Class #388

Detailed and Profound Mat

65 min - Class
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Description

Pilates Anytime is pleased to introduce distinguished instructor Madeline Black to our members. Experience Madeline's expertise in guiding you deeper into the work in this Mat class. Begin by warming up your spine with a sequence similar to the Upstretch series on the Reformer (for a breakdown of these movements see class # 386). After the warm-up, follow along as Madeline offers you precise cues that are certain to have you experience your body and the exercises more profoundly. With the warm-up included, the class is 67 minutes long. Enjoy!
What You'll Need: Mat

About This Video

Mar 09, 2011
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So go ahead and take a moment and find a comfortable position for yourself. Alright. [inaudible] and don't have your legs too wide. You want them up against your rib cage, right? And a stack your hands for this first one and put your forehead on your hands. Okay. And then just relax for a moment so you feel the weight of your hips dropping down towards your heels. Good. Relax your shoulders.

Very good. All right, now relax your abdominals. No Co contraction. You get to let it all hang out right now. Okay. And now what I want you to do is breathe in slowly through your nose and feel how your abdominals kind of drop down towards the mat in between your legs, right? And this, do a few breaths like that. So you really let the abdominals react. Relax. Okay, now do that.

Co Contraction [inaudible] pelvic floor lift transfers to lift. And now breathe in through your nose. Slowly feel the ribs starting to press against your inner thighs, right? And exhale. You don't have to wait for me to cue you on the breath cause everyone's inhale and exhale. Length will be a little different. So just on your own time, feel that breath. I should see your ribs expanding. I should see. Or lumbar spine, the lower back lifting a little towards the ceiling. Not You doing it consciously, but the breath goes there.

Very nice and so nice way to open up the lower back if it's a little tight, especially first thing in the morning. Okay, so now on your inhale is come up to the quadro pad position and ready to start through the sequence. We'll start a little slow. All right, pushing your shins down. Take an inhale to start. Exhale, start to curl. Remember to press your shins into the mat. Draw the legs, Zim. Draw the arms. Good and inhaling. Move through the neutral. Keep moving though an exhale. The sternum comes forward. Take it easy at first. Sit bones reaching back. Inhale, push your shin. Start to curl. Just kind of moving through the spine.

Let your head hang good and through the neutral. Inhaling, just keep your breath moving. Exhale, feel the sternum. Reach, tailbone, reaching back and push your shins curling. Nice and easy. Push back a little bit through the arms, back. Good. And inhale, come through the neutral exhale. Go ahead and Tuck your toes under. Inhale. Exhale, curling back all the way back.

And I have to take a little breath in here. Take a breath in and on your exhale. Lift. Float the knees off and down. Try to keep the curl in the lower back. Exhale and lift. Head is hanging and down. Are you looking at your pubic bone and up? Keep going up to elephant.

That was three. Caroll, the sit bones down. So heel to sip on connection here. And then lift him up. Up, stretch, reach, and heels down. Down. Stretch, yes, and lift heels up. Good and elephant curl. Curl that heels down. Good. And lift up. It's the third one.

And now heels down in curl. Continue curling. Curlier tail back, kind of float the knees. Keep the abdominals working. And now down on two knees gently sliding forward onto your chest. Parallel legs. Neck is nice and long. Inhale, lengthen the legs out. Just hover off the floor, not too high and down. And now inhale, the body comes up. And let go.

Legs are weighted on the mat and down. Just the legs. Lift and down. Inhale coming up, then float and down. Good, and inhale and now and float the body up and then hands down. Keep coming up, lift all the way up and sitting back. Keep the arms extended and we're going to move through a little bit more.

Take a breath in and then exhale. Now inhale back to the cat and pushing the shins. Exhale, curl and inhale. Exhale, arching. Just keep your spine moving and exhale, curl. Lift the spine and through and stern and press those shins. Curl back and through fuller. Tuck your toes under and curling back. Exhale. Now take a little breath in. Exhale, lift and down. Exhale, lift and down. Exhale, lift into elephant and up. Stretch.

Lift the heels and curl and lift and curl. Heels go down. That's it. And lift and curl. Now continue curling curl. Get the trail to come down towards your heels and then place the knees gently down. Slide your body forward onto the mat. Inhale, float the legs and down. Inhale, lift the chest and let go. For a moment and down. Inhale, float the legs up pretty good and down.

Inhale, let go now and help the legs and down and inhale. That was a third one. Yes, and come all the way up and curl back. Take one breath here. Breathe in, reach your arms. Exhale. Use the inhale to come up. Inhale to come up a little bit faster. Now exhale, curl. Push those shins down. Inhale, just smaller and exhale, curl and inhale. Chest. Nice. Exhale, curl and move through the spine. Tuck your toes under and exhale, curl.

Take a breath in and use the exhale to lift. Good and lift. And third one. Lift down to elephant heels down. Sit bones down and up. Stretch, lift and XL and lift. Exhale, curl. Lift up.

Stretch last elephant into a check or habit. Just curl, rest the knee. Slide fullard onto your chest and inhale, float the legs and an inhale body and let go for a second and down. Inhale, lift the legs nice and long and down. Use your breath. Inhale the length of your breath and down.

One more time. Legs lift and down. Chest lift. Keep going. Up All the way up and sit back down. Yeah. All right. Inhale, come up to the quadro pad. Put your shins curl. I try to make the movement a little bit bigger.

I have a little more flow with it so you don't stop moving and keep the breath moving with your spine. Good and lift. Tuck your toes under. Exhale, curl and lift and down. Exhale, lift and down. Keep your head hanging. Lift and up to the elephant at reach the sit bones up and curl. Heal the sit bones down and lift and curl and lift. Go through the elephant down into the check rabbit.

