Class #2670

Foot-Focused Mat

45 min - Class
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Make your feet loud in this Mat workout with Amy Taylor Alpers. She continues with the theme of standing on your feet so you can beautifully organize the rest of your body. She shows how you can find freedom in your body, especially your knees, hips, and back, which will help you feel a sense of relief in your body.
What You'll Need: Mat

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Hi everybody. I'm Amy Taylor, Taylor Alpers from the plotty center in Boulder, Colorado. And we're gonna do a map, kind of a little maybe high intermediate level Mat, still focusing on this concept we've been talking about that I talked about in a tutorial that you might want to check out about standing on your feet. And surprisingly, that's harder than it sounds. All right, so you're going to take a moment and actually let's just bend your knees and if you're a Tucker or even if you're not, maybe just stick your butt out a little bit for a second and find your big toe, little toe balls of your feet, the center of your heel. Imagine that that's got a little bit of like a sail in it so it's a little less lifted versus flattened, right? And then let your shin bone move back and forth over the tailless bone, which is right under your shin bone. And that's a gliding action. You're not stretching, you're flexing your adjust bending things.

And as you do it, go straight down, not forward. Just go straight down like there was a wall behind your Seagram and you don't load your knee. You keep loading your feet. Now that's one thing to do when you're standing in Palati. We go supine. Could kind of take ourselves out of gravity, let the organs pull back into the body and at the heart, not be so stressed. But we still are organizing the body such that one at the end, you come to your feet, you're really beautifully organized, right?

So it's a little harder when you're not on your feet, but we're going to still try to find them. All right, so come to the front of your mat. We're going to cross one foot over the other. Doesn't matter one hand over the other. Now stand on your feet for a second, cause we're used to doing our thing right. Use your maybe perched this foot up a little bit, Amy, and just give yourself a little boost. Yup. So you're not hanging, there's no hanging. You're standing knees slightly bent. You're not locking your elbows. You might have a sense of slightly leaning forward.

You're gonna take a big inhale and you're going to flex your ankles to go down to the mat, deep ankle flection and everything else. Flex is two hands. Go right behind your head. As you roll down, bring your knees to your ears and we're going to do some footwork. Lift your heads and we stretch out and in. Now as you keep going, you guys go out 10 times, levitate up a little bit more. Yes, imagine your feet are on that foot bar.

You can even flex it those if you want or you can keep them pointed, but you're trying to remember your feet at the ends of your legs and let's add your hands at the ends of your arms. You be a four foot in animal like a Cheetah, and feel yourself between those four points. Let's go bird on a perch. Make your feet kind of loud. Flex your ankles, curl your toes. Kind of challenging, but like you were on the foot bar, right? Flex even more reaching through the heel versus pointing the toes. Stretch out in and good each time you stretch out. Inhaling, exhale, the air gets pushed out and then we're going to go flex your feet.

See if you can find your triangles again. You're still standing into the heel. Yes, flexing the toes back versus bending the knees. What about that? Bringing your feet home instead of your knees home. Nice job last time. We're going to stay out and you can go whatever height you want today. I don't care if you take him straight to the ceiling, you're going to point and flex and you're not like wiggling your feet around in space. It's as if you were doing the standing foot work. Yes.

And your weight was still on your feet. You're not hyper extending your knees. Let's even take your hands around to the back of your thighs. Bend your elbows and lift you up so you're not even worried about that part. And then just one more really nice and then bend your knees.

Unrest. All right, beautiful. You're going to take your legs out along the Mat. Hands along the Mat. Now you might notice right away when we're on the mat, right, that the shins are hanging kind of low. So instead of hanging the shins down and then hanging the foot down, we're going to flex our feet for a second. Bend the knees, one degree and let's go parallel. There you go. And we're going to pause. We're going to spine, stretch our feet.

