Class #1013

Beginner Mat Breakdown 4

15 min - Class
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Part 4 of Monica's Mat Work Breakdown includes detailed instruction of the Spine Stretch Forward, Open Leg Rocker, Corkscrew and The Saw.
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All right, so we just finished the dreadful and hard series of five, and sometimes your stomach has a hard time keeping up with all that, and your back starts working. It should work in some of the exercises on the series of five. So it gets tired and just supplies is an absolute genius that the next exercise is spine. Stretch forward. You want to have it. Now that we're in an intermediate level already in your mind, what does it look like? So that as you sit up, you automatically nail that position instead of sitting up with your legs together, then maybe opening up your right, then your left, then your arms come into play in five minutes later, you're finally in spine. Stretch forward. So since the legs are open, they're open about three inches wider than your shoulders, and they're going to be straight and you're gonna be sitting up tall with your best posture, with your arms up at shoulder height. Okay, so we're going to roll up using always our powerhouse, and we're gonna sit up opening the legs, arms up at shoulder high. So we're going to widen those legs a little bit.

That's good. Great job. Nice. You want to really push your heels away way and you'd use your seat. You want to squeeze up off your bottom and feel your bottom muscles have some energy, like you're skidding on your heels. And then if you're flexible enough in your, um, your hip flexors aren't gripping, we'd like to pull back those toes. If you aren't flexible enough and you're more at a basic level, then you're gonna bend your knees. But you're look wonderful.

So pulling up great arms. Our palms are down, facing down. Open up your collarbones a little bit. Great. And just beautiful job with the stomach here. Holen in and up, but a little bit more pulled back through your upper back and your neck and your head. So just think about Poland leaning back just a teeny bit. Yes. Excellent. Good. So again, I said you're going to squeeze up off your seat. You also want to have energy in those arms as if they're being pulled by a magnetic field this way. So they're not just kinda like up, but I could see like every muscle in your arm.

That's very important in Pele's in this next few exercises. Now finally, if you wiggled back and forth, you would feel your sit bones underneath you. No matter how well endowed we think we are in our bottom, we always can still feel those bones and they need to stay right there. And then these two bones right here, we want to draw that laser beam and it needs to be straight across, not going around a little mountain. It's going to go straight across. And if your belly pushes out in front of that line, second alarm goes off. Okay, so we're going to keep your belly behind that line and these hip bones directly over your sip phones when you're doing this exercise.

Otherwise you can stretch as forward as you want. You just don't want to see this tip. You don't want to see a lot of movement in the pelvis. So sorry to keep you hanging like that for long, but squeeze your seat. Grow as tall as you can, as if you're a puppet being lifted. By your head.

And now I want you to curl into yourself. One bone at a time. Wonderful. The arms, try to stay at shoulder height. Good. And you can keep going forward. Just remember that you're just trying not to tip that pelvis forward, trying to touch the crown of your head to the mat. So the top of your head right there. And we're going to inhale. Come up one bone at a time. Great. Here, here, here. Good. All the way up. Beautiful.

And take a breath and exhale into yourself. Good. This is more of the basic breathing. Exhale. Exhale, exhale. And now inhale, coming up. One bone at a time. Starting from there. Good. And exhale here. Take a big breath and exhale.

So you're peeling off an imaginary while. One bone at a time, trying to touch the crown of your head down to the mat and the ultimate goals to touch it between your thighs, not even between your knees, not even between your cas, but all the way deep into you. And now inhaling up, rolling up this phone, this phone, this phone, this phone. Keep going. Yes. Good job. Now the more advanced freedom, more intermediate, advanced breathing. Take a breath, exhale for as long as you can. So if you're thinking that hundred inhale, you exhale two, three, four, five, and then you would inhale up two, three, four. You're already back up and telling. You're going to exhale back down.

So the movement now goes with each exhale and inhale, and you're really stretching when you can't exhale any longer than you're going to inhale up. When you can't inhale any longer than you're going to exhale down. The toes are still pulling back the heels. You're still lifting off your seat. And we're going to come up one last time. Inhale, inhale, inhale, and take a little break. Good job. Arms can rest down. Good. So that is your spine stretch forward.

