Class #847

Foam Roller and Magic Circle

60 min - Class
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Amy intersperses the Foam Roller and Magic Circle into key places in class to help build awareness in your body as well as better understand the basic level exercises. This class moves deliberately which allows you to work on balance and proprioception exercises as well as discover the depth you can go into the most familiar of exercises. On top of that, there is light stretching sprinkled throughout class so you are likely to walk away from this one feeling really good!
What You'll Need: Mat, Foam Roller, Magic Circle

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Okay. So let's start and I think we, so we've got rollers, we've got rings, uh, got ourselves. Why don't we start guys with our roller on the Mat lengthwise and get your tail right at the bottom end of it. And as you roll back, take your time and actually use this as a little, almost a little. Uh, okay. No abdominal warmup and we've, you can, yeah, there and good thing. Take your time. Just roll on down. Ooh, yes. Even a little shaking on the abdominals there.

So I brought the two different props in a forest tonight and we'll, we'll kind of interchange them. So there'll be a few things with the roller, a few things with the ring, some things without any props, just to kind of vary it up. I don't want to do the whole hour with, you know, the whole every exercise with a prop that's really not necessary. But as we take a chance, right or glance over our body, put your hands underneath the small of your back. And most of us, if we're working with our normal spine or natural or neutral spine, you should be able to get your hand underneath it, right? At least like a a f a finger with there. So especially just opposite of your belly button.

That's generally the apex of that lumbar curve. Now for an exercise to work our abdominals and just kind of warm up in here in the lower belly, diminish that space, get rid of it completely by tilting your pelvis back a little bit. I'm actually thinking of pulling my hip bones toward my, uh, ribs, pubic bone angled up just a little bit, and then that becomes a full imprint of the lower back. And you guys are probably all feeling that right there, right? Okay, good. Now release that back into your natural pelvis.

We're just going to do that a few times. Inhale. Let's get ready. And as you exhale, there's a tilt. Usually we'll call it the posterior tilt posts your meaning backward, but it puts the whole vertebrae, the lower vertebrae on the roller. Okay. And then release that. Inhale. Okay.

Two more of those exhale as you find that abdominal contraction in up and wide across the inside of your waist, that actually helps to widen your back on the roller also and released your squeeze there. And one more time, exhale and contract. So there are certain exercises we're going to do tonight that have a little bit more of that imprint to them to connect you into your abdominals and it might even take some stress out of your neck, um, in, in various things. Okay, now walk your ankles closer together and knees together. And I want you to just to lift your hands and forearms up. So you've just basically got your elbows on the floor. Okay? Just checking everyone's head and neck. All right, so as you've got your elbows there, try your best not to dig your elbows into the mat, but just really light right there. Inhale through your nose, exhale right leg up to the tabletop position, and inhale, lower that foot down. We're going to do eight of those. Alternate exhale. Now what's the pelvis doing? Let's not have it in that tilt right now.

You've got a little bit of space underneath your low back, just your natural curve. Inhale down and exhale and four more. You've got to relax. Collarbone. Shoulders aren't contracted, your neck is relaxed. Exhale, left leg. Inhale down, right side, up and lower. And last time with your left leg. Now hold it there. Just hold that leg. I want you to think about the standing leg or the one that's on the mat.

Feel your foot. Press into the floor, activate that. The back of the leg should tone a little bit more as well as the inner thigh, right? So it's almost like, I want you to think about that. Uh, inner thigh leaning into your center line a little. Do you all feel that little? There's a wake up in those muscles. Good. Okay, now set that upward leg down. Bring the other one up and let's just stand there with that leg. Two. So solid foot on the mat.

Lean your leg into your center line. Solite Li tone the back of your leg. It's almost like good Rosie, like it's hugging the bone. The muscles are hugging the bones and that's a nice source of stability. We can't always stabilize just with the abdominals.

We've got a lot of other muscle groups to call on. Okay, so now put the top foot down. Take an exhale, bring the left leg back up again. Now with this, I'm going to have you reach your right arm up to the ceiling any old way you want. I just want you to take one arm up, right arm up, left leg is up. See now you've got a little more challenge on stabilization. Still working that downward leg. Lean in a little bit and stand strong on the floor.

Bring the arm and leg down at the same time. Inhale other arm, other leg at the same time. Stay right there. Breathe in and let's exhale lower. So there's our pace. Inhale, exhale. And we up go up. Yup. And we come down taking a slow stroll through the Palati studio, taking it through the mat. So if you really put your mind on that down, the foot that's on the floor on the ground might find a more, a better deeper source of stabilization.

And lower one more each side. Exhale, ah, and a little unsteadiness is absolutely common and fairly normal, so don't worry. No, keep that leg up. Lower that arm. So your elbows back down. Let's join the second leg back up there again. Okay. What'd you to flex your feet and point your feet and flex really reached through the heel bones and point and you're still in your neutral natural spine. One more time. Flex and point.

So as a contrast, do that. We're going to do that again four times and imprint your lower back into the mat. Find those abdominals a little deeper. Inhale, flex and exhale point. Inhale, flex and exhale point, flex and point and one more. Flex and point. Now keep your imprint. That's what this whole thing is going to be about coming up.

