Class #3465

Connecting to the Mat

40 min - Class
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You will find a connection to your Mat in this workout by Lesley Logan. She encourages you to draw from your imagination to use the feeling you get when you are working on the Reformer to help you deepen the work in your mind and body. Whether you only use the Mat or you usually try to avoid it, this class will help you find the parallels in each movement.
What You'll Need: Mat

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Hi, I'm Leslie Logan. We are here for eight awesome Matt workout. And here's the thing about the mat workout. I think some of us only map it out and others try to avoid the mat as much as possible, but the mat requires a lot of us, right? A lot from our body and a lot of us connecting to our actual equipment, which is the mat. And so what I want you to do today while we're doing this network is actually think about the other parts of equipment in the room.

So you're actually going to draw some imagination and the feeling of being on your reformer while on your mat doing the mat exercises. So hopefully my descriptions will actually get your imagination going and allow you to fill these exercises in a new way. Let's get started. Come to the front of your mat, one arm over the other, one leg over the other, and then as if you're lowering yourself down to your former, lower yourself, down to your mat with control. Okay, beautiful. And then lie all the way back. So take a moment to fill yourself on the Mat and imagine that you were feet were actually on a foot bar and you're pushing out like footwork, toes, right?

And how much strength you need in your leg. Suppress four springs out and open and just kind of feel what that feels like to feel your body reach across the room and then take your arms overhead and imagine you have handles in your hands and they're connected to those four springs and you're just going to float yourself up to the level of your hundred and start pumping your arms. And you'll have 10 cycles of breathing here. But what I love for you to feel as instead of your arms just flapping up and down, how can they be connected to your handles and how those handles connect you into your back and how your arms pumping here. Just wake up your body because I don't know about you. Sometimes the a hundred on the mat feels like someone just tossed a bottle of water all over me. It's like, okay, workout.

Hundred

So like the reformer where you get to do your footwork and warm it up. So find your hundred here, find your springs into your body to do two more cycles of breathing. And then with control on your next exhale, lower your legs, reach your arms all the way overhead. Keep that reach and hold here for a moment. Feel what's underneath you. Fill your entire mat, it's your whole equipment, it's your carriage, it's your foot bar.

Reach into it with your feet flex now and the strength you need with your heels for reaching forward into your imaginary foot bar and wrapping your seat around is all you need to focus on as you float your head and chest up over your legs, round forward and pulse forward one, two, three and then roll it back. Reach your heels into your imaginary foot bar, right? So if you're dragging your body across the mat, that just tells you actually stopped reaching from your whole lower body all the way into your foot bar. So I really want, you've got two more roll ups to actually trust that your heels can reach that far forward. Nice. Andrea and then again, round forward. Good. Hug The outer hips in and then roll down. Now if you want to keep doing the roll ups and funding your heels into your imaginary foot bar, keep going. Otherwise arms down by your side. Roll over. So before you go, imagine that you're just reversing your overhead, right? So you're just going to take your legs all the way over. Feel your roll up, point your toes, open your legs, and then roll it down.

Roll Up

Keep the reach through the spine, circle the legs together, and then again, take it all the way over like you would your overhead. It's nice stretch for your back. Your arms are actually going to find your chest expansion as you do your rollovers here. So instead of trying to crack walnuts and push your arms into your mat, imagine your arms are pushing past your hips on your chest, expansion on the reformer. Go ahead and reverse here. Take the legs open, reach over, stretch, close the legs, squeeze them tight and then as you roll down again, chest expansion with your arms. Two more times like this, the head stays with your mat. So as your legs come down, it's just like in your chest expansion. Your head doesn't go forward, right? The legs are not deterring where your head is in space.

Roll Over

You stay connected to your equipment and then you're going to go ahead and leave your right leg up. Let your left leg come down. Okay, so still chest expansion with the arms. Find your ribs into your mat. And then imagine you are about to do your tree on your short box. How much does your left leg actually have to reach across the room, underneath your imaginary strap right now? Circle your right leg five times across your body and then you'll reverse. But you're allowed to freely circle your leg because of how much effort is happening in your body to stabilize it.

