Restorative Mat

Hi. I'm Zola. Today, we're going to do a mat workout using the barrel with some activation and some restoration, a little bit of both. I have, of course, my smaller baby barrel, And I have two one pound weights. One pound is plenty. Let's get started.

So grab your weights. Starting with that lovely arm series that feels so amazing. I'm going to sit my hips right up against the front edge of the barrel and carefully drape myself all the way over. Now for me, I feel okay with the extension of the back of the neck. And if you don't, Give yourself a pillow. It'll give you a little bit more space, so there's not so much extension.

But for me, this is comfortable. From here, reach both arms up to the ceiling and feel your back ribs really pressing into that mat, belly button still pulling into the spine. My legs are long, feet are flexed. Take an inhale here. As you exhale, reach the arms up and back.

Let the weights in your hands kind of pull those arms down to the floor. Inhale lift. Exhale reach the arms down to the mat. Again, inhale up. Exhale reach.

Inhale lift. Exhale back. One more time, inhale up. Exhale reach. Get that stretch. Inhale lift.

Exhale lower. Bring the arms up to the ceiling. You take an inhale here. As you exhale, one arm goes back, one arm goes down, so they split. Inhale back to center.

Exhale switch. Inhale up. Exhale switch. Inhale lift. Exhale switch.

Both arms reach up to the ceiling. Inhale the arms reach back. Exhale circle the arms out to the sides and around. Again, two more this direction. One more.

And then we reverse those circles. Reach the arms out to the side. The palms will rotate up to the ceiling. The arms reach back. Stay connected in your core and reach the arms up.

Inhale to circle it around and back. Exhale up and down. Last one this direction. And lift the arms up. Good. Palms face into each other. Inhale.

Open the arms wide to the side. Exhale. Give yourself a hug. Let the weights pull those arms down. Feels really nice. Inhale open.

Exhale switch the cross of your arms and your hug. And one more each side, inhale open. Exhale cross. Inhale open. Good. Open the arms up.

Bring them up to the ceiling, and then you can bend your elbows. Don't move your head. I'm just placing my weights down. Using my hands, place them behind the head, and then use your arms to pick up your head round yourself up and forward stretching yourself out for a second. Take a breath here.

And then roll yourself up. So now I'm going to sit on top of the barrel long ways, having my tailbone right at the front edge of this barrel for some half rollbacks. I'll have my legs hip width apart hands lightly touch underneath the thighs, curl the tailbone under, and roll back to the tips of the shoulder blades. And then you roll right back up. I'm gonna walk my feet in a little closer to my body.

Roll yourself down, initiate from the movement of the pelvis. I feel my low back touch. I feel my middle back touch. I feel my shoulder blades touch. And then I roll right back up, sitting up tall at the top. Again, rounded back, curl the tailbone under. Inhale up.

Exhale lift. One more time. Inhale. Exhale. Roll down. Inhale halfway up, exhale, lift up nice and tall. Now I'm just gonna scoot you a little bit more forward because I adjusted back a little bit.

Roll yourself back to the tips of the shoulder blades. Staying here one leg at a time, bring your knees to your chest. I'm gonna hold on to the front of that barrel, slide myself forward a little bit more, making sure the shoulder blades are connected to the barrel, hug the knees into the chest, Let's do the 100, of course, stretch the legs long. Arms by your sides. We inhale two, three, four, five, and exhale.

Keep going. Inhale. And exhale. That's 30 inhale. 40 inhale. Halfway there inhale. 60 inhale, 70 inhale, 80 inhale.

10 more ten nine eight seven six five four three two one good hug your knees to your chest. I'm gonna place my feet down on the floor, hands go behind the head extend the upper back over the barrel just to take a moment a little stretch before we do the abdominal series of five. So when you're ready, lift your chest back up one leg at a time and bring your knees back to your chest. We do single leg stretch. Pull pull and pull pull.

Outer hand is on the ankle. In her hand is right under that knee. Pull pull. Pull, pull. One more each side.

Bend your knees to your chest. Put your feet down hands behind the head. Extend the upper back. Take a breath here. On your exhale curl yourself up.

Bend your knees to your chest. Inhale stretch out, double leg stretch, exhale pull it in. Inhale reach, exhale pull. Two more. One more. Pull it in. Put the feet down.

