Class #4195

Shoulders and Side Body

55 min - Class
315 likes

Description

Mariska Breland continues her Pilates-ish series with this class targeting your shoulders, obliques, and glutes. Using a fusion of different movement exercises, Barre, and traditional Mat, you will strengthen and mobilize your shoulders and scapulae along with the major muscles that support your side body. You are sure to feel the length and connection you've created in your entire body after this class.
What You'll Need: Mat

Transcript

Read Full Transcript

Hello, everybody I'm Mariska. And today we're going to do a Pilates-ish workout. And our focus is going to be on shoulders and side body and side body is going to involve obliques. It's gonna involve like outer hips, a little glute need, just my favorite muscle to work. Well, anything in the glute area is like my favorite to work.

So we're gonna actually start coming into a quadruped position. So you wanna have your hands under your shoulders and your knees are gonna come underneath your hips. And we're gonna actually start with some shoulder movements. So what I want you to do is to drop your chest down. So you're really protracting your shoulder blades or retracting your shoulder blades, and then you're gonna push away, protract your shoulder blades.

We'll drop down and push away. And we're just trying to warm up your shoulder blades' ability to move for all the things we're going to be asking them to do during this class. Now, I wanna change it up a little bit. As you drop down, you're gonna internally rotate. So your elbows are turning out to the side that's happening from your shoulders.

And then when you push, you're gonna externally rotate, which means your elbows are gonna be facing back towards your hips. Drop down internal rotation, push up external rotation, drop down internal rotation, push up external rotation, drop down and press, drop down and press. What we really think about is trying to get your shoulder blades to move. Now we're gonna stay with your arms more, not internally or externally rotated, more in a neutral sort of position. From there we're gonna push up, come forward a little bit, drop down, push back a little bit, come up.

So think about it as a shoulder blade circle. Drop down and up, drop down and up, drop down and up, and then we reverse it. Go back a little bit, drop down forward push, back, drop down forward push, back, drop down forward push. Let's do three more, two, and three. So from there, we're going to do a little bit of sort of a preparatory thread the needle, which is not at a point where I think you'd be super loose for it, but you'd go ahead and take one arm underneath.

You're gonna try to come to the shoulder of that arm, do a little bit of a twist, and then make your way back up. So you're gonna slide one hand under the other hand, drop down to come to your shoulder if that works, and then lift to come back up. We'll do one more each side rotating. So you'll probably, unless you have crazy amount of flexibility, have to bend your arm that you're resting your weight on, and then you'll come back to center. And gonna take your right hand, bring it on top of your left wrist.

We're gonna do a twist, so you drop down to your right forearm. Lift yourself back up, we'll do that three times. Two, on the third one really hold it. Now see if you can pull with your right hand on your left wrist to get more of a twist, and then release a little bit. So it's a little pull to get a twist, and release.

Pull to get a twist, and release. Come back to quadruped, left hand, right wrist. We're gonna do three just rotations. So drop down to your left forearm. Push back up, drop down, push back up, drop down, push back up.

Now we're gonna add the pull. So when you drop down, you're gonna pull with your left. See if you can get more rotation. and then lift yourself back up. Drop down, pull, and lift yourself back up.

Last one, drop down, pull, and lift yourself back up. I'm gonna walk a teensy bit forward, 'cause I want my hands to be able to be on the wood. So we're gonna have left hand on the wood, right hand on the mat. You're gonna slide forward so you kind of come into a little bit of a sort of one arm down child's pose, and then lift yourself back up, I'm gonna stay on this side. You're gonna reach left arm forward as you lower down, and lift back up, do three more.

Reach one and up, reach two and up, reach three. And on this one, try to lift up to your fingertips and see if you can drop your chest down a little bit more. And then we'll lift back up, switch hands. So you're gonna drop down to your left as you reach to your right, push back up. Here's two and up, three, two more, four.

And on the fifth one, come up to your fingertips. You can drop down, get a little bit more of a stretch. Keep that right arm reaching and then lift yourself back up. And do an arm circle, we're gonna follow your left arm around. So you're gonna lift it up, kind of turn to the side, follow your hand and return to where you started, and we'll switch sides.

