Class #468

Mat Challenge

60 min - Class
9 likes

Description

Kristi taps into the powerhouse while working the hips in external rotation through the warm-up. Then she includes instruction on Bicycle, Twist/Bend, and Rocking among others. There are always ways to modify an exercise, and sometimes we have to challenge ourselves in order to reach the next level. Join in the fun!
What You'll Need: Mat

About This Video

Jun 25, 2011
(Log In to track)

Transcript

Read Full Transcript

Okay. So here we go. I'm going to kind of start with the track I did the other day. Sit with your feet and what I'll call a diamond position. As best you can. Put the soles of the feet together where you're making contact. Okay. Comfortably. And I'm going to recommend holding on. Okay.

So we're not working too hard yet. So find your sit bones, stack yourself up, organize yourself from there growing tall and just for a couple of seconds because we're going to move more efficiently if we get rid of what we don't need and mostly tension. So inhale and exhale and let go and not, we don't have to be too serious just yet. Two more just to fill up. Take what you need. Take inventory. Most of all, exhale, if you've got to loosen up, I know I actually do. And inhale again and then find that place where it feels that you're as organized as you can be in field. The bones of your body, um, become a little bit heavier, but the energy within a little lighter. So you're holding yourself up almost effortlessly as the shoulder blades slide down. Inhale, expanding the rib cage three-dimensionally. Exhale and feel it kinda close on itself, but you don't want to feel like you're dropping into it. If anything, you get even taller. Inhale again, I'll move you in just a second. I promise. Aaron, and exhale. Maybe you can feel the space between the vertebra.

Expand. Now keeping yourself upright. We're going to start engaging the glutes and inner thighs. We inhale on the exhale, tick the hipbones, his front hip bones and pull them deeper into your body. So you start into a pelvic tuck, but we aren't going to drop it all. You'll see your back. Change a little and then inhale back to straight.

So it's basically just a deep contraction. Exhale, draw the hipbones deeper into the bodies. You allow the lumbar spine to curve the rest of the body response. Inhale, and I am encouraging you to use your arms right now. Feel the shoulders, press down, feel the elbows pop out to the side, find your lats. All of that. Inhale, grow tall. Exhale, press your feet together stronger as you do the same contraction. Start intensifying where we're trying to work, not through the neck and shoulders. One more like that. Exhale and draw deep. So just for contrast, it's basically the same thing I Helen and exhale, it starts exactly the same, so you pull in but go a little further back. Okay, so your arms are probably straight now and then just come forward. Inhale, stacking your spine at the last moment.

Head will come up last lead with the pelvis. Exhale, draw the hips back, find the latch. You can work the arms a little here. Don't worry about that. Keep the curve as you come forward. Inhaling and stack from the bottom to the top one more like that. Exhale the collarbone. Stay wide. I would at this point just kind of keep eyes basically forward. Inhale, except for maybe when you're coming up again and just exhale.

When you get to the top, turn towards the window up front here, both hands on that forward knee and then make sure you didn't lean into it or away from it. You're still even you're tall. Rotate a little inhale, exact same exercise, pulling that little bit back. Keep the shoulders where they are and pull the hips back. Inhale, stack it up. I'll go a little faster since we now know what we're going for. Exhale, stretching out just a little. As she tightened from the front. Inhale and exhale. Can you press down through the latter a little more?

[inaudible] you can make it work, right? Mary's already smiling. I love it. Inhale and exhale. She's always smiling. Okay, let's make it bigger. Inhale, exhale, roll it down, but I like to slide the arms. If you can put a little pressure there and I'm thinking upper arms, that's kind of nice. Check your hips are level. Inhale, we're going back up. Exhaling forward. Grab on when you want to, when you can, and restack just two more. Inhale. Exhale. Start with the hip bone.

Then take it back. So we're just trying to zero in right now on that center, on the powerhouse. Inhale. Exhale. Come back up. I think I edited a breath on these, didn't I? That's all right. Inhale, exhale. It's almost like you don't want to go, but then you have to go, but you're still kind of resisting your way down. Inhale, look at your abs for a second and press down first or breathe or exhale and then come forward and up. All right. Find your way all the way around to the other side. If you wobbled off the sit bone at all aligned, here we go. Just the small one.

Exhale, pull back in. He'll stack it back up. This is a pretty small number. It's just the waist. It's moving to and back. See it for a moment. You feel like you won't even move your upper body as if you could totally separate out the areas of the spine, but we can try and up. Here we go. Go on a little further down. Now we roll back finding the side, the obliques. Inhale, noticing differences in your hip. Exhale. As you come up, checking those collarbones are one side's going to try to creep up on you.

Stacking your spine. Wow. I feel like I'm talking fast. I'm going to shut up for just a second. If I can. [inaudible] keep tightening, keep tightening. Even now you can think to rotate and two more. Exhale down email. Exhaling, find your way to the chapel. The last one like that. Taken it down. Inhale and exhale back. So hopefully you've got some awareness of that.

I think you do. Center yourself again, making it big with a subtle change a little faster. This time we're going down. Inhale, exhale, roll back. Stay down your mid back. Both arms are going up. Keep your eyes forward. Inhale, exhale, PRS down again as if it were coming from just under your arm. Let's do two more. Inhale up and exhale down. One more time and down. Hold it with your arms down.

Inhale, exhale. As you roll up, you can keep the hips where they are for the moment. Keep pulling back on the abs. Find your hands to your knees. Come all the way up to straight. Squeeze your glutes and go into extension. On an inhale. Exhale, lead with the front hip bones. You can be kind of dramatic about it. Direct the head forward.