Gently place your knees down. Slide forward. Inhale, legs and down and chest. Float and down. Good and legs and down. Lift the chest and down. Good and legs and down and left and continue through.

We got one more to go and reach back and inhale, coming up. Exhale, curl and lengthen. Exhale, arch and moving through. Good through the neutral and length and she have a little more arch through your upper back and curl and forward. Try to bring that sternum forward and not tucky till Zehnder in curl. Here we go. And lift, exhale and down. And exhale. Really pull those lower ribs up and up and into the elephant and obstruct and really curl from the sip boats and sit bones.

Reach up to the ceiling. Good and curl and reach up and curl. Keep the curl going through down to the Jack Rabbit and come down onto your stomach and float the legs. Inhale and down. Chest lift. You be let go. I'm down and legs and down and float down and legs and no hello and keep coming up and sit back and rest. Good. Come sit on the end of your mat.

A little warm. Yeah, that's a good way to kind of just get that blood flowing and the spine moving. Okay, so we're going to sit on the end of the Mat. I'm going to do a little progression lower and lower and lower and lower until we're lying down. All right, but think of your roll up or we're rolling down actually. So we're going to place the hands on the inside and I want you to feel your feet. So kind of spread the transverse arch, and that's where your toe balls right across here are. All right, the knuckles of your toes. So spread them out and have some weight on that big toe ball a little bit more than the little toe, but have contact with the little toe.

So we're really stretching, stretching, stretching out our feet. So in place the hands on the inside. Then what we're going to do is when you lift your pelvic floor here, you're going to press and resist. So there's a little bit of that Mut. So you're abducting, you're trying to push your legs apart, but you're not letting yourself do it. Yeah, that's the feeling more than just squeezing. It's a difference between just squeezing your legs and actually the idea of pushing. But don't let yourself pull your legs apart, right?

It's a different kind of activation. You feel that lift into the pelvic floor and that should create an elongation in your spine. Okay? And we're going to hold that as you exhale. We're going to curl back just a little ways. So sit bones are coming under, hips are going into little extension there. Okay. Now from here, not far, we're going to switch to the outside.

Try to push your knees in, but don't let that happen. Use The exhale. Curl your spine so you're really creating a bow and then sit up and inside. Go a little bit lower this time. Squeeze into here. Switch, push out, curl, and then sitting up and in press, curly, good out. Push and in. Just go a little lower each time. So eventually your arms are going to start to get straight and push out. Let me do two more and push.

So get it to where your arms get straight. Keep the curl, push out. Scoop. Feel the ribs curling. Yes, and down. Pressing in. Now here we're going to hold, so keep breathing. Now exhale, feel the ribs dropping back. Keep the activity in your legs. Contact with your feet, your feet into the mat.

Just keep breathing. Feel the kidneys relaxing back. Keep holding it. That's what Kathy grant called the green room is. Hey, the green room. If you don't know that is, I'll tell you later. It's hard to talk in this position. Good. Keep working it. Keep working the ribs. Okay. Exhaling. And then let go and start to roll all the way down. Very slowly.

Very nice and lie down. Great. All right, so what we're going to do is bring your legs up to a tabletop position and the hands are going to be up. And I'm going to take a breath in and we're gonna move into the a hundred position. All right, so inhale here. Exhale, and just reach the arms. Now this is where we're going to hold and what I'd like you to do was have your legs in parallel. And I'd like you to press the inner edges of your feet between your big toe and your ankle bones together. So feel the inner thighs again. Hmm. And reach the arms long. Good. And then bend the knees and come back down.

Take a breath in. Exhale. Squeeze your legs together. Now feel the whole position. Feel the top of your head. Feel your back nice and wide. Feel the legs very active and really work the abdominals through the pelvic floor. Good. And come down. All right, I'm going to do one more. Take a breath in. Exhale, curling up.

Good and [inaudible]. All right, let's just do the hundreds. Easy. Two, three, four, five and out through your mouth. Now Nos and that job. How about your jaw? Good Villa Diet for him. Expanding, but the body should be absolutely still except for the arms moving. Yes. Good. They want to do one more and exhale. Great. And bend the knees. Very nice. Okay. Bring your legs down and I'd like you to slide your left leg along the floor and we're going to extend the right leg up to the ceiling. Now again, I'd like the leg parallel. All right, so what I want you to do at first, let's take your hands at your hip joint here and pull that right hip down a little bit.

Cause most likely when the light came up that hip hiked a little bit. So check your pelvis first and see that you've got that right sip phone reaching that way so that it might mean your leg has to lower a little bit. Okay. We gonna do a little pendulum here. So I want you to go across your mid line, look at your toes should be parallel, right, and a little bit out to the side. It's almost like a little metronome, you know, tick, tick. So we're doing hip joint abduction and abduction pelvis, very stable. We're just moving in the hip joint.

Try to make a little even feel okay on the next one across the line we're going to do a little circle around, rotate the leg out and then find that pendulum again across and rotate around. Good and across. Rotate around just nice and easy. Keep your shoulders relaxed and around. One more. Inhale across, exhale and come up. Now we go out to the side, I have to the side and across.

Find that pendulum again across. You could let the leg turn out as it goes out to the side. Very nice. Nice anchored pelvis. Shoulderblades relaxed on the mat. One more time. Nice and easy and come up. Then bend the knee, place it down, bend the other knee, come up, slide the right leg down, lift that left leg up. Now check your pelvis again, is your lexid bone reaching away from you, right.

Pendulum across, and if you'd like, you could hold onto your hips just to see that they're not tipping with the leg movement. Good. And keep rotating. Little pendulum. A little metronome of the leg. Okay, one more time, and then we're going to go across the midline. Cross the midline, down and around. Open the leg out. Find the pendulum and down and around. Should be nice and easy and come up. Find the pendulums. Do One more circle. Wonderful. Let's go out to the side and out and across. Out and across.

