The Classics Reimagined

Hi. I'm Danica Kellum Dorelou, and welcome to classics reimagined on the mat, where we'll be looking at classical exercises and fun contemporary variations that keep the order fresh and exciting. As much as I love the traditional order, I also love to mix it up. So come on to your mat, and let's stretch out and get ready to move. Roll down, go ahead and stretch your arms back give a flexing point of the feet just to wake up that distal end of the body. And then on an exhale, circle the arms, pull chin to chest, and go ahead into that advanced version of hundreds scooping and lifting to lift the legs, breathing in, and breathing out. One more.

And on the exhale, go ahead and bring those legs as high up to 90 as you can get them with straight legs. For some of us, this is more of a challenge than the weight of the legs down. It really exposes our hamstring flexibility. Now let's vary it up a little bit by taking instead of a pumping just an inhale reach and an exhale press back down, letting the legs move with you or keeping them still. One more.

Now let's leave the legs still and take an alternating of the arms. Which really challenges my ability to stay stable on the back of my ribs versus adding a little lateral flexion. But what if we did? What if we lower those legs to a 45 and look at lateral flexion to the right. Come back center.

Lateral flexion to the left. Center. One more waking up those obliques in that 100 position, bend the knees roll down. Let's go ahead and take a little bit of a hamstring stretch and pull back in. One more and pull back in. Ready to go into our roll up.

Starting from here, let's reach the arms back. And again, circle them around, chin to chest, dive your toes into the mat and arrive with arms parallel to the floor, ears adjacent to your arms, work the scoop and the contraction versus trying to get closer to your legs for more of a hamstring stretch. Work your core. The hamstring stretch will show up. Let's flex the feet, pull through the abdominals, curl the tail, roll back down. Let's take those arms through the sagittal plane coming back up, flexing the feet for a challenge, pointing them when you arrive, flexing the pullback, and that footwork is optional.

Now let's change it up a little bit. Articulate through the spine. And then as you arrive on your sits bones, stretch up to a tee across the arms, lift up higher, and then contract, articulate back down. Feet pointed or flexed your choice. Flex is a little bit harder, chin up, roll over, stack up tall, press to your t, lift, and then curl the tail contract back down.

One more, and your arm choreography can be yours. And this time, as you open, press legs apart, Come back up with those arms, and as you contract, adduct, pull legs together. Just adds a little bit more hip work into the whole situation. Plant those arms down, bend the knee, stretch that leg up to the ceiling, and take a single leg circle across the body, down around, and home. One more in that direction, and home, reversing it for two.

Open down round exhale home, and open, down round home. Let's go ahead and do that on the other side before we start having fun with it. Cross over, down round, home. Breathe in, contract to bring it home. So it's not just the work of your hip flexor and quad.

It's the work of your core scooping and zipping to lift that leg back up. Change legs again. Now instead of doing a circle, let's do a lifting, bringing the back of that pelvis up out of the mat, little rotation back through the waist, come back down into that hip. Roll up in two, stretch to the ceiling, and come back down. One more, and notice how the rotation of my leg does change, and roll back down. Send that leg down.

Yes. Doing the circle gives you all that range of hip mobility that you need, but this also brings to light the fact that your pelvis needs to be able to roll as part of the ball and socket just like the femur rolls, and up, and roll back down one more. And I'm very much using my arms to help push and return. We're gonna pull that knee into the chest, curve up and arrive and are rolling like a ball. Let's do two or three here rocking back to lift the hips and come back home. Breathe in, curl the tail, keep it lifted, and then fight for your balance.

One more, and balance. Now stomach series is next, but I love to bring it in here. Let's come parallel stretch out one leg, pull the other knee in, and take a rock here. Scroll the tail over, home, change, and roll back The challenge here is I still have to hold my pelvis, uniformed and even, even though the weight of my legs is very much uneven. One more.

Rock back and home. I could just lay back from here and go straight into my single leg stretch and proceed into my double leg stretch. We'll do one more, doing two of each, single straight leg, and our double straight leg, and back up one more, finishing it with your criss cross. Twist back into that single leg stretch with some oblique action, and come center, and down. Those are all five exercises from your stomach series.

Here's a fun way to add a little bit more connection to your core, also a little bit more arm and shoulder work. Roll back onto your forearms. Pull waist back and up, resist falling into an anterior tilt, and therefore down out of your shoulders. Scoop. And you can do the entire variation of your legs in this position, giving you way more load into your upper back, having to find and fight with the weight of your legs to not get pulled into that anterior tilt. Keep a scoop the double straight leg, one more. This is where we really start to feel it, and then hip circles.

