Class #313

Magic Circle Fun

50 min - Class
30 likes

Description

Become more mindful during your exercise simply by incorporating the Magic Circle. Have a little fun and add the ring to exercises you know like, "thread the needle (Double Leg Stretch), Rolling like a Ball, and Mermaid. Kristi also uses the ring toward the end of class to accommodate the request of the class for hip stretches.
What You'll Need: Mat, Magic Circle

About This Video

Nov 19, 2010
(Log In to track)

Transcript

Read Full Transcript

Okay. We've got the rings. Must keep it feet comfortable. Distance apart. Just extend your arms. I'm not squeezing on it much. In fact, let's put the thumbs on the inside. Gently pull apart gently. Collarbones wide. We go. Inhale. Exhale, roll down. I'm only going midway about mid back, but do get your back down. Check your shoulders. Keep going. Keep going. That's good. Aaron.

A little more gym. Yes. Inhale, exhale. Come forward. Just keep the shape. Just keep the shape. Just keep the shape. Don't change your hips yet. I mean they'll move, but they're not gonna come out of the position until right now. They'll go up to straight. Lovely. And I didn't specify. So let's go feet slightly apart since we're about half like that little pole.

So you feel the back of the shoulder a little bit. We go. Exhale. Okay. Getting down there. Whoa, that's it. Inhale, exhale. Keep the shape. The whole thing just keeps exactly as it is. It just comes forward until now we inhale and lengthen and exhale down.

Looking somewhere through the ring. Hold. Inhale, exhale. Sometimes people let go of the pelvis here and they just sort of let it rock forward. And that's what I'm trying to avoid. One more. Inhale, exhale down. We're going to stay here. I'm gonna probably suggest drawing the food in a little closer. Inhale, take the arms up, but keep your eyes forward. I'm still not squeezing the ring. Exhale, bring it forward. Do it again. Inhale up and forward. You know, how much more could you wait the middle of your back into the mat and inhale to exhale. Hold it there. Inhale, exhale up. Accomp and now straightening out your spine. From here, just let the knees drop out to the side. The soles of the feet are together.

Exactly. Thumb on the outside. So now you have all five fingers together. A little bit of resistance, but boy, not much. It's I'm, I almost want us to put the ring. Let's do it. So how I did that was I put it there, I held it, wouldn't it? There I'm about midway. Pretty close to the fore. I mean the elbows. Okay. From there, squeeze it and no, and lift your chest as you do. Right.

Cause if you around you're going to run into it. But that's not really why I'm doing it. Good. Oh that looks good. I should've done this years ago. That looks fantastic. Little squeeze. Just keep doing it. Keep doing it. And, and you know, don't let it push you out. Just press one and two.

I'm hoping you feel a little bit of your back involved. Hold a little contraction. Hold it. Come to the front. There's your inhale. Exhale and squeeze. Three times one, two, three and center. Inhale to the back. Exhale three times one to continue. Exhaling as you come center.

Drop their shoulders jam and in here and little pulse is one, two, three. Hold and come center. Inhale to the back and two, three and center. I guess I do lighten up a little as I come center and here we go. And exhale. One, two, three. Inhale. Last time, two, three and center. So not as just how little you had to use your hands there and kind of keep that in mind as we move on. All right, placing it between a bit above, but between the knees, feet are going to go flat again and the feet were, let's say normal would be about there for a pelvic curl. Go a little bit wider, but not as wide as the ring, so there's the ability to have tension there.

Resistance on the ring. All right, sitting tall. We're exhaling as we roll down, squeeze the ring, attempting to parallel your feet. You won't exactly, but you're going to get close. Bring the feet in a little closer. Heads go down for pelvic curl. Inhale on the exhale. Roll the bell of the school using the ring. Doesn't have to be all out squeezed, but have that tension there. If it feels like you're fighting the ring tremendously, you should widen your feet a little. Inhale and exhale. Taking yourself back down bone by bone, finding the low back, releasing the glutes, and then you're down.

You can even let the knees get pushed apart for a moment. Inhale, draw the knees back toward each other, squeezing the ring. Exhale abdominals to the mat. It's fine. Even press the upper arms into the mat a little bit. As you roll up, looking for the long line, a sense of stretch to the hip flexor, which will be harder with this ring here. Inhale and exhale. Down we go. [inaudible] middle scoop a little more there and you're down. And inhale. Exhale, hollow. The abdominals up. We go.

Trying to balance out through your feet. It's going to try and push you apart. Inhale, can you tuck and bring the pubic bone closer to the chest? Exhale, enrolled. You could of course set the ring aside too if you want. Otherwise I'm doing one more. I lighten up there. Inhale, raise, squeeze. Exhale. Up we go.

