Class #2570

Magic Circle Introduction

50 min - Class
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Work your way toward the intermediate level in this Mat workout with Monica Wilson. This is part 7 of her beginner Mat series and she introduces the Magic Circle to add more control to your powerhouse. She also begins working on your side so you can start to organize your body in different positions.
What You'll Need: Mat, Magic Circle

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Okay. So today we are going to add magic circle to our mat. Today's class number seven and we're going to keep progressing to an intermediate level. We're also going to be introducing work on our side. So all we have left from the to get to intermediate is work on our side and work on our stomach, which are both a little more challenging than just being square and on your back and enjoying feeling the powerhouse that way. So we're going to add magic circle to help add a little bit more control. Super beneficial to work with.

The apparatuses of Palladio's of the reformer was really created to help you do a better mat work or the Cadillac to help stretch you out more. Challenge those muscles you need working all the other equipment, all the other app brass really help you to do a better mat work. But we don't have that. So get a magic circle and if you don't have a magic circle, be still want to do this class. Maybe I'm a ball or something that you can squeeze because basically this allows you to hug a midline.

So we're going to be hugging a midline between your arms, between your inner thighs, and between your ankles at times to really help you feel your powerhouse and feel the right muscles. So let's start with the circle between your hands up at shoulder height. I'm going to walk right through here. Great. So you want to hold it between the heels of your hands. Good. And you want the hands at shoulder height. Good.

And then finally we want to be aware of our ability to be double joint hitter that our, um, elbows and knees like to hyper extend. So soften those a little bit and even we mind pointing your elbow down. Good. So normally our arms kind of hang like this and we want to keep the hand and the shoulder at this point, but rotate that elbow up. So now they're all at the same level.

What that does is it really engages the back of the arms and it creates beautiful, um, arms you don't want to ever have sagging back of the arms. That's how we're gonna press the circle. And I'm going to use all my ladies here today to illustrate something else. Go ahead and relax your arms for a second and look down at your feet. Let's get know our Palabra stance, two to three inches apart with those toes.

Good heels together. Excellent. Now have the weight of your body on the ball of your foot. Let's talk about those knees. We're not pressing back with those knees, right? We're going to come a little soft spiraling legs from the line of our hip bones. We have a barbershop pulse spiraling all the way down to our heel that made our seat start squeezing and our belly is in good.

So when we lifted up our arms justice second ago, our upper back went into our lower back. So let's make sure that we're still leaning forward like the leaning tower of Pisa as you lift up your arms. Good. Good. So Nicole, I'm going to have you to soften those elbows. Great stomach in, and I'm going to have you lean forward your shoulders. That's it. Fantastic. Great. Now those are some strong Peloton buys. Now pull your belly in and squeeze at circle.

Schoolies and really, let's do that one more time. Stomach in and squeeze that circle. Can you feel how much your stomach pulls into your back when you squeeze it? Great job. Go ahead and lower your arms and lower yourself down to the mat however you want to. You're going to have your feet this way. Legs that way. Great.

Good and lie down completely. Let's lie down with your head on the Mat. Center yourself on the Mat, bend your knees, feet flat on the Mat. And we're going to place this circle between our inner thighs right here. Just lower than your knees. Good. You want your feet in line with these bones of your pelvis.

You don't want them super wide and your knees going like this. So maybe a little narrower DJ with your feet. Excellent, good. And maybe an inch wider with yours. Really Nice. Same with yours, Juliana. Maybe a teeny bit wide. Good. And now take your shoulders that way. Great, good. Nice work.

I'm just going to bring this foot a tiny bit forward. You're pretty good though. All right. So I want you right now to think about your pelvis like a bowl of soup, and I want you to dump that bowl of soup into your chest. Very nice. And I want you to dump that bowl of soup towards your feet. Good. When you do this, a little tunnel forms in your back, right?

And I don't want that to happen for a little while when we're squeezing our circle. So now I want you to squeeze your circle, see if you can find some pelvic floor muscles and some inner thigh and the lower part of your stomach to pull dumped that pelvis into your chest. Ideally you're not using hip flexor muscles to do that. Go ahead and dump it out. Again, relaxing everything, even stretching your lower back again and try to trigger those muscles again. So you've got inner thighs, pelvic floor, lower belly and seat curling your pelvis towards you. Great. Hold it right there. Can you feel how deep your belly is going into the mat, into your lower back, pulling in.

And so when you're hugging a midline with your inner thighs, you should be able to intensify the feeling in your stomach and you should feel right now that your back is really flat on the Mat. Right? Great. So again, we're going to, this is easier to learn pilates when you're flat on your back and your square. It's not too hard to understand those concepts. Good. Now let's go ahead and bend the knees into your chest and we're going to learn how to put it, our ankles. So slide the circle to your ankles. Good. Alright, nice bent legs. I love it. Now go ahead and extend the legs.

