Jamie's Go-To Workout

Hi. I'm Jamie. Welcome to the mat. I've got my weights ready for this workout. It's gonna be a a workout that ticks all the boxes, and I'm gonna use a block concept. And what that means is you can take any section of this workout.

Independently on its own and use that as a short movement series just just individually. So whole workout with me or if you prefer, just choose little sections and come back to those when you need them. I'm gonna be using 10 pound weights for my workout, but choose whatever weight works for you. Even if you do it without weights, you're still gonna get all the benefits from this movement. Okay? So come and join me and we'll get started. So come down to our knees to begin.

I want us just to sit back on our heels and just take a moment just to breathe. Just lengthen up through your spine. And what we're doing in this moment is connecting ourselves to our bodies preparing to move and just getting ourselves ready. And it also gives us a moment as we breathe in and breathe out just to scan through our body, look for any areas of tension or stress and just try and release those before we move. We'll take one more breath, nice deep breath in.

Breathe it out, and then from here onto all fours. Okay. I'm curling my toes under, and just circling around my wrists and shoulders, my hips and my knees, and I'm gonna go as big as I can. Just oiling up all the joints. Bringing a little bit of weight through the joints as well. Let's reverse it, go back the other way.

And if there's any areas, maybe you find like a point that's a bit sticky, you can work through that. Just go one more in this direction. And then what I want you to do is bring your knees together. Take your feet wide. Try and get them all the way out to the edges of the mat. So it's gonna internally rotate fema there. So that's gonna feel very different in the hip joint and just see what kind of range you can get as you circle now. Let's reverse it coming back the other way.

And once again, any areas that feel a little tight, or a little sticky. You can just work through those. So maybe it's like in the hips a little. Maybe that's in the shoulders last one, and then back to you or fives. As you were. Let's cat and cow.

So nice round back as we exhale. And as you inhale lengthen up broaden across your collar bones. And again, exhaling round. Inhale, lift, lift, lift. And as we're lifting up, pushing our seat back, just do one more of those, and inhaling up, and just take your seat back.

Very similar spinal movement, but getting a little more funky now. Take your nose down to the mat. We're gonna press that along the mat. Lift our heart, lengthen up and take our seat back again. So we're getting a deeper stretch a little addition with that extension just making it a little more length through the body.

Two more of these inhaling up. Press your hips back. Last one. Big inhale here. Exhale rounding all the way back. Okay.

From here, we're moving into a thread the needle but we're not only taking too much time with this. We're just lengthening it up just once on this side to open up and stretch and then thread your arm through the gap, lower to your shoulder and reach your other arm up. You can crawl your fingers out. And then when you're in this position, that might be enough, but if not, have a little wiggle around. Move a little, see if that releases any more tension and bring breath into your body of course.

Let's bring your hands back. Come all the way back up and we repeat that on the other side. So open it up, really stretch, open the front body. That's a good opportunity to inhale, and then exhale as we thread through. Work the hand and the arm out to get the stretch, and then it's like, just shaking our hips a little, and just see if we can find any areas to stretch into just to take the stretch a little deeper or any errors of tension that you want to release. Let's bring the hands back to the mat.

A little cat and cow once more just to find that reset, and then from here into our planks are all ready to get our core going. So just float your knees off the mat. Just hold for a moment and then take your seat back towards your heels. And then from here, pressing forward into a plank, take your seat back. Just hovering your knees off the mat, pressing forward.

And again, and you can work through whatever range works for you, and if it's too much, just lower the knees down. Take a beat. Take a breath. There's always opportunity to pause. This is your workout. So make it work for you.

Let's do two more of these. So working the whole body now, full body integration, reach with this, and then come back down to our knees. Alright. So same position. We're going into that knees off position. And this time, working our knees in towards our elbows just for a little bit more fun.

So take the seat back. Come forward into the plank. And we bring knees elbow, knees elbow. And again, let's do two more on each side. And then we're bringing these under the body and simply run.

Just run here. Hold a little longer. You'll feel that through the shoulders. In the abs, and getting the heat going through the body, getting the heart rate up. Let's twist. A couple more.

One on each side, lower your knees down. Take a moment, shake your arms out if that feels like they could use it. Get the blood flowing again. Stay in on our knees now. We're gonna start first of our strength blocks. So, I'm taking the weights, and I like staying kneeling for these.

You can do them standing, but being down on your knees eliminates any extra movement from the legs, focuses on the target muscles. So, let's just work bicep curls and we're bringing those weights up and slowly bring them back down. Keeping the body as still as we can. So it's just the arms moving. Let's go for five more now. Keeping your body still rocking back and forward to make the weights left. Okay? Just the arms.

