Legs For Days

Welcome back. You guys are nuts, you came back. So we did the top part of the body, let's go into the lower body. Why do we have this thing? It's called the Pilates ring or the magic circle.

You're gonna have your hands holding onto the handles. And we press in just to open up that chest and wake up the arms. Yes, so we're just pressing in while I'm talking to you and set yourself up. So we're gonna start with our legs. So I am standing in a parallel position with my feet.

You can go into your Pilates if you choose to, but we're gonna hold the squeeze, press into the magic circle. And as you do this, find a tall posture. Yes, I'm speaking like I'm on some kind of TV show on PBS. "Find a tall posture." So take that right foot, point the toe in front of you. It's there, find your balance on that working leg.

And we're gonna lift and lower as we press into this magic circle. Extra credit if you take it out far. Lift that leg five times, let's go. Five, four, three, two, and one. Hello, there's a side leg.

So go ahead, take that leg out to the side. Find your balance. See that there, good. Holding that magic circle, lifting it up for five. Find that balance, soft knee if you need it.

Five of those, let's go. Five, four, three, two, one. I fought for that last one. Let's take the leg back. So taking it back, when you take it back, I want you to see this.

You're gonna shift your hip, so it's not gonna stay out. That hip will go forward and that leg will come out to the back, so the top of your foot will be on your mat, okay? So remember that for the other side. So take it back, hips stay towards me and find your balance. There we go, five of those back.

Squeeze those glutes. Five, four, three, two. Done with that side. Shake it off, hello. The working leg is, she's mad at me, and this one's mad at me.

So let's do the other side, because we're not a spider, we only have two legs. All right, front leg, take it forward, find your balance. This is my left leg, tall posture. Five lifting and lower. Let's go, five, four.

Ooh, four and a half. Three, two, one, yeah. You may find that one side is really friendly, and the other one not so much. Five of those on this side. We did this before, let's do it again.

Five, four, ooh, three. The hip opened up. Two, one. Look at the lift on that thing, she woke up. Alright, back.

I showed you this already, turn the hips forward. Point that toe, drop it, squeeze that booty. Five, four, three, two, one. All right, we're done with that. Go ahead and come onto the floor.

Have that magic circle somewhere near you, okay? Coming into a quadriped position. Shoulder, this is called a elbow, and then wrist. Hip and knee, same line. Find yourself into a little bitty box, pull those abs in.

This is still a leg workout. So we're doing this just to wake up the spine. Rock yourself backwards and forwards. And what we're doing here is just kind of telling the hips, "Hey, you're getting ready to work. As if you didn't already." So rock backwards and forwards.

If you're feeling froggish, press forward a lot and drop that booty. Stretching the hip flexors and the low back. All right, and bring it back. My favorite, my six spine stretch, cat cow it. So curl under.

Open the chest, extend. Tuck everything in, tail comes towards the head. Press the floor away, and come back out. One more cycle through, curl under. And open.

Tall, long spine, and come back to neutral. Bring your right hip, this is the right side, right hip towards the ribs. Left hip towards the left ribs, press in. And this work is really important because we are going to use a lot of legs here. Last one on this side, good stuff.

Gonna move this circle. Gonna bring my chest down, bring my hips back towards the child's pose and thread through just to twist through the spine. (Mychele inhales and exhales deeply) Come through neutral, do the other side. This is your warmup, y'all. Other side.

(Mychele exhales deeply) This will all make sense in about 2.2 seconds. And let's come out of that stretch. Let's pick up our magic circles and go into series of five with our magic circle. Wow, that was loud. All right, go ahead and lay everything down on your mat.

Take a quick little breather. Adjust whatever you need to adjust. Right here, I like to just let my body settle into the mat. Let everything be heavy. Let the legs come out to the side and splay.

And just sit here for about two seconds, because it's about to get real, y'all, all right. One more breath here, and then we're gonna grab onto our lovely magic circle. So the fun part about this is that we have a little part behind our head, our occipital. I like to wear it as a hat. See that?

So I have it here. My hands are gonna come up into a diamond shape. So the other handle, I have my hands on the magic circle. And I'm gonna hold my head up and curl up right here. The legs are going to be engaged because I'm really stressing, and pointing, and pulling everything into my powerhouse.

So we're there. So bring that right leg into tabletop. Left leg comes in the tabletop. And we're gonna hold that right there. (Mychele exhales deeply) The work is already working.

All right, so single leg stretch. Go ahead, right leg comes into the chest, left leg goes out, And switch. Three, two, and one. Bring both legs in, take one quick breather. Head goes down, feet go down.

Go ahead and bring yourself back up. Curl yourself back up, press into that magic circle. Both legs will come together into tabletop. We're gonna do a double leg stretch. Curl up even more onto your shoulder blades if you can.

