Class #3629

Pilates Mat and Gait

55 min - Class
322 likes

Description

You will lengthen, load, and restore your body in this Mat workout by Tom McCook. He puts the concepts from his previous tutorials together so that you can achieve a wonderful movement experience. He flows through the exercises, allowing you to learn how to be more center-loaded without tension when you are in motion.
What You'll Need: Mat, Triadball, Franklin Ball (2), Theraband

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Transcript

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Hi everybody. I'm Tom Tama Cook. I'm here at Palladio's anytime for a matte class experience. I'm here with j d and Aaron and our class is going to be a nice flow where we're going to combine some work on the clavicle to improve your quality of movement in the shoulder girdle, some work with the hips and the feet and the spine. We'll put it all together for a great movement experience. So we're going to start with basic concentrations.

What I'd like you to do is look down at your feet for a moment and have your feet right under your sit bones. And as you look down at your feet for a moment, lift all 10 toes off the floor and no side. It allows you to sense your key weight bearing points, the ball behind your little toe fall behind your big toe and the center of your heel. And just picture that like a triangle on each foot. And as you do that so often, the knee joints then let the toes come back down. Let's do that a few times. Go ahead and lift. Feel those points and then lay it back down.

I noticed you can do that and you can relax your neck and shoulders. Head right up over your spine. Lift and lower and one more. Lift and lower. Now leaving the toes down. Lean a little forward on the feet. Come back to the center. Lean back slightly.

Okay, back to the center. Lean to one side. Back to the center. Lean to your second side, back to the center. Now as you feel the middle, since the three foot points equal weight front to back, left to right, it's a good starting point into something to do often in your day so often the knees and with your head right up over your spine. Just close your eyes for a moment and just take a few deeper than normal. Breath through the nose on the exhale phase settled down into your foot points, but also lengthen and straight and at the same time notice you can settle in. Lengthen. Let the breath drop lower in the body.

Do that for one more big breath. Now as you're noticing, just set your own intention for your practice that this particular areas of your body you're working on. Do you want to become more skillful with move better, let go of tension, heal an injury, or just have a good movement experience? Set that intention before we begin, then go to the end of your next exhale and just softly open the eyes as you bend the knees, feeling your three foot points. Lift the shoulders straight up as the legs length and a release the shoulders. See the spine getting a little longer and again, hips down, shoulders up, legs length, and shoulders release. We'll just do that one more time and lower. Now with your left hand, touch your right clavicle and feel how it's s shaped and feel how it moves and it is. There's two main joints. The SC joint is the sternoclavicular, right where it attaches to your sternum. Then your AC is out there where it attaches to your clavicle, our to your scapula. Now just notice when you lift the shoulder up, you're just going to go through the basic movements. Notice when you lift the shoulder up, it slides down on the sternum and then it's when the outer edge drops the slides up on the sternum and there's a slide where it attaches that the sternal notch, that's the beginning of your shoulder girdle.

That's where your shoulder girdle attaches, your arm, scapula and clavicle, which make up your shoulder girdle. This is the only place that attaches to your skeleton. Now notice you can lift the shoulder without engaging your arm muscles because the rms was done. Have anything to do with lifting the shoulder. Just saying, here we go. Now take the collar bone from the outer border forward to protract and then take it back to retract and feel how that can be a nice ease glide around the rib cage. So in moving well, we're also looking to become more efficient. When we focus on how the body's designed, we keep our attention there.

We can improve function. Now take the arm Ford. We're going to build it arm first. Now clavicle and scapula going back. It's scapula clavicle, looking back, reach. It's the arm and again it's arm, clavicle, scapula going back and Scapula, clavicle arm. Just feel that nice glide around the rib cage. One more time. Arm, clavicle, Scapula, Scapula, clavicle arm. Now we're going to add the spine, arm, clavicle, Scapula, the spine flex coming back. It's spine, Scapula, clavicle, arm, and just two more times. Arm, clavicle, Scapula, spine, spine, Scapula, clavicle, arm, and one more fluid. Motion, arm, clavicle, Scapula, spine, spine, Scapula, clavicle, arm. Very nice. Then just brush down the arm all the way at the end of your fingers. Take a moment to a little consumer report. I'm noticing, oh my shoulder feels much lower.

Even notice that arm probably is longer and notice the range and ease from that short affective process to improve the quality of moving in your shoulder. Girl also improves your posture. So let's take side too. Let's just touch the clavicle. Feel it, shape, feel it's s shaped. It's kind of shaped like a key also, and now just practice lifting the shoulder up and notice at the sternal notch there's a sliding down as a lateral border goes up and notice. Can I do that without tensing my arm muscles?