Two more. And then bring the weights halfway down, hug the elbows into your ribs and we'll just take them out to the sides. Squeeze between the shoulder blades. Press those weights out. It's almost, I mean, we're working for sure, but we're stretching as well.

You feel that stretch in the back of your shoulder. Four more. Two more. And the last one. Okay. From here, bring the weights up to your shoulders.

Delta press 10 on each arm. We go individual arms, reach and reach, and I want you to stretch the whole side body. That's it. Reach it up. Stay strong through your core as well.

So you've staying stable so that you've got a good strong foundation to press the weights from. Two more on each arm. And reach, bring those down. Good from here onto a force. Again, place one weight just to the side, hand on the mat for our triceps. So, hug your elbow in to your ribs, just stretching back. Stretching back.

Stay as strong as you can through the whole body. So you feel like even though we're working the arm, we're actually working the core as well. Press that arm back. Nobody rolling. Last one. Bring it down. We change sides.

So nice strong quad position elbow up to your rib and press nine. Eight, seven, keep working. Keep your elbow high. Last one, and then bring the weight down. We'll just take advantage of being in this all fours position.

Take the weight back to one side. And from here, it's a very similar action, but with a little rotation in the body, we're gonna pull and twist. Pull the elbow high body twists. That's it. Twist. Keep all the other parts of the body nice and strong. Just the movement through the torso.

Looking up to the elbow. Two more. More more. There it is. Change sides. And we press and reach.

So we're rotating Let's go three more. Last one, and then we're gonna recover both the weights and come into a standing position. So, this one, just a straight squat. I want you just to have the feet hit distance or a little bit more apart. Let me just go down.

And stand up. And as you stand at the top, press your hips forward, draw your shoulders back. Five more. Pressing up and two and one more up nice and tall. Let's place one weight down onto the floor. Hold one out in front of you.

I want you to create space like a circle with the arms. Don't hold it too close into your body. Take the feet a little wider, bend the knees, 10 on each side, just rotate it, twist, twist, and center. And keeping the knees pointing out to the side so it's the torso that does the twisting. Let's go five more on each side.

Stay strong. And two more. Last ones, you'll be happy to know the first strength zone is done, we will move down onto our backs ready for some core work. So on to your back and we'll begin with a Pilates favorite, the Ab series. So hug wagging leg and stretch your other leg out.

Bring your nose towards your naval and we reach and hug reach and hug and just think all the time about pulling your abs inwards and upwards. And that's gonna fire up your abs and the whole body is working. Let's go one more on each side. Both legs in. If you want, in your next field, Just lower your head down. You can move it from side to side, loosen up your neck.

But if you're still with me, ready for double leg stretch. Reach your arms legs long. Sweep your arms and hug four more. Inhale out. Exhale hug it in.

Two more. Last one, hug it in. Let's lower the head again. Give the neck some respite. We don't wanna build any tension. Just looking to strengthen, mobilize, turn to chest, nose to enable, scissors to take hold of one ankle, pull pull and switch, pull pull and switch.

Abs in and up, reaching through the legs, one more on each leg, and bring the legs together. Pull your hands on the backs of your thighs, bring your head up even higher. Hands behind the back of your head for lower lifts. Let's lower the legs away. Lift them back up.

Four more. Three and two. Last one. Ben your knees for crisscross opposite elbow, opposite knee. And try and keep your elbows as wide as you can. It's almost like we're putting the armpit to the knee.

Let's go one more each side. Hug the knees in, rock until you come up, and then turn over onto all fours. We stay connecting to our core muscles. So we're looking to really center, connect, stay strong, for bird dogs as we reach finger tip to toe. Land in the hand and the knee at the same time.

Bring that in. And again, reach reach reach stretch long. Oh, buddy. Let's go one more on each side like this and then I'm gonna give you an option for those who are with me who want to turn up the heat a little more. Can we take the seat back, float the knees just off the mat and see if you can do that balancing with the knees just hovering. Whoa.

You see, I got that wobbly one in there. It's okay to wobble. It's what this is all about. One more on each side. And then bring the knees down.

A little more challenge in that one. Okay. Taking one weight. We're still in the core series. Okay? So don't get excited and think we're on to the next strength block. Take a plank position. Feet mat distance apart and we'll place that weight on the opposite side of the mat and this one's a little rotation, little bit of full body integration, little bit of call or I should say a lot of call really, reach cross, place the weight to the other side.

Repeat again. And every time you grab that weight, trying to take it a little further, and that will challenge you across the body. Reach and return. A few more to go. Stay with me.

If you need to come to your knees to do this, you can. It works just as well. And then we'll do one more after this one on each side. So here we go. Reach, swap, reach and bring, and then come down to your knees take a well earned rest position stretch.

