Class #713

Play with Control

55 min - Class
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This class taught by distinguished instructor Michele Larsson plays with two notions of control. Some movements are contained and mechanical and some are swinging and free. Both require different qualities of control and this group had a whole lot of fun playing with them. Michele says the class "is based on the Pilates principles but is not necessarily Pilates... It's fun. It's not difficult. It's...strange." Enjoy!
What You'll Need: Mat

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Welcome. Okay. I just decided to do a class that I had sort of made up a number of years ago and I haven't taught since then. So I have my notes over there. I'll, if I disappear, it's just I'm doing stuff. This is a mat class based on the plot's principles, but not necessarily doing polarities. Okay. It also is going to deal with two different qualities of movement, one of which is definitely polities, which is a lot of control. And the other one is more of a dancer thing, which is a swing movement or throwing yourself around and how, if you're going to throw yourself around, do you control it?

So it is really all about control. Okay. But it's about two different kinds of control and you'll, you'll figure out, so you're going to be doing some nutty stuff. I don't know you. So take care of yourself. If you look at this thing and you think, I think I'll watch this one, that's fine. Okay. Don't feel compelled to do something. Okay. It's fun. It's not difficult.

It's strange. Okay, so standing the back of your mat. Yeah. Just wherever you are to shift your weight forward a little bit and shift your weight back. So all you're doing is just sort of scanning the body. Where are you standing today? Are you standing too far forward, too far back? What is your tendency? And then come into your center and then do the same thing. Roll to the one side and roll to the other.

So you feel your ankles sort of rolling a little bit. You just make a note as to whether you tend to hold weight more on one leg than on the other. It's just basically acknowledging things. Yeah, a little bit like a boat. And then come back center. We're going to do a simple breathing exercise. Inhale, lift the arms, open the chest to the ceiling wide arms and exhale and hug yourself. Drop your head and inhale and open everything and exhale and drop your head and inhaling, open thens reaching by.

Exhale in hug yourself and inhale and open and exhale, hug yourself. Good. And then just relax for a moment. Separate your feet and put your hands at the low back and make a hip circle. And just feel it in the soften your knees. Everybody. Just feel that the movement in your lumbar spine, just feel that movement back there and rivers.

Just keep your knees bent. Hip Circle. Nice, easy hip circle and come center. Good. Place your feet a little closer. Put Your hands on your outer leg, your greater trocanter. Soften the knees. Do the same thing and feel the hip move. Feel what's going on in your hips as you move from side to side in a circle, so to speak. And rivers. One more. Yeah, just use one to feel this joint movement here. Yeah. Good.

Now you don't have snow, but we do. So put your feet together. Lean forward. Put your hands on your knees and do this classic warm up for steam and go for in the other direction. Really easy and loose. Good and come all the way back up. Now we're going to do a simple pattern that will eventually lead you down to the floor. Okay, so you're going to inhale up.

Exhale, open the arms, look down at your seat, inhale deeply into the back of your ribs. Exhale, bend your knees. Let your hands go below your knees. Slowly stand up and circle your shoulders. And again, inhale up. Exhale, open, broad. Look down at your feet in Hillingdon the back. Exhale, bend your knees, let everything. That's it.

Slowly stand up and circle your shoulders. And again, arms up. Circle around and looking down at the floor. Inhale to the back of your ribs. Exhale, bend your knees all the way down to the floor and walk out onto your hands and knees. Now you're going to do a cat cow.

When you go into cow, which is the sway, I want you to lift your head and hiss. So start with the cat and cat up. Inhale and go into the cow and his and round your body up and go into the other thing in his. This time, keep going. You round up. When you go into the hiss, turn your toes underneath you and sit back a little bit onto your heels just a little bit. Turn your toes underneath that. Stick your butt out. That's it. Come forward.

Turn your feedback and round up and then coming down. Turn those toes underneath and sit back and hit [inaudible] one more and nice full round and come back and sit on those toes and beautiful. Come back onto all fours and be very stable through your spine. Find your middle position in your spine looking down. Now on an inhale, I want you to drop your belly muscles.