So we're practicing learning how to be more center loaded instead of side loaded with tension, which actually makes our body move less well and not as effectively with burning more energy. Now from there, let's take the clavicle forward into protraction retraction. Now I'm focusing on the clavicle, but obviously the shoulder blade is moving with it because they're married to each other. They can't move independently of each other. Actually that's it. Now let's take that into adding the arms. It's going to be armed first, clavicle scapula coming back at scapula clavicle. Looking back, it's arm and again, arm, clavicle, scapula. Feel the slide around the rib cage. Scapula, clavicle arm though that fluidity allows the spine to move easier.

Arm, clavicle, Scapula, Scapula, clavicle, arm. Now we're going to add the spine and deflection, so it'll be arm, clavicle, scapula's spine coming back at spine, Scapula, clavicle, arm, arm, clavicle, Scapula, spine, spine, Scapula, clavicle, arm, and one more time. Arm, clavicle, Scapula, spine, spine, Scapula, clavicle, arm. Very nice. Not just from there. Brushed down the arm to your fingers, letting go of any stress that no longer is being useful. Let that go. Good, good. Very good point. Probably never that it useful. Has this moment. Now just take a moment to compare.

Now we're going to pick up our Franklin balls. I didn't mention in the beginning, but you're going to want to have two sets of four inch balls, a triad ball, which is like a nine inch ball and a theraband. So we're gonna take the two balls and we're going to tap. Let me just mirror it for you. So when I lift my elbows up like this, I want to think of the weight of the upper arm falling into the breastbone. Cause the clavicle went like this and it's falling.

It's sliding down on the sternal notch. So your knees a little bent. You're going to tap up the center of your chest. Now, right here, let the weight of the arms fall into your breastbone. Lift the heart and reach up. Circle the arms and flex the spine. As you bend the knees, tap up the mid line, open the top of the chest, reach open curl way to the arms of falling into the center. Open and curl. Just two more times.

That's that nice effect it has on the neck, the shoulder girdle, and the spine. One more. Very nice. Put the balls aside. Bring your hands on your shoulders. Now imagine you're going to stir circles. Your clavicles are going to go like this.

You're going to steer circles on the opposing walls with your elbows and go for like an equal size circle. Leave your knees bent. Now as you're doing that, start to breathe where you breathe in. For count to three, exhale for counter three. Imagine your goal is to hit all the surface area of your lungs in hell for three. Exhale for three. Now let the thoracic and lumbar move. Inhale for three.

Exhale for three in. Feel like your clavicle and Scapula are leading the circles in health for three XL for three. Now the next move, it's going to be a bellows where we're going to fill an empty the lungs. So as you inhale, take the clavicles back, lift and open the chest and look up. Exhale, bend your knees and then empty your lungs. Inhale, fill. Exhale, empty. Three more times. Lengthen and open.

Two more and one as you come up, shake out your limbs. Now we're going to go into some circles for the hips with your feet, about six inches or a foot apart, a little narrow than a foot hip joint with a part. I want you to bend your knees and picture that your hip muscles go all the way around the hips, not just in the back and the sides. So with your legs bent, shift your pelvis at your hip joint level to the right. Load that lateral hip and feel the whole foot. Now I'm lengthening the muscles on the outside of the right hip.

Now shift to the back to sit into a chair, load the back of the hips. Feel how you're stretching the back. Shift to your left. Load the left. Now open up to the front, not arching in the back. Just open the front of the hip joints. Now I'm opening my hip flexors shift to the right, to the back, to the left, to the front.

One more. That way, right back left. You didn't know you were doing a summit today. Now we're going to reverse go left to the back, to the right, to the front, left, back, right front, last time, left back, right front. As you come up, do a little alternate knee touch. Reach into the floor on the standing leg. Now from there we're gonna go right into hip hinges.

So with your feet about a foot apart, turn the outside edges of your feet parallel so your feet are slightly turned in and bend your knees slightly. So because we sit a lot all day, the back of our hips can get inhibited and weak. So attribute one level picture, that's the level of your hip joints. So just practice taking your arms into goalpost position. When you look out, you want your elbow directly under your hand and then draw the chin slightly back and lengthen up through the back of your neck. Now at your hip joints. Pull the hip joints straight back to hinge without rounding your back. Now press into your feet evenly to come back up. Now let's add the breathing. Inhale, Xcel up inhaled the hinge XL up four more times.

Hold that nice line through the spine. Sit bones widen. Sit Bones and narrow, widen, narrow to more and one and release. Shake that out to open up your hips a little bit more. I want you to step your left foot forward, right foot back about six inches left to right about a foot front to back. And this is going to be an open up your hip flexors. Mainly your Iliac is on the back leg, so take your pelvis moving from right below your belly button. Move on a diagonal towards your left foot till you feel the weight on your front foot. The three foot points. Now with your hands on your hips, press into your back foot. Feel the front two foot points.