Single Leg Circles

So how much does your head and shoulders have to press back? How much chest expansion your arms can you have here? You'll scissor switch your legs when you're even, and then before you go into your next circle, stop. Make your right leg actually go under your imaginary foot strap. Make your right leg, reach across your short box and pull your stomach away from your thighs so that you can actually freely circle this leg and not have any hip clicking or rocking around with your pelvis. Once you're even with both legs, lower that leg down and we're on a roll up for our rolling like a ball.

Okay, so sit up to the front of your mat. I really love rolling like a ball because it actually helps you with stomach massage. And I know so many people hate stomach massage like you hate it, but you're going to love it. So before you, um, rock and roll, lift your feet up off the mat and take your hands to the bottoms of your feet. Just for a moment, push your feet into your hands like you're pushing into a foot bar and really feel how that actually causes like some tension and some connection into your center. Okay? Now take your hands to the front of your shins. Push your thighs forward into your hands as if you're going to push a foot bar away. Then with that pressure of thinking about pushing into your foot bar rock back and forth three times. Just three. Uh Huh.

Rolling Like A Ball

So I love rolling like a ball. It's not a massage. It's actually nice work to set us up for our ab series here. We're going to hold at the top. Grab your right Shin with both hands. Cinder left leg across the room. Yes. And then roll on down all the way. Hold here.

Pull on your right shin. Stretch your left leg away. And just imagine for a moment that you're doing front splits on the reformer. How much does the leg in the back, which is your leg that's reaching out half to reach into your shoulder block, reach into it, pull your right leg into two times, and then switch. Pull, pull, switch. So keep flowing. You're just thinking that this free leg isn't just hanging out there across the room. It's actually helping you connect to your seat and reaching into something imaginary that actually will help you resist and connect to your seat. Let's finish on the left leg and then bring both knees into your chest.

Single Leg Stretch

Hold here. It's your stomach massage again, right? So press your thighs into your hands here and then inhale, reach out for your double leg stretch, hold XL, circle around, pull it all the way in, reach everything away, keep your chest up, and then circle. Sometimes we forget, and backstroke go ahead and reach again that our chest doesn't get to drop with the handles. And so this exercise actually can even help your back stroke on your reformer by keeping your chest up. One more time, reach, circle everything around. And then let's rest your head for just a moment. Okay, that's over. Lift your head back up. So legs up to the sky.

Double Leg Stretch

Take your right leg up and let our left leg long. And just pause for a second. I want you to think about your tree. I want you to think about your control balance off the reformer. Press your thigh bone into your hands so you can find your center into the mat and then pull on that leg two times and then switch, pull, pull and switch. You got three more each side.

Single Straight Leg Stretch

And I want you to set a three in your leg to your face. How much can you push your leg away so you can bring your forehead to your knee? Because entry, you actually can't just bring your leg over your head. You have to bring yourself to your leg one more. And when you're even both hands come behind your head. Okay?

So here's where you have to really get creative. We're going to picture something that actually is in a whole different position. Think about your up stretch and your elephant. Push your head into your hands and feel yourself curl into your lower ribs a little more. Now as you push your legs down towards the Mat, it's actually pushing into your shoulder blocks. Press the carriage out, and now pull the carriage back in like you would for your elephant. Press the carriage out, keep your chest where it is, and then pull the Kerogen, right? An elephant.

Double Leg Lower Lift

You can't let your legs just fly away from you and move your body. So your double straight leg stretch here is actually helping you find more of your center and more of your seat. So that's purposeful. The legs lower. Last one by pushing into the shoulder blocks and then pulling it close hold. Bring one knee into your chest, twist your right knee and then pulse here. One, two, three, switch to the other side. One, two, three. Keep going. You have two more times each side.

Criss Cross

And you can actually think about like some snake and twist here or your twists and reach on your stomach, on your, on your short box, right? You're not just going right and left when you're even arrest. Okay, so all the way up short spine. So take your weight, legs as wide as your mat, and then place your hands between your legs. Now I find to think of shorts. When is this nice break after that ab series. But what if your shorts, mine was as hard as your horseback. What if instead of horseback being the most miserable exercise on the reformer, it actually makes mine switch forward super hard. So here we go.

Take an inhale and then imagine you're reaching against two springs and press yourself out and go one round forward two and three. Roll it all the way up. Now how much do your legs have to work and horseback? So round four. I want to see your legs reach forward across your mat. One, two, three. And then come all the way up. Let's do two more times again. Find the reach of your legs across like they're hugging a short box or a long box. Excuse me, and roll back up. One more time. Round forward.