That would be our crisscross. One more back center, roll it down, and then we come up for your spine stretch forward. In return to life, Joseph Pilates, demonstrates his version, the archival version of spine stretch forward, hands start on the mat. And as you come into flexion on an exhale, you reach the arms forward, let them lift, and then stack back up. What this does is really help give you a contact into the mat that allows you to scoop back up, and then lift those arms again parallel to the floor adjacent to your ears, and stack back up.

I'm gonna add a little bit more arm work to it. And as I exhale and contract, I'll pull the arms forward, arriving head in line next to those arms. Step up tall with the waist. And press back open, exhale contract, inhale stack up, and press back open. I actually like to go straight into my saw from here.

It's not traditional way the order, but it's fun. I can twist to the right, change that back arm, dive forward in my rotation, really squeezing through the waist, stack it up and come back center. And to the left, reach into that rotation, stack it back up, and back center. Now let's see where else we can go with it. Let's take the saw and the twist, flipping that back arm over, dive forward, but then pull that through the waist, plant that hand, bend your left leg, as it is my left leg in front, And now I'm gonna press up, spiral and reach to get a little bit more extension. Come back down into my saw, stack back up center.

And to the left, reach forward. Plant that hand. Same arm as leg that bends. Press up. Reach and look back. Come back down.

Into your saw. And reach one more. Twist to the right. Diver over. Pull back, bending, left knee. Stretch back.

Pull it down. Reach to that ankle. Back up center. Last time, to the left, over, right hand, right knee, lift, come back down, reach forward in that saw, stack up and come back to center. We're gonna go ahead, pull legs together, and shift prone for some extension and swan, which we just warmed up in that fun saw variation. Planting the hands underneath your pectoral muscles. I don't like to say shoulders because people don't necessarily know where their shoulders are, but pecs chest Oh, you know.

Plant the hands, the wider the shoulders, the wider the hands. Elvis are lifted and squeezing towards each other towards your spine. Plant your feet The minute you lift your legs and swan, we really begin initiating with our lumbar. Your lumbar is gonna get work no matter what. So we're gonna press the feet and anchor them.

We're gonna pull the head forward and we're gonna think of drawing our belly and the front of our hips forward as we reach back through the legs to come higher and come back down contracting the abs to return long in your spine. One more, lift, and then exhale and come down. We know that swan ideally is building to your swan dive. Rather than going into the dive, let's add more hamstring, lift up tall. And as you begin to lift your ribs, take one knee bend, pullve toes towards the back of your head, stretch back out. And the other side, lift, that hand me work really gets into it, and back down, and now both, head and chest, both feet stretch back out and down.

That really makes you use the hammy by the knee and the hip to give a full hamstring curl. Then we're gonna pull the legs together. Lift and give a kicking of the legs like in swimming. This is where now we're really gonna get more work in your lumbar. And as you saw me lift my arms, can you go ahead and give that idea of your arms and your double leg kick? And then return, keeping the legs moving, and reach, and back down.

One more for those shoulders, lift, plant the feet reach those arms forward and down. We're gonna bring those hands back under their shoulders, and we're gonna tuck the toes, knees can still be on the floor, and they're gonna stay on the floor as we push all the way up in the swan, back onto the knees, keep your hands where they are. Scoop the abs as you sit back. If you leave your hands, instead of pulling them towards you, when you press from your feet, into your hips, through an articulation, I end in my plank, and I come down, hover off the floor if you can, set down lightly with control, lead with the head, Exhale back, pull forward into your plank, very similar to up stretch on the reformer, and down. And now one more, lift, Press back onto the knees, curl tail. Now instead of going into plank, press it up into a downward dog. Plant the feet.

Downward dog is the pike in the hips. Let's take a treading of the feet here. Because we don't get a lot of footwork in our mat work. We have a lot of open chain work. So let's add this closed chain work.

Both legs straight. Come back forward into your plank. Do not lower, come right back up into that downward dog. Just do more of those. Reach it out.

Pull back up. One more. Pull back up. And now a little bit of a pull of the knee in, reach it up to arabesque, let the back extend, come back down. Pull the knee in contract, reach up, let the back extend a little bit.

Pull back in, and down one more each side. Bend it in. Reach up, extend. Pull back in, and down. Last one. Reach it up.

Pull back in. Come forward, and down. We're gonna press back up, crawl the knees in, and give it a nice rounded low back abs lifted off the thighs. I like to call it adult pose, rather than child's pose, because adults have to do work. And we scoop and we lift, take a little hips over to one side, and then the other as the arms go in opposition.

And with having done all of that extension work, let's flip back over and go back into some flexion work with our teaser. So teaser in a seven is actually a very traditional way to build into the teaser. And here's what it is. You've got legs together, and your feet are a little far away from you. If they're too close, you won't have ability to roll the pelvis as you come up.

