Around the World on the Mat

Hi. I'm Misty Lynn Cotton, and we are going to do a quick and dirty intermediate mat session. It's meant to feel good. It's meant to play. It's not meant to feel very aggressive or aggressive. So let's just play with some warming up first. I'd like to start sitting here.

You can be crisscross applesauce. You can sit up on a block if that's more comfortable. But find your vertical posture. You are on top of your sits bones, and you'll start from your head, and it's as if you're peeling off of a wall. Without falling behind your sits bones, you're just rounding forward.

Letting your back stretch. To come back up, you'll start from the base of the spine and really think of creating space in between each bone of the spine until you're back up to the top. Two more like this. Using your breath, of course, because holding your breath is not a good way to stay alive. We're curling up and over without collapsing down, inhaling at the bottom, and exhale again, placing one bone on top of the next, until we get to the top and see how much taller we can be, one more. Exhale nodding and curling up an over full exhalation until you get to the bottom. Take another sip of air, and let's try to take it over a little bit more.

Let your head stretch and just gently turn your head side to side. Coming back to the center as you're rolling up stay on the sits bones. Sitting up nice and tall. Moving into some simple side bending here. One hand will come down.

We'll side bend over and stretch. Let your ear pour your brains out to the mat. Kidding, don't do that. Other side, as you're stretching, you're thinking of getting longer, up and over, rather than just going down. So I'm going up and over, finding my side bend, letting my head drape, I'm rolling back up against stacking those vertebrae, and last side up and over. And returning to the center switching the crossover, your legs, if you're crossed. If you're not crossed, just hang tight.

From here, going to wash our face. That's what I call this. So we're going to bring our hands together inner elbows touching, turn your palms to face you. Your shoulders will be a little rounded forward, but think of keeping your collar bones wide anyway. From here, you're going to come up and pull back down, trying to keep the forearms and the sides of the hands together, lift, lower. It's like peekaboo.

Pilates version. Up. And now now we're gonna add shoulders here. So we're going to come up. And as you open, I want you to open your shoulders and chest. Bring the arms back down to the sides, feel the cracks and the pops. Come back up, let the fingertips touch.

Roll the elbows in and pull them back down. So this is all about mobility. Can we mobilize? Can we find our open posture? And as we're coming back down and in, can we allow the bones to go where they need to go without disrupting anything lower in the chain. We're going to come out and open here, and then we'll sit facing this way.

You're sitting up nice and tall. The hands can either be here on your knees here behind your thighs or they can reach straight ahead. Partial rollbacks to begin scooping from the pelvis to roll back. You'll hold here. Take a big breath.

And exhale rolling up, it starts from the bottom, lift the breastbone as you come up so that when you're at the top, the breastbone is over the pubic bone. Let's do it again, scooping and rolling back. Trying to keep the shoulders uninvolved. Inhale, and exhale hollowing to roll up, getting tall at the top. One more here scooping the pelvis. Keeping your gaze on the horizon rather than letting your chin pull your gaze down. Hold. Inhale.

Nice soft exhalation as you come back up to sit tall adding on. We're adding marching here. So you'll scoop back to your point of control. Let's bring the arms into Jeannie because I like it, and we're holding here. We'll lift the first leg thinking of creasing at the hip joint.

So I'm not really changing the angle of the knee in as much as I'm trying to keep the bottom of the leg still and let all the work happen from the hip joint. Four? And three, free your jaw, for your eyebrows. They didn't do anything wrong, so let them go. Now we're holding here big breath in, exhale take a small scoop back to roll up to sit tall. We'll take a big breath in here. And here we go again, adding on, scoping back.

And holding here now will slide the right leg away. We'll dorce the flex here, but we're still thinking of reaching through the back of the leg. Follow the foot comes down, push the other leg and pull it in, and push. And as you're working through the legs, again, the torso is staying stable. One more each side.

And here's your last one, stable in the torso. Big breath in. Exhale deepen the abdominals to come all the way up, breastbone over the pubic bone, and extend your legs for spine stretch forward. Flexing the ankle staying up on your sits bones, arms reach long, Big breath, nod the chin to the chest and curl up and over as if you're pressing a tray across the table, your spine is round. As you roll back up, stay balanced on the sitz bones.

We'll do one more like this before we add on nodding and curling, finding your hollow shape as you go up and over, opposition. So I'm reaching forward as I'm reaching back, inhaling at the bottom, and exhale rolling up. Now we'll add a couple of layer couple of layers to this. Big breath in nod, exhale curl round spine. Now we'll reach up to a flat spine hinge, and then we'll reach over round scoop and roll back up to the start position. Two more like this. Inhale, chin to the chest exhale curling over round. Reach up into a flat back hinge, scoop and roll all the way back up.