Start to slide your right leg out. Thinks single leg stretch. I'm skimming my shinbone with that knee, but I don't want to lose my imprint. So only go as far as you can with that imprint. Do you feel those abdominals little better right now? A little more d? Yeah.

Okay. I hope so. And bring that leg back in. We're going to alternate. Breathe as you need to guys. It's all about the imprint right now and the reason being, I want your abdominals really working and bring that knee in. One more each side. Exhale, [inaudible] and in. So that's the transverse abdominis most likely and others that's stabilizing that internal seatbelt that we think about a lot of the time. Okay, now let's just go ahead and lower one foot and then the other.

Bring your spine back to its normal shape or position and reach your arms up to the ceiling. Want you to turn your arms inward and bring the fingertips together like the back of the hands and fingertips together, and take your arms now back alongside your ears. Stretch and get long on the ruler. Take a big inhale and exhale. Do a little opening of the arms and bring them around in slight circle and back up. We'll do that four more times.

Back of the hands are touching as you reach your arms overhead. Circle the arms and up. Three more. Inhale as you lengthen into a stretch. Exhale around and last too, you're still in that natural spine. You haven't tilted out. We're back. Anyway.

Reach the arms and circle round and once again, place your elbows just on the mat. Okay. No, I'm not a, okay. Do you want to come in? Yeah, come on in. Someone else is going to join us, so let's do a pelvic curl. Okay, so I want you, before we do pelvic curl, be kind of mindful of how you put, if you put extra additional pressure on the back of your head, there could be a likely chance of doing that. So monitor that. Let's start at the pelvis. Take a breath. We're in natural neuro, normal pelvis. Exhale, tilt. So you go back into that imprint. Okay. Now as you start to peel up your back, you're probably not going to feel as though you're as high as your normal pelvic curl. That's okay.

Inhale there and exhale as you articulate down. Try also to find the length between those bones and comes down to your normal pelvis. Okay. Feeder about sitz bones with the parts. Inhale. Yeah, hands are still up. Okay, let's go again. Exhale, go back through the imprint. Feel those abdominals just like you did a few minutes ago. Use that. Peel the pelvis even higher.

Now remember those leg muscles I told you about a minute ago, that back of the legs and the inner thighs, put them to work to help you stabilize. Inhale and exhale and come down the upper back, middle back. Try to go through that imprint and find your level two more times. Inhale, exhale, imprint. Feel those stabilizers in the legs.

Is that helping anybody to think about the inner thighs? Yeah. Good. Yay. And rolling down. That becomes really very helpful in shoulder bridge. A single leg stuff. Exhale, curl. Inhaling there at the top and exhale as we lengthen our spine on that roller all the way down. Okay, so let's just find a natural pelvis.

I'm tempted to have us do a little chest lift here. Let's try. Can you guys sneak your hands behind your head? Ooh, that's tricky. We took that for granted. Deny. That's a not so easy to do. So find those stabilizers again in your legs. Now as you start to lift your head and your neck and your upper spine, these rollers are dense. They're kind of stiff.

It's going to talk to those vertebraes. You're going to know, wow. Oh, stiffness or bending. We want to get some more bend, right? Yeah. If he got like your sternum, like a sponge, feel good with water. Really easy to squish. And then come on down for more. Let's breathe in first. Move in through it. Exhale and allow your pelvis to go into the imprint.

Play with that. See if that allows you to come higher in your upper back. I bet it will. Yep. And then come on down. Inhale. Three more guys. Exhale through your imprint. Find those inner thighs. Good. Giulia. Yeah, and roll it down. Last two.

Ah, all the while sinking those shoulder blades away from the Ed, the head and the ears and down. And one more time. Exhale, curl. [inaudible]. Good balance. Everybody. Come on down. Relax your pelvis back to your normal position. Roll off your roller.

Okay. Like I said, we're going to be going between two props with certain things, with certain things. And now just feel your body flat on the Mat. It probably feels great. Use your ring now and let's put that between the knees right there between the knees. Parallel feet. Squeeze the ring, pretty firm, and I want you to connect your arms into the mat. We're gonna do another pelvic curl. Inhale. Exhale. Here we go. Go through that imprint, squeeze that ring, but now you'll notice you can come up quite a bit higher.

I want you just to stand there so that there's effort in the back of the body, the buttocks, the hamstrings, the back muscles, the back of the shoulders and arms. Those are the extensors of the body. Find your extensors and press into them. Breathe in now as we release the spine and roll down. Float your arms up and keep floating them all the way back. With that, the hands touching like we did on the roller. Okay, we're going to do that pattern twice more. Find a level pelvis. As we started in printing. Lower the arms, peel your spine, find your extensors of your hips back and shoulders.

Inhale, and as we roll down internally, rotate your arms so the risks come together and you're reaching overhead. Lengthening that spine on the mat. Find your level pelvis. One more time guys. Peel. Go through your imprint. Find your hip extensors, your back extensors, your shoulder extensors. Breathe and exhale, float those arms, wrists together, and reach all the way. Okay?