So feet are out a little bit. And you're gonna keep the knees together, straighten one leg, slightly externally rotate it. So you're in half of a pilates v, press together. Arms lift. You come chin to chest closing those ribs, And you aim for your humorous arm bone to be level with your femur thigh bone in parallel in space.

I roll back down and as my ribs touch, I change the legs. Reach the waist long and return my head down. And coming up, reach, roll back down, change and up. Roll, lift those legs. Leave them there for your teaser too.

Roll all the way back up. Now we're gonna come down for the full teaser three. Everything comes up, and one of my favorite variations is to take a bicycling of the legs here and roll down through your back as you do that bicycleing away, reverse the bicycle. Push pull up, peel up, and we're there. Reverse the bicycle. Whoo.

It's tough. One more. It just adds more moving parts where we still have to pull everything into center. Reach back long. Let's take those arms back again.

Go ahead. Let your ribs play a little bit. Let your back arch a little bit. And then pull everything back in, rolling up. And now let's talk about side body. Now we can tuck the legs in, and we can look at mermaid here.

I cannot slide on this mat, so we're just gonna place the hand out so we have a nice open angle in the arm. Lift the top arm, fold the elbow into that side, find a reach, press back up, lift, and pull over to the other side, and lift up, reach out through the fingertips, down into the palm, pull the mat with you as you bend that elbow in, lift up, over and out. Now let's change it up, taking a twist, reach both hands into the mat as you stretch and lift that top leg. Pull it in Find that saw action twist to the back heel, lift up, open round, dive and catch, and pull back in, open and around. Now instead of going into side kicks to really target the glute hammy, we're gonna use this same position. Spiral up, catching the upper body and reach that leg out.

Little pulses up. Using the outer hip, using deep, deep fibers of your glutes, yes, my leg is an external rotation. And then from here, a little bit forward, and a little bit more back reaching chest forward the more I wanna pull that leg back and forward and back one more and back, bringing it in line with the spine, small circles, one direction, chest for three, and return because the arms are really feeling it here. But then take a big ronde Jean to get the full movement of the hip, come around and take a nice stretch of all that work and what I just like to call your pretzel twist stretch. And then we're just gonna take the legs to the other side for mermaid on the other side. Starting with the hand open, We're gonna reach over, pull the mat in, pulling the elbow, and then lift up a little push off that hand to help you go over.

And then coming back up, and two reach that waist, the idea of going into your side blink, in your side bend, and come back up. Right. One more, and over, and lift and then take the spiral saw action. Now, here we go. Open the chest, dive into the hands collarbone nice and wide as you stretch back through that leg. Bend, pull it in, and pull the waist all the way around.

And inhale, exhale to catch, inhale lift, and exhale. And now we go into that work for all that hammy and glute. Little pulses up, keeping that zip up, chest forward, breathing nice and even. We'll go a little forward, and then back past the line of our spine to open up the front of the hip. Forward, and back one more forward, and back coming in line with the spine, small circles, and reverse. Then we'll take the big Ron de jam, come around and across, pull the leg and continue to spiral your collarbone and waist open if you like.

Fold the knee down, take your pretzel stretch, which really works to stretch out everything you just worked. We're gonna stretch the legs back out, and we're gonna do a variation of tree on the mat. I think trees should be done on every single piece of apparatus regardless of your ability. It's just what we all need. We're gonna pull the knee to the chest.

And if you're flexible and strong and connected, Keep your spine straight up vertical to the floor. If when you begin to lift your leg, it immediately makes you flex your spine, then go ahead and start with your tail under and that spinal flexion. Either way, you still have to scoop those abs up into the upper back as we are pulling the leg towards us. However, we are also pushing that leg out away. If I let go, that leg falls, If you let go and your leg stays there, guess what? You're only using your hip flexor. And eventually, you're gonna pull down.

So lift and stretch it up, bend it in, stretch it up. Walk the hands. Take a flex point three times. Again, we don't do too much footwork in the matwork. I really like to sprinkle it in where I can, circling one direction, circling the other. Then, really go into that scoot. Get back towards your teaser tailbone balance, scoop, bring the other leg up, hold, set it back down. You can cross the legs like your boomerang, if you like, you can just bring it up next to the other leg. One more.

Change legs. Come back forward and take your tree with the other leg. If I wanna go taller, I do have the flexibility to find that straight spine. And it's just more work. But again, requires the access to that hamstring length. I can walk my hands up and still keep tall, flex in point, breathing through it, circling and reverse.

And then if you are tall, contract back onto that teaser tailbone, scoop and lift. Set it back down. Scoop and lift it. Set it back down. Scoop and lift, and now look. We're in your boomerang.

