Beginner Mat Alignment

All right, Casey, we are going to be doing a beginner map, so go ahead and just lower yourself down to the mat however you feel comfortable and go ahead and take the full length stretch out. Good. There you go. And Go ahead and start with bending your knees, putting your feet flat on the Mat [inaudible] and just relaxing. Good. So we're just gonna, we're going to teach you [inaudible] and kind of increase the levels little by little, seeing, starting you off in a really good strong zone. And then if you can do that, then we'll advance a little bit in advance to a little bit and that's take it from there. Okay. I know you've done a few sessions before, but we're going to approach it as if you've never done pilates before because you've never done it with me. Right? Right. Okay. So a few things that we're going to be using in today's class is a slightly weighted bar, but you don't need to have it if you wanted to try this again at home, you can just, it's just a little bit helpful or imagining that you haven't, and we're also going to use two pound weights later on and want to do some arm weights. All right?

So the most important thing that I need you to think about is your powerhouse and you're going to generate all of your energy from the powerhouse. Okay? Initiate everything, whether they're doing strong arms or legs, whatever it is today, it still starts here, okay? We're also going to have a straight line from one shoulder to the other and a straight line from this hip bone is bone. That process on top here to this one, so it goes straight across. Okay? So it seems pretty easy. You have a straight line from here to here and a straight line from here to here, but you also want this line to be right on top of this one. So we call that your frame or your box. So it goes from here to here.

Cross down to this hip, across to this hip and back up. That's your frame. It's going to stay square throughout your whole mat work. Okay? So we don't do things like this with one shoulder up or we don't do things with what hiphop. I'm going to say nice and square, having all of it from your powerhouse. Okay? So the last thing I want you to think about is can you pull your belly in so much that you are supporting your back and maybe even stretching your back a little bit and pressing it down into the math. Okay? And I want you to go ahead and think about your pelvis, like a bowl of soup.

And I want you to tilt that bowl of soup so that you would dump the soup into your chest. So just your pelvis tilting towards you. Exactly. Your waistband is now super glued down to the Mat, right? Good. And now I want you to dump that bull soup out towards your feet. Good. Now there's a little tunnel under your waistband and, and that's what I want. And a little mouse could crawl under it. Say, okay. So the, what I want you to do is just be really aware that I want your stomach working hard to pull into your back. And for me, I even don't mind if you're gonna end up tilting pelvis a little bit towards you, but I need your back to be flat, okay? Uh, eventually as you get stronger, I'm going to want to get away from that tilt because I don't want you to be using any hip flexors or anything else going on, but I do want your back to be flattened all your exercises. Okay? All right.

So with your stomach in, I want you to go ahead and bring your right knee into your chest and give it a hug with your belly and bring your left knee. So everything's from your powerhouse. Good. And now I want your knees just over your hips, so let go and I'm going to have them right here and it's kind of like a table so that I can have my lunch. Kay. And now I want you to reach your arms nice and long by your side. Great and almost like you're pushing something away from you and I want you to lift them up so that their level of your hips and they're going to go five inches up and down, pumping like this, and take a big breath and exhale, really being aware of your belly, pulling into your back.

Big Breath, big exhale, pulling in, in and in. Nice in with the air. Exhale supporting your back and you're holding your legs up from your powerhouse. Inhaling and exhaling. Good big breath. On this exhale, use your stomach to lift your head up so that your Chin's almost to your chest. Good big breath and exhaling, pulling in in eyes on your belly. Make your belly pool into the mat. [inaudible] if I had an ice cream scoop, right, good scoop out your stomach. It's so scooped in. Okay.

Big Word we use in Belarus and exhaling. Go ahead. Good, good. Keep doing everything but lower your neck and head gently onto the mat. Back Down. Keep pumping. Good. Good, good, good and exhaling. Good, good, good. On your next exhale, we're going to lift the head up again. So pulling in though. Yes, yes, yes. Good. And now we're going to add a little length in your legs.

Turning out the legs slightly, pulling your belly away from me. I'm really pulling so that you can feel the opposition of your belly pulling it. One more big breath. Two, three, four, five. Exhale, two, three. Pulling in and scoops. Good. I now hug your knees in and lower your head. Rest your head down. So that was inhaling. I just said take a big breath and exhale, but that was inhaling for five counts.

