Building Heat Mat

Hi, I'm Jamie, and thank you for coming and joining me for another workout, strength related workout. And I want us to think about some of the gyms revisited. When you go to the gym, you'll find different sections for different things. The treadmills, the bikes are in one section. Maybe there's a weight section and maybe there's a place where we can stretch off or do some mobility work.

So we're gonna make the mat today, our own personal gym. And at one end, we're gonna do body weight work, mobility work, and then at the other end, we've got our weights. They're just there ready for us. And the only difference between us walking around a gym is gonna be how we move from one end to the other of the mat. So we're gonna bring a little bit of tension to that and a little bit of fun as well. So let's get warmed up and get ready and get our workout going. Okay? So start with your feet hip distance apart.

We'll just start with some swings. So take your arms back as you bend your knees and lift your arms up. And just try and breathe and flow as you do it. Begin at the top. Pressing down, lifting up.

And just feel the blood moving around the body. And if you're feeling keen, we can stretch up onto our toes as we swing. We do a few more of those. Swinging your arms back, lifting up. One more time, and then add a little twist with it as well. So we would go back as we come up, we twist down and twist. Little rotation, but keeping length through our body.

And breath through our body too. Let's go one more on each side. So we twist and we twist and then settle. Ready to get our workout. Emotion.

So starting down at the body weight end of things. So come down to your mat. And for this one, you can be off the end of your mat if you wish or on your mat. It's all about an imagined zone more than it is an actual zone. So me, I'm gonna come onto the mat and hold a plank position. So we get straight into some full body work, good core work, and lift one knee to your elbow nice and wide.

Center. Push back into like a stretch, a bit of a down dog stretch, reach, come forward, other knee to the shoulder, to the elbow. Sorry. Reaching back. Stretch your hips back. And then bring your knee up and out stretch it back up and out stretching back. And if we wanna add a little something in here, as we stretch back, let's add a push up.

And then forward needs elbow. Up, push up needs elbow. Still a couple more of these. Miss our yogi push up one more on this side, up yogi press one more on this side, and then lower down. To your knees. Onto a seated position now because we're moving into our weights room.

And for this, I want us to sit tall. Sit tall at the end of your mat. Place your hands behind the back of your head and lift up tall through your spine. And already you're starting to feel some work here. As strange as it looks, I want us to lift our seat and walk to the end of the mat.

Let's get almost to the end. And now we're in a position ready to use our weights. So bend your knees, take hold of just one weight here. Hold that out in front and we'll start just by scooping our abs, curling back sitting back up tall. We're gonna do this four more times.

Just curling back. Sitting up nice and tall. Three more and two more. And on this last one, let's go back for some Russian twists. So we take the weights, tap them down to one side and change, and change, and change. That's it. Stay strong through your core.

And stay scooped through your apps. So we got rotation and all that full body integration happening. Let's go three more on each side. Last ones, and then we get to place the weights back down. Hans come back behind the back of our head, sitting up nice and tall.

Let's walk it backwards and try and do this with the spine as long as you can make it. It's a little wiggle going on, but not too much. Fully on the mat all the way back down to the end. And then from here, back into a plank position. And for here, we're gonna do a thing that I like to call commander push ups.

So basically we start in a plank, but we take our plank down onto our forearms. And then we come back up again. And try and alternate which arm goes down first and which arm presses up first. Let's go five more after this one. Even just holding the planks, pretty strong in itself.

So doing it with this movement is gonna add a whole new dimension to your planking. Let's get it two more. Last one, press all the way up. Okay. Come down. To your knees, and we'll stay in this position facing forward to bear crawl our way all the way down to the weight section. Alright.

So from here, just come up onto all fours, lift the knees, and I want us just to walk to the end of the mat, and that's quite a short distance. So we're gonna take that back again. And again, crawl to the end of the mat. We're going back one more time. And then all the way up for the last one, and we find ourselves back in the weight zone.

