Full-Body Reset Mat

Hi, everybody. I'm Tom McCook. Great pleasure to be back here at Pilates anytime. This is a mat class I'll be offering, and you're gonna wanna have a triad ball like a nine inch ball and two Franklin balls or similar balls These ones have pox on them, but you don't need. You could be small smooth, all good. And we're gonna start standing, and this will be a function of mobility, strength, and balance for the body.

And our goal is to end feeling aligned and ready to go. So we're gonna start standing. And when you when you look down at your feet for a moment, take them about six inches apart and bring them into parallel, and just take a moment to lift all 10 toes off the floor and lay them back down. And as you're doing this, just make the transition from whatever you just doing, thinking, working, doing whatever you're doing to coming in and feeling your body. And as you lift your toes, start to feel the key weight bearing points of your feet. The ball behind your big toe, the ball behind your little toe and your heel, feel that triangle, then lay the toes back down. And just do it a few more times and see if you can slowly, but surely, have the weight feel a little more balanced on those three points.

Front to back, left to right. Now as you lay the toes down the next time, to center the weight, unlock your knees, and center your head over your spine, and just close your eyes for a moment, and take a few deeper than normal breaths through the nose. And on the exhale phase, imagine you're settling down, but you're growing a little taller. So inside of your vertical line, you're getting a little more space in your spine, but you're settling, relax around your jaw, your eye muscles, relax your tail, and let your breath drop down into your lower belly so you can feel it when you breathe. And as you're just coming into feeling yourself, just take that moment to set your own intention for yourself today.

For the particular area your body you're working on or a quality you're working on, just set that for yourself. And if you're not sure, just have the intention of making progress. And then, softly, open your eyes, bring up one arm, and just tap all sides. So tapping is the way to wake up your body, wake up your proprioception, I do this in a lot of my classes because it works all around your shoulder joint, up to your neck on that side. So awaken up your mind map, and it only takes a couple minutes.

And then from there, just brush down your arm, sluffing it off. Different way of touching, sponging, brushing, sluffing all hit different neuro receptors. And just take that moment to notice. Just from that, I already feel like my shoulders dropped a little bit. We'll go right into side two.

Tapping all sides. Tapping does another thing for you too. It really brings you into feeling yourself. Which slows the mind down from distracted thinking. And to move well, what we wanna really develop is selective focus, our ability to bring our attention to our body while we're moving and direct our mind into the quality of how we're using our body.

And now from there, it's left down. Brush it off. All sides. From there, as we shake it out, just tap your chest. Belly wall.

Now right around the rim of your ribs is where your diaphragms attached on the inside, front to back, and with your back of your fist, bent knees, tap along the rim of your ribs front to back. Waking up that most important breathing muscle. Tap your lower back a little bit. Make a little noise, vibrate your kidneys. Tap down the front of your legs.

Up the back of your legs and hips, down the outer border, up your in seams. Give your butt a little punch. And they just shake out your limbs. Now I like you to take your two smaller balls. We're gonna do something for your neck.

So take them on each side of your neck just below your ear lobes, unlock your knees and relax your jaw. Now as you exhale roll the balls towards each other, massaging your neck muscles. And as you do this, so you even get that sense of relaxing your jaw and your eyes as you roll. So you can really feel how you don't have to hold neck tension when your head is directly over your spine. Now add a little chin nod to it. Really simple, you can go a little higher, a little lower on the neck.

And just a few more. Great way to just get the nervous system to become a little more useful, present, and connected, and one more. Then from there, we'll take the balls and put them on the floor. Now take your feet about shoulder width and turn your toes in slightly, bend your knees and press into your foot points. Now put one hand on the front of your pelvis, one hand on the back, and center your head over your spine, and picture you're growing tall through the crown of your head. Now from your pelvis and lower back, curl the tail forward and reach the tail back.

