Exploring Isometric Movement

Hi, it's Jonathan Oldham back again at Valadez anytime. And I was so inspired by, uh, our mat class I did last time that I decided to make a progression from that class and move it on to a little higher tempo, few more challenging exercises, uh, less explanation and less, um, fewer reps so that we can get through a little bit more material. And I have my lovely students here, Hailey Giuliana, Karen and Candace. Thank you for being here. And we're going to start with just breathing. Uh, we're going to do a percussive breath, which is a breath which has a sound and a rhythm. So I'm going to ask you to just take your hands on your rib cage and just feel your ribs expand laterally as you inhale and then contract as you exhale and make a little sound. Yeah. So you're going to inhale, feel the ribs expand, exhale, feel the ribs can track and feel how the exhalation asks for that work in the low belly. Let's just do four more breaths. Inhale, exhale.

Sure, sure. And tomorrow. Sure. And the last, very good. And I'm going to ask you, just take the hands a little lower and you're just going to monitor your pelvis. The pelvis is going to move. In this next motion, we're just going to define a high contraction and high release.

So yeah, bring the feet together, pull in your, uh, pull and lift up and you're going to take an inhale. And as you exhale, I'm going to ask you to slightly curl forward. Just a slight curl forward, exhaling, but keeping the, the, the lower part of the spine and pelvis, uh, just vertical. And then inhale, lift up. And then exhale you're going to lift the chest, but keep the lower spine vertical in health centers. So this is a high contraction. Exhale back to vertical high release.

Exhale, back to vertical. One more exhale, high contraction and to vertical and high release and center. And then I'm just going to ask you to make a Nice v, a nice generous v. You're going to take your right arm up by your ear and you're going to take your right pelvis too to the side and make a side band with a whole body. And then back to center. And then the other side, it's the arm, then the spine and the body going to the side, back to vertical and center. And as you're doing this motion is side bending motion of the body. I invite you to just, uh, sense where, where things move readily, where there might be some restrictions.

You're just going to take note of how this feels. One more each side. Inhale, exhale, shh. Inhale and exhale. Inhale, arm up, exhale to the side. Inhale to center, exhale arm down. And then you're just going to bring your feet together. I'm gonna ask you to just come to sit and stand in the center of your mat actually, and just reach your arms up and you're going to round forward, round, forward, round, forward. Um, and then I'm just going to have you bend all the way down into a little ball. She's just going to come into a little ball and then sit to your side and you're just going to lie on your mat. Good.

Go ahead and lie all the way back. Go ahead. I'm going to ask you to just take the hands behind the head. Good and pull the knees into the chest and feel your tailbone deliberately anchored down on your mat. Makeup. [inaudible] v, take an inhale. As you exhale, I'm going to ask you to lift the base of your skull, the base of your neck and your shoulder blades up. Go ahead, exhale, lift up, and we're going to do some footwork. Inhale, lengthen. Exhale, bend in and inhale, lengthen. Exhale, bending. Again, linkedin and in one more inhale.

Exhale, go to parallel point the toes, press out and in an imagine you're pressing away a weight or spring. As you're pressing out in, press out and in. Flex the feet sternal notch and pull in and press out await. Exhale and two more. Inhale. Exhale. One more. Stay here. Point, flex, point and flex and point and flex. Inhale, exhale. Here we go.

Two more. Sh less and bend in and lie back. You're going to take your arms down by your side and wide cross. Your feet are flat on the Mat. Cross your right knee over your left knee, right knee, over left knee. Then you're going to rotate towards your left, rotate to your left, keeping the right shoulder blade down, and then bring, come back to. And we're going to do six of those.

Inhale to the side. Exhale back to center. And you're keeping your opposite shoulder down, not by pulling your shoulder back, but by using your upper oblique muscles to pull the ribs back. So, so it's really an oblique resistance. Not that keeps your shoulder. Now two more here and center. Last one and it. Okay, very good on switch legs.

