Full-Body Functional Mat

Hello, everybody. I'm here with my good friend and peer Mandy White who owns Lapla Pilates, and we are going to do a funky matte routine that is addressing both hips and shoulders and arms and wrists as was covered in the tutorials, and it's just creative and different. So to start, we are going to be working with weights now. These weights are to help open and stretch the body. And if you really want to go for broke with this, you will eventually build up in the gymnastic world.

They build up to half the body weight. We're not going there with with five pound weights. So what we're going to do is take these hand weights and get up higher than the floor. So this is roll down on steroids. Bring your feet into a slight pilates v or completely parallel. Tighten your quads and your glutes so you stand up nice and tall and then the first movement is bringing the arms so the weights come in front of you.

So I'm opening my shoulder blade, and for me or not, I'm doing a roll down, keeping the knees very straight. Use the weights to allow them to stretch you and you go as low as you're able to go. That's why we're on a box. So if you're a flexible person, you can go beyond the floor and then start tightening the glutes, pulling the kneecaps up And rolling back up right here, pay attention to the shoulders that they stay down, and then roll the shoulders open. That's set number one. Take a breath in.

Breathing out. Roll down. Where these weights are very helpful. They're really, really helpful to open up and stretch out the the tendons and ligaments in the spine that connect each vertebra and to open up a lot of very tight congestion in the spine and the back. Repetition number two. Take a breath in and breathing out, roll down again.

See if you can keep your hips right over your heels. Don't hinge back, and you will go even lower because you're stretching out further. Rolling up, I have found people that start out. They can't even get to the floor. By repetition five or six, they are going deeper than they ever went before, like, six inches 12 inches increase in flexibility, and that's where adding the weight can be very helpful in breaking up tight muscle patterns again.

Breathing out, rolling down. I think we in repetition number five, I haven't been counting. Coming up, and lifting, Mandy. You keep on going, and I'm going to just come over and point out a few things. So as Mandy's rolling down, stop right here.

This is where people are I want you to pull the ribs right back into your spine. And tuck your tail more. Now keep rolling down. So what I'm looking for you all to experience is this opening right here in the lumbar spine. That's where we all grip and it's kind of we think that's our anatomy.

Yes. And then send the sit bones up as high as you can. There you go. And then try and keep the kneecaps this pulled up as you roll back up. I point that out because you can really, really stretch the spine massively. If you keep working this, take a breath in, breathing out, roll down again. Really poor right there in that mid back area, and down.

Yes. Let the shoulders go when you're at the bottom. Really release them and roll up. You may find you don't recognize your body by the time you finish this. Take your breath in and breathing out. Reach as low as you can.

And then roll up. Yes. I think I didn't quite check, but I believe Mandy wasn't going beyond the beyond the, box itself, but by now she's definitely a few inches lower. We'll do two more rolling down. And rolling back up. Opening, don't forget that final opening.

And I'll just point out one thing before we do the final one. As people row up right here, there's a tendency to pull the shoulders up. So you want to take that final row back and keep lose the weights to keep the shoulders going down. So, Amanda, you keep in your own rhythm and I will just do, I'll catch up to you. Yes. Now, right here, long arms dangling down. Use the weights to drag your shoulders down. Down, down, down, and then they just roll around the sides of the ribs and your sternum lifts.

I think we're done with that part. So stepping down with the weights on the box. So now we will do something called inchworms in the gym world with a variation of the roll down we do on the mat, but we're starting at the back, and we're gonna emulate the same roll down we just did. So really clamp the hips, squeeze your inner thighs, pull up first of all, and the first thing is rolling down to the mat. And if you get to the floor, you should get to the floor by now because you're stretched out. But if you're one of those that you're not there yet, bend your knees so you can place your hands flat on the floor and then walk out to a plank.

Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, and lock your plank. Now you'll walk in with your hips and your feet keep your knees straight and walk in getting your feet as close to your hands as you possibly can. Walk out again. As you walk out, shift your weight forward onto the hands. And then walk back in with the feet, and tie one more time walking forward, plank, and then walk back in with your feet, all the way in, all the way in, all the way in, all the way in, and roll up to an upright position. And let's turn around.