Let your belly hang out without moving your spine. And on the exhale, pull your belly up without moving your vertebra. On an inhale, let the belly hang and on the exhale, pull the belly up. That's it. And again, let the belly hang. It's called pregnant cat. Pull it up. Get all those kittens pulled up inside of you so you can run down dinner and inhale and pull everything up. Keeping the abdominals pulled up.

You're going to do something called thread the needle. Take the hand towards me and lift it towards the ceiling, and then slide underneath and put your shoulder on the floor so you have to bend the other arm. That's it. Inhale coming up. Keep those kittens a little bit in there. Exhale, slide underneath. And again, one more on this side. Change sides an inhale, exhale, and inhale. Exhale.

One more. And Inhale, beautiful. And exhale good. And come back up on to all fours and sit back into a gentle rest position you're going to do [inaudible] so as stretch a little bit. So as you come forward onto your hands on an inhale, draw your right knee between your hands and stretch out your left thigh. So inhale, stretch out. Open up your chest, stay there for a full breath cycle. Just breathing for a moment and then press into those arms and sit back into rest position. And then again, coming forward, other leg. Open up the chest, press back and into rest position.

One more. Come forward the back leg. Turn the toes underneath and take the back knee off the floor. Really open up the front of that hip. Just breathe for a moment. Support through the abdominals. Bring the knee down, bring the toes down and sit back. And last one, come forward, other leg front.

Turn the toes underneath. Pull the knee off. Breathe. This is all for you so you can move right. Bring your knee down, turn your toes underneath and sit back and rest position. The next thing we're going to do is a hundreds breath pattern or hundreds actually, but you're on your hands and knees holding your kittens in. So come onto your hands and knees and then I'm going to tell you to straighten an arm and a leg and do all of that. So you have 10 sets of a percussive, hundreds bet breath pattern. And in two, three, four, five Oh, keep your kittens in. Keep those belly live. One more like this.

Now straighten the right arm, left leg off the floor. Change other side change. Change One more set on all fours. Just breathing and sit back. Good. Nice. Ooh, good.

Turn your toes underneath you and sit back on your feet. Take your knees off. You're going to do something that we nicknamed. Oh squatty. Remember these, right? So if in any way it strains the knees, you stop your hand, your weight is on your hands, you straighten your legs up to the ceiling. If you cannot keep your hands down, only goes as far as your knees can straighten with your hands flat and you bend down. This is your footwork. Okay, so you've got to be okay.

So we'll do parallel eight and PyLadies v eight okay, so start in the down position and inhale up. Exhale down. Inhale up, exhale down. Keep the weight on the hands and down. Don't straighten the legs all the way. If you can't keep the weight totally on the hands and the feet hands up flat, the floor and her up and down and up and down. Last one and up. Down. Stay down.

Open the knees to beyond the arms. Heels together, right? So you really have a wide position. Knees beyond the arms. There you go. And go up and then up and down and up and up and up and up. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale and inhale and exhale.

Inhale, stay here. Breathe. Breathe. Soften your knees and roll up to standing. Very easy and gentle. Nice. Walk to the front of your mats. Okay, we're going to work our way into a roll up. Roll over. Okay. So it's a little bit of a pattern.

So you want to sit on this side of your mat with your legs on the floor out in front of you. Okay. So, so you know your, you can just actually let me, everybody sit down on the edge of the mat and put your legs out on the floor. Good to warm up. To do this, we're going to do something a little different and then we're going to go into the roll up. Roll over Combo. So what's you're gonna do is you're gonna roll down onto your back, roll to your side, facing the clock. Come to sitting up, roll down on your back, roll to the window or the F right? And sit up. Right? So what you're doing is your, you have controls, you go down, then as you come up, right? Control as you go down. How did you come up? And I don't know how to interpret any other way. Okay.

