Building Stamina

Hi, everybody. I'm Christie. I say, let's build some energy. Let's get moving and let's work out. Here we go. If you don't have energy, let's start together and we all collect it together. So you stand with your feet apart parallel.

Just kinda shake out, loosen up wherever you feel like you know you need to loosen up, and let it go. And then with your arms hanging heavy, we'll just take an inhale. For now, just let it expand you. Let it bring you into the space. Let it bring you into a mindset that you know you're taking care of yourself. Exhale. Inhale. Let's let the arms float out to the side. Oh, this doesn't feel like energy does it.

But for me, I'm let go stuff. Inhale. I just wanna be loose and move and exhale. For now, what we're gonna do is actually roll forward and you get to take inventory of yourself. We inhale. On the exhale roll, your chin forward, your head forward, everything else just follows that.

Try not to lean back so much. You're really trying to curve your spine. You might bend your knees here. You might even shake the arms back and forward. Let go of that or let it be an energizer for you, then let them settle. Inhale, if you haven't already, start exhaling, draw the belly up the tailbone tilts under and roll back up.

Oh, my mouth has more energy than my brain, inhale. And exhale roll forward. This is your chance to just check-in. What do you need? What do you want? Because the truth is is your intention is gonna make the difference here. The exercises will help. Inhale, exhale roll yourself back up. Stant tall.

Shake out again. Last one, and we'll get going. Exhale round forward. Notice your feet. You don't wanna look at them right now.

You're probably looking at your thighs, but notice your feet. Try to balance the weight. Right? We're no longer just hanging out on our bodies. We're gonna facilitate the efficiency that's exist within us. And now we're up. So to get that energy going, what I'm gonna start us with is typically done on a reformer.

It's called foot and leg work, but we're just gonna do a few of the foot positions so we can get the heart pumping and the body moving. So the feet may be a little bit wider. I have I'm shifting my weight ever so slightly back on the heels not by much, and we're just gonna squat, basically. We're gonna sit down, come back up. So it's gonna be a hinge at the hip. Right? The knees stay forward, right over the toes, and you just come back up. I'm gonna turn sideways because what I do wanna make sure that you do or think about is that you're hinging at the hip. Right? And you can go as low as you want, but the point isn't to round your back. Don't go that low.

Just keep the hand chip and then come back up. Right? Easy enough. Arms are down by your side and it, like, engage them. Like, you're pushing against a wall up here. And then you're gonna push against an imaginary solid as you sit back and the arms go in front of your shoulders and come back up. Let's go. We inhale down, exhale up. Try to connect to the back of your body here. So as you sit back.

You can wiggle your toes a little, and then you feel like you're person against a wall there, and down, and up, down, and up, try not to round your back at all. Like, not at all. I mean, it It's just heating us up, getting some fluid going in those hip joints, maybe in the shoulder joints too, and stay up on this one just for a second. Exaggerate pushing against a wall. I don't mean push way back. I mean, imagine there's a wall there.

So you feel the back of the arms. You feel even more importantly the upper back. Let's do 10 more. Down and up. Whoo. Breathing. And I'm going for five more.

Down and up. Anchels are bending. Three, four, and five, and Up. Stay up. Do you fill that imaginary wall? The arms can be a little behind you, so the chest is open, tilt forward a little at the ankle joint, rise up on the toes. Oh, boy. Hand down. Up And down, it's okay to wobble. Just notice it really. And then maybe think higher up in the body and not so much at the feet to hold your stability.

Oh, it sometimes works up and down. One more time. Okay. Same idea. The only change is gonna be just stay where you are, but I'm gonna go wider with my feet. We could go straight down, but I'm not going to. I'm gonna hinge and go a little lower. So it's the exact same idea, same arms, heels carry a large part of the weight.

Try not to roll out or forward on your feet. Ready to go. Inhale. And exhale find it. Squeeze. Squeeze. Why not? Inhale. Go low. It's okay. And you do get to hinge. Right?

