Class #252

Push Up Variations

55 min - Class
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Description

An intermediate BASI workout with some variations on some of the basic exercises as well as an emphasis on arms with Side Push Ups, Traditional Push Ups, and of course the Pilates Push Up.
What You'll Need: Mat

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Sep 18, 2010
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Okay, so sit up tall or just behind the nylon, just behind it. If at any point you guys need a prop or something to help modify an exercise, please let me know and hold on behind your legs, behind your knees, and stack your spine. So just take the second that I think we deserve to set up to find your spine, because that's what we're gonna move around, right? So holding on length and up. Inhale. Exhale. See about allowing yourself to grow taller, tightening the abdominals a little. Not a lot. Sometimes I think we overdo it.

So I'm going to add in the glutes on the next one. Inhale. And on the exhale, just think taller. Start tighten the abdominals a little and perhaps the glutes. It's hard place to squeeze them. So maybe you'll think inner thigh. One more. Inhale with this breath. Let everything go and make a decision about what you want to do. I'm not going to see you for two weeks, so let's make it a good one, Huh? Inhale on this next exhale, we roll the hipbones deeper into the body.

We're taking ourselves down to the top of the pelvis about trying to wake up the spine. Inhale, you can use your arms. I recommend it for now. Exhale, pull the abdominals back as you stay curved and come forward and then lengthen up. So if I set our mission at the moment is just supple spine. Let's, let's put our thought there. Here we go. Exhale down. I'm going to go a little quicker tonight. I'm like I said, I'm feeling a little pre playing jitter, so that's where it's unfortunate for you. Exhale forward. We go and lengthen up. Inhale and exhale. Pulling the body. You know this is mindful stuff. I know we start like this most of the time. Inhale, exhale forward.

It's intentional so that you don't have to think too much yet. I'll throw something at you somewhere in here. Exhale, roll back, paying attention. You know what? What needs to be loosened up more for you then I might call for and do it. All right, here we go. Moving on. Exhale, Dan, we're going to go a little further. If you've been stopping at the pelvis, go to your shoulder blades. Draw the feet in a little bit. Release the arms. Inhale, the arms go up. Exhale, they come down.

Inhale, they go up. Exhale. As you bring the arms down, think about pressing the backside of the rib cage into the mat with the exception of the top of the shoulder blades. Can we do one more? Please? Inhale, eyes are forward and exhale. Grab onto your legs. Inhale, start. Exhaling. Press your abs into the ground first and then come forward. Try to keep your legs forward where we moved them to and straight and inhale. Exhale, gung, a little bit of inner thigh connection. You can even put your slide your hands down to your glutes. Make sure they're involved. Here come the arms. Inhale, you reach them.

Exhale back forward. Inhale, reach him up. Imprinting most of the spine on your mat with exception of that upper shoulder. Inhale and exhale. I'm giving you one more here. Inhale to exhale, holding it there for a full inhale. I'm using my arms. You do what you need to do. Oh, I would as I am and if we go reaching forward.

Inhale, we're going all the way down this time. So here it comes. Exhale down. What do you need, Andy? I can do a neck stretch if we need one. Let the arms come down by your side. Adjust yourself so that you're in the middle of your mat. And inhale, start. Exhaling.

We roll the hips up so it's basically the same action we've been doing all along. But now find your upper back a little bit. That just means gently press the upper shoulder into the mat. Exhale, coming down, upper back, middle back. A gentle encouraging of reaching the pelvis back to neutral annex. Hale, I'm assuming even held somewhere in their rural. And take a second check out your body, right? It's the beginning. So let's see. Are you long through the hip flexor? Are you engaged in the hamstring?

The back of the leg is your neck long. And what about your shoulders? Easy. Exhale. When it's time to come down, keeping the knees lined up right outside your hips. Let's go again. Inhale and exhale. Rolling. You can become even more precise. You can, not every time, but you can always look for it. Inhale, exhale. We come down. So on the ones you know, that's the place to dig deeper.

The ones you don't know, chances are it's going to be more difficult to do that. Last one for three, Anna, locate the glutes, the hamstrings, a subtle sense of reaching hips towards heels or vice versa. Inhale and down we go with that. Take the arms right above the shoulders, right above the chest I should say. And you know, reach the arms right up to the ceiling. So let the shoulder blades go. Hug the arms around you and exhale, put them back in place. Keeping mindful that the rib cage stays pretty. Still.

Wrap up the arms around and put them back in place. From there, open out the arms to a t position, reaching wide and long, but not quite to the floor. Exhale, take them back up. And as you do, think about the broad collarbones open wide. Okay. And it can be a small low V if you have to avoid each other. But making it a giant wingspan. Let's stay there for a second. Just stay there. Exhale, reach further. And to do that, you have to almost let go. So sure you could just sync the ribs a little bit. Just a tiny bit. There we go.

Alright. Set them on the ground. If you have to go lower or higher than your neighbor, please do to take one knee up to tabletop and then the other zip them up and again, find the glutes more than you do. Pinning the knees together toward the front window. We inhale the hip lifted, the legs are relaxed, we start exhaling field the bones of the rib cage sync back to the mat. So this has nothing to do with the legs to the back. Inhale, this is about you releasing and opening up the spine, back to center and inhale to the front. Begin an easy exhale. Perhaps you'll feel deflation.

And I mean that in best possible sense to the back and that there's some ease. Yeah, let's do it again. And to the front and XL. And while the back of the ribcage may come up, it's pretty much the first thing to go down. Keeping the hips nice and level. Yeah. Let's take the feet to the ground. Hands behind your head, laced the fingers together and just let the elbows float off the mat before you go any further.