Spine Stretch Forward

I need to see some around in your horseback. One, two, three and then roll all the way up. Good. Okay. Scoot a little bit towards the front of your mat. Not Too much guys. And then you're going to go into your open leg rocker. So ready, curl back, lift your legs up and grab your ankles and pause. Now I know you don't want to hang out and open leg rocker too long, but I need you to join me for just a moment. So I want you to preach your hands into your legs as if you are doing tendon stretch on your reformer.

Open Leg Rocker

How much do your hands have to reach strongly into your foot bar? How much do your sister, your stomach have to pull up? And then as you rock back, it's like you're pushing your carriage out and as you rock up, you're closing your springs. All right, so we don't hang out in our open leg rocker. We do a nice rhythm, rock back, push the carriage up, and then come back up. Close the springs. So the more you reach into your legs, the easier open leg rocker gets. The more you use your arms like they're standing on something.

Hold closed your legs open your legs. Think about coordination. Squeeze your legs close. Push your legs open one more time. Close the legs, flex your feet, grow close your legs like your feet. Grab your toes. Now you're really going to have to think about that tendon stretch. Here we go. Rock back and up. If you can't touch your toes, you just reach for them. They'll get there one day, I promise frog back.

Push into your carriage and then close your imaginary springs. One more time, rock back, push into your carriage, and then close your imaginary springs. Hold. Walk your hands down your leg, make sure you're on your mat corkscrew so you can do any corkscrew you want. If you want to keep your hips down, you can. If you want to take your hips up to the sky, totally fine. I'm going to talk about with the hips up. Okay, so arms down by your side.

Find your chest expansion and lift your hips up into the sky. Hold here. Find some. Reach into your ceiling. And imagine almost like an overhead, how much your arms are reaching into straps so that you have them connection to your back in your arms are really strong for you. And then lower yourself down onto your right side. Sweep around to your left side all the way up to the sky and find that overhead. Reach at the top and then roll it down the other way.

Corkscrew

Yeah, and as you're going one more time, each side you can even think about how you're around the world on your short box. Helps you here, right cause on around the world. In the short box, your legs are really strong, so your body is free to move on corkscrew. Your shoulders are really strong so your legs are free to move. And once you're even just roll yourself all the way down and then come up for your saw. But before you open your legs, keep them closed just for a moment. So, okay, think about your feet pushing into a foot bar, stomach massage, twist, right? How much can you push your legs? How much are they squeezed together? How much are they reaching there? They're reaching so much into the springs that it allows your thighs to connect to your center and your stomach to lift off of your legs.

Now slide your legs apart. Keep that reach and take your arms wide. Okay, we're all gonna twist to the right first. So twist to the right and round and reach forward three times. But Oh, did your feet leave your foot bar right? Your feet have to stay on your foot bar. And as you twist to the other side, you can't shift the hips around. If we were on the reformer, you would know one leg would be bent and one leg would be straight. And so I want you to have super strong legs reaching into your imaginary foot bar and really finding a nice twist. And Ben, because if your legs are strong then you're free to move your whole upper body when you're even flip onto your stomach head at the front of your mat. Okay.

Saw

So before we go into your Swan, take your arms long by your side. Make this for me. And imagine you are holding onto two straps, one strap in each hand with a spring attached to it in your, at the very back edge of your pole straps. And I want you to reach into those imaginary straps so much your head and chest reach forward against that pressure in that pool. And so I really want you to feel the end of your pole straps one here for me, and notice just how much your chest is more forward and up rather than back and up. And then lower it all the way down. One more time.

Swan Prep

Reach your arms back like they're pulling into your straps. Press your legs long and together on your imaginary long box. Keep them down, reaching down in a way. Hold here to spend your elbows and place your hands on the mat underneath your shoulders and find a swan. [inaudible] press pause. Pull yourself forward and lower all the way down. So it's really easy all of a sudden to press ourselves back towards our feet.

Swan

And I know we're gearing up for a swan dive, so we think we need all this. Reach into our arms to lift ourselves up. But find your pull step chest here. Reach your hands into your mat, like you're pulling back on your straps and pull your heart forward. Good hold. If you want to keep doing this kind of a swan, you can. Otherwise you're going to do a die. I would say arms forward or to the side.