Come on, come on. Come on. [inaudible] staying here. Inhale on your exhale. Lift the heel of your right foot. Just lift the heel. That's all. Put it back down. Other side, lift the right heel or the opposite side. Let's do it again and for side lift. Squeeze the ring a little tighter. Press into the big toe as you do it last time. Bring it down. Inhale, reach the arms down even further and XL down we go. Rolling through joy. Curl up and grabbed the ring.

Ah, wow. That's nice. Take it out from between the knees. Knees come up to ta actually, sorry to keep them down and put the knees and feet together. The rings going to be directly above your chest. Draw the feet close enough that you can be on the ball of the feet. Heels are lifted going to your, toward the front of the room. We, it's dropped the knees. Inhale as you reach the knees over, and I've kept, I've, I've kept the feet together as if they're one. So it's that uh, foot that's in the back is lifted off the ground.

Exhale and rotate back to center. Go the other way so the knees are lined up. Now that foot that's in front is going with it. Stacked. Exhale, bring it back. Put a little resistance on the ring. Just a little end to the front. Inhale. Try to find the obliques as you exhale and [inaudible] roll yourself back and inhale to the back. The shoulder blades should be on the mat. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty small.

In fact, the back of the shoulders as best you can last time and center. Let's make it a little more interesting. Draw the feet up to tabletop. You could keep them down if you want. Same thing to the front. Now again, think upwards a little as you reach the nieces, not just over back to center. And what I mean, what do I mean? Um, if I just go over and rotate, I'm going to keep falling. So I'm aiming energetically up on a diagonal and come back right away.

I do lift that opposite hip and bring it back one more time to go over and bring it back from here. Inhale. Exhale. Set the feet down, all in one piece levels, pelvis. If you can take the ring back for the next day and he'll just reach overhead on your Xcel. You're curling up, reaching toward the the knees. Not much of a squeeze here, but some come up a little more good. Roll it back down all the way. Inhale, reach back, exhale, curling forward just right at the chest and then go a little bit higher at the last moment. Good.

And then all the way down and one more like that just for three, just to kind of get that sense of pressing and reaching and back. Now we'll pick up the pace a little bit. We're just taking the arms up toward the front of the room. Here it is. It's exhale, reach one and all the way back. Touchdown, other side and two and back. Keeping the feet weighted in the mat and three hips.

Easy and level and back and back and back. Hold it back for the moment. Take one. You tabletop, other knee, tabletop. Keep the exercise going toward the front of the room and reach up on all the way back for now and two and back. [inaudible]. All right, let's do two more and then come down all the way. What we're going to do this time is, sorry.

Keep the knees up as we curl up. In fact, just curl up to the front instead of going down. Switch to the other side. Okay. No big deal. Let's do that again just so you can feel that. So it's just upper body. Yeah, one more time. Okay. Come back to the front. Now as you've come to the front, just like you did that twist earlier, stack the knees and feet, but take your knees a little to the back. Straight arms. Good switch. They're both switching switch. And do you find a Deborah that sounds for you. Do you feel it though? Cause I got more tricks up my sleeve. No, this is plenty.

This is plenty. Eyes are forward. Let me see those knees move gym. I want this needs to move. Yup. I want the hip to come off the ground. Everybody. Yes. Manny? Yes. There you go. There you go. [inaudible] any lists exactly. Go four, three, two and back to center. Nice job and set there and set your body down for a moment. Huh?

Polished Molly. Good. Right under the sternum for you. Good. And anyone else? I felt it quite a lot tonight and kind of all over. What'd you say Maddie? You felt a Blake's great. Perfect. You've helped the whole thing. She felt her eyelids very good. All right, let's take the ring between the ankles, and again, this is the one that if you normally go into your hip flexors, you may decide to opt out of this using it as the ring.

So everybody bend the knees in. Take your hands behind your head. This is going to be a version of the a hundred just in the count on Lee. Curl your head, neck and shoulders up so you're looking forward. Let them feet drop down a little bit. It's inhale, exhale for five one, two, three. I'm squeezing the ring for five. Inhale, pull in two, three.

I'm kind of keeping some resistance, but I add to the resistance right there. Three, four, five, and inhale. Two, three, four, five and exhale. Two, three, four, five. And inhale. If when you're pressing the ring out, you start to feel pressure come off the back. Meaning it starts to arch. Take your legs higher. You should and you'll feel it more where you want to. And inhale and school.

You can keep your arms there or reach and forward. One, two, three, four, five, and in two, three, four, five and out, my feet are pretty relaxed and in reaching forward with the upper body and out. You're getting one more after this one and pull. Here comes reach two, three, four, five. Pull it in. Two, three hands. Come inside, take the ring, set the feet down, reaching the arms overhead. Inhale, head, neck, and shoulders. Come up. Look at your feet. I'm not squeezing the ring. Exhale, come up. Great. Let's separate the feet.