Slide the shoulder blades towards your hips so you feel your neck long. I suppose the last piece is to pull on your head just lightly or give yourself a sense of length. Inhale for the chest lift. Exhale. Feel the chest fall to curl the chin to chest. Looking forward. Inhale, hold. Exhale. Pick up the leg closest to the back. Email, excel. Put it down. Switch sides. First email. Sorry.

Exhale, lift up. Inhale and exhale. Put it down. Staying there for an inhale. No movement. Exhale, take yourself to the ground. Did that just to see if you could keep your hips still. I'll only do one more. Here it is. Inhale, exhale, all the same rules you roll up, keeping the hips still. Even now, inhale, hold. Pick a leg to float it up on the exhale. Inhale, I'm putting it down on this one. On the Xcel. Pickup the other one.

Inhale, put it down. Exhale. We take it all down, changing the whole deal. It starts the same way though. Inhale, exhale, roll in yourself, checking in. You know it reached to the back of your legs. Inhale, collarbones are still wide, even though I'm going to ask you to pull a little bit forward towards your hips. Exhale. If you haven't, inhale the arms go up. They're going to circle all the way around, back to your head and take it down. Exhale. That's a long, long breath there, isn't it? That's all right.

We can handle it. Inhale, exhale. We go. Finding the ease. Inhale, reach to the back of your legs. I'll make this more about sinking the abs and pulling yourself forward. Inhale the arms. Do a circle. I'm going to go look quicker this time on about you and bring it back up behind your head. Exhale down and inhale.

Exhale, so if possible, we want to curl high enough. Keep going. If we can reach forward with the inhale high enough that the low back is released. Inhale, full circle duct. It's a circle and a half, isn't it? Exhale when you need to and continue that as you go down. One more time, attempting to avoid tucking the pelvis, but it may be necessary. Sometimes it is. Inhale, reach to the legs. Exhale, pulling in alarms.

Do a full circle and even another half to get back up. Listen Up, stay up, rotate to the front. Exhale. Inhale. Come through the middle without losing any of your height to the back. Exhale. Inhale to the front gate. If you can lace the fingers, you're going to be heavier. I'm going to do a small adjustment on you guys and X. Hey, let me hold you a little fall back into me. There you go. It's there. Yes, it's there. You're actually a little high grace. You get them down.

There we go. There we go. That's what I was looking for. Didn't know how to say it. How you doing? I'm gonna move. Keep going. You're good. I'm talking to them. You're good, grace. I know. I got two more. One to the front. One to the back. Come back to the center.

Grab the back of your legs. So sorry. Pull yourself forward and then Andy, easy. Let the arms go up. Put them behind your head rest. That wasn't so tough for me. All right. Stretch their arms overhead. They're not on the ground though. They're just floating off and I'm going to ask for you to lightly and not fast, lightly re let the ribs flare. Oh boy.

What's she doing? She's gone crazy. Yeah, it's good. Inhale and watch how big the inhale can be. With that, just let it happen and then on the exhale, leave your arms where they are and allow the ribs to fall back in. But don't lift the pelvis. If you can help, it should give you somewhat of a stretch somewhere, but it'll be different. Let the ribs go again. Enjoy not so much that it forces something to do back and then exhale, feel health.

A breath just naturally will start to engage the abdominals when you're trying to expel it. All right, leave them down. Stretch your legs out, zip 'em up. I have them together. Try and squeeze the glutes here a little bit. Here we go. For the roll up. It's an inhale start. Exhaling when you're ready to lift off. Keep the curve of the low back. Well done. Inhale. Exhale. Hug the space with those upper arms.

As we roll down and touching the back of the head here. Should tempo. If you can. Inhale two, exhale, lift off, keeping the energy extending. Go beyond yourself. You'd be surprised how far you can extend your energy to go back and in. Yes. And so, um, everybody just checked this out for one quick second.

Keep the shoulders first on your back. Second over your, over your hips. Okay, so it's, it's not quite as far forward. Here we go down, we'd have to touch back and right when the head touches you feel the bones wanting to come right back up. Yes. Nice. Sound Nice. And that looks great down there. I'm going to give us just one more and what I'm liking and really feeding off of from you guys is we'll stay up is the linking one exercise to the net or one repetition to the next. Move yourself forward on your mat. Get just behind your tail bumper.

Rolling like a ball. Draw the feet in close. You can have the knees together are a, I'm gonna, um, do the opposite of what you normally do if you always having them apart, put them together and vice versa. Hugin a tight, tight, tight tonight. Here we go. Inhale, roll back, exhale up. Use the breath and put a little bit of faith behind it. Inhale back, inner thighs. Help and inhale, roll back. The idea is that where you start, you stay.

And that includes your eyes and includes where you're living looking. I bake it. So make it so easy, easy, easy. I try not to kick if you need to, you can spread the ball out. That makes the ride a little smoother. I'm doing one more here at comes [inaudible] right? Sliding the hands up to the knees. Slowly lowering yourself down to the shoulder blades.

If you can keep the tailbone sort of back into neutral. We're going to keep the knees bent tonight for at least now let them drift away until the, maybe the toes touch the ground in the arms, reach back, bring the arms back in, the legs, back up. And I'm gonna encourage the exhale there. So it's inhale. You don't have to touch, but you can. That's the direction the knees themselves never change in him.