Just shy of the ceiling and turn out those legs for me. Good. Pull your belly into the mat and squeeze with your seat. Inner thighs. Outer thighs again, that pelvic lower, lower belly. Pull in and release. Try that one more time. Spiraling barbershop, pull muscles spiraling, spiraling, and release. One more time. I want to see your belly button disappear. Thank you. That's great too.

Three and release. Bend the knees in and hold onto those legs for a second so you don't get too tired. All right, so we're going to put actually your feet down on the mat and we're going to start off with the hundred. So you know now when we put the circle between your hands, what to watch for with sagging back of the arms, okay. And you know when you put it with your inner thighs, you don't want to roll in with the knees. Instead you want to feel the barbershop pull muscles.

Same thing with the ankles. All right? So we're going to put your hands one over the other behind the head. Nice. Take a big breath into the mat and exhale even deeper. Just staying down there and inhale into the mat again. And exhale. Really trying to feel every vertebra on the mat.

We're gonna do that one more time. Inhaling into the mat, exhaling into the mat. Scoop your head and shoulders rounding up and take another breath. Exhale, squeeze that midline and bring your knees over your hip bone. So you form a tabletop. Reach your arms long by your side. And let's pump. Inhale two, three, four, five. Exhale, two, three, four, five in with the air and exhaling.

Good hugging that circle by feeling all of these muscles awake, pulling and let that belly sink down. If you can feel your belly sink down against that circle squeezing. Then on the next exhale, reach your legs away from you. Spiraling up so they're straight and long and your tummy should go even deeper. Make sure your knees are turning out. Make sure you're squeezing with your seat, not with your feet. And one more in with the air. Two, three, four, five. Exhale, two, three, four.

And bend the knees and rest your head. Good. Very nice ladies. Sit Up and we're going to get ready for the roll back. We're gonna be feet hip with the part circle between your inner thighs and your hands will be here. Try to sit up really tall, right on those sit bones. Good. Then once you're aware of your spine, draw your belly in and round your back. Almost pretending like you can touch your forehead to that magic circle.

That's how round you want to be. So DJ, there ya go. And really get your bowl of soup to tilt towards you towards the so your hipbones are looking up at the ceiling. Nice. Very good. All right, so we're gonna pull in our belly, squeeze the circle started from your c, even use those inner thighs and the hands will stay there as you draw your belly away from your thighs, straightening your arms, rolling down one bone until your arms are straight. Take a breath and exhale, pulling your belly in. As you squeeze that circle home, take a little break with the circle and squeeze it and roll down.

See if you can find the muscles in your hips, lengthening towards your feet instead of coming back with you just to straight arms, hands underneath the knees, taking a breath, and then exhale back. Rounding, rounding. Good. We're going to go all the way down now if you can. We've been doing this so we should be able to go all the way down, but now we're learning how much the lower body has to work to stabilize this while we roll away all the way down to your head. Inhale, lift. The head up and exhale, squeeze a circle and that helps you draw in your belly. Fantastic. Juliana.

Nice. Riana and again and in with the air to start rolling back. You squeeze with the seat, you feel your pelvic floor, lower belly, all of it coming with you. Exhaling all the way down. Touch the head. Inhale, lift the head, squeeze with your seat. Annex. Exhale, scooping in the belly against it. That's fantastic. One more like that. And squeeze the circle, roll back, draw that naval and keep drawing it and rounding. That is so great. And Inhale, lift the head up an XL. Squeeze with a seat.

Very nice. Okay, now take the circle away and let's do arm work with the Rola. So you're gonna straighten your legs and we're going to be using this the whole class and close. You just get used to hold Monterey. So we're going to hold it here. Again, no droopy arms. We're going to hold those elbows up. Press the circle together as much as you can and round your back and stretch forward. Reach, reach, reach.

You're gonna squeeze at circle to draw your navel in. Rolling back in the lower back. We're going to roll down lower back, middle, upper pause right here with your arms straight up overhead. There should be no tunnel under your bottom of your shoulder blades or your bra strap and you're going to relax a circle as you stretch it back. Making sure, again that every vertebra stays on the mat. You're not going to lift their arms lift. Pull your belly into the floor to squeeze a circle your head through your arms and squeeze a circle as you curl up one vertebrae at a time and relax it as you stretch forward and pull your belly in. Squeeze that circle, send your hips to your heels, check that circle in the back and stretch it back as you relax it to mark arms.

Squeeze arms up. Squeeze the circle, curl on up. Reach for your toes. Relax it as you stretch. Pull your belly and squeeze that circle, roll it back. Send your hips to your heels, lower, middle, and stretch back. Relaxing that circle one more time. Circle up belly and squeezed a roll up. Fantastic Nicole, and stretch and roll it back. Pull your belly in, squeeze, or you're pulling your belly and hug in that midline and stretch it back.

