feel this a lot, in the hamstring. Some people are going to feel this actually a lot more, in the lower back or potentially in the back hip, right here. Notice he's changing how his hands are. Sometimes switching hands, who's doing a cross hand grab, sometimes he can do both hands, sometimes he can just grab his toe with his finger, just like that but notice each time, he's got his eyes closed. Now, the eyes closed, that's a personal preference thing. In Yoga, they're very adamant actually, about keeping your eyes open, most of the time because they feel it puts you more in the here and now. Some people, including myself, like to stretch with their eyes closed because it really helps them to withdraw, within themselves, relax a little bit more and kind of gain a little bit more muscular control or relaxing of muscles. You would normally spend a little bit more time, in each stretch. He's kind of abbreviating them, just a little bit, just to show you some different variations. And again, he's probably trying to loosen up and stretch out of some of the tight areas like his lower back would be. Most important, I notice he's not intensely pushing, any of these stretches, it's all about just going to the edge of, where your stretch is, and getting your body to loosen up. He's doing a lot of switching, to go into a lot of different muscle groups here, now he's going to bend his leg back, behind him. When you do this, when you get your knee over to the side like this, it now makes the stretch a lot more intense, on your front hamstring. Notice he's going to reach forward, with his hands, his eyes are closed again and there's varying opinions, as far as this back knee, back here thing. Some people, they don't like it, they think that it's *** the knee, if you do it and your knee hurts, I certainly would suggest shying away from this stretch but generally, if you can keep this back part of your leg tucked in behind you, then you're going to keep from getting any pain, in this knee right here. Like with any stretch, if you have any discomfort, make sure you discontinue it, right away. Some people get a great stretch out of this one, from this front leg because it definitely makes it very intense, on the hamstring. He's sinking deeply, into each stretch. Switching hands.