Strong Mat

Hi, everybody. Amy Haven's here for Matt Class with you. I feel like standing on my arms a little bit, front support, some side support, and some back support today. So I'm bringing in some elements from the mat, of course, the list, but we're not doing the list. We're not following that specific order. I just wanted to get on my arms a little bit and feel some strength.

So we need to get centered. We need to get connected in our center. We need to feel our hamstrings and our hip extensors, and we need to feel scapular mobility, stability, and then load. How does that sound? We're gonna start with a roll down. So I'm gonna come to the back edge of my mat.

Have fun. Practice your practice. Take a deep breath. And let's roll down. So right away, focus on as your head comes down, opening up the space between your shoulder blades.

Coming over, I'm gonna soften my knees just a little bit. As I come down, take a deep breath here. As we roll up, press the feet, especially the heels a little more into your mat, see if you can get the hamstrings coming into the situation. And articulate all the way up. Maybe a little taller than you began. We'll take another breath, lengthen out through the top of the head, cervical flexion. Your arms are really just helping kind of pull you forward and down.

They're loose. What's lifted is the abdominal wall. My knees are a little straighter now. I wanna focus on keeping my weight right above the heels and the arches of the feet now bend the knees to round the lower back. Get the length feeling your sit bones pointing down to your heels, your tailbone down to the floor, and roll yourself up.

We'll do another one one more time. And add on to it down there. Rounding down. So start working your abs here. This is a pretty swift little class or a workout. So don't forget the basics.

Okay. Walk yourself out all the while. I'm really focusing on my tummy. Now when I get into my hands, I love to get focused on spreading the palm on my hand as wide as I can first coming over the wrists. Now we're not bearing full weight. Try to be light on your wrists.

Be light on your wrist. It says a little sense of almost pulling your weight up off of the wrist themselves. Take a deep breath. We're gonna go into some sternum drops. And then recovery.

Basically, just coming coming out of neutral and then coming back to neutral. So I let my sternum drop toward the floor and I bring it back up home. And a sternum drop. But really what's also happening, and you guys know this, the scapular are also moving relative to the sternum and the and the rib cage. We can move this in direct, it, initiate it from the sternum, which I'm doing now.

Right? And the ribcage sternum, that part, one more like that, sternum, you'll see what I mean here just now. Alright? Now if I think about it more from the scapula, Let the scapula glide. There is often more mobility and now really push the scapula wider protraction. So the retraction, see how much deeper you're getting there, mobilizing more, and then push that floor down. Spread your scapula. You're not going into thoracic flexion yet.

You're just working the mobility of your scapula around that rib cage. Connecting to your serratus muscles, the scapular stabilizers. Okay. So we've really brought some awareness there. Now keep it stable. Breathe in.

Let's go for some spinal flexion. So the scapula are going to protract more. You don't need to overdo it. See if you can bend your spine into more of that c curve cue and shape we often hear. And then move back out through your neutral, and then go into more of an extension expression of your spine.

Doesn't have to be big. It can be if you wet, and then come back through neutral, breathe in. So now I'm focusing spinal motion, relative scapular stabilization, inhale, and exhale through neutral. Try to be light on those wrists. Working a little bit of the extension.

So I'm trying to pull my arm bones back a little bit. One more here, everybody, and full c curve. Maybe pick up the tummy a little bit more this time and then work into the extension as much as you wanna go with. Okay. Come into neutral. Now this is really hard and fun.

Just do neutral, excuse me, lumbar flexion. It's very tempting to add your thoracic flexion, but if you can just focus in, let's come to neutral, on your lower spine, mechanics, and holding your thoracic and cervical in their neutral. One more. Hold that position. Make that c curve warm now.

You're gonna reach that c curve back. It's a little bit of cat, right, and just come off your wrist, which was quite a long time to warm them up. I'm gonna turn around and I'm gonna sit I'm gonna take my arms forward. So are you and slowly roll down. You may have to get when you get down to make some adjustments of your spatial arrangement on your mat, body, and heels come closer together.

Pretend you're on the reformer and doing chest expansion for a moment. Scapula are back. Your clavicle is open. You're not thrusting the ribs. This is really a shoulder girdle event there.