It's a it's just a subtle difference, but I'm going more for the hip and g type situation. And it that the risk is saying too much, you can imagine you're pushing something away so you get some front of the shoulder working beyond just lifting it, push that arrow away, push it down, push it out. Just let that heart rate goin' up. Let's go. Let's do I don't know how many you want. Five.

Four little inner side there. Do you feel it? Three and two. One. We are up. We're strong. Stay there. Stay there. If you need to and you might wiggle your feet in one step.

Just a little walk in. Same position. Arms are down, or to the side. You could do that too. Rise up on the toes, lower. Rise up. Everything is strong, but not bearing down. Find a sense of a lift in your body if you can.

Even though the legs are kinda working hard. Let's just do one more. Take it out. Come down to the ground. Just have seat. Oh, stretch yourself out onto your mat, legs down, and together.

Arms go up above your chest for now. Reach them up to the ceiling. You just let the shoulders crowd you. And then as you pull them down, add a little sense of pressing the backside of the ribs down too. And we're gonna try to maintain that as we take the arms overhead. And they're not gonna touch the ground.

They're just going overhead. The minute you feel your ribs come off the ground you've gone too far. So just pay attention to yourself. We're working up to a full 100, and it starts like this. Let's just inhale, start exhaling, bring your arms and head forward like you're gonna get up off the ground.

Keep the legs down though. You're gonna get up. I wanna go over there. That's all I wanna do. How am I gonna do it?

Okay. Not yet. We go back down. It's an intention that allows us to recruit the muscles that will help us in a second. Let's do one more like that. We just curl head neck and shoulders up, pushing through that imaginary thick solid in the air, And the energy is like, I wanna get up. Okay. I'll come back down.

This time, we're gonna lift one leg. So even right now, imagine I'm gonna lift my right leg. Don't lift it, but Just what would you do? You don't have to think. I'm gonna lift it. Something will engage.

That's what you need to that has to happen a split second before the leg does come up. Goes like this. I'm thinking of lifting my right leg. I'm curling my head neck and shoulders up, and I've already engaged that spot so the leg floats up, hold. Inhills, reach it back down, but do your best to not fully let go? I'm thinking the same leg. Engage. Like, oh, I'm gonna lift it, but I didn't. And then I curl up, and now I can easily lift it.

Stay there. Just pump the arms a little. Just pump them. And it's an inhale and an exhale. And an inhale. The body isn't moving really. The leg isn't moving.

It's just like hard, but it's good for us. Right? That's what they say. Let the leg go down. Take the arms back. We're gonna do the other side. So right now while you're on the ground, think I'm gonna lift the left leg, but don't actually do it.

You can already feel that sense of tension on that side of it. XL curl up. Go ahead and let us slide. Flote off the floor and take it down. And again, let's slide. Florida. So it's all kind of in that energetic direction there.

Stay here and pump the arms, inhale. And exhale. So the leg itself doesn't have to be tight, but it's good to have it straight. One more breath. And let everything go down.

Are we gonna give it a go? You know what's coming. So you're back here with your arms stretched overhead. Think about lifting both legs. Just like It imagine you're going to, but don't. It's it's one of those two things.

It's like engage, and here we go. It's not gonna be as hard as you think, curl forward. You're already engaged. They float. Hold it there. Inhale breathe. And exit, you can take the legs much higher if you'd like. Okay? That's absolutely or bend them.

That's fine. But just getting into it is a real important skill for so many other exercises and in and out. Go ahead and just let The legs come down, reach overhead, take the arms out to a t position, walk the feet in closer, and let's take both knees up to tabletop. Alright. So tabletop to me means you could set something on the shins. You can have your knees a little closer to you, but keep them absolutely together, rotate to the front of the room. Exailed, bring it back to center.

So a little bit more of rotation, and a little bit more of a warm up for the spine, exhale. Keeping those knees together. So, yes, the hip lifts up. The breath is really helpful here. I inhale as I rotate and then I start that exhale and it's like, oh, my abs dragged those legs back in a couple more. So far so good. I hope.