Out and across, and we got one more out and across and bring the leg up and the knee. I'm down, up in the right knee, up to the left. Okay. We're going to go into single leg, single single leg stretch. Okay. But I'd like you to do is to, we're going to come up with the right knee and we're going to slide the left leg down. Now again, check your right sip on and make sure that it's reaching away from you. And we're going to take a breath in and we're going to exhale and we're going to curl up and just hold the leg. Okay, now keep the leg down on the mat to begin with. Now make sure that your inner hands on the inside of that knee and the outer hand is reaching towards the ankle. Yeah, and what I want you to do is the hip.

Again, do not pull your knees so far in that your pelvis starts to hike the hip. I don't know of very many people who can actually get their chest, their thigh close to the chest without hiking in the hip. So be very careful and we really want your lumbar spine to be a nice possession and here. So now take an inhale and as you exhale, just float your left leg up. Now reach out through the leg. Feel your whole body. Your spine should feel like a nice, large c shape with a tail anchor. The leg is reaching long.

The top of the head is reaching up and take a breath in and out. So good. And then let's switch legs. Hold the position. All right, take a breath. Feel that alignment. Well, the position, we're going to do a continuous changing, but this is going to be where you're going to go in and out of the nodes in, in, out, out, ready. And two more. Bring both legs in and lower your head down. Excellent. Now I'd like you to glue the inner part of your foot again from the big toe to the ankle bone together as if you have velcro on your feet and they're sticking together. Hold your shins comfortably. Have the act. Now here's activity.

You're pressing against the big toe edge of your whole foot. And at the same time you're pushing out. So bring your hands here for a moment. Press your feet together. You feel what that does to the inner leg? Look in her leg here. Little like hamstring ish at doctor and now push out and you should feel your abductors working.

I want you to keep that activity in your legs and we're going to inhale here. You're going to exhale and stretch your legs out and hold mid thigh for me right here. Squeeze your legs together from the feet and where your hands are. Exhale, push in. Squeeze your legs. Good in the bend. Come down, knees are a little bit open. Press your feet.

Hips are active. Exhale, hold the outside of your thighs. Elbows are relaxed and now squeeze. Should feel yourself get up a little higher. Yeah, push. Good. And come down and use the breath. One more time. Exhale. Now use your feet. Use your arms. You should feel your body come up a little bit and that knife feels good, doesn't it? And then come back. Let's do it one more time.

Inhale and exhale and squeeze. Oh, it feels good. And come back down. Now we're going to curl up into the traditional, uh, double leg stretch. Okay, so inhale. Exhale. Just curl up now, but still squeeze your feet. Can you lift the little toe side of your feet up? Right? So your feet are like flat, but press your thighs out. Hmm. Good. And Curl your body up. Take an inhale here. Now you're still going to squeeze your legs together. Squeeze in, circle your arms around. Feel your feet, little toe side lifted. Inhale. Exhale, good little toe side lifted. Squeeze your feet. Curl again in.

Let me do one more and very nice and Laurier. Head down. Everybody doing okay? All right, let's bring the legs up again. Do the straight leg, single straight leg. All right, so we're going to curl up and I want you to just do a small v to begin with and just hold comfortably on your cath or shin leg is parallel. Okay, Anchor your tail down now cause it's very common to want to pull your tailbone up when you're pulling your leg, but really anchor down and then pull yourself up a little bit more in the body. Okay, now reach the scissor leg down.

Really extend out and work that parallel position so you feel the inner thigh here working. All right. And a little exhale here. A little pulse. Great switch. Go ahead. Do you want it slow, easy. Feel both legs. Really long gating. Feel the top of your head going up towards the cla.

Perfect. Okay. Little quicker now. Great. Nice and easy. Still have the breath even though you're going fast. Perfect. All right, great. One more. Beautiful. Okay. And rest. So it's a very different training effect to do with slow and sustain versus quick. Yeah. Okay. That was our little rest period there. Okay, so legs up straight again, hands behind the head.

And we're just going to lift up. Now what I'd like you to do with your elbows is kind of scooped them up as if the tip of your elbows reaching up towards the ceiling. So your back, your shoulder blades are very wide, right, and supporting your head. But reach be, I should see a nice opening through your armpit and that helps you pull those ribs down more. The more you reach your elbows up, this can. Yes. Very nice. So keep that activity in your arms. Flex your feet and just lower a little bit as you exhale and then point the feet and come up. Keeping the back in contact with the mat.

So everyone's, um, how far they'll go down will be different depending on your spine. So be mindful to your spine, keep it anchored, keep reaching through your elbows. It's a very small movement. Keep those inner thighs working. One more excellent. And bend the knees and come down. Okay. All right. All right. Lights up. All right, we're gonna do a little double pendulum here like we did with this single leg, right? So again, keep your pelvis stable. I want your feet to go to the side. You'd go to left center.

And notice how when you do that row to the right and to the left, your pelvis is stable. One leg will slide your foot to slide down. One leg is shorter. Can you see that? So slide that inner edge of your tail between the big toe and the ankle a little bit. What we're doing here is moving in the hip joint, keeping the pelvis stable, and you feel that in the hip. This is really hip joint movement, keeping the back nice and stable. And you might notice that you can go further on one side than you can with the other. Okay, now come back to center.

Now we're not going to allow keep the legs up. We're not gonna allow the fee to change their length. So I want you to do a little more, it's like a corkscrew. So you're going to turn side, not very big just to the hip circle around. Keep your legs the same length now and around.

So just rolling along the pelvis, you're keeping your rib anchor into the mat. It's not a very large movement. You're controlling it with the obliques here. Very nice. So we're not over torquing the back, but we're working that oblique system in the front of the body. Very nice. One more time. Excellent. All right. And now you can bend your knees and place your feet down.