Breathe in. Let's go for some pelvic curl. Hamstrings and hip extensors. So no matter what what support you're doing front side or back, we have this plank line reference. Right? It's not there. It's definitely not a rib thrust.

We're trying to have a straight line, a plank line, and then roll that down. And in that plank line, what's involved? Shoulder extension. So I've got my chest expansion going. And the hip extensors, back of the hips, glutes, hamstrings, even the lower back, but you've got all that center containment there.

Breathe in. And come down. We'll do one more, inhale at your level of pelvis, and exhale roll back up through that. Use those hip extensors as early in this motion as you can. It's not a rib thrust.

It's hip extension. Breathing and rolling down. Now when you get down there, we're gonna take those arms straight up to the ceiling. You're in a beautiful neutral body. And we're gonna do a little more shoulder girdle awareness. So protraction, retraction, scapular motion, protraction, retraction, protraction.

So healthy to do one more. Okay? And then some shoulder blade circles. So I left to mobilize before the stabilization. Right? And let's go the other way and definitely before the loading phases come in.

We just warmed up in quadruped. We're gonna get more motion in a minute. Big open expression of the chest, exhale close. The pecs are also involved in weight bearing front and side, so we'll give them a little attention. And open and return hands behind the head.

Take a breath in there. You can clasp those hands. Now I love elbows up away from the floor. Feel how your thoracic spine now has space, to touch the mat, breathe in. Lift your head, flex that spine forward.

Get some mobility between the shoulder blades. We don't want the shoulder blades back there. Nope. We want them around those ribs. And then roll yourself down. Breathing in, getting your center connected.

So we're not gonna do a ton here to maximize your effort. One more time, curl forward. We're gonna stay there. Take the hands around the side of the thighs, the back sides. Walk up a little higher. Now I'm gonna ask us to go into some flexion of the spine at the tail, lumbar, and thoracic, and just hold that intensity.

Hold that intensity. Now see if you can let your lumbar come to neutral. And then lumbar deflection, this is a joyfully fun, and it's flattening into extension or neutral. And flexion. Can you do that without dropping your upper body?

Right. So we have that thoracic flexion and this lumbar mobility. We did it from quadruped. It's just probably more effort here. Take your hands back behind your head and roll yourself down. Feeling that connection, inhale.

Flection forward. Breathear rotation of the upper thoracic. Little bit of side to side motion. Very small. Deep connections, deep internal feeling.

My feet are solid on the floor. My pelvis is as level as I can have it be right now, one more each side, twisting, getting my obliques. We need those obliques for all of the support positions. Take a breath and roll yourself all the way down. One more roll up to a bridge.

Take a breath. Xhale, pelvic curl. Bring it up. Take a breath. A one leg up to a tabletop and a stretch up. And bring it back through and down.

Couple of those. Making sure you're standing even on that single leg. Your pelvis hasn't dropped. Alright? You need that pelvic support So when we do all the front support, side support, back support, pelvis is really an interesting place of the body.

It's between the hands and the feet. So it's usually the place that we look at if if the bridge is sagging. We go, oh, no. We've gotta really train and get that That strong. Right? Okay. Come on down. Tuck your knees into your chest.

Roll yourself a little bit. And then we will roll up to sitting. Take a breath here. Arms forward. Little mini rollbacks. And the reason why I wanna get us onto our sacrum again.

Just onto your sacrum. I'm pushing the heels on my hands forward. So I'm already starting to connect the push muscles that I'll be working on in my weight bearing. Right? So it's my serratus coming through here and my thoracic coming back. I'm just gonna get onto my sacrum and come right back up. Three about three or four of those.

So in my mind, I'm getting ready. Okay. Pretty soon I'm about to stand front support plank movement. You guys know what planks are. You know front support. Right? You're prepping.

Mind first, body second. Okay. So before we get on our hands, again, roll your wrists around. Just sit comfortably for a moment. Roll your wrists as big as you can. Something I do is something I like to call this helper hand. So I'm gonna use this hand as my helper hand. One arm is gonna go forward.

Helper hand goes to my humorous upper arm bone. I'm gonna externally rotate the whole thing, arm to hand. Now from my elbow to my wrist, I'm gonna rotate the other way. And just keep going from elbow to wrist palm up, palm down. Meanwhile, this arm is stayed back here.