Now, we will be doing a lot of walking out and walking in. One thing I want to point out for you people in cyberspace. When you walk out, it's I see this all the time sag, sag, sag, sag, sag, sag, and that's not what you want to do. So you have to have this super clamped hip structure. And when you walk out, the hip should stay tracking on the midline of the body, and then coming back the same thing. So you have a lot of control without the shift of the hips.

So that is basic basic to keep in mind every time you do the walking out and the walking back in. So we will start this again. You're going to roll down Get your fingers or your hands on the floor. Clamp your hips and see if you can walk out in a straight line. And come to a plank.

So check that your shoulders are right above the hips. And now let's bend the knees on the floor. So we're going to do push ups from a knee position. If possible, bring your hips a bit forward and anchor your shoulders wide on your back. And let's bend down now.

I don't I'm not strong. So I'm only doing hand up and press and up and press. This is good because you can see what a good strong push up is and then curl the toes under. Lift back to plank and walk your hands back to your feet. From this position, turn your toes out so you have a pilates v again. And bend your knees and bring your hips down towards your heels.

Lift your chest up so you're in a frog like position. Now you'll lift your hips up again and press your heels down. Bringing your head towards your knees. Bend your knees again. Keep your heels down as long as you can.

So you're reluctantly lifting them up, lifting the chest, and then pressing the heels down to come up. Again, bending the knees and looking up. Now shift your hands a little bit more back You want your weight back towards the heels. If you can, lift one arm up and back, lift the other arm up We're kind of prepping the hips and the legs for squats. Squats are a functional movement in the human body, which has become a historical remnant of the He passed, because indigenous people squatted all the time, but modern civilized man forgot that that's part of the genetic pattern of the body. Now, another way of opening here, so we're still here you take one hand and you open and back, the other hand and open and back. So we're just starting to get rotation in the upper body and back.

And the other hand and open and back. Now from here, hands are on the floor. Turn the heels a little bit more to face back and see if you can press your hips, your heels back, but keep your knees bent. So we're kind of coming into a deep squat and then come back down. Hips go back and down. One more time hips go back, really shift the hips back, Mandy, bend the knees more and get your bottom to go back, and bend back down.

From here, you're going to take the hips up to a straight position and walk back out to a plank. So we're gonna walk work a little bit more into our hips. So here we are in a strong plank. Lift your right leg. And down. Lift your left leg.

Now as much as you can, you don't let those hips move out and in. Right leg. Down. Left leg, your glute and your hamstrings should be firing one more time. Right leg and down.

Left leg and down. From here, send your hips back. This is like a down dog in yoga and walk your feet in a little bit. You the goal isn't to get the heels done, but get to a place where you're relatively comfortable and you can use your hands. So now let's let's really work this into the shoulders. Shift your weight forward towards your hands a bit, look forward. And now ground the hands and press as far back as you can, dropping your head down. So you're stretching out the shoulders.

You're stretching out your arm. You're stretching out your armpits and lengthening your sit bones away. Come forward again. And again, start pushing with the hands. The pressure comes from the index finger and some really push away from the hands to get that opening in the shoulders.

One more time, forward. Walk your feet towards each other so they're together and press back one more time. Now from here, same movement. We're going to work more into the hips, take your right leg, lift it as high as it will go. Same principle you did before in plank.

Bring it back down. Left leg goes up. Lift it. Make the glutes and the hamstrings work. Down. Right leg goes up.

Down. Left leg goes up. See if you can keep pressing away from the hands to get more length and down. Right leg goes up and down. Left leg goes up and down and walk your feet up towards your hands.

Get the feet together and again take your one leg up and down. Take the other leg up and down. First leg up. Oh, she's really nice and tight. She's working way more hard than I am.

Other lake, love my students being much better than me. First leg up, and down. And other leg up and down now. Keep your weight on your hands, walk your feet back to plank, and then walk your hands back toward your feet. Back. Back, back, back, back, and just roll up for a minute to change shape and change direction. Very, very good.