Both legs reach out and come in. And out and in. Three more. Out. In.

Out. And last one, out and in. Rest everything down. It's already getting real, y'all. Woo, all right, next exercise.

Go ahead, curl yourself all the way up. We have our lovely scissors, or our single straight leg stretch. I'm gonna take that right leg up to about 90 degrees. Left leg can do whatever you want. So I like 90, 45, low.

So hold it there. See if you can bring that leg closer to your magic circle. Kick, kick, switch. Kick, kick, switch. Three, two, one.

Both legs come to the tabletop and bring it down. Your abs are screaming at me and you. All right, next exercise is gonna be the double straight leg stretch. We're gonna take both legs up to 90 degrees. Boom, boom, curl your neck and shoulders up.

Lower the legs down, three counts. Three, two, one, lift it up. Two more, three, two, one, lift it up. Last one, three, two, one. Bring it to tabletop and take a rest.

Go ahead and take the magic circle off of your head. Hold onto it with both sides. We're gonna have a lot of fun here, y'all. So go ahead and curl your neck and shoulders up, head, neck and shoulders come up. Twist to the right side of your body, here we are.

I'm gonna extend my left leg out and bring the right leg towards my chest. See that there, legs are working, switch sides. Switch sides. Notice how I'm holding it. Hold it and switch sides.

(Mychele exhales and inhales deeply) And switch. Evil, aren't I? And switch. Last one. Woo, all right, y'all, let's bring it together.

Let's roll up from there, so both legs will go along out in front of you. Take the magic circle back, keeping your shoulders plugged in. Maybe point your toes, maybe flex your ankles. Whatever you need. Let's see if we can roll up.

Woo. Nope, okay. (laughs) Let's do it again. My abs are mad, okay. Shoulders plugged in, heels are gonna be flexed. I think that's gonna work for me, and roll up.

Yep, I needed a flexed ankle, that's what I need. All right, keep holding onto that magic circle. We're gonna go a little bit wider with our ankles and feet from our mat, and do a spine stretch forward. So what are we doing here? Tall spine, like your back is against the wall.

Arms are straight out in front of you about shoulder level up. I am flexing at my heels. My head is gonna try to go through the magic circle. So pitch yourself forward, back curls back, and bring that head like it's going through the magic circle. Reach towards the feet, reach past the feet.

See how far you can stretch while you keep pulling your ribs back. And then stack your spine back up. Whoa, hamstring stretch. Hello, tendon stretch. Let's do it one more time.

And stretch back, reaches back, curl in C curve. And then head is gonna punch through that magic circle. Reach, reach, reach, reach, reach. (Mychele inhales and exhales deeply) All right, let's bring it to the side body work. So I have my magic circle here next to me.

I might wanna use it, it's up to you. We'll see how we feel. So I'm coming to the side, going to the back of my mat. My shoulder and my elbow is in one line, taking both legs long, stacking my hips. Ring the feet into a little shallow L.

And you have this here. Now, extra credit, sometimes people like to do this. If you don't like that, use your other hand as a kickstand. So here we are, flex up the ankles, both feet are flexed. And we're gonna lift that top leg to the level of our hip.

And again, make sure you're not pitching back. Bring the hips forward, bring the shoulders forward. Nice and proud. We're gonna do our sidekick, so we're gonna kick with a flexed ankle forward. We point the toe and reach it back.

Try not to rock too much on our feet, yes. So let's go, sidekicks. Two, reach back. Heel flexed, point. Flex the heel, point, Flex it, and point it.

Last one, flex and point. Bring it back to the level of the hip. We're lifting and lowering here. Keep the foot pointed, knee stays towards your device. Lift and lower.

And as you lift and lower, I'm gonna talk to you really quickly. Maybe your foot doesn't go up so high. Maybe you have a small range of motion. It's okay, you'll get there. So keep going, we got one more here.

Last one, hold it there. Hover that leg, hold it, OMG. Can I have circles please? I like fruit, so the first fruit we're gonna try is an orange. So three circles, both directions, the size of an orange.

Let's go, three, two, one. Other direction, three, two, one. Now, the size of a blueberry, it's little. Three, two, one. Other way, three, two, one.

Ha, lower the leg. It's already crying. We're not done yet. Go ahead and take that leg, bend it, bend the top leg. Hold onto the ankle, press both hips forward, and really open that chest for a hip flexor stretch.

Ooh, it's so good, it's amazing. Three, two, one, let it down. Let's come over to the other side. Normally I would tease ya'll over, but why would I do that to you today, I like you. Alright, so same thing.