Really Nice Ladies and bring the circle up. So there's about three exercises that we're going to do now that don't really use a circle, but let's go ahead and if you're flexible enough, go ahead and bend the right knee and put your right ball of your foot and stretch with the circle. And when I have am doing this, I want to see that your boxes square and that this hip can be square as well. You don't want this hip rolling in and all the way up here. If you can't straighten the right leg, bend the left so that the left foot's on the floor and that'll allow you to pull that leg up higher. So make sure you're getting the appropriate stretch for your body.

Looking good ladies. Both hands and both shoulders are on the mat. Both hands on the circle. Thank you. All right, so a little extra stretch here with the circle. I want you to take your right hand and put it on your right hip and kind of pushing it away from you so that you know it's not hiking. Now I want you to use your belly to help pull that right leg up towards your nose as high as you can. And then I want you to use that left hand to pull that leg in.

Circle towards your left shoulder. And your right hand is keeping your right hip in. Join in square on the mats, not lifting up with you. You should feel a diagonal stretch in the back of your thigh, right through here. You want your goals to get that stretch every time you cross over.

So we're going to put the circle down now and wherever you want you, um, the left leg can be bent or straight. We're gonna pull that leg up to our nose and cross around up crusts, around up three, around up, stomach pulls in. One more circle around hold, reverse reach. Get that stretch arms really close to your body deejay. There you go. [inaudible] down around, up. Good. Cross this thigh around.

Up One more. Yeah, good. And hugging that knee. Wonderful. But that right foot down right next to the left. Grab your circles so you can stretch. I'm going to have your hips over just a little awesome. And now bend the left knee in and put that for a nice stretch.

Remember to turn out that left hip and drop it a little away from you so you really enjoy that hip stretch. So you're pulling again. If you can't have this leg straight, you can bend the right leg and put the foot flat and try to both hands this time on the circle. Good. All right, now we're going to take your left hand, push your left hip away and use your right hand and of course your stomach to put first up to your nose as high as you can and then over to your right shoulder and you should get this diagonal stretch on the back of your thigh to feel that DJ. Good stuff. Good. All right, we're going to now put the circle down and your hands down by your side leg stays up to your nose and cross around, up. Cross around, up. Cross around, up to around up one more and reverse. Try to keep pulling into me here. Yeah, pull into me when you open that leg. Don't let yourself come off of my hand. One more. Good job.

All right. Hugging that knee. Good. And put that left leg down. Okay. Next exercise is rolling like a ball. So head to your chest and roll on up. Let's leave the circle by your side. This one, you won't use it at all. Good. I loved how you guys sat up and we're going to use our hands to lift our bottom forward. Good.

So we have pretty much advanced now to rolling like a ball with your hands on your ankle. So you're going to balance with your feet up and your hands on your ankles and you're going to use your stomach to see round your head between your knees. So make sure your lower back is rounding and curving to get there. Good. If that's still not a possibility for you, you're still working on stretching out your back. Then you can put your hands underneath your knees. Maybe try that, Nicole.

Awesome. And now pull your belly as far away from your thighs as you can. Even a little more. Three. Two. Yes. Excellent. Alright, here we go. Inhale, roll back. Exhale, rock up. Good. Inhale, roll back. Exhale. Rock up balance here. Brianna. Point all your fingers towards each other for me for almost yet.

You're getting there. Yeah. Pull those heels to your seat. Kind of using some nice arm muscles. Again, not shoulders, but dropped those and use the arms. Pull. Yeah. And then use your belly. I want to see everyone's ears trying to get through between their knees. Okay. Inhale, roll back. Exhale, roll up. Beautiful.

Inhale, belly palsy, back. Exhale, upper stomach. Nice range. Rana. Inhale, roll back. Exhale, roll up. Very good. And when you come up, make sure you don't bounce with your back and pull away with your belly. And exhale holding right there. Excellent. One more. Rolling. Yes. And pulling right there. Beautiful. Rest your feet down.

So one more exercise without the magic circle is single leg stretch. So we're here. We're going to put our hands way behind us. Lift up, and we're going to lie down and I want you to go ahead and bend your knees. Feet flat on the floor. Good. All right. And bend the right knee into your chest. The right hand on your ankle, left hand on your knee. Pull into the mat and round up your head and shoulders.

Keep your navel really, um, into your back. Oh, and relax that foot. There you go. Nice. And we're going to straighten this left leg right there as our belly goes down deeper and we're going to switch left and right. Good. From your stomach. Yes, Eh. Good. I want you to give me a right hip. Yeah, that's it. Good. And in and in. And Scoop. Wonderful. Two more sets on your own there.

A right and a left. And Hug both ankles into you and rest your head for a second. Go ahead and grab your magic circle. It's going to go between your ankles now. Excellent ladies. Good. Put your feet on the floor. Nice.

