St. Patrick's Day Mat

Hi everyone. [inaudible] happy St Patrick's Day. So I've got Arthur [inaudible] band. It happens to be green for the holiday color. I am Irish also. So let's have some fun a, we'll be doing overall body conditioning today. So you can start with your band on the floor, on your mat out in front of you.

And I want you to start at the kind of maybe middle of your mat. We'll do a few standing roll down. So just get yourself centered over your legs. Let's take a couple deep breaths. So we have the incredible, uh, we've got a lot of lot of wave action today. So let's try to stay focused on class, but also observe what's going on in the background. We're so blessed to have this.

So let's take a deep breath and raise the arm and exhale and just lower. Press the air down. Inhale and lift the air up and exhale and press the year down. A couple more. So I'm working a little bit the idea right away, creating some additional resistance with my body, my muscles, how they're pulling on my bones to fortify my bones. Okay, dude.

Nice roll down here to letting the head in the neck and the upper body and your middle back and coming all the way over. Take a deep breath in. Shift your weight forward slightly, making sure you're lifting those abdominals up away from your feet. And exhale as we roll back up, tailbone heavy down toward the heels. Restack come up nice and Tom and, and just add that arm gesture. Just makes sense today and exhale coming over.

Okay. Less thinking of gripping the ABS. Just more of like scooping them up. Maybe a softer work there. Um, start to feel like you're grounding your body down, kind of hips toward feet. So you're anchoring yourself. Rounding over, shifting the weight slightly over the ankles.

Inhale, exhale, roll Becca. Just getting some movement in the back, in the body. The last one, we'll stay down there. Inhale, bring it up and exhaling over. All right, so what I'm gonna do, guys, I need to step a little more forward. You stay where you are. You don't need to move. I do. And I want us to go up on propping up on your fingertips here. Look right at your knees and rise up on the balls of your feet.

Just lift the heels up and down. Let's do eight of those heels up, heels down. Now as you do the heel lift and lower, you may be rocking forward and back. That's fine. Just minimize it. Less rocking, more lift of the abdominals. Now they're lifting up away from our toes. You may be feeling the stretch in your hamstrings, way up high by your sitting bones. And that's what I was after. So we're staying up on this one. That's our eight. Now if you round your spine, focusing on the lower back, primarily kind of right in the lumber to the sake room and just round and hold.

So I'm not going all the way down to a full squat. I want to stay kind of in a little halfway zone cause my quads are having to work right now. If I let myself go all the way down, I'm a little out of the work, but uh, I don't want you to go out of it and then go up into straight legs. Hurry more of those. So we start with a heel lift. [inaudible] bending your knees towards your hands, your sacrum toward your heels. Hopefully you're feeling a little lengthening stretch of your lower back.

Pelvic tilt might be a good cue for you and then rise. Stretch your legs. Do more times. Lift [inaudible]. You have an advantage right now to look at your feet. Look at your foot alignment and I'm sure you're not rolling out on the outside edge of your feet. Hopefully you're staying evenly weighted across all 10 toes evenly.

I'm going to start adding something here. It's not too difficult, but see again, up in your legs, right? So you could actually kind of make a take, a little balanced check so you're not too low. Now take one leg and reach it behind you. Staying around back and just reach, extend from the hip to the heel. I want you to squeeze your glutes and just hold, hold, hold your abdominals are ready for you. Lift. Bring the leg in. Other side, lift and stretch that. I'm just getting into my body, getting into muscles. Squeeze those glutes and lift and whole and again, reach in. Squeeze two, three n n lift and reach to three and in four more times, maybe no lighter on your fingertips. Two and three and one, two, three, some fund balance and a good stretch in your legs. Two, three, last one, one, two and three. Okay. But your heels down. Let's pick up the band and slowly unroll to a standing position.

So I'm about to turn to face you. Okay? Valadez v and I want you to raise your band up and right in front of your chest, shoulder level, and a little wider than shoulder with flat palm. So let's start working on opening the chest and feeling your back muscles. And then easy to return.

[inaudible] so what I want you to think about with this, uh, keep your legs active is your inner thighs are still working and I'm doing it slow just so we can work on the concept of control also. And finally you can move the band open and close with similar quality with that makes some sense. Rather than a sudden, sudden it's just this nice, easy tempo. More might even think of a waltz, one, two, three and close to three and open to three and close to three and open and close and open and close. And then just rest your arms. So we'll add a little variation. So come again. Chest level wants you to pull on the band about half of what you just did.