Right arm lifts and back down. Left arm you go forward, follow your hand as it reaches around and come back. Right, follow it around and come back, two more, or one more each side, whichever way you like to think about it, and last one. I'm gonna pull myself back a little bit and then I'm going to move into sort of a child's pose, but I'm gonna do it by pushing with my arms so that my hips go back. So think about your arms doing the movement.

Now you're gonna pull with your heel of your hand and you should feel you relax and then push back. You should feel the top of your shoulders. Pull, you're creating your own resistance, and push. Pull, and I'm not trying to use my legs to do this movement, I'm trying to have my arms control the movement entirely by themselves. We're gonna pull forward, push back, pull forward, push back.

We do a couple more like this. Last one like this, I'm gonna do the same thing, but we're gonna hover your knees off the floor. So we push back, adjust as needed, pull forward, push back against your arms, doing the movement, push back, pull forward. And you might feel your quads as well, especially if you did squats the other day. Push back, pull forward, one more, push back, pull forward.

Drop to your knees for a break. This next one, same thing. We're just gonna reach an arm back. So we'll only be pushing with one arm. So you're gonna reach back, one arm comes by your side, come forward, reach back, come forward, reach back, and forward, reach back and forward, reach back.

And I'm moving a little bit from side to side. It's not my intention. That's what my body is deciding to do right now to maintain its balance. We'll call this the last one. And then go ahead, come all the way down.

If you're feeling that in your quads, you can go ahead and sit back on your heels. Push forward a little bit. So you get a little bit of a stretch, and then we're just gonna spin your legs around so that your feet are facing forward. Your knees are facing right over your feet, and then you can hold on behind your legs as our first roll back of the day. And we're gonna go ahead and roll down, going down slowly.

And then if you're like me, make sure you're on the mat. I'm sure they make these mats shorter every year. And I'm going to walk my feet in a little bit more. You want to think about the different ways that your side body can move you. So we're gonna be doing rotation, but we're also gonna be doing side bending or lateral movement.

So, lift your head and chest up a little bit to start. We're gonna keep your elbows pretty wide. And we're gonna reach your right elbow towards your right ankle. And it's not clearly gonna get there. And then come back to center.

And then reach to the other side and come back to center, side bend and center, and side bend and center, side bend and come back to center, and side bend and come back to center. Lower your head and chest down just to reset. When you come up this time, we're gonna lift your right leg up and rotate over it at the same time. So big inhale, exhale, lift your right leg up, twist, and lower back down. Left leg lift twist, and lower back down.

Right leg lift twist, and lower down, left leg twist and lower down, now right leg lift twist, extend your right leg out as you come back to center, lower down a little bit, lift up twist, reach out, lift up twist, reach out, lift twist, reach out, lift twist, gonna do four more, one and two and three and four. Go ahead and lower head and chest down. You're gonna lift up left leg lifts twist, return you lower down a little bit. Lift twist two, and lower down, lift twist three and down, four, five, six, seven, and eight. Go ahead, and you'll bring both legs back down, head and chest lowers down this time.

This time your arms are gonna be by your side. Walk your feet in a little bit closer, because we wanna be able to, once we lift up, to touch your ankles. So head and chest lift, you're gonna rotate to the right. I'm tapping my outside right ankle and back to center. Rotate left and center, right, center, left, right, and left.

Like where is it? It's over there somewhere. Right and left, last two, and last one. Lower head and chest down for a second. Bring your hands back behind your head, float your head and chest up.

Bring your right leg then your left leg into a tabletop. We're gonna do a little crisscross. We're gonna rotate to the right, left leg goes out straight. Come back to center, rotate left, right leg reaches and back to center. Twist and center, twist and center, twist.

This is my favorite of the abdominal five. Well maybe single leg stretches, but all the rest I'm kind of indifferent about. Twist and center, twist and center. We'll do four more, actually we'll do five even. Two, three, four, and five.