So we're going to point the toes and we're going to go the other way. Toes go down, then the arch, then the, and then the until the toes get towards the floor. But if we don't hyper extend the ankle, that levitates the calves a little bit. So you can take a big inhale and on the exhale, pick your feet up and your whole leg comes with. And exhale, lift a mop head too. And we'll do some hundreds of, don't lock your knees into three, four, five and out too. So the downness of the toes gives you an up-ness in the calves and you might have to bend the knees to find it at first. Beautiful.

And you're not hyper extending your ankle, you're pointing your foot. What's the difference? Maybe back off one degree into ankle flection and then point your foot instead of your ankle. So you have a little sense of bird on a perch in there. Yes. So it comes right back up and last one. And you can just bend your knees or put your feet down. Beautiful.

Your ankles to take your feet on out. Flex your ankle very strongly. Do not push your shins and calves into the mat. Flex your ankles instead. And what does that mean? And it's not your toes. It's going to be your ankles. Yes. No, it doesn't mean your knees have to be crazy meant they're just not hyper extended or hanging. Take your arms up to the mat.

Pretend you've got a weighted bar. Keep your ankles flexed. Inhale, lift your head when it gets hard. Flex your ankles more. Roll-On up, flex your ankles more. Add, come on up. Yes. And reach all the way up. But don't lose your ankle flection and roll back. Flex your ankles to roll back. Flex them, flex them right into you and down and roll up. Hardest moment you flex more aren't the crazy. Those feet, they're so hard to find. Yes. And then roll back. And again, we're not stretching or flexing. What's the difference? Don't stretch anything. Flex everything. Flex your spine, flex your hips, flex your knees and ankles and toes. Don't stretch anything. Don't stretch it.

Laurel. Just flex your ankles. Yes. Okay. Now we're getting there. One more time and inhale. One of the things that happens in our civilization today is we lose our flexors. Flexing becomes actually quite hard. We're good at stretching. Flex your way. Home flexors are essential to our health. Yeah. Chloe, nice job. Okay. Black.

Flex your knee, right knee into your chest, like flex it. What's there to flexing your knee into your chest versus lifting your leg into your chest, right. Flex your knee. Flex your knee. Don't stretch your knee. Tighten your knee. Harden your knee. Just flexor me. Yeah. It's like sure hip, right. Have Ankle, but point your foot. Now instead of thinking I'm going to straighten my knee, what you're going to do is you're going to lift your calf up into your Shin to straighten your leg up and you can put your hands down on the mat and you're going to hold the lower leg, the calf ankle, foot up.

Instead of tightening your hip. Okay. And we're going to circle that free hip with that strong foot, circled the foot over and bring the foot back. Circle the foot X. Hey ho. Yeah. And it's like you have a nice pointed, sharpened pencil on your toenails and you can go for big circles and we'll stay in the center reverse. Now let's go for a big twist. Let your pelvis rotate up and over your left hip, but keep your foot and your foot point equals no pressure in the shin.

And then I've lost count. How many do we have to do? That's it. And then when you don't just break your knee, lift your calf home, right? Yeah. So you, you actually, sometimes it's nice to kind of imagine you actually have a knee that's somewhere halfway down your Shin, right? So you use muscle to support your lower leg versus break your lower leg off your upper leg and hang it off your name. Okay. So now think about your left foot for a second before you do it. Maybe activate your foot, ankle, calf, and bring your left leg in. Yeah.

So your knee is free. Really. So one of the big things is we're trying to free the knee and hip so they don't get so damaged, right? Try to flex your hip with hip flexors. Try to flex your knee with knee flexors. That's very different from stretching your knee.

Try to straighten your leg up. I lifting your calf foot and keep your toes pointed. So your arch is active, but that's not the same thing as stretching your ankle and circle your leg over, down around, and bring your toes back and over, down, around and over, down around good. And the root to eventually straightening the knee without just gripping the quad and reverse after five is to be able to then gently pull the knee cap up the quad to your so as versus push it into the knee and then bend. Yeah, so we know how many times we just sorta let our foot flat down and that Craig's on the knee every single time, right? You can grab that knee and roll right on up and flex yourself forward.