Here's the deal though. Your mid back, you're all points of the back that start touching it. Never change. Exhale. Let's do four more a little quicker and it's in nailed to exhale. One inhale, open. Exhale to putting your focus in the middle, not on the arms and legs. Three, one more time, four and with that, stretch the legs out on the diagonal. Inhale kind of high and exhale. Bring the arms around and back. In. Inhale, reach back. If you have room to circle, you do that. Two more. Inhale Open. Find the glutes.

It will help you. One more time. Reach. Fantastic. Bring it in. Roll your heads down for a second, but you're still working. Bring them right back up with control. Extend the lay closest to the window up here. Slide it out and hold. Stay there for a moment.

I would like you to try to take the bent knee. In fact, support your head with your hands. Take the bent knee almost across the midline or even slightly across the midline for just a second. So you're crossing [inaudible] crossing and now little just pulses of both the legs coming together and maybe a tiny lift. The reason I'm doing is I want you to hug that Midland. Want you to feel the midline [inaudible] Yep. One more time. Change legs. Good. If you're in your neck or back, you should take a break or you can take your legs higher.

This can be done with your legs on the ground. I mean your head on the ground three. I'm not rotating it for body for sure. I just take your legs a little bit higher for the moment. Yep. And then everybody bend your knees, heads down for a second. You can leave the knees in the air or arresting feet if that, if you want.

And that's sort of the feeling I want you to get as we even just do the regular single leg stretch. So for now, leave your hands where they are. Inhale, exhale. You Roll Chin toward chest as we come up, extend the leg closest to the front of the room. Think about crossing the midline but don't actually do it. Cause now we change and Oh, Oh and two to propel just a little bit from the glute and for four of eight and five get longer on the hips. Six and seven heading into the Chris Cross and we're here it is.

And three two, one, one, two still logging that midline. Maybe more so now [inaudible] so I do a little XL each time I rotate inhaling as I change. But there's lots of ways you can do it. Let's get a two more full passes here at comms. Come back to the center, bending the knees, let your head come down, draw the knees in as close as you can. Even if you slightly curl a little bit.

Sorry with the hands back behind your head. So just do what you can and try to do it from the abdominals. Let the feet fall where they may just sort of hanging out. So what I'm going to ask for and I'll all get up in a second to make sure I'm clear, is that your hands are behind your head. You're going to roll the thighs toward the ribs and hips will roll up and draw the knees toward the chest a little bit, but not so much that your head has to pop off the ground and then take it back down, roll towards you to lift and back down, trying to keep whatever, wherever your calves rest near your thighs.

Just keep that space. You don't have to lift the fee to do anything gestural. That's it, Andy. That's it and exactly. No big deal. Yeah, you can let the size get quite close to you. The challenge is if you do lift your hips to control them coming down. Exactly. Love it, Deborah. Love it. All right, so we'll keep going with that, but before you do the next one, bring your head, neck and shoulders up a little. You don't have to do a full curl, just a little hovering off and rest your head in your hands. Truly. Here we go.

Same thing. Let's do it six and down. You're in charge five and down. Easy head, neck and shoulders. [inaudible] right? Let your heads go down or it. Now I'm just going to give you the option heads up or down. Down is actually a little bit harder. The same exercise, but you're going to shift the knees toward the front window.

The feet slightly away, but just think knees and that's enough. So you're kind of rotated sorta like that. Just a little bit. And now, same thing. Draw the knees up toward that opposite shoulder. The hips will come up a little. Good.

Exactly. Except I'm just curious. Can you rest? And you know you were good with the puzzle. There you go. Yeah. Simple, simple. Yes. So Sam, just don't extend the knees, meaning pull the thighs towards you, but don't straighten the knees at all. There you go. Anybody counting at all by five really good.

You guys look faster than that. I think. What's that? Eight. Okay, so let's go to the other side and do about 10 or whatever you think you did there. One good. Rolling the hips. [inaudible] give you a little assist. You're okay with the range? Yeah. Yeah. Good.

Five which was giggling. Is that my mom? Yup. It's just off center. Just off center. Hardly at all with your head. Yeah. Okay. Bring the feet down please up and uh, we'll go for one more roll up and then I'll head into what I was going to do. One more roll up. Here it is. Inhale. So you're all stretched out to start that roll up.

You exhale to lift up just like before. And it's been a while since we've done this last one. Um, I've got a bit or not turn. Turn in a second. Take a bend your knees a little, take the like closest to the back and cross the ankles. Put your hands down and you're sitting on the hip closest to the front. Okay. And by that it's not a lot. Again, it's somewhat off center. You don't have to be completely sideways and just on the one butt cheek more than the other. Okay. Arms are forward so the knees are off, your arms are forward. If anything, you're aiming slightly across the body.

Okay. Here we go. Exhale to roll down. Yup. You can stretch your legs out a little bit. There's lots of ways. Hold. Inhale. I am using my ankles for help for now. You don't have to, but you can exhale to come up. You can grab your legs too. Good. And them to get off center over there. And Andy just turned, I'm going to ask you cause it looks quite good and I'm going the other way with your arms. This whole side would go to your right. This whole side would come. We'll go to the back too and down.

Stopping about the shoulder blade or top of the ribs and exhale up. I guess it's not top of the ribs and the shoulder plane. Inhaling and exhaling down, allowing the inner thighs to help you. What's what, what, what? What's up? Everybody's rotated to the back. Is that a question? Yeah. Everybody's, everybody's rotating to the back. Everybody's knees are rotated to the front. Yeah. Arad so should we start over? Yep.