Okay, we have one more to do here and then we're going to do is the criss cross. So I'd like you to place your hands behind your head and we'll get to do the same kind of reaching of the elbows that we did before. So bring your head up and curl. Bring your right knee up to your chest and now stretch out like we did in single leg stretch. But I'd like you to do is just rotate to the right what I want you to keep your spine in the center so your nose should just pass the knee.

It's a little bit different shape and feel that position. So your sternum is turning towards that knee and just hold it for a moment. Reach the arms buried. How about your leg? How about the top of your head? It's not, not easy to hold. Alright, and switch. Turn. Feel the pelvis square that sit bones reaching.

The sternum is turning towards your knee. Your eyes should just be looking just past your knee, not out to the side. So I'm really want to get that flection. All right, ready? Here we go. I want to do the nose breathing in, in and out. Easy. N O and it's a rotation not side bending. You guys, some of you are side bending. Go ahead. One more and rest.

Okay. Place your feet down. All right. So that was a lot of flection, a lot of engagement in the uh, trunk in the front. So I want to reset our back extensors a little bit. So let's just do an easy little articulating bridge. So we're just gonna curl the pelvis and just come up onto your feet. Stay on your shoulder blades. So don't go too high on this one, right?

Reach your knees over your toes. Do you really standing on your feet and then roll through your spine, coming back down. So we're just gonna do this a couple of times after doing all that flection. It's kind of Nice though, kind of turn on our back muscles a little bit before we do the next sequence. And then coming down and again, curling and reaching up. Reach those knees, release, stretch.

Stay on the shoulder blades and roll it down. Okay. And the next one, we're gonna stay up. And this is optional. You can either repeat, what we just did or I want you to do is stay firm in this position. Stand firmly on the left leg. Let's spin the right knee, extend the foot up, reach your heel to the ceiling. Now pull your foot as if someone's taking your foot in there, pulling it towards the ceiling. Reach up good. And bend the knee and come back down. Stay in the bridge position. Check your pelvis to make sure it's still up. Then the left knee, somebody who's got your foot in there, pulling it towards the ceiling up and then band.

Come back down. We'll do one more each side. Check your pelvis, make sure it's level still. Then we've got a rope on your foot and they're pulling it up towards the ceiling and then down. And one more. I'm impressed with the leg. Good down. And then roll it down. Very nice. Okay, now we're going to roll onto our side. Alright, so you can just support your head with your arm here.

I'm going to bend the knees. And what I like is that the knees are about 50 degrees. Like this is 90 yeah. So maybe 50 I'd like your heels in line with your tailbone. Yeah. So the feet will be a little bit back and the knees aren't too bad.

Just comfortably back. So heel, if I drew a line, the feet would be against the wall and your butt would be against the wall. Yeah. So the shins are not forward. Is that clear? So your back like that and about 50 degrees here. I do want your neck down. All right, so we're not side bending into the net to support your head here and place your hand onto your ribs right here. Okay. So push your ribs down into the mat. Push and squish your hand here. Okay, now relax. Take your hand here. Okay.

And lift your rib up into your hand. You feel when you do that, how it lengthens the waist on this side. Yes. So I, you need to try to keep this like here across the top. So there will be a little space in your ribs here. If you can maintain, that means you're holding on to your core to maintain that red position. Okay? And you can have your hand here to balance. What we're going to do is squeeze again that big toe to ankle position.

So your feet are squeezing, keep the heels squeezing and just lifted the open a little bit. I want the hip to stay in this alignment here so it doesn't rock back right and back down and squeeze your feet and lift. Yeah, the big toe actually stays connected. So two big toes are squeezing together as you lift. Yeah, I'm back down to the feet. Don't separate. Good. And down. [inaudible] this is work in deep rotators of the hip and your abductors. Yeah, we call this the clam, so I'm sure you all are familiar with here. Okay.

We do about 10 let's pick up the tempo a little bit. Up and squeeze and down. Remember to keep the feet active. Up and down. Good. Lift down, lift. Keeping that rib down. Couple more left down left. I'm going to lift again left of this time.

You're going to turn your knee down towards the other knee. That's internal rotation and then turn it out and bring your toes together this way. See, I'm pointing on my foot, toe to toe, knee to knee, toe to toe, knee to knee, toe to tell. So we're doing the internal rotation and the external rotation and again, keeping the stability of that Rep. Very nice. You the knee, toe to toe, rotating. So that tried to get that foot to go up towards the ceiling. Rotate it.

Excellent. One more time. Great. Okay, now we're going to slide the legs out. All right. And it could be slightly in front of you. All right. And now what I'd like you to do is see if you can do a little Charlie Chaplin or a Ballerina and first position, but put the ball of your foot of the underneath leg on the mat. The ball of your foot of the underneath leg is on the mat. So it's like you're standing up on it. Yeah, here. Very good.

And we're going to point the top foot. Now again, tried to keep the lift here of the ribs. All right, so we're going to swing with the leg in the turnout position, so we're going to swing forward with the heel coming forward and then we're going to swing it back. Turn out now stay here for a second. Try to keep the weight on that big toe under here. That's not easy. Yes, and reach your leg. Good. Keeping the hips stack so it's not going to be very far behind you. Forward and back and forward and back.

Reach behind you. Forward. When you reach behind you, you should feel the glutes working. Yes, and forward and back. Very nice. Keep the standing heel forward. Yes. Good. Very nice. Okay. Now back. No, from the back. Bring your leg over. Your standing foot lifted a tiny bit higher. You have to really reach out of that leg now underneath leg point and lifted up to the bottom line.