Lower your feet back down, lower your head down. Now I'm gonna have my legs basically so they're all the way zipped up. We're gonna press into your feet, peel your back away, come into a bridge and then slowly lower down bone by bone. At the bottom, you untuck your pelvis, press into your feet, lift up, lay your spine down slowly, bone by bone. And then again, press into your feet, lift up, lower down and accept.

So next time when you come up, we're gonna actually also lift up onto your tiptoes. So you might wanna come in a little bit closer. So my left leg is doing some very weird MS stuff today. So my foot doesn't want to work, which is like life with MS. So if my left leg looks a little crazy, look at my right leg.

We're gonna press into your feet, lift your hips up. I'm gonna take your arms up towards the ceiling. And we're going to let your legs drop a little bit towards the right, and back to center, drop a little bit towards the left, and back to center. So I'm actually dropping my right hip and letting my left hip lift higher and back to center, left hip drops, right lifts higher and back to center. And my arms are up so that I'm having to use my waist to control the movement, not my arms to control the movement.

We're gonna go a little bit to the right, and center, a little bit to the left, and center. We'll go right, and left, and right, and left. And then we'll lower back down. Bring your arms out so that they're in a T, but not touching the floor. Think about lots of energy through your arms.

You're gonna bring your right leg into table top, and then your left leg into tabletop. Arms don't get to touch the floor, but your shoulder blades are pressed into the floor mat where your stability is coming from. We're gonna go towards the right. Don't go too far because you don't wanna tip over. And then exhale back to center, inhale towards the left, and back to center.

Go right, and center, left, and center, right. Maybe go a little further, and center, left, maybe a little bit further, and center one more each side. To the right and center, to the left and center. Hands come behind your head, lift your head and chest up. You're gonna rotate through to that side.

Bend, so we're side bending slightly towards the left. Legs are gonna go slightly towards the right. And then you're gonna bring your knees in, lower your legs down a little bit. So see my left hip is lifting up a little bit, I'm fine with that. You're gonna pull in and lower down, exhale in, and lower down, exhale in, and lower down four more.

One and two and three and four. Legs come back together, torso comes back together. You're gonna side bend towards the right. Legs go towards the left, right hip lifts off a little bit. You're going down up eight times.

Two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. Come back to center. Feet are going to lower down to the ground. We're going to lift your hips up and not necessarily as articulated more, just like butt up in the air. At the same time, you're gonna reach one arm up and overhead.

You can turn to look to the opposite side of that reaching arm and lower back down, and then we'll reach, twist, and lower back down. This should generally feel good. There's a couple of exercises in the Pilates-ish repertoire that just feel good. Lift up, arm reaches, and back to center, lift up, arm reaches, and back to center. We'll do one more each side.

Lift up and down, and lift up and down. I'm gonna lift your hips up. You want to have both hip bones level. We're gonna stay weight on the left, but we're gonna bring them right knee up, right leg goes up towards the ceiling. So you're trying to keep your hips level, and we're gonna challenge your obliques by letting your right leg drift to the right, and pull back to center.

Drift right and center, we're doing eight total. Three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. Right leg down, re-establish square high hips, left leg lifts. You're gonna go left and center. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.

Leg comes down, lower down, we're gonna do one last set of reaches. So lift up, reach your left arm up, lower down, right arm up, and down, left up, right up. We've got one more each side. And this is also just to warm up your shoulders for some of the stuff that's coming later. Lift up, and back down.

Go ahead, and you can hold on behind your legs. We're just gonna rock yourself up to seated. And we're gonna be seated with bent knees. You're gonna start by reaching your arms forward. Exhale to round back till your hands, maybe fingertips, are in line with your knees, and then lift yourself back up.

Exhale to round back, and lift to come back up, exhale back, and lift to come up, exhale back, and lift to come up, exhale back, and lift to come up. We're gonna add an elbow bend on the left arm. So you're gonna go back and lift to come up. So I'm starting with my palms facing down for these first couple. Going back and lift up, going back and lift up.

Now I'm rotating my hands, thumbs up towards the ceiling, rotate back, and up, rotate back, and up, back. I'm trying to get a little bit further each time. Go back and up. On this next one left elbow is gonna touch the floor. We're gonna go back and up, right elbow touches the floor.