All right. And slowly rolling down side and coming up and rolling down towards the window. Hoe over and come up. Good and rolling. And you go and come up and rolling. And when you roll to the side, let your head be heavy. Roll like a baby coming up. Use your hands, roll down.

Make it as smooth and easy. There you go. Up last one. Rolled down and side and oh nice. Okay. Now we get to do the roll up rollover thing. Yes. So what she's going to do, and you have to be pretty specific, this is where you start to throw yourself around a little bit.

So you've gotta be real specific as to what you're doing. So find a place to watch Ruth. She's gonna roll down. Lead slower, slower, roll down, roll down, rolled at, Nah, don't even bend yet. Now Bend, flip your legs overhead, bend your legs, come down, put your feet on the floor and then roll up. So you rolled down bend and flip. Roll down, bend and sit up. You see? Right.

And it's like, you know a fishing reel. This is the, that part, right? And your legs are the line. Does that make sense? This is your control. Your center and your legs are the line you're flipping out over the water. You just get going faster and faster and faster until you end up rolling like a ball. Do you see that how that works? Okay. So if the more you're on the, the legs are on the wood, the more you can slide these things. Don't tell these sticky pads. Don't.

Okay, let's start slowly rolling down. Bend the knees into the chest, flip 'em overhead. Roll down, bend the heels to the butt, roll up as the feet. Hit the floor and roll down. Don't worry about the arms. Just keep them down by your side cause once and then roll down feet and um, you've got to put those feet on the floor and slide out. Otherwise you're going to strain your back and rolled on. Also, I would glue those legs together as if you were [inaudible] pencil.

There you go. And Roll Down Bend. Then flip band rolled down, bend and floor crow forward and go down. And the flip bender down and the forward and, and, and the flip and a down and a forward keeping control and control. I know little quicker and quicker and don't extend the legs. Don't extend the legs. Don't extend the legs.

Keep 'em roll like a ball. Go into rolling like a ball. Holding on. Roll, likable. Roll, likable. Roll, likable. There you go. That's it. That's it. Remember your childhood and calming down. Nice. Okay, good. All right. Now we will switch to another kind of energy.

I would like you to just scoot back a little bit on your maths. Roll down onto your back. Come into hundreds position. I'm sneaking this up on you. Hundreds position. Legs are straight. Take your left leg all the way to two inches above the floor.

Hold it there and circled leg circles on the right leg. Right leg. Left leg is your standing leg. Right leg is the circling leg and I don't want to see this leg going in now. Right and change. Breathe, breathe. Change the direction. Breathe. That's it. Breathe.

One more. Breathe. Bearing both knees into your chest and roll down. Release your head. Sneaky. I love it. I love to be sneaky. Roll up other leg, other leg and circle. Find that control. Find the dropping of that whole leg down into your hips. That's it.

Find that control. Good and reverse direction and around. Hard to keep the uh, out of it. Right. And one more and coming down. Nice. Good. Single leg stretch. This is for your brain.

Okay. You're going to go right knee in, left knee in right knee and right knee in left knee. In right knee and left knee in left knee and right knee in right, right. I love it. Rodney in left me in right knee in right knee and left me in right knee and left knee in. Loft me in. Change it up guys.

Right hand the both legs out straight and right knee and left knee in right knee in right knee and left knee in, in left knee and repeat. Alright and I'll left and our right and repeat and I left, left and repeat. One more set. Nice to wake up that brain. Get them firing and go ad ex. Oh, okay. Alrighty. We're going to do a double leg stretch that I learned from Alan Herdman and then actually I think I learned it from Cilia first and then I ended up changing it and then he came to take my class and boy was I embarrassed. Okay, so what, this is what you're going to do. You start up in this position, your legs are slightly open, right? And your toes are together. Okay?

Yeah. Now reach both arms, your head and legs straight up on diagonal. Roll your upper body down onto the floor. Circle the arms around. Roll towards your feet. Stay here. Flex point. Bend your knees and come up even farther. Wall. Reach those feet. Good. Inhale, reach to the ceilings. Arms forward. Exhale, arms overhead. That's it, right. Reach around. Reach, flex point. Bend those knees.