So you're going to go to your right now. Inhale to the side. Exhale, bring yourselves back to center. Good. And to the side and back to center and to the side. Inhale. Exhale, back to center. Three more. And inhale, exhale and inhale, exhale. And the last one, inhale. Exhale.

Now I'm going to ask you to stretch your legs up to the ceiling. And I call this the hello goodbye. So right now your two legs are saying hello and your right leg is going to press down and say goodbye and it comes back together, says hello and the left one says goodbye. And hello, reach the arms up towards the ceiling and curl up. We're going to pump and your right leg is going to say goodbye as you inhale. Here we go. Inhale, two, three, four, five. Hello, two, three, four, five. Goodbye with the left.

Okay. Hello. Two, three, four, five. Inhale, two, three, four, five. Exhale. Very good. Inhale, two, three, four, five. Exhale, keep going. Sh two more sets. [inaudible] last. [inaudible] very good and lie back. All right, please rise up.

You're going to reach your arms around and just come forward and make, um, make a rounded spine. Now, so with this position, it's not so much a forward bend, but it's really a hover forward. So if you look at the, my body am really curved up. That's it. And you're going to do eight pulses. Just going a little deeper into the curve of your spine and pulse, pulse, pulse, and pulse. From here, we're going to take two breaths to roll down. Here's one. Inhale, exhale. On the second breath, your right leg is going to come up. You're going to lie all the way back. We're going to pulse the leg.

Just hinge at the hips. It's eight pulses. Pulse, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. From here you're going to come up into a hinge. It's kind of like a half teaser. So you come up and do a hinge like so reach your arms up and we go. That's the pattern. We pulse it. One, two, three, four, five, six. Roll the spine. Back. Two breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Left leg up. Inhale, exhale and pulse.

Sure. Sh and lifted up and reach. Bend over. Here we go. Go and pulse it one. Sure. And roll back.

Sure. Right leg and pulse. Sure. To the hinge, to the reach and stretch up. No over pulsing one.

Sure. Roll it back. Sure. Left leg up and we pause. Sure.

To the hinge, to the reach and over n pulse. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight rollback. Inhale. Exhale. Now just take your arms by your side, right leg up, right into your one leg circle. Here we go. Across, around and up. Across, around and up. Sure. And reverse. [inaudible].

Sure. A cross and a cross. And stop. One more. Sure. And switch legs. Here we go. And a cres around, across, around and yeah, sure, sure.

One more time and reverse and across, down and across. Sure, sure. Last and very good band in. And you're going to pull yourself up just sitting, come forward on your mat. I am asking you to do first. We're going to just do different, we're going to explore some different, um, uh, isometrics here.

So you're going to take your hands to the outside of your knee and make your rounded back. So you're gonna press your knees into your hand, your hands into your knees. You're going to strive to maintain that isometric as you roll back on the inhale. Exhale and up. Strive to keep to maintain that tension as you go back and forth. And one more here. Then you're going to take your hands to the, instead of your knees, press in and form more. Inhale, exhale.

Keep the press in in x hair. Two more. [inaudible]. Now you're going to press this way. So knees you're going to kind of flex in and pull back in here.

Exhale. And two more. Last one. Now behind the knees pressing down. Here we go. And two more. Last one, and scoot back and bring the knees into the chest. All right. You're going to pull your right knee into your chest. Extend the left long, curling up. Single leg stretch. Here we go. Pull and pull and reach. Reach in here, in here. Excellent.

Excellent. Eight more. PUK. PUK reach and stretch. Far More. Sure. Good. Double leg. Stretch, hugging in. Inhale, reach. Exhale here. Inhale, stretch. Exhale in.

Inhale. Exhale. Two more. Last one. Inhale, exhale. And we lie back. Good. We're going to go right into the crisscrossed and my signature with the, with the crisscross is that we do it to the tune of jeopardy. So you're gonna take your hands behind the head and you're going to take an inhale. Exhale, curl up. And the lyrics to the are twist.