Doesn't matter to me. But I want you to actually take your hearts forward and then send your arms out and go for it. Dive three times. Yeah. And then you're gonna sit back and rest. So I think it's really easy in swan to think it's all about the up of chest, but it's really all about the length of the spine.

Swan Dive

And that takes us into our single leg kicks. So come out onto your stomach. I want you to feel for just a moment like you are on your reformer for your down stretch. So prop yourself up on your forearms, push into your forums like you'd push your hands into your foot bar on your down stretch, and then feel your stomach lift up. And imagine your heart pulling forward across your foot bar. Now your legs, while the feet are not actually flex into shoulder blocks, the thighs are reaching back into those shoulder blocks for you. So when you go ahead and kick your right heel to your seat two times, I want you to feel the same muscles that would push a carriage away. Turn on and pull your heel towards your seat.

Child's Pose

And as you kick two times each side, notice what's happening in your center. So if you're doing the down stretch, you can't just fall into your lower back and expect to come back in. You have to pull your chest through your arms. One more time, each side and feel your seat. Press the carriage away. All right, lower everything down. Let's look to the right for your double leg stretch. Layer your hands high up on your back and take them away, up on your back. Now in your rocking and then on the reformer and on your breaststroke, on the reformer, it's really easy to think about taking your chest back towards your feet.

Single Leg Kick

But for today, I would love your double leg kick to actually have the longest extension. You can just think so long. So when you press your hips down here, it's the same pressure you'd put on the long box for your breaststroke. And as you kick your heels to your seat, it's the same kick that you'd have for your breaststroke or the pool of the heels is your hamstring curls. Press your feet down and instead of just going back with the arms, lift them up, up, up, and then lower everything down again. Kick three times and then reach your palms of your hands to the ceiling and your feet towards the floor and your chest across the room. And then again, kick three times your hips. Have to press into your imaginary long box guys.

Double Leg Kick

But don't get to twerk in here. So you got to keep the hips down. One more time, kick and then press the feet down. Take the chest longer than back, and then lower everything down. And let's sit back. Child's pose. Okay, you're going to come up kneeling for your thigh stretch. So I can come towards the front of your mat on your thigh stretch. There's something really important. We tend to kind of like sit back, especially because we don't have the straps of your reformer, but you have your arms and they can reach into your back. So same idea. So I want you to start off by taking your heels together and then press your heels towards each other to move your hips over your knees.

Child's Pose

So instead of taking your lower back forward, I want you to actually move your thigh bones more forward than you think. Like you're going to fall and just feel how your hamstrings turn on. It's the same work you'd get if we were on the reformer with the straps. Now separate your feet so they're parallel. Take your arms up and then it's not just going down towards the floor.

Just like you don't go down towards your springs on the reformer. You lower your arms and you lean it back. You're getting long like you went your size, which would stretch your knees down into your imaginary shoulder blocks and then press yourself up and lift your arms up to connect to your back again, lower down, lean back. How long can you get by reaching down into your knees and then lift back up? Good. Do two more. And remember if you were on the reform, you'd have so much support from those heavy springs.

Thigh Stretch

So let your legs and your center be that support for you. One more time. Lean back. Yes. Yeah, and then lifted up. Good. Okay, so shoulder bridge. Why on your back, right. All right. Walk your feet.

This is why does your actual fist distance apart is, and then feel your feet here on the mat. Okay. And I want you to actually feel the inside and outside of your heels. You can even roll your feet around and I want you to feel the inside and outside of your toe box and like make sure that all four corners of your feet are touching the floor. And then as you roll your hips up to your shoulder bridge, lift up and hold here. And you have options. You can keep your arms long like chest expansion arms would be, or you can place your heels of your hands underneath your hips, right? So if you were coming out of high scissors, high bicycle, you'd have them there.

Shoulder Bridge

So hold here and reach your tail bone up and over your knee. So imagine you're just finishing your semi-circle on the reformer and how much you have to reach your head back in your upper body, back into the floor because you'd have the pressure of the shoulder blocks in the springs, in your semi-circle. And then just bring your right knee into your chest. Take it up to the sky, flex that foot, and then reach it across the room and open the front of the hip just like you would on your semi-circle. And then point, kick it back up three more times. Reach the leg across the room. What if you could actually touch the wall across your room and then point, lift it back up. When you finished your fourth one, Ben Journey.