Exhaling for five counts total of 10 and do it 10 times. That's why it's called the a hundred. Use your legs or whatever you need to sit up. Try to use your stomach and just have your feet flat on the Mat. Great. Hands Underneath your knees. Just right underneath like that. Good.

And round your back like you're trying to create the letter c with your back. Excellent. Trying to relax the shoulders. Okay. And we're going to really focus on your pelvis and your stomach. So you're going to your belly, into your back to move both sides of your waistband onto the mat. You're going to roll back away from your thighs until your arms are extended in long. Take a breath and then exhale.

Draw your belly and to come home right back where you started, but your belly stay in, in, in. There you go. Take a breath and exhale. Pull your belly in to pool. I love it. You pulled those two hip bones away to get your arm straight. Take a breath and exhale, scoop in your belly to come forward. Scoop it in. Leave that there. Yes. That's how you stretch your back. Good.

So you'd do that pretty well. So let's advance it. You're going to take a breath and exhale, roll back those hip bones, both sides of your lower back. Slide down your legs until you touch the bottom of your shoulder blades. Hold just there. Take a breath, look at your belly, pull it in as you exhale. Come forward, pulling it in. Yes, yes, yes. Good.

And the hands are turned perfect. One more light up and exhale, rolling away. Relaxing the shoulders. If you can keep scooping in, take a breath, eyes on your belly, exhale forward. Make sure your stomach is pulling in to support your back. Great. Again, we're going to keep advancing it and exhaling all the way down. Rolling through your waistband, the bottom of your shoulder blades through your neck. Your head's going to go down, neck and head. There you go. Inhale, lift your head up and exhale, pulling in your belly.

Curl up one bone at a time. Good. We're gonna do that one more time. Round your back and exhale. Exhaling. So if you wanted to do this at home, you could slide your feet under like the couch and that holds them down. I don't need to hold yours down. Lift up your head as you inhale this time and exhale scooping in, scooping in God. And now I want you to straighten your legs.

Good. And I'm going to slip them under this strap. That's it. Perfect. And reach for your ankles. Good head down. And now you're going to roll down with straight legs rolling back. You're going to hit the lower back first, the middle back, the upper good. And Inhale, lift up your head and exhale.

Look getting at the belly. That's it, girl in love it reaching. So the straps helping you to advance and rolling back. Big Breath. Get the waistband before the bottom of your shoulder blades gets down. Come on, scoop it and get down debt. Yes, there you go. Good. Now this time reach your arms up and hold this. It's about three pound weighted bar, long fingers so you don't break it.

The risks and I straight line plug your shoulders in meaning let them relax, drop them down and be in joint. Good. This is now like a frame, a window frame, and as you take a breath, I want you to lift your head in between your arms, looking at your belly and now almost push it down as you come up. Exhaling. That helps you to really get in. I love how you're holding it up at shoulder height and now pull back that bar as if it's a really heavy weight. You're going to pull it back with you with your powerhouse. Lower back, middle, good. When your shoulders and head are down, I want you to make sure your waistbands down. Drop it down into the mat and reach back away from that.

Nice pulled in, scooped in back. One more arms up to the ceiling. Watch those shoulders lifting by your ears, eyes on your belly and push down a little bit. Yes. That allows you to really get into your powerhouse and rolling back. Lower back. Let's roll back that to the mat. So actually I'm gonna have you do two more because I want you to get a sense of the tempo now. Okay? So we're going to double time that tempo, but still use everything. Arms head, using your powerhouse, reach for your feet, scooping it good and rolling back.

Lower back goes down to the mat already. Come on Middle Beck. That's it. And reaching back. One more arms head and exhale to your feet. Good. Really good. Powerhouse and rolling back. Lower back, middle. So your stomach doesn't get a break though when you're reaching over there.

Good. And now gently rests this bar down by your side. And that's the only time we're going to use that. And that's just a little bit extra help. As you come up, go ahead and bend your knees in. Place the feet flat and using your belly to have your back supported. Bring the right knee into your chest. Give it a hug, straighten the leg up to the ceiling. Good.