Go ahead and lower the legs. Feed those arms back in a row. Reach out to the ears and contract more. Place the hands on the mat, scoop, lift, change, and hit it. Down with the legs, row with the arms, and around one more scoop and lift, change, dive back forward, catch it.

And again, look for that parallel arm to thigh. Down, dive, find your row. And now here's a little fun, very advanced variation. Keep your hands off the floor. Scoop curl, lift, change, change, roll back.

Change change. Hit it. Do not put your hands down and around. And last one. Pull back. And scoop. Change change. If you fall, it's okay.

And come back up, die forward, and stretch. We're gonna scoot forward on the mat, find a grab at the inner ankle and around the top of the feet come back into your rolling like a ball balance. We're just gonna do some open leg rocker stretches. We've rocked enough. Stretch one leg out, pull back in. Stretch the other leg out, pull back in. Both legs, but then add a flex, a point, and a bin back in.

One more. After doing that very difficult boomerang, this should feel like a lock in the park. No big deal. Just stretch it out, flex point and bend. Now lift up, heels, beat, beat back open. Enter thighs, thigh, and back open. Two more.

If you really want more challenge, no hands, no hands, and back in. Coming over, back around, coming up on the knees to now really lengthen and open back up through the front of both hips. That was a lot of hip flexion we were just in. So let's add a thigh stretch into our mat work. It's really not part of a mat repertoire, but we can make it part of.

Parallel, look back and check that your heels are in line with your knees. You really do not want sickled or caved in feet as it will really, really strain the ankle and the sole of the foot. If you do not have enough flexibility in the front of your ankle to press the feet down and point the feet, tuck the toes. This is now door to flexion. Reach back through those heels to find the press forward.

That you would need when you do thigh stretch on the tower or on the reformer. You want that feeling of open before we even go back. Arms are by the side, chest is lifted with the upper back. As you go back, counter the weight, reaching arms forward, exhale, press yourself back forward. And inhale reach back, and exhale press back forward.

If you're on the ball of your foot, make sure we're not getting any wibble wobble. Two more. Reach it back. And forward, can you hold it back there? Maybe don't go as far. I'm just gonna right here, and we're gonna take arm circles up, circle around down, and lift to around, and three inner thighs squeezing, place a ball between the knees if you need to reverse.

And back forward, inhale, exhale, press. Last one. And press back forward. Lift arms up, and let's add rotation. Lifting opening, reaching back to the heel as you reach up to through the chest and to the ceiling. Pull yourself back up.

And open, reach for the back heel, but then press the chest up to the ceiling through the opposite arm. Come back up. One more. Reach. This is a great way to prep for exercises like rocking, where you really need that full connection of the back body to open the front body. Back forward, plant the feet, round, reach arms back now If you can get them to your feet, fabulous. Round your spine, press down in your shins, lifting up in your spinal flexion, stretching back out in a flat back. Contract back into, come down.

Press like you're gonna stand up on those knees, but scoop up into your curve, sits bones reach as head goes away in the opposite direction, curl tail, scoop back in, set it back down. One more. Lift, and I'm giving a pull on my feet as I press down. Reach, then reach the arms forward. Plant the hands, come up off those knees and stretch them out in your downward dog, take an extra treading, and just get the weight up off your knees after having been down on them.

And then we're gonna come forward with an easy pigeon stretch. And the thing about your pigeon stretch, don't collapse. Press back in that leg as if you're pushing back into the shoulder blocks on the reformer. And drive energy forward. You should be able to pick up, change through your plank to the other side.

If you come down, it's still not a collapse. It's a reaching of tension through space. And then set it back, come all the way back down. We're almost done. Let's come around back forward and look at our seal to standing so we finish upright so we can go about our day.

We feed the arms down through the feet and around to the tops of the ankles. Not everyone is gonna be able to make that happen with what their front body is. So if you have to go around, It doesn't change what the exercise is still really about. It's about finding that teaser tailbone balance and using your outer hips and inner thighs to open close, open close. Here's the thing.

If you clap, clap, clap at the bottom, you need to do the same tempo at the top. So I'm going to clap, clap, rock back suspend, clap, clap, clap. We don't wanna do faster claps at the top just because you're stuck up there. Right? Clap clap. Clap. Keep it even.

Outer inner, outer inner. Couple more. When we decide to come to standing, depending on the knees depends on what your stance is gonna be. Classically, it's just stand up in Pilates v. My knees cannot do that.

So I will show you what I do. I clap, clap, clap, I rock back, I cross my good leg in front, and I come up to my standing. The classical mat is a fabulous way for you to get down, get the work, and get it done. But not all of us wanna do the same exercises every single time. You can use whatever creative variations or modifications you want in the exercise as long as you stay true to the technique of Pilates.