Come up even further and reached this and back and circle around. Reach, flex point, bend and reach and roll down for a moment. Let your heads go side to side. You're okay? Yeah. Good. Nice. Alright. Nice. Roll up to sitting. You need to come up again to the edge of the mat.

Okay. Spine stretch. Bend your knees in, hold onto your toes. Good. Pull back in your belly like mad. I'm sorry, I'm blocking roof and slide your legs out and your belly back and hold onto your toes and then fold in. There you go and slide everything out. We used to, I guess this floors you're going, it's sort of sticky, right? Cause I feel I see you going side to side.

Can you take a little bit of weight off of, okay, let's do this tip back onto your sitz bone. With your heels off. There you go. Thought and do your spine, stretch in the air, spine stretch and curl in. There you go. Don't straighten the spine. Those think of it as spine stretch. So go up so you're to use it as you straighten. Use it. That's it. Good and down. That's it. One more.

Use it and come down. Put your feet on the floor. Hands. Besides you let your knees wobble side to side. You okay? Yeah. This is wasn't sliding enough to clean, to clean. Absolutely. We're going to go into open leg rocker, but we're going to do it with the legs closing and opening. Okay, so you start with an open leg rocker. You do to just normal.

So go back and forth and back and forth. Go back and bring the legs together to come forth. Go back, legs together, forth. Open the legs and back. Legs together, up reverse legs together, back. Open the legs, up, legs together, back. Open the legs, up. One more legs together. Back just to give you practice and come on. Nice and place the legs on the floor. Good. Good. I had to make up some, Huh?

It's a sneaky teaser. Yes. And open the legs for Saul. All I'm going to do for saws, add an extra two counts. So stagger yourselves a little bit. Scoot back just a hair. You stay here. Perfect. So what you're going to do is you're going to inhale and rotate.

Exhale, reach. Inhale, sit up tall in the twist. Exhale, center. Inhale both arms up length and both sides of your torso. Exhale, open. Inhale, twist, exhale, reach. Inhale up. Exhale, center. Inhale, lengthen and open. And inhale and reach and inhale and center and come and open and uh, and reach and, and pick up the pace and inhale and reach and inhale and center from your spine up plus time in bed.

Go Up and center and up and open. Good. Okay everybody. All right, good. Let's roll over. Prone. Put our heads in the center. Put one hand on top of the other. Put your forehead on your hands so you can breathe. Wiggle.

Wiggle your pelvis so that you're just loose for a minute. Come back center. I want you to do a little test. I would like you to keep your arms on the floor and look forward lifting the upper body into whatever's form of easy swan. You want to do just and mark something on the wall opposite you see what you see and come back down and do that one more time. Come up and just see what you see.

Just find a spot to look at and come back down. Okay? Now listen carefully cause you, this is what I want you to do. It's very small. I want you on an inhale to lift both hip sockets off the floor. So inhale, lift your hip sockets off the four very small exhale.

Let your hip sockets down to the floor and do this again. Lift your hip sockets off the floor. Very small. Don't curl your belly. Stick your butt up and down. So you're like a baby with a full diaper. Inhale hip sockets. All very small. Now the important thing is coming down. All right, so do it one more time and just really lengthen the coming down.

Find that coming down through and open up the front of those hips. Good. Now stay here and go back and do that tiny swan. Inhale, lift up. Boy, look at that big difference, Huh? And come back down and again, inhaling, lift up and come back down. Big Difference. Okay.

Now here's what you're gonna do. You come up into a the sphinx position, or like single leg stretch into Sphinx position. So, because you can slide, I guess we're going to have to move out onto the wood, chest out onto the wood. So your hands are underneath your forehead. So in order to come up into Sphinx position, all you need to do is slide your elbows underneath you. So start with your hands under your forehead. And on an inhale, slide your elbows underneath your armpits to here on the exhale, curl forward and look at your belly. Curl forward and look at your belly. On the inhale, extend from the bottom of the spine.