The ring is going flat on the ground at your heels and you're going to want the ring all the way on the mat or really far off so it doesn't pick up your mat like good. Alright, so sit straight up for a moment if you can. If that's hard on your hip flexors, bend the knees, squeeze the ring from your upper inner thigh. Hinge forward just a bit. Still a little bit. Now keep the shoulder somewhat forward as they are, meaning the whole body. Roll the hip bones backwards so you tuck under and squeeze your button.

Good. That's great. Those are such good positions. Wow. Okay, good. You're, everyone's squeezing. Let's go roll back. That's where we come home every time. Rounding the back, touching the back of the head. Don't let the ribs pop off, but here we go. Lifting up. Exhale.

Sure. You just landed in that spot. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's good and back. It's a hard position I think to hit. Let's go a little faster. Not that I want to mess it up because we can end down squeeze in that ring and up. Sure.

I somewhat, I don't, I'm somewhat pausing on that inhale, but not really at this speed of going pretty quick with it. Hang on. Only one more. In fact, I'll stop you at your shoulder blade, so roll down to those eyes forward for the moment. Let your legs reach long. Squeeze the ring a little bit more unless you're over contracting the hip flexors and you'll know and now just breathe. Exhale as if you're going to get up, but you don't, and let drop back a little. Inhale. Exhale, squeeze.

And I'm talking abdominals now and back up by maintaining just a small squeeze of the inner thigh. Feel what Deborah said just under the sternum. Perhaps the sense of drawing the abdominals up as you curve to get up and let's put the right hand behind your left, but right behind your head, right hand behind your head. What's happening? Nothing. Lots of stuff. Okay, check this out. I don't have words for this. You have your right hand behind you, right the opposite arm or left arm is going to cross over the body a little bit.

Press your right leg into the ring more than the left and pulse slow one to keep that one side working more pressing into it. It's pretty a stationary hold. Take everything back. Let your head touch. Curl up in the center. Same, same position just right in the center, right in the center. Switch hands so you're right in the center. Thank you. Have now crossed over to the back. There you go. Now you've got both legs long.

Press the front leg into the battery that I guess it would be the left leg into the right and here you go. Five slow presses. One you don't need to lift. You're reaching low and longed when don't even get higher. Get across. Yes. Oh Wow. Hold, come back to the center. Reach the other arm forward. Come up. Yeah, round on her.

Yeah. I'm going to say that on one side in particular. That's kind of scary. All right, let's do something. If you just move your ring for the moment, you know I've got more plans for that. Come up to either a diamond position across like a position, something that's relatively comfortable for you. Hold on. Squeeze through the glutes a little and with a straight spine. I wanted to try and get a little extension in there, so just lift your upper back and release it. I'm going to change the feet position, foot position.

Turn it to that and hold on strongly, strongly. So you're up on your sits bones. Start to lift your spine, lift your chest, look up to try to find that upper back as the shoulder. I am trying to stretch that. I'm actually doing yes is the answer. I'm trying to stretch those abdominals. We just worked, but more actually, more importantly, I'm trying to work the upper back too. I know I'm using my arms, but that's the only, well, a couple of reasons.

Yeah. Great. That's fantastic. Upper sternum stretching. Wow. That is money or what value. Right. Okay. Come back to neutral. Yeah, that's good. Especially if you're in this position a lot, which I certainly have been lately. Let's do that again. A first turn. I'm stretching when you, yeah, I feel free. You can do it that way.

You can get more leveraged this way. No problem. What I want to be careful of is people like Aaron who could really thrust, but you won't. Here we go. Let's do it again. Either way. Either way. I agree. I kind of liked that one. But this one's working for me tonight. So upper sternum, do you mean by your throat or just your sternum in general. Okay. Oh Wow. Fabulous. Fabulous. I can't, I can't say I'm getting that one, but I'm gonna try.

Okay. And release right now. Then scooting forward on your mat for rolling like a ball. Let's do it first with the ring between the knees. And you've gotta be careful with this one, right? Cause it's there. Right where we are. So we draw the feed in.

So put a little contraction on the ring, holding the ankles or shins, and be aware of where the eye should. Let's try keeping it touching us. Oh boy. What have I gotten myself into? Try. If that grosses you out, you can keep it apart, but don't let it come any closer. All right, here we go. You nailed. Roll back a little boy. Exhale. Oh, what was that? What was I thinking? It just goes as me. That's why I'm not keeping it there. Here we go back. Keep the shape and yes. [inaudible] back and up. Did you say it's fun?