Place the foot down plate. Take the other knee into your chest and again, reach it up. Find your imaginary semi-circle where you stretch the front of your hips and you work the hamstring of the leg that's you're standing on. So you allow your pelvis to be its own semi-circle and you get to really stretch across the room. Bring your other knee down, and then take your hands out of there under you and roll down. And imagine you just slid onto your carriage because there's that moment after semi-circle. We're like, yes, that's over. I know there is for me. Okay, so now let's actually, I'm a sit all the way up for your spine twist. Okay, so we're back to that stomach massage.

I told you I was going to make you love stomach sound like massage throughout this class. So flex your feet for me and then take your arms wide and pause for just a moment. Again, the more you reach your feet into this imaginary foot bar and find how those springs terrain your seat and your stomach to give you some lift, the easier this is. Now take your arms and imagine you just finished a rowing three and four and how much your back is connected to your arms. And then twist to the right to us a little bit more and a little bit more. And then come through center.

Spinal Twist

Double check that you're still connected to your back in your reformer and then cut and then twist to the other side. Hold the legs together. One, two, three. And so just like on the reformer, you don't get to lean forward or lean back. So twist again and make sure that your arms are reaching so evenly and your feet are reaching into your foot bar so evenly that you actually can keep your center your torso over your hips. Right. Let's do one more time. Each side. Yeah, press into anymore. Yup. Good. Lift your stomach off your legs. And when you're even, we're going to do our sidekick. So we're all gonna lay on our left side. Make sure you're at the back edge of your mat.

I'm kind of a [inaudible] person about that. It just makes it really easy to line yourself up and know that you're in the right alignment. Now your legs are forward. Okay, so here we go. Hands can be behind your head, like saw and Andrea or you can have a hand one hand in front of you. It's totally fine. Your bottom leg is all I care about today because your bottom leg is like star on the reformer. You have to make that bottom leg push the reformer in and out.

Forward and Back

So it has to press into this floor so that you are free to move this top leg. And all I want you to do is think about that bottom, like pressing into the carriage so your top leg can kick forward, forward and then back back two more times with this one. Forward, forward and back. Back. The more you stand on this bottom legs, the more you star. But it's becomes the most awesome thing you've ever done. So you might have to soften the bottom knee to do this. Now turn your leg out, top leg over the bottom, like up, down. Good point the leg foot, and then flex to lower. Two more point to kick up, flex to lower. But don't get so excited about the top leg. You're remember you're doing star, it's all about that bottom leg. Now take the leg back towards the back edge of your mat and that actually means like back, hold it. Find a swan in your chest. And then little circles here.

Lift and Lower

Five and then reverse them. [inaudible] how's that bottom leg? Are you still pushing that carriage out? And then big circles, three in each direction. Biggest like relative, right? It's what you think big is, but your bottom leg is still pushing the carriage out guys. It's reaching it out and reaching it in. And if it's not, these circles just kind of suck a little bit. So, and then when you're even, you're gonna Swivel over to the other side. Watch these amazing people go, whoo. All right, so make sure at the back edge of your mat, sometimes we think we are and we're not. And that your elbow is also at the back edge of your mat. Thank you.

Circles

Your legs are forward. So what did you learn about the first side? Right? If you learned anything is that your bottom leg can't be trusted. So here we go. Push your bottom leg into the mat and then kick forward to kicks and then back to kicks. [inaudible] as you kick forward, it's kind of easy to keep the torsos still. When the leg goes back we automatically want to lean forward. So you have to mitigate that, right? Think about pulling straps.

Forward and Back

Think about Swan. How much length can you give your upper chest and then top leg over the bottom like turn the leg out. Where's my star? Bottom leg ready. Kick the leg up. Up. Flex. Squeeze it down. How much length can you give me in your waist? Cause if you're doing star, you definitely can't sink in your waist, right? One more time. There you go. And then take the leg back.