So put your hands down, flex your hips, knees and ankles, and bring your seat to your feet. Nice. And then just come up onto your tip toes. Take your ankles and have an ankle so you're not going to hyperextend your ankle. If you're going to have deep hips and knees, you're gonna have a little ankle and you're going to point your feet and almost like you're holding something with your feet towards your sit bones, right? And then you roll trying to keep the deep flection the whole time. Yes.

If you get it right and you're not blocking it at the Shin or blocking at the knee or the hip, or even in the arms or shoulders, right? You'll feel a little bit more freedom everywhere. Maybe a sense of release in your back. Yeah. Good. Yeah, I last time. [inaudible] nice job, ladies. Beautiful. Put your feet down. Put your hands down before footed for a second, right?

And just pick your butt up and straighten your legs. Just be four footed and then lie down and take hold of one need. Now the leg is going to be stretched out. The one that comes to you if flexed in, lift your head, flex that right knee deep to your shoulder, lift the other leg up. But when you lift it, hold it in your arch calf. Don't hang it off your knee and then bring it home by the foot.

Bring your feet home, bring your feet home. Yes. So if you were a chimpanzee, you could reach out, grab something with that foot and bring it home to you. Grab it and pull it to you and have your arms do less of the folding of your knee in and have your foot come closer to you. That's the way, right? So as if I were coming right in here and bringing this home, right. And then both knees come in. Actually both arches come in, stay in for a second. Put your heels together, your knees apart, and pick your feet up. See if you can pull your feet off of me.

Elbows a little higher and use your gut. Inhale, stretch out. Stay right in the middle. Exhale, grabbed something with your feet and bring it on home. Don't point it home. Bring it home. Think of bringing your souls home, not your knees better all the way. Let the knees part a little bit as they come all the way home. Yes. Last time. There we go. Exhale. Take both legs up and scissors. Split pull twice. Switch. Pull. I'm saying pull, but what I really mean is flex. Flex.

Right. Take your ankle. Flex your spine. Don't hang out in. Yeah, don't hang out in this. Stay for one second. Bend your knee. Find your foot. Pull your soul as into you. And then this is over here, but this is not hanging. Yeah.

Yeah. Or hanging. This is up because we're holding ourselves here. So burnt on a purchase. A little. Flex your ankle bit more, right. So you're holding here, right? And this is held up with that. And switch your feet. Yes. Switch your feet in. This put never hangs cause it's held. All right ladies.

Gorgeous both feet up. Do you want to take a break? Are we good? Stay here. Use your feet. Point your toes to the floor and your belly to the floor and lift up a little bit more. Laurel don't lock your knees and Shins points your toes to the floor and lift your, pull your belly back in toes all the way to the floor. Just go all the way down. And then belly comes deep to the spine. Last time, toes down, toes down and belly up.

And do your scissor or your twist on twist. Same feeling. Can you scoop the toes in versus flex the knee. And what if you dragged your toe along the Mat and took it out along the mat and at the end, don't flick it straight at the knee. Keep reaching it through. Reach it through, not from the quad, but from the so as and then last one and rural. Okay.

These four ladies have been here all day and arise on up questions. Pretty clear. Yeah. All right. Take your feet a little wider than the mass. Yeah, even a little wider. Yep. Flex your ankles. Now that's not the same thing as lock your knee and it's definitely not push your shin down. Yes, yes, absolutely right. So Ankle flection doesn't actually happen here. Here happens right here.

Yup. And it's distinct from the knee. It doesn't require knee action. It's a separate thing, right? And feel it. Come right back to here. Take your arms up. Imagine you had sons, very energetic suns in your palms and soles. Take a big inhale and exhale. Move your palms and soles without stretching anything and inhale, come back lifting [inaudible] and exhale a little toes to maybe bend the knees.

Don't worry about stretching, hamstrings, stretch anything. Inhale, fill. Exhale. M, t, m, t, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Inhale Phil. Flex your ankles. Don't stretch your calves. Don't stretch your hamstrings. Don't stretch your low back. Just round over last time. Gorgeous. Inhale up and exhale all the way over.

