Class #1781

Archival Mat Exercises

40 min - Class
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Description

Amy Taylor Alpers teaches an archival Mat workout. Experience exercises that aren't commonly done anymore, but were discovered in a film of Joseph Pilates moving and doing Pilates exercises. After a quick breakdown of a few of the movements, Amy takes you through the archival version of the advanced Mat repertoire.
What You'll Need: Mat

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Jul 19, 2014
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Hi, I'm Amy Taylor Alpers from the plotty center in Boulder, Colorado. We are here today to do an archival mat. In other words, what I mean by archival mat is there's a very, very old film from the early forties of a couple men with Joe offscreen coaching them. Um, and this is what are going to be doing on the film. And we pulled that material out and tried to play with it a little bit and realized that there were a couple amazing skills in that mat that we're not necessarily teaching so much or doing so much anymore and they're very enlightening. So as well as strengthening. So what I wanted to do before we actually dove right into the mat was just give you a little breakdown of those couple skills. So when I speak them, you'll know what I mean. So we're gonna call this first skill, the three inch skill. We made that up. All right? It's going to show up in all your rollovers. So your rollover, your overhead, your Jack Knives, all of that kind of stuff. And it's true on the reformer too, but it's a lot harder here because you have nothing else to help you with.

So start like this, just to practice. You're going to bend your knees into your chest and straighten them up. Now if you're very flexible like Kristi is, then I would recommend just feeling like your legs are a little shorter. Maybe bending them a little bit. You could burn on a perch, your feet a little so your feet feel strong, not dangly, but also not hyperextended either. So you can pick your hips up. So the three and skill is basically pinch your butt and Levin teacher pelvis three inches, and then come back down and pick it up and come back down.

It's just you Amara. And up we go. It's a lot of power and come back down. Here's how it's used. Let's say rollover. So you're gonna start on the Mat. Your first movement, unlike you might have learned it, is not 90 degrees. If the hip is actually the three inch movement, right? So you come up to the three inches, then you continue over.

After you've finished, you come back to the three inches. And from there you start your hip extension in to the coming down. Okay? So you don't get to do this lovely little moment here. There were so used to where we then can kinda just roll over. Okay? So you have to skip that one a little bit. Um, and then we're have this other one, which I'm going to call the V, right?

So when you rollover, right? You roll over and then you open to the V. Okay? You roll back down. You're going to come to that three inch moment. Then you're going to come to the V for a second. Okay. We'll turn in a little bit more. You know, you're, you're about as wide as your mat and then you come together. Okay?

Then you would come to the three inch, you roll over and we're going to do this, a little variation here, but we won't talk about that one until we get to the class. Then you're gonna come to the V, you come to the three inches. And then you come to the V, right and again turning a little bit and it could be a little wider and then you'll close and you see the legs are still off the map. Okay. And then you can rest. Okay, so three inches hips come right up. And then the V is that you take a little pause, kind of like you might've done in coordination or something out and in.

And this time you stopped there for a second and come back in. That does show up in coordination on the reformer in the archival version and also on backstroke. Probably maybe another spot, but it does show up in a few other locations. And you know, I think we are going to do an archival reformer as well, so you'll get to see it there. Okay. So we'll take a little break and then we'll start our math class. All right, so we're just going to start [inaudible] just down each of these exercises. We'll start and end pretty much like this. The old film doesn't have transitions in it, so we'll come to this position pretty much every time.

And then we'll take the next position for the next exercise. Okay, so here we are. Toes are pointed. Maybe the knees are a little bit bent or they're not hanging is all, I mean they're levitated a little, right? You take a big inhale and on the exhale you lift your legs in your head and your hands and you pump into three, four, five out two, three, four, five. Good. And on this one you keep the nice steady beat, right? And the arms are a little higher than you might normally do them, right? So they kind of come up above the legs a little bit and you're levitated but you're not too much curled forward. You're almost more straight up in a way.

And of course the goal is those feet are eye level. These guys are doing it. Lovely, good. And then inhale and exhale and we'll just do one more. And on the exhale you just lower every thing. Okay? Flex your feet, take your arms up to the ceiling and then back to the mat above your head.