All the way up to the head is straightening the elbows. As you go on the exhale, push the hands forward, slide out and bend the elbows and underneath the forehead. Nice. Inhale, those elbows slide underneath and you come up into Sphinx. Exhale, curl your spine. Look at your belly. Inhale, extend the spine from the bottom, straightening the elbows. If you want.

Exhale, reach your clavicles to the opposite side of the room as you come down and bend your elbows. Beautiful. And again, coming up. Exhale, look at yours and release all the way up. Inhale, exhale. Reaching forward last time and straight up. No cell phones and calming down. Oh, beautiful. Sit back and rest position. Rounding your spine. Breathe deeply into your kidneys. This breed for single leg kick.

We're going to be on a whole fours. So come up onto all fours. Connect those kittens, pulling your belly in. Extend your leg towards the windows out behind you. Lifted up parallel to the floor and do a leg kick. Flex point and reach out law and in, in law and in law and in, in long slide down and change.

Oh their side. Extend out. Support through the abdominals, eh in, in reach in and reach in and reach in and reach and come all the way in. Sitting back and rest position for a moment. Stretch out your back. Double leg kick is going to be done on your hands and knees also. Okay? It's the one where you curl in like this and you go out. Okay, so this is what awesome legs at the same time for my back in real fast. Okay. Right. So opposite arm and leg starts extended.

Just watch for a sec and then she's going to come in and curl elbow towards hip needed towards her forehead or ear and out on an inhale. Right? Okay, so let's do right arm, left leg out and curl in and extend and crew and in Hay and ex hay and in [inaudible]. Inhale, last one. Exhale. And [inaudible] Hale, change sides extend first to start, eh. Exhale and inhale and yeah. [inaudible] and coming back. Good and come down.

Nice. Nice. Okay. Breathing into everything we get to do neck pull, not like a neck pole. Let's not do neck pole on your neck. Literally. Let's do it as if you were going down, doing roll back on the Cadillac. Does that make sense?

So you can even start with the arms as if you were holding the bar. Then we'll just be a little liberal here. Bring the, as you start back, bring the hands towards your head. You Roll, you gently. Don't put them behind. Does not like a neck pull. It's like and roll down all the way. Then come forward with the hands on the forehead and reach right at the point you need a little extra help and straighten your spine. So yeah.

Okay. Alright. And arms are straight. Roll back as if you're bringing the bar towards your forehead. All the way down to gentle curl. Start up and slowly extend the bar towards the end of the Cadillac. Roll it up and find the place where you time it.

So it's right where you get stuck, right and go back. You go owl arms come in. You don't have to be so strict, you can just be a little looser in it. And lets guide with your eyes for a minute. Now hold on for a sec. Instead of thinking I have to curve my spine, not straight. Yeah, yeah. Don't do anything like that.

Put Your eyes on your horizon and then as you roll down, you go down the horizon. When you hit the floor, you let your eyes go up to the ceiling. When you come forward, your eyes go down your body and then when you come up, your eyes rise up the horizon. So they stay at Isla. So it's a visual cue you're giving yourself. You work your back a little differently. Okay. Visual Cue. Let the eyes travel, literally traveled down the horizon and come up. Now head comes forward and look down your body.

Let your eyes travel and come up. Yeah, it changes the way you use your spine to more changes. It should become a a less of an exaggerated curl. It's wherever you reach. That's it. Easier, Huh? And going down last time I'm in your horizon. Sorry about that. And coming. Oh Nice, good, good. We're going to do a wrestlers bridge.

You've always wanted a little Greco Roman wrestling, haven't you? Okay, so I would like you to lie down on your back. Knees bent feats to the sides of the mat to no, both feet, feet separated to the side of the Mat. The edge of your Mat, right? There you go. I have to be more specific, right Ben, your our elbows. So your palms are facing your shoulders. Your upper arm is on the floor, upper arm as much as possible. On an inhale, the pelvis goes straight up to the ceiling and you press the whole upper arm into the floor on an exhale. You come right back down any old way you feel like good inhale, press up.