Just go Jessica, and don't hold it. Don't tighten anything. Inhale, fill back up us. Let's go right into saw. Take your arms out to the side. Now stare for a second. Don't lock your elbows. Float your elbows. Hold your arms up. The sounds funny with the muscles on top of your arms. Okay. Keep holding them up at the muscles, top of your arms. Flex your feet, twist curl. Keep your feet. Don't stretch your legs. Don't stretch him. Just flex your spine.

Inhale acts. He'll keep them pretty parallel. Sit back into yourself versus stretching your shoulders. Acts. Hey, a, lift the arms with the muscles on the top of the arm arm and flex your ankles more. And as you go, lift your arms and stay on your hip. Right? So come over to the right mark. There we go. One more set. Flex your ankles better. Soften the knee, calf, and last time, soften the knee. Calf.

Yes. Oh, nice job. I bring it on a beautiful, bring your feet together. Swing around in line your belly. Yeah. Right. Okay. So harder a little bit. When you're prone, it really is a little more challenging. We're going to go feed pretty close together. The goal being that when we actually get down into the feet, hands, we're gonna lose the tension in the, in the quad hip.

That makes you worry about your low back. Right? So even if you can't go together yet, eventually together is not going to be a problem. You're gonna have your little toes, not by opening things, but just by rotating in the foot. You're having a nice forward feeling in the Shin and a nice lift in the arch and you lift your eyes, nose. You can even lift your toenails and feel the arch of your foot.

And the calf Shin help you extend your spine with no fear. So you're thinking a nice arch in the foot, which pushes the Cap Shin to the mat, which gives you a little cramp in your feet or helps you for your spawn and rise up and you come back down and you keep the foot. The foot is actually working the arch of the foot. One more time. Arch your feet. Yes, that was beautiful. And Rise up and arch your feet a little more. Don't lean on them.

Arch them right. And then you're going to die by lifting your Archie feet. You Arch your feet up and you are at your feet up. Oh my goodness gracious. Woo. Gorgeous and feet. Oh yes, I had last time. Fantastic. And sit back on your heels. Wow, those are beautiful. Yeah, that was gorgeous. Nothing wrong there. Yeah, and Laura, you could see how you just was extension in your way.

High back. Yeah. Stay here for a second. Tuck your toes under and walk yourself back onto your feet. Going to lift. Your knees are going to be in a squat, right? Your heels do not need to be down or together. You can take this a little wider if you need to, but you're just going to explore. The heels are as low as they can be.

You're in deep flection. Take a moment. Feel the space above the tailless bone, right below the Shin, the Tibia. There's a space there, there's not crushing and the Tibia can gently glide forward over the tailless. Now again, we're not stretching or flexing. Maybe you think of opening the sole of your foot a little bit.

If that feels tight, you can put some nice weight in your Shin bones and you feel the calf slowly melt down the back of the Shin into the ankle. Fluxion. You feel your spine melt down into your sacrum and tail. And then in your mind's eye, picture the muscles of your quads starting below the kneecap and my grading over the kneecap, up your quad deep into hip flection and up into your soul as okay. Now you're going to try to put the top of your Tibia, not your knee cap on the floor as close to your toes as possible. Use Your hands to help. So you stay in deep ankle flection, deep knee flection. You come to kneeling in your ankle, flection on your Shin bones, not your knees.

And you could even take your quad muscles and kind of pull them up into your pelvis so you're not shared forward into your knees. You're sitting back in your ankles and your quads are coming here, right? And we have such a reverse pattern today that I really feel is completely directly to getting in and out of a chair every day, which sheers you over the knee every time instead of deep into the ankle. Right? So the goal would be you could just come to standing and go back down in this position.

That would be awesome if you know that we should be able to just do that and it wouldn't be hard, painful or tight or anything. Right. So keeping that feeling of quad coming this way, calf down and forward ankle flection and come onto your belly. We'll do single leg kick with that feeling. Yes. So you're on your forearms and we've been kind of playing with the idea, Joe Says 90 degree angle and it's really hard to know what that means, but we're thinking it means shoulder to spine, so it's actually your elbows much further forward. Yes. Even a little more Gen. Yeah, and I personally kind of like the tripod position.