Oh good, good. Go ahead. Yeah. Nice Job Jim. Oh my goodness. He must have a good teacher. Well done. One more. All of them. All right. There we go. Let's move the ring out and try it with the knees together. The ring just above your knees. Elbows pointed to the side. Here we go. Inhale, roll back. Keep the shape. Ah, and in held back, they have Donald was given up one more then or none if they've given up.

All right. Put your feet down. Do you guys know thread the needle? Yes. Yes. Okay. This, I'm not sure I remember it. I'm so hang on one second. It will be, oh yeah, it's in him. It's exactly, it's the devil like stretch, but the breath just lasts a little longer, so it'll be inhale, bring it in as you exhale. Extend through. Okay. Otherwise, if you don't like that, you can just back and forth with it. So let's start. Where are we down? Okay, down it is.

So from there we're curl in ourselves up. Find your tabletop and let's go slow. It's inhale, reach back. Make sure your low back is absolutely still exhale, bring it forward. Your tips might lift a little. I do flex my feet to press through. That was theoretically all exhale. Then inhale open.

Okay, exhale close. I'm not squeezing the rink. By the way. Inhale, open. Exhale. Close the same rules applied as normal. You don't get to rock the Pelvis and Oh, I'll go a little slower since you guys are tall and there and eyes forward looking. Good. Gym and close. One more time please. La. La. And then from there, bend the knees. Only. Set the ring. Set your head down and just bring the ring close to your chest, right?

See, I wonder if this works as well for you. Probably not. Alright, from there, stretch the legs all the way out. Reaching the ring up just above your chest. We're rolling up here it comes. Little resistance on the ring, not a lot from here. Separate the feet. Flex the feet and [inaudible] roll up all the way to straight, all the way to stream. All right, it goes in here. Exhale as you round. Rounding on spine stretches. What we're doing, you get to travel forward a little. Now if you find that the ring is too narrow, meaning it starts to hunt your shoulders, put the thumb inside and gently pull the ring apart. Inhale, hold, exhale to roll up. In fact, I'm going to recommend that for everyone because some of you will still have to bend, so you're just gently doing that, pulling apart. Here we go. Inhale, exhale round.

Find it as a way to oppose the stretch or the reaching forward. Inhale and exhale. We come back up stacking the spine an email at any time, you can bend the knees. Exhale round and far in here. Pull the shoulders down a little, Jim. They're just getting ahead of you. Yep. And back we come. I'll add the back extension here.

It's inhale, exhale to round. Lighten up on the arms. If you're pulling with them. Inhale, you lengthen from the low back up through the upper back. If it feels too narrow, just bend the elbows a little. Exhale, round and roll. You could also put the ring down at any time. Inhale, exhale to around. Not much tension up to email.

As you start rolling through the low back, the upper back, the middle back. We come up kind of high, the arms behind the ears if possible. Exhale, round and roll. And just one more like that. And then I'm gonna do a couple without the ring. Exhale round. So if you want to get rid of the ring now go right ahead. It's almost too narrow for a lot of us. Inhale to lengthen, not squeezing it, just using it. Exhale, round and roll.

Okay. Just set the ring down in the middle anywhere actually, and let's do one more. Once we get up, we'll do some one fancy version. We'll see what happens. Here we go. Inhale. Exhale. Rounding forward, stacking your spine nice and long in here. Taking the time. The arms will end up almost behind your ears. A little bit more good. And a gym. Instead of going forward with your chest, go up there. That's it. Chin down and lean forward a little and you're good. Okay. From there a, just take a free breath.

Inhale as you bend the arms to 90 degrees at the elbow. Exhale, rotate. So it's, you're not really changing anything. The hips don't change. It's pretty subtle. Inhale, extend the arms. Exhale, center. Hold for a full inhale. We're going down. Exhale, round two, roll up. Yeah. Inhale. You can put your hands down. It'll work. Exhale round. Forward. Right. If she's starting to get neck tension, it's just not worth it. Inhale, stack the spine. Use the arms if you're going to, if you are there up, inhale, bend to 90 degrees at the elbows or just wait for us. We'll be there.

Exhale, rotate to the back. If you are not using your arms here, just guide yourself one way. Inhale, extend arms overhead, or just pause. Exhale, back to center. Inhale, exhale, round and roll up. Okay. Take your ring, place it at your heels again like we did earlier with the rollout, and again at anytime you can bend your knees and still do this. All right, arms are extended out fully. I'll change it in a second. Just go ahead. Don't even need to stagger. Don't even need to stag. I'm gonna Change it, but I want that and what that sense of, that's it. Good.