Roll the shoulders. Yes. Roll the shoulders. Roll the shoulders. One more time. Roll the shoulders just to change shape. Roll down to the floor again, rolling down, and walk forward and then come down on your hands and knees.

So we're getting hands under the shoulders, knees, under the hips, and let's work a little bit into abduction. So bring the knees together, and taking your I'm gonna do my left leg. You just lift the knee up. So you're looking to get as much of an external rotation but keep the hips and hips even and down. Again, lift and down. So the first segment, the foot can be resting on the floor.

Only the knee is externally rotating. And again, now lift the knee up, And keeping the hips even now lift the knee higher, just watch you don't have an internal rotation. So, Mandy, your foot should be lower than your knee. That's it and down. So that's the goal to get that knee higher than the foot. And down. Knee higher than the foot and down.

Knee higher than the foot and down one last time. Knee higher than the foot And down, all of you will find that temptation will do other side is to internally rotate. So, just the knee opens and down. Just the knee opens and down. Destiny opens. So the foot is kind of still grounded on the floor one more time. And now we add height.

So get the knee lifted and then just lifting the same angle to the side and down. Nee, lifting the air and down. Nee, lifting the air. And down. Me lift in the air and down. Last one knee lift in the air and down and then sit back into your heels.

And get into a nice vertical position to loosen up the shoulders clasp your hands behind your back and first movement. Are you okay with that? Yeah? K. If you want to sit with your legs extended out or in another way, so if you if this position is not comfortable for you, please sit any way you like. You can be like this. You can be like this.

Any way that works for you. Yes. So once you're seated in that position, squeeze your shoulder blades together. Really clasp them. Now keep pinching them. So we're trying to get this cuff as far back as we can.

Then stretch the elbows, lock them, and then pull the arms away from you. So a lot of you will have tight shoulders and tight elbows. So I'm going to show you something very cool how to get more range of motion. So for a squeeze of shoulder blades together. Now her inner elbow is right here. I'm going to roll roll it towards the body and out.

Bend the arms for a minute. Okay. You know what? Here we go. Squeeze your shoulders. Now lift his shoulders up to the ear. Roll and then pull them back.

So now stretch. So, Mandy is tight. And it's just a now, you see, if you take the elbow and roll it, it will start to open. The joint actually, can you feel that? Yes. So that Nowski squeeze shoulder shoulder blade. Yes. And then that's your work right now.

Just doing that very good. So you keep working that, and I'll demonstrate. So what I'm doing is I'm rolling the elbow. The crease of the elbow forward. So I'm here. Now, I've been doing this for a long time, so it's easy for me, but I started not so easy.

So you see, I'm rolling it. She had a strap. So our hands weren't together. Take the hands to the side. Roll the elbow and now take them back. That's the movement because we're looking to stretch out the inside of the elbow to help open up the chest. Yeah.

Yes. Exactly. It's locked into an internal rotation, very common, and sometimes we can be very strong in that shape, but we always want we want more than what we have always to keep life interesting. So from here, I think I will be sitting back, but let's have you a little bit up. Are you okay with this? You're gonna take your hands, and here we go. We're pressing the fingers down.

So right here is another place to work into this. So if you're tight, bring the hands closer to the knees, focus on the crease of the elbow. Really imagine hyper extending in your elbow. And then once you have your maximum stretch there, start moving your shoulders back. So you're increasing the stretch and then roll through the fingers.

You can feel the blood flow. Yes. She said I can feel the blood flow and her hands are getting her She's going bright red here, which means we're opening the fascia up and we're releasing a lot of stuck patterns in the muscles. Now we reverse. We put the back of the hand, straighten as best you can, the elbows, Notice what I'm doing, Mandy. I'm taking the elbows and I'm rotating them around towards so the that's it.

Yes. She just spiraled the inside to face front and there's more stretch. And then you reluctantly roll back and suffer. Again, put palms facing out, come forward and press the palm of the hand down. Open the crease of the elbow. And roll back.

Opening the hands up. So good for us because back of the hand, so many of us who have hands get stuck in computer land, typing, and carpal tunnel and who knows what else and roll through. Yes. Now, let's have the palms of the hands this way. So you're going to take and just circle around the wrists.