You stop at 90 degrees with the hands each direction. The hands come to 90 degrees. The head comes up, you curl all the way forward, you pulse past your toes twice. Pulse, pulse, you roll back down, hand stop at 90 degrees and then the arms go to the floor and you go up and then head and then roll through pulse, pulse, roll it back. Stop at 90 and lower the head and then the arms flex your ankles very powerfully and 90 degrees. Just the head. Then roll up, pulse, pulse, roll back down. Stop at 90 and the head one more time and arms come up, head goes through. Then you come up, pulse, flex your feet, flex him, come on Jen, and then roll back and then stop and Hanse above your head.

Take your hands down to the mat. All right, here we're going to use that three inch and that v. All right, so you're going to roll over the legs come up to 90 but your hips are off the mat three inches. You roll over, tap the floor once and take your legs to the v. You roll down to the three inches. Then you extend out to the V and you close the legs. You come up to the three inches up. Oh over tap and open.

Roll down to three inches. Continue to the V, close rollover up. Oh over tap. Oh, open to the v. Come down to three inches. Beautiful job. And then down to the V, close the legs, reverse it. Open up to the v o over tap the floor and close. Come down to three inches. And then out to the floor, almost to the floor. Open to the V, rise up to three inches.

Rollover, tap and close. Come down to three inches and then down to three inches from the floor and open to the v last time over to three inches. Over tap. Bring the legs together, roll down to the three, and then dig the fetal all the way to the floor. Nice job. Flex your left foot and take your right foot straight to the ceiling. Cross the leg way over. Single leg.

Circle over down to the other foot. Why? To the side and up to center. Oh, over down. Center wide on center. Two more. Inhale, maybe three Mora and down and around an exhale center. And again, overreach that strong leg connected to your center last time. Rollover and reach and are around and center, reverse side and watch.

Don't turn out too much as you go to the side. Keep a little, yeah, so that you right. Use your abs more than your turnout muscles a little bit more. See if that makes sense. And then down, cross over, pull your belly to the center. You've got very strong arms the whole time. Keep going and I'll cross over and we'll do one more and open out and down.

Way Overcome to set a very nice lower the right leg, flex that foot point the other foot and lifted up and we cross oh over down and wide and center and Oh over a nice, smooth and steady the whole time. Breathing in strong arms, pushing the mat, very chesty, right? Two more inhale, you know that picture of Joe or he's appearing in the big chest. That's the feeling, big chest and around that up and come to such a reverse and open and down and cross whale over and center and inhaling and exhaling. Yes, and the other foot. Nice and strong. Flex on that. That's it. I want to stay very strong and again over and I think we need to do one more after this and center last time, open all round and overcome to center. Then just lower that leg. Now in one movement, unlike the transitions you might have seen, you literally just come right up to rolling like a ball.

You does grab your knees and you go roll back and forth. You get to allow those knees to part. I was like, oh, your mats are sliding. Okay, so you, yeah, roll the surface and that roll on the surface of the mat so you don't roll the surface of the mat. Right, so you'd stay on that bat. Yes. You Roll and you come up. Yes. And you're trying to be in that tiny little ball thighs on chest, heels on butt ears between the knees. You're trying, right?

Your goal in here. Let's do two more. Inhale, exhale. Last time in Hail. Exhale, pause for just a second and then just lie flat. You got it. Okay. Rolling like ball. All right, so now we're going to just one movement. Pull your right knee to your chest and lift your head, right. Okay.

And then we're gonna switch and switch and switch. It's very strong like that and switch. Now one of the odd things on the old film is that the actually on the opposite hand grip, that's like a brain teaser. You can play with that a little bit. Good. And then last time, or be even and then returned back down to flat. Now like as if you were going to do round the clock in one movement, like the rolling like a ball, but you stay on your back, you pull both knees into your ears, grab your ankles and you do a little rolling like that.