Gonna do one more like that each side. Go back and up, go back, and up. Now when your left elbow touches, it's gonna stay there. So you go back, left elbow is on the floor. You're gonna turn your left hand out and then turn sideways so that you're on your left elbow and on your left hip.

You can bend your knees in a little bit more. Bring your top hand behind your head. Might scoot back a little bit, just to have some mat. Now, when we lift up, you're gonna take your top knee and open it at the same time as we lift. And push your hips forward up, one, and down, up two, and down, up three, up four, up five, up six, seven, we're gonna do 10, eight, nine, and 10.

So I'm on my left hip, but what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna extend my legs straight and I'm gonna come onto my left kind of more glute than hips. So this is hip, this is glute. And I'm just gonna have my hand down, both legs up and down eight times. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. Go ahead and rebend your knees.

We're gonna rotate back, hand can come behind your legs. Try to make your way up. I'd imagine that was gonna be more graceful than it was, but seems like it wasn't. So now we're gonna do the other side. So you're gonna round back, you're gonna drop to your right elbow.

Turn your right hand, turn on to your hip. From there your knees are bent. You gonna have your top hand behind your head. When you're opening your knees, you're almost thinking about bringing the soles of your feet together. Lower back down, lift up two, and down, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10.

From there, we're gonna turn a little bit, so you're not on your hip, you're on your glute. Hands down, lift your legs up eight times. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. You can go ahead and bring your legs to center. See if you can make your way up from there, we're gonna come back to your bent knee position, arms forward, shoulders back.

We're gonna do a little round back elbow down, round back all the way til your elbow touches, lift to come back up, right elbow touches, lift to come back up, left elbow, and up, right elbow, and up, two more each side. Left, and up, right, and up, left, and up, and right, and up. Just go ahead and sit cross legged so you can roll over your feet to come back to a quadruped position. And then from your quadruped position, we're gonna come into a downward facing dog. So I want you to push back, and then we're gonna do something similar to what we did in the beginning, which is we're gonna drop your chest, push, drop, push.

So retract your shoulder blades, protract your shoulder blades, which don't move as much when your arms are lifted overhead. But I actually find this to be slightly more satisfying position. Now, from here, we're gonna pull your abs in, shift forward. See if you can come into an up dog, which is more a yoga thing, but you're on the tops of your toes. Shoulders back if this feels better on your back.

Don't go to this range of motion or drop down to your knees. And then we'll come back into that downward facing dog. Abs pulled in, you can keep your head dropped. You're gonna come forward, come to the tops of your feet and then take your shoulders back into retraction. You can look up, tuck your toes under, lift back up.

We're gonna do one more like that. Pull forward, tops of your feet, shoulders back. And then go ahead and lift yourself all the way back up. We're gonna do a slight shift forward. I might narrow up my stance a little bit, slight shift forward.

You're gonna reach back, one hand goes back, slight shift forward, other hand back, slight shift forward, hand goes back. And I find it actually harder to stay on the same side then to go to the opposite side. Gonna reach back, and reach back. Come down to your knees, little press back to child's pose and let's come onto your stomach. So rest your head on your hands.

So chin on your hands. You can also bring your hands behind your head. I think this feels more comfortable, so I'm gonna go with this one. On an inhale, float your head, hands and heart all in one piece up, and then lower back down, lift up and lower back down, lift up and lower down. Now lift up, we're gonna side bend.

So you're rotating along that lateral line to the right and back to center, to the left, and back to center, lower all the way down, lift up, you go left, center, right, center, and lower back down. Lift up, right, and left, and lower down. Lift up, go left and right, and lower back down. Go ahead and have your arms forward. I like to have my hands on the floor for this.

I might even scoot a little bit forward, 'cause I wanna have like a lot of room to move. I'm gonna have my hands slide as I lift up. So think shoulders back, lifting up, and then slowly lower yourself all the way back down. Inhale as you come up, and then exhale as you go down, inhale as you come up, exhale as you reach, inhale as you come up, stay there. We're gonna take your left arm and just open it out to the side, back to your hip, out to the side, that's where it started.