Ball the big tone the little toe and let the pelvis turn slightly back to the right shoulders. We'll turn to the left. That's more like gate. Now with your hands on your hips, you're going to post yearly tip your pelvis on the exhale. Take the tailbone forward, pubic bone up the front in health to release it. That's enough feel when you do that. Press into your back foot and do your best to keep the back knee straight. Do two more strong back leg. You're opening the front of the back hip on the next one. Hold it, reach into that back foot and then gently released and we'll take side too. Doesn't look like much, but there's a lot of sensation.

Six inches front I left to right about a foot front to back. First thing, take your center of mass and shift it towards your right foot on the diagonal so you feel all three foot points. Almost like you're lining up your belly button over your big toe. Easy to keep the whole foot down. Now with your back leg, reach into the two front foot points, little toe, big toe, but reaching of those points in. Straighten the leg, turn the pelvis slightly back to the left, the pelvis, the spine will turn slightly to the front leg. With the hands on the hips. Just practice curling the tail forward to round the lumbar and open the front of that back left hip and again, okay, practice doing it and pressing into your foot points and get the feeling you're trying to keep that back leg straight.

Just two more times on the next one. Go into it and hold it. Hold it, hold it, press into that back foot, fill that nice opening and then slowly release. Now we're going to tick take it into what's called the clock step. We're going to step around the clock with a sliding leg, but your focus is always on the standing foot, keeping your three foot points on the ground. The sliding leg is just a gesture. So the first start, we'll start by shifting the weight onto the left leg and we're going to go around the clock to nine o'clock from one to nine so as you bend your left, slide your right forward to one o'clock. Now right there, feel your three foot points when your standing foot, the other foot is moving towards pronation. Straighten all the way up. Now go to two and back to center now to three.

Feel how your hips are changing a little bit and when you go to four let the pelvis turn open slightly, but keep looking straight ahead. Not a five. Focused on the weight on the front foot all the way up to six go. Nice and slow. Seven money 0.8 and now nine reach forward with the same side arm as the reaching leg for a counter. Oh there you go. Come all the way up. That's part of the process. We'll go right into side too. So shift the weight onto your right left leg. We'll go to 11 o'clock again, just the gesture.

Come all the way up. 10 fill your three foot points on the standing foot. Nine eight all the way up each time to feel the foot. Supinate seven six focus on the weight. Five. Now we can add the counter even here at four with the left hand forward. Same as the moving leg. And then two, three very nice. Back to center. Now from there, we're going to come down onto the floor on the back and take the two Franklin balls and put them onto your pelvis. Come on down when you're ready you guys. Now we'll put the balls right under your hips on each side of your sacrum, basically behind the pubic bone, just above your sit bones.

Now while you're here, have your feet in line with your sit bones back of the neck long and just take a few breaths there and see if you can get the feeling of that euchre. You're in a different position with gravity now, so let the front of the body fall into the back of the body on the exhale. Now in the exhale phase, as you start your next exhale, curl the tail towards the back of the knees. Feel the bottom of the pelvis narrow is the tailbone, goes towards the back of your knees. You're going into a pelvic curl. Now inhale, tip the pelvis forward. Feel the abdominal wall. Lengthen.

Sit bones widen and then curl and take it nice and slow where you're working from the pelvis, abdominal muscles, pelvic floor muscles, lower back muscles, but easeful in the neck and shoulders. Do that two more times. Okay. And one more. Just the nice warm up for the center of your body. Now as you come back to center, we're going to do a little bigger focus on your Iliac is your deeper hip flexor muscles. So we're going to slide your right leg long on the floor. Now that leg is going to stay long, so that opens up the front of your right hip more. Now on the exhale, curl your tail towards the back of your knees to flex the lumbar spine.

Inhale to release it. Now if you feel like you can't get much flection that feels like it's too big for you or too extended with your leg, you can bend the down to you a little bit if you needed to. That's an I do three more. And it focus as you curl both sit bones narrow the lower back lengthens and you're opening up the front of that hip one more. Okay. And as you, as you finish slowly bend, we'll switch sides, slide out your left leg and again, just take a moment.

Exhale, curl the tail towards the back of the knee and to release. And again, nice and fluid. There you go. Fluid motion fail. You're opening up the hip, those muscles that travel over the pubic bone to the inner thigh. Two more and one more grey thing to do if you've been setting a lot of times sitting. Yeah. Now from there we'll come down. We'll come back to bent legs.

Now take hold of your left knee with both hands. We're going to go into a develop pay movement with the down legs, with the down leg. Draw it into your chest on its own. Reach it straight up to the ceiling. Long exhale, let it lower towards the Mat. And again, inhale, bend it in and up. In our XL picture as it's lowering that you're you're deeper hip flex hip flexor muscles. You are e center, clea, lengthening from the weight of your leg, the muscles that attach your leg to your spine that go over your pubic bone.

Connect to the spine on on that side of the belly button. And as you do that, really great idea to relax the neck more cause we inhibit our hip flexes with shoulder and neck tension. No need to tense your foot or do any of the things that we tend to do. Just let the weight of your leg be enough. Let's do two more. I recommend anywhere from six to 10 reps and one more you guys. That's it.