And so if you'd like to sing along, please do. We're going to start rotating to the right, extending the left leg long. And here we go. And twist and twist and twist. And with twist and twist and twist and twist and twist and twist and twist.

Twist and twist, twist and twist and twist and twist. And lie back and rise up. Thank you. Doesn't it make it easier? Yeah, it really helps. So we're going to just take the hands here on top of the head and you're going to take your feet slightly wider than your shoulders and I just would like don't press down on your head, but press up into your arms and you're just going to make your spine stretch here. Exhale round forward and then inhale, rise up. So I just, I do this just so you can feel I'm not distracted by the spinal, uh, rather by the arms, but just feel that the motion is very, very much in the spine and exhale round for it. I'm going to watch and inhale, rise up.

Take your time, exhale round forward. Now take your time and feel each segment. That's it. Reorganized back to vertical. One more time and rounding forward. Exhaling and inhale, rise back up and reach the arms up. Let's do four more. Rounding forward with the arms and then feel each segment organize as you come up and you round forward again. Exhaling and lift up, rising up and exhaling and lengthening to tall. Last one. You exhale and rise up and you're gonna Cross your arms like self and see you're in your arms. We're gonna go head. Do a saw, she's gonna rotate to the right.

And then you're going to exhale down and back to the rotation center to the left. Exhale down in here. And now we'll take the arms out to the side, twist and just feel that same rotation, that same spinal movement up center, twist and curl a central. Now I'm going to ask, let's do the, we're gonna do three like a. So when you, when you round forward, we'll do it. We'll do a three, three different incremental, uh, rotation. So you twist. Inhale, exhale. One, two, three, back to the twist center. Twist. Exhale. One, two, three, twist center. Inhale, far farther, farthest up.

Center twist, far farther, farthest up center. When we're each way, twist and round to three, lift, center, twist. One, two, three, lift and center. Good. I'm going to ask you now to just bring your knees or lean back rather on your elbows. Bring your knees in and you're going to rotate your lower body. Um, to your left. We'll do to the left. Yep. Good. Three rotations here. So it's one, two, three. Keep the thighs where they are.

Extend the legs out from there and one, two, three, stretch, bend and we'll thing it. Twist, twist and twist, stretch, bend and twist, twist and twist, stretch, bend and twist, twist and twist, stretch, bend and twist. Twist and twist and stretch and bend. Good. All right, that's your cancan. You're going to turn over now onto your bellies.

You can just take your heads that way. Great. Forehead down on the mat, palms down underneath your shoulders. I'm gonna ask you to lift up into a swan, but as you lift up, makes sure or strive to initiate the motion with your back muscles. So you're going to lift your, lift your spine with just your back muscles. And then when you hit the barrier, go ahead and press down a little more so you can come up a little higher.

Strive to truly bend that thoracic spine. And then you're going to roll back down. Now here I'm going to ask you to think of pulling your femur bones into the socket and lift the legs up just a little bit. Lift up femurs bones, pull into the socket and lower down, and then again, you're going to rise up with the upper body. That's your inhale. And exhale, lower down and lift the legs, the two legs by pulling the femurs into the socket and lower down and lift up the upper back and down. [inaudible] and the lower body lifts and down and lift up.

And we're going to die forward. So go ahead and lift up and you'll just, I'll just ask you to, just to keep your hands down today. So when you take your exhale, your, your shoulders go down, but your heels go up and die forward. Here we go, dive forward and lift, dive forward and lift. Exhale. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, two more. Nice and lift. Last dive and lift. And then sit back on your heels. Rounding the spine, give us, give your back a little break. Great. Take a breath and then come forward again. You're going to come into your Spinks position.

Make fists. Press your forearms into the mat and actually kind of pull your forearms back as you lift the chest. Ankles, knees, and thighs together. And you're going to bend your right knee. Kicking twice. Here we go. Kick, kick, extend in the left, kick, kick, extend and bend. Bend and stretch and kick. Kick, extend. Good. Inhale, exhale and kick. Kick, extend. Keep going. Kick and extend and kick and extend to more.