Now Jim, just barely bring your arms forward. Good. Then from there we just easily bend the elbows to 90 fabulous, heavy shoulder blades. Aaron, this is a subtle cue. Look here for one second. Just pull the, it's not, it is a rib Q, but there you go. That's it. All right. Toward the front of the room. Devil. Exhale, and I'm squeezing the ring by the way. Oh yeah, I use your abs. Is that all I had to do to keeping a sustained squeeze on the ring?

Yeah, hold center. Bend the knees a little. Squeeze the and don't worry about squeezing anymore. Now check this out. Inhale, rotate the elbows forward. Exhale, extend the arms, lifting the chest as you go. [inaudible] he'll just sit up nice and tall. Exhale the arms to the side. Okay, and he'll just bend. Sorry. Okay, you can stagger. Exhale, rotate. Elbows forward. Risk back. Inhale, lift the chest first.

Extending the arms on the exhale like you're looking up in behind you. Lovely, lovely, lovely. Sit Up on the inhale with straight arms. Exhale down to the side with straight arms. Sorry, I'll, I'll do it better now that I've decided what I'm doing. It is a easy, just inhale, bend at the elbow joint. Exhale, reach, elbows forward, risk back. Be careful with that part. Inhale, lifting the chest up. I haven't done a thing with the arms yet. Now I'm going to extend the arms to follow the chest. My arms aren't straining, they're just trying to float towards straight. Then we bring the arms directly overhead as well as the body back to neutral and then lower them down to the side. Straight arms. Yeah. Last two. Inhale, bend. Exhale, rotate. Elvis forward wrist, back. Start to lift the chest. It helps to squeeze the ring a little. It's very subtle. Lift and then float the arms up.

They may or may not get all the way to straight, but we try bring the whole body back up to upright and then down last time, reach a little further. You can take a quick break if you need it. Then come back to bend. Elbows. That was your inhale. Exhale, rotate the forearm toward the back. Inhale, lift the chest. Not much to see here, but you'll feel it. Looking up a little, not a lot. Extend the arms. Inhale and exhale this time round all the way forward and relax.

That got there, Huh? Good. Well, I really feel that one. That's exactly where life doesn't take us, isn't it? I was with rail all weekend and he kept saying, I want adventure. I want adventure. That felt adventurous to me. I think he would be proud that this doesn't excite me. Christie, this doesn't excite me. I heard that one too many times. All right gang, we need to do something on our side. So let's do that now. Perry.

Um, here we go. Please hear from actually take the ring. Sorry. Take the ring and Yup. And we'll have it so that you are right there. Cool. Um, no, you're perfect. Is that what you meant? Yep. Yeah, you're right. We're all together. Alright, so from here south from the elbow.

I don't want to lean on it yet, but do take the arm out kind of far. I suppose there's a little bit of a lean, not much. Yeah. And now drawing the, yeah, so you can engage. In fact, sorry, I'm trying to get my head around what I want to say about it. I've rested my hand there. I have a little bit of pressure there though too. And it's, so, Aaron movie, was that a little bit more? Yup. Towards Deborah. They'll ring everything so that I actually want you to come over with it. Yep.

Okay, cool. Now from there applying a little pressure, I'm thinking maybe shoulder towards waist and then pull away at the waist. So you're actually getting a shortening of the waste happening. Does that make sense? And then release. Yeah, so there's not a lot of pressure on the hand. I did put some and then I pulled away. So I have a pretty significant something, something going on over here, you know, good grip. It's a lot of lat, but let's minimize the pressure on the arm now that you've got that part and, and so yes, there's some, absolutely. I and I do feel kind of a lot there, but now let's take this arm up and stretch into it more so you can put more weight toward that opposite side. Yeah, it is a lot. A lot actually.

And then, Huh? Okay, good, good, good. I'll get more oblique rotation in a second and release. I'm exaggerating my movement a little just so you can kind of see the action, but that is what I'm doing. Yeah. Press good one more like that. Cool. Yes.

And open from there. A little pressure. Not a lot. And I'm not pulling away this time and maybe it tiniest bit and then turn and then open enter. So I guess I had just a littlest lat pull that we started with so I've pulled into XML. Yeah, I'm not getting that far. I'm not putting both hands on the ring. Thank you. I'm attempting to but I don't want to move the other one out of the way so I'm just reaching along. You might be able to, um, I'm not going to say it's a goal yet over. Okay. Now just take the ring to the other side.

Reached the free arm up. You're not expected to push on this ring. Use it more for balance and, all right. Switching sides. Cool. Yes, we're out in a bit of a lien so that we can have something to pull away. Perfect. All right. I didn't do that yet. Did I? I went soft elbow, shoulder towards waist and press and maybe I did and porous and release.