All right. So just for real quick review on this cause the next three exercises, four exercises, you can really uh, engage the back incorrectly if you want to. So dump your bowl of soup towards your feet and there's a little tunnel under your back. And if you do any of the next four exercises like this, you'll strain your back. So make sure you dump that bowl of soup into your chest and your belly button is only like four inches away from your back. You feel how flat your back is. Awesome. Place one hand over the other, behind your head. Good.

And we're going to take a breath into the mat and we're going to use that exhale into the mat to round and scoop up our head and shoulders. Rounding up, take another breath here. I want you to pull in and see if you can come up a little higher. What do you think? Good job. All right, now I need you to imagine that there's like a big spike right under your shoulder blades. In this exercise we don't go down and up at all. We stay up using our powerhouse using the upper six pack, especially to stay right above that spike. Yeah. Now Ben, pull the knees into your chest using your powerhouse all the way into your chest. Oh wait, nice.

Squeeze at circle to straighten your legs, wrapping, squeezing, and pull it in. Make sure your back doesn't arch. Squeeze and scoop in. Squeeze first from your seat. That's it. That's what makes your body solid. Squeeze from your seat. Otherwise it's going to go wonky. Won't go all the way out. Beautiful. One more.

Squeeze and pulling it in and rest for a second. Rest your feet down. Rest your head down. Very nice. So we're going to do double leg stretch, right? We're just adding a circle. So take a breath into the mat. Exhale, round up with your head and shoulders. Draw the knees in using your belly. Good. And now take your hands and put them on your ankles. Good.

And keep the legs right there. I want you squeezing and pressing. Okay. So we're keeping the legs right there and we're going to work the upper body. Remember how we have that spike there? So we're going to inhale, reach. No thanks. Except I had a feeling.

That's why I crawled up here. And inhale, reach arms right by your ears and exhale. One more. Imagine you're swimming and you've got to pull yourself through some water. Now add the legs. Inhale, squeeze. Exhale. Pull yourself through water. Inhale, squeeze. Exhale. Four more. Inhale, reach beach. Exhale, make sure your eyes are on your belly and that it is sinking, not rising.

Yes, no loaves of bread rising in the oven here. One more time. Belly is sinking. Bottom is squeezing and pull it together. Nice job. Circle goes down. Good. And we're going to bring both likes up to the ceiling, so get rid of the circle for a second. Both legs up and I want you to lift your head and shoulders to crawl up behind your right leg. Great girl. Up As high as you can.

Lower that left leg down the middle of your bias. I want you to work on that. Yeah, right there. Number those barbershop poles. No knees. Yeah, this instead and switch. Go down the middle. Beautiful. And now switch and unconsciously to keep my hands right here and switch. Yes, they between them. Switch. Stay between them. Switch straight legs. Yes. Yes. Stay between them and switch quicker now. Right and left and belly and fry and right and left and right and left and last set. Good Job Ben. Both knees in. Rest your head. Grab your circle.

We're going to put it between your ankles again. Please remember when the leg, it's between your knee, inner thighs or legs that you squeeze it first from your seat. And then all of these muscles are spiraling. We're really learning how to be, get to an intermediate level and so there's a lot of turnout work before we get to parallel work. So we really have all of our muscles hand over hand behind your head. Again, inhaling into the mat. Exhale, rounding up. Use that mat to scoop in. There's no tunnel under your lower back, right.

Bend the knee Zinn legs up, straight up spiraling. Curl up another inch with those shoulders. I want the weight of your head to feel like it's in your powerhouse and elbows wide. Squeeze with your seat, lower the legs just an inch and pull them back towards you. Lower an inch and scoop it in. Good. Lower an inch and scoop it and really warm up those abdominal muscles. Really filling those powerhouse. One more like that.

And I want you to take a little break. Good. And relax. Bend the knees, rest your feet down. So this exercise really helps you learn how to work more advanced powerhouse. So when we first learn how to use your powerhouse, we use, I should probably stand up to demonstrate, we use a forage band of muscles around your backs, hoods, the lowers, lower part of your stomach and the lower back. But as we get more advanced, our powerhouse extends to the bottom of our seat and then to the bottom of our chest. So all the way from here to here, you should see marvelous changes and toning throughout your body. Okay? All your controls going to come from here.

So we're trying to move more towards that advance work. Alright? So them circle allows you to feel this part of your body as the legs go down. And as well as a stomach sung. Demonstrate a couple that you can learn how to work to lengthen.

So on the double leg stretch, our goal is going to be to get very close to the ground. So right now we're going to keep it small little bit, right? We're just really feeling your stomach. But now I want you to try to engage the side of your hips and inner thighs to see how much can you stretch those legs long and then pull them up. Now it doesn't count if your stomach rises like a loaf of bread.