Lift and Lower

Hold it back there. Make sure it's a level of your hips. Stand in your starr leg, and then circle with like five little circles. Okay. And then reverse them and they're small. The up in the back as what we're most concerned about. So you know, if it's just up and back, that's okay too. Now big circles. Set yourself up.

Circles

Press that bottom leg into this, the imaginary carriage. Really stand on that bottom leg and then you'll reverse after this one again, lengthen out the crown of your head, find a little more, reach into that bottom foot and then you made it. Okay? Sit facing the front of your mat for your, for your teaser, and then lay all the way back. So teaser on the mat to me is worse than tees on the reform, but for whatever reason people are super scared about it on the reformer. But I think the spring is really helpful. It literally helps you up. So just take a moment here. Imagine you've got handles in your hands.

All I want you to do is press your hands into those imaginary handles and float up into a teaser, your teaser, right and hold. Now I want you to lower your upper body against the weight of a spring. So that's actually harder than you think, which is like the Mat. It's harder than we think to roll up and roll back to more. Roll back, reach into your handles, roll up, roll back reach, and your those on hold.

Teaser 1

Now you have to think about how much your seat has to work to lower and lift your legs. So think about your elephant here guys. You gotta push into your shoulder blocks and you've got to pull the carriage close. One more push and then you're going to hold and everything's going to go down and you think it's over, but it's not. You're going to come right back up. Float and half hole that here. Pause, reach, and then lift your arms up and then lower everything down. Stretch across the room, lift it back up. Hold. All right, I'm only gonna make you do those two.

Teaser 2

So you're going to take your hands back cause you gotta do hip circles. So don't make me now. Okay. So here we go. You already got your stomach massage, reached back on. Ready? Circle the legs three times. But feel your arms reach into those shoulder blocks. How much?

Teaser 3

I know we don't rest on them, but we reach into them and you can use that idea to reach into the floor right now when your circles are even reach forward, like none of that happened. Find a teaser and then roll it all the way down. Whoo. Okay, so now let's flip onto your stomach's for swimming. Let's put your heads at the front of the Mat. Okay. So if you do breaststroke, there's this moment in time when your arms are straight out in front of you and connected to your springs. And it's the hardest thing in the world to get there. And then you're like, oh my God, I have to like finish this, right? So I want you to actually lengthen your head and chest up across the room.

Hip Circles

Don't worry about the legs right now. Lift your arms up and then imagine your hands actually are connected to handles, which are connected to a spring so your shoulders can't be in your ears because you're actually reaching your back forward. Hold that now. Stretch your legs across the room to lift them up. And then as you swim opposite arm and leg, your arms are reaching from your back forward, not from the tops of your shoulders forward. So it should feel really strong and connected to your center.

Swimming

Then hold everything still and just lower it all the way down. Good. You can take a child's pose. Yes. Okay, so this is a part of the mat where I'm like homestretch like every time I get I'm like, yes, we made it. So you made it to the leg pulse. Let's come on out into your plank. Okay. I want you to think about your long stretch for just a moment and how your hands would actually be pushing into a foot bar and how that allows you to connect your shoulders to your back.

Child's Pose

And then your feet are on your head rest and they're attached to two springs which pull your stomach up and into your center. That's the great thing about the lungs, which is really connects you strength wise from head to foot. Now lift your right leg up and as it pushes back, you're just going to think about running on the reformer lower one heel and then lift that heel. Press yourself forward, hold, switch other leg. We go back first and then you really reach over your foot bar. Lower it down two more times each side as you're switching your legs.

Leg Pull Front

If you were doing this on the reformer, you wouldn't want to like hop switch and you wouldn't want to drop. You want to be super connected to the equipment that you're touching and then when you're even there is a super fancy transition to this. You can also just flip over, but you take one hand to the other hand, you flip over and you find yourself into this reverse. Push up. Now just for a moment, lower your hips a little bit and then curl your tailbone towards your heels to lift your hips up. Now I do mine with my hips a little lower than most so that I'm not in some of the back of my knees and I can really stretch and I want you to find your reach into your imaginary shoulder blocks here. Kick your right leg up, and then switch. Kick your left leg up.