The arm doesn't have to be in the air at this point. We hadn't done it yet, but it's feeling good to me at the moment. Good press now. See when it's good. Keep the hip down like it is and just stretch the rib cage back out, Huh? Yeah. Feeling on the side too. Aaron. Good and good and pull back and release. If you didn't have a ring or if you didn't like the ring, you could also just draw the elbow and like that to get the contraction.

Let's get two more. One and good to, then we added the overhead with the arms so it was draw and hold. You can continue trying to lift up here as the arm comes over, over and then back and exhale over. If you're feeling strained in the elbow, you probably putting too much weight into the ring or you're overlocking the arm. Lighten up on it. Almost like you're in space and again, one more here. Drawing over. Lovely. Here we go.

Mild pressure on it but some and rotate and open and xe. [inaudible] I was just going to say that. That's exactly on this one. I'm a little more obviously anchored. Is that open and rotate. This is it and open. When you get there, stay there.

Just move the ring to the other side, reaching up to go over the right hip, w w right hip. Okay. Okay. All right. And release it. Okay. For the moment, let's just set the rings after a side. Swing your feet back to the center and we've done a fair amount of back extension. I just want to do, um, one more thing to the back and then we'll, we'll give you some stretches. So with the fingers facing your heels, if you can, you could also do this on your fist or you can turn your hand sideways. Those are just wasted. Just the hands roll up a towel. Lots of little things you could do if your risk don't like it. But main thing, what I, I'm most interested in at the moment is that you, we try to straighten the arms without staying into the shoulders. So Yep, that's good. Aaron.

Now contract your bicep. Like you're going to pick up your mat. There you go. At least the elbow I can see so that you're not hyperextending there is what you're, I'm just making you use it so you don't hyper extend. So Aaron do this. This is for anyone who hyperextends and it's probably a good lesson for us all. So for the moment, turn your hand sideways everybody. Okay? Do you do that?

Because it hurts your wrists. Turn your hands. Yeah. Or dance. Okay, so she, that's fine. So now we're all sideways and I want you to make a little spider fingers like you see, oh, I'm going over. I know you can't do that but that, and I'd like you gay because she hyper extends and a lot of people do. And I want you to think about picking up your mat by tightening. It's almost like I'm going to bend my elbow to pick it up. Okay, good. That's almost too much Mandy. Huh? It's like a little section cut.

Exactly. So that's the s that's a stable elbow. Okay, now you can relax your hands and still do that. It's harder in your, because it's a brain thing. Cool. Let's just keep it like that. Here we got lifting up, still trying to pick up the floor with the hands. If you tend to hyper, extend the elbows and then sit down. And when you sit down and think of lifting up away from the floor, that's a gym. That's it. It's a huge stretch. I'm assuming for most of us, lift up. I'm using the back of my legs and my glutes back of my legs more but everything a little bit and then sit down like you're lifting up away from the ground.

Iser forward on this part too. More lift up. You use the back of the legs and down and one more time. Up and down. Okay. Freeing up the arms. That would be a fine place to stop if we wanted to, but I'm going to do just a few hip stretches to round out that evening if that's all right with you. Take us a little long. So take the ring. I'll start with that like please place your left. Sorry. Your right below the foot and the ring and you can adjust wherever you put your foot for comfort. For now it's probably a good idea on the ball sitting relatively tall. In fact, let's just bend the other leg for comfort and keeping the heel down.

I'm just bending my arms to stretch my calf and I know I said hip, I'll get there. I promise if you want a little more hamstring hinge forward and just pull on the ring. If you need to grab higher, grab hider and want those elbows to pull out to the side. For the moment I'm just sort of relaxing that other leg. You could move it fully, but to get more hamstring you've got to have a flat back to do it. So it almost rather been the other leg too, if it's hard to keep the flat back.

All right, and let's just, while we're here, switched to do the other side while we're already sitting and the other one out of the way. Enjoy a little cass stretch first. You know, hopefully not having to work so hard with the arms. I like the way Wendy's doing it. She went under hand and bent the elbows. It's a little bit easier to hold I think and probably a better stretch then for the hamstring. It's the same exercise, but you just allow your flat body to come forward, get the knee out of the way and then so that we don't have to work quite so hard. Let's go back to the first side, the right foot and roll down. Taking the leg up into the air, so for the moment the other leg is straight.

If you know your hamstrings are a little more flexible, the bottom like stay straight. If you need a little more assistance with it, the bottom leg is bent. Either way, the tailbone or the hips are level so you haven't tucked in. Brought your butt up to the ground. From there, bend the leg that's in the ring and the foot stays flat to the ceiling, so you're drawing that thyre writing close, maybe just outside the ribs and I'm bending my arms to do and I'm not working that hard to do it. Then start to straighten that leg. You can allow the arms to straighten out a little bit, but try to minimize how much the arms have to adapt. As you begin to straighten the leg, the foot will kind of inch its way toward over your head, right? Rebend it, pull it in, nice and close knees kind of aiming to the shoulder and then again, minimize how much you straighten the arms.