Now what I want you to do is your arms are back behind you there. Open the, so now your palms will face each other shoulder with the part. Breathe in. We're going to come into a chest lift here, so arms, chest, and linkedin and ruled out reaching all the way back. You can keep your palms facing each other two more times. Now with these, I want you to find your level pelvis, not your imprint. It's gonna feel a little bit of different work in your back and the coordinating muscles around your waist and roll back. Okay? Last one.

Ah Yeah. Float the legs up. Squeeze that ring, squeeze that ring, kind of it feels a little odd. And then take the head and shoulders back and reach those arms overhead. Now, what I want you to do is retake both arms and I'm reaching to my right just a little bit as if both arms are above my right shoulder. Kind of hard to explain. As I exhale, I want you to come up in a chest lift and reach the arms toward the right outer leg. So it's a way to get into those obliques. Yeah, inhale, and you're going to go over the left shoulder and we go up and curl. Inhale, take it back to the right end. We squeeze the ring as we curl up.

Exhale to the left. Ah, we'll only do one more each side. This is a lot for the neck, so I want to make sure that we give some break in between looking good guys. And last one, do you feel those waistlines the sides a little bit? Yeah. I think it's because we've got that ring to work with. Okay. Rest. Take the ring away. Whew. Put it off to the side.

All right. Move Your, get your roller again and put your feet on it. Roll back again. Not that this makes it easy, but we're going to do a roll up and we're going to allow the roller to help us roll up. It's kind of Nice. And so as your feet are on there, organize yourself few inches apart. Take those arms back. I'm just kind of into the internal rotation tonight with the arms. It's a nice stretch for the side of the shoulder and something different. So now guys, as you curl the upper body up, slide your shoulders down, pick up that head and chest. Now what I want you to do, start to roll. It's probably kind of intuitive role, the role of reach through your heels.

In fact, and pull yourself up. Three Jean. Yep. I'm gonna Flex my feet. I'm going to touch my toes for a little add in hamstring stretch. And then as we roll back, I'm going to soften the feet. I'm going to just, I'm just kind of a little lighter with my arm energy tonight. Yeah, that's it. And bend the knees. Roll good, Julia. Take the arms back.

Risk together. Two more like that. So sometimes changing the energy of how we move next summer. You can move better. Little less tension sometimes, right? Go into that stretch. Keep pulling the waist back and roll back. Soften the feet. Pooling in. Nice Pat.

And we've got one more roll up. Here we go. Reach through the heels. Woo. Yeah. Nice. Try to touch those toes. Pull that waistline back. Inhale and exhale. Nice you guys. Yeah, go ahead and take the arms back. Beautiful. Okay.

No ruler. Move it off. No prop. Let your body be flat for a moment. Feel the openness in your hip joints or maybe you're not feeling that open right now, but I want to, we're going to do a little a preparation for the hip circles or legs circles. So fold your legs in towards your chest. Try to keep your, your normal spine, not the imprint. Put what? Your right hand on your right knee, your left hand on your left knee.

And these are the, I haven't done these in long time. These are the s, uh, leg stirs or Niesters as I learned this long ago in my fundamentals from the physical mind. I love it. It's a great way to learn about keeping the pelvis steady, but mobilizing the femur at the hip, right? Does that feel okay? Cause that technically that's what's happening in our single leg circles is that motion. Now reverse it and all the while you're staying on that sake room.

You've got a little space in your lower back. Just allowing your femurs to explore the sockets. [inaudible] okay, this'll be fun. One leg will go one way. The opposite leg will go the opposite way. So it's like you're doing a figure eight. Don't worry if it's not perfect, but I really want you to go, why [inaudible] at that wide aspects.

You get that inner thigh stretched and do about three or four and go the opposite way. Hello? Anyone feel uncoordinated? Me Too. Yay. I must need to do more of this. Okay, so we've kind of warmed up those hip sockets for leg circles though. So let's go ahead and put the feet down tonight.

Do our left leg first cause we always do the right as your right leg is on the mat. It's long and energized. Left leg comes up. Feel the femur. Meet the socket, the socket, meet the mat. Five circles. We crossover circle round and up. So it's the same thing you just did with your hands during your leg. Now your leg is doing its own thing and cross around up.

We have one more cross around and up. Other way, five times [inaudible] and the last circle round. Bend your knees deeply into your chest. Pull it in, and then let's switch sides so you can bicycle your right leg up to the ceiling. Feel the socket and the socket on the floor. The back of that soft point in the foot. Here we go across, down, round and up as if you were still stirring it with your hand. Four and five. Beautiful five the other way. So I'm what I'm really picking up with us tonight.

Everyone's nice and calm, but working strong. That's a beautiful combination. Two more. We reduced that tension. Find some calm with your strength. Okay, that's her five then the knee. Now, what I'd like you to do, pull both knees in towards your chest is your hands are on your shins and you're pulling your once again back in that posterior tilt. Right? That'd be, I think we'd all agree there. Now pick up your head in your chest and you're still going to be in that imprint of your low back and see if you can get even more flection in your upper back and take a little bit out of your low back. So we're actually, that's right you guys. Beautiful.