Hands behind the head. Extend the upper back over the barrel. When you're ready, roll it back up. Needs to chest. Single straight leg stretch.

Your legs go to the sky. We pull pull, inhale, exhale pull pull. Four more. Three, two, and one, Good. Bend the knees. Put them down. Hands behind the head. Extend over that burrow.

Exhale curl yourself back up. Bring the knees to the chest. Lakes up to the sky, heels together toes apart. Hands will stay behind the head, inhale down. Exhale, pull it up.

Three more. Two more. One more. Chris Cross, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, really twists, two more. Last one, bend your knees, put the feet down, hands behind the head, drape yourself back.

And with control, roll yourself up. Good. And turn back towards the front of your mat. I will be using the strap for the roll up, placing the feet under the strap and sliding myself back. I'll do heels together toes apart. Again, make sure the hips are right against the front of the barrel, then round yourself all the way back, reaching the arms back. Now from here, connect your abdominals in front ribs and back ribs, glutes engaged, curl chin to chest. And roll yourself up.

Inhale back. Exhale round it down. Feel the stretch. Inhale roll it up. Round it forward.

Inhale, curl the tailbone under. Drape yourself over that barrel. Two more of these. Round it up and forward and roll it back. Good. One more time.

Round it up and forward. And stay up here. Good. Take your feet from out of the strap, slide your body a little bit forward and take that barrel with you. We just want a little bit more space on the opposite side of the mat. So from here, I'll sit myself on top of the barrel. With control, I'll keep my left foot down holding on to the strap bring my right thigh to the chest and roll myself onto my back with control.

Good. From here, I pop my hips up so I can pull that barrel a little closer to my body, and I wanna make sure I'm in a place that I can lift my head off of the mat comfortably. I'm gonna try to reach for those handles that are straight up and down and then reach the legs up to the sky. From here, I do the roll over. So from here, I lift the hips up and back, open the leg shoulder width, and roll down. I don't as had as far down to go. So it feels really nice to lift the hips up and back.

We open and roll it down. Let's come together and up one more this direction, open, roll it down, and then reverse, lift up and back, close, and then feel the back touch the barrel. Left the legs go down and open. Up and in. Good roll it down.

One more this direction. Roll it down. And we continue with our legs series. So from here, let's start with frog. So bring the thighs to the chest, make sure the tailbone is heavy and stretch the legs forward and we've been.

Press out. And two more. The last one. Keep the leg straight. We make our circles up and up and down and then bind that connection of the heels and the legs every time they come into center. So squeeze to lift and open.

Good bring the legs up, reverse those circles down and around. Down and around, down and around. Two more. One more. Good. From here, we do scissors, This is where you get that really nice stretch in the thigh, the leg that goes down.

So lengthen forward. But try to keep your hips even as much as possible. Feel the stretch in that quad. It feels so good. Good. And from here, starting your bicycle.

So find the mat, connect the foot to the mat, drag it in. Good. Find the mat every time. Good. And keep by sickling those legs, feel the stretch. Good. And then after this one, let's reverse. So again, find the toes on the mat.

Slide the leg out to straight, pull the belly to the spine, find the split, and then continue. Reach out and reach out and reach out and also continue to hug the midline my legs were starting to splay off to the side. So hug those inner thighs in towards the center. Last one. Good.

Bring the legs up to the ceiling. We do helicopter. So I'm taking my left leg up right leg down. Helicopter the legs out and around and do two scissor switches. Switch and switch.

We go the other way. We switch, and we switch helicopter the legs out and around. Switch and switch one more time. Circle, and switch and switch. Good. From here both legs up to the sky. Bend your knees to the chest.

Let's do a little rolling in and out. Five bones go away. They circle around and come to the opposite shoulder. One more time. Good. Send your knees.

Use your hands to push that barrel away from your body. Let the hips come down to the floor and let the legs rest over the barrel for a second, settle your back. Take a couple breaths here. And from here, just make sure the barrel is about arms length distance away because we're doing some bridging with with your feet on top of that barrel. Let's start with the legs, hip width apart, arms long by your sides, curl the tailbone under, roll the hips up to the ceiling.

