Tutorial #1850

Jack Knife

5 min - Tutorial
36 likes

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In this tutorial, Monica gives a very detailed overview of the advanced exercise, Jack Knife. She gives helpful cues to think about so you can maintain control during this challenging exercise.
What You'll Need: Mat

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We are going to be doing the Jack Knife today. This is a tutorial on the Jack Knife, so extremely detailed and very slow and methodical of going through this advanced exercise. You definitely want to be healthy when your neck and upper back. If you've have issues there. You might want to leave this out for a later time until you're a little stronger in that area. All right, so we're going to start off lying on your back and then you're going to bend your knees into your chest and extend the legs up to a right angle.

Good. What I love to think about in this exercise, because it's a lot of obviously always powerhouse, but a lot of hips and outer thighs and inner thighs is an escalator. I love thinking about an escalator going straight up and you have to lift your bottom up on that escalator to get your legs over cause it's so easy to just get into the momentum and fleeing your legs over and we don't want to do that. We want to really work though our hips, our inner and outer thighs, and always be safe as well. When you take your legs over, you don't want, you can go ahead and bend them for right now. You don't want to them to flop onto the floor. Your hips are going to be under control and your legs need to at least be parallel to the floor. They can also be a little higher.

That's kind of PR by people's preference, but definitely not lower. It's not the rollover, so we're not just rolling over. Okay. All right, so go ahead and lift your legs up. And the other thing is, which I'm going to do with you right now is you want to imagine you're doing tower on the Cadillac. So I'm going to be your tower today. Okay? So we're going to is a great way to get stronger for this exercise. So she's going to separate her legs and I'm going to let her put right under my arms and I want you to engage your hips. Good pull in the lower belly and using all of your hips, inner and outer thighs.

You're going to curl up your tailbone and push me up like you would the tower bar. That's it. Nice. Really pushed me up and use this hip as well, and I get to see if she's using one side more than another. And now take a breath and exhale. I'm going to put all my way into you to roll down your upper back. There you go. And really lengthen your tailbone out that way. That's it. And just stretching down.

I'm going to walk in a little bit and she gets her pelvis really nice and flat. So squeezing your glutes together, taking a breath, and then curl up as you exhale and extend as high up to the ceiling as you can. Lifting your bottom up over your shoulders. Nice and take a breath and exhale rolling down. And I really am just going to sink into you, but also lengthening you out, not just going down into your body. Nice, Nice. And even one more time, feel those hips. Feel those thighs goop in your belly more. There you go.

Protect that spine as you curl up, pushing me up. There you go. Taking a breath and exhale, curling down. Good lengthening out. Rolling down in a straight line. Come on, resist me more. There you go. Feel the legs on the work. Nice job. Good. So now you get to do it on your own. So you're going to have your legs nice and straight.

I like it in a Pilati stance. So you can engage the, what I call barbershop pull muscles. So from your hip bones, you've got spirals going all the way down to your ankles, right? Zipping up those inner thighs. No hunch. Shoulders reach those long. Beautiful. Scooping in your belly. Right? Let's see if your bottom can rise up on that escalator. So let's bring your legs over, but they're leading from those hips. Okay, good, good, good. Nice imagery. Now Steve, you can jack knife all the way up.

Beautiful. And now roll down one bone at a time. Nice. And even good. So the tempo is gonna change a little bit. That was really good, but it's called Jack Knife. So you're going to go over with control and then Jeff knife up and then roll down smoothly. All right, so we're gonna go ahead and take a breath and then come and as you're going over and then, and then let's go over. Sorry, further, further, further, further. And then exhale up and take a breath.

As you start rolling down and exhale all the way down. So on this last one, Julianna, see if we can come over a little bit quicker. I love the detail, but we're going to come over a little bit smoother. So here we go. Squeeze those hips and pull in your belly and over, over, over, and now up to the ceiling and control rolling down. That was so beautiful. I want to see one more.

Squeeze those hips and girling over with. Control up that escalator. And now jack knife up and curling down. Scoop, skip into each bone. Beautiful. Cool. And then when another thing that you did so great is when you're up, you kept your toes over your eyes, your feet didn't end up falling behind you as you went. Great job. Nice work.

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Comments

in just 5 minutes, I found 2 gems..the escalator and .the barber shop pole - genius....and Julianna - gorgeous Jackknife! Thank you Monica & thank you PA - helping me with my 10,000 hours to GREAT!
This is great!
I love your tactile cues on the escalator. Thanks Monica

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