Yup. Now if we rock back and forth, it's like a little way to get into rolling like a ball. Pat knows my material. Yeah, so it's a little weight shift game to pelvis to shoulders, pelvis to shoulders, pelvis to shoulders. They'll spend a little more time. We're rolling from landmark to landmark. Yes. Have a little fun. Every now and again.

It's good to have some fun. Ah, I have rock and roll. Rock and roll. Let's take one more rock roll and come on down. Great. You guys. Okay. Single leg stretch. The way I want to approach this tonight. As you pick up your right leg, bring it close to the chest, a little imprint in your low back. Not a big one, but just a little one hands on your shin.

So the hand to go way out to that ankle, left hand is on the top option. Pick up that head and chest and it's almost as if you're going to bring that cheekbone to kind of the inside of that knee. So that's kind of what I'm aiming for. Or need to shoulder. Stretch the other leg out, lifted up to a height where you feel stable in your back and we're all different. So you might have a low leg, someone else might be up higher. Okay, so your low back is slightly imprinted. Now bring this thigh closer to the chest, but don't add any more imprint.

Right? Change sides. [inaudible] we'll do 10 of those. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] two more [inaudible] and 10 and bring that second leg in and let's rest her neck tonight. Okay. Interlace your thumbs. I don't care which thumbs on top. Try to remember though.

How your crossing them and stretch your arms back overhead. So tonight we're about to do double leg stretch and I want to have you do this little thumb wrap tonight in double leg stretch. So as you feel that thumb on thumb, stretch the arms way back. Now, make a big open circle with your arms and bring your arms over your shins. Right now we know that's the arm pathway to the double leg. Stretch. Reach back, open around and again other thumb on top.

Reach open around, reach back, open around and center. Now if you don't remember what the legs are going to go out, the legs will come in. [inaudible] that's right. The legs are going to go out, the legs will come back in. But of course we know the whole thing is with the chest up. So raise that head in chest. Start with your hands on your shins.

Gaze into your abdominals or at least right above your knees. Okay, here we go. We'll do for inhale, stretch, exhale, circle. Remember what thumb you cross, try to do the other one the other way. Stretch. Good, Julia. Beautiful. And in, you've got two more. Get as long in that spine. Stretch yourself long. Keep your gaze into your abdominals and stretch and everybody ran. Let's rest our neck again and there it is. Place your feet down. Turn your head to your right shoulder. Turn your head to your left shoulder and center. Okay, we're gonna use a roller again, so put it underneath you. You gotta lift your hips up, roll that roller to the back of your, and it's not going to be in the small of the back where we imprinted.

Don't put it there. That's a little too much pressure. It's below that. I'm going to think we're glute Max is right at the top there. And your sacrum is right on top for a wonderful stretch of your le, your hip flexor. Take your right leg long on the floor, all the way out. Yup. We would never want that unsupported there. Okay. At least right now. Flex your heel. Now I want you to take this, that right arm way back again, just as you were in double leg stretch and feel that whole right body long and open. And then just switch that out to the other side.

Fuel. Okay. Feels good. I think. I'm hoping everyone's in a dream state. Now I take you're right. Need a table top and then the lefty we done, we've done this several times. There's lots of ways to do scissor. We're going to do it like this and we may do it another way too. So legs are vertical. You can hold the edges of the roller for security or if you don't need that, you can actually just let your elbows touch the mat again. So guys, I want you to reach your right leg out, way out, away from you and the left leg way back over your body.

So both legs are reaching wall to wall. If the front wall, the back wall, you're turning to scissor in both directions. Very often. One leg is there. Legs aren't the same height than space. We're trying to get both legs in space the same. You can't see it, right Mo? I can see you. Most of us, our bottom leg is lower than where this the top leg is. So I'd like all of us to lift our bottom leg up a little bit. That looks better to me there and stretch the top leg further back.

You feel those hamstrings lengthening out? There we go right now. Change legs and let me just help you figure that out. Knowing that the bottom leg might go too low, pick it up good and take that top leg back further. Stretch out those hamstrings. Okay, so I think what we're going to need to focus on is the top leg right coming over our body here we go and change with the little rhythm and we excellent a l x, x, x, which is a little different thinking of it that way. Normally in the other scissor we focus on the one that goes down, but we're not up on the thing on the roller, so we have to switch the dimensional kind of thought of it and four and three good.

Lots of great long hamstrings here too and last one and then bring your knees in and rest. Just roll your knees from side to side. We're going to do one more up on the roller. And this is the leg circles we did single leg circle. We're now gonna do two legs. This is more from the reformer and Cadillac. So why don't you guys hold your pelvis. Can you?

Does that feel stable enough to hold your hip bones? Okay? You know I'm going to do it this way. Thumb on your lowest rib. Don't tickle yourself and then fingers on your hip bones contract those bones towards each other. That's that kind of center zone right now. Lower your legs a little. We don't have to go so low. I want you to feel the depth of that abdominal contraction.