And as you do this arch curl, feel when you're curling, you're using your pelvic muscles. Your inner thighs, your glutes. So you're getting all those joints in the pelvis and the lower back to mobilize a little better and do two more. Now next time, hold the curl, take your arms out to the side, turn your palms up, and now with your shoulder blades, pull your shoulder blades towards the spine, then open them a few times. Feel you can retract, use your middle back muscles, and open them. Now next time, retract, stabilize your shoulder blades, palms your up arms are straight, and spin your arms to the back.

This is for your rotator cuff and your postural muscles. Grow tall through the crown of your head, We're gonna do this for, like, three hours. You wanna get really good at it? Now we're gonna do 40 of them. So we've done about 20 right now, so 20 more. Arms are straight.

Show the blazer stabilized. Great. If you've been tending a lot of time sitting, this is a great way to wake up those muscles that are held long and weak. Last five. Now, really slow as you bend the elbows, bring your knuckles that are bent halfway to your temples. This is for the muscles in your chest and mid back. Also, now, exhale bring the elbows to touch, inhale to open, use your middle back.

10 times. Feel the glide of your shoulder blades to the back. Wide and low as you close. Five more. Nice and smooth.

And two more. And one. Open. Take your feet into parallel. Maybe sit bone width.

Now with your hands on your hips, just come back into the arch curl, but we're gonna add the whole spine. So curl the tail forward from the side view, you can see I'm not dropping my head forward. I'm just curling. Take the ribs down and down and back so you feel your lower back stretch slightly. Now drop the arms and roll the shoulders forward.

Don't dive forward with this failure. You're trying to create a long c curve in the spine, but your head is staying relatively over your pelvis. Now the tail will reach back, shoulders back and slide the heart forward and up. Use your middle back muscles. XL to curl.

Inhale to extend and open. Nice and fluid failure using the shoulder girdle and the muscles along the spine and abdomen. But you're going for a fluid mobility of the spine. Two more. And one.

From there, bring your hands to your shoulders. Roll them back. If this is uncomfortable for your shoulders, you can put your hands here. Roll them back, small bend. Now keep your knees and your hips straight ahead like headlights. From your ribcage up, turn without turning your headlights. And as you're turning, press into your foot points.

Picture you're holding an imaginary ball with your knees. So your inner thighs are keeping your hips and legs straight ahead and start to look back and use those middle back muscles to pull that shoulder back a little bit more. One more. Now come back to the center, bring one of your hands to your hip with your palm up, take the other arm up. Now as you exhale, side bend, inhale up and switch.

Nice and smooth. And again, one more each side. Last one. Back to the center. Now just rolling through your feet, roll through and lift one heel, bring the opposite elbow forward.

Just roll through the feet like you're about to do a slow motion run. Now flick the floor away, start to lift the knee, reach into your three foot points on the standing leg, and start to get the knee if possible all the way up to 90 degrees. Just warm up your hips and legs, your connection to the ground. Now, lift one. Bring your opposite hand to your inner knee and press the free arm back. Side two.

So you add a little balance challenge, connection to your whole body. There we go. One more. Take your feet shoulder width, turn them out slightly for squatting. As you bend your knees a small amount, center the weight on the three foot points, and picture you're gonna ride down on the top of your legs, right on your femur heads.

So as you slowly descend, bend the elbows, press into the ground, press your arms to the back at the top. Inhale to bend, exhale to straighten. Add a little tone to your belly wall as you're going down. Disend with an even quality all the way through. Five more.

Breathe all the way through the movement. Three more. And two, and one. Very nice. Now we're gonna come down onto the mat. I like you to take your Franklin balls or your smaller balls, and we'll come down onto your mat and have a seat on the floor, and put one of the balls under your sacrum, which is just behind the pubic bone.

Right in the middle back of your pelvis, and have your feet in line with your sit bones. And just take a moment to settle where you're centering the weight on the back of the pelvis. Sending the weight on your feet, the back of your head, and just take a moment and just take a few breaths where you breathe into that space between your ribcage and your pelvis like a three sixty cylinder into the waistline. On the exhale phase, just follow the cylinder in a little further than you would naturally just to see how your abdominal muscles help you to empty your lungs. One more breath like that.