I didn't dump the sand. I don't want to cheat yet. Okay. All right, fine then we better make this the last one. All right. Help yourself with your hands. Other side, you must switch the cross to the feet. So the top leg is in front. Oh boy. And it's never the same so it might be much easier to, everybody's rotate it to the front, the knees are toward the back and we'd come down almost to the, to the shoulder and inhale, exhale, roll up. If it ends up taking a little longer, just use extra breath.

You try and get those knees close to down there and they don't have to be laying flat in here. And also if you think about, I'm going to say, well I better keep going. The shoulders want to help you on that one spot. That gets really hard and unfortunately it's the antithesis of what you need to do. So if you can feel that it's so counterintuitive, tried to let them fall, you'll be surprised. Maybe I got three more. If it's easy and it may be you bring them to feed in cluster and the knees will be still, they don't change as you go to more. Oh, there you go. I'm serious on me. That's good. You should be.

This is very important. One more. We must come up and we must pretend that it's as easy as the first one. That doesn't say much. I realize. All right, so since we are already crossed legged, just finish it by letting the feet come out. If that doesn't work for you, you can sit on a towel, roll your mat, and then hug the inner thighs a little bit together so it's as if you are drawing energy inwards so that you can lift upward. Good. Just like that. Must be perfect. From here, I pull on the knees a little just for help, but we're just inhaling to let the spine grow longer, maybe heavier shoulders. Go ahead and exhale to continue to lift the chest up, guiding the eyes up towards the ceiling as well. We're not leaning back.

We're not really going for a huge arch or flaring the ribs. We're keeping them relatively contained. Inhale, bring it home and exhale somewhere in there. Changing the breath to a one cycle so you're inhaling up. Exhaling down. Here it comes. Inhale to lengthen. First, keep inhaling as you try to let the chest open and lift. Exhale to bring it back without collapsing and inhale, lengthen. Lift. When you need to exhale, you should start and bring it back. I'm not trying to produce strain, I'm only doing two more. Here it is. Inhale, lift, lengthen and arching.

The upper back is really the goal and down. Last one here, I'm noticing that I feel I like it better with my elbows wide, so it's up to you. Give it a shot and release to come home. All right. Since I was not, since we're up, we're going down. Bring your feet together, roll yourself down. Arms are going to be by our side or a low v would be fine.

Stretch the legs out and we'll take the leg closest to the back to extend it up for leg circles. Okay. Flex the foot. Try to imagine the front of the hip joint soft. If your hamstrings really tight, that's going to be impossible. You bend the lower leg otherwise toward the front of the room. Inhale for a full circle, same direction. Exhale, keeping the rest of your body still inhale and exhale. Put a little dynamic, dine, whatever. Make it dynamic.

One more right? Is that five a finished this exhale. All right, other direction. Inhale around. That's where some more at times words just don't seem right. Inhale up. Exhale, let it fall on couch and inhale to exhale. Stern it up in here. I'm going to call it on this. That might be four, but I'm going to call it there. Bend the knee and cross over the body, allowing your need across over the midline. You're going to look the other way. Open the chest and bring it back.

Stretch your leg out and really it's a good opportunity to do that Q of lengthen out of the hip joint. Otherwise bring the other one up. Flex the foot heavy through the trunk coming across the body first. Here we go. It's in here, and exhale and inhale. So we talked a little about extending the energy right, so that means the arms, that means the leg especially is really involved. One more finish of this. Exhale, other direction. Inhaling around up.

Exhale and inhale full circle. Exhale full circle in here to exhale, last full set and point the toe and bend the knee cross over and enjoy. I would bring it back from here, bringing ourselves to a pelvic or we're going into the shoulder bridge with a couple of little variations. Spread out your upper back so you can feel the back of the arms. Inhale, the feet are slightly apart. Well sits bones, distance apart. Here we go. Exhale rolling. And if you don't already feel your hamstrings, try to look for them. Now I went kind of slow on that one.

Nice tall. Let's take the leg closest to the front of the room. Extended up and check that you didn't pike or drop the hips. It's gotta be up there. Here we go. Kicking to reach down one flex, bring it up and reach two. I encourage you to reach longer rather than lower and down. Come up seven and an eight and nine. Come back up. Hold it there without rolling.

This time you just lower the hips. Lightly touch, pushed back up. One, lower the hips pushed back up two and check in with the rib cage and trunk. There should be no reason that your low back has taken over, but it will feel like it has if you've arched. So keep everything the same. Two more. Get up there, stay up there. Just pointed toe or bend the knee. I mean put it down and check your pelvis. I need to readjust a little bit just to get back where we started and we're going to all just maybe roll down halfway.

Roll down halfway so you feel the bottom of the rib cage, but you're not your hips on the ground. If you can help it. Inhale, exhale, you're going back up, spread out the collarbones. Once you get up there you're going to take that other leg and we did 10. Here we go. Reach down long one and bring it up and reach to three. So important to get the hip extensors involved. Just anything from the backside of the glue or the butt down.

Really encourage it. I have no idea. Yeah. Oh boy. Get hold. I must've had some idea lower down. And, and to press up like you're pushing the ceiling away. That lower leg is the obviously the one working and we did eight. So here's four and down. Hug the inner thigh. Three they're not touching, but is the intent, right? One more. Get up there, stay up there. Return the foot to the starting position.

Adjust if you need to to find that original place. And when it's time exhaling to roll down. Yeah, great. Bring the right knee into your chest. Extend the left leg, curl your head, neck and shoulders out. Reaching forward from here. Let go. So you're just straddling your leg with the arms. Extend that leg up to the level that you can start to bend the lower leg as it comes in. You're going to hold it there for a minute.