Up and up and up and up and up and up. Good. Up. Up, up, up. Two more. Up, up in rest. Very nice. And bend the knees. Great. Let's do the other side. So nice little hip strengthening. Okay. So lying on your side about 50 degrees, feet in line with your tailbone rib lifted. Then if you don't know where, just push up here and support your head, you can hold your hip or balance here. Ready, squeezing the feet together.

[inaudible] lift and yeah, Lyft really makes sure that the pelvic bone on the top is staying staffed within want underneath. Yes, go ahead. So for some people it's not a very large movement, like your clam doesn't open very much and that just means you don't have um, you know, very open hips in that direction. What point of this is to feel the deep rotators working around the hip? Very nice. I like to do anywhere from 10 to 15 of these.

Yeah, good. Do a couple more. Okay. I'm going to stay open on the next one and then I'm going to go in. Right. Turn in, toe to toe, knee to knee, toe to toe. So really isolating the Femur, rotating in the socket and the more you can get that foot to go up towards the ceiling, the more internal rotation you're going to get. And work on. Yes. Turning in is just as important as turning out.

Yeah. Good. Any couple more. Nice. Okay. Stay turned out. Let's stretch the legs out. If it can be a little bit in front of you for balance, turn the legs out. Try to be on the big toe.

I kind of think it really reaching through that heel point, the top foot. Keep the turnout now and go forward and back. If you hold on a little bit, it's easier to keep the pelvis really stable. Right? So that we really isolate the hip extension.

This is called flection and extension and when you swing that leg back, it should be coming from the glutes in the back. They're pulling your leg behind you, but you have to have a stable pelvis to really get that action in the hip. Very nice. I'm going to do one more. Okay, and back and now bring it over. Lifted a little bit, point the underneath leg and we're going to go up, up, up. Try to hit that like you might notice it's a little harder on one side than the other. We all have one more, a dominant ad doctor, then the other, keep it like real straight up, up, up, up, up, up, up a couple more and rest. Very nice. Okay. We're gonna roll onto our stomach. Okay. So I'm going to show you a little bit of a sequence.

So this is one of my little signature pieces you might've seen in Poli Style magazine is called Tom Swan. Okay? So it has a little bit of coordination that you have to have, but it is quite simple. So we're going to start, I'll face you first. So your hand is on your cheekbone, the back of your hand like this. Okay. You can watch for a second. The other arm is by your side. And what we're gonna do is I'm gonna extend the body out and we're going to float up opposite leg.

So my right leg is lifting and I'm looking at my left elbow and I'm going to turn as if I'm trying to look at my back foot. So the rotation is happening in the ribs. So you know, we work oh bleaks in the front doing crisscross. Now we're working the crisscross in the back. Okay, so you come up, lift the leg, and you rotate back. That's the first part. Then we go into like a one-arm swimming. This is a transition. Okay. And then you're going to lift both legs.

Circle your arms out to a t like this. Go back to one arm swimming, but on the other side. So opposite leg. Hmm. And then I turned my head and look at that. I'm on the other side. And then you come down. So it comes up and here's the twist. You try to look back, but then we're going to look at the floor. One arm swimming, both legs, lift arms to a t.

Now you have to remember is that the same arm is moving overhead as the leg going down. You see what I mean? This light goes down as this one goes overhead. It's the easier way to remember. And then you turn and come down. Okay, let's see. So what's all so I can say left and right. So let's all, um hmm. I was facing other way. Face was due left. So you'd be facing me right now. Your left arm, is that not your left arm? You'll be looking at me, but I'm not that dyslexic. Okay. I know you guys. Yeah, you guys were actually looking at the other way, right?

I think it'd be easier cause if I say left and right, then you'll understand. So we're all lying with our right cheekbone on the back of our left hand. Yes. Right. And we're looking at our left elbow and the right arm is by our side on the floor on the mat. Good. All right, we're going to end hell. Inhale, lift the right leg torso. Your hand comes with your body and you look back at your right leg if you can right now. Look at the floor. Extend your left arm overhead.

We're doing one arm swimming here. Now lift both legs coming to a t. Now the right arm goes overhead as your right leg goes down. And then you bend your right elbow. I'm look at your right elbow. Look at it, look at your right elbow and then lower down. Well look ups, you're lifting, twisting, looking back at your left leg. Bring your right arm over head. Look at the floor when I'm swimming.

Go round to the tee. Sorry. Right and now your left arm goes overhead. As your left leg goes down, then bend your left elbow. Look at it. Stay up. And don't worry. You get to try it again. And lifting up. Good extend. Look at the floor to your left.

Arms overhead. Your right leg is up. Now both legs come up into a nice t right arm overhead is the right leg goes down. And then bend your right elbow. Look at your elbow and lower down and lift up. Try to look back towards your left leg. Right arm. Look at the floor when I'm swimming. Come around to a tee with both legs. Left arm overhead is a left leg, goes down. Good Bend, look and come down to one more. I'd like to see.

I like to watch you and come up. Good. And one arm swimming. You look at the floor. Great. Both legs lift come out to a tee. Good. Now you're bending, your right arm is coming overhead and the right leg is going down and then you're bending the right elbow. Beautiful and down. One more. And lift up. Look at that right elbow. Try to look back at your left foot. Excellent and right, I'm over here. Look at the floor.

Arms circle around to a tee. Both legs are up, left arm overhead, left leg down. Nice. Bend the left elbow. Look at you. He got it. And lower down. Nice. Okay, now stay there and we're gonna reach the arms overhead. Nice and long. Smacks a little short for me, but okay, so reach arms out. Now we're going to do kind of a swimming in a different way though. All right? So what we're gonna do is you're going to look up with your eyes, lift your right arm and your left leg right now at the same time.