Right? So this is preparing us for weight bearing. Now flex that wrist, extend and flex. You might feel some nerve sensations. Okay. Bring your scapula down your back. One more time and hold.

That's gonna be your weight bearing. Right? Okay. Here we go. Do the other side. So palm up, help her hand, humorous, externally rotate big time at the shoulder. And then from elbow to hand, rotate down. It's gonna be a pronation, supination.pronation supination. All that's happening, nothing's changing up here.

Okay? Now play with the wrist. Oh, boy. Does it feel different? Circle, and that's our weight bearing. You ready? Let's come on to quadruped. So here we are. Back into our quadruped.

We need some good triceps, don't we? Yes, we do. This is our camel drinking water. So what I'm asking us to do is stabilize first. These can be together or apart. Let's go ahead and do a weight shift forward over the wrists intentionally loading more than weight shift back. I'm gonna talk about a few things I'm doing.

As I come forward, I it's as if I'm pulling my arms back, even though I travel forward. And when I travel back, it's as if I'm pushing my arms forward. So I'm really using my hands, like suction cups on the mat. I'm also directing the tip of my head forward and the tip of my tail back. One more to go. Each side.

Pull forward. We're in a neutral spine. We've got all the abdominal connections there. Okay. Now, we get a stop where our shoulders right above our wrists. I'm gonna separate my knees just to touch. And I'm going to lower myself down to my forearms, maintaining my neutral spine the best I can.

Very challenging not to just go hunk then I've lost the push muscles. Okay? So we I'm still pushing. It's as if I'm kind of pushing the mat that way as I lower. And that's helping my thoracic spine, the chest spine stay very long. And then I pressed myself up.

Let's do a couple more. So definitely weight bearing. So for those of you who don't love weight bearing, and you're trying this class to build some strength, I'm very proud of you because it's hard. Weight bearing can be hard. I'm not showing any modifications really.

You could roll your mat up if you wanted more, support. You know, you know, that one. Bring it to your hands. Okay. Walk your knees back. We're gonna do a few push ups.

So lift up on your knees. And a few means three. That's what I mean. Hit extension. We did it on a bridge and push. Right? Weight bearing, you need push effort, down control, and push. One more.

Keep those hip extension muscles active and push. Okay. Ready to stand on your feet too. So before we do two feet, let's do one foot. Take one foot back and just stand on those toes.

Just stand there rock back and forth a little. So although we're bearing weight on our arms, we can try to be lighter on our arms. However, you perceive that in invitation. Okay? Chain sides. The first time I was invited to think that I thought the teacher lost her mind.

How can I be light? I'm on my arms. I'm on my hand. When I got the understanding of that, I tapped into the source within my center and I lifted my weight. It was kind of a aha moment. Okay? So here we go. We're gonna bear onto two hands, two feet. Just stand there. So we're not dropping down. That's the challenge. No. Lift.

Pretend your lifting out of your wrists. Hold. Hold. Hold. Okay? Bend your knees and come down. Shift off. Come back to it. Take a breath. Get your hip extension going, get your abdominals active, stabilize your scapula, and go.

Let's hold for three breaths. One more and bring your knees down. So I'm gonna do one more round. You can stay with that, or you can lift a foot. I'm gonna lift a foot up.

Here we go. A leg, really. It's a whole leg. Just hold. And bring it down. Solid and strong on your arms.

Hip extension. One more each side. And down stable scapula. I'm pushing that floor. Okay. Come on off your knee, your hands, down to your knees, and just rest for a moment well needed and well deserved rest. Let's move to our sides.

Okay. So on side, we're first coming to our elbow. And as you're on your elbow, similar to what we did a moment ago, we're gonna actually kind of mobilize and stabilize. Alright? So my knees are bent heels are in line with my sit bones, and I'm going to mobilize my scapular region and then push the floor away. A couple times. Be mindful though when you lower your weight there, you do it with control.

You do it with awareness of not a sudden drop, but it's controlled effort. Right? Then stabilize. Hand behind head. Breathear. Let's rotate the spine a little bit, the thoracic spine. Alright. So I have a stable scapula there on my elbow support, but now I'm mobilizing my ribs in a rotational effort through the stable shoulder girdle.