Get the other one all the way down. Extend it up there. So we're basically doing a gigantic bicycle bend. They are lower leg. Pull it right in close, and then extend it and it reaches [inaudible]. This is not going to get any faster extent. And Ben Checking your shoulders. You're reaching long. Oh, it's gorgeous.

Now you could do this with the head down, but you just wouldn't be able to go as low with the leg, right? You'd have to bring the leg up sooner and you wouldn't be able to go as low. It's quite challenging actually. I'm not sure which is harder actually. I think this one's harder, but let's not do that and one more I believe if I did not let you be even, please do bring that lower leg up to match it. Support your head. Let your head go down for a moment. So we have our hands behind our head.

Everybody externally rotate from the hip joint that me just turn the knees out from the hip and from there, what was I going to do? Oh, curl head, the controllers up. That's what I was going to do. I'm hoping that your glutes are engaged and if so we'll be able to inhale the, let the legs reach long and somewhat down. Start exhaling and bring them back up. Inhale, reaching down in long exhale, bring it back up. You are your own best judge. If your back starts moving, you're not ready for it. All right? It's just, it's working. Something else. Anyway, I suppose if you're trying to work that thing, you're ready for it, but let's keep the back still one more and up from there. Go back to parallel feet and legs. Bend them.

Reach around to grab onto the back of your legs, keeping the feet parallel to the floor. Let's roll up. Excellent. Put the leg foot down closest to the front of the room and straighten the other one. Fantastic. Hold somewhere where you can lengthen out. Now, if you're too close, you won't be able to. You might just move the foot out flat back.

Either continue holding on or reach forward with your hands. We rolled down, we're doing just a little teaser prep. Squeeze the glutes a little more down here. The head touches and we inhale. Make it smooth all the way up and chest just reaches forward and exhale down and you inhale all the way. If you can, of course you can add in more breath, right? Your breathing, Sam. Good. Good. Me Too. This time we're coming up. I'm going to have a little fun up here. Do your best to, I'm going to say Ben, that bring them foot of the VAT on the ground, a little cluster before you.

Then extend it and go down once all the way if you can or just to the shoulder blades is appropriate too and up. Squeeze the glutes a little, a little. Watch the shoulders. The first leg goes down and we go. Things that can help. If your hip flexors right here in front start to take over. You can try turning out the leg a little bit in.

Draw in more energy through the inner thigh. Inhale. Anybody? All right. All right, and [inaudible]. Lovely, Nice Mandy. Nice. This is it. We're going up and rather than picking the other one up already, find a place to hold the one that's in here. Wherever it's, it needs to be dropped. The other, the other one and closer, pick the other one up. Separate them for open like rocker. Perhaps you can hold higher and it's the same thing. Okay, here we go. Inhale, roll back just to the shoulder blades. Really start exhaling. Trust it a little bit and then use your upper back to put the brakes on.

And I'm going to tell you that if you let go, like, okay, now I'm just doing my spine and now I'll think about my legs and inner thighs. It just won't work. I mean you'll catch it, but let's keep it all consistent so you could actually do it without holding on. It's not easy, but you could inhale back to exhale up and it's not even necessary. As long as you're thinking about it and emailing back, keep it, keep it so you're very much still aware of whatever is the hardest part for you. And here we go. I say that just cause that's what we let go of usually.

Last one. Here it is. Easy arms. Find some sense of ease with it and we're up. All right, bring the feet down. Sit Up till stretch yourselves out. Okay, heading into the spine stretch. Let's do a quick stretch. Sorry. Sorry Debra. So you're here, right? Go a little wider than your mat then. Then we'll set back up for, yeah, use your hands for support.

Bend the left knee [inaudible] and initially the Mars Bent. Typically that's where people feel it more so maybe no, I'm sorry. The more spent the less you feel it usually. So do that first you're going to spiral the thigh forward and I am, my hip is lifting and I am just sort of turning. I try a little tuck here just for a stretch, kind of look for what feels good.

If it doesn't feel good on the knee down here, don't let it go solo. Otherwise you just kind of come back up, rotate it out the other way and then slide it out to straight. I'm going to do that side again. Just lift it. If it was like no big deal, then maybe don't bend it quite as much at the knee. Let the hip moves. It's okay. Use the hands. There's no nothing about it. That's cheating. It's just what feel good. If you feel nothing, attempt to press sort of the foot backwards in the pelvis forward.

That's what I would suggest. Let's do the other side. Bend it. Fair amount cause it's different on each side and yeah, I suppose you minimize how much you turn. Right. But it's, I don't know that that pop you okay. Okay, good. And Open and same side. Maybe a little less bent. Perhaps you need more bent. Yeah.

All right. And we bring it back once it's settled then bring your feet just about Matt distance apart. If you need to bend the knees cause it's been too much hip flexor, that's fine. Arms are forward for the full back extension. I'm sorry. Spine stretch with back extension. Inhale. Exhale.

You lead from around the abdominals. Your head falls first downward. Let's see. Can you get your forehead on the mat tonight without rolling the pelvis forward? Come on, some of you can. I just don't. I always say it right away. We go into back extension so the pelvis has to move on. This one, you might need to bend your knees on this a little bit, looking for the long line and be pulled energetically on the diagonal.

Exhale, reroute. This is where the hipbones get pulled back deeper into the body and you roll up and I'll go ever so slightly faster. Inhale, exhale, rounding down. See what you get. You might be surprised. You might be able to inhale, lengthen up. Exhale, re round. Excellent. Really Nice Mfi to bring it up. Inhale and exhale.