Can you push your left hand down firmly into the Mat, end your right leg firmly into the mat. What happens when you do that? You do up, push down to go up. Nice. And then lower down. Let's do the other side. So as you're lifting the left arm and the right leg, your eyes have come up. You're pushing firmly down on the right and the left, and it helps you come up with your chest forward nice and down. Remember in the cat, let's do the other side. We were pulling our sternum forward, so the hand that's pushing down on the mat, pull yourself forward. Pull, pull.

So you can lift your chest more youthful and down. And again, lengthen. Pull yourself forward with your arm. Bring that sternum up more. Nice and down. We'll do one more each side and pull in. Lengthen breathing in. Come up higher. And now one more. Pull and lengthen. Lift and down. Very nice.

Now Bend your elbows and cross your fingers here. Okay, I'm gonna move forward to him on the Mat. Okay, so in this position, I'd like you to spin your legs in a little bit, but the heels straight up to the ceiling. All right, so they're not out to the side. Your heels. Yeah, and they're not into the middle. They're straight up to the ceiling. Okay. Now with your arms. I want you to press your forearms firmly into the mat. All right? And I want you to take a breath in and pull yourself. Pull your arms, your elbows in towards yourself and length and pull yourself wiggle a little bit. Can you lengthen between your ribs in the hips? Can you feel that opening there? Very nice. Okay, so we're going to bend the right knee.

Point your foot point and hold it for a second. Now be sure that your knee is facing straight and your heel is not turned out the lower leg. Who tried to spin that heel in? Good. Now here, take an inhale. Lift yourself up more. Lift your torso, bend your knee, lift. Ah, that's what I want you to try and be in that position. Hmm? Extended leg. Don't let go. Great. Try the other way, then the knee. Hold it for a moment. Hmm? Feel the inner thighs. Yes, yes. Now lift your body up more. Inhale, lift, hold that good and keep that lift as you lower. Okay, here we go.

Point in flex point. Flex. Now lift. Inhale, lift and pulling. This is exhale. Good. Now inhale, lift, pull, exhale and lift. That neck is nice and free and lift. Nice. And and see when you do that, it really activates the hamstrings and gluteals can feel that have bad good ad lift. One more age and lift. Last one and lift. Okay. Why down you're gonna turn your head. Um, I'm looking left. Everybody look left. Bring your arms behind your back.

I'd like you to hold these two fingers. Just the first and second finger like this. Okay. And put it in the lower back and let your elbows drop to the floor. Good legs are parallel. Heals are still towards the ceiling. Very nice. Alright, going to bend the knees, right? Bend the knees. Two, two kicks.

Now I want you to lengthen long. Look at the floor. This is the double leg kick. Now stay here for a moment. What are your legs doing? Are they spinning in? Are Your heels up to the ceiling? Now pull your arms back more. Move your sternum away. Forward as much as you can. Neck is free. Inhale, come up higher and then exhale, turn the other side. Then your knees. Well, it's a good folder here, Huh?

This is the slow version. Now look at the floor. Lengthen all your fingers. Now inhale and lift more. Use the breath and exhale. Very good. Slowly again, kick, kick and lengthen. Look at the floor. Nice. Long. Now inhale, float up and exhale, lengthen. Look at the floor. Inhale. Excellent. And exhale and rest. Okay. Push yourself back.

But don't go into flection yet. So just push back. We're going to come back to the quadriped position. Okay, I don't want you to flex yet. We just really worked the extensors. All right, so just stabilize in this nice flat back position and hold that stability. And I'd like for you to reach your right arm forward and the left leg behind you, but keep it on the mat. Now check your shoulders and pelvis stabilize here. So now we are recruiting the oblique blind in the front of the body here.

So engage your abdominals. We're trying to try to contract them here to release our back. All right, so then slowly reach out. Not too high, but balance. Good. And then come down then and feel your quadriped position before you change. Check your rib cage and your neck. All right, here we go. Just keep it low.

First hand to the floor, foot to the floor. Feel your abdominals. Feel that oblique line in the front and then lift, not too high. It's about getting your stabilizers in the front of your body. Working in balance with the back. Yes, and then down and come in. We're gonna do it one more time. Each side and find the position low. Engage. Check your ribs, lift up, hold it in. Lower and down.

We'll do one more out and lift. Hold the position and lower and down. Now stay here and you can take your right hand with the palm up. Good. And keep your left arm straight. And I just want you to slide it through a little bit.

Keep your pelvis level and twist your thoracic spine to look over your left shoulder. It's a small little movement. Good. And turn your head. Go ahead and then come back and other side. Keep the arms straight. The one that you're standing on here and it's just in the upper back. Yes. Nice. Long neck. Just turn and you can reach to get that twist in the thoracic and come back one more each side. So we're in a neutral spine, really trying to be to check your ribs, lengthen and come back and last one breach and come back. All right, now what I'd like you to do is um, we'll get to sit down with the legs straight and I don't want to do too much flection yet cause we're going to do a little bridge series.

So try to keep your back long. All right, so legs are straight. You do a little spine twist, just the twist. So legs, let's flex the feet. Okay, so you're reaching through, see if you can find the little toe side of your foot pulling up when you flex your feet. Okay, so they're very flat here. Okay, spine, he long gated. So lift through the pelvic floor. Inhale, exhale. And just turn going to stay here for a moment. Do an inhalation and grow your spine long and exhale and come back to center. And inhale, twist and stay here. As you exhale, feel the position back as wide. Now inhale, elongate the spine and go a little further. No. So you can reach the arm in front of you. Forward helps and come back. Yes.

Again, lift, exhale, and turn to the arm that's in front. It's my right arm. I'm going to be with your left arm, but reach it forward. Reach forward in turn. Inhale, turn a little more. Reach that right arm or left arm forward. Good. And come back. So I feel good in the upper back. Yeah, and lift and turn. Okay.