Kick and extend. Last one, kick and extend. Now the right facial cheek comes to the mat. Clasp your hands high up the back. The elbows come down towards the mat the best you can. Ankles, knees, and thighs together. Good. Take an inhale as you exhale. Three kicks with both feet. Kick to three feet to the floor and reach back and squeeze the blades and lift.

Turn the other cheek. Hands high up the back. Elbows down in to three feet down and stretch to three. Turn the the chicken, kick two, three and stretch two, three and two. Three and reach. Good. And strive to lower the elbows here and reach one more each side. Kick two, three and stretch two, three and two, three and stretch to three and sit back on your heels once again and take a breath.

Good. Now you're going to lie on your backs again and we're just going to go ahead and do a roll. A roll up rather. So you're going to reach your arms back overhead. And uh, keeping the spine connected. We bring the arms up, you lift up and we'll just roll forward x, hailing and then round back. Inhale and exhale, stretch back. And again, the arms come up the head and round forward, deep in the belly.

Very nice. And curve it back. Lay the spine down and reach to more arms up, head up, curl and come forward and roll back. Andrea. Low ceiling as they say. And last one and roll back and arms come back. And then by your side, go ahead and pull the knees in and extend the legs up. Good. We're going to just do a rollover. So you're going to lift the legs open, flex and roll and together and roll it back and lift.

Open. Flex roll. Bring the feet together. One more time. Open, flex and rigid. First, bring the feet together. Now take the feet apart and up and over together.

And Flex our tic. You laid down very nice and open. Press powerfully through the arms, the whole length of the arms. Hundred percent of the time. Last one point open and lift and flex.

[inaudible] back. Great. And then just place your feet flat on the Mat. A slightly apart. And you're going to do a bridge. So we're going to rise up. Inhale and excess who take a full breath to rise up into your bridge. Go ahead and reach. Nicely done.

And roll down. Inhale. Exhale. So this group has nice placement of the feet. Everyone has a feet night, evenly distributed through the inner and outer borders. So keep up the good work. And again, inhale and ex. Yeah, good. And inhale and exhale.

Exhale. Lower. So what did I ask for when, uh, do a couple more, but just something to be conscious of is that when you're coming up to your bridge, you're gonna come up to a specific place. I like to think of, it's the vertebra just across, just just behind where you're, there's this notch on your sternum. Okay. So there's a vertebrae right directly on the opposite side there. I call that the destination Vertebra. So when you rise up, rise up to that specific place and, but still really strive to get the pelvis lifted higher, but without losing your connection on that destination Vertebra that looks good and roll back down. That looks like there's more going on when I see. Watch that. And one more time, you're going to come up and you're going to go to that destination Vertebra and then you're going to just take your hands, uh, just below the, uh, backside, you're just going to kind of monitor your backside here however you'd like to do it, just to make sure that things aren't, um, twisting from side to side. And we're just gonna do a simple mark.

So you're just going to lift the right foot and place it down good. And the left and place it down and feel the destination Vertebra. Just feel that, um, specific placement there as you lift in lower without putting more or less weight into the upper body, just keeping it very even right and left. Nice. Great. And Roll back down. One segment at a time. Good to enroll. Up to sitting please.

And you're just going to straighten your legs out. Ankles, knees, and thighs together. We're just going to take the fingertips on the shoulders. Pull in the belly, lengthen up, and we're going to think of your center axis. Exhaling. You're going to rotate, right? Here we go. Exhale. Exhale. Inhale. And on the left. Okay. Sh, sh, sh eh, twists, twist, center, twist, twist, center. Two more each way. Twist, twist, center, twist, twist central. One more each side, twist, twist, center and twist, twist and center. Now you're just going to face me if you would, and just lie on your side this way you're just gonna lie on the side this way.