Rounding over imagining that ball that all of us talk about when we teach this. Find your forehead only if it's not straining in the shoulders. It's just meant to stretch. Inhale, reaching. Challenge this. You're loosening up even as in within this exercise and round checking shoulders as you come back up. This is Scott. So much going on in Hale. I'm just going to watch a couple exhale to around.

Imagine your spine growing up the wall before it rounds forward. Good. Head down a tiny bit. Grace and Yup. Inhale into back extension. Hip bones are reaching forward a bit. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Exhale round. Wow, that looks good. Sorry, I don't mean to sound surprised, but it's just the whole room looks fantastic and Rola to to go on the second one we'll do with the variation. What did we do last? Go ahead. I'll figure it out. Oh, do you know [inaudible]?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, good, good. And inhale into your back extension. I should probably, I taught it first the last time, so I'll wait and round to come up. Yeah, I can do it. Yeah, you can do it. Anyhow, man. Let me just show you really quickly so you don't have to crane your neck. When you're here. I'm going to have you inhale. Exhale, exhale, rotate. Inhale. Right. Exhale.

It's a long exhale. I think. I don't know what, oh no, no, no. I went back to here and then forward. I don't know. We'll see what happens, but that's what I'm talking about. So when your arms, Ben, don't, we don't want to use that as an excuse to thrust. It's just wherever you are. They easily bend. We'll rotate. They'll extend. I'll probably bring you back. I don't know what the breadth will be yet and around to come up. The breath could change. So make yourselves comfortable. Okay, here we go.

Make yourself well, relatively. So in terms of the breathing or breathe, it's the same thing. Here we go. Inhale. It's far more comfortable when you read. Exhale, rounding forward. So this is all, the first part is normal. You're, it comes. Inhale, find your long line. Ah, ah, I guess we must exhale the arms. Inhale, rotate. Oh, that feels good. Exhale. Extend. Yeah, that's it. Inhale back to center with straight arms. Exhale. We round forward and roll up while lie. Now if I remember it, any hell growing tall? That's not the good part is all good.

Exhale round forward. Inhale to your back. Extension your head lines at blast. Exhale, Easy Ben to 90 degrees at the elbows. There's no major pulling there. Inhale, rotate to the back. Excellent. Extend the arms. Exhale. Get longer. Take your spine with you. Oh, beautiful grace in your rotate. FROMT with straight arms and down. Do you want to Moore's that? Plenty. Two more. If you don't want two more, you're just leave your arms down.

Inhale right here on your legs. If you're gonna do it that way, exhale forward. Okay. In Hilda back extension or just stay there for a bit. While that would be fine. Exhale, bend elbows lengthen through the crown of the head. Inhale, rotate. Front. Exhale, extending. Take the spine with you.

Inhale, rotate front. Exhale. If you were rounded forward, we're coming to get you in and we rule back up. Last one, exhale forward. So if you feel your upper back, that's totally appropriate. [inaudible] if you don't, I want to talk to Ya. Linkedin, Linkedin, lengthen. Good in how band? Elbows a, I'm sorry. It's an inhale rotate, isn't it? Extending the arm. Come back to the center and round and let's all hang out down here for a moment.

Hmm. And then help yourself up. Okay, good. So we're going to turn to face front onto our sides. I'll have your knees bent. Sam, we've met before. You've been to my class? Yes, we have.

Do you have a twin sister? Oh, I was about to get off my request. Oh, okay. Oh yeah. We're lying all the way down. [inaudible] oh, no worries. Yes, we are laying all the way down, but I forgot one minor detail. This arm that you're laying on? No, it's gonna wrap around your waist. [inaudible] your head. It's not going to be comfortable for the moment, but if you can comfortably arrested, do otherwise, it just floats for a second. Your other hand is near for now. We're going to put it close to the upper arm, K and all. You're doing simple.

You're going to keep that top shoulder down and you're going to lift up and down. You don't have to rest fully and come back up. Keep that arm close. I'm just moving my arm not cause I'm cheating. It's the mic that's in my way. Here we go. Excellent.

It is a warm pushup, but I'm also wanting a little flection here. Okay. Just a little little selection and rather they'll get a straight arm to get the straight arm as if you can or straight as you can. Knowing that you're going to have little flection here and [inaudible] one. Okay. And now meant to be straight up this along the side. If it feels like it's going to your back, rather lean back. Okay.

I'm going to do two more. Stay up on your next one. If you're up, extend the arm, bend a little and up one out of five. Adjust your hand if you need two to three, bend that elbow for the one on down. Here it is. All the way down. Good. All the way down. Yeah. Good. Let's take that arm that was not really doing anything and now you can lay on it. Stretch your legs to straight.

So you just did a little crunchy exercise. I wanted to see if you can feel it when it's long. So you're down, your legs are long, maybe you bring the legs a little toward a little more forward. And that's pretty much all I have to say other than again, if you're someone who takes pressure in your back, you would rather have yourself lean back a little so that the abs face the ceiling. Okay. Inhale, prepare on your exhale. You're just reaching the legs to lift it. It's the same side that you just worked. Both likes coming up.

If you want the full thing, inhaled down, almost touching or barely touching. Exhale to lift. Yeah. So again, a lot of you've done many of these. I encourage you to put your fingers anywhere on your front side, um, the abdominals and see that they're working particularly the bottom edge. Great.