Press down on the thighs if you want to. Try to get a little more connection. If it messes you up, don't do it. Arms go up. Inhale, exhale, press down. Check this out, arms ups. Keep them there for just a second. Exhale and curl forward a little bit more, just a little. Then inhale, exhale, arms down. One more. Arms up and down. Inhale, exhale, press down and you can come up on that. Exhale. If you can come up on that. Exhale, find your hands to your knees. Stack your spine.

Inhale growing tall, so it's the upper back. You're working. Exhale, take it down as your arms go up, and there's a subtle sense of like, I'm going to get up from here. Inhale, exhale, press, and again in here. Oh, you look good. Exhale, we can do one more. Inhale, absolutely firm in the mat. Exhale, inhale, hold. Think of going forward on this exhale instead of just up forward for awhile forward for awhile forward for while. Then of course you just curve, you roll, you stack, you inhale, make it a, the big one is you let the Chester eyes. We're just settling back to neutral on the exhale, right? Inhale, rotate to the front and from the moment you go as far as you can without help. Then once you're there, assist yourself up rather than torquing. It's up. Then you might be able to with just your muscle strength, take yourself a little further and assist that and we're not leaning back.

Check that out for yourself. You're not leaning onto off to one side. Pick up the back hand and reach it. It's not just up. It's reaching and then of course the front arm. Press your feet toward each other. We're doing five slope presses toward the window and it's from the obliques, not the AMS. The one inhale.

Exhale to think three relatively light in your body. Oh, I love it. Here's five. Bring that backhand to the front. We roll down on an exhale. You're going to want to walk, or maybe it's just me, but check that you don't wobble from here. Arms up for three. Inhale, exhale, press one. Let's go faster. Inhale. Exhale, press two. Inhale up. Exhale, three, hold. Inhale. Sorry. And if we go think forward, forward, forward, forward, and then yes, of course you have to lift.

Find your hands to your knees. Ian Hill tried to rotate a little more without losing your hips. And down we go. This is it on the side. So inhale, arms up. Check your hips. I'm going to check your hip down with your arms and two more. Yeah. Wow. It's just me and down. Hold for an inhale. I'll just come back.

Then play and upward. Come on the exhale. Nice job. Nice job. Oh boy. Oh boy. Find your knees. Stack your spine. Begin. Well as you go the other way. Stay there when you get there. Exhale, right. Then unload your hands and see what you can do with just your spine in terms rotation. Either level then yes. Put your hands down and assist yourself vertically. Yeah.

When you're ready, you take the backhand off, reach it so you almost get a stretch to the chest and then have the front arm lifted chest. Everybody. Fantastic. Big exhale to journal and to Meredith. You can lean back a little with the shoulders and slightly longer in the middle. Thank you all for right, right and hold. Put your hands back down. Assist yourself a tiny bit more. Big. Inhale. Hands are underneath, or the floor.

We're rolling down from there you can let go with the hands rolled is reaching off on that diagonal. Stabilize and balance your hips. Here we go. Both arms up. Inhale, exhale, press down. Feeling almost more pressure of the spine into the mat. One more. You can come up on the exhale or take another inhale. Can't quite make up my mind on that. Can I? And then stack your spine.

I suppose it'd be more challenging if I made us wait, so we'll do that. Exhale down. We go. Good too. And there's three and then we'll pause at the bottom. Inhale. Exhale, press one. Inhale, exhale, press two. Inhale. Exhale, press three.

Hang on to it. Just inhale. Exhale. We'll go forward. Stack your spine and come through center. Basically going to do our roll ups from here so we inhale. Exhale, roll back. Just leave your legs if reach back overhead, lightly tap, inhale, start to come up again. We'll keep the curve and we'll go for the stretch over the top.

This is going to go a little faster. I think tequila breath is a little weird, but I do, I kinda exhale down. I started inhaling, I exhale up and I just start inhaling when I need to, which is somewhere around here and down. So basically we're keeping the curve. It's probably a little bit more of a curve than you're used to, but don't just hang out in a stretch as you go forward and down. Yes, just letting all the air in all the air out. And on this next one, we'll go down and stay down. And from here, take your arms around by the side, by your side. Draw the feeding closer. You can do that one at a time.

Adjust yourself on your mat so you're not off the way. Back end, right. Come forward. Maybe. All right. From here, let's do a little tuck of the pelvis. Okay. And lifting right leg, just a little off the ground. You're about to lift the left leg, so make sure as you start to that, you don't automatically drop the pelvis out and lift the back. You've got to be ready for that, so pick up that other leg. Right. Then inhale, the legs will come higher from here. Xcel towards 90 inhale, lower arm down.

Just a little exhale up. Now as far as feet placement, yeah, it'd be great if you can keep them together. If that feels too stressful though, you can just keep the heels together and just one more like that. We'll make it a little more interesting as it lowers down curl, head, neck and shoulders up, reaching forward. Okay, from here, inhale, lower the legs. It doesn't have to be the ground. Feel the resistance in the belly as you float them up. A one. Let's do 10. You inhale down, exhale, two. Inhale, squeeze the glutes and we'll help you with 34 per rested down. Pull up. Five inhale, press. The pelvis really never moves.

Six to push down. Seven hanging on eight, push down back. Never changes nine and 10 and with that, bring the legs all the way to the ground. Let your body go down, keeping the turnout. We okay with that? If not, we're about to go into a pelvic curl. So if you need to go to the regular version, please do. Otherwise you'll be putting some weight on the outer edges of your feet.