No strain in your back. Now turn your legs away from each other and you're going to do that small leg circle. Sure. Let's do five down. Turn out around with the thighs and back together and down and open around and back together. Two more. Yeah, so contracting those muscles between hip and rib, the whole journey. Okay, that was our five other way. A little open.

Down in and up. Open down, in and up. Open down in and up and lift. Last one in and out. Bend your knees. Place, one foot on the floor or mat. Second Foot, lift your hips. Take that roller away.

Now put your bottom down on the mat. Let your legs, your hamstrings, the back of your legs. Just enjoy being up on the roller for a minute. Just kind of toggle your legs back and forth. I'm thinking turn in turnout, little raggedy and doll. It's a little kind of a moment for massaging your hamstring tissues. Okay. All right guys.

So we'll go ahead and roll yourself up. We're going to do a spine stretch exercise. I'm going to face you. You may want to stag or one of you two. Okay. And let's, uh, yeah, I'll face you this way. I'm going to come out on the floor. Do you mind like that? Okay. You know what, think somewhere face me that way you might not have to stagger genius. Well, it took me awhile to figure out, wait.

Oh boy. So spine stretch. I have a slight advantage. Does anyone know what it is? Yeah, I've got my hips back against this, this elevated mat. So, and I also have pretty flexible hips and hamstrings. So if you feel right now sitting here as challenging, which probably is a little, bend those knees up cause you want to be high on your sits bones. Yeah, that's better without feeling like you're being held back. Right. Okay. Feet flexed. Before we use the roller, let's just wrap your hands around your waist. We're going to do a nice spine stretch from here.

Breathe in tall and as you exhale, put your head down, look inside your shirt and keep rounding over round. Squeeze your Tomi in. Try to take the tension of the shoulders but yet grounding down. Keep weighed on the pelvis though it hasn't shifted. Good and restack up to sitting bone by bone and put the other elbow and hoppy.

Inhale and we round overhead. Shoulders are dropping. I'm trying to bend into myself or that kind of image. Inhale and exhale. Roll back up. Okay, one more. Each arm on top. Flex. Do those feet round over, squeezing those abdominals in toward the back. Roll back up to sitting, leaving the shoulders down.

Other elbow and yeah, rolling back up to sitting tall. So instead of the arms wrapped on front of the body, you know, probably have to open your legs a little wider. Can you get your fingertips on top of your roller? Good. Inhale, same rounding through your spine, the flection, so curl into yourself. As you roll the roller away. It will be tempting to take the weight off of your sits bones.

Don't see if you can. Yeah, good. Stay right there on top of those bones. What Benz is the spine. That roller is in forming the flexors of my body to go even deeper in that curl and roll back up. Leaving the shoulders down and sit. Tall. Lift in your waist. Or guys, that's it. Two more to go and exhale. Yeah, so the flexors of the body here means specifically the trunk flexors and the abdominals. They're learning about that by this roller.

That's the information. Inhale. Exhale, rolling up. Okay, one more time. Lot of energy out those heels, but yet the heels are on the floor. Good and down. Keep those heels on the floor. I'm going to watch y'all. Nice, rosy, gorgeous rounding. Pat. Beautiful. You guys stay right there and do another breath. Go further. You can find the front of your body and feel the strength in it.

Yes, right and roll back up. That's how spine stretch forward could feel normally. It should really feel that way. I'm going to have this stay seated like this. Okay. Fold your elbows again. Let's go here and let's turn toward the windows and as you rotate, the sitz bones will stay even the bottom lip ribs. Lift them in.

Turn, lift and turn continually. Lift the bottom rims up in turn. Stay right there. Make sure you're seated heavily on that opposites. It's bone. Yeah, the one we've turned away from. Keep turning. Keep turning, lifting the ribs and turning. All right, now open the arms in the diagonal. Open and diagonal. Now lift and turn a little more. Good lifting attorney. You didn't know you had that much potential. Did you keep going? Keep going.

Now the back arm. Turn that palm face up. Stretch. You're still trying to turn further. What I'm gonna have you do this a definitely a variation. Turn your head away from that back arm to turn your head to your front arm. So go the other way, Miss Julia Dah, and flip your hands the other way. You're fine, you're fine. Still trying to turn the ribs the first way they were, but our head, neck and eyes toward the front arm. Right. Okay.

And unwind and find the center. Inhale. That was luscious. Exhale, lift those ribs and turn. It's kind of cool. There's really a never ending potential with a lot of our work, right? We just, if we do this same old thing over and over, I think we lose a little of the motivation to keep seeking the depth of it. So sitting wider is one aspect. Lift and turn, lift and turn, lift and turn on those sits bones. It's fine. The diagonal with the arms still lifting and turning. That's it.

Waist and spine. Now it's that back arm. Turn that palm face up so you can actually look into it for a second. Right? I keep it turned up. Now turn and look to the front arm and that palm is face down. What other exercises has an arm up and down the saw, which we might see shortly.