Up one more time each way. The shoulders stay on the ground if that sort of dictates your rotation the next time you do it. Okay. Hold hold the knees up. Hold on behind the knees. Look up towards them.

Just rock and roll a little bit and sit yourself up. We're going into the roll up. Don't be scared. It's a good one. Here's what we're doing.

So if you're sitting upright, that's cool. We're gonna reach your arms forward, and then tilt forward a little bit, pull the hip bones back. So you're gonna I think of it as a giant c curve. I'm not collapsing down. I'm supported in the front to have this sort of like a hairpin turn or long u shape looking down. We're gonna roll back until we're flat on the mat, but to do that for help, I'm gonna start rolling back My legs are gonna drag toward me so I can bend my knees and keep rounding the back to go all the way down, reaching back. The hands don't need to touch the floor.

We inhale reach forward. As you start to go forward, you can hold the back of your legs but start to stretch the legs out, let go of the legs and end up right where you started, inhale. It's initiated from the pelvis or the abs really, exhale start to roll back, drag the knees in so you can keep tucking the pelvis and reach back. Inhale, look forward, reach forward, hold the legs or not, but do start to stretch the legs out, sitting tall, shoulders over your hips, inhale, exhale slide back. Now if you want to, you don't have to bend the knees.

You can keep them straight because that is where this exercise goes. Inhale reach forward. Hold on or not. XL slide the legs forward. Keep those hip bones held back just a bit and energize yourself. Right? Really? Like, I'm trying to go over there, but there's something holding me back in the middle. Let's go down again.

Bending the knees, reach back, trying to make for a smooth ride, exhale to lift, stretch your legs out, and then let go of the arms if you haven't already, two to go. And back. Email. Start the exhale. It really does help. XL. Reach forward. This time, we're gonna go down and stay down.

Go ahead and bend the knees with you again. Just let your arms go down by your side. Head goes down. And then adjust yourself so you are in the center of your mat, feet apart in that pelvic curl position again. Caller bones wide. Inhale. We're gonna pelvic curl up, exhale stepping into your feet.

Feel the natural tendency for the abdominals to sink down when you exhale. From here. And by here, I'm not quite there yet. I'm gonna re tuck my pelvis just to make sure. And I'm gonna step into my heels a little more to send my hips higher.

Looking for a straight line from really the whole trunk to your knees. If that doesn't happen for you, if you're real tight in the hip flexors, I suggest you come down a little bit, but not dropping the butt. You have to actually tuck more. And and you could do the exercise from there, but do work to get yourself in the slant board position. Okay. Off we go.

We're picking up the right leg, keeping those hips level. Stretch the leg way up. Keep it pointed for now. Kick down. As far as you can go without thrusting your ribs, flex the foot kick it up. We'll go quicker now for six.

Down, flex up, two, and up, three, and up, four, and up. Five, you're in control. Six hold it up. End point the toe, set it down. You could let's all roll down just a little bit so we can regroup. The knees are not displaying.

Your inner thighs have to be involved. Recommit to the abdominal glute connection to roll yourself right back up into that slant board position. Opposite leg comes up, left leg point down, flex up. One, up, two, up, three, up, four, you're long, five. The last one, six you're up.

Point the toe, bend the knee, roll yourself down. Bring your knees to your chest for a little rock side to side, and then hands behind your knees. You can just let your feet drape pick your head neck and shoulders up, find a little space between your thighs and your abs, and get a little rocking motion. Two. We'll come up on the next one to sit up.

So this one, traditionally, would be with straight legs. So if you can do that and sit up straight, do that. Otherwise, you can go bent knees, try to keep them together. And yet another option for really tight hip flexors or tight low backs, you can come into a diamond position. Either one, anyone pick one. I'm gonna I'm gonna go for, let me go for straight legs.

I'm just taking my arms out to a t position. And, again, if it gets too hard for me, I'm gonna bend my knees because I want the rotation in the back with a straight spine. I'm not so interested in the hamstrings right now. Alright. Palms are up. Come towards the front.