A little turnout in your leg so that your hip bones are even in straight across. Okay, and now I want you to put your hands behind your calf, thigh and stretch. If that's an easy stretch, then put your hands behind your calf. Good. And try to plug your shoulders back in and have the back nice and supported. Okay? Now I want you to put your hands right on your hip bones because this is the bottom of your box and when we circle your leg, I don't want you being doing anything like that.

I want the obliques really diving down into the mat. Again, slightly turn out the legs so that you're leading with the inside of your knee and you're going to come up to your nose as high as you can. Cross your left shoulder, circle away and come right up in line with that right shoulder. Cross around. Up is the rhythm. Ready and cross around. Up stomach diving down. Crus around stomach.

Cross around lift crus around lift, cross higher and hold reverse down around. Cross up to your nose, down, crossing up to nose scoop and then two more reaching. Last time. Good job keeping your knees slightly turned out. Hug in that knee. Good. Place up, foot down and bend in the left knee and yep, that's fine. Hands behind your thigh with your belly in work to get behind your calf.

Open up those collarbones for me so that the bottom and now hands on your hipbones go ahead and slightly turned out. Leading with the inside of the knee, you're going to come up to your nose. Cross to your right shoulder. This is the most important part. You want to really, not from your nose. You don't want to go down to your hip, you want to go nose, shoulder, then circle away. Okay, nice. Quick Tempo. Stomach, stomach pulls that leg, cross around it. Good Cross. You can go down a little bit more. [inaudible] and three good. All from your stomach. Are those oblique sending down to little linkers and Holt?

Reverse down. Cross around, up, down. That's it. Now I just have to look. Get your stomach and it pulls in two more. Yes. Last one. And Hug in that knee. Great job, Casey. All right, as you, um, if you're really flexible and that doesn't feel very hard than you could had this leg straight on the mat, go ahead and straighten it. Good. And when you do your circles, you could have it like this, but it is kinda hard to keep the hips square when you do that. Okay, so hug in that knee. That's a goal. Good. And I want you to straighten that leg and you're, I want you to lift your head up to look at your belly and use your hands if you need to. But sit up and now see if you can use your hands to lift your bottom forward to your feet.

You're going to bend your knees, lifting your bottom forward. That's all right. So exactly. And we're going to have your feet right here and put your hands on your knees. You just did it. [inaudible] Jess did the roll roll back and then we worked it up to the roll-up pulling in. Good. I love it.

Your weight and is a little like your center is right here. Relaxing scoop, scoop, scoop. And I want to see, can you keep your belly in like this without pushing out and balanced while holding the right foot up. Just an inch off the mat. Chest and itch and then put it down. Good. And now let's pull in the stomach and do the left. [inaudible] and yeah, so I don't want just the foot to lift. I want the thigh and knee to kind of stomach in.

There Ya go and down and that's better. Good. So now really pull that, hold that right. Just keep it right where it is. I'm, let's see if you can add the left. Pull in belly belly. Good, good, good. But the feet down. Scoop in. Let's pull up the left. Now add the right. Good. So I'm just really challenging you to keep your balance with your stomach. Now imagine a rocking chair and that rocker part is right here under your seat.

And I want you to keep this shape, this relationship and rock back and come up with balancing and no Tommy sticking out. Good. Inhale on the way back. Exhale, coming up. Scoop, scoop, eyes on your belly the whole time. Give me three more. Inhale. Exhale, belly. That's it. Think of it almost like a stomach crunch. That's it. And hold it up here. One more for me. Hold and rest your feet down. That was pretty good. Good job as the advanced. We're going to hold onto your ankles, but that was really good for today. Okay. I want you to put your hands back, help lift up your bottom back too.

You can lie down all the way with the Madigan and you're going to bend your knees, feet flat on the Mat. Okay, we're going to do single leg stretch and then double leg stretch. So we're going to bend this knee, the right knee, and it's super important where your hands go. So your right hand, we call it the outside hand, is going to go to your ankle and the left hand is going to go to your knee. Okay, relax that shoulder. The reason we have this is the arm that crosses your body goes to at the knee, okay? The ones that just on the outside goes. Inga. Why? Because if you pooled equally, go ahead and pull strongly with your arms. Your legs should stay straight.

