Daily Mobility Wake Up

Hi, everyone. It's Amy havens here. I am so excited to be back at Pilates anytime sharing some classes with you. This is a all over mobility feel good, multivitamin 10 to 12 minute segment of movement. Pre walk, pre hike, pre run, pre work. If you've got a few minutes, you don't wanna wake up, join me. So we're gonna start with our feet wide, arms up in the air, and you're just welcoming your day.

If it's the morning, middle night, doesn't matter. Just take a nice deep breath in. Take it all in, exhale, and just let yourself settle a little bit. We'll do that twice more, deep breath in. We're trying to elongate right away and take some pressure out of our spine and exhale release a little bit. One more will reach up.

Think the whole spine lifts And then one side of your spine a little higher than the other and then the second side a little higher. And you're just alternating. You're waking up. It's like a multivitamin. I already said that, but it is.

And reach and reach 1 more each direction. Waking up and lift now. Take your arms down by your side. I'm gonna turn sideways just so you can see, but you stay right where you're at. We're gonna do a spine dance, waking up flexion and extension.

So I want you to bend your knees, get into a pretty deep bend here. I'm gonna put my hands on my knees, And first, you start with a nice long, elongated spine. Let's take a breath into that, and we'll flex our spine. Inhale into extension of the spine. Go as far as you feel like you wanna extend and flex.

We're just dancing in the spine. Moving head away from tail tail away from head. One more here. Moving the top to the bottom bottom to the top. Now it gets a little more fun.

Try just to move the bottom of the spine. Flection back to extension. Flection back to extensions. You're trying to hold your other upper body and extension while you mobilize the lower back. And then hold that in extension and mobilize into flexion in your upper back.

Just dancing through the spine. Try to hold the low back in the curve. And one more. Let's go all the way to flexion. Okay. Now we'll do segments. So back lower back goes to extension, slowly moving into extension all the way through the neck, starting at the low back, going to flexion, and come all the way flexion in the neck. Again, from the tail, thoracic, cervical, and flexion tail, lumbar thoracic cervical, reversing it, starting at your head and extend thoracic and lumbar and then flexion all the way back.

You're just dancing. You're waking up. Mobility through the spine. Let's do one where everybody extend through the head, neck, thoracic tail and one more time that big v stretch, and we'll take a roll down. So just take yourself forward roll Get your hands down on the floor.

And I want you just to pause, you know, or stop in a quadruped. Open up your hands as wide as you can. I prefer to bend my toes this way because I wanna wake up the toe joints, and this is to wake up our wrists Our shoulders, our hips, knees, and feet, shifting your weight. I'm in a relatively neutral spine, I like to think about my head guiding me reaching me forward and my sit bones and tail reaching me back. Pulling on the mat a little bit.

Pushing on the mat a little bit twice more. So it's waking up as many parts of our body. As we can in a short amount of time preparing for your day. Okay. Hip joint time. So have a seat.

Your feet are apart. Your knees are pretty wide. Your hands are behind you. Go ahead and lean back on your arms a little bit. And then gently, just let your knees rock in.

This is pretty common. We see this a lot. We're trying to do some internal rotation and external rotation of our femurs in our hip sockets and the whole pelvis itself going into internal and external rotation. Sometimes there's some sticky sensation. Move slowly if you feel that.

You can stay on one side if you feel that. Like, this would be my how I would do that if it was a sticky hip. Kinda rock into it a few times if you needed to see that. And we'll do four and 3, just drop into your body, and 2, and 1. Okay? And we'll take this more of a a lot of times we'll call it a z sit. Here's I'll show you the shape. Here's the shape I make.

I have been my front knee. My foot's kind of in front of this thigh. The other knees behind. You can have your hands in front of you this way, everybody. And just let your chest come down and up. You can do your hands on the floor.

Let your body weight be what stretches this leg into external rotation. Okay? But if you don't want your hands, it's actually kinda nice to not use them I'm just gonna rest my hands right behind my back and just let that body weight move over the leg You can breathe. However, it feels best. Couple more dipping the chest down towards your thigh. And I'm gonna ask us not to overthink any of what should be happening. This is your body moving and connecting other side. No overthinking.

If it's possible. Okay. Foot in front of me. This foot behind as much as you can. Remember, if you have a sticky hip, you gotta modify that a little bit. That would be this, probably putting hands in front and just take that body rocking forward and back. The upper body weight coming down on that thigh is what provides the stretch in the joint and the muscles. And, again, if you'd prefer not to use your hands, I'm gonna try that three or four times here.