None of the thing worth looking at, especially if you've done these a lot, is that if you put your hand flat on your back, low back, mid back, low back, I guess that it's not recruiting a lot. If you feel it's shortening your tightening, your of the muscles popping up in your hand, chances are you're overdoing that. So we'd rather you tuck under or lengthen the back. Let's hold it up, hold it up, and the top leg now reaches a little further. These are going to be quick for 10 reach up one and two and longer. Three, four, five, six, seven. Hang on. Eight, nine, 10 reach it long. It's still up. Help yourself up with a one more push up, right? Help yourself up.

Bring the bottom knee forward. Exactly lifted above the shoulder were kicking forward for side kick, kick, kick and reach back and kick, kick and reach back. So paying attention to I have you on your elbows. It's not going to be that hard to balance for this crowd. So you get to really free up the hip joint as it kicks forward and feel the glute on the way back and kick, kick and reach. Kick, kick and reach. One more here. Kick, kick, hold it to the beck lift.

We'll actually take your top arm forward just so you can, you're not back here and the back leg lifts and focus more on the glute than you do the leg, I should say. So you can rest the leg a little and squeeze the glutes like you're pushing something heavy away from right here. Couple more, probably three. All right. And then bring it in. Cross it over, either in front of the knee or anywhere in front. And press the knee away is one option. Lots of options on this one.

But if you've been on your arm too long, you could do the same stretch down here, holding the knee, holding through the knee. It's all very similar. What would feel best is what I'd like you to do. Cool. And then we'll just change sides. Okay, so feed her on the outside heads on the inside, still facing front, and we're doing the pushups again. So before you get too cozy, take that bottom arm and rapid feet. We're a knees were bent feet where you could flex them because you get to use the outer edge of your feet. If it works for you, sometimes they'll come up a little. Alright? Um, if you need a little more challenge, the hand goes a little closer to your waist. Okay?

It's somewhat changes per person. But anyway, here we go. Engage the top shoulder down and we lift up one and down. And two, my advice is not to fully rest the bottom and three. Now the last thing I want to do to you all is have you wrapping that shoulder around the front. So try and keep the collarbones wide like every other exercise at six or five.

Here's six. Yup. And SF. Yeah, eight. Nah, we did stay up on this last one. Extend the arm out of Boyle boy, and we lifted up and bend the elbow. The one that you're standing on the Riata five, four and five and you can come all the way down.

You don't have to replace the arm. It's just a habit I have, right? Then we did a full extension, so remove the arm to put it as a pillow. Stretch your legs, look down your own body and make sure that you're not sticking your tailbone out behind you. Here we go. It's an inhale on the XL. Raise and lift both legs up, one in how they come down. Remember your head's part of your spine, so although I did ask you to look down, I'm aware of that. Let's put it so you're looking straight ahead now. Good. You can try and balance more. You can mess things up a little bit, but closing your eyes and I mean that in a good way. As long as you can keep form pretty well, you check in on yourself. I'm all my abdominals working. This is one.

It's so easy to get lazy on. Can we do one more? Please hold it up. Stretch the top leg in. These were a little quicker. We lifted, one leg itself has relaxed, it's right here at the top three. Yeah, for longer. Five, six, seven, eight soft knees really known. And finally den come up with that push up, bend the lower knee and reach the leg a little longer. And off we go it's kick, kick and reach and kick. Kick.

Things to watch for here is, especially if you're relatively flexible, sometimes we'll keep going, we'll kick and we ended up rounding the low back and that's not a stable body so it kind of messes things up. So make sure it stays still. Two more. Take it to the back, hold it to the back, check it out, stretch that arm. You might feel a rotation through the trunk. Do look for the glute contraction and lift one lift too. The last two here, take your stretch please.

Either on your back, crossing over a little anterior tilt to the pelvis or tail bone. Sticking out sometimes helps. And then when you're ready, we're going face down for a basic back extension first. So what that's gonna mean to you is before you get all the way down there, if I can, we pretend I'm on the mat, the arms will be here collarbones wide. Your head will be on the map just a little bit.

So the first thing you'll do is just simple depression of the shoulder blades and that alone is where the back of the head starts to come up. You do get to look forward a little bit, provided you can get this, the sternum till lifted touch. Okay. Hopefully not dropping into the adds into the floor. Pretty smooth. It's quite small. So expect that expected to feel almost like you're straight. You'll be lucky if we get there. All right, so your foreheads on the floor are hovering. If that feels better to you, palms into your legs if they can, it definitely your upper arms into your ribs.

From there you inhale, the legs will just stay down. Start exhaling. You'll feel the shoulders draw down, you'll feel the chest sort of conveyor belt like rise and maybe you'll look forward. But try to feel the place above mid back. Inhale and exhale. Articulate back down if it were possible to fully go one bone at a time, you, you would, or you do. Inhale, exhale to reach the Scapula. Feel how that automatically can kind of guide the back of the head up or the face forward. However you view it. Looks Great. Any inhale and exhale, stretch yourself further down on the mat. Slightly faster, but no less precise.

Let's go share and maybe you could hug your arms in closer to you, Sherry. Yup. Exhale to rise. To lengthen your beautiful. Inhale and exhale to go back down. Fantastic. Inhale, last one. Like this. Exhale to reach and lengthen. Very nice. Very nice. Sam. Chin down. Just a little. One's good.

[inaudible] inhale and exhale down. Fantastic. Hands by your shoulders. I'm ultimately gonna push you back. Hips over heels, but if you need a second, take it. Otherwise you end up with me up here. Alright, so close, so close. Uh, while you're resting, you will have to come forward a little just to pick up your head. We're going to go into a plank in a moment. I'll tell you in just a second. I ultimately, we want the back, the part we just worked feeling work here as well.