But you're welcome to do what you need to do towards straight leg. Yeah, let's do that one more time. Bend. If you stay on the ball of the foot and level, you'll get a decent cast stretch and here it is. Straighten, check the back of your neck. If there's tension in the back of your neck. If you find yourself looking behind you, you want to put a little towel behind your head and I'm happy to get that for anybody. All right, from here, gently pointed toes. You're going to have to give up some in your arms and flex and point.

So I'm just providing my own little bit of resistance and flex gently pulling the whole time. All right, so our right foot's in. Let's hold it with our left, right arm out to the floor to the tee. Start to crossover and you, yeah, you want to straighten the bottom leg. It doesn't have to go far. You want to think of in the hip will come up. It's okay. But as you push the foot into the ring, either at the ball of the foot or the arch at this point it doesn't matter.

You oppose, you gently hold back on the hip a little bit too. We're getting at Jim. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Breathe. So this is the area right, that you were talking about. So let's do what we did earlier. We bend the knee a little. That should give up some of the resistance and don't go so far that you're straining to hold onto the ground two and then go towards straight.

And as the foot goes away from you, the hip tries to inch its way toward the floor. Made appear still, but it's the energy that's bend again, one more time but in the knee quite a lot. And then extend. Maybe you'll leave the elbow bent. This would work with a theraband and then let's help ourselves back to center. I used my arm to do it. Grab it with the right hand level, your hips, other hands going to go out. And most a lot of you, probably all of you are going to need to bend the elbow as you go because some of your more flexible, maybe you'll get your elbow to the ground, maybe not for support. And this might be a place where if you're really flexible, you do an underhand grip so you can pull it higher.

But in any case, the hips are level and as usual you're reaching the heel or the foot one direction, the other end of the leg, the opposite direction. And it's not quite as mental as it sounds, but it, that's the idea. Help yourself back to the center. Remove the ring for the moment. Set it down and keep it nearby though. Hug that knee in close. All right, so it's our right knee. We're going to take the right hand and just brace it so it can't get out to the side. Take the left hand on over the ankle, somewhere around lower legs, nothing perfect. Just grab on. And then with that, don't let the knee point to the side of the room.

Like we sometimes do just guide the knee across the body. So essentially it's so Deborah pull with your left hand. Just don't let that, but brace with the right a little and then it's coming across like, yeah. Yeah. I think you already have it. [inaudible] absolutely. Yeah. And it's, you're doing it already. It's just that energetically. Is that okay? Yeah, exactly. And then Mandy, keep your hip on the ground though. So it's abuse. Yeah, it's a hip stretch. It's just normally, a lot of times we do it like that. It's just like that. And then I'm going to go like, you got it. You got it, Helen? Yeah. It just leveled the hips out. So it's, it's, I don't mean to turn your whole body.

That's good. Just like that. Do you feel that? Yeah. Good, good, good, good. Aaron, go ahead and put your hip down. Yep. That's like that. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. It's not so different from ours. The one we normally do, let me take it. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Here. Put it here. This is more hip flexors. Your hip flexor, you're feeling grip in the front versus over here where it's like, then stay over there, stay over there. It's fine. You're special.

I have a feeling your hip flexors just getting sort of caught in it, but I'm not entirely sure. Let's, let's go to the ring again. You know what I mean? Let me you kidding of time. Well, you're needing to chestnut never feels great. Yeah, I don't, I can't say exactly why that would be. I can't even get close probably. But, um, I know what you're feeling. I have a little bit of that as well. So just if you, if you, if it feels pinchy or something like that, we just want to avoid that. Right?

So everyone's gonna be a little different and I'm just kinda guessing. Yeah, they're probably, I don't, they, I don't know. I'm guessing a little tight. All right. So we have the ball of foot, right? And we did calves first, I believe. Yes. Thank you. So our arms are straight as they need to be for support.

Gently flex the foot by pulling. And then point thank you and point. Yup. And again, if you're completely loose on the ring, it's not going to help you and you'll end up working your hip flexor. So put a, you know, breast, at least your arm weight on the, on the ring. Couple more [inaudible], whatever feels good and then you'll leave it flexed. If that feels too intense, put the ring in the middle of your foot. Otherwise we bent the knee. Yup, that's right. Then the lower leg, if you're a, if you did on the other side, and then minimize the arm movement as you guide the legs short, straight as a foot goes toward the ceiling, the hips just get heavier into the mat and bend and straighten and bend to straighten and to straighten.