Right arm out to the side, back to your hip, out to the side, back to where you started. Left, and if this feels too aggressive on your back, you can actually do this fully proned. So just almost like in your swimming position, left arm goes out, down, out forward, right arm out, back out forward, two more, left and right. And we're gonna go ahead and lower back down. I'm gonna have my head resting down on the floor, now lift your right leg up and lower it back down.

Left, like energy through your leg lifted up. So it's really kind of glutes, but we're gonna make this a little bit more side body here in a second. lift your leg up and lower it back down. Right leg lifts up, and lower down, left leg up, and down, right leg, and down, left leg, and down. Now, right leg goes up.

You're gonna let it drift to the right, touch the floor, lift it up, bring it back to center, but don't let it lower down. Bring out two, down, up and in, out three, down, up and in, out four, down up and in, we're doing 10, down up and in. Five more, out, down up, and in, out, down up and in, last four. Out, down up and in, two, three and four. Right leg goes down, so now we have 10 on the left.

Left leg is up out to the side, down up, in one, out, down up, in two, out, down up, in three, out, down up, four, out, and in five, six. And you're trying to keep both hip bones and pubic bone on the floor. This is eight, I think, nine, and ten. We're gonna come onto your forearms, tuck your toes under. I'm gonna come into a forearm plank.

So we're just holding in the forearm plank. Now there is T-plank. I'm on T-plank and there's T-forearm plank. Personally can't stand forearm planks, very miserable right now. I don't know if you can tell, do not enjoy this exercise.

Not at all, not one bit. We're just gonna hold and breathe, and we're gonna see if we can shift, so you're on one arm in sort of a tricep bench, and just holding and then bring that side back. Other arm in a tricep bend. And bring that side back, lower yourself back down, reach your arms forward and come back into that lift. Now, before we did a straight out to the side lift.

This time we're gonna do, like so we did this. This time we're gonna go straight up. So reach up and down, up two, three, four, five, six, seven, we're doing 10 total. Here's eight, nine, and 10. We're coming back to lying on your stomach.

This time when we lift a leg up, we're gonna actually take it over. So right leg lift, kind of open it up, lower it down and up, bring it back to where you started. So you're going over, down, up, and back, over, down up and back. Here's four. Didn't touch the floor on that one.

But my goal is to touch the floor, five, six, seven, I think today the magic number is 10, eight, nine. And I say that meaning 10 for this exercise, but I have some other exercises that's coming, we're not gonna do 10 of. So your other hand is down to kind of give you a little bit of support, help with your rotation going down, up and back. So let's like this, you open your hip, touch the floor behind you, lower back down, up, cross over and back, up, cross over and back, up, cross over and back. Let's do I think six more.

Two, three, four, five, and six. We're gonna come into essentially a forearm plank. But this time I want you to make sure that your elbows are right in line with your shoulders and you can make a fist with your hands. And we're gonna start on your knees, kind of coming close towards your elbows. Not super close, unless you have really loose hamstrings.

And then I want you to like push the floor away, so you're protracting and you are also when we come up, you're gonna be elevating your shoulder blades, tuck your toes under, and we're gonna lift up and really work on pushing back. You can let your head come forward a little bit, push back, head come forward, push back, head forward and back, head forward and back, forward and back. Bend your knees, push back. There's really push back a lot. Push more, push more, try to extend your legs from there and just hold.

Bend your knees, see if you got more push, head is not touching the floor, it's not a headstand. Bend your knees so you've got more push, extend your legs, lower down to your knees, press back into child's pose. Let's take your fingertips, lift them up just so you get a little bit more of a stretch here. And then let your hands come down and you can make your way up. And we're gonna go ahead and come to a kneeling position.

So sort of like we're gonna do kneeling sidekicks. I hate kneeling sidekicks, so we're not actually gonna do those. And I want you to stand on your right knee with your left leg extended out. We're gonna start with your left hand on your left leg. And we're gonna side reach to the left, we come back up.

Side reach to the right, and back up, to the left, and up, to the right, and up, to the left, and up to the right, and hold. So now your left hand is gonna reach up by your ear, down by your side, up by your ear, down by your side. We're gonna do eight total. Here's three, four, five, six, seven, I should smile more, and eight. But we're not doing that anymore ladies, are we?