Last one. As you're curling, staying on the sits bones, as you're reaching, staying on the sits bones hinge, scoop, round, and return to seated, bring the legs together. We'll grab behind one leg. And I'd like for you to clasp one hand over the other. This is climb a tree. So imagine you're on a box, but you're not.

You're sitting up nice and tall. Your knee is in towards your chest yet a little open toward the shoulder. We'll kick the leg three times. Kick one, kick two, kick three, kick stretch, hold two, one, soften the knee. Big breath in. You'll roll back down.

To the floor, nod your chin to your chest and walk up the leg here. Bend the knee again. Hold this position. Scooping and rolling under the pelvis goes under and away. We come back to the floor, leg comes up. Your first step, nod, curl, walk up the leg. Two One, this time, the leg is gonna stay up.

So that's gonna require much more thought about what our standing leg does, and we'll walk down the leg this time as we go down. Hold the stretch. Take a big breath in. Nod pressing through the hamstring to come back up, hold that stretch. And now we can rest out of that, but not really rest and not for long because it's time for the second side.

Again, finding the position where the knee is into the chest, but slightly open so you've got space for your leg and your hip joint. Let's kick three times. Kick three. Kick two. Kick one.

Hold. That almost got me there. Take a stretch and then bring it back down here. We're rolling back. Tail bone goes under, reaching through the standing leg, the floor leg.

Extend the leg, nod the chin to your chest, walk back up, blow through your lungs. Try to empty your lungs as you do that. It makes it a lot easier to come back up. Exhail scooping back, Take your time, find the floor, find your shoulder blades flat, extend the leg up, curl and walk up the leg. Two, and one. We have one more. Scoop rolling back.

Extend at the bottom. Not the chin to the chest walk up. Three, two, one, hold this stretch. Get a little taller if you can, and let the leg come down. Now just as a quick interlude.

We're going to come to a z sit here. We'll rotate the body sitting up nice and tall. Do some inward rotation here. Just a few of these. Which will allow us to transition down to the forearms.

And in this position, think of that leg having a sack of flour on the shin. And when you lift the leg, you wanna try to keep that sack of flour level. So my knee and foot are lifting at the same rate and they're lowering at the same rate. And two, and one, And now I'll extend the leg here. Same idea. I'm lifting evenly without falling to my right side of my body.

And one. How convenient? I'm ready for a forearm plank, so I'm going to rotate onto my forearms here, and I'm holding this position. Now you can also play with figuring out where your pelvis is but you want to be in a straight line from the back of your neck all the way down through your middle back through your tail through your heels. And we'll come down. Swan is next, but before we go into that, I'd like to do just some basic prone hip extension here.

So we're starting with one leg. We'll lift and lower. Other leg lifts and lowers. You can have your head all the way down if you'd like. Or you can keep it here at the level, but no matter what you do, really keep your armpits rotating forward, your forearms are weighted into the mat.

One more each leg? Actually, this is the last one here. Good. And now we'll go into swan. The hands are down here by your sides. You'll Start to lengthen the head and neck up, keeping the armpits rotating.

And as you lift, it's not about the height in as much as it's the stretch forward to go up. As you roll down, keep your triceps active. Two more like this, lengthening, lifting opposition. We're going up, up, up, and we're dragging ourselves forward to come down. And we'll do one more here, lengthen and lift up. Hold it right here.

Look to the right. Look to the left and pull yourself down. We have to do one more, actually. So we're gonna lengthen and lift up and hold and find that rotation. Look left, right, center, and drag yourself down.

Now from here, hands are gonna stay here, feet, or hip width, or slightly wider. The first step is to lift. Then we'll reach the arms forward. We'll circle the arms, lift the legs lengthen through the spine, and lower back down. Same idea, gaze goes up the wall to lift into a baby swan, arms reach, arms circle lift and lengthen, and lower down? Just one more here.

Head lengthens and lifts, feel the breastbone reaching forward and up. Arms lift and reach, circle, lift, hold to one, and come back down. Now we'll go into a z sit on the second side. Find the place where your hips are level, and we're side bending over. And when you come back up, checking with this hip, has it creeped up, or have you been able to keep it nice and neutral? Up.

One more side bending up and over. And come back up. It feels too good. I have to add a little bounce there. Second side, my chest is up, and I'm going to rotate from the hip joint, turning my foot up. And this is my tough side, so I have to work really hard to think of the transit of the leg.