Now in the next exhale, as you do that, we're gonna do the arch curl that you did standing. So on the exhale, as you follow the waistline muscles in, curl the tail towards the back of the knees, and lengthen the lower back towards the ground, inhale tip the pelvis, the anterior forward. Exhale the curl. Go for an even quality on each side of your lower back. Keep your feet.

All of your foot points on the floor. Just two more. And one Now from there, from the curled position, we're gonna go into a clock. Picture the clock includes three and nine, which are the two hip bones, and you're gonna roll around the rim of the ball with the connection to your breathing. Since your inhale, go towards one hip and down to your tail on half of the clock, exhale curl up on side two.

Challenge yourself to go slow enough that you can smooth out the edges and keep your knees relatively straight up and down the whole time. The feet stay planted. Relax your jaw. One more in the direction you're going. Now as you come to that curled position at 12:00, reverse, go towards the second hip, down to your tail.

So what we're practicing is how to move the center of our body better. That relates to so many exercises where we can do them with less force and better skill. Also, really good for your lower back and your posture. One more. As you come to the middle, find the way to center it again, float up one knee at a time, now reach the arms up to the ceiling.

Set the shoulders low. Now in the exhale phase again, follow the belly wall in. Not like you're bearing down, but you're just feeling it gets smaller and tighter. Now on the exhale, let one knee lower towards the floor. Inhale to lift.

Feel how you keep the shape of the spine the same as you move in the hip joints. Now add the opposite arm to the back. Found that little bit of instability gives you a good feedback. Keep both sides of the neck long. One more.

Now inhale let both knees open away from each other. X, he'll to close. Focus on the pelvic muscles, the belly wall, the inner thighs. Keep the neck relaxed. Two more.

And one. Place down one foot at a time. Take your second ball Now put both balls in one ball right above each sit bone. Bring your knees up in the air. Now take your feet up towards the ceiling and internally rotate your legs.

Your knees are a little bit bent. And now when you internally rotate, we're stretching the back of the hips a little bit more. The hip rotators that tie into the back of the pelvic floor. So as you open, open an internal, Now as you close, rotate the heels to touch. Open on the inhale phase. Exhale to close.

And focus on the back of the pelvic floor. We tend to work a lot with the front of the pelvic floor. They urogenital muscles. Now we're getting into the backs. We're hitting both pieces of the pelvic muscles to restore balance and function. Two more.

And one, Now as you bend one knee, pull it in towards the chest, reach the other leg straight up, now lower that long leg towards the floor, bend it in and up. Now we're focusing on the hip flexors on that lowering side. Great idea to restore functional length and function to your hip flexors before you do stronger abdominal work, especially if we're in our modern life sitting a lot. Two more times. And one.

As you come in, switch legs, reach up. Flu in motion in the hips. Notice how working hard is actually, I like the term of working smart a little better than just working hard. The body's designed really well. We're just tapping into that knowledge to three more.

And one more. From there, place the feet down, take the balls away. Now take your bigger ball, put it between your knees. We're gonna use this for bridging and just take a moment to center your feet on the floor. Center the weight on the back of your pelvis, arms long, and add a little tone to the back of the shoulders.

Take a breath now initiating from the pelvic curl, curl your tail towards the ball and peel into a bridge. In the bridge, touch the bottom of your pelvis and take it more towards the back of your knees. Touch your front, low ribs, and melt them more in so you start to feel the back of your hips, your inseams, and your abs, are all working together to create a nice long line from your knees to your shoulders. As you breathe in, reach the arms overhead into a high v, traction down away from your fingertips, As you drop the tail, float the arms to your side. And again, curl into the bridge, find that straight line, inhale into the reach, traction down, Float the arms down.

Just one more. Add the reach. Track down. Float the arms down. Now take the ball away, and we're gonna do the bridge without the ball because we can add leg movements.