We're not smiling when people tell us to. Now we're gonna reach over, you're gonna bring your right hand down and you're gonna take your hand onto your hip, weight into your right hand. Right leg is gonna go behind your left leg. Left arm goes up towards the ceiling, so we're finding your side bend position. We're gonna lift up, look down at your hand, lower down, hips go higher and lower down.

Hips go higher and lower down. Two more, hips go higher and down and hips go higher and down. So we're gonna bend your knees so you can come down onto your hip. Take your right leg and bend it, so it's parallel to the front of your mat. Your left leg is towards the back of your mat, adjust to close as needed.

And we're gonna come into sort of a pretzel position with your legs. And then we're gonna take your right hand so that it's outside of your right leg. Your left hand is to the inside of your right leg. You can take your torso and try to twist a little bit, but also find length there. From that position, we're gonna lift your back knee up and down 10 times.

Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10. Lift your arms up. You can stay rotated or you can lean slightly forward or you can turn more center. The lean slightly forward is gonna be easier. The turn more center is gonna be harder.

You can have your hands down or you can bring your hands up into sort of a prayer position. Praying that your leg lifts off the floor or you can again bring your hands down. You're gonna lift your leg up 10 times. Up one, my hands wanna be down on the side. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

On a 10th one you're gonna lower down to your forearm, extend your leg out. Now when you're on your forearm, you try not to sink into it, especially since we're working shoulders. So think about pushing away and then we're gonna take your leg and we're just gonna do little circles, maybe the size of a large grapefruit or a softball. Gonna do 10, here's five more. Two, three, four, five, switch directions for 10.

Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10. You're gonna take your bottom leg so it's forward and you can actually have your legs stacked. I like to have my top leg forward of my bottom leg. You're going to bring your top hand behind your head, lift your hips up, we're gonna rotate. Try to touch your hands to your elbow or your elbow to your hand and lift back up.

We're doing six. Two, three, four, five, and six, and then we'll lower everything all the way back down, and then take a mental break, scream in your heart, whatever you need to do. We're gonna come back to standing on your knees. This time we're gonna have your opposite leg out. And I'm just gonna make sure that once I bring my other leg out, it's definitely gonna still be on the mat.

So standing up on your left leg this time, have your right hand on your right leg, left hand on your left leg. We're gonna side reach over and up. And then to the left and up, go to the right and up, to the left and up. I think we did one more each side, to the right and up to the left. We're gonna hold the left and you're gonna reach your top arm up by your ear, down by your side, eight times.

Two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. We're gonna go over to your hand. Hand can come onto your hip. So now weight into your left hand. You're gonna take your left leg, tuck it behind your right leg.

Reach your arm up towards the ceiling. We're gonna lift, look down towards your left hand and down. I think we did six. Two, three, four, five, and six. Bend your knees to lower down, take your left shin.

So it's parallel to the front of your mat. Your right knee is basically inline with your left arch. Left hand to the outside of your left leg, right hand to the inside of your leg. And then your lift your knee up and down. Two, three, four.

I feel like we did 10, but we maybe did eight. This is where I miss having a class that I can hear because they always would scream at me and say, "No, we only did this many," or they're very honest, and they'll ask to do however many we did on the other side. We'll lift up and down. Now you have the option of keeping your hands here of leaning slightly forward or bringing your hands up. Gonna lift your leg up 10 times, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and then you drop down to your forearm.

Send your leg straight. Try not to again sink into your shoulder, although that feels really nice. You're gonna push away. Keep that leg lifted. Keep your lower ribs lifted, and we'll now do circles, so you're going.

Did we do eight or 10? I think we did 10. Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and 10. We'll switch directions for 10. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10.

Leg comes down. So you're on your forearm and you wanna have your legs in a position where you can lift your hips up gonna have your hips lifted, top hands behind your head, You're gonna rotate elbow or wrist. And back, rotate and up. I think we did six. Three, four, five, and six.