Now you keep going up and down down and think about the fact that from elbow to shoulder across your shoulders, down to the other elbow becomes your foot. Does that make sense? If you're going upside down into a plow or a Jack Knife, right? Your support is your whole arm. Cause we can put the whole arm down. Yeah. And come down now bring your arms down by your side.

Let's do the wide knee. Nice swing, wide foot. Nice way. So one knee goes to the opposite toes there and then roll back. Other knee goes to your opposite toes. So you get a different kind of a twist in your body. Yeah. And again, that's it. And Again, oh, I think you have one more to finish. To be equal on both sides.

Who knows? Okay. Now we're going to get a little bit into floppy. You might have to move a little bit away from the wall roof just a little bit. This way she's going to demo. Sit Up. You're on. You just move your map a little bit this way. Yeah.

Just let's just a hair just because you'll kick the wall, right? This is what I was talking about where you, you have that thing, you have the reel with the fishing line out loud. Get at your legs that are going to be your fishing. I was the line and the center of your body through here and here is the real, so all the time you have to pull those legs back in from here and you let them out from there. An inch from here until your knees are up and you're going to do wide legs, feet sort of together. [inaudible] and you flopped to one side, extend the top leg. No, no, no. It's really a swinging. There you go. Ha.

And back. Boom and shoot and boom and [inaudible] and boom. Right. I don't know what you want to call it. Right, but you don't want to go into extension. Right? But you're going into the twist, right? Here's your, yeah, don't look at it in terms of shape. So much. Look at it in terms of dynamics and where you move from because everybody's legs might straighten at a different place. So this is good back. Scoot up. Yeah, stagger again. There you go. You all staggered. Good. Go.

We all have to go that way first. Okay. Otherwise it's an accident waiting to happen. All right. Oh, Ruth just said, oh, we can't do that in stagger them. Okay. Ready? Feet together. Ready? You're going towards the machine and go up and duck. Cat Up. Bam. Back.

Got Up and buy cap and buy. Go Up and buy. Get up and back up. Bed. Back. Last one. Up and back. Nice. Very, very, very nice. Good. Okay.

All right. I don't, we're just going to do jack knife. Just a plain good old jack. No, I don't think that. Do you think we could do tail flow? Do you think we could do tail flail and get away with it? No. Jack Knife. Jack Knife. Alright, let's just do jack knife. I mean, why, why risk it?

Okay. All right. Legs to the ceiling. Lower them away slightly and go back and up and go back and down. This is an easy one, right and down. That's it. So legs through the wall and up and to the wall behind you and down. That's it. To the wall and up wall and down. There you go. One more and good.

Put your feet down on the floor and just relax for a sec. Okay, going to do side stretch. Slide kicks. Okay. So Ruth is gonna lie and watch this because this is not the forward backside kick. This is a Po. What eve would call Pauling paw with your leg.

Do you want me to, you need to be down. I think maybe support the head. No. All the way. Okay. Now hold on because this is something that's important. You have your legs a little forward and you start, you turn your leg out. Don't do anything yet. Just turn your leg out. Now in order to protect her hip, she's got to do this. Okay? So this is the place where you actually do go back in the top hip and now she paused and this Si, yeah.

Yeah. And with the hip back like that, you protect your hip socket and then reverse. Does that make sense? So how far back you, you roll all depends upon your turnout in your hips, but don't think you have to stack like we always do. Yeah, see that's way too stressful. Do you see if she's stacked to go slow? You see it's way too stressful. Inhibit dropping back here so that then you find that you can talk it in nicely. Okay, so let's face Ruth and she's going to do her other side so she doesn't get, now you're going to do six in one direction and then six in the other direction.