So take a breath, come into the bridge, stand into your feet, keep the pelvis level, and just go into simple marching. Seaming keep the hips level, anchor into your standing leg, easy hip on the lifting side. If you can take it a step further, reach one leg straight out in line with the other knee, now lift it towards your head. Back out the straight line and place it down for each side, either marching or leg reach and lift. Nice and smooth, all the way through.

Move with your breath. One more each side. As you place the foot down, sequence down through the spine, take hold of the back of legs, rock up to a seated position. Now take your bigger ball, and you're gonna put it right up against the back of your pelvis. So while we're here, picture you're gonna use the ball just for a little bit of support, but the work is in your abdomen.

So as you grow tall, holding the back of the legs just to get up nice and straight, reach the arms to the front. Now from that pelvic wheel, curl into the ball and hold it, now activate your inner thighs. And on the exhale, lift the arms up with no change in the spine, inhale to lower four times. Stay in that lower core, that connection to your inseams. One more.

As you lower, curl back up, Another set will add variation to it, so curl back and hold. Keep the connection to your inner thighs. Now lift the arms, just from the low ribs, not from the arms so much. Turn Open the arms, close, turn back to center. Turn, open, close center. And again, turn Open, close, center, turn, open, close, center one more each way.

Feeling it a little bit about right now. Turn, open, close, center, lower the arms, curl right back up. Take the ball away. We're gonna take it down onto the mat for single and double leg stretch. So curl back onto your back.

Draw one knee in. Now, pull the knee in tight. Hold the ankle. Set the shoulders low and wide and look towards your belly. Sholders are connected down. Reach the other leg long. Pull in a little tighter with an exhale switch.

Leg are like pistons, lower back stays long. Two more each side. Come back to the center, hold the knees, lift the head come down for one breath. On an exhale curl up and hold. Now looking at the belly, set the shoulders low.

Imagine from your head to your tail, no change. Inhale arms and legs slowly reach away. Xhale circle the arms draw it in. Four reps. Two more.

And one. As you come in, let the head come down for one breath, bringing the hands behind your head for crisscross, curl up and hold, Now slowly turn towards the right knee, slide the left leg long and switch. Nice and smooth. Get heavy in the hip you're turning away from. Two more each side.

Back to the center, rock up to a seated position. For a spine stretch. Now when you're sitting up in spine stretch, picture you're right up on the center of your sit bones, even if you gotta bend your knees a little bit, and then float the arms up at shoulder height and grow a little taller as you breathe in, push down with your legs On the x as you nod your chin, pull the waistline back, curl over your center like the top of your head is moving towards the floor. Inhale push down and restack the spine. And again, excel up and over.

Inhale restack. Just four reps. Row tall, energy through your fingertips, crown of your head out your heels, lengthen up tall, now bring your legs together. Zip up your legs sit tall for spine twist. Reach out. Now turn on the back of your shoulders, press back.

Picture you're gonna turn from your ribs, not so much from your arms. Reach out, grow tall on the inhale, exhale turn with a pulse. Feel the connection to your back muscles and your waistline and inseams. As you come to the middle, back to the open leg position for for the saw, reach out to the side, inhale rotate. Now as you go forward, let that back hand turn down, press back as you reach forward. Inhale back to center, rotate flex and reach.

Get heavy in the hip you're turning away from. Let your eyes follow the back arm. Push down with your legs to come back to the middle one more each way. Last side, back to the center. Now, we're gonna take it directly into reverse plank. So for reverse plank, take the shoulders back.

Have your hands a little behind you. If you need to, you can turn your palms out if that feels uncomfortable on your wrist. Or even to the back. I don't like it this way myself, but do what works for your body. Pull your shoulders back, point your feet, reach into your legs and press up as you create a line through your body.

Slowly lower, keeping the chest open. Four reps, exhale reach, send the tail towards your feet. Slowly lower. Two more times. Full body, feel that connection to your back muscles, back of your shoulders, and one more.

Slowly lower. From there, we're gonna come onto all fours. As you come onto all fours, hands directly under your shoulders, knees under your hips, take a moment just to do a couple slow shoulder blade slides, but before you start, draw your nose and your chin straight up away from the floor so you get a little more length through your neck. Now really slow that the shoulder blades slide in towards the spine. Widen and lower them as you float up. Feel how you don't have to change the shape of your spine to move your shoulder blades.