Reach that front arm. Reach it forward as you inhale and turn a little more good and exhale. All right, so bend the knees here. We're gonna work our way back to the mat. I want you to hold the back of your leg for a moment. So you're sitting upright. Hold the back of your leg and you're going to do a little pelvic curl just a little bit to release the back and you're going to pull, let the leg come with you. Just curl. Almost like your forehead is coming towards your knee. Let your kidneys just kinda dropped back and then put the leg down and nice. I'm gonna do one more each side. It's just a nice release.

But keep the lift of your spine. Yeah, you're not collapsing down, but you're lifting good and come down. Alright, so a little bridge series. So come lie on your back. Okay. So what we're gonna do here, I have to take this out. Alright, so we're going to come up into the same bridge as we did before, except for meaning in the position of feeling your knees over your feet. But this time I want you to put your hands on the front of your hip bones. They're actually called the Asi. Yes. For those who know that, or it's just the top of the bony part right here. So put your fingertips there and feel your feet. So you spread those better.

Tarsals feel your heels. And what I want to do when you come up is push from these bones first. So it's not a curly bridge, but you're going to push your pelvis up from these bones here just to your shoulders. Okay? So press up and now reach your knees over your toes. So you're gonna pull that way. You're going to feel your hamstrings, right? Push your hip bones up more.

Now you're going to bring your knees towards your head. Move your knees this way and lift those hip bones even more. You feel like opening up and feel glutes a little more here. Now reach your knees back over your toes. Do you feel that little shift? Yeah. And then sit down.

It's a really good way to kind of length and even through the Fascia of your torso, through the hips, which will help with our bridging. So let's do that again. Hands on the hip bones, right? And press into your feet. And now lift from here. Push those bones into your fingertips. Push up, reach your knees over the toes. Now push this hip bones up higher and move your knees towards your shoulders. Feel to work in your legs. Yes, and go forward.

Back over your toes. Feel that length. And then sit your tail down. Let's do that two more times. Pushing the hip bones up, reaching your knees over your toes. Press those hipbones higher as you shift your weight onto your shoulders, length in the knees, over the toes. Nice and long. And sit the tail down. Do it one more time and we're going to hold the position. All right, so over the knees, press the hip bones up first.

Move the hips higher. Shift to your shoulders. Okay, now you're gonna stay there. Let's bring our arms down. [inaudible] so you can choose to just hold this position or I'd like to do as a little leg gesture here so you can stay firm on the left leg. Bend your right knee, extend the leg up again, reach to the ceiling, but this time lengthen and bend the knee and come down. Reestablish a pelvis. If you lost a little height, then the knees up, knee and flex and reach. Kind of like a cat pawing at you and lift the hips up again.

If you lost some height two more times, up and reach pelvis, lift. Relax the neck up and reach pell. This up. One more set up and reach pelvis up en up. Reach. Nice Elvis up and hold the position and just lower down.

Very nice. Okay, I'm going to roll onto our sides now. Okay. Actually there was one more stretch I want to do. Sorry, come back down before we come up. It's another little met. Nice release for the hip. So we're gonna take the right leg, cross it over your left leg. Okay, now check your pelvis again and make sure it hadn't gotten side bent there. Okay? And what I want you to do is pull with the right leg, you're gonna roll onto the inside of your left foot. So pull, push the weight of this leg, pulling the knees to the right. Okay, but don't go too far. Your hip could come up, but keep the ribs reaching towards the Mat.

Now what I want you to do, so I'm on the ball of the foot of the left foot. You guys on that? Yeah. Now squeeze your legs together. Really squeeze as hard as you can. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. You should feel your hip muscles engaging. Okay. And then relax that. Relax your sparkle a little further. It's tiny, tiny movements.

Squeeze against squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. Both like pressing hold and release and go a little. Did you feel it released that time? The second time? It's usually, yeah. One more time. Squeeze. So if we developed any tightness in the hip on the outer hip, this is how we can get rid of that tightness and then relax and it should feel really good. Now just really like butter melting. Yes. Okay. Now use your core.

Draw yourself back to the mat. Great. And let's do the other side. So the left leg crosses over the right, you're gonna turn your knees to the laughing Kebab onto the right big toe and only go as far keeping your ribs down. It's not a big twist. All right, now squeeze your legs together really actively, as hard as you can. Squeeze, squeeze. Did. You should feel your hip joint contracting and then relax. Let the muscles relax and then put a little weight a little further. Not too much, and squeeze. Rarely be active. Make sure I sometimes tap my hips just to make sure they're working. Yeah.

Sometimes they need a little help. Wake out. Okay. And then relax. Oh, and that should feel really good right there. That's second one. Little bit further. One last time. Squeeze. Squeeze. Contract. Hard, hard contract and relax. Great.

Now use your obliques to come back to center and bring your legs back down and just check out your sacred for a second in your back. How's it feel? Yeah, I should feel really good. All right, so let's turn onto your side now. Yeah, I almost missed that one. That would have been bummer. It's such a nice one. Okay, so we're going to do spine stretch and saw. All right, we're almost done you guys. Okay. So this is how I'd like you to do the spine stretch. Uh, I'd like to have your hands on your thighs with your feet flex cause I want to go for a nice curb. Nice open, like a big capital c curve. So we're gonna start to curl back. Slide your hands along an agist slide along.

Feel like your fevers are like pulling out in that direction as your back is curling back in that direction. Okay. So take a breath in. As you exhale, pull, pull your legs, slide, pull back, and now reach your arms over your toes. But contrast it with an opening of the back through here. And look right at the floor. Lengthen and reach. And then stack yourself back up. Inhale. And now exhale, pull your legs, reach your legs. That way reach your back behind you and length and really trying to open up the spine.

And then roll it back up. I'm gonna do one more. Inhale. We're getting ready to do some rolling you guys. So get that spine ready, right. Exhale and reach. Nice and coming back up. Bring the arms right on up. And let's do the twist for the saw.