Has that need comes in, we'll switch sides, take hold of the right, reach up with the left long exhale, let it lower towards the floor. Now I didn't mention this on the other side, but as you're lowering the leg, think of letting the hip get heavier on that side. Imaging that the pelvis is subtly turning horizontally towards the floor on the lowering leg slide. That's just like what you were doing when you were standing. Like if you were walking, your pelvis was subtly turn towards the back leg side and that's very helpful if you get clicking and popping in your hip. That helps to actually remedy that. Okay.

Do two more like that. And one more. Everybody. Very nice. Now we're prepared and ready for some bridging. So now we'll place the feet down. Lift the hips, take the balls away. Now have the feet just in line with your sit bones. And we're just going to do two bridges before we do a few different variations.

So the feet, see if throughout. What about to do that? You stay aware of your three foot points on both of your feet. So take a breath XL, start to curl the tail through towards the back of the knees and peel into a bridge until you feel like you have a straight line from your knees to your shoulders. Now the top of the bridge just touched the bottom of your sit bones with your fingers for a moment. Now take the bottom back of your pelvis more towards the back of your knees.

Now touch your front ribs. Now let the front ribs melt in without dropping the pelvis and feel how you just got more action in the back of your legs. More length out of your lower back. Now bring the arms long. Take a breath as you press the back of the shoulders into the floor, soften your breastbone and use your abs to lengthen down at the very bottom that the sit bones wide and to come to neutral. We're going to do that just two more times. This time is your curl.

Arrive in that nice toned straight line from the knees to the shoulders. Take a breath of the top, soft breastbone traction down towards your feet. Sit bones openings. The very last thing that happens at the bottom. One more nice and smooth fluid motion. Nice breath at the top and then articulate down nice and smooth.

Now the next bridge, you're just going to come up. You're going to come up the same way, but a little less so come up about two thirds of the way. Now when you're up there, imagine your pants pockets are filled with sand. As you inhale, rotate the right pocket towards the floor XL. Squeeze back to center. Now see of as you're doing that rotation, if you can keep the weight even on both feet, try to avoid left to right swing of the knees.

It's just a pelvic rotation. Fill your inner thigh muscles back of your legs, hips and abdomen, working together. One more to your second side. Now hold the middle. Now imagine you're, you're going to shift without on leveling your pelvis. Shift your chair, canter the top of your thigh towards one side like a typewriter, and then squeeze back to center. Shift and come back to center and make it as small as you need to to keep the pelvis level so you're feeling the inner outer hips, the waistline, and still connected to your feet. Yes, I am demanding. Here we go. One more each side as you come back to center, hold position.

Now inhale, reach the arms back into a High v overhead. Thumbs towards the floor, wider than your shoulders on the XL. Traction your spine down away from your fingertips. One Vertebra at a time. As you arrive at the bottom, interlace the fingers behind your head for an ab curl. Now begin by just getting a sense of from your tailbone to your belly button that you could lengthen your lower back, a little close to the floor and press into your feet.

Now take a breath and on the exhale start to roll your head off the floor like a wheel and slide your breastbone towards your pelvis to curl as far as you can without pulling on your head with your arms in help to lengthen down and again, roll the head off. That's it. Now feel an image that your back ribs are sliding up your back. When you curl forward away from your pelvis, nice and smooth. There you go. There's two, two more and one as you come down and touch your front ribs for a moment with your hands. Next slide your hand from your front rib to your opposite hip.

And imagine these are the muscles that are going to turn you. It's going to happen from this low opposed to overdoing it from the shoulders. It's really low. Now interlace the fingers behind your head again. Take a breath to your initial head lift. Now slide the breastbone and turn rib to opposite hip in health center.

Exhale the turn and get heavier in the hip. You're turning away from. Feel like the hip is heavy on the floor. So you start to feel your waistline a little bit more. And the shoulder girl is wrapping around from the back to the front on the side. You're turning away from one more each side.

Back to center. Draw your knees into your chest and rock up to a seated position. And we're going to grab the theraband and do some roll downs. So for this version, wrapped the theraband around your feet and bend your knees just enough that it's relatively easy to sit up on your sit bones and your arms can be straight. So when you look at your elbows, if you're like this, that means they're not straight. I have to do that in my classes a lot, so no worries. So I sit up tall.

Now just get a feeling that a roll down is exactly the same as a bridge that you just did. You just happen to be sitting in a different position. It's initiated from the same place. When you start to curl, feel the bottom of the pelvis. Start to narrow, the tail pulls forward and roll back until you touch the part of your spine just behind the belly button. Take a short breath. Now fold that the belly button level without elevating your shoulders and at the top, let the sit bones widen to get right up on the sit bones and again, narrow the bottom of the pelvis. Tail forward. Lower back, back, short breath. When you touch, keeping the shoulders low and wide curl. That's it. And then at the top, get right up on the sit bones and we'll do two more like that. Nice and fluid. That's it. Nice and smooth. Short breath right there.