That last one wasn't as stable as it could've been. It got a little excited. And then one more time. So even here, I'm pressing that elbow to the floor. The one on the floor.

Right? But now here everybody's take a breath. Let's add some effort of our hips. Remember I said pelvis earlier? Now in this particular position, I'm not in a place where my hips can extend like they would for bridge. Would you agree? Because I'm inflection here. Right? But we can extend the hips in this plane. Right?

You'll see and feel is the bottom hip along with the scapula. You have to effort the pelvis. And lower with control. You'll get the hip extension in just a minute. Don't worry. Think about it as a side extension.

Okay? One more time and then hold. And just take your leg out and just hold it there and hold and hold beautiful holding, knee in, and down. Breathe in. Let's do one more round. Press stabilize. Check your tummy, your abs, your hip area, and hold.

Lay out. An arm out. It's all there for us. Isn't it? Come on in and down we go. Alright. Climate up a notch on our hand. So now open up your hand.

Do that same. Spread your palm. That was from a yoga teacher, an Ayyengar teacher. Never forget that. He made it very clear. We would not forget that.

So open up that hand. Okay. So here we go. I have my legs layered now. Top leg is in front, bottom leg behind. Take the other arm on a diagonal. Alright. We're about to load.

Are you as stable as you know how to be? We're not sliding. We've done mobilization. We're instability. Breathe in. XL, shift your weight, but you've gotta use your hips as well. Everybody is not a big lift yet.

Hold there. Come down with control. It's a light landing. Two more. Use your feet, hips, and upper body strength. Right? Everything leads to success, not one strong player. The whole team. Here we go. We just had the World Cup and then rotate into a little bit of the twist, push the floor away, reach as much as you feel like you can. You're gonna come out of that and bring yourself all the way down.

And just rest for a minute. We have more of that. Be give yourself a little mermaid stretch as a transition. Open all that stuff that you just contracted, get it a little stretched, and then back down we go. Okay? So we're gonna segue a couple things. Thread a few things together.

Side support. Take a breath. Connect. Lyft. Let's come through our side support to front support. Hold your front support.

Pick up a leg. Put it down. Pick up the other leg. Put it down. Shift your weight forward.

Shift your weight back. Center, set your knees down, one push up, down, up, back into your front support. So we're just gonna retrograde, come out around your side support, and then lower your hips down. Okay? How'd you do? One more mermaid?

Because we still have to do that on the other side, don't we? So mermaid. And then let's through a little rolling like a ball transition before we do our other side. Give yourself the shape that you like for rolling like a ball at this moment. Four times, just use this as a back release. Just use it as a back release.

And just take a moment to notice how the that side of you that you just worked feels versus the other side. Let's do that second side. We began on the elbow. Knees in the slightly in front of hips, heels in line with sit bones, around the elbow, and we did some mobilization, and some stability. And some mobilization and stability.

One more. And then stability where we're gonna stay for quite a while. Hand behind head, breathe in. Rotation of the thoracic spine. Forward. I am using my crisscross oblique muscles and then center. Exhale forward. I'm at the ready.

We're in a moment gonna lift that hip off the mat. Ready and rotate and return. Here we go. We're gonna breathe. Now, like I said, it's the stabilization of the scapula, absolutely, and the strength here, but it's also the hip You gotta use your team players. Can't just be one body part and lower down with control. And again, and lift.

Don't go too high. No need to go too high. One more time, you're gonna stay up there. Extend your leg. Pretty simple.

And bring it down. Let's go back up again. Our arm will go overhead and lift. So you're extending your pelvis kind of on a up and down maneuver. Right? Not necessarily forward yet. And come back down. Okay.

Little mermaid. Little stretch. Now, we're gonna come onto the hand down on the hand. Restach your feet. So my top leg comes forward back leg is the bottom leg. Arm out. Now you're stable.

Take a breath. We're gonna lean onto the arm. Lift the hips and come up onto that side support. Ideally, shoulder pretty much above that wrist. And then set down with control. And again, exhale and lift.

Now my hips are more extended. Not flexed back this way. Extend those hips and come back down. Once more. Add some rotation and feel free to push the floor down with your stable arm and reach your arm other arm back for your feet. Lift your hips pretty high and circle yourself all the way around.