You may need to adjust a little for comfort. That's fine. Okay. From here, stretch your legs out a little bit. Press the back of the arms into the mat. We inhale on the exhale. Draw the abdominals in, pressing the low back into the mat to roll the pelvis up and off the mat to the shoulder blades. Okay, find the glutes you use the glutes. This would be a good time to figure out if the feet are okay. You might have to pull the feet apart a little. Keep the heels together, but the feet can come apart. Inhale, exhale and roll down from the chest, from the upper back. Deepen your curve, deepen your glute squeeze, and you can almost relax the bullets at the bottom. Not fully. Inhale and exhale. Up we go. I'm calm, calm, calm, calm, and inhale, exhale down.

It feels a little challenging I think, cause you don't keep going. You don't really have that depth of articulation that we sometimes get, but all the more reason to look more deeply. I'm going down again. There's my exhale. Inhaling at the bottom, exhale, we'll go and we'll hang out here. All right, thinking about taking the right leg off, if you know you're not going to be able to hold your weight on one leg because your feet are too far out, just bring them in a little half step. Now, all right, from here it's an inhale on the exhale. Everything else stays the same. You bring that right, like inhale, it comes down, stays turned out and he points to the side room and up to and inhale down. Exhale three. We're doing five just so you know. Here's four and five. Replace it. Let's switch sides carefully.

Keep it a seamless transition. Exhale as you lift up one and press down and too, you can put energy into the heel or the outer edge of the foot. Three that of the foot on the ground. Here's four hanging on strong. Five. Place it down. Inhale and from the top of your spine. Roll it down.

When your tailbone gets down, just slide your legs out to straight. Make them parallel. Look forward at your feet, and from here we're just going to a little and we come back down and we'll lift a little. Try not to lift so much that your low back comes off, but that the shoulders are still pressing downward. Exhaling forward. Inhaling down, let's do five more and one. Inhale down. Exhale to everybody. Start pressing your feet into the mat or the whole leg even better and hold that. Support your head.

Turn the right leg out just a little and think about allowing it to reach further, curling up enough or tucking if necessary so that your low back is down into the mat air. You go from there. That same leg is going to lift a little higher, but also cross the midline of your body want. It'll come down a tiny bit. Exhale, lift to the tiny little L ish like thing theory. Finding the Midland press for both sides have to work. By the way. Five. I'll stop at six. Six changing the legs. Lift, reach, and cross. Whole inhale supporting your head too. You're not just holding your arms up. You're arresting your head in the hands.

Reach a longer. Four and five. I think we did six. Here it is. Six. Press it down. Reach your arms forward. You can just keep that turnout and come on up. Reach the legs, reach to the legs, reach to the legs. Ho slide yourself far for rolling. Likable. Bring it in. Close. Yes. Getting just behind that tailbone close as you can tonight. Elbows wide.

Here we go. Inhale, roll back. Exhaling up. Use the breath. Trust you. Where you start. You stay. That's the trick. If you need to open it up, you will. Yeah. This can be one of those ones where we think it's only the front of the body that's working, but if you keep the glutes a little engaged, it's much easier and more effective. Stay up on your next one, right? Yeah, we'll do it. I'm just going to back myself up a little.

We're going to lower ourselves down for double leg stretch. With that little variation we sometimes do. So you're in table top, your eyes are forward for the moment. Keep the angle of the knee and just let go. Touch the toes to the ground or almost if you want, bring it back up one and again, two and and three. I'm a changes home. Next option is to go down with it, but stretch them out out there and then bring it up.

So that's kind of challenging. If you don't want to go that route, you can just go to the regular one, which would be simply to reach out, right? Not quite so low. And let's do four and sweep it off and three and inhale open. I think this is it. And pressing the knees into your hands. Slowly roll yourself up or a little momentum. Probably again, just me. Okay. From here crossing your, let's see, I want you facing me. Cross.

Get the Lake in the back to the front. Hands down. Sit on the cheek. Closest to the front of the room. Okay. You guys getting sick of this one? Too bad. Okay, so you're sitting sideways. If you can drop the knees out down, you should, but not so much that you're facing out the window. You're gonna face the other way. You're going to try to crossover those legs. So you're going to be aiming to the back with your upper body. From here, we're going to roll down, I think probably holding on is merited for the first one or two.

And we're going just to maybe top of the rib cage or top to the shoulder blades. From here you can hook the ankles, come up, exhale. Just keep the curve and down we go. Now what part of a box squat would hurt this? Huh? Or box jumps. What? F we come. Exhale and okay, so you don't have to come up so high that you're sitting right on the hip.

Meaning keep, go ahead again, that you're way up here on top of it. I'm kind of holding back behind it. Yeah. And and big exhale. It helps. It's fine. It'd be better to grab the leg than to let the arms creep up. One more coming down. Sort of. Sort of.

Don't get too psyched out that they're over. We are going back down, but we won't come up for a little while. So go down and keep the, what is that? The front hand going over toward the back like it is, but support your head with the other hand and we're just reaching and it's as if your thighs are trying to go out the window and the everybody's gone no that way. The other way, right? Andy, how many would that be? Huh? Eight then good. No, we must come up on 10 so let go the hand. Find your leg or your ankles. Hold. Oh boy. Oh boy. [inaudible] find your hands. Switch the cross. Let's go the other way. So now you're kind of angling that way, but you will end up bringing it back with your upper body. Mostly tips. Go ahead and we'll start.

You can stretch your legs out a little bit more for help or hold on. And that's about all I can offer down we go. Big inhale and get calm when you're not sure if you're going to come back up. It's surprisingly helpful if you don't waste the energy in knee. Good. Yeah. Next. Eylea.