Really working to stretch the lower back, not just the upper back. Good job. So now we're going to transition into preparation for open leg rocker. We're not just going to go right into it. We're going to do the prep. So I want you to bring your legs together, schoolies them together. And this is how I like to transition to them. Um, we're going to think you're have enough for him if we stay here.

So I want you to pretend you're going to do a [inaudible]. You're rolling down and do a roll up. So you're going to pull your stomach in and start to roll back a little bit. Good. Stay there so that your energy is in your powerhouse. And I want you to start bringing your knees up so you use your stomach to kind of pull them back toward. Great job. Hold the feet on the mat still here.

And then open the knee, shoulder width apart and your arms are going to go between your legs and onto your, you're gonna use your belly to pool up and hold onto your ankles. Good job. A little lower onto your ankles if you can. Great. Good. Drop your left shoulders, the hair. There Ya go. Good heels are together and the fee. So the most important thing here is just to relax. I know, but to not tense the shoulders and to not grip in here, but to kind of just, this is when Romani used to tell all her stories because she wanted you to just get into relaxing and the only thing that's working is your powerhouse.

So the most important thing right now that we're going to do during our prep is we remember, okay, we're going to keep our box super easy, basic concept, but it does change a lot. It's more challenging right now. And we're going to use our stomach so that our lower back's not popping out. We're going to keep pulling in. Good. And if I was looking at gesture box, I wouldn't know anything's happening. We're going to extend just your right leg, hold it there for a couple of counts and bring it back down. That's great. And you're going to scoop in your belly. Nothing moves. Is that left leg extends and then several little shake of the leg.

Yeah. And we're gonna do that against scooping in. Great. So you're pulling into your back, keeping your box and down, and we're going to scoop it and extend the left leg hold and bring it down. Now we're going to be daring and do both lights. So scoop in, keep your box and both legs go up. Good, good, good. And Bend and scooping in and both legs are going to go up and hold it there. So see now this is another one where justifies you to sit on top of his desk and just talk and teach for like an hour like that. Should we stay here for an hour?

No. Okay. And bring your feet down and you're going to scoop in and extend both legs. And we add a little choreography here. Keep focusing on something so your weight doesn't go back and bring your legs together and apart. And now just bend them down again. We're gonna do that one more time. Scooping in.

Bring them together, open and bring 'em down. Good. You look like you're ready for the open leg rocker part now. So we'll do six of them and we're gonna bring the legs up. The most important part here is that the energy is not back. It's an up. It's always in and up.

So find something to focus on that's forward and try to keep your focus on that as long as you can. And as soon as you lose it, you want to come right back up to it. So you're going to pull the powerhouse in, roll through your spine, and come right back up to that point with energy. Hold two, three and roll back. Exhale always up to three and inhale, roll back and exhale up. Good. Two, three, two more. Try to challenge yourself and keeping your legs and arms straight. Last one, let's even keep your arm straight. Oh yeah.

And right back up to that point. Hold. And now squeeze your legs together. Leave them there. It's kind of a preview of your teaser and we'll transition into your corkscrew. So we're going to roll down away from those legs. Good. And you did a really great job. So now you're ready for your corkscrew, but we're going to bend your knees and give yourself a little break right out.

Perfect. Nice job. Good. All right. How do you feel? Good. Good. Slide over. Just a teeny bit towards me. Good. And we're going to bend your knees and good. All right. So corkscrew, there's many different levels. We're going to keep it basic and a little bit intermediate right now. Um, so when I say we're going to lift up your first five Vertebra, I want you to think of gesture pants and trying to get as deep of a pulling in and up into you. It's actually easier to lift a lot of your back kind of with the momentum and everything. And then uh, we'll lift up our back on the last set.