And then remaining on our knees, we're ready to repeat our second of the strength blocks. So I'll get the other weight. And bring them in. So we're repeating the same as we did with the first block, but this time we turn it up a little bit for a couple of those exercises. So kneeling again for 10 bicep curls.

Curl it in. That's it. Five and four, three, two more. Lower them down. Okay. Ready for this one, but we're gonna add a little difference to this. So stay with me.

First one, elbows into ribs, stretch out here, turn the palms down, do the same. Turn it up, take it out. Turn them down, repeat the same. This one can feel quite heavy, so if you wanna use lighter weights or even do it without weights, you're still gonna get all the benefits. Just do what works for you.

Okay. One more on each. Press it out. Close, down, out. Close. Bring that together. Great. Okay. So from here, triceps.

So onto a force, Once again, just the one weight, elbow high, and press. Four more. Stay nice and strong. So the whole of your body. And last one, change sides.

So keeping that quad really strong. No moving of the hips, no wriggling of the body, just a good straight tricep press. Two more. Alright. Nicely done. So from here, we're going into a side plank and we're gonna add the rotation there.

So it's extra challenging. If this feels like too much for you, just go back to that first strength block. We find ourselves on our side, place the weight in front of you, one foot in front of the other, and first thing to do is to press up into a strong side plank, which in itself, you're gonna feel that's quite a strong exercise already. Take the weight, and we press and reach, and reach. And seven. Good.

Press out of the hand that's on the floor. Five more. And two, one more. Here we go. Change sides. You get to see if one side feels a little stronger than the other. And maybe bring that side with a little more intensity if that's the case.

Press up into our side plank, hold that position, take the weight. Here we go. 10. Nine. Reach high. And five more.

Last one. Oh, nice work. How do we get on? Did we manage to do that? Very impressive. That's a good strong exercise. Moving on though, we stand up for our squat series.

So for these squats, we're gonna do a split squat this time. So weights are gonna come into our chest So we're gonna add this and combine it just for fun with the deltoid press. So step back for one foot, split squat, step in, press up. Change legs. Step back.

Step in, and up. Let's go. Hold buddy working. Up, back, up, and press, and press. Here we go. Few more. Everything involved.

Not just the arms as you're feeling now. Two more on each leg. Last one. Stay with me. Up, press back and up. Great work. Down to just one weight again.

So place one week down away from your mat. Okay. And this is gonna feel like you're almost like shoveling some dirt. Alright? So we get messy together. Waits in in both hands, reach it down to one side and throw that over the shoulder for five. Four, three, two, And one, change sides, reaching down, and shovel. Good little rotation, strong core connection.

Two more, last one, and then we can place that weight down on the floor with the other one. You'll be happy to know that's the strength part done. We're coming back to the mat now for a little bit of a stretch off. So lower yourself carefully down onto your tummy, and just lengthen. Take a moment, hands by.

Your chest elbows up, forehead down. Let the breath come back down. And on your next inhalation, lift your head, chest, shoulders, little press with the arms. Breathe it in, lengthen. Breathe it out. And again, lifting lengthen up, exhale lengthening back down.

Could you two more of these. Keep a good activation of your back body. As we lift and then lengthen as we come down one more time. Lift and lengthen up. All the way back down.

Take your seat back to your heels. I'm gonna take a nice rest position here just to counter stretch. I'm gonna take the hands over to one side. Draw your hips back to your seat. Okay? And then to the other side, take as long as you need here just to breathe.

And then we'll come over onto our backs. Continuing the rotation that we found during the workout. I want us to take our arms wide and cross one leg over the other, whole thigh. Simply anchor your shoulders down and lower your knees to the side, feel a stretch through your waist, through your side body, maybe in your hip as well. Come back through the center, change legs, and change sides.

This is usually a bit where I get a few cracks through my back. It feels really good. Good ones, not bad ones. Just releasing some tension there. Let's go one more on each side.

One more on the other side. And then very carefully, you can roll to one side and sit yourself up. And then from here onto a fours again, step one foot forward, and just a couple of lunges forward, lift your heart straighten your leg, give your hamstring a little bit of love. We've done a lot of squatting so it's a good way to release the backs of the legs. One more of these. Change legs.

Try and keep your hands either side of your foot if you can. If that feels like a bit too much, then you can always come up onto blocks or use the weights there as well. We can hold the weights to create a little bit of a prop stretching back, last stretch back. And then from here, we're gonna finish standing just as your heart rate's down, I want you ready so that you can walk out the door, ready to take on the day ahead. So, finish with some jumping jacks. Just 10 of these, just to keep the heart rate up, Are we ready? Here we go.

We go out and together. Four more. And bring the legs together, hands by your side. Little clap and round of applause for making it through that workout. Thank you for joining me.

I hope you're ready now to get going and to embrace the day ahead.