Yeah. If possible, turn out to hike this hip toward the shoulder. Rather go towards the hip and down. Oh, we love Polarez or whatever this is and he might've won ago and stay rotated. We're going back down for the fun part. Here it is down, down, down, hand, closest to the window behind your head, and it is. Then I have to be big to be powerful, right? You don't have to see it to feel it.

Know it's working and for five don't come so high. It makes your legs want to lift up. The ground's seven, six. Great. LA, I think this is it. We roll up on that 10th one. Let go the arm. Use the lower feet or the lower feet. These little ankles if you need them. Right, and unwind yourself. Straighten out your legs. Just keep, take advantage of the fact that I suspect you can feel your obliques.

Your tall arms are going to be here. So goalposts, right, and then for tonight, for now, just take your elbows. What do I want to say? Slightly forward and your wrist slightly back. Wow. Nice. And then can you lift a little taller, squeezing the inner thighs and glutes. All right, from there, let's slowly rotate. Rotate to the front. I've got the feet flex. So you watched that.

You don't move them and just switch all the way to the back. Inhale all the way to the front. Exhale all the way the back. Inhale, grow and tall and you now exhale. Stay there in here. Grow taller. XL the front. We'll go a little quicker now. Inhale back. Exhale front and two more. Come all the way. Front. Stay there. Arms are out. Reaching them. And again, for five.

Same thing for three to switch sides for five is go and one, two, Oh, change the hips. Not at all, Jim. There you go to the front. Double pulse. So watch your feet that they don't move, like and switch time out for one second. Center. Flex your feet. Look at him for a second. Then I'll get to move. Turn. But keep looking at your feet. Pulse as much as you want, but the hips don't move.

All right to the front everybody. Let's go for four on switch and two to three. Three last one for four. Four to the center. Arms are down. Bend your knees. We're doing just a quick try step for you. Yeah, if it's okay. Alright, so just lifting yourself up for the moment. Come all the way up to just stretch out the shoulders. Find the glutes again, pretty evenly balanced between your feet and your arms.

From there you can bring the hips down. Just hinge at the hips so you can now look forward a bit. And then I'm going to suggest tucking your pelvis just a little from here. It's a bend of the elbow and a straighten one and two trying to kind of make it a vertical move. I think that's five. I'm aiming for 30 so you might want to help them. I've already lost it.

Okay. Okay. Pick up one leg if you want to for 10 okay. It'll change the a bit. Good. I'll trust you. I'll just watch you and we'll put the foot down when we've got the last 10 to do things you're really wanting to watch for is that the shoulders don't shrug at all, right? They're down right and up. I'm trying not to travel too far forward. Open the chest.

Go Helen, go hell. And we want you to wait another a hundred bucks. Eight 29 Oh 30 31. Okay. Uh, we'll watch you [inaudible] have a seat. Good. All right, from there, open like rocker, skip forward. Now your arms are hopefully somewhat tired. So we'll have to pull in deeply. I'm trying to think of a way to say, draw the leg bones deeper into your body. Um, so whatever you come up with, I did just say, didn't I? Okay. So the reason being is we, I don't want you to have to lift your legs with your arms or your, you can, you can move them without your whole body. That's what I'm going for.

Even if it were to extend them. Right? All right. Imagine you've got the magic circle. Here we go. Inhale, roll back. Exhale. Trust it. Keep your eyes down until the last minute. Then grow into it. Lighten up on the arms if you can, and down and up. Doing our best to keep the shape.

Something that helped me with this or sometimes helps me with this is if I slightly let go as I go back and then recatch before coming up. I'm not quite sure why it worked for me, but sometimes it does. I'm going to give you three more. There's one and he just watched for what you know you might be doing. You may be bending the elbows. You don't want to do that one more up and keep it there. Keep it there long as you lift your chest slightly. Let your chin come down, find your upper back, close up the feet, bend the knees to tabletop and we'll do teaser prep here.

Pressing into the five. You don't have to press in, but it might help. Roll down just to shoulder blades. Squeeze your glutes. You're not sure. Touching. Inhale if you can to come up. Nice Chimp, very nice and he'll watch the shoulders up and there you go. We'll go down from there. To sand contraction. We start in class with the hipbones, reaching deeper into the body and inhaling up and down and up. And this one will go all the way down, arms to the ground, bring the knees in, a little closer to your head. Gets down. We're going for rollovers from here, so squeezing through the glutes. We in here. Check your space.

Exhale. When you're ready to roll over, reminding yourself. Now that the back side of the body is very important, flex your feet. Then separate them. If you can lower the legs without your back moving, you should exhale. We rolled down. Continuing to think of the mid line all the way and circle. Here we go. Inhale Knight here. Exhale up over. It's smooth.

Don't let him know where the hard part is. Flex separate, lower and from your throat. Don't let the abdominal contraction be an excuse to let go of the glutes. Not saying they're squeezing hard, they're not, but they are most certainly involved. Flex. And for those of you who do tendon stretch on the reformer, I'm reminded of it, right? I'll show you right here. It. When you flex your feet, draw the abs up and think to tuck your pelvis slightly more separate hand than down. It's exact same feeling minus the fear of being upside down.

Let's reverse the feet. Inhale up and over. It works here too. If you close up the feet and you flex, but you pull the entire front of the body into the back, that's exactly the same feeling. Point. Circle three to go up. Oh, full X and close. You can lower the feet and want the stretch to do ankle bones together. Big toe joints together. Let's get precise about it and again to go over flex and close and yes, good. Start playing with what could you do with the ease in your hands? Can you get your wrist flat? Maybe not yet, but it's something to work towards.