You got to keep your stomach scooping as your legs reach and work, and then pull up. Does that make sense? All right, let's try it. Bend your knees in hand over, hand behind your head, round up, legs straight up. Feel those thighs. Get long stomach in again, way to the heads. More into your powerhouse. Ladies. Ants length. And as you go down and pull it up, even if it's one inch lower than you did earlier, that's an achievement. But you got to work the seat. Reach and scope.

One more. Yeah, I'm loving what I'm seeing. Good job ladies. Keep those legs up. Bend the knees, rest your head on your hands for a second and your feet down. And we're going to do Chris Cross. So Chris Cross is a great, you can just stay there and beautiful exercise of working the waist muscles rate, but it's super easy to use the lower back. So here we're going to learn not to cheat. So we're going to lead not with our elbow Joe supplies you say in order to get stronger implies it's helpful if you know your body parts.

So we're not gonna use our elbow. We're gonna lead with our shoulder and we're going to keep our magic circle still. So here it's between our ankles. And when we do the crisscross, right now you don't want to drive a car, Kay. That'll show that you're using your legs and you don't want to pull one side closer to you. So you're going to have laser beams looking at your circle.

You're giving yourself a workout right here, right? So you got to train yourself to look at those things and it does not move. So use your belly right now to bring your knees up over your hips and form a tabletop position. So there's your circle. Round up with your head and shoulders and look at that circle right about here. Looks good for me, and just open that kneecap. All right, you're going to press that circle with the hips and the inner and outer thighs.

So you're hugging the mid line so your belly can pull against it. Your legs and circle do not move as you take your right shoulder to your left knee, up shoulder, knee, shoulder, knee com center. Straighten those legs as your belly dives down. Squeeze it back to a tabletop. Holt, left shoulder to right knee, pulling in. Know drive in that circle. Come Center.

Straighten the legs as your belly dives down. Pull it back into you. One more set, right shoulder to the left knee. Awesome. Get up there. Get up there and come center. Look at your belly. Make sure it's scooping in as you straighten and pull it back in. And one more left shoulder to right knee and come center.

Stretch those legs long and pull them back in with your belly. There we go. And relaxed down. Nice job. Good. So that is taking the cheating out of the crisscross. All right, sit on up. We're going to do a spine stretch forward. We're going to do it two different ways today with the magic circle.

So one thing that's super important is learning how to get really nice and long and lean in here and take away any compression in your lower back. So we're going to upstack it first. I guess you should probably, we will wobble back and forth on your sit bones. Find those than try to make sure your hipbones are right over them rather than a little in front or a little bit behind. If they can't get up, bend your knees so that you can get up. Okay. If it's the hamstrings, find where you are and then stack your spine, one on top of the other. And with straight arms you should be able to put your right heel of your hand or your left heel, whichever you want first. And then the other one on top. Okay. So I'm going to push down on the circle, not by lifting my shoulders, but by using my shoulder girdle muscles. Okay.

So we're learning all kinds of parts of our powerhouse today. So going to pull my belly in, start pressing down as I really try to lift up, up, up in my powerhouse, up, up, up, and then sitting up tall. So I'm thinking about lifting my belt, pulling my belly button in, and almost like my six pack is gonna pull up under my chest bone when I round forward. Sit Up really tall for me, Brianna. Really, really, really tall. Good. And pulling your belly in. We're going to press down and round your head, Shul head forward. Ah, and keep pulling your belly button up, up, up, up, up, and release. That looks pretty good. Ladies. One more time. I'm going to have your circle come back, chest and edge. That's it. There you go.

And [inaudible] and we're gonna pull your belly in and then lift from my fingers. Lift, lift, lift. Beautiful. And then come up tall. Now put it between the heels of your hands in front of you. Good. Good. And we're going to have it at shoulder height and the elbows are going to tilt up so we can have beautiful ballerina arms, right? Good. Sitting up nice and tall. We use your seat.

Pull your belly and squeeze that circle and exhale down. Touch the crown of your head, down to the mat. Good. Using your belly, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing, and then relax the circle as you roll up. One more that way. Pull your belly in. Squeeze a circle, and exhale, squeezing it on the way down. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze and relax it to roll up one vertebra at a time. Check your arms. Do they get elbows floppy? Are they still tilting up? We're going to relax it on the way down this time.

So take a big breath and exhale head to your chest and relax the circle. It's not squeezing cause I want you to feel now pull your billion in. Squeeze a circle, feel what it feels like. Now ring up squeezing the circle. It should really increase that awareness. One more like that. Relax a circle.

As you touch the crown of head down to the floor and now pull your belly in deep and squeeze it to stack up your spine. Come back further with that lower. But yeah, keep stacking, stacking. Fantastic. Good job ladies. All right. Now everyone's favorite openly rocker with the magic circle. So we're going to pull back in our powerhouse. Yeah.