And then you stretch the arms and legs out and hands go right on your thighs. And then you come in and you lift and hands go on your thighs and you come in and you lift. Then hands go on your thighs. Gorgeous. Two more up and out and last time, up and out in there it is and rest right one movement come up to sitting and take your feet to the v and your hands on the mat between your knees. Okay? And you can flex your ankles very different. This one, you actually do three pulses, one, two, three and then you come back hand stay on the mat and you started one, two and you sliding and then you come back up, enhance down the maths. You kind of stay in a little bit of around curl and you go out, out farther out and then you come just back but you're still in a little curl.

And then one more time out, out, out. And you come up into a little curl. Now point your feet. If you need a little help, you put your hands on the mat right next to you because it's actually quite hard. You curl back and levitate those legs with three inches. Bend your knees, take hold of your ankles and straighten your legs. Open leg rocker and you roll back and forth.

And we're only going to do the open leg. They don't show the close leg. So we're just doing what's on the film. Again, be careful of hyper extension. You want to lift those hips like you did in that three inch motion. Rather than stretch your hamstrings to do it or pull on your hamstrings or your knees, you pick your hips up, hips come up and back down. Oh one more time. I know hips go up. You're got to stop at the top.

If you can bring your legs together and then guess what? You get to lie flat again and just lie flat. Okay? All right, now open like rocker into corkscrews. So you're going to come up to your three inches, up to three inches, and then over parallel to the floor. Now you could twist, you come down to the three inches, right? So you come down and you're trying to be about here and then you get to Yay.

Circle all the way around and come back up. You don't have to do the three inches on the way up. Thank you. And then you twist the other way. You roll two thirds of the way down and pause and then you continue around and up again. So you start to notice maybe this feeling of a connectedness, maybe even a feeling of being a little shorter, a little more compact, right? It's not momentum.

You don't get to use momentum so much swinging those long flexible legs around. And let's do one more set. So you come on down and then you spiral the whole body from your center as opposed to from your hip sockets. And one more time. So you stop and now you've got yourself with your gut and you move it from your gut and back up through your gun. Nice job ladies. And then roll down. Take the feet all the way to the floor.

Roll up to sitting. All right, pick your legs up, open them and flex your feet for saw, right? And then the arms go very wide. So yes, at some point, I think we brought those hands into the periphery, but this is how pretty wide. And you can feel like very open here and a little extra connection in the shoulder blades. Pretty strong accent. You twist, then you reach for your little toe and pulse, one, two, three and then you come up to center strong. You twist and pulse, one, two, three and come up to center. You twist and on one, two, three and center and truest on two, three and center. We'll do one more and twist.

Now on the film you're not seeing or hearing what the breathing is. So we'll just use our regular breathing, right? So we'll just inhale and then exhale, and then inhale. Nice and finish there. And You bring your feet together by lifting them and closing them. I know. Great. And now swing your legs around in line your belly.

All right, why don't we go, let's go head to each other just for, yeah. All right, so now there isn't swan. There's only swan dive, which I think might've been a thing. You're going to start with one cheek on your mat. Hands are down next to your thighs. Okay. In one movement you come up almost like pull straps and t, right? You come up, you lift the legs, the heads in the hands and the hands are at this wing position and you start by going backwards and forwards.

So you go back and front and back and front and back and front and as big as you got up and down and up and down and up and down. Yep. And then you come back down when she got on the Mat, hands next to your hips. Okay. That we come up to our, for our position for a single leg kick, right different. Again, only one kick and it's quite aggressive. So you go kick and kick and kick and kick like that and you go a kick and kick and kick and kick and maybe walk your hands out Janet A. Little bit farther. Yeah.

And just kind of pull yourself forward and lift yourself up and lift and kick and kick, kick, kick last one and kick. Nice. They're good. Hamstrings. One cheek on the mat. You are going to bend your knees and place the backs of your hands on your sacred Bandon place. Then you pick your hands up once more and try to get them as high as you possibly can up your back. Pick them up and move them higher. Elbows go down, no kicks you just one movement. Lift everything as high as you can with a nice accent and other cheek.