Good. And you're just emo. You'll find this, this link, and you're going to just turn the head towards the feet and then away from the feet and towards the feet and away from [inaudible] feet. Good. And then we'll come around to the other side, just kind of preparing the body to be on the side here. And you turn towards the feet and away from the field and towards the feet and away from the feet. One more towards the feet and always very good. Then I'm going to ask you to, to swivel around again and we'll, I'll, we're all gonna just come down into this side kick, um, side kick position. So the position I'm gonna ask you to take is with the elbow at the back of your mat and we'll be up like this, as long as that feels okay on your shoulder and the pelvis is lined up with the, with the, with the elbow, the feet are forward.

And we're going to just take the hand here. So remember at the beginning of the class we did the high contraction and the high release and we're going to do that high contraction, high release with your sidekicks. Okay. So, and what we're gonna do is we're going to go the opposite way of what the body would want to do. So normally when the leg comes forward, the body wants to kind of lean back to counterbalance the weight. So we're actually going to lean forward, hike, contraction, high release, and exhale in how this is a pulse. This is a long reach. Pulse, pulse, Longreach. Now really lift up your rib cage. Try not to let it sag and reach and exhale.

Inhale, exhale. Inhale tomorrow, x Hale. Inhale, last one, x Hale. Inhale, good. Reach your top arm by your ear. Stretch long. You're going to bend that top knee and find your ankles. Get a nice quad stretch here.

Bring it forward and stretch it long and sweep it back and reach good. Strive to keep [inaudible] the leg parallel to the floor the whole time. Good, Ben. Okay, bring it forward and stretch and reach. Now we're going to reverse it. Kick Front, catch the leg kick front, catch it bent, take it back and extend.

Good kick front catch, bend, reach and extend. Last one, kick front, catch, bend and reach. Nice lead Don. Coming down. Head in hand. You're going to turn out from your hip and we're just gonna do a little of kind of a developed pay pattern. So you're going to bend in, extend up, bring it down. This is two inhales, one next sale. Sure, sure. Two more. Sure.

Last one. Schriever still goes. Inhale. Exhale. She's good. One more for fun and yeah, sure. Let the arm come down. Let the legs come in, lined with the body.

You're going to lift both legs up and, and lift up and down. Two more here. Lift and lower. Lift and hold. Flex the feet. And we're going to do a scissor kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick and kick and kick and kick. Kick, kick, kick, kick feet together. And um, and then I'm just gonna ask you to come up to here again and take your, um, your bottom leg, uh, behind your, your top leg in front. We're just going to come up into a, into a plank here, side plank, and we're going to hold it for 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two and one. And then you're going to come into your side. Sit It [inaudible] position your arm, your left arm is out this way and your right arm is up here and the left arm is out there and we go over. Okay, this is a appalled Paul. Two three four, five, six good. Seven eight. This is a reach.

This is a twist. This is a fall and this is um, the twisted swan so you're not [inaudible] back and lift up. This is Fletcher. And then you round forward and arch and lift. Exhale forward. Inhale, exhale. Really let the spine almost kind of undulate here.

Lift and curve. Oh, let's do one more. Lift and curve. Good. Now this is a, this is a point in a reach with your top legs. You're just going to reach the top leg long and then pull it in like you mean it, reach it long and pull it in with conviction and stretch and answer. And in tumor stretch and in last stretch and in, you're going to go all the way up over to your mermaid, up over good and tall. You're going to take your top leg and cross it over the bottom and sit up straight. And if you need a little more, just hinge far, but don't round forward. Keep it, keep the spine straight and two more breaths.

Great. And you're going to flip over onto the other side. Elbow is aligned with the back of the Mat as well as the pelvis theatre. Forward Top, leg up, hip height, hand behind, and we flex with our high contraction. Here we go. Exhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale, exhale, inhale. Sure.

Sh Sh three months, two more. Reach left and hold in. Stretch. Good. Ben, the top leg. Grab hold of the ankles. Stretch the front of the thigh. Bring the knee forward, extend long. Keep the leg parallel to the floor as you stretch back and bend, find your ankles good. Bring it in. Stretch, sweep it back and bent forward.