Leg Pull Back

The more you can stand into your reformer foot bar, the more you can press your hands into your shoulder blocks, the better this is going to be guys, when you're even, you're going to slide your right knee underneath you for your kneeling sidekicks face this way. Take your top hand to your head and then push your head into your hands like you would for shave, right so that you're super connected. Now just double check that your shoulder is over your wrist and it's not too far back and then at your top hip is over your top knee and that, guess what? The Star's back you guys hear it, is to lift your top leg up. You have to push your bottom leg into the mat more.

Lift and Lower

And then lower the top leg down. We're just going to go up and down. Nothing crazy, right? It's enough to think about how much you have to stand on this hip over this knee. Yeah, there you go. One more time. And then without thinking too much about it, keep everything connected. Flip up towards standing on both knees. And then let's go to the other side.

So double check that hip is over knee. It's really easy to stick your booty back and it's even easier to just like hang out on your shoulder. And then this bottom knee is pushing down and towards your hand, actually as you lift and lower the top leg. So all you have to think about today, if you want to think about lifting the leg higher, is standing in your star leg. More your standing leg more, and then come all the way up and okay, face your front of your mat for your boomerang.

So I love boomerang and we're gonna make boomerang super simple for you guys. There is not gonna be this stop and teaser and any of that. You're just going to actually think more like rowing on the mat. So take your hands by your, the front of your hips and let's just do a little magic teaser before we get going. So magic teaser is what my teacher was taught by Joe as his first teaser, which is just take your hands by your hips and then you bring your legs to you so you don't get to lean back. You have to go right.

Okay, now that's how your boomerang goes. The last thing we have to talk about is instead of stopping and buying a teaser and then circling the arms around, I want you to find your rowing and your chest expansion arms. So you're going to rock back and then just reach your arms back as you come forward and pull three times. Let's try that together. So magic teaser your legs, find your boomerang open-close and then as you round forward, just keep reaching your arms back, back, back. Beautiful hands down. And then let's go boomerang, and then find coordination.

Boomerang

Open-Close and then rock up and then find your rowing back, back, back. Good. Hands down. And then to go again, open, close, and then reach your arms back. Three, two, one last time, right. The open is something that actually matters and then the arms reached back. They're helping you control your descend and rest. Okay.

Hips towards your feet. Let's find your seal. We are almost there. Take your hands in, grabbed the bottoms of your feet and then press your knees into your arms. Okay, so you are going to think about coordination here. Coordination happens at the hips. It's not the feet, right? So open and close your thighs three times. Open, close like coordination and then rock back.

Seal

And you can open and close three times up there or once and then come back up. But I really want to see outer hips, inner thighs, outer hips, inner thighs and rock. One more time. Outer hips, inner thighs, and then come all the way up. Okay, crab before we go into Krebs, sit all the way up. Cross your ankles. So when you transitioned from shave to hug, most people just do this, but there's actually like some, there's like a method to the madness. You're going to do your crab here. So I just want you to like sit really tall, find your stomach and then just try to open your legs up and close. So push your knees apart and then pull your thighs towards each other.

Knees apart, pulling together. Good. Okay. Let's see if you can take that with you when you're upside down and rolling. So Andrea, scope back a little bit. You're going to round forward hips over your knees, head towards the floor, lift your stomach up, find your elephant and then rock back. Find your knees apart like your shave and hug and then come back forward. Yeah, and lifted all the way up.

Crab

And then use that stomach up like you would in your upstretched open, closed your legs and bring yourself forward. Let's do two more. Lift, lift, lift, and then rock back. Knees go wide, knees close. And then round forward. Last time, rock back, open the knees wide. Close the knees from your control and then roll it up. Whoo. Okay. Flip onto your stomach for you're rocking. So face towards the front of your mat.

And then before you get into it, reach your arms back, bend your knees, think about your hamstring curls. Think your hamstring curls are so hard and so awesome that your knees lift up and your feet pull toward your seat on their own. And then think about your double leg kick and lift your chest up. Reach back and grab both angles at the same time. Now if you are on a long box rocking, it would be scary, but we're on a mat so it's not so much. Now go ahead and lower everything down, but keep holding onto your ankles.