Bend your knees and up and bend your knees. And you actually try to maybe get your feet higher than your head. Feet very high and lift him to bed and feet very high. And then lift them to bend. Yes. And one more set up. I lift them to bed and last time up and lift them to bend.

Nice job. All good. Now you don't officially get this, but we're going to do it anyway. Have a seat back into a little child's pose and take a moment. Okay. So there's a nice dynamic always to in these exercises. It's got a little bit of a bang to, it, gives you a bit of more kind of a impetus for the volume of the exercise. A little more, um, just bigger, bigger with a little more potency. All right.

So now we're gonna do neck pull. The coolest thing about the neck pole in the archival version is it's actually a lot more doable without a strap. So sometimes if I'm with a group and they don't have a strap, we do this one anyway. Okay? So you get to start sitting up, Peter, out in front of you. You can do it either hip with a hip width apart or feet together. So you can choose the weirdest part of this one is, or the one where you have to break your habit is that when you come up from the floor, you're going to come up to sitting straight instead of rolling over to your knees. So it's hard to, yeah, you roll up to sitting straight.

It's hard to break that habit cause we're so used to the other one. All right, so you can take your hands behind your head. Elbows are very wide, if not even a little bit farther back, right? Your ankles are nice and flexed. You round forward and pulse three times. Pulse, pulse, pulse, and sit very tall. Okay, so you're going to come to this position again on the way back up, right? You get to narrow your elbows and curl to the floor and then at the bottom, elbows widen and you have to come rolling right back up to sitting row. Right up to sitting. Arms and elbows wide round forward. Pulse two, three. Sit very tall and then narrow and curl.

And we're all right. Back up to sitting tall. Really tall and round. Elbows high and wide. Yeah. Inhale, sit very tall. Narrow the elbows and curl and on. I'm more time and [inaudible] up to sitting round over. Elbows high and has a fit and you get to narrow those elbows and curl all the way down. Beautiful. Got It. Okay. Maybe come down your mat.

Skin if you traveled. All right, we're going to go into scissors and bicycle. Okay. The main thing is the accent and the speed. Right? So from here we're going to jack knife over and as you go up you go right into your scissors position, right? So your legs will split on the way up. Okay? So Jack Knife over and then as you go up and put your hands in your back, put your legs into your split, then you go pulse, pulse, switch, pulse, pulse, switch, pulse on switch, pulse and switch. And the pulse is splitting, right? Not just sort of like down to the floor, but splitting the legs apart, apart, apart, apart.

Yes. A part could be even. And then go bicycle, bicycle, bicycle, bicycle. And you do the split in between. Really get the split, the split, the split, the split. That's the way. Got It. Very nice. All right. And then you can bend your knees and roll all the way down and put your feet hip width apart for shoulder bridge. All right, so they're not showing a lot of these transitions. The film just picks up when you're in the position. So let's rise up and put your hands underneath your hips.

All right, you're going to straighten your right leg down the mat. Now the distinction here is pulse hold at the top. Okay, so pointed foot the whole time. Three times, same leg. So you're going to go up pulse hole. Now before it comes down, you pick your hips up off your hands and extend your hip, kick up pulse, hold hips up and arch it out. Kick up pulse hold, kick it up and switch feet and kick up. Pulse hold. Lift the hip center arch down and kick up.

Pulse. Whole hips rise. So you get a lot of hip extension out of it, both hips, right? And then down in around, bring your feet together for all your spines down and then take your leg straight out. And if for some reason on the film, they don't show spine twists. So we're just going to go right into Jack Knife. Okay. On the reformer, you get to top tap the floor. Technically on the reformer, there's no real floor rights, so they actually would hit the back of the old reformer on the mat. However, they don't so much go so low. So just different variations on the theme. All right, so jack knife is not all that different really. Basically you just have that three inch thing. You do start at 90 degrees though. So you started in 92 to begin. Okay.

Then you pinch and lift the hips, you roll over. Oh, I forgot about one thing. You jackknife up really sharply. Then I forgot about this one. So come on over and you're up. Now you drop two parallel to the floor with your legs. So you drop and then you come to three inches and then you lower the hips.