Ankle nine with your knee in line with your shoulder. And plies is all about alignment that supports your knee and your hip. If you had a bad hip or knee or anything. Now if you did the opposite way and you pulled, you would pull that knee out of alignment. So the arm that crosses over to the leg grabs onto the knee.

Okay? So let's see if you can do that. As you put the right foot down, but it down, bring in the left with your belly and beautiful. So now your right arm was crossing over to the knee on the outside arm was the left hand. Put the foot down and let's switch. Very nice and put the foot down and switch. Good man. Put the foot down and switch. Now that's really important if you had a bad hip or knee, but if you are totally healthy, the most most important thing is always going to be your powerhouse.

So now we're going to lift your head up using your belly again. If I had an ice cream scoop or I could scoop it out right? And your arms are beautiful. Now this leg is going to challenge your belly by reaching away, stretching away. Pull that knee towards you. [inaudible] good. Alright, remember you're gonna keep your box in this exercise. Let's switch legs. Bending in the left. Don't go so low. It's up here. That's it.

And switch. Good. So you use your stomach to pull this left knee in. That's better. Use your stomach to bring the right knee. And now we're working and I love your arms. That's great. But again, just good to know. For Future, most important thing is your powerhouse. Good. The back is pulling into the mat. Good stomach. Nice.

Okay. Do two more sets on your own. Left higher though. You can stay here so you don't go too low. And now bend both knees in and rest your neck and head. Good. So that was single leg stretch. Now double leg stretch.

I want you to press your arms into the mat. Actually I'm going to have you put your hands behind your head, one over the other and take a big breath and exhale. Let's lift up and look at your belly. Good. Relax your shoulders down a little bit there. Yoga. All right, we're going to hit, your feet are going to be in a little bit of applauding stance. That's heels together, toes a little bit apart, just a tiny bit, not so much.

And you're going to pull your belly in as you straight in your legs a little lower than straight to the ceiling and then bend them back in. So you're saying that as you extend your legs, your back does not come up off the mat. You support it with your stomach and then pull it back in. Okay. And in with the air and exhale, really pulling into the mat. Curl up a little bit more for me. Thank you. That's what your legs are gonna do.

Exhale, come up a little higher. [inaudible] good. Stay here. So you want just the bottom of your shoulder blades down. You don't want all of the shoulder blade down. That's what I was going for. Go ahead and grab onto your legs and rest your head. Okay, good. And if it's okay to keep your legs like this, I want your arms to go right up to the ceiling and then a little bit back actually. And I want you to imagine that you're swimming in a pool. Cup Your hands like, like that as if you're in the water.

And I want you to pull yourself through the water into your ankles so your arms had a lot of strength. Your belly pulls in as they go up, not so far back, just a little lower than the ceiling. And then exhale. Oh dear. Cycles. Inhale. Good. Exhale. Oh, oh good. Now lift your head up actually. And hands on your ankles. Good. Bringing hands on those ankles, pulling into you. Good.

This time straight in your legs as your arms go up and now pull yourself through the inhale. Exhale. I want your eyes to say looking at your belly. That's what I want to see. Exhale, scoop, scoop, scoop in with the air. Beautiful. Exhaling in with the air. Nice. Two more. Inhale, squeeze at all that air. One more time. Inhale, fill the lungs. Exhale, squeeze out. And restaurant. Neck. Great job.

Really good. Sit Up. And we're going to do spine stretch forward. So you're going to have a heel in the middle of each block. Okay? Yes, you got it in the middle this way and this way and see if you can go back to straight legs. So slide your bottom back, can use your hands, whatever. Good. And ideally, flexing the feet. This is a hard position, but you are pretty flexible so you can do it. Okay. But if you had, if you started really gripping here, it's a little bit tight there. Then you can slide forward a little bit and bend your knees.

Whatever feels better. Okay. But I'm gonna use this pole since I have it to give you a good idea of what is straight. So this is obviously a straight pole and now you're going to have to start with your waistband and then the next bone up, and then the next bone and try to hit. That's right where your bra strap is, or the bottom of your shoulder blades and then the head. So that is straight. Okay. Arms lift at shoulder height, just shoulder height. Good. And I want you to take a breath and exhale. Pull your belly into my pole, into my ball, and with your belly into my pole.