Circle. Circle. Circle, and then reverse your circle. So we're loosening up and we're mobilizing the whole shoulder area. We're mobilizing the wrists.

And we're starting to stretch the elbows and the joints have a full spectrum of energy in them. It's kind of like when your joint isn't fully open, it's like you have a a hose with a kink. Because I have found over and over again when people get the joint open, there's such a surge of good feelings and energy that come in. I'll turn this way, Mandish, say as you are. Okay. Don't. And you're gonna lift and lift.

So I'm just turning so the camera can see me. So I'm, first of all, moving away from the hand to bend into the fingers. And now I'm gonna stay on top of the hand. This is harder. Lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, and shake your hands out because they're going to be tired, but they've done a good job.

Yeah. Think how tight the little spots that you don't think about yet. I know. Yes, Mandy was just saying how tight. You don't even know that you're tight until you feel it and it's like they inspiring. I hope to open it up.

Fists make a fist. Get the fist down. So see if you can bear weight. And again, notice, roll the crease of the elbow to face the front. So that's it. That's it.

Now from here, bend the elbows and pop up her to fist. Bend the elbows pop up to her fist. So we're strengthening and activating a lot of dormant possibility in the hands and the arms and They're like a code of self expression, actually. So much of the body holds a language. We don't realize that it's a language, but it is because we all read it all the time in each other.

We roll our eyes when we have a certain emotion, we slouch, when we have a certain energy and impact. We pull away. We stand up. That's all language of emotion. Very good. And then sit back. I know if it's just and then a little bit better.

Just doing it. Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful. She was saying how she's her knee is loosening up. Everything's loosening up. So from here, we're going to just get onto our hands and back and onto our hands.

So we're getting used to loosening up the hands, place our hands and weight, place our hands and weight. One more time place the hands and weight. Now, the next one is a combination of weight bearing onto the arms, but also core. So let's place the hands quite close to the knees. Round the back. So this is like a scoop or pulling in. It's like roll up or hundreds.

Shift the weight onto your hands. Elbows are straight. And now can you lift your knees up? Towards your chest and down. Wait on the hands lift and down.

Lift and down. Lift, so this is upper body and core, and flexibility in the legs, and sit back down. Right. So now we're going to combine this all together. I'll just demonstrate once you see, coming and lifting. And back, this is easier than what we did.

How you make it harder? The closer your hands are to your hips are harder it is to lift. Eventually, all your body weight is on your hands. Sunday, you lift your feet off the ground. So you're completely balanced on your arms. Your upper body has that much ability to hold a strength, but it doesn't happen in one day.

So we're just in day two of this preparation. So here we are. We'll just do another five here. Press and lift down and start to notice how you're going over the hands. That's it.

And over the hands. And over the hands. One more time, over the hands and down. Now, back to our legs and our hips. This is a form of stretching out.

This is in order to develop the skill of doing splits both front and side, but it includes a contractive element of, the technique used in physical therapy and in sports medicine to increase your range of motion but stimulate the strength in the muscle so that your body actually is willing to stretch because it knows it has a muscle stability that you won't over stretch. That's part of the factors why people get stuck and they don't get loose. So let's bring the right leg forward. You want to come into a lunge that you're comfortable with. And from here, just lunge forward. So you're starting to find where there's a stretch in the back hip, a stretch in the front leg.

This is like, you know, what's it called on the reformer? At the end in the split series, you have the lunging one of the lunging splits. So you run to just stretch into that area. Now from here, think of your front knee and back knee and pull them together. So I am you can stay down, but I'm clamping. I'm dragging them so I'm contracting very strongly. All my muscles all the way up to my glutes.

Everything is activated. And then when I release, just take your back leg further back and sink into it a little bit deeper. Yes. Now, here we go. Again, we're going to contract, contract, contract, contract, contract, And then see if you can go deeper. If you can't go deeper, that's fine.