And now right side of your back is reaching behind you on the diagonal as your right arm is reaching past that left toe. So reach. So we're stretching the right hip to the shoulder, right. And then unroll, come back to center. Turn that palm over, push back to get the rotation. And now left side of the back is going behind you as you reach that left arm forward. Lengthening. Good and roll it back. Now when you come out of it, I want you to think about the back arm. So let's curl the back, reach past the toes, really to stretch and open the back. Now with your back hand, can you pull it like someone's pulling you up, pull back, use the backhand to come out and see how that rolls you up.

So emphasize that when you come out of it and right hand behind you and curl and reach past you good. And reach that back hand behind you. Nice and come center. Okay. Then the knees who come to the end of your mat. All right. I want you to hold the back of your thighs and we're just gonna do a little rolling, right? And keep your legs relax. Try not to lift them up. Okay? Cause I want it all in your spine. All right? So Eve gentry did sniff, blow, sniff, blow. All right, so you sniff before you roll. You're blowing while you're rolling.

And when you're upside down, you're sniff again and you blow again. We'll come back up, right? So as Eve gentry breathing. All right, ready? So sniff. Blow. Wow. Sniff flow. Sniff flow. Yeah.

Perfect. Okay. Sniff. Hello. Sniff. Hello. Very nice. Couple more. Very dry. It's one more in stayed there. Good. Can you stay down? Good and stretch your legs long. Make sure you have room on your mat.

Arms by your side. Alright, here's an option. You can bend your knees if you'd like and extend the legs up or if you're feeling really good, just exhale and lift your leg straight up. It's up to you all we're gonna do roll over. So take a breath in here. Exhale, curl onto your shoulders. Open the legs, flex your feet and slowly roll down through your spine.

Make sure your neck is relaxed, your shoulders have wide, and you could do a little circle called to come around. And again, think of it as a massage for your spine. Controlling the descend slowly requires that you recruit the abdominals in a sequential form. So don't use gravity. Resist the gravity. Relax the spine. Great. Enrolling down. We'll do one more and I'd like you to stay over to the rollover right now.

See if you can balance here. It should be on the shoulder blades. Be active in your legs. Circle your arms around overhead. It's a little bit of a controlled balance here. Yes, flex your right foot. Lower the foot down. Your foot can be on the floor. Point the left leg. Now you could stay here. Just stretch through your heel.

So very good. Stretch for the back of the leg. Or you can add lifting the other leg up, keeping the curl, reach up good. And then lower the leg. Switch sides. Flex the foot, reach to the heel back and lift the leg up without losing the stretch of the foot on the floor. Good and down. Let's do it one more time. Flex. Really stand on that foot. Reach up. Good and down. Last time. Flex through the foot.

Reach up. Nice down point both feet. Float your arms off and roll down nice and easy. Feel every vertebrae. Open them up, control it. Nice and relaxed. Ah, it feels good.

And then the knees again. Great. Just feel your back for a second into the mat. Should be nice and released into the mat. Very good. So we're gonna roll on our side. Sit Up. Okay. Now we're going to sit this way. All right.

Okay, so just grab here. We're almost done. That's one of my favorites. I can't skip this one. So you're going to reach up and I want you to reach towards the ceiling so you can pull with this leg a little bit and reach up to open up this side here, right? And then let's go over in a little bit of a side stretch. Good. And then come down. I'm going to reach up just straight up this time. Up to the ceiling. Good ad reach. Well, really open up the ribs on the side. Come up and reach up.

We'll do one more and reach or you stay here for a second. Here's the transition. You can watch me, but you stay in the stretch. Okay. You're going to come out. You want to stay there? Watch. Okay, we're going to come down in a pivot around to the other side. Okay, go lean. Very dainty around. There you go. Nice arm gesture. Okay, so hold your Shin.

Lift up and sure. Oh, did we deserve that or what? And that lengthened up. If you even look up, feels good to stretch that open. Okay. Ad Reach. Yeah. Right. It's really, pull yourself over. Okay, good. And reach now, just turn around this way and we won't get too fancy. Okay.

Reach arms forward again and then a roll down. Okay. And I'd like you to just take your feet wide on your mat. Let your knees fall into the midline. So they're just resting here. Reach your arms up to the ceiling, cross your arms over the test, and then we'd laugh the weight of your arms on your scandal. Close Your eyes, integrate all that energy. Then you just move through your body.

We only pay in self towards your core and your center and grounding. You think so. Whenever you feel ready, you can come sit up. I was going to let them rest until, until we set up, but she's like, okay guys, good work. [inaudible].

Comments

1 person likes this.
Loved the cueing. Can't wait to teach your single arm swimming sequence today. Thank you Madeline!
at 46 minutes the class stopped playing
Cindy we can't find anything wrong with any of the formats for this class. They all are playing all the way through. Have you had any trouble with other classes?
1 person likes this.
Wonderful new ideas for cueing! Thank you!
really enjoyed this class. Thanks ! :)
Love Love Love Madeline!
a beautiful session !!! I love the foot cues....and the swim....I feel long and lean !!!!
Liz
Liz
This also cut out at 46 min mark for me. It has happened with another class also. Very frustrating. Tried restarting after this point but it just hangs and doesn't resume.
Liz
Liz
Seems to happen at around the same time point, so classes up to 40 min not affected but longer classes stop playing
Elisabeth I tested this in high and low formats and it played all the way through, so there isn't a problem with the video file. Sometimes, there can be a disruption in your internet connection. Another good idea is to check how many windows are open and to restart your browser or your computer prior to taking class. Ted says that sometimes browsers slow down or quit after they have been open awhile. I have learned to make it a habit cause I can't stand it when it pauses or quits on me!
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