I'll ask you to pick up one leg and we're going to bend it to pull forward as much as you can because I've come as far forward as I have. I, it's appropriate for me to let my head change a little bit rather than keeping it there. We'll do four of those on each leg. Four put it down for the other side. Then we're going into, I'm going to do a traditional pushup, so it's going to require that the arms are a little wider than normal so that you're going to like, so as opposed to Chaturanga like or push pushup like I suppose I should be saying. Okay, fair enough. So you're going wide the knee? Yes. I pulled it up and kind of at the last moment. Did it kind of pull it across? Sorry. Yep. Yeah, I did it. It's somewhat minimal, but yes, I did polit across the body. Um, as far as the width of the hand, I think everybody's going want their hands. Probably did the at least edge of the mat. Some of you may want more.

I know from myself when I'm on those green masks, I tend to be like half on like my thumb is. The only thing on that probably would bug most people, but for me that's where I like it. Yeah, just like that. Alright, so let's place our feet back into plank and before we get ready to even go [inaudible] you want to be able to feel both sides of your body. I would suggest Andy moving your hands or your feet, your feet back or your hands forward a little. Yeah. Okay. So can you feel your glutes a little? You should. A little. Not a lot. ABS are in. Oh, they're like get ready. Okay. Pick up your right knee and do it. Slow. Exhale. Pull it in one. Keep the body as still as you can. Here's two.

It'll move, but it's still, that looks good. Three and four and change sides and one and reach. Full extension back and chew. And the last minute kind of crossover or maybe it's just gradual. Here's four. But flip down. Go slow. It's a push up. Let the elbows go. To the side xls. You don't have to do these.

I'm doing five inhale down. Exhale. Your body moves in the plank that it was in. It's still in. You can drop to the knees and it still works. One more time. From there, lift the hips, walk your feet in a couple steps and probably need to adjust your hands so they're a little more in front of your shoulders from their long spine, long legs. It's fine to leave the heels up in the air and not a big deal, but we do want the spine to feel like it's lengthening. Your head is just dripping off your spine. Shake it out. This time we're going to do a [inaudible] Bush up [inaudible], so probably going to need to back your feet up ups s step or so.

You can adjust later if we need to take yourself off right away. I'm kind of rolling into plank, feeling my glutes, push me along until we're in a plank. Keep that. If you prefer just to stay there, stay there. Otherwise without moving the shoulder blades much. Just bend the elbows a couple inches or you can go all the way if you're up for it and straight five again, you again, you don't, you can just do breaths.

You can go to your knees too. Flex your feet, squeeze toward the inner thigh for last one, five from here, lift the hips again. This time we're going to walk the feet all the way in. Let your head stay down. Walk the feet all the way toward the hands. Feel free to bend the knees where you need to and let the um, body, upper body rest, particularly the arms.

Yeah, it'd be heavy on the strength of your legs. You can let the rest of your body dangle for a moment. That includes the musculature, it includes the skin, everything's just sort of following your hair or following what your clothes are wanting to do. Just sort of hanging out. I even let my shoulders go, which I didn't mean to do, but it kind of feels good. I'm going to suggest you do the same. And then before we roll up, if you need to go ahead, but before we roll up, maybe put your hands somewhere either on your shins or the floor. Um, pull the shoulders back onto your back if they fell off like minded and bend the right knee so it comes closer to your forehead.

Leaving the other leg as straight as you can possibly. If you need more of a stretch to let that hip have the straight leg, the hip of the straight leg would just release out to the side gently or carefully changing sides. So the other knee Benz, try not to lock the straight leg, meaning don't drive energy through the back of the knee and then soften or actually bend both knees quite a lot to here. I'm going to recommend hands above knees, but you could just roll up from where you were. Draw the abdominals away from the thighs, kick in the glutes a little that and roll yourself up.

Taking your time head. It'll come up last restacking and going halfway down. Inhale, exhale. Let your head go first. This is nothing to do with collapsing. This is a supported role, if you, yeah, just about halfway arms are pretty easy. Inhale, exhale to bring it back up. Standing Tall. If your feet aren't parallel, make it a plotty stance, one or the other.

And when you get to the top, just carry the arms forward in front of you, up and down the sides. And one more time forward and up and down the side. Right. Good. Hey, good. Thanks for doing that.

Comments

Great class with nice arm work. My first practice for a few days and it felt really good. Thanks!
Awesome Helen thanks!
1 person likes this.
Hi Kristi - you are such an inspirational teacher - I live here in London and we need you here! Your style and way of communicating is totally spot on to me. Accidentally came across this website and am in heaven with so many of your classes to choose from! I am glued to this site! Thanks so much for your uplifting classes. I love it - Tya
Another great class! I agree with what Tya said, except I don't live in London!
great class!
Thanks Tya and Welcome to PA! Your comments are a real boost to keep going and are very much appreciated. For those times when you need a set of eyes on you to watch form, check out Amit Younger and Lisa Longhurst. You'll find them at Amit's studio Pilates Performance at The Royal Academy of Dance.
Here is the link:
Pilates Performance
Great class Kristi, I like the side push ups they are a challenge. You are the best!!
Great class Kristi! So great to get an awesome Pilates workout in while the kiddos are napping!!!
Hi Kristi, great class! Your cues are most helpful for me...relax this or focus on that...I need that constant reminder on "where to be"! Great job..thanks!

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