And then we'll come all the way up from there. And then go ahead and again you're gonna cross your legs, you're gonna roll over your feet, coming back to sort of where we started. So we're in a quadruped position. You're gonna take your left leg and reach it out and you're gonna bring your right hand behind your head. You're gonna open your right chest.

When you come down with your right elbow, you're gonna lift your left leg up. Now I need to bend my elbow a little bit because I just can't get my arm down if I don't. But your goal is to keep your arm as straight as possible, lower and up. We're doing eight of these. Three, four, five, six, seven, don't wanna kind of crush into, and eight.

So you're gonna stay on your elbow, have your leg lifted. And we do little lifts from there, up and down. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. We're doing eight more. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, hold it up on the eight.

We're gonna drop down to this forearm and then see if you can open your hip more. So I had to push into my left arm to get it more open, just lifting and holding, holding and lifting, breathing. And then you're gonna come back to center, gonna take your right leg straight. Bring your left hand behind your head. You're gonna rotate, left elbow goes down, right leg goes up, come back up, eight times.

Two, three, that was a little bit of a crash. Nice to have a squishy mattress. Four, five, six, seven, and eight. So we're gonna stay down. Keep your leg lifted, we're gonna go up.

Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight more, one two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Arm can come down so that you can find more balance. Open your hip more, get your right arm to be straight so you can lift your leg higher and just hold, last 10. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10.

We come all the way back down. You're gonna bring yourself into a plank and then we're gonna walk your hands back to your feet and then walk yourself back out to a plank. So hands, feet, we're gonna walk back. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight, and gonna walk forward. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Refine your plank if you weren't there. Hips go up, lift up, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight. Back out, eight, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. On this round the room one more. Pushup, walk back one.

Two, three, four, five, six, bend your knees if you need to, seven and eight, back out to a plank. Eight, two, three, four, five, six, seven. You're in your plank. You're gonna push back, bend both knees to the left, back to the plank, both knees to the right, plank, both knees to the left, both knees to the right, to the left, and to the right. Knees down, widen up your legs.

And we're gonna push back into a child's pose. Let's go ahead and spin around, we're gonna come back to lying down on your back. And you can just kind of hug your knees into your chest, rock a little bit from side to side. I want you to take your left leg, reach it long on the floor, pull your right knee in so you feel a little bit of stretch in your right leg. Gonna lift your right leg up towards the ceiling.

And then similar to what we did sort of at the beginning, you're gonna have your arms out to the side, they're not touching. You're gonna let your right leg go across, your hip might lift up and back to center. Right leg goes to the right. I feel like I can't go very far without falling. You're gonna go to the left with your right leg and up to the right, and up to the left, and to the right.

To the left, and to the right, we'll do just one more. To the left, and to the right. Knee come in, go ahead and bring that leg long. Gonna take the other leg in, reach it up. This is my leg that does not like to go straight.

So I'm gonna leave a little bend in it, bring my arms out to the side. I'll go to the left and center, right and center. Again, your arms are not touching the floor. Go to the left, and to the right. Go to the left, and to the right.

And we'll do one more each side, left and right. Both legs in, you're just gonna rock yourself up and then we'll drop back to your forearms, and then just bring both knees in, shoulders back, legs can go straight or almost straight or really quite bent. And we're just gonna let both legs go to the right, and center to the left, and center to the right, and center to the left, and center one more each side. Go right, and go left. You're gonna lie back down, take both legs so they're all the way over to the right.

You're gonna take your legs so that they're stacked. Bring your right hand on top of your legs and then open your left arm out to the side. And you should feel a big stretch in your upper back. Maybe your pecs kind of depending on where you're tight today, I'm like tight everywhere today. This is one of those days where you're like, kind of know that your workout will not be your best because you didn't sleep.

Or you worked out too hard the other day. But I am a very big fan of showing honest movement and honest movement isn't always perfect or beautiful. It just sort of is what you can bring out that day. And sometimes it's gonna look more fancy than others. And sometimes it's just gonna look like you're grunting through your workout.

And my mentor, Julian, always had people at his studio grunting through their workout. And I feel like that means you are actually really working, which is never a bad thing. Let's go ahead and we'll switch sides. So your legs will be stacked. So knee on top of knee, and then your hand is down, just basically to try to keep your legs behaving.