Slide up the pole with the crown of the head. Go into the ceiling. Good. So you really want a lot of effort in this exercise. Pull your toes back as well about lifting in the waist, making your waist really long and tall. So take a breath and then head goes down between and roll off my bar o off of it. One bone at a time trying to lead the waistband. They're reaching, reaching, reaching, and then inhale, roll back up one bone at a time. We did wonderful up until this point and then this part got hard and take a breath and exhale down. I love your roll down.

It's very nice. And take a breath and exhale. Roll it up for me now. Right here, pause. Okay. And I want you, there are at least 12 to 15 vertebra roll up. One at a time. The next, come on, roll these back before the head.

I'm not going to let you do [inaudible] and then the neck and then, yes. All right, let's add a little bottom. Lift up off your seat, taking a big breadth and then head goes down. Rolling each of those off. One at a time. Exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale. Ideally we exhale the whole way down and then inhale the whole way up. You lost your pelvis a little bit off that bar, that time again, I'm going to make you keep that there. So you work that upper back.

Super important for today's Day and age of all our technology. One more time. Big Breath. And exhale all the way down this time. Keep your belly into my pole at your waistband. Yeah, cause we want to lower back. Stretch here and now roll back up as you take a breath.

Rolling. Rolling, rolling. And Great. Relax your arms down. Nice job. Very good. All right, we're done with the mat work. I want you to go ahead and stand up in front of the map. Good. And just go ahead and face me.

You're going to take these weights almost perfect in the stance. You want to have a heels together and toes two to three inches apart. There we go. But open your right foot just a teeny bit. [inaudible] a little overkill. Sorry, it's really, really specific, but you want to just always make sure that your feet are equally turned out right. Okay. And you want weight on the ball of your foot. All of every toe, the side of your foot and your heel, but you want it a little bit more on the ball of the foot so that I could slide a card. Good. And I want you to put both weights together and I want you to just go ahead and pull your belly in and try to lift the arms right up to the ceiling.

Good. Good. Your pelvis is in a perfect position right now, but your upper back kinda hung back into your waistband. So make sure that it's still forward. Okay. Relax here a little bit. There you go. Alright. And now bring your arms down by your side. Great. Alright. I want you to turn your palms up, Tom's pumps forward and with your belly in.

Go ahead and lift your arms at shoulder height in front of you. Good. Imagine you have to keep your weight forward on the ball of your feet. There you go. And I want you to imagine you have two heavy springs coming from there and you're going to contract your biceps, upper arms, pull in, and then resist those springs pulling you back. Good. You gotta get this in [inaudible] and there and pulling it.

Open your shoulders a little bit more and good resisting. So we're gonna pull open there. Yes. And back. So we're at a writing goal and two more scoop in and pull those imaginary springs to you. Good. And one more. Scooping in. Keep those elbows up a shoulder high and resist.

And then let your arms hang down. Good. And now you're going to turn your palm slightly out to the side, pulling. Take a big breath. And as you exhale, pull your belly in, really support and yourself and wait on the forward, on the shoulder, on the ball of your feet. And you're going to bring your arms to the side, but slightly in front of you. So they'd be in your peripheral vision. Again, just hold them there cause I want you to work. Um, as you brought your arms up, you slightly rocked back with your upper body. So think of a beautiful light coming up from your chest and use your stomach to lift forward and up. That's it. Okay.

A little more open to the side. Soften the elbow and the shoulder. And now those springs are from the side. You're going to pull them into your shoulder, bending those arms, tighten, tighten, tighten. And now resist straightening those arms. Now, once I put my fingers here, now you started working so tight in the alcohol. That's it. So it's not that it's two pounds and resist. You want. Imagine it's 50 pounds that you're pulling into you.

When your imagination connects with those muscles, you get a lot more work out of the exercise to more polling in stomach, in and up, and resists straightening your arms. And last one a little bit more open and stomach. That's it. And let your arms hang down by your side. Good. Watch the hyperextending in those elbows. All right. So now I want you, there's like two little pockets right here. I want you to put your elbows right in those pockets. Good. Again, still leaning a little phone. Okay. And I want you to pull your belly in and you're going to think of the springs coming from the floor and you're going to tighten your biceps and you're gonna pull up to until the hand almost touches the shoulder as much as you can.