Rocking Prep

Pull your heels to your seats three times so you can find the connection of your arms to your back. And then press your feet to lift your chest forward and up. Hold and then come back down. And then like one more time, press your feet to your seat to connect to your back and then keep your arms connected to your back so that when you pull yourself into your own rocking shape, you're there. And then with your hamstring curls, you can think about rocking forward and back. So you use the legs to do this, not your head, and then hold and then lower everything down. Good. Okay. Control, balance. Flip onto your back and take your, let's put your heads in the back of your mat and then take your legs overhead, reach back and grab your right ankle. Good. So lift your left leg to the ceiling and pause.

Rocking

It's really easy to think that you're pulling your right leg to the floor. But what if your right leg was pulling across the room and then your left leg was actually reaching up to the ceiling and not across the room the other direction. So it's not a scissors, it's your tree. It's your single straight leg stretch, right? Hold here. Keep everything together as you switch your legs. And again, the leg you're holding on, you're actually going to pull back across the room and then other leg is going to the ceiling and then switch because one day you just roll this over and a somersault off a reformer, right? So we have to think about that and not just like hang onto our leg for dear life. And then switch one more time, switch and then bring both legs together and like, it's not a big deal. Both likes together.

Control Balance

You're gonna roll all the way up to standing. Good. Okay. Go to the back edge of your mat. Last thing. So heels together, toes apart, arms up, round forward over yourself without sticking your seat up behind your heel. So you lift your stomach up like it's elephant or it's up stretch. And then four counts. Walk out into your plank.

Push Up

We've been in our long stretch position before. You can just hold it or you can do one to three pushups here. Elbows back, squeeze the legs tight together. Stand on your equipment, your feet and your hands and hold. Let your head dive in. Find your up stretch, lift your stomach up. As you walk your hands back, you don't go side to side because you're going to keep lifting your stomach up. You're going to roll it all the way up. We're going to do it again. You get to roll down and you get a second chance at this whole idea of not swinging your hips side to side walk out in four counts. The more you lift your stomach up, the easier it is. One to three pushups.

Okay? All right. As your head goes in, roll your stomach up and then find your lift and your lower back to lift you up. Yes. Final one. Arms up round forward. Walk out with your ribs lifting fine.

Your long storage stand in your feet so it lifts your stomach so when your body goes through your arms, it's not like you're falling. You're actually lowering the body down to the floor in each push up, lift your hips up with your ribs, find your up, stretch all the way back towards your feet. Lift everything up and circle your arms around. You're done. I thank you for joining me. I really, really hope, I hope you found some new reformer feelings on your mat practice and then take it with you onto your next reformer class.

Comments

7 people like this.
Challenging class, probably not ideal for me because I don't have much experience on the reformer or other instruments and therefore it was a bit too much talking about these for me.
Katia Hi Katia, Thank you so much for taking my class! I'm glad it was still challenging for you. I can totally understand where you are coming from. For this class and my next Reformer class, I was hoping to connect exercises from other parts of Pilates to each other. However, my other mat classes (2830 & 3158)are just solely talking about the mat. xx~LL
2 people like this.
loved the flow! classic advanced Pilates, a real mat class even without taking about the reformer all the time....
with some changes i can use it to teach my classes. thanks!
2 people like this.
Lesley, I loved how you integrated the reformer work directly into the mat flow as they are both reinforcing the other! I like how different angles can be achieved by mixing up the mat work with different apparatus. Good job!
5 people like this.
It's amazing how just thinking about how your hands or feet are positioned on the reformer engages muscles you ordinarily don't think about when doing this same work on the mat. Thanks for a great class and a challenge to find new movement!
2 people like this.
Aahhh : the two way stretch....
Wow Lesley Logan I loved the class and your cueing was perfect! It is awesome when you actually imagine and "feel" the bar and the straps in your hands or feet how that makes you engage and connect your body in a totally different way! That is why the whole Method is as simple as that: a mind/body conection. It was really helpful! I am SO glad to see máster Saul Choza doing the class! He is extraordinary, same as you! Saludos desde Costa Rica!
1 person likes this.
Merav thank you so much!! I hope your classes love what you took from this. And, if you're up for it my new Reformer class takes the ideas of the mat through our Reformer exercises. xx~LL
1 person likes this.
Traci yay!! I am so happy you enjoyed it! And, I agree, it's so nice to think about the different angles and how they help us and challenge us! xx~LL
1 person likes this.
Kandie so true! I love just playing a little bit to find new ways of connecting! I am so happy you do too. Thank you for taking my class xx~LL
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