Curl back up. Now the next one, we're going to go all the way back, but it's a $50 fine if you let go with the bottom. So on the exhale, curl back. Now when you're letting your head go back, keep the tone in the muscles that are lengthening, which is your abdominal wall. Nod your head, fold right below the and slide your back ribs up your back as you curl, curl, curl. And we're going to do one more time. Grow Tall, awesome, good looking rolled down. It's going on there. Curl back, nice and smooth. That's a keep the length as you [inaudible] length and your abdomen at the bottom on the XL. Roll the head off the floor. Curl nice and fluid.

Now we're going to take that into some extension to strengthen the upper back and the upper back muscles along with the arms. And think of what we're going to do is include the head on what was a counter movement to the typical posture of driving or being on the computer. So when you get up on your sit bones, just practice retracting your clavicles and your Scapula is far as you can without bending the arms. Notice they have a lot of glide. Now the next one, pulling back as far as they can. Then as you pull the elbows back, rotate your palms up and feel how it's, it's back long before arms and for most of the exercise arms come in last.

Now, let's add to that retract. Pull the elbows back. Next, slide the heart up the front of the breastbone and then go up the back of your neck. So it's thoracic extension. Neck flection slopes. The neck will flex, then slowly release and again, retract elbows back. Now lift the heart up. Go up the back of your neck. Do that three more times. Retract. Pull, lift up through the heart, up the bet through the back of the neck. Very nice. Slowly shoots in. This actually is relevant to the gait cycle and again, retract, pull, lift.

One more time. You guys also feels really good. And again you tracked. Pull up with the heart up through the back of your neck and straight. And now we're going to take it into rotation. So in rotation, staying just as tall, just pull your right, show the straight back. Start to bend the arm as you turn, but stay as long in the front as you are in the back. Slowly come straight, retract the left. Pull in, turn equal weight on both sit bones, the bone that moves first as the clavicle, pull it back. Turn start to image on the one you're not pulling on that that clavicle is going forward like a bow and arrow.

Nice and smooth. Two more each way. Press down through your heels. Get right up on the sit bones. One more each side. Okay, and last one, back to center. Take your away now help yourself onto all fours on all fours. You're going to have your knees about shoulder width apart and take your hips about six inches behind your knees. Now you'll leave for you guys.

You're going to leave your left hand on the floor a little forward of your body and bring your right hand. Eventually we'll go behind your head for now. Just put it on the other shoulder. So if you watch the movement, it's going to be, I'm going to take my left collarbone back to turn open and actually, and why don't you do the other arm so you guys can JDC. You guys were kind of facing the same way at the same time. Now when you turn, keep the weight even on both knees and think of your, your s you're a corkscrew. You're not laterally flexing or shifting. You're turning around the mid line and now when you can. Now let's try it with the hand behind the head. If anybody, when you practicing, if you have shoulder problems, leave your hand where we just started.

Otherwise put the hand behind your head. Now when you flex our rotate down, let the elbows come to touch one another. I feel like your outer clavicles are coming towards one another and then open and spiraled down and then open. This is thoracic mobility, upper back strength, nice line, head to tail all the way through. Do two more.

Challenge yourself to when you open that you just turning around the mid line, you're not arching, you just rotating one more. As you come back to center, we'll switch sides. Start just to one repetition with your other side, hand on the other opposite shoulder. As you push into the floor, just open and feel like the collarbones are moving away from each other and then back down. Not Try with the hand behind the head and you can let even lightly press the head back so you can lengthen through the back of your neck. Then open, that's it. And on the weight bearing arms so you can get the feeling of keeping that shoulder away from your ears throughout the exercise. That's it. Exhale to close. Inhale to open. Let's do two more on that side. Nice and smooth, and one more. Very nice.

That leads us right into some upper back extensions to come onto your belly. Now on your belly, have your nose about two inches off the floor. Arms long by your sides with your palms up. Now practice anchoring the front of your hips and your pubic bone towards the floor. Lift your nose slightly in your chin. Straight up off the floor. Now just practice taking your collarbones straight back off the floor towards the ceiling.

Float your hands off the floor and pull your hands towards your back pockets. Okay, now holding that, just practice letting the collarbones come a little forward. Draw them back again as you reached for your feet. Pull the upper forward, keeping the back of the neck long like you just did earlier with the theraband exercise length and back down again. Feel like the first bone to move is the clavicle. Draw back, slide the heart forward and lengthen back down. Nice and smooth like that. Feel like as you come up the Cla, the show, the blades come in, the back of the neck is long and there's a sense of length through the front.

There you go. Let's do two more notice as you get that shoulder girl to move first. The spine extension is easier. Beautiful. One more. Very nice you guys. From there we're going to go into single leg kicks, so come up onto your forearms and have your elbows wider than your shoulders. Hands close. No, we just going to start with our lizard pushup.