Let's play with that. All right. Now you're going to pull yourself a board, like there's a kickboard there and you actually got on the kickboard and levitated your thighs off the mat and then when you flex, right, you're going to go kick on switch on switch and the knee is completely free. Yes. Because you're not stretching it, you're flexing it. You're having a little bit of an ankle and your calf is moving your tibias free from the knee. You got it. Nice job. Switch last time. Switch. Good. Now once she got on the mat, just keep those thoughts. Take your hands to your spine, high up, really high up. Get them high or get them higher. Elbows down. Take a big inhale, feet together. Point your toes and kick your feet.

Kick to three and then lift your feet. Very high. Your toenails, not your ankles, but your toenails. And then other side kick. Two, three toes go up so you don't lean back. Moral quite as much. You lift your feet much higher. Yes, on kick two, three feet. Go eye level even though you can't see them and had failed kick to three or can you? Yes, that's there for a second.

You're still trying to straight in the knee. That happens above the knee. And then you're working your calf to street and your push your Shin down towards the Mat, but you're still lifting your toes. And then last time on kick two, three on stay way up. And we're going to try one last thing. Flex your ankles, put your toes down for a second. Push your chest forward.

Wrap your shoulders up and around. Beautiful. Bring your feet together and now point your toes and find the equality of that and rest down and sit back on your heels. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful. All right, come back around. We're going to do neck polo. We're going to keep the arms down too, because if you don't have a strap, very challenging. If you feel like you want it, take your arms up. You're welcome to. But we're going to work more on staying on your feet.

Come like when you're on short box. Stay on your feet, right. Feel that that could maybe help you. Flex your spine more freely. Okay. Deep Ankle flection. Just keep your hands on the sides of your thighs hip with the part you have a little sense of push out to activate that glutamate a little bit. Yeah, and then exhale. Enroll yourself all the way down and just keep your hands down there by your thighs, but keep your ankles flex and imagine that ankle flection is your strap, right? So you curl up and by ankle flexing.

It creates stability here and if you need to bend your knees just a little bit, influx your ankles more. Yes, yes. And roll back up. That's nice. And now flex your ankles to go back deep ankle flection. It's not tension. Yes. Ideally it's not even hard, but it might be right now. And then curl up. Ankle flex through the hardest moment. Beautiful. Beautiful. There you go.

Keep ankle flexing so you don't hyper stretch something and then rise up to the flection of the ankles will kind of dictate how far you go and go back down and we're going to do one more ankle flex more and go flex versus ankle tents. It's a movement. You keep doing it. You keep doing it with deep muscles in the foot, ankle and you rise up and then you ankle. Flex your way down again. Keep flexing, lift your calves a little bit more. Yes. Think about when you do tendon stretch or long back stretch, you have to stay on those feet. Beautiful. You guys. All right.

We're actually gonna. We're gonna take a little bit of a leap now. So let's bring your feet together. Point your toes and we're going to go into Jack Knife. Okay. So yeah, make sure your head's where you want it. Now, point your toes. Take your legs down straight legs. You're going to point your toes so much. Your calves are not hanging around on the Mat, right?

You have the nice arms to palms on the back. You're going to roll over with those long legs that are not hyper extended. They're going to pick your legs up and go over farther than you're use to. And toes up first toes. Take the legs up and you roll down keeping those toes up there and you take your toes to the floor, your actual toes, which is different from the ball of the foot or the heel.

And you roll over and you're doing that by not hyperextending your ankle, but by pointing your foot. Yes. And you roll back down, keeping that toes. Fantastic. And then last time, let's just take the last one a little faster. So you roll over farther than you might be used to. And then toes lead you up and then you come back down with your toes.

Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful, beautiful. Excellent. Okay. Let's maybe flip your head to this end and we'll face that way and we'll be on our left side. And today your sidekicks are about your feet, so they're called feet kicks today you're up on your elbow, but your placement is on your greater trow canter. So you're wasting ribs, have no weight in them and they're probably lifted a little bit off the mat.