Dredge and sweet back kick front. Catch the leg kick, front catch, bend, stretch. Oh, open, kick fight. Catch Ben. That's true. Open one more. Kick Front, catch, bend and reach and enjoy. And then bring the feet together. Come down here.

Good. We turn out and we'll just keep the feet pointed here. Bend, extend, and lower and reverse. Now it goes. Sorry. Shh, shh. Shh. Two more. Last.

Sure. Very good. Bring the legs back. Lay the head down. Good. Lift both legs up. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale, and again, lift and lower. Lifting. Hold. Flex the feet. Scissor, kick, run. Two, three, four, five, six, seven. Run, run, run, run, run, run and run and run. Run, run, run and run. Feet together and lower down. It sounds like, um, that, what is that? Oh, we have to go to our sidekick here.

Our side plank. Rather. We did our sidekick for now. Do I say plank? Here we are. 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one and down. And here we go into our side, mermaid position. Eight little pulses. One, two, three, four, five, six. [inaudible] an eight. It's up. Then you twist. Okay. And you fall.

And then you arch the back and really deepen the belly to round the back. So it's a lift and occur and a lift. Good and a curve tomorrow. Yes. Last one. And down. Staying down here.

You're going to extend your top leg reach and, and stretch, pull it and reach and again, do more. Stretch and in last one, stretch and in, and then come up and over and then cross the lake. Next you're going to lie on your backs low. Let's do heads that way. And uh, reach back and we'll just do 'em for these. We're just going to come right up into your teaser as best you can.

So you're gonna pull yourself up. Inhale, exhale, control down. And again, pull it up. Inhale and x, two more in here. Exhale, Lexan. We're to have a little surprise at the top. Inhale, lift. Now your right leg goes down. Inhale up and clap.

Left and clap. So this is one of our hello goodbyes again, and bye and clap left one and clap and lay it back and rise up one more time and come back onto your elbows. Where to circle the hips around. Circle around center. Circle around center. Inhale. Exhale. Nice work. Inhale. Exhale. One more each way. Very good.

And the last and center and come up. You're going to just flip over onto your tummies and reach your arms long and your legs long. We'll just go right into this. We'll do four to prepare so you can lift your right arm and left leg. And when I invite you to feel is that you're lifting your arm from your shoulder and you're lifting your leg from your, and then lower down. Then the other side. So you're again, you're just moving your limbs from your center and down and lift up and down and lift up. And I'm going gonna ask you to lift all your limbs up and swim. Here we go. Inhale. Exhale.

Inhale, exhale. Two more breaths. Inhale. Exhale. One more breath. Inhale. Exhale. From here you're going to come right up into a pushup position and make sure you're, I'm not kind of slightly rounded in your upper back and you're going to just bend and stretch Ben and stretch two more then and stretch, bend and stretch and come back and flip over. And you're going to cross your writing co over your left ankle. We're tall. This, um, this is a boomerang, um, modification or a variation.

And the difference is what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a little hinge with, it's got three. Um, it's got three little beats to it, so it goes hint, hint, hint, lift up. Then you're gonna roll back onto your shoulders. Switch feet come up, float the legs down in hinge two, three and up. Up and over. Switch feet come up, float, hinge, hinge, hinge, and straight. Up and over. Switch feet. Rise up and float down in hinge two, three, one more each side. Here we go. Go ahead and roll back. I'm going to watch switch meat. Come up, float down and hinge too.

Terrific and last. Roll it back. Switch feet. Rise up, float down, hinge to three and up. Good. From here, just bring your legs around. You're going to come into that little ball position again and rise up to standing. Good and make your Wii and we're just going to check our sideband. See, see if things have changed so you can take your right arm by your ear and you're going to take your pelvis away from center.

Hopefully there's a little more motion, a little more movement, a little more freedom, and come up and lift and bend to the side and back the center one more each way. We go up and for recenter yourself. Good. Lift up. The pelvis goes off center. Sure. And back to center. Now you are for upright citizens. Thank you. It was a pleasure.