Okay, so lizard pushup is you ever seen them on the rock? They're actually performing for somebody to come their way. Now as you push into your elbows, lift out of your shoulders now broaden across the collarbones in, lengthen through the back of your neck. Now just to energetically draw the pubic bone towards the belly button. Tone your inseams on a snip. We're going to do a sniffing breasts. We'll go.

Okay, kick on the Exhale, Huh? Feel like you're telling me in the back of the hips and the belly and the muscles under your shoulder blades. Nice and smooth. There we go. Two more reach side. One more. Very nice. Then lengthen down for the swan. Now for the Swan, you'll have your fingertips just a little forward of your shoulders.

With your elbows on the floor, let your feet be about six inches apart. Now just practice taking your collar bones a little bit back and then slide your shoulder blades down your back. Now anchor the pelvis, the pubic bone and hip bones into the floor and draw your nose and your chin straight up off the mat just a little bit so you feel like you haven't even extended yet or used your arms. Now as you inhale, start to slide the upper chest forward to lift your head now reaching or the arms to come higher. But keep your shoulders low. Lengthen all the way back down and lets you let you determine the range based on your ability to keep it out of your lower back. Keep a sense of even as through the extension. Slide the upper chest forward, shoulders slide down. You can come up a little higher if you like, and then lengthened back down. And again, keep the collar bones back as you start to extend opera Sheff slides forward. Legs are nice and actively toned. Beautiful. There you go.

Two, two more. Nice and smooth. Really get that feeling. There's a down through the shoulder blades and a retraction of the clavicle. Nice opening across the top of the chest and one more. Nice and smooth. That's it. Nice and fluid. Now we'll finish this prone position with an eight point plank.

And you're thinking, what are the eight points I'm about to tell you? Stick them up onto your elbows. Have your elbows read under your shoulders, toes tucked under. So think of the eight points are your wrists, your elbows, your knees, and your feet. And they all stay on the floor. So push your elbows into the floor to lift out of your shoulders. Now imagine you're going to wave your spine off the floor and your spine starts just below your chin to start to pull your throat away from the floor. Your breastbone away from the floor. Do you? Nasal band is your hips.

Come off the floor. Now feel a straight line as best you can from your head to your tail and start to resist your elbows and knees towards one another like you're pulling the mat together. Now squeeze your limbs towards the midline and breathe the width and length into your torso. Hold for five more breaths long in the torso at the back of the neck. Be Nice and long. Two more big breaths.

One more big breath. Slowly lower. Gently press yourself back to a child's posts. So if you got that high speed wobble to happen in the middle of your body, that's actually a good thing. That's an I. Just take a few breaths back there. Soften. Let your belly soften. Let yourself become foldable. Hips, knees, spine, neck is easeful.

One more breath. Now from that nailing position for a counter movement, shift your hips a little bit off your heels. Put your elbows in front of your knees, about six inches on the floor. Now round your back, taking your tailbone towards your head just to release your lower back a little bit more. Tone your belly. Press into your forearms and your shins. Take one more breath and now slowly release and help yourself onto your back.

We're gonna have a little more of a flow happening, so we're gonna come on to our back. Now while you're on your back, just take a moment to line up your tail with your head, with your nose, and from your tail to your belly button length in that part of the spine. A little close to the floor. Now take your left knee and hold it with your right hand with your left hand. Reach a little lower on the Shin and take a breath and do an abdominal curl.

Now pull the elbows wide. Reach the other leg long. Now like we were talking earlier, I feel like your pelvis is gently trying to turn towards the long leg side. Curl up a little bit more with the next sale. Switch and switch. Nice and smooth fluid. There you go. Back ribs up your back, legs tracking right over your hips. Two more reach side, one more each side.

As you come to the center, hold your knees, let your head come down for a moment. Just roll your head from side to side. Now find the middle again and do that same lengthening of the lower part of the spine. This is going to be single straight leg stretch, so exhale. Curl up with the upper body. Now reach your left leg straight up and hold just below the knee. Reach the right leg long.

Now look at your belly and get heavier on your right hip with an exhale. Switch and switch. Nice and smooth. Fluid motion breathing wide and low. Two more each side. One more each side as you come back to the center. Hold the knees again just for a moment. Now we're going to take it into the rollover. We're going to start with the legs wide. Little variations, so arms long.

Take the shoulders back. Now take the leg straight up and open them about shoulder width with the feet pointed. Take an inhale. Exhale, roll back. Inhale, close the legs. Flex the feet and exhale rolled down through the spine. Inhale, open point. Exhale to the back. Inhale, close the legs. Flex the feet. Now press down. Soften the breastbone. Traction down through the spine. One more time. Inhale, open point. Xcel to the backs. Sit bones narrow.