I'm just enjoying the sensation of the body coming down. Oh, it's a beautiful way just to stretch without, you know, it's an active kind of stretch. I get that all the way down to my sacrum and my lumbar spine. Feel so good. Wake it up. Okay. Good. So now we're gonna come up on our knees.

We won't be there long, but we're gonna think up on our knees. I'll face you And then per take one leg. I'll take this one. That happens to be my right knee. And I want you to be a little turned out on this hip. This leg pretty parallel.

Knee out over your second toes, and we lunge really gently. For me, I love to feel this flexion and just driving that knee over those second toes, second and third. That wonderful stretch in the inner leg, the hip, Again, if you want your hands on your leg, you can take that or you can take your arms anywhere they serve you, you know, anywhere. Push the foot into the floor a little bit. We'll take twice more.

So use that floor push Good. We're gonna stay here just this one and just rock a little about six times. Try not to hold back. Let it go. Let your joints soften. Let those muscles ease. Good. One more, and we'll take the other side.

Alright. So you just find yourself in an external rotation. We just warmed up that parallel and easy does it. As you lunge over, aiming that knee over the second and third toes. Yeah. And, again, hands on legs is fine. Arms open. You can V lift if you want. Should be nice to stretch. That. Right? And we're gonna stay there and do 6 little extra.

I'm using the foot really pushing it into the floor three and 4. And 6. Ah, good. Okay. Quadruped again. I'm gonna stay facing you for this one. And hands open wide knees underneath your hips.

And in fact, I'll yeah. I'm gonna do it starting this way. I want you just to sway your rib cage. Whatever that means for you, we happen to be by the ocean, of course, maybe you're the waves, the the current of the water. Letting your ribs move.

Right? This is a big place of the body that gets kind of restricted if we're tense or stiff. So let's your rib cage dance from the right and left I'm, again, using the mat, and I'm pushing my hands into the floor to help kinda guide me to the side. Let those ribs move. And you'll notice your head and your pelvis will move opposite of your ribs. That's normal. Let it go.

You can go lower to the floor, and you'll start to feel your chest muscles getting a little wake up in your upper inner arms. Good. I'm gonna count down from 4. Let it go through. Really loosey goosey. One of my favorites.

So healthy to do. Okay. On our stomach. More for the chest muscles. Alright. Open up the arms, everybody. Legs are apart.

Pick up a leg, up behind you, bend the knee, and you'll send that foot over behind the other body. And I'm you can see what I'm doing now. My chest is up, and I am letting my shoulder, the one that's close to the floor, really stretched down toward the floor. So my from my sternum to my armpit, I'm really getting broad. This other hand is again kind of pushing Then you lift that foot off the floor and you return just onto your tummy, other side. So pick up a leg.

You bend the knee. You reach the foot over behind you. Use that opposite hand and you push. You can look in either direction. I happen to be looking at the hand that's pushing me, letting my chest really stretch toward the floor.

And we'll do a couple more now, more flow. So just lift. Let the shoulder dip toward the mat. Look. Take a breath and down again. Lift. So, you know, getting ready for a day or anytime, any movement? Like, what about the shoulders and the posture? A lot of times we're slouched forward.

This won't let you do that for sure. Opening that line up one more time. I just love that. I feel so good. And notice a whole spine again is involved in rotation. So coming back up on hands and knees, We're gonna crouch into a little ball shape.

Okay? Do what you can here. Some of us have longer Achilles tendons and calf muscles, some are shorter. That's okay. Open up your hands and put them in front of you.

What I'd like us to do is spend just a little time picking up the heels and bending those toe joints, really healthy rock a little onto your hands. And now if you can, and some of us can get our heels all the way down to the floor. That's not mandatory. I just want you to get them in the direction of the floor and your pelvis rolled under. It's a calf stretch. It's a low back stretch, and we'll do 4 more rocking forward and back. We'll find a little flow.

So this little movement segment intended to wake up pretty much our whole body. All of our joints that we can. Major muscle groups. Here we are. We're gonna do a forward stretch of our hamstrings. We are going to roll up all the way returning to that v stretch position for 1 more.

I'll face you, arms up, a little bit of side body. Just stretch. We'll do 4. Just 2 each side. No one ever thought things, did they? You just moved like I did? It's nice. We don't have to think about everything so detailed all the time.

Lower your arms. You guys have a great rest of your day or evening or what have you. Come back to it often because I think you'll feel the power of just mobilizing a little bit. See you next time.