So pick up your weights. We'll do some squats, and we're gonna take these squats in all directions, taking them almost all the way around the world. Here we go. So we start going forward with a split squat, split squat, step to the side, bend the knee. Center, step back, and then a courtesy squad. Change legs, stepping forward, split squat, step to the side.

Back and then a courtesy scribe. And let's repeat that again. Changing legs each time. Split squat forward, out to the side for a lunge, back. And across.

Change again. Forward. And back. And inside, I think I mixed up the journey, but it's okay. We're getting them all in. And up. Okay. Two more on each side.

Here we go. Forward. Inside and back. And then across. Forward to the side and back and across. Alright. And again, forward to the side.

And back, all the way across. They all add up. That's for sure. One more here. One more to the side. And back.

And across last one. Nice work. Okay. We're gonna place these back down. We're gonna do our bear crawl back down the mat, ready for return to the body weights on. Okay. So find our bear crawl.

Work that back. It's good agility work all the way back and then from here onto our backs. For a little ab work here. So find ourselves curled up, change your chest nose into naval, and then reach your legs up and if you want to cross your ankles, you can and if you want to bend your knees, that creates like a nice connection brings it all into the abs. And I want you just to reach up, take your rope and reach and reach and we're gonna climb a rope reach for the top as high up as you can get. Reach up nice and tall.

So we've got a lot of ab work happening, oblique to firing, good core exercise. Really good for toning and strengthening. Reach really high. Really high. Pull on that rope. Pull it down.

And again, let's do two more on each side. Here we go. One down. Up and down. Last ones. And then lower your head down to the mat. The legs come up to the ceiling, and you can take your arms nice and wide.

So we've got a good strong firm base and just take the hips and the feet to one side back through the center, staying anchored through our shoulders back to the center. It goes far over as you can without losing the connection between the floor and your shoulder blade. Let's do two more per side. Stay anchored now. Stay strong. Keep your legs as straight as you can.

Reaching long through your toes. One more each side. And through the center, hug your knees in and then come up to sit and we're ready to return back down to the weights. So from here, we're gonna lay onto our tummy and create a role in motion and incorporate the exercise of swimming from pilates. So it's a challenging exercise on its own.

And when we add the role into it, not only does it make us work a little harder. But it brings a real playful element to our work. So lift yourself up and let's swim. Lifting opposite arm, opposite leg, good strong flatter kick, and we hold for 10 and hold. Now we're gonna try and roll without our hands and feet touching. You need a little push to start.

Let's roll over to our back. Roll over to our front. How do we do? And let's swim here. And that's 10. Hold it. Stay up here. Lift higher and lower down.

Great work. Okay. So from here, taking the weights now, we're just gonna take one weight. Come onto your back again. And then very carefully place the weight by the side of your head. Not over your head, just to the side. So you need a good grip on that and then straight on one leg.

Up. The other arm comes down by your side. Lower your leg away. As it comes back up, we reach up hand to toe, not toe to weight, but hand to toe, and back down. Four and three, and two, and one, come all the way down, change sides, leg up, and we lower, and reach. And four, as high as you can. Three, and two, and one, bring it back down.

We change again. This time to add a little more intensity. Let's lift the hips up. So bridge in. One leg reaches up.

Keep those hips lifted. Lower the leg down and up. Down and up. Three. Two more.

Keep your hips lifted. Change the weight. To the other hand, bring your arm by the side. Other leg points up. We lower it.

We lift for five. And four. And three. And two. Last one. Bring the weight down.

Legs down, lower slowly through your spine, and we return back down the mat using our swimming. So let's press the weights back in position and onto your tummy. Arms reaching out and we roll to our back all the way over. Whoop onto your tummy and finish with the last swim. Hold lift higher.

And then lower down. Just take a moment. Just reset your hips. And we're coming from here onto our side for side bend. So Let's start seated, good connection, shoulder nice and strong, one foot in front of the other.