Still try to turn your ribs toward the back arm, but your head mechanized toward the front arm. Whew. And come on back. That should be enough of that, right? Take a little bit. How were your quads? Do you need to do this? Bounce your legs? Yeah. Okay. Let me try a little something else. Take this away. I'm just going to stay seated. Facing you guys up.

Come into a more soul to soul. Hands behind your head. You can interlace your hands if you'd like and press your head slightly back. So it's a version of the saw, a turn towards your, that's your left correct mind. Now, as we round forward toward that front thigh, take that you're going to be your right arm and reach it out over your Shin. That's part of that saw. Roll back up and put the hand behind your head and come forward to your right.

Inhale. So flection as you're going over, take that right on your left arm and reach and come back up. Just one more. Each side, twist that same rib lift round as you're flexing, reach that arm, reach that arm out, stomach his back, roll yourself up one more to your right and we inhale and exhale. So see with taking the legs into a different position, you may have gotten into your trunk muscles more than fighting your hip flexors. Yup. Okay. And come on. Right. And that's another variation of that. Okay. Let's come on to, um, I think we could try this.

I hope that you got, well, let's try it by on your back this way again, tailbone at one end. Okay. Rule back, we've done a fair amount of flection already, trunk flection and scissoring and leg work. But let's see if we can put a couple things together. I'm not sure how this is going to feel on your neck and things. So bring your right leg in, left leg out on the mat.

Stretch this right leg up toward the ceiling. Put your right thumb. I know it's very step-by-step, right thumb in the, the crease of your hip joint and kind of push. What that's about is to help direct where that sit bone should be aiming in. It should be aiming to the other heel, not out to the side of the room. It's a forward. Okay.

Now can you lift your head and your chest up off of the roller? Yep. Oh yes. You guys beautiful. Those trunk flexors again and bring it down. Let's try a little more challenging thing that stick with that. If you'd like. I'm going to take my opposite arm up and hold behind my thigh.

Exhale, curl the body up. Curl still pushing, kind of crease it. Oh yeah, enrolling down. Okay. One more with this leg up and exhale, bringing the trunk toward the leg and the leg toward the trunk and come all the way down. Bend that knee. That one goes down to the mat. The other one comes in first leg lengthens, left leg to the ceiling. Thumb in the s in the crease of the socket there.

The joint, you have a light press. You're informing the direction of the reach. Okay. First one elbow just on the mat there and pick your head and chest up. You can absolutely stay with this through the whole thing. This opposite leg should have a lot of reach in it, which we have and everybody come down, you can stay with that or the second to put that hand on the back of that thigh.

Now earlier we talked about stabilization and what assists that. So the leg that's on the mat, the hamstring and the inner thigh. Again, I should have said that on the first side. Ah, right. You can't always just be abdominals. We've got a lot of other muscle groups. Woo. And then down, here's our last one. Good exhale, curl up, trunk to leg, leg to trunk, stretch that bottom leg.

And feel free if anybody ever wanted to, you know, later we can maybe go whoa. Way Up there, but not tonight. Come on down. Bring that knee down, foot and foot and we need to roll off. Great. Lay flat for a moment. Good. Okay. Uh, let's turn over to our belly. It seeming to be a lot more about the roller than the ring.

We'll use the ring when we stand up in a few minutes. Okay. So come on down. Okay. And as we go and do a little bit of back extension here, we're going to turn this way. As you set your arms up on the roller, just let me see that about shoulder with the part or a little wider. In fact, and I'm going to just do this with my arms. If you want to just take a look. Yeah, there's going to be an internal rotation and an external rotation.

So as you internally rotate, let your shoulder blades go up towards your head. And as you ex terminally rotate your arms, slide your shoulder blades down your back. Internally rotate shoulder blades go up. Yeah. Externally rotate shoulder blades. Go down a nice summer. Yeah, really clear. Turning in, shoulders elevate. It's kind of a normal gesture.

Turn around and slide. Keep doing that. I'm going to get my hands on all of you for one little thing. Turning in, shoulder blades go up, turning out shoulder blades can come down. So notice there's a rhythm. Oh, and try to do that with your elbow street. Hmm. So it's just these arm bones. That's the easier one. No. Here's the harder one. Try not to bend the elbow, but move the shoulder blade.

Oh yeah. Okay. Close, close. And one more. Well, what I was saying is there's a rhythm of that shoulder blade movement. Short good shoulder blades go up and down as the arms go in out. So when we go into back extension on our spawn, we're going to enjoy, I'm a little behind yarn. I am going to enjoy internally rotating to stretch the spine externally rotate to allow a little bit of extension in the spine. So I'm lifting my head, my chest slightly above the mat. Base of ribs is still down.

Now before we do anything else, can we all pick up our tummies a lot more? Oh, without putting too much more weight on the arms. That's a toughie. Now come on down, but try to keep that abdominal work going. Turn the arms in and stretch the shoulder blades up. Yeah, turn the arms into external slide the shoulder blades lift. Make sure to pick up that tummy.

So almost just as much abdominal work as back work. Let's take two more. Turn in and come down externally. Rotate. Come up. One more time. Turn in to come down externally. Rotate to come up. Now I want you to all to stay there.