Yeah, right. Just to 90 on this one. I don't know why. So you go over and then Jack knife up and then you drop, you really like drop and then you come to three and then you come to 90 the spine moves and it's as if maybe you could think like you're going to bring your knees over your nose so the hips move away from the shoulders a little bit, but they don't go to the floor. You go over three inches, sorry. And then over and up. And then you jack knife, like shoop, drop into it, shoop. Yeah. And then come to three inches. You got it. And then to here, let's do it one more time. And you go over and then you up and then you drop right into it.

And those legs will just stay 90 like that so they won't get too low. And then to three inches and then lower. Yeah. Right. Okay. Nice. Take your feet to the floor and then let's just turn onto our maybe um, Christie. Put your head at this end and we'll roll that way and we'll do sidekicks.

Let's face that way shall we? It's up to you. Okay, so you start, you can have the choice of two hands behind your head or one hand on the mat in front. They show both. You start in a parallel long line, right? And then you pick both legs up. You move them forward to 45 degrees. The bottom foot as it sets on the floor, we'll flex top one points and reaches to the back. Okay? Now you're going to keep your foot pointed the whole time for this. I'm sure you could play with that if you want, but that's how they show it.

You swing the leg forward, catch pulse, you swing the leg back, arch pulse. You swing and kick you arch and arch. Good. You catch it with your ads. You are shit with your back right now. You can have the sense that Lou, the leg is doing it, but you want to actually have a sense of the spine is doing it right. So the spine curls leg forward and arches the leg back.

You get it, they're lifted, you arch it and arch it one more time and into the back. Nice. Bring the feet together. Now they don't show the side. So we're not going to do the side. So we're gonna flip. We can either roll through your belly, see the other side if you want. Yep, you got it. However it fits in your space. Okay, so you start in a parallel line. You use that nice hand. If you have it and you pick up that both hips, bring them forward to 45 degrees, put 'em down, bottom foot flexes and stays strong.

Top foot swings to the back to start. Then we go for that kick and arch kick. And this base bottom foot is kinda helping to stabilize you a little bit because it is a lot of force actually arch. Good. Now remember the dog, the tail, doesn't Wa wag the dog. You got to move the leg, move the leg, but you see it's so not as stable. Straight neutral spine. It's incredibly moving in the spine. Lots of abs and then lots of back muscles and good rest are your feet together.

Nice job. Okay. Come up to sitting. Let's face each other a point your toes teaser. Okay, nice strong feet. Take your arms out to find. This one's really hard just with no hands. If you need to use your hands, use your hands, but ultimately no hands. You're going to curl back and lift those feet up to 45 degrees.

Yes Mans and then you roll your belly to the floor and you rise up and you roll belly to the floor and rise up. Nice jobs and belly to the floor and rise up. Stay up lower. Lift and try to touch your toes. Touch your toes. Yes. Touch and touch your toes and then lie flat. Nice. I didn't know like, oh thank God. Okay. Rise up to sitting, becomes your elbows.

Take a big inhale and on the exhale both legs straight up to the ceiling, four hip circles. Now they show it both bell bent arms and straight arms. So we'll do two each way. So whole pelvis twists to the rights and now on left and center. And again if you can, you have this feeling. Sorry, alternate. I didn't say that. Alternate.

You have the feeling right that you're not just say rolling your pelvis around on your sacrum, which of course you are kind of, but it's more like you're holding your pelvis up with your abs and moving. The whole lower body is if you were on like the parallel bars, like the Mel Gym Gymnast are on, right? Good. Now let's come back down, legs to the mat and then come up and you can take your arms back. They do have officially a pretty much a sideways hand. Right? Romana was very clear. It was like this, but in the pictures and in the film, they're sideways. Okay. Same idea. Take a big inhale on the exhale, grab your gut and lift your legs up and then around [inaudible] around. Yes. And the whole pelvis is trying to twist. Yeah.