Sometimes. Just going a little wider with your hands helps as you get more flexible. All right, that's it. Bring the knees in. Curl yourself up. All crazy order today. Curling up. Sorry Jim. Just to the tabletop. Just a tabletop. Let's just go into single leg and Chris cross right here.

Pull it. Pull one ligand doesn't matter and change. We'll go one, one, two, two. Now do something different with it and I don't mean choreographically. I mean find a new place within this exercise. You're going to do them for the rest of your life and chances are you're even going to like it but play within it. Can you pull the knee closer without the pelvis moving?

Can you pull the knee and closer without moving? Doing it with the hands. Let's take the hands behind your head for just four more passes. One, two, three. Right into Chris cross. Here it is rich and rich and reach. How relaxed can you make the legs while still finishing the extension or perhaps even reaching further than you're used to? Oh, I'm going to get six more passes. One, two, three, four, five. Come back to the center. Bending your knees. Set your feet down, reaching the arms overhead. You guys mind if I skip the a hundred today? You won't. You won't tell anyone. Good. Inhale. It's a pelvic curl.

Your feet are placed. Sitz bones distance roll up as you reach the hands through until they find the mat. Just hang out there for a second. Aaron, can you post your tech a little bit more? Did you book been to sky? Now use your hamstrings and your glutes like you never have before by going up with them and tech more. That's it. But I think can even ever so slightly posterior tech more with a push toward the ceiling. Okay, come back now with that. Okay. There it is. Right there.

Right there, there. Okay, good. Happy. Alright, take you right. Just keep your feet where they are. Press your right foot into the ground and squeeze the right glute more. Not so much that it fully tilt you, but it's working more switch sides so you're not seeing a big rock, but you'll feel it. Good. Keep it and switch again. So we're on the right, the left there, right. It's a downward action of the whole leg. Hips are pretty much as high as they needed to be, so that's not going to change a lot. Let's do two more right side, left side. Go back to evening them out. Check it out. Do they feel even?

What are your feet doing then without rolling, just hinge to release a little. Just let your hips drop a bit. Press both feet into the ground to come right back up. If you know you flare the ribs, watch for that. All right, we're going to take the left leg into the air, so press the right leg down. Keep the hips level, take the leg up and we'll go into shoulder bridge right away it's kicked down one flex and come up XL two and up and three six I'm doing 10 here's number seven. Can you be longer? Eight, nine come back up. Keep that leg up. [inaudible] good.

I am predictable. We're going to reach the leg down as soon as you pass the other knee. If you pass the other knee, start lifting that hip a bit to feel the hip extensors. Try for the floor. Try for the floor. If you don't get it, that's cool. I don't want you to go to your back, but part of the way you get it out of your back is lift the pelvis. All right?

You can bring it back up and change legs. Alright, other like reaches up. Let's do our 10 and it's reach one and a half and two and 30 so it isn't that the goal is the floor. It's really the reach. Oh God, I stopped counting six or seven. Okay. It must've been some nine. Come back up and then check that you haven't gone out of limit as you reach. I'm kind of preparing us for a scissors and bicycle right about here where the legs are kind of lined up side by side. Start to lift the hips is the leg, tries to go lower. Don't let it go to your back, but feel the hamstring work.

Then bring it up, put it back down. Inhale and roll down. All right, so with that said, we'll do the scissors and the bias or at least the scissors. Can you just, let's just roll up for one second. I like to give this little speech only cause I don't do this very often. Um, I'll be, I'll have you go over. If you don't want to do this, I'll give you a modification in a minute. You'll bend your knees, hands. I'm not going to get particular about it, but what does matter is that as you, you're going to go into hyperextension here, supported. You're going to lift the back and then arch it. It'll be fine.

Okay. And then support it. You'd notice I moved my elbows and I just have to like, it feels better. So that's what I did there. Alright, we'll start like, so the leg that you were most interested in in this exercise is the one that's going away. If you just reached the leg, you're gonna. That's where all the elbow neck pain comes in. Okay. So as you're reaching the leg, this one, it's doesn't do a whole lot truthfully, but as you're pushing it, you lift your hips almost out of your hand.

Just what you did in that last exercise. This one will pull you this way. So you kind of need to hold back on this, whichever one's in front. Okay, so it's Lyft, Lyft, Lyft, Lyft. You're not really seeing me lift, hopefully, but I kind of am. That's how it works. So if I tell you that the muscle focus, go ahead and just lie down. Bend your knees and roll yourselves over. If I tell you muscle focuses, hamstrings and glutes, look for the work there. If you don't want to do this, you can do a reverse crunch or even the pelvic curl again. So we roll ourselves over, lift your backs, and then arch them so they, the hips kind of spill out over your hands.

Adjusting your hands for comfort. Pull one knee in, close, reach the other leg. And now the straight leg as it reaches away from you, you're gonna start to press your hips, not only upwards, but over your shoulders as the legs reaching down some fabulous stretch. Well, let's just switch legs before we straighten the other one. We'll just sort of carefully switch. And as those straight leg starts to lower, you lift your hips. Toward the ceiling and also over your shoulders. Okay. And then straighten up the top leg, but let it go up a little so it's not receiving the maximum stretch. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous, and slowly change as you do.

You're going to keep lifting the hips, lift him up. That's how you take weight out. Although there are some, and now we'll pulse twice. Here it's pulse, pulse, change, pulse, pulse chain, glute, glute chain. Feel the stretch, stretch and stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch. One more each. If your elbows have had enough or wrist, that's cool. Bring them both overhead. Release the arms and slowly roll down. [inaudible] I actually didn't hear that one coming. All right, turn onto your side and face the front please.