Okay? Find that connection. Rotate your legs out. Drop your hip back. Do the first one slowly to see how it feels. Come up. Good. Now five quick at a Whoa, Whoa, whoa. And four and five reverse. Don't enough down. Enough. Down and out. Down and out. Four and five.

Beautiful. Very nice. Why don't we just turn to the other side? Ruth will turn and face this way. Okay, now set yourself up. Roll those legs out. Move the pelt. Let the pelvis drop back and point and go away. I know one and two and three rivers.

Good and hold good. Now stay onto this side. I'm going to throw something at you. Move to the front of your mat. Okay. Lie All the way out with both arms overhead, right. What you want to do is you want to lift both ends of your body off the floor a little bit and come back down. Find your stability.

Lift both ends off the floor a little bit. Find your stability and come down. Now listen carefully. Come up and roll into a hundreds position. Arms down. Come back to this direction. Roll onto your side. Roll into hundreds position. Go back to this position. There you go. Roll into hundreds position. Yes.

And relax. Nice. Huh. Woo. Other way. Sit to the front of the mat or what's your front, whatever your front is, right to preps, side lift, connect everything and and connect everything. And uh, now we go into this rolling thing. Connect, rolled a hundreds position, roll to the side, roll to hundreds. Position and roll to the side. One more role to hundreds. Position and relax.

Good Fun. Huh? At the end of class, we'll line up all the maths very differently and we'll roll side hundreds side swan side. Okay. But we've, since we have to rearrange the room name and, yeah, so we'll do, we'll keep going on. We're going to do teaser as if it were on the chair. So you're going to come up the face on the face, Ruth. So you're looking at her for a moment and you're on this elbow and your legs are out straight. There you go.

[inaudible] and she goes from here up to teaser to t to elbow on the other side, up to teaser to elbow and the other side. Does that make sense? Arm is out and coming up into teaser and other songs and up into teaser and sod and up and so and up and side and up and sod. One more. Chop and side. Great. Right? She's already done it. Reformer workout. Four thing.

Eve's twist. Can you handle it? That's the real, real tight one. So if you're facing me, you get your feet in really tight, tight, tight, tight, and all your weight stays on the foot that's in front. You can hook this foot around the ankle if you like, but don't put it down until I change it. And you turn and you look back. So she's gonna look towards me, not towards me. This was your starting position. Oh.

And then you come up and you dive straight underneath. So this swings around in this big circle and you come back down, right? So our heavier part goes up and so it's about balance, not so much about strength and you're rotating around that a shoulder. Okay. So everybody look back over your shoulder at inhale up and dive and inhale up and sit, look behind you. Inhale up and dive.

Inhale up and sit. Inhale up and dog five and sit. Good. Just face the other side of the room. Yeah. So face that way. The clock. No. Are you on the other side? I think you've got to be on the switch.

There you go. And looking and coming up and die. That's it. Up and sit. Up and Dar up. Whoops, set. Last one. Good. And relax.

Who you need to feel. Okay. Roll over onto your bellies. We did this yesterday. Arms out on the floor, legs out. What's you're gonna do is we'll just do the double arm on an inhale. Press both arms and both legs into the mat.

On the exhale, let both arms and let both legs float off the mat. On the inhale, press down. You feel how it lifts the abs on the exhale. Keep those abs lifted as you float the limbs off and the head press down on the inhale. Legs, arms, and head float off. Press down.

This is your last one coming up and off for swimming and swim. Come up as far as you are comfortable and swim and coming down. Nice. Sit back onto your heels. Round your spine. Okay, we've got, we combine the pushup right with rolling, so she's going to stand at the edge of the mat.

This is why you need to be really staggered. Some of you might want to sit right and she's going to lift the arms up. Curl forward, squat and roll back onto respond. But take your legs with you. Roll likable. Inhale up. Rolling. Roll like a ball down. Roll like a ball behind you.

Roll like a ball to standing. Stay here. Walk out onto your hands. Do a pushup. Come back, walk back to your feet. Roll up to standing. Arms out. Dive forward. Bend the knees. Roll like a ball. Back to the shoulders. Roll to a squat. Walk out and you can see you can use your hands a little.

