Energizing Mat Flow

Hi, I'm Kathy Corey and I have been teaching pilates for almost 40 years now. I have found and last several years when I was doing an hour or two, an hour and a half workout, um, at least five times a week that I ended up skipping some days. And so what I've been doing for my own body is just doing some, uh, basic PyLadies mat work or equipment work, working between 20 and 40 minutes a day. I find that it really energizes the body and it also keeps me going to do a program every day. So what I'm going to do here is just some of my own mat work that I've been doing. It's a short program, but I hope you'll join me because you know, really energize the body, mind and spirit green. You begin by doing a basic roll down, but I'd like to start with my knees together and having the knees bent, feet are flat so that when I'm rolling down, I'm just really getting that nice release in my low back as I'm working, I'm paying attention to my own back.

Am I rolling more to one side than the other? How do I even that movement out? The next thing I want to do is as I'm rolling out, I'm going to work on extending my legs so that as I am roll down, there's movement, there's some, uh, live movement all the way through the shoulders, the spine, the hips, and the pelvis so that the body begins to wake up slowly all the way through the movement. And this then helps me as a preparation when I want to do the roll down, when I'm doing my 34 minutes, the next thing I like to do is to work on my low back and hips. So I'm going to bring the legs up and I want you to think about lifting the legs okay?

Toward the ceiling. But I don't want to roll because I find that if you're rolling, you're using just the momentum of the movement. But if you're working on that deep contraction and just thinking about the legs going to the ceiling, you get a really inclusive movement into the low pelvis so that you're activating the muscles all the way through. We then add an upper body lift. Once again, keeping that length in the torso so that as we're moving, we're thinking about an upward lift from the interior of the body. Again, I'm thinking about working evenly on both sides for my body.

I then like to alternate so that the legs come up, the upper body legs come up, the upper body and the legs and the upper body coming. Then through that movement, I'm going to add lifting the head up into a rolling like a ball, so from here now I'm going to include continue to increase that rolling of the spine all the way through that movement. I like to also work on increasing the mobility of my hips, so I take my leg over to the side, allowing the hip to come up. Now I'm going to hold the foot where it is and the other leg is my stabilizer as well, so I'm going to press the hip down and let it come up. The thing that I want to do here is really keep my foot in that placement so that I'm pulling away from the flip and I'm working deeply into that hip to really get that mobilization in my hip joint.

The leg will then go out to the side, the other hip will roll over and come back so that when I'm working, I'm thinking about pulling the bones away to the one side of the hip is going to move away from the other and I'm going to keep that foot absolutely still as well. From there to continue the movement, maintaining the alignment through the other hip. I'll do my leg circles. I want to keep both hips down and stable to increase the movement inside the hip joint [inaudible] so the preparation really does help me with movement. Now as they stretch the leg out and down, begin with the other leg again, the leg goes up, hip comes down and like green to cross over and do those hip lifts. I'm really concentrating to try and get my hips even in this movement and really remember that the foot stay still so that we're really not moving the leg we're working from inside the hip as we roll over and down, rolling over, rolling down, and of course I use my deep breathing all the way through to really help me.

Okay with all of the movements and life circles, nice stabilization, nice stipulation across the shoulders too, as well as that supporting foot that has to stay steady and reversing them. [inaudible] single leg stretch is one of my favorite exercises and what I'm concentrating on here is not lifting the pelvis but thinking about the thigh pressing down and out so that the leg really does stretch the name of the exercise, single leg stress, so you really want to move by reaching that leg away from the torso in that stretch. [inaudible] AA stretch, which we come in and I'd like to do a long extension, so I like to really feel the body stabilized and then the legs and the arms simply grow away from the the center or the core movement. It really gets at nice reach in it. Okay.