Last one, see if you can challenge it a little bit. Check neck tension. Yeah. All right. From there we held it with our right hand or left hand or left foot is in there. Start to crossover.

Opposite hand goes out into a t and maybe the leg will go to the ground. I mean the elbow will go to the ground. Sorry. Not the leg. If we gave into this, we would just sort of roll over and hang out. Maybe you'd get it back stretch. But that's not what we're going for. Right. We are definitely, I had requests for hips, so as the foot pushes, and I know I keep saying it that way. Pull back a little on the hip.

It is off the ground though. Then bend, bend the knee and straighten it and Ben and I feel the whole leg attempting to get longer. Do you feel on this it Jim, but just not as much. Okay, good, good. And then one more one, once you get back to straight hangout with it and help it back to center level your hips. Um, if you have event new, you're gonna want the knee straight. Now I preferred an underhand grip, but you're welcome to switch it just to the left hand. So the same arm, his leg and open out opposite arm to a t. This one, the hips are down that you don't let one lift up.

Yeah. And if it's a piece of cake, you've just got to create a longer line. And that what I mean is the lower leg is kind of gently reaching the upper leg or the leg in the air is reaching, photo's flexed, and let's bring it back to center. Remove the ring, hug the knee in comfortably. Right. Then we had the left hand just outside the left knee so it doesn't get pushed out to the side. Hug the knee in and then just gently grab somewhere lower in the leg and guide it and the knee closer to your chest.

Yup. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Sort of like pushing it across midline. You've got it, Jim, is that enough for you Aaron? No. No. So I want to go like, it's like you're trying to bring the knee to the opposite shoulder, the hip staying on the ground and this like that. Okay. Okay. And that you may prefer the other one. You are quite flexible. Do you find it Debra? It looks like it. Yeah. I won't do it much, but okay. I feel like I want to go like that a little bit. Is that okay?

Good. You're good, Mandy? Yeah. All right. I'll hold that if you do. Yeah, that welcome. Yeah, there's those are pretty tight muscles in general, right there for most of us. And let's carefully ease her way out of that.

And what I'm going to suggest is stretching your legs out a minute and just letting the whole leg sort of roll out, just sort of back and forth. And then when it feels right to you to bring the legs up, hold on behind the legs just to give yourself a little rocking action and bring it all the way up. Sitting somehow, comfortably for one last stretch either like so or like so I think or even like, so that would work too. Whatever you want. And from here, sitting tall, just start to walk your hands forward, rounding over and like everything else we do as your upper body's going forward, try and make sure you hold the hips down and then Rola. Oh I hate to cut that one short, but I'm going to just to switch the cross and the leg and do it again. And Jim, if you're, if this is less of a stretch on your right hip, you might want to go back. Is it more or less or no big deal? It's less then switch back if it's less so the other foot's in front.

I think you'll get a better stretch if it's less of a stretch or if you're, if you're good, you can leave it and just let go here. We'll take two more deep breaths here, or you can stay as long as you like, but one more time and when you're ready, roll yourself up. Just stacking your spine. I've kept you long enough you can find your way. [inaudible] out into the world. Thanks guys. Good job.

Comments

Another great class!!! Thanks Kristi
Lots of great stuff here too similar to #303. Thank you. From the hundreds with the legs to upper sternum stretching to mermaid variations. Thanks again! Valuable stuff.
Great class, Kristi! Love working with a prop like a magic circle as I do my pilates workout.
This was a great one, thanks Kristi! Sometimes I have difficulty stretching out my back, due to a sciatic nerve injury, but the leg extensions with the magic circle felt really good and allowed me to strech without overdoing it!
Glad you all liked the class. Krysta, it's great to hear you found a way to stretch without irritating your injury.
LOVE the hip stretches. More like this! Thanks!
1 person likes this.
Love this workout but keep losing it at around 8mins. Anyone else getting the same problem??
Hmm Debbie we haven't heard that from anyone else. I wonder if the connection was weak yesterday?
Thank you for the class. I had so much pain in my back and this is the perfect class for me to get the core stronger. i should know better. I've done all kinds of Pilates for 20 years then switched to yoga and then stopped everything for awhile With a tipped vertibre i can't live without pilates. much thanks
Meryl Price
Meryl ~ What a profound lesson... Movement is life! I'm thrilled to hear this class assists you in your recovery. Be Well.
Sincerely ~ Kristi
1-10 of 13

You need to be a subscriber to post a comment.

Please Log In or Create an Account to start your free trial.

Footer Pilates Anytime Logo

Move With Us

Experience Pilates. Experience life.

Let's Begin