And then you flex both the really strongly flex them at the ankle, not the calf, and pick up your right foot, hip high flex to the front and then point to the back and follow it around like you did. You're in your Jackknife, right? So the toes, you actually follow them around and then you scoop them forward and you follow them around so you don't let your quad tightness stop you because it's your toes that take you excellent. There you go. The idea that we might actually go for range there because we're using our foot and not tightening our hip. We can literally get hip extension, spine extension, and some strength in those glutes and low backs. Beautiful. Yes. So that it's free to go there and stead of, you're just doing it at all costs, right? So the goal being, let's see, one more that when you're way out in your foot, everything is free and bring your feet together. Turn your foot out, pick your foot up, flex your foot down. Don't use your hamstring as a break. Just pick your foot up and then flex your foot down.

Pick your foot up and flex it down. One more time. Pick your foot up all the way and flex it down. Reverse it, pick it up all the way. Don't throw it. Just pick it up. Pick it up, pointed down, flex it up, flex it, which is different from foot tightening. Just ankle. Flex it up. Yes, and pointed down. Let's do the developing. [inaudible] start by toes down, calf up versus Nia. Toes down, calf up. Keep the toes. Lift the calf and flex it down.

Point, toes down. Lift the calf up. Keep lifting the calf up. Calexico down. Sorry. Three right up, right point the toes. So less here. Point the toes. This comes up. Then this comes up and then we can flex and we'll reverse flex up.

Point the toes down, which lifts the calf up and the foot down. One more time. Flex up. Point. Lift the calf versus breaking at the knee. Even though you flex your knee, you do it by actually picking the calf up. Gorgeous. Yes. Excellent.

Nice job. Good. Okay. Let's just roll to the other side. We'll do the whole thing. I looked really clear. Okay. No groaning, but it is your third class. Bring your feet nice and forward. Yeah. Okay. This hand can help, especially today, but actually you'll find when you get way out in the feet, suddenly this hand is quite free so you don't feel like you're just desperately relying on it. So you're right rib cages up off the floor. Even your right hip bone is off the floor cause you're on your femur. Pick up your left foot, hip high, flex your ankle, flex it forward, point it back all the way and flex it for it.

And that doesn't mean you bend your knee, but it may. It may cause that at the beginning, but eventually, no, it frees the neatest straighten because you haven't hyperextended the knee can actually straighten it with actual muscle straightening. Yep. Yeah, and take that toe around. It's like the hands of a clock. The toe goes all the way around the circle and then one more front and then all the way around the circle, like there's just a nice pivot point in your hip joint. Bring your feet together, turn out, pick your foot up, flex your ankle down. Don't stretch your, don't lean on your hamstring to go down. Just flex your ankle to go down more ankle, more ankle, less foot. Yep.

Point up. Flex down. Yes. Well more point up. Flex down. Reverse. Flex up. Pick your foot up. Point your foot down. Yes. Flex it up. Pointed down and flex it up.

Pointed down. I don't remember how we did for one more. Flex it up. Pointed down. Keep that point right into your developed pay toenails down cap lifts your Shin. Flex your ankle, put your foot down. Beautiful points. Your foot. Toenails up. Arches up, calf up.

Lift your calf up into your Shin Flex and you see how that frees the hip, right? One more time. Toes down, calf up and lifted up. Beautiful ladies, flex it down river. Sit. Flex it up. Point. Curl it in and stretch it down. And see if by virtue of being so far out in your foot, your turnout could be freer and easier and last time up point. Beautiful. Fantastic. Excellent. Okay.

Come to sitting with your feet facing each other. And we're not going to do leg pull necessarily, but I want you to feel how this is the answer to your leg pole. Cause leg pull is so challenging for most of us, right? So put your hands up behind you. Ramana would say fingers back. Some of the old pictures, he's more to the side. So either way, but what you're going to do is not let your calves hang.