And it's a long beautiful stretch on the body. From there I need a lot of rotation so I am going to go ahead and do some crisscross movements. [inaudible] I like to first turn and really just feel the rotation around the rib cage [inaudible] and into the crisscross emphasizing the turn of the rib cage around the spine as the leg comes away from the body [inaudible] now a variation on one of my favorite exercises that we dropped the legs to the side and it really does work the obliques. So as I'm coming up I'm thinking about bringing the sternum high to the ceiling and trying to keep the knees down on the floor so that I'm really working inside the body lengthening as I out actually as I come up and using the breath really does help all the way through the movements so that as we are working the breath is an [inaudible] aid and guide to my movement. And then my number of repetitions.

Once again, the center, the chest comes high to the ceiling, the head is resting back in the hands and there's no strain in the neck or the head. We're just working on those obliques. The next one takes that movement just a little bit further. Once again, the knees come down. Once again, the torso comes up, but this time I'm going to rotate all the way over. So I have shoulder over shoulder and hip over hip. Now from there, the arm sweeps underneath. I lift, I back up and come down. We lift, open the arm and sweep to the side, come back up around and come down.

I really need to use the breath here to open and sweep onto the side. Watching that the rib cage doesn't come out in front and down to more of an open it and around and down. One more time, uh, and open. Now since I'm already here, I've got hip over hip and shoulder over shoulder and going to do in the next movement, which brings my front arm in, right toward my shoulder, shoulder over shoulder, hip over hip. And here we go. Can we ask to come up and inhale to come down, exhale to come up and inhale to come down. I'd give you more instruction but I'm working as hard as I can so that's what all you're going to get is breed. I'm going to do the next set with my arm down toward my [inaudible].

Exhaling up, inhaling down, exhaling up and down reaching and I hope you're doing this with me cause I hate doing them alone, Eh, last one up and all the way down and so that's my work for the upper body, which I really do try to do quite often. We're going to go onto the other side, starting with the roll-down and dropping the knees. Once again, we're going to work on the obliques and I really do need to work evenly on both sides because I came into this program with scoliosis so I have to work a lot harder to keep my muscles balanced and to really work my body towards symmetrical patterning. And so I'm really lengthening to come up laying thing to come down, exhaling to come up and inhaling to come down. Now I'm going to add that rotation so I come up and I come around onto the side. Really trying to open and stretch and coming from the rib cage from the rope cleats all the way through to lift a little higher and come down and it comes up, opens and Stuart riches all the way.

Open it around and lengthen and lift and stretch. Open and around and come back into the center and down. All right, I've got two more of these and reaching, stretching down and again, up and open and stretch. Lifting and know up, opening onto the side, getting ready for my pushup. So one arm comes onto the ribs and the other arm comes right in front. It's easiest if I do it towards my shoulder, gets more intense.

The further down the body we go and reaches up and exhale. Inhale, lift up and yeah, one more. Here we are, five more. Take it down. Exhale, up and down and reach and lift. Exhale and last one up and stretch all the way down. Friendliness, position.

I'm going to stretch out at the back of the mat and let's lift the legs up and bring them slightly in front too. They go to the front of the Mat. I'm going to bring both hands up. So now I'm going to go into my side leg series. And the what I like to do is a combination of a bicycle. So we're going to bend the leg, bring it around and front touch down, lift it up and sweep it around to the back bending.

So once again, I'm really working through the hip. Okay. And uh, keeping it slow and controlled. Bending and reaching down and up and around. And once again, so it's not a kick of the leg, both in the front position and the back position.

I am [inaudible] j Belizean so I can a really long stretch all the way through them movement. Then I'll reverse it. So they will come to the front bend and go to the back. This time we'll touch down in the back, lift it up and sweep the leg around to the front. We bicycle to the back, extend it to down and up. And sweep to front. And again, there's no kicking. We're getting a long stretch on that hip flexor as we go through the movement.

And we'll do just one more time. Legs come back then the knees and get that [inaudible] lung long stretch over. We'll come up for the other side. [inaudible] so I aligned shoulder over shoulder, hip over hip at the back of the mat, lift the legs and bring them to the front and bend. So now with leg over, leg, arm has been behind the head.