You just want to sync to your maximum today. Again, contract, contract, contract, contract, contract, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, and then sync a little bit deeper And honestly, just keep on going and you will someday quite soon find yourself in splits. So let's do the other side. So they're like, we'll come up. You find the lunge. You can be right up here.

If you can't get your hands to the floor, it's fine to be on yoga blocks or something. Just like fi meet yourself where you are and find that first level of stretching your tissue. From here, pull your knees to give the knees and the front foot of pulling and dragging towards each other so you're squeezing all your muscles as tight as you can. And then relax and go a little bit deeper. Again, squeeze.

Right? And then release. This is used. This is these are stretching techniques used in gymnastics in sports medicine, in physical therapy. One more time, squeeze squeeze squeeze squeeze squeeze squeeze squeeze. Hold hold hold, hold, and then release a little bit further.

And then come on out. What's that? We okay. She doesn't want to. She's going for full splits. It's very stimulating. And it wakes up it wakes up the muscles and it the the what happens, you can keep on going.

What happens is the muscles go into a panic when you're just stretching, because they don't trust that they're not gonna get over stretched. And honestly, a lot of us, I am guilty of that, were addicted to stretching, but it was what's called passive stretching. Why I was just making long fibers, but I was not building power. And I ended up messing up my hips as a result, very common with the loose type of people. They don't have muscle control.

This technique is a game changer. So we do have to finish with side splits because we can't just be frontal. Yeah. Right. Right. Yes. So pulling together set her hips.

So I'm going to turn. Yeah, might do well. We're gonna take one leg out. So these are one legged side splits, but where the goal is to get all the way to a straddle, what's called a straddle. So you have a choice of the foot here.

You have a choice of the foot here. I play with it and just find that first level of stretch. Now, here we go. We're gonna contract. We're gonna put the heel and the knee towards each other so you squeeze and attempt to drag the legs together. You're contracting.

You're adductors super, super strong. Hold, hold, hold, hold, hold, hold, and then sink a little bit deeper. In this new position, move your hips forward and back. Forward and back, so you find all the areas that Gremlins live in. Yeah. And here we go again, we're gonna squeeze raw power hips and then a little bit further out.

And then check what's happening with this bent knee. Bring the foot a little in, nodeman the other way inwards and away from me, foot in. There we go. That's externally rotating your hip and pull again, pull pull pull pull pull. Right? Yep.

And then release and see if you can go a little deeper or just return to the split. So honestly, sometimes you start and you're like, in panic mode, And then day three, day four, the muscles go, and it's a real good feeling because then you get this elasticity of power and strength kicking in. So you can keep going on that side if you want, but we'll also I'm gonna change side. I think I've recreated the devotee. She loves this, a new worshipper of splits.

It's a game changer, honestly. You've never been able to split. Yeah. Yeah. This is Okay. If you practice this way, if you have a diligent so the question was I could never do split. So here we go. We're gonna contract and hold, and I'm gonna share stories with you. About the fact that we all settle into a pattern of what our body's like because it's kind of where we lived and then release and open a little bit more.

But the body is incredibly malleable and it can change. It's more like you have to want it because you in order to change the tissue, you have to make it a priority to practice this regularly and consistently over a period of time. Because then you change the one more time syncing and one more time contract. With the committed practice, you can change anything. You can train yourself into anything, but you have to have a destination.

I want splits and then release moving back and forth. And then when you're ready, you come out of this. So I suppose my final comment, as we close-up these practices, there's two ways to approach your training. One is maintenance where you work out. You go and do a yoga practice, pilates practice.

Whatever you do, you do it, and you have a good sense of moving your body. You go for a run. Most people live in that place, and honestly, it's the best. You want it. This is basic, basic. But if you want the next level up, You want some specific targets, and then you take all of this training and you focus it in a direction.

That's what athletes do. They make certain things a priority, and you train your body into that priority. You can achieve anything. And honestly, it's real good to have goals because it it keeps you outside of the problem area of your body. Most people just go, or have pain.

I wanna get out of pain. I don't have abs. I want abs, but it gets you into a higher level of involvement and it's very rewarding. So go find your goals, make your dreams come true, and don't stop moving.