So it's happening not in the pelvis so much as it is happening in the abs and the spine. Right. Good. And then be even as that too each way. And then lower your legs. Nice hip circles. All right. So swing around and let's lie face to face again and do swimming. Now they don't actually, so swimming on the mat for some reason in the film, but we'll do it anyway because it's nice to get your backs extended and we'll do it the way they do it on the reformer, which is not that terribly different.

Lift everything up, eyes and heads and feet and then you swim, swim, swim, swim and it's big and it's high. Well, what they are actually doing is kind of hitting their quads, not their hands with their quads onto the box when they're on the reformer. So it's like you literally see that quad muscle actually kind of um, rebound a little bit off of that box. Good. And then lower. Okay. Tuck your toes and hands under and come into a push up. The leg pool front is quite different. All right, feet are together. You're going to point your right foot right where it is and then lifted.

Kick up twice, kick pulse, put it down, other foot points, kick pulse down, point, kick, pulse down, Keke, pulse down point, kick, pulse down. You have it very nice. And then you can lower your knees. Let's bring your feet out in front of you. Again, there's no transitions. You can do fancy transitions if you want. And then the regular leg pull is very similar or alternating legs, keeping the foot pointed the whole time, but you can obviously flex her point if you want. The hands are back and again, they can be actually a here is more where they're in that side position even more so than in the hip circles. So you just levitate those hips.

Now there's a kick pulse, right? So there's always those pulses. Kick pulse, place it down, kick pulse, place it down on a cramp. I get your boss laser done. You got it right. So you can see the ballet has been removed. It's been removed, right? It was never there to begin with. But many of us kind of learned at a little prettier. This is definitely more.

And then beef even and lower your hips. Nice job. Alright. Kneeling, sidekicks. Okay. So let's face however you want. Do you usually face this way? Okay, so face this way now, similar to sidekicks, kneeling in terms of the way the back is moving the leg, right? And that you start with the leg going to the back. Okay? So we're going to lean over to the right.

And instead of taking the leg out to the side, you're going to take it straight to the back. As you bring your left hand to your head. And then you swing it from front and pulse and back and pulse and front and pulse and back. And if you can, you get to flex your spine, right? So that you can actually get that leg higher than you think. And it's actually nice. And then last one and good, come back to the center and we'll go up and over to the side.

It's nice because you actually get to come past this and grab with this. So it's almost like a feel like you're, you're throwing a ball, you throw the leg, catch it, pulse it, throw the leg, catch it. R-Chop guys are going to go over to your left hand, take your right leg back, and then we go kick pulse, hold and kick. Pulse. Hold on. Kick going again. I think their Moses thing pointed, but you could flex and point a little bit if you want. And then kick and then back. Very nice. Good. Okay. Come to setting.

Now, even though in return to life they do do side bend. They don't do it on the film. So we're going to go right into boomerang. So you're going to have a seat. Face each other and your, this is quite different. Again, this is particularly the one where all the ballet has been removed, right? So you've points point your feet in front, your hands are next to your hips. Okay. You're going to skip that whole balance part in the middle.

It's really quite nice. You're gonna lift your arms behind you and pulse forward one, two. Put your hands on the mat. Jack knife over. Oh, sorry, I forgot to start with her. Legs Cross like boomerang. There we go. Okay. So again, pulse, pulse, come up, rollover, open, close. Come right back to the floor, sitting and swing your arms back. Pulse, pulse, and around over open close.

And come right back up and sweep those arms back and let the height of your triceps in the back determine how far forward you go instead of vice versa. Right? So your triceps pick up to lift you there and then you don't pause there. You just row right back, open, close. And let's do one more set. So you lift those triceps. Yes. And you are all back open, close. And then last time you lose them.

Yes. And then are we finished there? Okay, we can finish there. And then you go right into feel. You just come to the prayer foot position. Okay, so prayer, flood, palms are the feet together. Soles of the feet together. Sorry. And turn the toes towards you. Yep. Right. And they're really around it in and that actually helps you curl back.