Now hold the lifted position. XL slide one leg long. Reach the opposite arm. Control the return. Take your time where you focus on the body line not changing so much.

Keep the weight bearing limbs strong. Energy through the crown of your head, into the floor, lifting limbs your light and toned. Nice smooth. One more each side. After this one.

Last side. From there, we're gonna go into leg pull back. So set the shoulders, step into a plank, fill your body line on the exhale reach back through your heels, point and lift one leg. Come forward and lower for each side. Keep the hips low.

Use the back of the hips. One more each side. Lower the knees. Come onto your side for side lifts. Side lift side side bend.

So your legs are the top legs in front. The arm on the floor is a little bit forward of your body. Push the floor away and picture you're gonna propel yourself on that diagonal. So as you extend into your legs and your reaching arm, come into your side plank. Pull yourself with your legs back to the start.

And again, lift and lower. Next time we're gonna come up and hold. Now as you hold, lower the pelvis on the inhale, pull through the top arm to come up. Three reps. And one. Lower with control.

Side two. Top leg in front. As you lift, push the floor away. Come into that side plank. Pull yourself back to the mat.

Two more. Feel your body line. Feel your connection to your center line of your legs. Hold, inhale to lower, exhale to lift. Feel the oppositional pull through that top arm.

One more. Lower the arm, lower the body. Nice and slow. Roll on to your belly. Bring your arms long by your sides with your palms facing up. Now roll your shoulders away from the floor and lengthen through the neck and just take a breath.

And on the exhale, follow the lower abdomen in. This is called flight. So on the next inhale as you slide your heart forward, using your upper back muscles, reach the arms up and back, and keep following the belly in through the exhale phase. Inhale to lower exhale through for the forward up. Four more times.

Nice and fluid. Nice and smooth. And two more. Slide the heart forward. Use those middle upper back muscles.

Keep the legs toned. One more. Now as you lower, press yourself up onto all fours and take it into a very slow cat stretch. Take a breath now really slow, curl the tail towards the belly button around the back. Look back towards your knees.

Inhale send the tail back. Open the chest to the front. Three times. And one inhale to extend. Now as you come back to neutral, come down onto your elbows right under your shoulders, palms flat.

We're gonna do a forearm plank with a leg bent. Your goal is to keep the lower back the same. Set your shoulders low and wide. Step into a plank and lower the pelvis. Now feel the tone through the whole body, the inseams.

And on the exhale, draw one heel towards your butt without dropping or lifting the pelvis. Three side. One more each side. As you lower stretch back to a child's pose just for a moment soften become more foldable. Roll it back up, come to a seated position for seal.

So for seal, reach through and hold either the underside of your calfs or your heels. Drop your shoulders, drop your chin, set your body curve. As you breathe in, click the heels three times and roll back. XL forward. And just play with fluidity.

You're massaging the spine. Keep your breath smooth. Have a good attitude. One more. Next time, come all the way up to standing.

Come to the back of your mat for push up. So as you come to the back of your mat, stand with your feet right under your sit bones. Take a breath. Now roll down nice and slow. Walk your hands out to a plank. One, two, three, four. Set your body tone as you go a little forward, lower, up and back.

Four reps. One more. Back to downward dog hold for a moment. Get a sense of length, traction. Take one leg up.

Back to the floor, two times each side. Last one. Walk your hands to your feet. Soft knees, roll it up. Come to the middle of your mat.

Take your feet shoulder width apart. Small turnout. Small bend of your legs cross your wrists. Now big inhale lengthen up and look up, open your chest. Xhale to deflate one more time.

And bend. Step your feet into parallel. Take a moment to center the weight again. Let your breath drop. Notice alignment, ease, aliveness.

Take that feeling with you for the rest of the day. Thanks for joining. Hope to see you again on Pilates anytime. Take care.