We're gonna rotate once and then further twice come back to center. You can almost think mechanical. I'm going a little slow right now. Once twice center. Ready? It's boom. Hit them. Hit hit It's not staccato, or is it staccato? It's not a bounce.

It's one and then center. It's one and further center or go as far as you can and just breathe for the second breath. And press press so good for us. Oh my goodness. The arms are not the motivator here. They're just pointing you in the right direction.

I said one more, but let's do this and finish with that. Okay. From there, we get to just relax the legs a little bit. And now we're gonna take them into what we call the saw. Again, bent knees are absolutely fine, but you're gonna separate your legs. Any one of those leg positions are fine. Separate your legs straight if you want.

They're gonna be a little wider than if you have a yoga mat, a little wider than that. First point, you're gonna stay on those sits bones. Right? So you're not gonna we're about to rotate again, and it's gonna be really easy to go. What's the point if you lift off the hips. Don't do that. Same arm position to start.

We're gonna go to the front. We rotate I'm gonna put my back hand down on the ground to assist me in reaching forward. My back is not totally flat, but I'm kinda angling that way in a flatter position rather than just a round. Then you can pick up that back hand, sit up in the rotation, and back to center. Again, it might feel mechanical in a minute. You rotate first, back hand down to assist you reaching sawing off saw, off that little toe is sort of what you hear.

And then if you can handle it, by not bouncing out, lift that back arm and sit up in the rotation center. It goes like that a little quicker. We rotate. We reach use the hand to come up, lift the hand. You're in rotation and center. Think four parts.

It's one. You put the hand down or not. Two. Lift the hand to help you up three and four again. Oh, one. Reach two. Three and four. One.

23. This one can be done really well if you slow it down too. But for today, let's just get the ringing out of the spine as best we can. This is the last one. And up center. Shoo.

From here, we're going to go into the back support. Fingers face forward, elbows for now are bent. And if you can't get the fingers forward, turn them to the side. Okay. That's fine. All we're gonna do here is for today, I'm gonna say, push your heels into the ground, slightly bend your knees.

And the reason I'm saying that is it's almost like you're dragging your heels toward. Do you want your hamstrings to work? We're just lifting up to a straight line. Chest is open and come down. You can let the hands come up just for a little break, put them back down, or leave them there. We're only doing a few.

It's a nice, long line. You're not dropping your head back. You're trying to get a line across the chest that is straight, and then you set up two straight sides. Three more. And down to come up Here's two. This can be done with bent knees as well.

It's the same point. You just have to distribute your weight a little differently. I'm not sure which is easier to be honest. Is this the last one? Think not. Do another one anyway.

Let's go. And just hang out for a second. If you can't get your toes down, it's okay. Something to work for, but it's the glutes, the hamstrings, and most certainly pushing away from the ground, go ahead and sit down, shake out your arms, yeah, stand. I'm gonna turn over energy. I'm gonna do single leg kick. The version we're gonna do is like so.

Let your elbows go a little bit in front of your shoulders, but so that you can push off them still, not so far that you can't press down and feel like an oppositional lift. The forearms are angled toward each other. You're just resting your hands. And the idea here is to create a sense of back extension, not create it, do it. It's reach your chest through your arms.

I am pressing down on the floor, but there's a subtle sense of dragging my arms backwards, even though they don't move. From there, draw the abdominals in, hover the absolutely straight legs. If you did nothing more, this is a great exercise. Just hold it. If you wanna do more, we're going like this.

Pick one leg and kick it to your butt twice than straighten it out. Goes like this. Inhale inhale stretch. Switch. Inhale inhale stretch.

Now when you're doing it, you're not changing that spinal position. We just set up. Why would you change that? We worked hard to get there. Pull pull straighten. You can keep that or we can alternate, which makes it a little trickier. It would go inhale, inhale, exhale, exhale.

So I'm alternating those kicks. They pass each other. You're lifted. What are your shoulders doing? Email, exhale, inhale. That'll do it. Go ahead and stretch your legs out.