And then if you can, you can let the legs float up and put it between there. I love it. Nice job. Otherwise get there. How you can. Now it might seem a little too much to add the circle, but it out actually strengthens your powerhouse and gives you a good frame of reference. All right, here we go. Giving yourself a little more room back there. Nice. Alright. Plaques those feet and roll back and roll right back up.

Awesome. Good. I am here for you and you're going to rule, just roll your lower. Ah, that's it. So you want to massage that back down. So we're going to use your left side a little bit more. All right, so you're gonna roll back and think left side. Beautiful. Roll back. And think left side. Check you out. Awesome. One more in with the air. Fantastic.

Good. And now stay here and see if you can roll your lower back down. Walking your hands down, middle back, legs. Go straight up to the ceiling. Heads on the Mat and I'll let you take a break. Bend your knees and rest down your legs.

If you slid a little bit back off the Mat, go ahead and get your head back on the mat. Great job. Okay, so we're gonna bring the legs up again and we're gonna do corkscrew arms are pressing into the mat. Turn out those spiraling legs. Yeah. Good. And you know what? Bend your knees and rest your feet down for a second. Nicole just gave me, reminded me of something. One cue that we always use is squeeze less with the feet and more with the seat. So if you find your feet are over tensing, remind yourself that that doesn't benefit your bottom as much as you'd like it to. So that usually lets you relax those feet. All right, so we're going to come up beautiful. Just a soft foot, squeeze with the seat, bring the legs up an inch if you can, and then fall to the right around to the left and center.

Excellent to the left around squeezing it and two more sets right around pulling it up and left around, pulling it up and right. I love how your muscles are working. One more time left around and pull and that's enough. Bend the knees. Good. Did that help your corkscrew at all? The magic circle gets intensified a little bit. Go ahead and sit up. We're not going to use it for the sauce of put it aside.

The beautiful thing about the magic circle is you can squeeze it as hard as you'd like to or as little as you like to. So you know if you really are interested in toning more, you can give it a lot of squeezing. So arms up at shoulder height. Let me see every muscle in your body. Almost. Imagine like you're pushing down on some magic circle so you can lift up taller. And then we're going to twist to the right and exhale, reaching past your baby toe stretch.

Roll up your spine in with the air. Twist to the left and exhale down and inhaling up. Two more sets, twist and exhale, reach, reach, reach, and inhaling up and twist to your left and exhale so you're really pulling in the opposite obliques and inhaling up, no shifting in those feet for the last set. Twist to the right and exhale, relax that shoulder. Little Nice and inhaling up and twist to the left.

Nice Nicole. And exhale. Good job DJ pulling in your powerhouse and inhaling up and relax. All right, so now we're going to do neck pull with a magic circle. We are going to grab your circle, bend your knees, feet flat on the Mat, and we're going to do it like we stood with the roll-up. So it's going to be between your inner thighs and you're going to try to squeeze a little bit again, more with your seat and then inner thighs and outer thighs.

And I want you to sit up really, really tall cause neck pool has a tall back component to it. Good. So sitting up tall, now round your back, touching your forehead to the circle and then use your belly to roll back. Lower back touches the mat. Then the middle back, upper. Once your head touches you, inhale, lift up your head, squeeze the circle with your seat and exhale, scoop into round up. Beautiful job ladies. Sit up tall, squeeze the circle. Exhale down. Rounding. Beautiful.

Keeps pulling your belly against that squeezing circle had goes down. Inhale, lift the head up, squeeze a circle and roll up. Beautiful. Now this is [inaudible] really hard to do. So if you need to keep doing that and that was challenging enough. Excellent. But if you can take it to the next level, we're going to put your hands one over the other, behind your head. Good.

All right, and I want you to sit up tall and work on hinges a little bit back. First hinge, hinge, and now round the rest down. Squeezing the circle away. Inhale, lift the head up. Your elbows might need to come together and exhale, rounding all the way. Of course the goal is keep them wide and inhale, sit up tall, hinge back a little bit, cause you're pressing from the hips and round the rest down.

Inhale, lift the head up. Exhale, round up, scooping in. Inhale, sit up tall and squeeze with your left a little more as you go back. No arching. Ah, that's it. And round the rest down. Round, round, round two more in with the air. Head Up. Exhale, squeezing. Great Job Deejay. Touch your forehead first though. Yeah. And then inhale up nice and tall. Hinge back by squeezing with your seat.

And then beautiful squeezing. Roll the rest down. Last one in with the air. Exhale, forehead, forehead, forehead. Yes. And now sit up tall prs with your hips and feel the belly. Pull away from that circle and then round the rest down. That was awesome. Awesome. Great job. Nice.