Going up and transitioning into support. Bring in. Side support. Come face down. Front support.

Same pattern as we did. Hold here. Lift a leg, bring it down, second leg, bring it down, pull forward, pull back, knees down, one push up, down, up back to your front support and retrograde to your side support all the way up, bend your knees, lower your hip, and that mermaid. Breeze stretch out the tissues that just got contracted stretch stretch stretch. Ready for back support? Okay.

Here we go, guys. So I'm gonna turn on this way. Just in case, let's start on our elbows. Like we've been doing, same thing, feet apart, stabilize first. But now we have a scapula here that we can do sternum drops. Oh, that feels great.

And then a sternum lift back to its neutral, and a sternum drop, and a repositioning to neutral, and one more, a sternum drop. And a lift. Now from here, we really, we can't I mean, we could lift our hips from here, but we're this far in class, we're this far in the session. We're gonna go up on our wrists. Okay? Because let's do it. So your hands get to go to the sides, facing the side. That's my preference for most of us. Separate your feet.

Lift the sternum and get very stable with your scapular. K? Now, one thing I wanna have us do here, one more sternum drops situation or feeling, we wanna avoid this at all costs when we get up on our arms, right, in the next one. In fact, we wanna do a little bit more. Let's exaggerate something of bringing the scapula back I'm not thrusting my ribs. This is what that would look like.

Very different. My ribs are stable. It's my scapula that wrapped. You see the difference. There's a different demand there. That's what I wanna work on right now. And I'm pelvic curling, and I'm bringing the weight of my pelvis up, and I'm standing on the arms and working those hip extensors again.

Right? And then I'm gonna come down with control. Try to keep the scapula back there. Two more. Take a breath. It's the pelvic curl. Two point o. Three point o.

Lift. Lift. Push push the floor down and come back in with your stomach in. This is such great preparation for tendon stretches on every apparatus we have. One more time. Reach a leg out. Why not?

Bring it back in. Stand on those arms, pelvis state's level. That was from my own self, and come back in. Take a breath, and we'll lower yourself with control with control. Now, we're gonna do one more round.

Your truly here does not do the leg kicks in her back support. You can. If your knees are healthy, I have I'm still managing hyper extended knees. It probably will be my whole life. I don't do the leg kicks. I can do them there in that one.

I did one slow one. I'm okay with that. If you wanna challenge yourself to do the full leg kicks, be my guest. I'm very happy with my practice this way. I feel more safe.

Scapula back. I'm gonna breathe, and I'm gonna round my tail. I'm gonna lift up, and I'm gonna be in my back support. That's where you could do kiss scissor kicks, right, one up and one down. One up and one down.

I'm working hamstring strength in long lever. That's what I'm doing for my practice. I'm satisfied if you'll healthy and strong. Feel like I'm really solid here. I'm thinking about my chest pulling back.

My legs reaching forward. Take a rest, everybody. Come down with ultimate control, ultimate control, and round forward. We're gonna start kinda winding this up when I want everybody to do because our low back and the front, this these this panini section, right, front and back. This area gets a lot of work in front support, doesn't it? And side support and back support? Let's massage it with a little bit of rolling.

And the rolling I wanna try two different rollings or part of one, reach your arms forward. Contract your abdominals. Roll back to your sacrum. Could be the bottom of the sacrum, middle of the sacrum, even the top of the sacrum. Where do you feel like you could be in balance for a second?

Okay. That's where I feel like I can. Can you lighten your legs? It should feel like you can just pick those legs up with really no chan no trouble. And then rock back and forth on the sacrum. It's like a hollow body situation here. Okay. Not easy.

Try to be in the middle of that sacrum. Okay. And then come up. We have one more rolling We're gonna do seal. Feel. Why?

It's fun. We worked hard. Let it go. Let's do four of them. On the fourth one, we'll stand up. Okay? So get into your seal. One, two, release your hips. Roll.

Come up, release your hips. That's what that can be for. You're on that balance point and release, release, release. Ready? Last one. When we roll backward, you let go. Let go.

Roll up, and, boom. You did a mat workout. Yay. Thanks for joining me, everybody. I hope you feel very strong and empowered on your arms, and I will see you the next time I teach you class.