You get to only do the claps in the front and just to, okay, so you're going to roll back. Return, clap, clap and we're all back. Or return collap claps. If you can literally press those feet together. Pushing together to do it. Yes. Clap, clap. Nice job. That really organized it really quickly. And good clap, clap. Good. And one more time over and forward.

Collap flap. Okay. Cross the legs. Now it's hard to say cause it's just a silent black and white kind of old film and they're on Funky mats. Whether this was just for the filming or not, but it's kind of fun to try it looked as though they couldn't put their head on the floor for crab. So right. Cause it would've been like off the edge of the mat. So what they do is they come up on their knees with a little head extension like that, then they curl forward. Tap, tap. Okay, so just try it. It's always fun. So cross the legs, you're going to roll forward up and onto the knees with a little, lifted the head for a second and then you crow forward.

And tap tap and then you roll back and switch your feet and you come forward and lift up a little bit and then tap Tufts. So it Kinda like stops your momentum a little bit and then you curl back and switch. Good. Now you are trying as all in all the crabs, right? You're trying to keep those heels on your, on your hamstrings the whole time. Yep. And then, especially here too, you're still trying to stay small like that. Right? Exactly. It's Kinda easy to kick out too far.

So you try to keep it in the ball like that. Yes. And then tap, tap. Yeah. And then finish your last one over there. Good. And then we'll, we'll, there's two more we're going to do control, balance and then push up. Okay. So you're gonna lie on your backs. Legs are pointed out nice and strong. One movement, again, you roll over into your Jackknife, but one foot that the legs split. So one foot comes to the floor and you grab that ankle.

So it's just like one moment. So you jack, knife over and ops, split the legs right away and grab your ankle. Yeah, with both hands if you can. So see if you can point your bottom foot. Yeah. And then you split pulse. Split Pulse, split Paul. Sit again. Split. Yup. Switched pulse. Switch pulse. Right. And you're doing that split like you were doing in your scissors and bicycle, right? You're actually splitting those legs, split those legs, split those legs and split those legs off and then come back down.

Good. All right. And then we're going to roll right up to standing. Come to the backs of your mat. All right. No ballet again. So there's no big arm circles or anything. You literally go flack palms to the floor. Just go palms to the floor down. You get three steps. One, two in it.

Right? Come on out. Now Jenn, just go hand, hand, hand, hand, hand, and you're out. Good. Now elbow stay very narrow and you go very forward. So elbows go back, but you go out over and then you can, yeah, put your Chin down just a bit more and then over. Yeah, I come back. You got it. And then over. Nice. Up now from this position, you down dog. You like pike up right now again, not so hyper extended though. Cause even though I said down dog, it's like Joe version and then you walk back to your hands and you co or your feet, sorry. And you come up to standing. So let's do that one more time. That's where the film ends. But we're going to do it one more time. So you go down, palms flat, what you go, step, step, military point. You go down, up, down, up, down, up, you pike up. And then you curve your Chin in and pull your belly in and you come all the way up to stand. Great job.

Yay.

Comments

3 people like this.
The variations on this class are pretty similar to the ones on Benjamin's Mat Class. Loved it!
2 people like this.
It is immediately apparent is it not, that Ms Kristi Cooper clearly demonstrates the Archival Mat exercises here very well indeed, and it is a fine example of what one could define as the "real and original Contrology mat practice".
Not to the exclusion I hasten to add, or forgetting of course, her friend, accompanying her on the second mat.
1 person likes this.
Thanks Amy! That is so fun to do.
4 people like this.
What a great explanation of how the exercises were done in the past...and a reminder to all of us, who instruct and practice, where pilates began. In our everyday instruction and practice we tend to modify the exercises for the clients needs and I can see how we lose the original techniques. I would love to see more of this type of technique teaching.
2 people like this.
I appreciated learning about 3 inch rule, I will implement from now on. Thank you!
D.
1 person likes this.
It was interesting.
1 person likes this.
Love!
1 person likes this.
Great class - it felt oddly different without the transitions :)
1 person likes this.
Fantastic! I'm out of breath :D Thanks for bringing Joe back, Amy!!
Brenda B
Great class!
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