Set yourself up at the back of the mat. Legs come forward, pitching in the letter L. Top hand is over. Lift that leg to the level of your hip. Kick it forward two times, point it back.

Kick, kick, reach. Kick, kick, reach. Kick, kick, reach. Kick, kick, reach. Last one, kick, kick, and reach.

Good, lifting and lowering. Staying tall in the spine, holding that leg up. Lift and lower for five. Four, three, two. Last one, it's burning, I know.

You've got oranges, y'all, three circles. Three, two, one. Other way, three. Is your butt burning, I don't know. Blueberries, three, two, one.

Other side. (Mychele screeches softly) Ha, it's burning. Bend that leg, hold that ankle. Press that hip forward for a nice little stretch. Now, what are we doing next?

We're gonna let it go, boom. Come onto your belly, I'm going onto my belly. Bring the feet together. Maybe you want it parallel, pick your poison. I'm gonna have my forearms on the mat.

Pull the belly button away from the mat. And we're gonna turn on our back body, squeeze at the glutes. So I'm gonna give a little hammy kick. So flex that foot, bring the ankle to the bottom. We kick, kick, and point.

Other side, kick, kick, point. Kick, kick, point. Kick, kick. That was weird. Kick, kick, and point.

This is a flex. Flex, flex, and point. Good, I like what you're doing there. We're still working with the legs. Can we change this?

Can we bring the feet together into a frog position? So the ankles are touching, they're touching, yes. So in this position, we're gonna keep the ankles connected. Press the ankles together, press the the heels together. And that's turning on your back body.

Your bottom is on fire. We're gonna lift and lower these legs. Let's do five, five is enough, right? So tall spine, belly button away. Five, four, three, two.

Can we hold? It's shaking. Pay me my money, that's what I want. This is the money, the shake, the money shake, this is what we're doing. It's happening, I'm doing this with you, and I'm done with it, okay. (laughs) We're out of there.

All right, fun stuff. So now what we're gonna do is a little bit of a short box, as you say. So for the short box, we're gonna come onto our bottoms. We're gonna use this magic circle. So legs are long, stay along with the legs.

If you need to flex your ankles, you can. But I'm gonna stay pointed 'cause I like pointy. Find your comfortable seated position. Go ahead and take the magic circle into your hands. Both hands into the handle.

Side to side stretch, stay tall. I want you to pull over to the side like you're driving a Cadillac. And then the other side. Now when you do it, can we reach a little more diagonally? Yes, and then come diagonal with it, 'cause the hips are getting ready to move.

And then we're gonna take the arms out. I'm flexing the ankles here, I'm gonna twist at my waist. So I'll go towards you first. So coming to the twist, twist at the magic circle, lean back. Keep connected to the mat, come back through center.

Other side, twist, reach back, and center. One more each side, twist, then reach back. Tall spine, stay tall. The legs are working down there to keep you balanced. Other side, twist, and reach back.

Come back through center, take a little shake of the legs. All right, tree. We have options here. Keep the left leg long, right leg will come towards the chest, interlace the fingers behind the thighs, and I want you to bring that leg off of the floor. You may need to pitch back just a little bit.

I got a little extra loving in the front, so I kinda press into 'em. So holding that there, we're gonna extend and bend the leg three times. Three, two, one. Hold it up there. Walk up to where you're comfortable with your leg holding onto it.

And then bend your head towards the knee. Good, and then come outta that nice and long. Bend the knee, place it down. Other side, same thing. This is without the magic circle, we're gonna get the magic circle involved in a second.

So bring that knee to the chest. Wide shoulders, wide arms, point and bend. Three, two, one. Hold that up, walk the hands forward, hold that there. Curve into the leg, try to keep it as straight as possible.

(Mychele inhales and exhales deeply) Hold it there, and maybe this time ride it down. Ride it all the way down and take that stretch. Ooh. Yes, so that was fun. So I'll give you a magic circle option because it's magical.

We're gonna take the handle and put our, the arch of our foot in that same place. Wide elbows. And we're gonna just take the stretch here for our tree. You can bend and straighten here. Three, two, one.

Hold it. Extra credit if you wanna use that magic circle to bring that leg closer. Hello, yes, good. Let that rim reach down. Other side 'cause we stay even.

Keep that toe pointed, bring that leg up, stretch. Maybe you're gonna find a little more stretch here, so go ahead and bring it in, bring it in, bring it in. Woo, and there we go. I like it, ride it down. Take the magic circle to the side for a little bit.

We're gonna lay back and go into some toe touches. Now, go ahead and bring the legs up to a 90 degree level. I like my feet pointed, but you can also adjust yourself to go into a flexed position. Make sure that your bottom is flat as possible to the mat, and we're going to go into some toe touches. So holding the magic circle, we're gonna reach up towards our toes for five.