I'm just rotating it up. I'm not kicking out. One more. And then I'll come down onto my forearms. Same idea, sack of flowers there.

I'm not dropping it. Not on my watch. I'm lifting it up and down, keeping my spine angle long. Two, one, And then I extend the leg. Now this is tough. You may need to cheat the leg a little bit more forward because it's not cheating if that's your alignment. Two more.

And last one. Good. From there, we'll lay on our backs. The arms go up, and extend both legs long. For the first action here, it's just a roll up.

We know what they are, so we'll just go through it, keeping your ankles flexed, stretching long and over, scooping and rolling back. This time, we're going to lift one leg, bring the other leg up, and we'll go into a teaser here. So you'll nod, you'll curl, Up into that teaser position, keep lifting the bottom of your breastbone up, and then scoop to roll back down. Now this time the legs and arms come back in opposition, arms will come up again. Once they come past your ears, your headlifts, you scoop, you curl, you come up and hold.

Arms circle, one? Arms circle two, arms circle three, and lower back down. We just have one more of those. Arms come up. Once they pass your head, you see your toes. And you come up along with.

We're up and we're holding and we're reversing the arm circles. So down around and up and two and one. And we roll back down. And just take a big stretch here because you've earned it because you did the teaser. So to come up for more joy and Mary Men, I'd like for you to just bring your legs in, grab hold behind your legs, press your hands and your legs and your legs into your hands.

Big breath in and exhale nod scoop and roll up to sit tall, find your balance because it's good for you. And let's just do a single roll here. Looking into the belly scoop the pelvis, to roll back, to roll up balance, and come out of this. We're going to come to sitting on your heels. If you have knee issues, you can always put something between your knees, or you can press your inner seams of your heels together and open your knees a little bit.

But we're going to work on chest expansion and thigh stretch here. So we'll start. Arms will be forward. And as we come up into our chest expansion, our pelvis is coming with us. And we're sitting back down, and we're pulling up.

Get your hips over your knees. It should feel rather precarious. As you're sitting down, you're breaking at the hips, but keeping your spine angle long, pulling and lifting over, sitting back down, two more, up, and down. Let's not forget about those armpits. Get the armpits rotated forward, hold, sit back down. This time we'll pull up, and then we'll go into a thigh stretch. So we're up here, and we'll hinge.

As you come up, really find the inner seams of those heels, sit back down. Two more. We're coming up. Find the armpits and hinge. Coming back up and sitting.

You have one more up hinging back, finding the front and back of the legs and coming down. No sweat. Right? Super easy. From here, let's just come on to the seated side position. So everyone does clamps, but we always have various clams variations. I want us to try to think of clams as being something that happens when our pelvis is seat belted to the floor.

So as I'm opening up into my clam, I'm not allowing my top hip to roll back. Four. And again, three. And two. And again, one. From here, we're going to go up into a hold, a hover hold. It's lifting your hips up.

Hold four three two one, lower the hip. Tap the floor and lift. Again, lower. And as you're lifting, it's coming from the bottom side up. Last one. Lower.

Tap lift and hold, stay right here, and come back down. We'll break dance the legs around, place your knees down, and then make sure they're stacked and a little bit more behind you than in front. Your feet, I'm sorry, are more behind you than in front. The hand's gonna come up. For clamp, I'm rotating the femur, not the hip.

Three more. I'm not a lover of clams, I will tell you, but this is such an important exercise. So I'm gonna hold the knees together here. I'm going to go into the hover, hover and lift. Up, up, up, keep the inner seams of the thighs pulling together, and come back down.

Continuing. We go up. Reach, top hip is pressing forward and come back down. Two more. Pressing up.

Reach And down checking in with the bottom armpit. Last one come up. Reach hold. Hold. Hold.

And float. Back down. Okay, guys. To round this out, we're gonna just go back to the way we started sort of. Gonna go back to that washer face idea. So Hopefully, this is going to open up your back, and we'll bring the arms down.

We're gonna reach wide. Let your breastbone lift. Come up. Bring the hands behind your head with an interlace. Nod. The chin to the chest, let the elbows fold forward. Hold this stretch.

Now gently flex through the toes, stretch to flatten the back. Up come back through that extension, and we're staying extended to come back forward, round. Bring the arms back, up, over, bend the men, settle the ribs, bring the elbows back down, find the elbows together, open up, and bring the arms down by your sides. Thanks so much for working out with me today.