Push up. Tiny. Push up. Walk back and roll up to standing. Now I don't want anybody's heads crashing so she's not going to do it. You're going to move up here? Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. Oh you can is everybody? No, no, no. You need to stay there. You need to be at this edge and you're mad if that's possible. You could. Yeah.

Okay. Now can you got to keep your eyes open. All right. When you go forward. Okay. All right. That's, you know, you need to be up here. Sorry about that. All the way. Inhale up. Exhale, dive forward. Squat. Roll back like a bowl. Roll like a ball. Keep yourself tight. Come to your squat. Walk yourself out into a pushup position. Do a push up.

Come back, walk yourself back. Inhale the arms to the side and up and I forward root squat. Roll likable. Come to squat. Walk Out, do a push up. Walk back, row up. Last one in hand. Dive forward. Walk out. Oops. Sorry Andy. I'm glad you didn't pay a bit of attention to me.

Walk out. You guys are good and nice. Beautiful Fun. Yeah. Okay. Here's what we need to do. We need to roll these five mats. Put them next to one another, and these five maths, put them right next to one another. Who's got the most flexible spine here?

So she gets to demo it. You want to straighten this mat out? Okay. Yeah. This is a new line. You go one by one, right? Hold on. The line of Mary's starts. Well, you'll see it head in either direction. I lie down, lying down, facing me on [inaudible] your side. You're gonna roll all the way down the Mat, trying to keep your limbs off.

So ohms here, lift both limbs up and go. Hundreds side Swan. Keep going. Keep going. Side hundreds, side, slow on high. The go, go, go. Yay. Woo. Okay, so we do one right after the other so nobody will put you on display, but that's it. Okay. Right, so one right after the other.

I'll tell you something. If you've never done it, go fast, right? Because you'll get through the hard parts easier until you figure it out. How your spine, but your spine has gotta be side curve, side art. So it's gotta be really supple to get through all those things. Okay? Come on two at a time. Face me, face me to start. Although it's easier to go on your back.

There you go, eh, go. Hundreds. Side row. There she goes. Go, go. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. And keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep [inaudible]. She did it next fast. Oh well don't do slow. That's fine. Okay. And Go.

There you go. Go, go, go, go. Good. You're doing it. You're doing a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. All right. Yay. Next. Who wants to do it over here? No. Giving up and go. Go. That's it. Feel like a kid. Go like a kid. Use. Yeah. Yeah. There she goes. You want to try? Absolutely. Go.

Who wants to try with her so she doesn't have do it alone? Yes. Here she's going. Go for it. Go for it. And Go. She use, those are look, yes, yes, yes, yes. Pulled us and go, Yo, Yay. She's got that flexible torso that's hard to control. All right. Gotcha. Thank you all very much. [inaudible].

Comments

Great class, Michele. It was fun doing pilates exercises but doing them in a different way.Going to add this class to my favorites.
2 people like this.
Sadly, my livinq room isn't larqe enouqh to execute the endinq series one after the other, but I qot one complete rotation in! Yeah! What fun!

I! Love! This! Woman! *Michelle*
I think I would fly to the moon to be in her class if I had to!
LOVED this class!!!
Rachel K
That was so much fun! Thank you Michele!
Una clase muy divertida y distinta. Muchas gracias Michele.
1 person likes this.
I loved your class, Michele: your way of teaching, your sense of humor...I learned a lot! Thanks. You are what we say in Spanish "una maestra"!
Patricia W
just fantastic
1 person likes this.
In a word or two. Totally fun! Especially loved the brainwork with SLS, SSF, sphinx sequence, teaser, and the ending sequence with pushups! And loved your laugh. Thank you!
1 person likes this.
Michele, you're the best - have always loved you!
Leonie D
1 person likes this.
An awesome class! Thank you for bringing functional and free movement back to Pilates. So much fun to feel that it is still possible to move like a child ...
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