You're going to point your feet and let your feet pick your calves up without hyper extending your knees until your hips would rise in. Your toes would go down, right? So your toes go down, your calves come up and you're standing on your feet hands versus hanging in your Shin knees, right? So you're way down here and your feet and your hips are up and then lift yourself down in home. So there you go. Now that doesn't make the kicks all love doesn't like totally answer the kick problem, but it's the beginning of the issue right there. Right? And sometimes that's what I do is I just see like where is everybody struggling?

Cause I see so many people and I think where are they struggling? Why is that such a struggle? You know? And then that leads me on the search for something that of course affects every single exercise every single time. Right? Okay. So teaser, same idea. Your hands are down, your feet are pointed, but your calves are lifted. Okay? You're going to take an inhale on the exhale. Ooh. Curl back. Lift your feet, eye level and your shins and your shins. And your hands come eye-level soft arms too. And Roll your belly to the floor.

Keep your shins up and rise back up to your shins. Yes. Feel your arms the same way. Right? So you're not pushing this down either. This is your Shin. Lift your shins up in your arms as well. Yes. So you have arches and shins and you have palms and forearms that are lifted, right?

And you lower lift your legs and you lift them up. Yes. And they don't hang off the knees. They're attached directly to your, so as abdominals. Beautiful. And then let's just take the whole thing to the floor. Nice. Yeah. Then bring your hands down by your hips.

Come halfway up and just bend your elbows in, be on your forearms, and we'll do leg circles here, right? So walk them back a little bit, kind of how we walked ourselves forward. Here. Walk yourself back a little bit, then pull yourself onto your hands. Point your toes, lift your shins, taking. Inhale, belly goes down, feet go up. Exhale. Take your feet up. Circle your feet, your feet go all the way to the floor and all the way up because your shins are up here. Go down. Sorry. It does go to the floor and you lift your calves back up. Yes, around toes to the floor and back up. And when they come up, just let them come up all the way, Jen, all the way closer to you. That's right. Toes go down, calves. Stay up and then be even exhale last time, last one, and beautiful. Bend your knees. Fabulous.

Swing your legs around, legs around. Align your belly. Hard but smarter. Yes. Yes. Okay, so now we're going to do a little rocking. Just not even the rocking part, but the shape of it. Because again, this idea really changes. You're rocking a little bit as well. So you're gonna bend your knees. You're going to take those pointed feet, right? So reach around and grab them with your hands. All right, so now the goal is here, right?

The toes are pointed, you're not hyper extending, hanging off your ankle stretch. You're pointing your toes, you're not hanging in knee flection. You're lifting your calves into your shins and you lift your calves into your shins and that lifts your upper body up. Gorgeous. And if you don't tend to your shoulders, you're way up there. My goodness ladies, you're going to love seeing that on film. Stay up that high. Gently release, reach around and swim way up there.

Very high. Yeah, lift those, lift those toes. Lift yes, free your hips and lift your toes and then have a seat and lie back or sit back for a second. And we didn't do scissors and bicycle or shoulder bridge. A couple other exercises today, but play with them and you'll see that it really changes those exercises quite a bit. All right, and then let's just bring your feet out in front of you and we'll do seal. All right, so what does it feel like if your feet lead the way versus whatever else we use? We have all kinds of techniques, right? But let's go prayer, foot, soles of the feet together. Turn the toes towards your nose, a little bit, Cup under, and then without your hands, kind of pick your own feet up. Yeah, hold your own feet with your own feet and role keeping everything connected.

So inhale, keep the connection. Don't hang off them. Go to them. Go to your feet, go to your feet, go to your feet, follow them and come back, right? So you don't end up hanging in your low back. Point your toes towards your nose a little bit, Laurel, if you can that way, and really continue pointing. Then there you go. There you go. Right. Let that spiral of the FID, which once again is activating that deep posterior Tibialis, which comes right up into your soul as lungs. I know this x, this shape got lost along the way and it's actually incredibly cool.