And then roll it down. Inhale, curl the tailbone under. Exhale, peel the spine off of the mat. Inhale, sternum, melt it down, exhale, melt the rest of the spine down. One more time like this, straight up.

Push equally into both of your feet. And roll it down. Let's bring the legs and the feet together. Squeeze them together nice and tight and roll them up, keeping the inner thighs together. Good. From here, right leg goes up to the sky, flex the foot to lower, point to lift, flex to lower, point to lift, one more.

Good. Once the toes are reaching up to the ceiling, we do 10 pulses, ten, nine. Eight, seven, six. Two more. Hips lift, feet come down, readjust squeeze the legs together again, maybe lift the hips higher. Left leg to the sky, flex to low down, and point to come up two more. One more.

Toast reach to the sky. We pulse ten, nine, eight, seven, six, push and push three more. Keep the hips lifted, bend the knee, put the foot down, re squeeze the legs together, and roll down through your spine. Okay. Let's bring ourselves up to seat it. Let's move the barrel back again and go into swan.

So Swan is a tricky one. We wanna find a place where we're able to balance lifting the arms and lifting the legs, and that's gonna be different for everybody. I have longer heavier legs. For me, my belly button's pretty much at the top of the barrel, but I also kind of have to find my happy place. So what I do is keep my arms down.

I try to stretch my legs first, and then I see if I can stretch my arms to the side. And if I feel like I can't find that balance, I make my adjustments from there. And here looks about right. So thinking of, of course, bringing the legs together and rotating the inner thighs upward so the legs are together in parallel. This is very much a back body exercise.

You'll feel your legs a lot. So lift those legs up again. Squeeze them together and shoot the arms out to the side. Now from here, we just start to rock a little bit. And I rock because my hamstrings are pulling up to the ceiling, and my belly button's pulling up to the spine. Good. Keep rocking forward, and back. One more time, and then bringing everything down for a second.

Same thing goes for swimming. I have to find my balance point. So I probably won't do too much moving, but can I reach my arms forward? And my legs back in balance. So that feels okay.

So legs lift, reach the arms forward. And from here, I lift my opposite arm and leg and just swim. And I won't go very fast because I'm just trying to focus on the lift of the upper body and the back of the body up to the ceiling. Good. And then bring everything down. Nice. From here, I'm going to change to go to the opposite side of the barrel, because I would like to use this strap again.

So I'll push this barrel back, find the strap, place my top foot into the strap and let the barrel be right up against the hips with the strap nice and top because you want that two way stretch. It feels really nice. From here, we do some side sit ups over the barrel. So option to keep the shin parallel with the front of the mat or hook your foot kind of behind your thigh. I'm gonna stay parallel here. The top leg is parallel, toes and knee point forward.

Hands go behind the head. Now, it's not a big movement. I'm just draping myself over. And lifting myself back up. It's very small.

And, heel down. XL up two more down. And up. This last one, I draped myself over and I stay over, reaching both arms long. Now from here, I inhale twist my ribs up to the ceiling leaning back into that barrel. And then I exhale chest goes down to the barrel.

Inhale rotate upwards. I try my best to keep the hips square and exhale. Two more open, open, open, and close it. One more time. And then chest goes down.

I center my body, bring myself up, take the foot out of the strap, bend both knees, counter stretch into a mermaid, hug your front ribs in Good and bring yourself up. We do the other side. So find that strap again. Stick your foot in the strap, hips right up against the barrel. Hands go behind your head.

Good. Try to get your hip bones to point straight forward. And then a small little side bend over the barrel. It's not big at all. Just a little activation in the side of the body. Let's do three more down.

And up two more. Last one. Now stay down, lengthen the arms all the way over your head. Good to readjust so that those hips are stacked right over top of each other. And then we open, and we close.

We can twist up And keep in mind which side feels tighter for you, which side is harder to twist. One more time, open, open, open. Good chest comes down. Send to your body. Bring yourself all the way up, bend both of your knees.

Tuck them in for your last mermaid reaching the arm up, and then stretching over. I'm looking up towards the ceiling, hug my front ribs in. Bring the body up and lower that arm. And that is it for today. Thank you so much for joining me.

I'll see you next time.