Here we are. Let's go all the way down. All the way down, lining up just to turn a tap into the obliques and side of the way. So your long try for a pretty straight line of the body. You may need to bring the feet slightly forward. It's an inhale back to the abs. Exhale as you reach and lift both legs. Inhale as they reach further. And almost to the ground and up again.

I'm just going to do six here and there. Okay. All right. Let's keep it up. Flex your feet and try to keep the big toe joints and ankle bones together just like strongly spread out the toes and then back through to a point and point or long toes, right. Flex and spread out in point. Everything's zipped up. Inhale as you reached a point, draw in on the abs and remember this as we go into front support later per one more time and the from here, help yourself up to the forearm.

ESCO, tip of the elbow, actually tip of the elbow, so option one would be to be on the forum, but if you go out on the tip it's you need to lift yourself away so you've got this triangle of space below you. Feet are going to want to come forward a bit. Top leg is up for sidekick. Reach the legs really long, straight out of the body and it comes forward. Exhale, two, inhale and see if you can find that same sense of hip extension that you just did a minute ago. When the scissor press, press, press, press [inaudible] long. One more common. [inaudible] duh, duh. And back from here. Go back down. Okay. All the way down. Hips are basically stack maybe top hip coming forward from here. Lift the leg up. How did, you can bring it around to the front as far forward as you can without much motion the spine, there'll be a little preferably more leg and hip socket and there re doing four. Slow it down just a little. Get all the nooks and crannies, reaching long.

Finish it in the back as the starting point. Reverse it, take it forward. You're gonna draw deep onto the abs, lifting up. Take it away back and look through that stretch and hip extension number two and three is me one more time. Uh, it feels sort of good. Sorta run there. Stretch the top arm looking for a sort of rotational stretch through the whole body.

And then we're just going to help ourselves up for a mermaid. We're long sitting tall. You can aim to get the hips down and some of you will be able to reaching out long light landing. Find your ground. If you can walk out a little further. Good dude. It's like you're pulling the floor towards, you rotate. Finding the floor. Yeah. It's not going to be completely square. It might be, but it doesn't have to be in how reopen and lift.

Find your opposite knee. Reach up first and then Oh, more up than over. Yeah, and reaching, stretching, finding the ground travel if you want to. And then around, Hey, this can be done up much higher too. It's just a different feel. It's up to you. Inhale, reopen and up we come. Another option for the leg, if it keeps cramping, is just to stretch it out or bring it in front. Okay. And let's just do one more for three. Reaching out, find the floor, get along or rotate. Trying to keep the hips where they are. Reopen to lift up. Take the stretch going out again. But this time going gonna let the hand come. Well, we're just gonna leave it there.

Cross the top leg in front of going into side bend, three side bend, three twist. So top leg is in front. Keep your knees together, trying it like that. We lift up on the inhale and I take my time here cause I think we almost always have to adjust, especially on the match. You're on LinkedIn now from under the waist. Lift up it only at the last minute. When you know inner thighs and everything's together, you turn the head, not the body. Inhale as if someone pulled you by the top of your head.

Just stretch you back out to the long line. Let's try bending at the waist today. You could bend the knee and sit down or he'd come right back up. Inhale. Exhale, lift armpit two ways. Make the rainbow make it different. Now stretch yourself out so you feel that difference. Either bend the knees or bend the waist. Last one, like so up. You hit the tee.

Now yo lifter tomorrow come back to the tee. Let's bend the knees to come down for this one. And if you're still sit up right to the twist, inhale, lift. I net te lift the hips, reach across the chest with a flat back. So you are in a twisted triangle. It's not around, it's fine. Not in this class.

And he'll reopen. Pick a bend. I'm going bet knees number two of three. Stretch. Oh, if this is your chance to pull weight over the arm, the back foot probably doesn't have a lot of weight. That's okay. And I'll reopen all strong arms. Here we go. Last one, put some weight in the feet. It's good. At least one of them. Here it is. Up and under. Ah, we reopen. We come all the way down and we unload the arm. Do you want the stretch?

Yeah, let's try and reach the shoulder up. Okay. Let the shoulder up. Really don't up. If you can grab it. Do and perfect. Trying to get that lad strong. Stretched. All right. Unfold yourself to the other side. Lined all the way.

It's gone quiet on me. Exhale as you lift. Oh, inhaling down. So something I've had to work on, I'll share and hopefully you don't have to. But if you do, if you find when you're resting on a straight arm, three to go, you have to look down. Either you're just, I haven't told you not to do that. Or your lots are really tight and it's just something to start inching your leg back. Okay. I mean your arm back so that you end up looking straight ahead.

That has to be six. Great. So theater together, ankles together, flex your feet, push to the Hills, really strongly pushed to the heels. Then point I kind of spread the toes out. Articulating in flex. [inaudible] notice what kind of tension is in the knees. You don't need any there feeling the feet somewhat like the hands for a moment. Articulate one more time. Great. Help yourself up for that sidekick on the tip of the elbow or the form. Lex can come forward a little here.

Shoulders down and we lift to go kick, kick and back and to to I miss exercise. You do kind of have to anticipate it does it. The leg. Really does it just swing and then it's the control in the center, man. Can you imagine stretching the back of the leg as you kind of anchor, give opposition from the hip. Three more. Pulse, pulse and stretch. Good place. You can articulate again with the foot.

One more time. The reach back. Reach back, looking for the stretch and come all the way down from here. We brought the leg up and let it be reached. Don't let it sink into your body. Reach it out, lifting it up to circle it around and return. You're only the leg move in the hip joint. That's good stuff. Getting warm or can you feel that? Not just because we're working out, but okay. Sandana ah, that's for let's change it. Come forward. Lift.