Bring your legs closer to the midline. If you can have a good pat. How are your legs? Up off the mat slightly. We're going to go into single leg kick, right heel comes in and kick, kick lower other side kick kick. If this is bothering your shoulders or back or head, come on down. [inaudible] you'd want to keep your leg work going.

Lot of energy through that. Back and up out the head for three [inaudible] and last. When you guys all the way down, we go. Okay. Bring your hands by your shoulders. Push yourself into a kind of a rounded back, back position and you can actually sit down on those heels. [inaudible] come up into quadriped pad so your shoulders are right above your wrists, your uh, thigh bone is right above your knee and just hold a nice flat back for a second. Take a breath as you exhale. Let's go into a curved back now.

Good head down toward the tail. The tail toward the head crests those shins into the mount. Inhale and exhale. Come in, back into flat back one more time. As we exhale, it's as if we're pushing the floor down, away from the chest, pulling the chest up away from the floor, head in between those arms, tail between the legs and back into level spine. Tuck your toes. Inhale with a flat back. Exhale, hover your knees. Be careful if you have any knee pain. You wouldn't want to hover the knees.

You could just stay in Quadrat pad and inhale, knees down. Two more. Exhale and hover. The, feel that strong back, right a flat back. So more expression through your chest, Julia. That's it. Your sternum long and forward. Knees down. One more. Let me watch you guys. It's like you've got an Arrow heads pointing right out of your head. Very strong and out your tail hold right there.

Can you march your feet, just little goods. Brita, little marching for three, two and one and knees down. Take a weight off those risks and sit back. Great. We're only gonna do one sideline piece tonight and no prop. So just you can face me on your right elbow and move this back and where it's going to be a little combination of some clam. Okay, so your knees are stacked, ankles are stacked, you've got your shoulder right below the hollow of your underarm, and that elbow again is straight out from your hip. Good. I've got a lot of negative space.

Let's go ahead and put the opposite hand behind her head and chicken neck your neck for a second. Why in the world would we do that to not do it again? Pull that head back. Feel that strength in your upper back that holds your head. Now on an exhale, I want you to lift your hip, okay. And see if you can sustain this position. A lot of work in this side, back the side, shoulder. If you'd get tired, come on down. We're going to clam here. Open and close, eight times open and close. Exhale and good for Maura and now and three and two.

Does that get anyone deeper in the in the side glutes than usual? Yeah, it sure does to me. And then set that hip down. Of course it would. And then stretch the legs out long. Keep that hand behind the head. You're going to prop back up on that elbow. Get ready. I'm going to do four. Try to take the top leg up and down, little bit up, down. Point your toes forward, up and down. This is kind of stinking me up and down and come on down.

Okay. Other side when we only have a little bit of side work is going to be powerful. So maximize that effort. So he, he uh, elbow down and your nice long spine. Get that head back in that hand. A lot of negative space. Feel that, strengthen the tummy up and in. We'd go lift the hip, looking out eight clams and we exhale. So it's actually really nice because, uh, it's harder I think to cheat because if you, if you moved your leg too much and rolled your hips, you'd fall backward.

So this actually kind of prevents too much movement. Like open that sternum. Rosie, let me see that tip of the head. That's it. Last two and your last one down. Set the hip down. Stretch your legs. Keep integrated in the upper body. Flex the feet and they're stacked. Exhale, press lift. You could always do this little piece without your hiphop.

Four times top leg we have one and two. It's long. Three and last one, four and down. Everybody rest? Good. Okay. Come up for just a second. What your first side take that first arm. It was your right arm. I'm doing my left. Take your hand up and stretch out your triceps.

We're going to do two things in standing. Okay. From standing. The other sign. Good. So the first thing we'll need is the roller and how this is kind of silly. Probably wouldn't need the roller, but let's go ahead and use it. Put it between your ankles. Parallel legs stand, however you may be standing towards each other. Yeah. Okay, so they squeezing and abducting that roller. Again, you're turning into the turning on the inner thigh and your hamstrings. Now zip up here. I want you to shift your weight slightly forward and rise up.

I'm going to do 10 of those lower with heights. What's funny, just the look of the roller between the ankles [inaudible] Oh, thank you. Well, you know what? I think for myself I will say Ah, is sometimes I underuse here. I'm going to be a little honest. I underuse my inner add doctors a bit. One way is to, you know, squeeze the magic circle, but that's wide. This is a little narrower so, and it doesn't have any give really. So it's a different way to connect and I absolutely feel my back legs more too.

Okay. How about two more pulled up in the belly. Good intro. It's okay. It throws us off balance. Sometimes we feel that so. So this time stay up there. That same thing from pelvis to ribs. If you put your fingers on those two bone sets, try to pull those muscles towards each other.

[inaudible] I know I'm losing my balance too. I'm going to try it again. Oh yeah. Floats your hands. We don't need our hands on your nose full feel those muscles. That's right guys. Okay. And down. When you say each other, you mean like just, yeah, so if I could make the muscles, well, no, I ma, I'm making the muscle fibers come like this, but without doing, yeah. Now if you take that away and work with the ring, stand it. We did something like this once. Now we know this. This is buoyant, right? It's good. Probably play with our sense of balance. So put one foot, I'm going to go left foot on. I'm not pushing on it.