Yeah, keep that connection. And then lift the elbow, not the shoulder. And keep your weight forward. Lift up the elbows as high as you can, and then you're going to come back down and put your hands onto the po in those pockets. And you're gonna tighten the back of your arm as you extend, tighten the back of your arm. That's it. And give me three more stuff. Don't lose your elbows right here though, and good. Come on, tighten more. And now use those to lift, lift, lift, good. And then bring them back down. You have a good range of motion there. Put them back into these pockets and tighten the back of your arm as you extend.

And two more stomach in your weight needs to be a little more forward. Good. And lifting [inaudible] and Dan right into here and tightening the back of the arm. And one more. Let me see those biceps. That's it. And up, dropping the shoulder as you live, but watch that alignment here and back down. So we lost a little bit of alignment and then tightening the back of the arm. Where's my tricep? Let me see it. There you go.

Now put your weights together again. The last exercise here, I want you to go up to the ceiling. Don't rock back with those shoulders. There you go. Stomach in, relax the rib cage. Just relax it. Good. And here are your ears. Try to bend your elbows behind your ears, keeping the weights together. Bring your shave off the back of your head, bending your arms, yes and straight and your arms pulling in and bending. Okay. And straighten. I love what you can do in the alignment of your shoulders, but I want them to connect. Bring your arms forward and down. I want to see if I can correct. So you have a great, like you're a little bit more flexible in the joints of your shoulders, but when you come up, you're opening up almost here.

And so your rib cage is coming forward as you're doing this range. But all your power, if you were boxing, comes from your shoulder girdle muscles. So when you lift your arms up that high, we're releasing that instead of holding that. So we want to keep the front working with here. Try not to push it out of joint.

So you want to keep that and then challenge your arms. Okay, so let's see if we can keep that a little bit more weights together. Stomach in [inaudible]. Beautiful. And here's these muscles. I'm going there. They're like snapping together as what we want. And I want you to bring your arms up, huh. And keep lifting the chest up a bit there.

Now Bend your elbows a hump on your elbows back behind your weights. Yes. And straighten your arms a little bit forward. So you really shave the head instead of losing contact. Yeah. And then bending. Lift this forward more and open the front of your collar. Oh, I took my hand off for a second straight. And your arms pull away from me here so that you support more into here and bending. And I want you to push into me. There you go.

And bending. And one more push into me. Yes, that's a lot better. Okay. And one more push in so that you open the arms in front of you to come down. Nice. Very good. Good. And we're gonna Finish with just holding your weights here. Okay. And again, you have weight on the ball of every toe on the side of the foot and the heel.

Okay. But I want your stomach to pull in, in when you walk around. And when you do nice posture throughout the day, you should always have your stomach pulling in to support your back. And you should always have your seat squeezing forward against it. You never want the reverse narrowing your belly hanging out forward and your bottom hanging out behind Ya. So, and as you work up to intermediate and advanced exercises, those to automatically have to work to power everything else up. Okay? So your stomach super in and your bottom is squeezing. And I want you to keep your heels together as you slowly lift your heels up or what we call relevant. So we're going to pull our belly in and squeezed.

Imagine I have weights in my hand and we're going to take five counts to lift up our heels. We're going to pull in and we're going to squeezing up one, lifting up heels together, two three belly in four, five and we're going to count for five. One good. I love it. [inaudible] and slowly come down once, like you're pushing something away with your heels and your belly and your chest are still lifting. Very nice. We're going to do that two more times. So if your heels separate, then you're doing it more from the knee and using the calf muscle. And I want you to use a rapping, the lifting of the seat. The stomach pulls in good.

And you're going to come down slowly rolling through the ball of the foot into the heel. Pretty Nice. But this can come in a lot more. There we go. Okay. And we're going to keep that in. Keep it in, lift with that. Now we're talking. Keep that in. Beautiful. And you're going to keep it in as you push the earth away with your heels. But the front of you is still lifting, scooping and slowly. Oh, get those heels together and roll down through the ball of the foot.

Scooping in. Uh Huh [inaudible] and that is beautiful alignment and posture. Nice job.