Draw the legs together. Flex the feet traction down. Now keep the legs together as you get to the bottom and point the feet on the inhale. Exhale to the back. Inhale, open flex traction down through the spine. Nice and smooth. Just two more. Inhale together and point Xcel to the back. Inhale, open. Flex traction down. One more. You guys, nice and fluid. Derived together. Xcel to the back.

Open flex traction down through the spine. As you get to the bottom, bend into tabletop. Interlace the fingers behind your head and one more time. Lengthen that lower part of the spine into the floor member. When we turned earlier, we're going to turn from the lower ribs to the opposite hip for crisscross. Exhale, curl up and slowly turned to your left and straight and your right leg.

Now get heavier in that right hip with an Xcel switch. Nice and smooth. Feel the opposition. The torso was turning opposite the pelvis. Two more each side. Nice and fluid. One more each side. Back to center. Take hold of your knees. Rock around on your lower back just for a moment.

Very nice you guys. Now we're going to grab your triad ball and you're going to come onto your side facing me and it right above your hip and then bend your bottom leg like you're sitting in a chair so you have it right above. The Leo in the top leg is long, and when you look at your hips, you want your hips to be stacked in a nice line from your ankle to your hip, to your shoulder, to your ear. Then just stretch out the bottom arm and let your head rest on it. That's an edge. Just puts your top hand on your lower belly for a moment. Right below the belly button, take a breath and on the exhale draw the tissue away from your hand so you feel the space in between the rib cage and your pelvis.

Become more toned in active practice. Doing that right before you move. So then we're training those deeper set of muscles that tend to get left out. Take this arm up on the exhale, feel the activation and inside bend over the ball and then inhale back down. I'll feel like it's your body moving you, not your arm. Nice and fluid. Exhale side and that's the nice gentle version which we all like, which is great.

Do you want to take it a step further and turn the bottom palm up on the exhale? Start to reach through it. Let it float and then add the side extra. You don't chill at yourself off the floor. Take it slow and just feel it. There we go. Just three more. There you go.

Nice and smooth. Beautiful. You guys. One more. Now as you lower come up onto your bottom forearm and let it be far enough away that you can push the floor away to come out of the shoulder and feel that you've got some tone on your bottom waist. But the ball is there for support and put your top hand on your hip and you get out a little attitude that's not from there. As you push the floor away, we're gonna do a little sidekicks who you reach out to the leg, float the foot a few inches in hell, kick to the front. Sell Point. Reach to the back. Now hold it back there for a moment.

Activate the Downey towards your chest to the legs are working together. Inhale, kick to the front pointing [inaudible] sure. Keep pressing to that bottom elbow. Have energy out the top of your head. Three more and two and one. Now from there as a release, stretch out the bottom arm again that the top arm come over the top, that the torso turned down slightly. Now with your top leg, traction it away from you and then a little to the back. Let it come to the floor.

Now breathe into the length like the top two limbs are tractioning away from each other and breathe into where you feel the stretch in that top hip and waistline. Relax the back of your neck and your upper back. Two more big breaths. One more big breath. Now help yourself up. You're going to take the ball away and we're going to finish this side with a side bend, so your top leg will be folded flat.

The bottom leg of the foot will be a little behind and I'm going to go from, the first thing you want to do is push the floor away to lift out of that bottom shoulder. And imagine really the two outside limbs are the bridge. This leg will straighten though. So imagine you're going to go on a diagonal towards this shoulder. So first, push the floor away to lift out of the shoulder. Now as you inhale, lift into a straight line and create a straight line through the arms. Now with your legs, pull yourself back to the start and again, lift. Now with your here, start to lower the pelvis and lower the arm and look towards your feet. Lift the hips.

Take it over the top and look towards the ground back to side. Lower the pelvis back to side over the top. One more. Lift and reach back to side. Lower. Swing around. Decide to and grab your ball again.

Put it right above your hip. Now Bend your bottom. You like you're sitting in a chair. Stretch out that bottom arm. Let your head rest on it. Now feel that line from your top ankle to your hip, to your ear. Put Your top hand on your lower belly. Now just take a moment on the exhale.

Draw the tissue away from your hand. Feel how it's not just front and back. It's the whole cylinder of your waistline. Feel that one more breath. [inaudible]. Now take the top arm straight up. Feel that core activation. Then add it with a side bend towards your long leg.

Inhale to lower, and again, continue with that version if that's enough. Otherwise turn the bottom palm up right away. After you feel the core activation reached through it. Let it float off the floor. Take it nice and slow. Feel how you're activating the middle to generate the emotion.

Let's do three more. If you have both shoulders, slide away from the ears throughout the side. Bend one more nice and smooth. [inaudible]. Place that bottom for them on the floor. Come up into like a supported forearm lift. That's enough feel haven. Nice line out your head. You're pushing away.