Yes. And then if you can last time w cross your feet, flex your ankles and come to standing. OOPS, we lost. That's right. Just come to standing right and take a moment and we're going to do the big twist because that one is confusing to everyone. And if you're aware more of your feet and you're standing in your feet and you're moving your feet instead of worrying about everything, it makes a lot more sense. Okay, so why don't we take those away just, yeah, or you can stand behind them. That's right. Go not very wide. We go a little too wide on this one and then everybody gets a little bit lost because the feet aren't really the thing we're, we're feeling, okay, so you're going to rise up, arms out on a slight star. We're going to turn to the right.

You're going to do that by pivoting your right foot until you're facing the other direction. Keep pivoting this foot until its heel is over here. Then reach down and grab your back ankle with both hands. Both. So the left hand will come under. Yeah, like that. Okay. Now stand on your feet. Don't hang out. Stand on your feet.

Bend your back knee a little bit and stand on your front foot. Yeah. And Laurel, see if you can bend your back knee. That's yeah, there you go. There you go. So all your weights on this foot. What does that even mean? Then reach out towards the door and swivel back on your two feet. And now we're gonna turn the other way.

So the left foot pivots all the way around. Get that heel all the way around. Stand on that foot 100%. Bend the other knee and take both hands around to the ankle. Bend your opals and pull your head to your knee and the foot behind you. So the foot you're holding, basically you're going to have rolled onto the side of it because you're standing on that foot. This one is has no weight on it.

It's there for a little balance, but you're not standing on it. And then let's swivel around and we'll do one more set a little faster. All right, so you spin around, you pivot your right foot, you stand on your right foot, you really should be able to lift your back foot up, right? Yeah. So it falls. It just falls right. And you're standing on that foot and you could turn this point out a little bit more. Yep. There you go. There you go. There you go. That's the position.

It's really not that complicated. It's just a big twist. And then on twist, but until you get the weight transfer, it's harder. Stand on your front foot. Keep pivoting this foot a little bit more. So the heel is over here so you can stand on it. There you go. You've got to turn it out or you won't stand on it. Right? And then you reach around all the way up.

Take a moment. Bring your feet together, little PyLadies v check that you're not pushing your shins back. You're standing on the triangles of your feet over your tail as Tibia drops. You're not tucking, right? You feel a nice line from the arches of your feet, right up your torso into the diaphragm. Let's just take a big inhale and exit. Excellent.

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Comments

Wow! Thank you so much Amy .. so many great images. You really brought my awareness to a new level.
2 people like this.
Excellent class Amy. There is so much in this class. And these girls had already worked so hard in the other tutorials and still managed to get all the gold nuggets you dropped. Going to be working with this for quite a long time.
1 person likes this.
fantastic class, the cueing really works for relaxing quads and hip muscles.
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Brilliant! Thank you Amy.
1 person likes this.
You totally rocked my body with this one Amy. It brought me back to my first private with you in 2007 when you cracked all my toes over the reformer foot bar and I knew you could see right into me with a deep knowing of exactly what I need. Thank you for your mastery.
1 person likes this.
Lot of good ideas in your class thank you. About the exercise you called "footwork" on the mat (other teachers call it this also I know), just wondering, why would you choose to call an abdominal exercise "footwork"? I realize that it looks like footwork on the reformer, but they are not muscularly similar at all. The reformer exercise is a leg/ankle/foot exercise. I just think it's misleading to give them the same name because it suggests they are similar exercises and they aren't at all. It would make make just as much sense to call footwork on the reformer ab work on the reformer because it looks like the ab work on the mat that was done in this class, and there is a small amount of ab work done in the reformer exercise.
Your class was great though thank you!
1 person likes this.
Yes!! Brilliant! Thank you so much.
NS
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1 person likes this.
I can watch this one over and over, it is packed full of wonderful reminders. Thank you Amy, you are a treasure! I hope to see you in October. :)
1 person likes this.
A hundred foot cramps later :) thanks Amy!
2 people like this.
Hello Amy, Thank you for your careful guidance in this workout. I'm a student of the equally brilliant Patrick
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