We've been the leg and we bicycle to the front. We lower lift and sweep the leg around to the back. Bicycle to the front. Once again, concentrating on keeping that movement coming long in an extension, not a kick or a swing. I like to use the slow and controlled movements all the way through. Okay.

In order to really work the whole body in every movement that I do [inaudible] now we'll go to the reverse. So we bring the leg and we open the hip to the back, extend it lower, lift and sweep the front bend and press lower lift and sweep it front [inaudible]. Again, we get it full extension and full breathing all the way through the movement. There's two more or ICI and the last one opening it out, down, up and sweep to the front. From here I like to do an extension exercise.

Okay, so being centered on the Mat, I'm going to just first work with a small extension, bringing the arms up again. For me rotation is very important so I'm going to lift one arm and rotate back and down. Now the rotation has to come from the upper back so the arm stays right by the ear and you just look underneath the arm so you're looking under your arm. Okay, not moving the arm in the extension movement [inaudible] and coming down when he lanes in the spine, away from the Mat, lengthening the front of the body away from the mat as we can. All right, now this is a variation on double leg kick.

That once again also works the whole body. So we lift the legs and we bring the heels in for two. We stretch the plate out nice and long, keeping the upper body lifted. We come in front, we place the hands down. We'd go either onto the plank position or just your knees is fine for pushups.

Now we come down, but we keep the upper body lifted as high as we can. Arms come out, come back around and bring the head down. Legs up in long spine extension, circling the arms, placing the arms onto the knees, or you can go to your plank if you like, and push up one push up to push up. Three upper body stays lifted. As we come down and stretch out, come around and lengthen to come down.

Take a breath and come back. Sitting down on the heels. Roll the spine up to sitting. Okay. Hey, from here, we're going to go into a movement where we're going to roll over and come up to our jackknife.

Bring the legs back. Roll the spine down as we come down that the upper body lift and do some hundred [inaudible]. Bring your legs back, rolling over, lifted the Jackknife. Bring your legs back. Rule this spine down and back to a hundred. Bring your legs in and roll up. Extending your legs out. Spine twist.

Lengthen the spine, turning the torso, thinking up and come back into center lanes in the spelling. Turn the torso, linkedin and come in to the center. Hands go behind the head for a side stretch to round over to me. Rounding through the body, rounding, Doximity rolling over, coming up. Lengthen spine. Stretch over, round to the knee.

Go across and go back side. Stretch over. Lengthen out and come up. One more each side. Linkedin and stretch and turn. So we wrote down to the knee, sweep across and sweep back.

Rotate. Reach out and come up. One more time. Lengthen it up and over. Turn and reach down. Sweep across and sweep back. Rotate and stretch out and come up crossing one leg over the other. We get a long stretch over. Now from here I'm going to sweep.

Rolling the spine, turning, opening the chest and reaching behind, lifting up, turning the torso and stretching over the reach. Past the toe. Lengthen it up. Cheren and open. Reach too long to come up and over. One More V's. Reaching out across the body, sweeping up and turning the torso, reaching it long out and up and working the other side. Stretch out animal up and turn and stretch.

Reach long and all the way over. Stretch past the toes, taking the body high and lifting. So you see, rotational exercises are very important to me. I put them in all my programs so that I'm really working a whole body every time I'm working out. Okay, I'm crossing the legs and stretching over, reaching past the toes and rolling the spine up to sitting.

This time will involve the legs from the diamond position with the hips open, sitting tall. We're going to close the legs through. Reach high and stretch. [inaudible] as we roll up the knees come in in the parallel position and open to the diamond position from the diamond position. We roll it out in over. Okay. Coming back in. See, we're really lubricating the hips, getting the body ready for the activities of the day, [inaudible] and just rolling all the way up and sitting tall. So that's a program I would just be doing for my body.

It changes every day that I do it because I just allow my body to really, um, activate what it wants. We've got plenty of exercises that we all like to do, but wait, when we let the body lead the way, it will really tell us the exercises, the amount of programming that we need as long as we just begin each day with some of our [inaudible] work. Thanks for joining me.