Rest your arms down by your side and go ahead and take your circle and put it by your side. That was really good. That is not an easy exercise. So we have done single legs circles. We have our box right now square on the mat and you should be able to feel your spine anchored, rooted into the Mat. I want you to take a big breath on your exhale.

Pull your belly even more into the mat and draw your right knee into your chest and stretch it. Tell me if you feel your back flat or arched off the Mat. Awesome. Straighten your leg up and it should still stay flat. Make sure that right legs a little termed out so that you can see the inside of your knee and your inner thigh.

As you stretch it should still be flat. Now I want you to press your arms down by your side, even maximizing that squared, anchoring, feeling, and without lifting the right hip up. You want to reach that right thigh all the way and try to touch the ceiling. Really lengthen those muscles. Now let the leg feel heavy into your hip and one more time.

Stretch it really long, long, long, and now with it long, reach it down the middle of your body. We've done this before in an earlier class from your powerhouse. Pull that leg up. We're going to two more times because this, you should still feel this much in your powerhouse. One more when you're on your side using your leg and hug it back in, which we're going to be in a second. Next class, we'll actually swing the leg around, but take a breath and then exhale. Bring in your left. Feel how flat your back is.

Feel how square you are. Straight in that leg stretch again. It's turned out so you see your inner thigh and knee inside of the knee. Arms press down so you really feel how square you are. There you go. Good. And now reach that leg up, up, up, and then make it feel heavy into the hip again. That left hip doesn't rise.

Just the thigh muscles. Lengthen and reach up to try to touch the ceiling and then let them get heavy. And now finally reach 'em long. Keep them reaching and sweep it down the middle of your body and pull it back up from your powerhouse. And two more times reach and scale. And one more. Reach and scoop. Good job.

Hug that knee in. Good. Now we're gonna lie on our right side DJ and Nicole, do you mind putting your head this way and like, that's perfect. And I want you to line up on the back of your mat to slide back just a little bit. Good. An elbow on the mat too. So be completely long. All of this on the mat. Yeah. Down, down. Good and head on your yes. Good. All right.

And I should have said to put your circle, grab your circle and it's going to be in between your ankles. Good. I'm going to be helping you guys a little bit. If you need help I might challenge you a little bit and not to need too much help. Good. All right. So we're on our side now, but that doesn't mean we get to let everything go. So give yourself a little check right now and we're going to bring, uh, the legs forward to the front edge of your mat. DJ Nicole. There Ya go. Good. Alright, so we're here and that still means that you're thinking of your box.

Your [inaudible] frame and more importantly, your powerhouse. So pull your belly into your back. All right, make sure this top hip hasn't hiked up towards your right shoulder, your left shoulder, keep it stacked over the bottom. It looks really good. And finally, spiral spiral that leg. Okay, so we're going to pull your belly in and I want you to press down with that top leg by rapping and squeezing for four three, two. One release is looking pretty good. Stomach and wrap and squeeze and go down. Bless. Feet more.

Seat four, five and release. One more time. And just like corkscrew, there's no driving of this circle. It's just one pad over the other and release. All right, for the transition, I want you to stay there if you can, but I will come around and help press down lightly with your top leg onto the circle. Rock back that circle, and you're going to have the weight of the circle more on the mat. Slip the bottom leg inside. You got it.

Rock forward with that bottom leg and then that top leg slips inside as well. So now both legs are inside. Good. All right. Nice. Okay. I want you to put your hand right here because that is where you're going to work between the feet a little more forward for me, DJ. There you go. That's it. We're going to pull in.

So pull your belly in and this time I actually want you to separate that circle. Stretch it, stretch it. Turn that knee out a little more. Yes. And release stomach in right there. And stretch two, three, bottom legs, pushing down also and release. I want your posture a little more like that. Yeah, and now go stretch it. Yes, very nice and release. All right, little choreography again, you can always hit pause and just change the circle.

But rock back. Put the thank you. Bend the top leg and put on the outside. Press down lightly and rocket back. Good job, Ben. The top, bottom one. Fancy. Very nice, Nicole. Good. That's it, DJ. Alright, this last one's a waste worker, so you're going to look pretty good. Adjust it your most importantly, pull your belly in one. Number two.

Squeeze that circle together with both legs. And now number three, lift both legs up off the mat. Both of them. We had to get that bottom leg. Yeah, there we go. And down two more of these. So belly first, then squeeze together and then use those waist muscles. Fantastic. And down. One more time. Stomach squeeze. Lift. Now keep it up and roll onto your stomach with your legs up.

Make a small pillow for your forehead with your hands. One over the other legs are straight and lifted. And Give me 20 beats so that circle, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 good. No feet. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 and roll to your other side. Make sure your back. That is perfect. Brianna. Nice here and legs forward. Good staying just like that.