So feel concentrate for a moment on the back of your shoulders. Kind of almost coming closer together. You're not gripping the Scapula, but you're thinking of your muscles coming toward one another, a little bit on your back. Take a diagonal and then the other diagonal come back to chest level. And then to soften the attention reached toward me. Reach forward. So we'll do that again. So we pull it open.

It doesn't matter which side you diagonal first because you switched them in diagonal and shoulder level. And as you returned forward, lift your abdominals a little bit more. Start to sense that you're creating a little more levity, possibly even just in standing, feeling those arms working and center and pull. Diagonal, diagonal center. Let's do four more. [inaudible] I just breathe naturally. I'm not setting a specific pattern. Concentrate in the back of your shoulders. Nice toned, strong rear shoulder muscles last to extend your legs are still active.

Your thighs being pulled up, your inner thighs toward one another. Last one, open, diagonal, diagonal. Now pause here. Let's rise up onto the balls of the feet just eight times one and two, a little higher maybe here three and four. I want you to keep your heels together, so don't let them go there.

Keep them together and seven and eight and down. All right, give your arms a little shake. One more round here. Getting into the upper body a little bit more into your upper back and the back of the shoulders. If your shoulders are ready, I'm going to take this band all the way behind my body down by my hips. If you're having a challenge with your shoulders, you just stay here and you do these. Okay? That's what I had to do for a really long time.

So then here going to pull the band, but I'm not going to rise my shoulders. I'm gonna try to keep the shoulders low, pull the band. I'm trying to reach the band back toward the water and then to my hips. So as they come back toward you, I have got to reach back with the band. It's a chest opener and this is shoulder stretch, eight of these. So we go up and back, reach the band back, reach your arm bones back, back then up and forward and down and lift.

So are your legs still active? They should be. I want you to feel like you're reaching your inner thighs towards each other, contracting them. Your heels are squeezed and you really don't have to pull on the band. Too much is there to facilitate a little bit more a stretch if you need it. So I'm not one that likes a Yank, right?

So I just think opening my chest is what's really stretching the band for me. Reaching the bones away from the body. I've got two more pretty sure and up open and reach back up in front. What I was just about to say is we're making sure you're not thrusting your ribs forward when it gets limited right there. If you're getting tired in your shoulders, that urge might be to thrust.

So try to minimize that. Okay? Adding on, roll your hand in the band so you shorten it, extend your arms behind you and instead of poems face back like this, turn, turn your palms in towards you. Make like a karate chop arm and just peel those shoulders back again. Let's do eight to 10 little karate chops and I want you to think of reaching down to go back down, to go back with your arms up through the top of your head. Legs are squeezed together. [inaudible] requires so much thinking, doesn't it? And back and back feeling strong.

Let's say last one and then we'll undo our hands from the karate chop. We've got one more chance to reach from the back all the way up and that should feel pretty good. Let's just shake for a second. All right, let's step out to second position and I want you to place your heels just a little wider than the outside width of your hips. And then take your band again into the kind of between your thumb and index finger. And then just kind of make a wrap around it. Something lying, bombs face up again and then wrap. Okay, so you can hold it as you wish, but here's the deal. Palms face down to do the exercise for right now, but let's think about the legs. I want you to activate your inner thighs.

I'm thinking of pulling that edge of the mat toward me. This edge of the mat in. So I've got good legs underneath my pelvis. No locking, no arching your back. So active. All right, you're going to need that I think. So raise your arms up if this is too narrow. If you're sure shoulders feel too bound up, you just unwrap and calve your arms wider. Okay. Lateral side bends.

So lift your body side, bend to one direction and lift right back up. Keep your arms lifted. Spine goes up and over. Spine goes over and up. Your legs are active. Lift side, bent up and center. You may have to, each time you come back to the center, just drop your shoulders. It's kind of easy for those shoulders to stay in elevation. So you work on keeping them low. Let's do four more.

You can go a little further. If your spine is ready. [inaudible] actively bringing your inner thighs toward that midline. It helps to create some stability cause this is not stable when you do side bends, maybe. Okay, I'm going to add on to that. So it starts with the side bend over. Now you get to pivot. Lift that one. Heel pivot. Your Body will come upright.

Make some adjustments if you need to. You're so you're square to your sidewall. Pull on the band gently. As you do a little lunch, you don't have to go very low. I'm going to go down neon mat. I'm going to rise re-pivot and find that side. Ben, use your inner thighs to help you feel stable. Over heel pivot. Make some adjustments. Pull on that band a little bit as you've been that knee down and rise. Re-Pivot and reach. Do you have it?

So we're going to go a little more flow and over. Lift and stand. Side Band and center. Side band, pivot, lunge, lift. I'm going to do that again for us and over pivot center, lunge and side bend and up. I'm trying to be musical but it's not working over Lyft and here and lunch cause it's in a six count really over side. Now let's add a little to it.