Lower down. Take a little breather, shimmy your hips, and then take your arms behind your back. Your head, you can turn your head one way, maybe toward the screen for now. Rest your hands on your back. Ultimately, you're gonna rest them as high up on your back as you can, and then you set the elbows down. Oh, boy. That's a good stretch, isn't it? Do your best to come back to this position every time. But for now, straighten your legs so much they hover. We're gonna kick both feet into the glutes three times, lifting up, lift your chest, look forward, and kick three one.

Two, three, stretch the legs, stretch the arms that come apart, and they just reach alongside your thighs. Go the other way, which only means turn your head, refold the arms, refold the knees, set your head down, set your elbows down, kick three times, knees are up. One, two, three, stretch, let the arms go. Reach like a dart. Feed her off the ground. We're only doing two more. Fold, head down. One. Two, three, and stretch stretch long.

Last one, one, two, three stretch stretch stretch. And relax. Again, you can rest your forehead on your hands. Take a breath, relax. And from here, we put our our hands by our shoulders and press up, round your spine into arrest position. You can walk your hands to one side, let your hips shift the other way.

Catching breath, other way with the arms, the hips oppositionally. Just find a little side stretch there. Come back to center. We come forward into the front support, which is a plank essentially, but let's set up. Hands are right below your shoulders.

So you're right over them. You maybe it's worth a little depression of this knee a sink in the scapula, and then an exaggerated push away from the floor, find the middle ground, extend one leg back. And this is a skill for later in your practice too. When you curl those toes under, It's not just like I'm gonna hop up. You push back. It is straight.

And then when you lift the other leg into position, nothing else moves. They're strong. They're like rods. From there, point both toes and lean forward on those wrists. Push back flex.

The shape stays the same. Forward, and back. Forward, and back. Let me give you a little challenge here forward, and back then. You're right back over those wrists.

Adjust your feet if you need to. Without changing your spine or your shoulder blades, can you slightly bend the elbows without dropping just slightly and straight? Just want you to check how stable you are slightly bend the elbows, but you didn't fall at all. Just slightly straight back. One more.

Good. Lower your knees. Keep your arms there and just stretch out. Phew, building stamina in the arms, the shoulders, the legs, the hamstring, and everything, really. Come back up. This time, we're gonna take the hand closest to, the back, I guess, and and put it forward. I want you facing me.

So it's it's just a little bit forward in the middle of the mat. You're gonna swivel your hips and just line the legs up into a Nice, long plank, side plank. Holding, you have a nice amount of space, nice and evenly. You're not sinking anywhere. You're just strong.

You're proud. You can use those inner thighs. I highly recommend you do. And you're just holding it. How long? I'm I'm trimming.

Are you? Good. Good. Push away from the floor. Push away. Not to get an arc or anything like that. Just hold it. You got it.

Then the knees. Come down and just come into a figure four position or you could stack the knees, and we're just gonna take that arm that was working so hard, free it and stretch the other way. You can even grab onto that arm, stretch it a little more, and then let it go if you want to or can. And then you could also rotate toward that shin. Rotate over that thigh. Re open and up, and let's just go to the other side for the side plank.

It goes like this. Top leg is in front. Since we have the opportunity to really set up that shoulder, is in the middle of the mat about or right in line with your feet is a better way of saying that. So the heels in the hand allow first the hip to line up with that. Then you can't start this from a relaxed position.

You're lifted away. You're gonna press into your feet and your arms, and you find that sideways t position, and you smile, and you breathe. Yes. Yes. Yes. And one more. You're strong.

Didn't it feel kinda good. Carefully let yourself down to bent knees while head back into that mermaid position. I do the figure four. You can stack your legs too. Trying to get the hips down free that arm we were just working and stir it over.

Oh, I think of going up and over first because it not a lot of space. If I just crunch down, so I'm lifting up and over. Sometimes I like to support the arm and even give it a little pull. And then once I've done that, I take my hand to the shin there that I'm looking at and rotate the body towards it. Just a little different variation on that stretch. Reopen and let yourself up.