Your waistline is activated top and on your hips here. Very official. Now lift your top leg up just a few inches. Now Inhale, kick to the front point and reach to the back. Hold there for a moment now to activate the Downey towards your chest so you don't sway the upper body forward and back. Inhale the kick. They'll have its full body. Inhale the Kik exhale to reach three more times nice and smooth and to, there we go.

That's it and one very nice as you can. Please take the top arm, let the bottom arm stretch out again, take the top arm over the top and I'll just turn your torso down towards the floor so you can relax your neck. Reach long through your top leg and pull it back behind you. Feel how you're opening up the front of the hip. You're also opening up that top waistline.

Now relax the back of your neck and your upper back. Try to get the breath a little lower, a little deeper. Create space in the muscles that you just work. Two more big breaths. One more you guys.

Now very gently help yourself out of that setup. Take the ball away and come up onto your bottom hand instead of the forearm for the side lift side bend. Now the top leg will be flat top arm. Push the floor away to lift up out of the shoulder and you're gonna lift on a diagonal on the inhale into the side plank. Now feel the line through the arms, through the spy. Make the head's not forward. It tends to want to drop forward. Pull it back now bend the legs and pull yourself back down and again. Lift.

Now from here, as you slowly lower the pelvis, look towards your feet, lower the arm lift aside, reach over the top, back to side. Slowly lower the hips back to side over the top. One more time. Lower and lift back the size. Slowly lower. Help yourself on to all fours and we're going to do leg pull back. So with leg pull back first, let's just do a couple of scapula glides. So for create a nice straight line, head to tail and just practice letting your shoulder blades come closer together in the back. As the body slowly drops between the arms. Now float the body up as you widen, but also lower the shoulder blades a little bit more. One more. Now as you widen lower, also draw your chin and your nose straight up.

Step one leg into a plank. Second leg. Now energetically reach back through your legs. And as you reach your heels back point and lift one leg. Inhale to lower and come forward. Exhale, back lifting, reach. Keep the hips low so it's hip extension a posted but us enough.

And you're wondering what is that? I think we know one way or he side back to center. Now as you Tuck Your Chin shift back to downward dog and just slowly as you hold that, the knees soften a little bit and let your hips traction away from your hands so you can get more length out of your spine and fully relaxed the back of your neck. Let your head just go look towards your feet, so the back of the neck and fully let go. Now as you shift your hips to one side, let the other knee bend and reach the heel towards the floor. Feel how your lateral you're, you're, you're stressing the lateral hip on that side. Come back to center and shift to your second side.

Still keep your front two foot points on the floor on the side that you're stretching. Big Toe, little toe side, one more reach side. Last one. As you come back to center, gently walk your hands to your feet. Soft knees roll up through the spine. Now take your left arm forward with the Pama. Reach it up now. Push down into your left foot. Look up towards your arm. Turn and reach back and then on their right, reach it up.

Push down into the right turn and reach back. One more. Each side. Reach. Lengthen. Turn one more. Reach. Lengthen. Turn. Bring your heels together in a small v. Now as you bend your legs, feel how the front of the foot swipes out.

Feet widens. Swipe it in. Zip Up your in. Seems to float your heels. Now float the arms. Stay long through the body. Open and lower. One more time than feed. Swipe out, swipe in, zip up the midline. Float. Reach Open as you lower. Turn back to parallel. Come back to centering the weight on your feet. Close your eyes.

Soften the knee joints, but the breathing drop lower in the body. Relax the jaw. Relax behind the eyes. Acknowledge Yourself. Your hard work today. Thank you. Plot these anytime. Hope to see you again. Thanks you guys. My pleasure.

The Teacher's Corner: How I Teach

Comments

1 person likes this.
Wonderful, looking forward to this!
1 person likes this.
A tad much for your average pupil
2 people like this.
wooow, what a great class!!! beautiful explanation, great feelings and understanding more of some exercises!!! love it!!! thank you Tom McCook
Thank you all for your feedback! Thanks Alice, happy to hear you gave it a try! Consider going through again, the second and third time are usually more fluid. Thank you Olga, great to hear you're feeling the benefits!!
2 people like this.
Great class to start off the new year to just get space and a new intention.
Thank you Lynn! Happy to be a support for a great year ahead!!
1 person likes this.
Fantastic! My hips are so stiff after the holidays, they feel much better now!
Thank you Tom. Always so insightful; watching as a 'new' teacher (although forever a pupil!) there is a lot of info to take in. I'll probably watch a few times to reinforce key cues. Great ball work for hips and enjoyed the side series also. Many thanks and Happy New Year! Sarah from the UK.
1 person likes this.
Thank you Sarah! Always a great idea with new concepts to review several times to get an embodied understanding. Wishing you the very best and enjoy!
Karyn Kasvin
I just love your classes Tom, always interesting. Your cues and visual imagery make the simple moves more effective and the challenging moves possible . Truly functional and foundational movement for all levels. I am so thankful for you and pilates anytime!
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