Five side bends, five press ups, five side bends facing the other way. Let's work through this together. Nice lift, stretch. Think long here, reach as you press your hips up and down and lift and reach. Making sure we're not sitting the seat down.

We're just letting it kiss the mat. If it goes up, one more to do, and then come all the way up and over into our plank position, five push ups, elbows in. Five, four, three, two, last one, and then we change to the other side, side bends facing in the other direction, as we lift, reach. And again, up and reach. Two more after this.

Last one, all the way up. Reach all the way down, returning to the mat, ready to make our way to the end of the mat. So for this one, we're doing bunny hops, and I'm gonna imagine that we're moving down the mat. And instead, we'll use the mat as something to target away from. So we come up into this familiar position from other exercises we've done and simply hop to one side of the mat and to the other and see if you can clear the mat each time.

Let's do a couple more of these. It gets the heart rate going. That's it. One more each side. And to the center, I'm ready to take on our weights for some hamstring curls.

So just the one weight needed for this exercise onto your tummy. And I like to place the weight before I go, I'll see if it balances. If it's not gonna balance, if you like mine, you've got a weight that's slightly shaped at the end, then we're gonna try and place it between the feet ourselves. So just be careful as we do that. And we have to weight down five together, curl it in. I do 20 of these because we're working the legs, so we should be able to do a few more repetitions.

Press the thighs together, lengthen the body. Last 10. Here we go. Squeeze the weight as well. Squeeze your feet into the weight to keep it safe. Four and three and two. Last ones. One, lower the weight down.

You can actually let that just fall to the mat. Keep your feet clear and we come up to standing for some upright rows. So for that, we're gonna need both the weights. So I'm gonna stand nice and tall hips distance with my feet and then push my seat out as I bend. Arms come down. Just 10 of these.

Pull them up to our chest. And nine, eight, seven, six, five, five more. That's our 10, and we can just take those weights down to the mat. Take a moment just to stand up nice and tall, shake it out. And we'll place those weights back clear to the end of the mat. Ready for a little bit of a warm down.

Take the body back down, so you can get a heart rate back down. And for this, we're gonna go on to our backs and just stretch out our glutes with a figure of four. So cross one ankle over the opposite knee you can begin by flexing the foot and just pressing the knee outwards, feel a stretch coming into the outer hip. And if that feels like it can be turned up a little, take the hands through, take the back of your thigh. And just pull that in, and I'm trying to push my elbow into the knee at the same time just to increase the stretch. And you can take that as deep as you feel.

We get a couple of breaths in here. Let your heart rate come back down. Let the body relax a little bit. You've worked hard. You've earned it.

Let's change legs. So once again, cross the ankle over your knee flex the foot and we begin here. Just pressing the hip out. Gain and lengthening the hip. This is a really good exercise to use after you've done some some squats.

I'm gonna reach through, take the back of my thigh, and just press my elbow into my hip. I can feel the difference in the hips as well. It's definitely my tighter one. So I give it a little more love, a little more attention. And let's lower that down, arms out, just let the knees go from side to side a couple of times, loosening up the hips, loosening up the waist, back through to the center.

We'll come all the way up to stand for a little finish stretch as well. So from here, standing nice and tall. Soft in the knees. I just round back as we roll down and just stretch that out for a bit. And then take a moment just to take the stretch a little deeper, let that hang, and then bring the hands to the mat.

We're gonna come down to our knees and just set our last seat onto our heels. Just take a moment Just to let the heart rate come all the way down, let the body, just recover, reintegrate, and take a few deep breaths. And if you're doing this first thing in the morning to get the the body going, this could be a great moment to bring some intentions into our mind. Think about where we're taking ourselves through the day and how we're gonna do that. And if it's the end of the day, we can use this as a nice way to wind down, bring the heart rate down, and just let the body slip now into relaxation.

One more breath in. All the way out. And we're ready to just step away from the mat knowing that we've left everything there. Great work, everybody.