Okay. So we're going to do a few getting comfortable just keeping your spine perfectly flat. So I want you to extend the legs up and I want you to really think about those barbershop poles with those muscles circling around all the ways you have a natural turnout in your foot because of the wrap and the squeezing of the inner thighs. Feel your stomach and your ribs. Stay anchored into the mat. Try to press the triceps and the arms into the mat with the nice long neck and collar bones. Looks good. And we're going to just let the legs actually go down a little bit straight down. And now use your belly to pull them back up.

Go ahead and stretch down a little bit and then scoop. And so now we found our stomach. Now let's see if we can find our sides of our stomach, our obliques. Let them go to the ride a little bit and pull center and to the left a little bit. And then pull center. I bet you you could go a little further, right? It goes far as you want and pull center. Beautiful.

And Go left and find those obliques. Great. Let's make that into a circle. Go right. Go down, left as far as you can and pull them center. Beautiful. Left. Go. Righ center and hold. Good. Let's lift up just your pants when you finish the circle. So to your right, down around and lift those five Vertebra. Good Center, laugh. Try to keep that polite stance from rapping and squeezing in those thighs.

Pull it center. Good. Let's do that again. Scoop it in around, keeping that polite stance. Good. Ran In and left. Reach, scoop, scoop, scoop and centered. Good. One more. Set me lifting up anything you want here as you come center and then roll down and left. And I bet you you can pull into yourself and hold and come down with a little more control this time. And rolled down with control. Beautiful. So you finished corkscrew. We've got a nice trim waist now and we're going to sit up just like this.

So this is this shape right now. We're gonna go right here. So go ahead and sit up. Good. Open the legs again. Three inches wider. Good. And your arms are straight out. Awesome. Good. So same concept here. The hip bones see directly over the sit bones. We really are aware of the placement of our pelvis. It doesn't move with us.

So your heels are again pushing away from your seat and your toes are pulling back if you aren't too tight in here. Okay. And our spine, our vertebra, our statue, straight. One on top of the other. Just pull your neck back just a teeny bit. Excellent. Keeping your fingertips in your peripheral vision. That means don't turn your head to look at them. Perfect. Good. And we're going to try to lift in and up.

Let's go ahead and drop that right arm as you turn towards [inaudible]. Good. And exhale, always reaching the Pinky to the baby toe. Inhale up, rolling up your spine, twist to your left, and exhale. This pinky is going gonna go up as this pinky aims for just that baby toe. Inhale, roll up through your spine, meaning you have all these bones still to go. Untwist, good and twist. So this placement's really important.

Exhale because this rib should pull right into this part of your back and your long squeezing out the last 10% of stale air out of your lungs. Inhale, roll up one bone at a time, twisting to your left, pulling in good. And again, exhale. So this rib is now pulling deep into that side of the back, trying to go past your baby toe. That one's harder for you. And remember, we're not leaving our sit bones at all. Inhaling. [inaudible] stay right there. Good. So now a little more challenge.

I want to see every muscle in your body and your arms, and I want him lengthening out to the corners of the room. Great. I want you to squeeze your arm, pull it in tight, and our breathing is going to be more like the hundred. So we're going to twist with that. Inhale, and we're going to exhale down two, three, four, five. Inhaling up and twisting as we're inhaling and we're gonna exhale rib in, reaching in both directions, binky up to the ceiling, and inhaling up in twisting as we're inhaling and exhaling rolling into yourself. Remember to stack each bone as you come up beautiful and twisting.

As you're inhaling and exhale for the last time. Let me see you reach past. Let me see that tricep working with the belly, pulling in and inhaling up and relax and you are very good song. Nice job. All right.

Comments

It would be nice to see beginning variations of both Open Leg Rocker and Corkscrew. Or perhaps as a beginner I just missed this :) Also, an alternate camera angle on Corkscrew would be helpful. I liked the cue in Spine Stretch to imagine yourself skidding off your heels. Great tutorial!
Micall ~ We have a tutorial on Open Leg Rocker you may find helpful. We also have breakdowns of all of the Mat Exercises. I hope you enjoy them!

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