Oh yeah. It's reaching to the edge. Last one. All right. All right. We did one more little stretch here by reaching back, looking for sort of that rotational stretch and then help yourself up for a couple mermaids. Three to be exact so you could do the mermaid. Kind of how we ended the last one to staff or opened up is how we did it last time. So here we are trying to settle the sitz bones. We reach out, we find the floor sink, however we are, reach out further if that feels good too. And then keeping the hips about where they, where you rotate. Inhale, it's a spinal movement and really doesn't have much to do with the arm.

And then with control, lifting up, find your stretch, think up first and then over. If you're going to go over to off, it feels bad on the short side. You don't need to do it. Reach out, rotate, go for it. If you want to put your hands and add a little more twist do, but just be gentle with it. Then reopen as if someone pulls you by the top arm, you know? Yeah. Find your stretch. Big inhale and we've got to look good. Here comes rotate and joy. Do what you need. Finding oppositions. So it's not just you hanging out here. Reopen to lift.

Finding that's trach. Is this where I did the, I did at the end and I, yeah, we'll do it in a minute. So now we came back out. We top leg was in front. We let the legs drift away a little bit. Remember, you have a choice here to come back to this position or to bend at the waist for three side bins. Here we go. Inhale up. Good. Take a minute to just help each other out with good lift from under the waist. I feel my arm pit kind of reach into the my waist as well in, he'll get long again and bend at the waist or bend at the knees. If you bend at the waist, most likely you're not going to the ground.

And then up and over. Distinguish between those two positions. Feel the body move there and, and, and move gorgeous and open. That's that right? And I think we've had to come out of that. Here we go for the twist. Okay, Helen, let's just take a second and lift the hips first. Let them get ahead of you. Then reach across the chest.

You could reach to the ankle, but I'm going to suggest the chest so you get more rotation. Inhale open and either bender, the waist number two of three we lift under side plank works as a modification. Reopen squeeze inner thighs and the last one enjoy. And if you don't want to do it, don't right. If you're hesitating, there's a reason. Open and come down. Right. Slide the legs in closer. This was the one we took the arm up.

Either just shrug and go or pick it up. Trying to get that bicep close to rather than reaching your head into it, which is what I caught myself just doing. That's a great good and a nice Debra. That's a good line. Yeah. Okay. Onto your tummies for a single leg kick. Let's go. Quick, quick setup and that is going to be statistic.

Just that we're not as high as you sometimes might be. So Elvis, slightly more forward than perhaps you're used to. Okay. I'm hands. How about palms up for today? Draw the shoulders down from here. Feel all of your bones, your pelvis on the ground, not your pubic bone. More than anything else. Yes. I know it's opposite what I used to say. I'm learning. I am just, Hey, this when I learned, you know, I can't, I can't stick to it just cause I said it. All right.

Then the best part kind of relapsed. How your ads are kind of relax. Reach both legs. That's it. They're still on the ground. Just reach them and then pull your chest forward and that's like enough. But yeah, I did. Oh, that's what we should do. I haven't done that a long time. Well done. Rocking. Wow. Yeah, that's exactly it. Right? If you don't, you're going to rock right into your back. Stretch the leg straight. Okay, we'll get there. But the thinking of a rocker now and said, lift that reach, reach the right leg but far not up. Then kick it. Boom, boom, straighten other side, reach it a little boom, boom. Now the truth is is they, they just stay reaching. Right?

How much more could you use your back extensors and less with your arms? I mean, they're there, but you're not pushing into the floor if you don't have to. And push. Push this. Do three F four more. Pulse, pulse, stretch, pulse, pulse, stretch, pulse, pulse, stretch. Last one. Pulse, pulse, stretch. Now then coming down, reach back to grab the ankles and I have a modification for you. Anybody who wants it. Oh, okay. Okay. What we could do as a rapid towel or a band? Anybody want one?

Oh, go. Hell right around Debbie's now. No good idea. Y'all just hang tight. I'm going to get one thing. I'm gonna get one thing. You're fine. You're fine. So the same role, same roles. You're going to have, um, all parts of the pelvis on the ground. So good. You could just wrap a towel, right?

So you have something more to hang onto. All right, knees are slightly apart but not splayed. Hey, start by thinking. What? What do I want to say? Thighs on the mat. Hey, I hips on the mat. Then you're going to think about what are you gonna think about using your hamstrings and your butt? Eh? For me, sometimes I have to flex my feet just to feel that initially I don't know why, but I do, and then I can go back to normal. From there, inhale to push the feet into your hands to lift your back extensors, but use your feet into your, that's how you do it and then come down to rest. Recommit the pelvis to the floor. Press your feet into your hands. Feel the glutes in the hamstrings a little. Your thighs will lift a little, but it's not the goal, right? We can all shoot way up here and just go for the back.

We're not going for that lift. Try to get that up for back. Stretch out the chest and come down and again, inhale, reaching forward with the chin and chest. You pressing the legs into the hands. That's how you get that stretch is not about the height. It's about opening along and down. One more time. Good idea. Debra. Press squeeze, glutes. Oh, she wants to rock. We'll go on up. On the inhale, you keep the shape. If you're going to rock and you lead with the hamstrings, exhale forward. Shape, shape doesn't change. Squeeze the glutes, don't yank it. Just two more. One, two, settle in the middle, lower ourselves down, stretch your legs out, let the back go for a moment.