Swive all the legs around. We're going back down for one of the great ones. The swan prep. Again, I keep saying that the there's some of these exercises all if all you do is the prep, it's just so good for you. And I think you probably feel that after this one.

Where we're at here is I've got my elbows in close. My hands are right by my shoulders. You may find you have to adjust that a little bit as we get going, but my feet are together. Looking at the floor, I'm basically rested, but I have to remind myself to pull the shoulders down. And I'm going to be using those elbows and forearms into the floor. So from here, it's as if I start to look forward or roll a marble forward, it's a cue.

I'm so used to, like, you're just tilting forward, and then the rest of your spine starts to lift without the use of your arms yet. See what you can do to start looking forward and lift your spine without the arms. That's it for me today. So now I'm gonna keep that intention, but I'm gonna put apply pressure to the forearms. Start to lift and oh my butt is working. Good.

It should. My legs are working. I'm reaching them. And I I can get all the way to straight today. It's not, always that I can.

Might not be for you wherever you are. Now you're gonna drag those elbows towards you. Just re bend them is another way of saying it. Reach your chest forward and unfurl your spine back down till you're looking at the floor. Slightly quick, your shoulders are down.

You start to lift your back with just the muscles of your back. When you've finished that, you can apply pressure, start to lift up. It's okay to keep the arms bent. And then as you come forward, kick in those lats or drag those elbows backwards, and intention, and you're down. Hands really are never moving in case that cue wasn't clear, start to look forward. I'm as high as I can, so now I'm gonna apply a little pressure. My legs are strong, and we come down.

Get longer every time, see if that makes sense to you as you try. I'm gonna add a little piece to this, and the legs are key. Inhale start to look forward. Your legs are kinda reaching away in in your mind anyway as you lift up. Now as you come down, keep those legs as strong as they are right now. As you come down, you'll find a spot where they can naturally lift up as your chest goes down.

Now inhale, let the legs go down. The chest comes up. We're going a little faster with that. Inhale coming down the legs go up. Think of it's like a bit of a teeter totter, isn't it?

Oh, working the back. I'm gonna do one more. We come up. Stay up and then elongate down stretching yourself out. Take a second.

When you're ready, your hands will go by your side. Fresh yourself up, pull the belly in to round your back into that rest position again, and hold. Just breathe. Nice work. Lots of energy just by doing some of those really deep muscular exercises. I just walk my hands forward a little because I wanna curl my toes under so we can end like we started.

Press your heels down. As much as you can. And as you start to straighten your legs, your hands are still on the floor. We're going back to that roll up or roll down. Before we actually roll up, just hang your head.

Shift your body weight forward and back a little. Start to if you need to bend your knees, absolutely no problem. But try to let the muscles of the face relax. Try to let your hair be heavy, your ears, whatever. Just like dripping forward tension out of the body.

We worked deeply. We worked quickly, and we get to let go for just a few seconds here. The arm bones are getting heavier, but that means I still have to support a little in the middle to be safe. Right. Letting it all go. We just gotta ground our feet.

Took the pelvis under. Roll yourself up. Let the arms be heavy. Start to create more space as we grow taller back on to our own two feet. I'm just stepping to the middle to face you.

And from here, let's just do two more roll downs together, take inventory. Hopefully, you feel better now than when you started. Shake off what you need to. Here we go. Inhale. Find space. Just support yourself. Nothing else needs to really happen here.

Head goes forward. Upper body goes forward. Middle body goes forward. Keep a little sense of support with the front of your body and the abs. You can bend your knees here.

You can straighten them. Either way, let's start to roll back up. Arms heavy, but collarbones wide. Keeping space, building more space, find space between the hips and the ribs, the neck and the older's last one together, inhale, and exhale forward. Feeling good about the time you took for yourself, the gift you've given your body for making it find new places, inhale, and exhale take your time.

Come on, Becca. Bring the energy down, but keep the strength of the stamina that you built with you. Thank you very much for being with me.