I'm just setting it there. So when it starts to get wacky, okay. That same feeling here, pulling those muscle fibers towards each other. This inner thigh, this hamstring, that's that standing leg from way back in the beginning of the hour. Now as you rise onto tippy-toe, we're going to do that in just a second. Bend this standing me just a little without pushing down on the magic circle leg. Little Bend, little stretch. Good. I note pad. Oh God. If I can't look around Ben, I'm trying to point my knee straight out to the circle and then straighten.

Okay, one more. A little bend of your knee. Find something in. Stare at it. That's usually helpful. Okay. Now as you rise up on the toes of this other foot, go forward a little bit. Can't look around forward and up and down. Good forward a little bit.

So there's a weight shift right in walking in life. We wait, Shit. Then we move forward. So our balance is working. Yeah. You guys wait, shift. Woo. So here's the deal. We're going to do bending, standing me, straighten it up on the tippy toes and down to more patterns. Bending. It's, it's humbling, isn't it?

Standing on one leg. What all is involved in that? Anyone's standing ankle warming up. Yeah. All right. Good call. Yep. It definitely is harder on that mat. Ah, I didn't, uh, didn't notice that.

Giulia. It's just funny. I love it. It'd be, it's hard. It is hard. I don't know if you guys remember us telling Perry earlier last year I did one of these standing standing where you there? Oh my gosh. I couldn't stand to do this to save my life, but we were all also doing something else. I was pushing on the ring. Yeah. It was quite disconnected. Right? Our Hampshire should be level, so no hiking up. Yeah. Okay. Good question here on feed parallel.

Right now too. Way Too late. She just got standing there. Don't worry. So the standing leg, bend your knee a little. You have to flex your hip and bend your knee. Track it straight ahead. Doesn't have to be too deep of a movement. It shouldn't be. Now to stand up, squeeze your bottom, zip up your tummy two more. They're a little bit of a bend and straighten and one more little bend and a little straight. Right? So then as you rise up to the ball of the foot, doesn't have to go high to simply just lifting the weight off your heel is a lot. But to go forward first, unweight the heel and lower [inaudible] you brought up a great question because as you do some of these, this hip might want to go up to assist your balancing.

It's common, it's information, so feeling like you're having a difficult time keeping an even a, it could be the, Oh, the back is working a little bit more than the front. Okay. We're going to make it guys, we're almost there. What we've got, oh shoot is three patterns. Bend your standing knee and straighten and go forward and up and down and standing. Knee. Straighten forward and up. Ben Down. Last one, Ben. Somehow this hand gestures helping me. That is, I'm channeling some to your, okay. Drop that down. Shake your leg.

I was doing a Tai Chi moment. It seemed to help me though. There's something to that balance. Yeah, I, you know, whatever that here, beer after a while I haven't put [inaudible] on top as if it weren't attached. You don't know if I put in a glass on the table. I love that Pat.

Like putting a yes almost as if the leg wasn't even attached as genius. Guys, let's do a standing roll down. [inaudible] parallel. Just a nice breath. Let's take those uh, risk together. Or if you want to do film with them, either way, lengthen the shoulder blades up. Ah, roll forward. I'm just gonna go loose arms. So a great class because we did lots of different, you know, not really complex exercises so much at all. Bend your knees roll up, but different ways to do them with different props, different angles, different pooling, all that stuff. Let's go one more.

Yup. Streamline those ribs. Bring them in and rounding over [inaudible] and bend your knees. He been heavy head and roll up through your spine. Nice work you guys. Thank you very much.

Comments

YES! i have been anxiously awaiting another class like this from you Amy! thank you!! i started my day doing the first half, and will end my day doing the second half. love it!
Thank you Cindy!! How did the second half of the class go for you?
1 person likes this.
i thought it was great Amy! thanks again. it's like medicine for my body. i wasn't crazy about the end ring-balancing thing...for whatever reason it felt like my back was a bit irritated. but all good!!! :)
As you could see the ending for me wasn't stellar either.....but on we go! Talk to you again!
1 person likes this.
Loved the props! The standing series with the magic circle was incredible work for the ankle complex, I'm still feeling it. Thank you for the great cues!
Hi Paula......thank you! Yes, the standing series at the end is wonderful for many things and very good for ankle stability. Although this filmed class wasn't my absolute best in stabilization or balance (as you can see), I see find value in the exercises and will keep on keepin on!
Hello Amy, well done. Your class was terrific. I love the balance challenges and specificity of each exercise. This adds an extra dimension to what I can teach my Pilates classes. Thank you. Jennie Thomson
Thank you Jennifer! Nice hearing from you!
OK i can't take this anymore!!! This class was the last from Amy and that's 6 weeks ago! Amy where are you??!!!!!
Kerry~ I know it's shameful! And she only has one class waiting to be edited! Amy has been pretty busy lately but I will tell her that she needs to film more classes for all of you!
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