So we're going to have the right hand now like a kickstand in front of you. Right in front of your belly. Yeah. And that actually proves, because if your arm is your belly is touching your arm at all, you know you need to pull it in more. Bring your shoulders forward onto the mat. There we go. Cut. And this is going to be right there. And so you gotta pull a high. There we go. Pull your belly and turn that top leg out and squeeze down for five, four, three, two release really steady.

I like how Brianna's is staying steady. Pull your belly in and press down to if it's rolling forward, maybe your quads doing it and release one more stomach in. Yeah, that's great. And squeeze two, three, four, five and release. Now do a light. Press down, rocket back and then the bottom leg slips inside. Almost got it. Rocks it forward. And then the top leg slips inside. You've got it, Nicole. Great.

Turn out the top leg. So the right knee is almost looking up at this ceiling. Pull your belly and up. This is the one we had to put our hand right here. Yeah, I want you to use that part of your leg, both of them actually the one going down, the one coming up to three, four, five and release. Always stomach first. Pull into your back and then stretch that circle. Two, three, four, five and release. Very good. I just watch your shoulders and stomach in and stretch and release.

Nice job ladies. Bend that top leg. Put It on the outside, politely pressed down. Rocket back. Allow that bottom leg. We've got that bottom leg. Now this time, now we're going to, there we go. Sometimes it's not. It just doesn't work on where you'd want it on your legs too. So sometimes you have to change it up now. Right? So both legs are turned out. Okay. This is waste work.

I want your stomach to pull in for one, squeeze together for two and then lift those legs up for three and damn stomach in one. Squeeze to lift three and down. One more time. Stomach squeeze. Almost. Press your under arm down to use your waist. Yeah, and release. Great job ladies. Lie Onto your back. Take the circle away. Go ahead and bend your knees. Keep it close. Unfortunately on this one, bend your knees, even shake them out if you want.

If they worked a little bit. And now we're going to do teaser with the circle. So we're going to put it between our ankles. Good. Everyone there. Okay. Stomach and try to find squeezing with the sea and your pelvic floor and belly pulling in. And you're going to reach the legs forward at a 45 degree angle with your belly and you're going to reach your arms back.

And we're going to try to come up and touch your toes. So inhale, lifting the head. Exhale, roll it up, hold to three squeezes, circle to pull your belly away and the arms go back to more in with your exhale up. Great. And take a breath and then exhale, roll away. Reach those legs. That way as you go down. One more time. Squeeze and rolling it up. The call. You're doing awesome. Taking a breath and then exhale, rolling away from those legs and then hug your knees into your chest. Nice job, ladies. Sit Up. Last one, seal. So we're gonna scoop our belly and have those ankles come up to our hands.

And you're going to clap. Two, three. Inhale, roll back. Two, three, exhale, roll forward. Good. Work on that. Lower back in with the area at five more. After that, you're going to stand up. Do you guys remember that from last class? And pull back from there. Good. Sorry. Gone your way. And exhale balanced like that. Yes.

And in with the air and exhaling. Good in with the air. Exhaling. Pull your waist away from you a little more and two more in with the air. And exhale on this one. You're gonna let go of your ankles when you're back there.

Cross them and stand right on up. Cross your ankles and give me you. Oh, you didn't even need me. Turn towards each other. Turned forward. Good. And I want you to have your [inaudible] stance and you've come so far. Let's have a nice exhale up.

Make sure that you didn't just drop your upper back into your lower back. Inhale as you turn your palms up and push down as you grow taller and healing and healing, and exhale here and you're all done for the day. Nice job, ladies. Good work.

Comments

1 person likes this.
Loved every second of this.
2 people like this.
Good to revisit use of magic circle. Smooth transitions, great cues, I really enjoyed this class Monica, thank you.
1 person likes this.
Monica - I have loved all this series !! You have really helped me deeply my knowledge and practice - you are a fantastic teacher! I honestly feel I did the best double leg stretch- criss cross- and teaser of my life!!! And yes - every other minute was super too! Just like the rest of the series- a huge thank you !
Kate V
3 people like this.
This series is great! Its always valuable to return to the beginner's mind. Your cuing is wonderful. I watched the class, then took it myself. It was a challenge for sure!! :)
2 people like this.
This series has been invaluable to me. Thank you so much Monica
1 person likes this.
Jan ~ Here is the playlist with all of the classes in this series. We hope you enjoy this Beginner Series!
1 person likes this.
Monica I loved this class. Excellent cueing and felt I worked so much deeper with the circle. Fabulous cueing
Monica Wilson
Thank you everyone! It makes me so happy to hear that you are enjoying the series and benefitting from them! When you complete this series, look for a new series I am taping right now that will keep taking you to the next level. Thanks again! Monica:)
1 person likes this.
This class is helping me learn to engage my bottom. I loved learning how to use the magic circle.
2 people like this.
Monica are the best! Your lessons are great. I am Italian and I always follow you! Compliments! Monica Wilson
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