And this side does not want to stay behaving. And this side is definitely tighter for me. So my shoulder does not wanna make it to the floor on this side. This is where it would be really nice if I had some teacher come along and just push it to the ground. So we're just gonna revert, to kind of pull towards the side with your upper body, almost like you're trying to wring your body out.

And then we'll go ahead, come back to center. Just in case you felt a little bit in your outer hip, let's go ahead and cross one knee on top of the other, grab hold of your shins and you can flex your feet, rock a little bit from side to side. And then breathing here is important, and then we'll go ahead and switch. Pull your legs in, again rock from side to side. I don't know that the rocking really adds anything, but vestibularly it's a calming sensation for a lot of people to rock.

I encourage rocking, get a swing if you can, to add rocking to your life. And I'm not talking about the exercise rocking, which is a good exercise, but I'm talking about like nice, peaceful, enjoyable rocking. So go ahead and make your way up. You can sit in just a regular cross leg position. You're gonna twist towards the right, holding onto your left knee.

Grow tall in your twist. Gonna take five breaths here. (Mariska breathing) And then we'll go to the other side, left hand, right knee. Left hand behind you. Again, you go tall and then you twist, five breaths.

(Mariska breathing) And then you can just take any last stretch that feels meaningful to you today. Next week, we're gonna be using yoga blocks. So if you're joining me next week, this is actually the class that of all eight, I'm kind of most excited about because I think it's gonna be really fun and hopefully throw out a lot of stuff that's really new and very Pilates-ish. So hope you can join me with that. And if not, they live on the website afterwards.

And I appreciate you joining me today. Again, take any last stretches you want. You've earned a milkshake if you wanna have a milkshake. If you're lactose intolerant, they make that delicious coconut dairy ice cream. So milkshakes are still hopefully on the menu for you.

Have a great week, and I hopefully will see you next.

Comments

Kristen G
1 person likes this.
Great class! Thank you
1 person likes this.
Thank you Mariska. Fantastic class!
1 person likes this.
Ok I did the first 7 mins and my arms were already shaking (lifted heavy weights yesterday). LOL. Fun class, thank you!
Stacy Oh I feel your pain! My last workout in this series (nonstop mat) came right after I did after a really tough new workout from my trainer and my legs were absolutely dead. So, I blame that for my less than stellar performance (but I can't really blame it for me falling off the mat, because that was pure clumsiness). 😑
2 people like this.
Don’t know if it was a cue (“scream in your heart”), but I’m stealing it. The best!
Vicky it’s actually something that I read that a Japanese amusement park was telling its visitors to do on the roller coasters because of Covid. I thought it was so funny and so my husband and I have been saying “scream in your heart” for weeks. 😀
1 person likes this.
Fab class
Forearm planks normally bother my shoulders, but you warmed them up so well, they did not complain:)  In the beginning ~quadruped position~ one forearm on the floor and twist~ popped many bones in my back:)  Also loved roll-down to one elbow (though i had to use leg and hand weights due to my larger torso and shorter legs~ which worked great).  Loved all the side planks and spinal rotation. Thanks again Mariska:)  
Gary I'm so glad it worked for you! I have very cranky shoulders, and the beginning exercises are things I do before I am doing a more intensive shoulder exercise. I also don't like a forearm plank (Team Full Plank over here), so I'm glad this one didn't bother your shoulders. 
Thank you Mariska for the wonderful variety of moves.
2 Q I have :
 Please explain to me this "trend", yes some years already..In quadruped, lower / upper body work with pelvis rotating. Is this a "goal, purpose " in it ,or just a modification for veariety ? . Mostly fighting to keep people in stable pelvis position  ! Now I want to know and be "hip" with new-ish stuff LOL

Also , did you have the surgery after the dog fall ?
You are looking great, but missed you for a while...
1-10 of 37

You need to be a subscriber to post a comment.

Please Log In or Create an Account to start your free trial.

Footer Pilates Anytime Logo

Move With Us

Experience Pilates. Experience life.

Let's Begin