We have to do that more often. We just do. It'll feel better. Come up into a rest position. Yeah, it's true. It's, we got a little confused and I can't exactly describe it yet cause it really is sort of the new idea for me. But the part that works the best for me is yes, sort of releasing the pelvis. It's a little tiny bit less abs because I think we're, we're overusing them to the point where the back of the wasn't protected and then we went into a back exercise.

But I think the biggest point is the sense of reaching the legs so that you get the hamstrings and glutes is this one. It's exactly this. Right next, I promised you front support. Here it is. So coming up to hands and knees first, stabilize to the shoulders, which makes it kind of feel like a box. A stable box across the shoulders. Take both feet into place. And by the way, it works here. So although, well, if you thought to reach the legs, you probably have to bias towards a little posterior tap to feel the glutes and hamstrings.

And is this someone pulled you by the ears forward your stretched down. You want to feel both sides of your body from your flex, your feet strongly push the heels back. Point the toes. You might have to move your hands forward if they're too far underneath you. And then back. You can walk the feet back a little if you need to and point and you can go all the way over the toes if you really want to stretch your feet and back and articulate forward. Don't lose the glutes and hamstrings though. It's subtle.

It's not that settled actually. All right, good. Bend the knees for one sec back away. Come back right into position. Oh that was so that was all. Pick up the light closest to the front in front of the room. Slowly without ch, without leaning away from it. Take that leg toward the window as far as you can without changing anything.

Bring it back and do it again. Same sec, long neck. Bring it back. You're going to set it down and change legs. It's sometimes easier to flex the foot cause you don't want to turn the foot out and that can help you sort of guide. Keep those toes to ground. Bring it back to the side. Bring it back and knees to the ground. Sit back for a moment. Release tense.

I'll give you a tiny bit longer on this one. We either will repeat that one or we'll play with one on one leg. Here we go. Come on up. Paint a blank. Let's start with the left leg lifting. You will have to slightly lean off to one side.

You can take the right arm off in front. Oh, I'll get called bring it down. Okay. Start with the right leg off. Trying to keep your pelvis levels flex. All those rules, the hamstring, gluten, blah, blah, blah. Other arm, shoulders. That's all right, so all right, bring it back and knees down.

You'll either hold plank, forearm plank or treadmill talking, or we'll go up to the same one we just did. Let's take the arms to the side. Arms to side. Like this side. Here we go. Grand finale. Yep. You gotta be solid though, right? We can't start overthinking what we're about to do if we do it, we're done.

Alright, pick up the left leg. Reach it long. Pick up the right if you're going to and do it slow as you take the arm to the side, the leg to the side. Bring it back. Put it down. [inaudible] change the right leg lifts. It doesn't just lift though. You're you need to have, we deserve the help. Opposite arm. Take them to the side. It's going to wobble. It's okay. It's okay.

Bring them back. Lift the hips up. Walk the feet forward a bit depth. Walk them forward a lot. Hang your head and relax the arms. If you want to bend the knees, please do. And just take a quick peek at your feet and try to bounce them out. Then hang your head again and I'm going to suggest you let the shoulders go.

Let the muscles of your face go. Let the just skin just roll off your back here. Maybe shake your head no. And then let gravity takeover. Surprisingly freeing. Nod your head yes or some version of a movement that just feels easy once you get it going.

And then some sense of reapplying some organization, but the shoulders back on your back. Um, hands maybe to the ground or fist to the ground. Let's bend the right knee closer to the forehead. As we guide the left leg straight. It doesn't have to be totally straight, but we can try. You can even shift that hip out. Then talking about the hip, that's of the straight leg or the left leg.

We're all on slowly transition. So the other knee bands, by the way, both heels are on the ground pretty easy with your rest of your body. Your foot didn't turn out, didn't roll out, but come back to the center. And then with just your hands above your knees or at your knees, somewhere around there, I'm going into extension so the hips will drop, the knees will bend and then flatten out your back. So it's like your, I think of using my hands to sort of assist that so our backs become a tabletop, but with support, if that's plenty, leave it there. If you want a little bit more just to finish out class, you draw the abs in a little bit. Don't round the back to do it. You just support yourself and it would take your arms out to a T position, palms down first and and it's like create the biggest wingspan you can.

Okay. Then from the shoulder, rotate the arm, I think backwards or outwards upwards, so the thumbs point to the ceiling, but you did it from the shoulder, not the forearm. Extend through the tail end through the crown of the head and gently pull the shoulder blades toward each other one. But don't move your neck. One and two. Still reaching wide. Three, four out of five. Reach along, let the arms drop. Pull the abs in, feet firmly onto the floor as you roll yourself up. Growing taller palms are facing forward as we go into extensional, lifting the arms to the side, the chest, the ceiling. Exhale to let go. I'm doing just one more of this for the day. Make it good.

Bring back what you need. Bring it in. Take it with you, let go of whatever you don't want. [inaudible] it's still light out. Good job. You guys.

Comments

Love the twist/bend and bicycle. Great rotations. I need to work on the rocking, can barely rock. Excellent cueing, as always. Thank you for a great class.
Elsabe D
Wao, amazing class. I have heaps to learn. Thank yoy for sharing your experience!
Colleen the secret to the rocking (trust me on this) is the hamstrings. You can't let them go when you are trying to lift your upper back. And Elsabe... me too! Let's keep practicing!
I really enjoy your style of teaching and energy!
Pele
Good workout! Killer for upper body.
Kirsty H
Inspired - thanks Kristi. PS: Meredith's focus at the beginning of the workout is super :)

You need to be a subscriber to post a comment.

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

Footer Pilates Anytime Logo

Move With Us

Experience Pilates. Experience life.

Let's Begin