Five, four, three, two, one. Because it's fun, we're gonna open that up into a V. Whoa. And we're gonna reach through that V for five. Five, four, three, two, one.

And because I'm evil, we're gonna open and close the V. So we're gonna leave it open, and close, and open. What, and close. One more, and open, and close. Hello, bring those legs down.

Put the magic circle down for two seconds, and come onto a kneeling position. Hello, it's happening. Now we're gonna get into the juicy, good stuff. So hip flexor stretch. I have the magic circle as a kicks in if you need it, but I'm going to be on my knee, on my knees, and taking my right leg in front of me.

So staying into a box, tall spine. Magic circle is here if you need it. So hip flexor stretch. I want you to walk that foot forward. And the hip flexor stretch is happening in the opposite knee.

So go ahead and press forward with that hip here. This leg is also working to hold you up from behind, so you're getting a stretch and work in the quad. The rear of the hamstrings are happening here, and the hip flexor stretching here. Come back, come back to the center, switch legs. Use that magic circle.

You got it, all right, here we go. There's my original position, now we're gonna walk this foot forward just a smidge. And then as we walk forward, take the magic circle with you. Drop that hip, stretch the hip. Woo, yes.

Oh yeah, it's getting real, y'all. And then come back, walk it back. Now we're gonna add a twist. Same thing, other leg will come out. Bring the magic circle in front of you.

Press forward, lunge forward, and twist towards the kneeling leg. Extra credit, stretch, putting the magic circle on the side, opening the side body. Come back to center, switch sides. That got real, didn't it? All right, so find that hip flexor stretch.

Bring the magic circle towards you. Twist towards that working leg. Yeah, I know, I know. Hold it there. Extra credit, stretch it.

(Mychele exhales deeply) You're getting into your psoas. And I'm not cursing. Let go back this way and bring it back through center. I'm facing you now, magic circle is here. Right leg will come out.

What, abduction, abduction. AB and A deduction. Stretch it, open that thing, right there. Yeah, the eyes are big, mine too. And then bring it back through center.

Press into that heel to bring it out. Other side does the same thing. What? Ooh. Ha.

Told you, one side is the love, the other side is angry. And then bring it back. Can we do it one more time, just one more, one more. I'm feeling like you can do it without the magic circle. Reach out.

What? Hold it, this is a picture, y'all. (chuckles) And then come back through center. I'm gonna touch the floor because I need a little love right there. Other side, let's do it, boom, boom. Ooh, hello.

You're ready for the splits, y'all. Come back and close that circle. Last part of this lovely exercise because you are so amazing, you're so open right now. We're gonna go into a pigeon. Alright, quadriped, take that right leg and slide it.

It can be here or it can be straight away. And now that you've opened your hips, look at that. Get that out the way. Look at this, tall spine. This can be bent, y'all, so find the happy place.

Extra credit, take that magic circle and reach for it. What? Mhm. And walk yourself out of it. Let's switch sides, swinging around.

Other side reaches back for your pigeon. Press yourself forward, tall spine. It's a stretch, it's a treat it's a little bit of rehab, it's a little bit of hip check. And then walk it forward, reach that magic circle. Stretching through the arms, the chest, the hips are so open.

And then walk it back. And then we will come back to the front to see how you're doing. How you doing? Are you okay, are you all right? Cool, go ahead, butterfly stretch, last thing.

Heels together, wide, wide hips. If you need something under the legs, pillows, bolsters, whatever you need, find that stretch. Hold onto the ankles, baby. The hips are loving you right now. Is it okay if we walk forward?

Oh, ooh, hello, hi hips. Can we bow our heads? Can we walk forward and then walk it back? That's what I meant to say, walk it back. Can we do it one more time?

Okay, let's go, last one. If you're feeling froggish, you can do this straddling. I like you, so I didn't do that. So here we go. (laughs) Let's do one more just to straddle, to close it out. The legs are doing the leg things.

Walk it forward. You're done, you're done, I swear to God. All the way. Keep both knees up, don't let 'em roll in. A few breaths here.

And then walk back in. Walk back in, walk back in, walk back in. Go ahead, bring those legs together. And then take that ankle over the knee-ish. Stretch forward, this is opening that hip Flex at the ankle or keep it pointed.

(Mychele exhales deeply) Good stretch, switch sides. Figure four stretch, tree, whatever you wanna call it. Let's get into it, point that toe. I like flexed feet because it makes me work a little bit harder. My hamstrings need love.

Soft knees, y'all. (Mychele inhales and exhales deeply) And walk yourself out of it. Go ahead, sit crisscross applesauce. And congratulate yourself because you are done. You are not only done, you are magical.

Thank you, see y'all next time.