Lift inside, bend, pivot to the side. We're doing four lunches guys. Down, up. I'm focusing the rise with my front leg using the front leg. That glute push. Yeah, push and then come back to your side. Bend Center, sidemen other way, pivot.

Adjust for lunges down this, that front leg three, one more round of the, of the pattern to both sides. Now that we've really got the choreography and go for stretch, pivot. Let's see. Add a little extra arm up because we can and arms and through your body works more anyway because you're getting more movement and side bend in her thighs. Last one over. Pivot and arms up and arms up and lift.

I'm just lightly pressing on on the band side. Bend and lift, and now we can lower the arms. Release your hands and we're going to find our way down to the mat. Nothing fancy. Just come on down. All right, so moving into some floor work. Put the band right over both feet. Palladio's V and let's go ahead and roll back.

Raise your legs up and you might need to take a second here. I want to make sure that you have some theraband on this side of your toes. Okay, I'm cooling off my feet, uh, on this side of your, because you need, if you don't, they're just going to fall off. Just I think you trust me. Okay. Now let's try for to for three different things. Keep your elbows on the floor as you bend your knees. You could do this, you could bend your knees and have your knees between the theraband to do some foot work. But I don't know if that's enough challenge. Really.

I want you to find more work in your external rotators. So with your elbows on the mat, okay. You have to pry open your knees. You have to turn out more. It's really occurring from your hip joint. You're going to need that in a few minutes. More of that turnout.

So use this as a preparation. So here we go. Amy is going to be quiet, bend, stretch, knees around that band and stretch down. And if this is feeling too easy with your arms like this, open them out here. You just kind of miss that reference of knees wide around the band. But you already did it. So you're already there. Three for Atta CIESLA for little extra work one too. And I, these are your legs are just really going vertical. You could stay with that or do one more set of four with your legs going on the diagonal too.

So that whole set of four stuff is going to happen from a parallel leg. So come all the way in parallel knees inside the band first I'm pressing through the balls of the feet and unless just come up one knees inside the band too. You could do this for the whole thing. Three. Okay. And for okay or out one too. And pressing the balls of the feet up into that band. Arms wide using those rear shoulders, cause we already did it. Standing there, ready for it. Chest lift and one, two, three and four.

And then you guess that legs are going to go on the diagonal, pushing the balls of the feet, arms reaching wide out, using those strong shoulders. Three and four come all the way in. One more place is the heels, heels, heels. Now you've got your toes exposed, your Rigo knees parallel and we press up. One want you to think of pushing the ceiling up off the walls of your room, from your glutes up to your heels and four arms out if you want to. One, two, notice how wide your chest can feel there. Hopefully for chest lift if you want to, one too should be a neutral pelvis. Three and for and legs lower. If you want to. One, they're gonna go there in the next exercise anyway. Three and for as you come in, just rest your hands on your knees. Okay, now I'm making a choice right now because I know the size of my band. Um, it's a little on the short side.

I'm going to move my hands to the very end of it. Just taking out the rest of that tail away and making a fist around it. I want to put my hands knuckles to knuckles and bring yourself to chest lift. So double leg stretch. Inhale, circle slowly coming in. I don't want you to come in fast because it snaps. You win.

Work on controlling, pulling deep into those abdominals. If this is not fun for you and your neck, I wouldn't be too surprised, but you could do the whole thing with your head down and just kind of minimize your angles of pool. Okay, I'm going to do four more though. I'm going to go for it. Reach open and in man, reach open and end last to reach. Open and in right. Use that band.

Really push it into it and in. Okay. Make a dead bug. So, uh, that was my fist with my thumb is kind of facing head level or head direction. I'm going to turn my knuckles this way. Knuckles to knuckles like Ram heads. Okay. Now my thumbs are facing each other. So double leg, lower lift with your arms and dead bug. Reach out for three, two, one and slowly bring those legs up again. I want you to think like you're scraping that window with your heels and then as you rise up, toes over your head, toenails going over out to three. You may have to really tap into the lats to support your neck position and feel free to do all of this without the band if it's feeling icky to more two, three and toenails over your head. And last one, one, two. Feel those strong. We are and lift, release. Pretty Fun. Okay, keep this nearby.

I'm just going to go here. Let's give our arms a break. We've been pulling on that thing for awhile and using lots of ranges. So I'm going to have us take our legs up externally. Rotate against. If you take your hands on your thighs and rotate, it's like I want this inner thigh to go over here. This one to come over here ish and flex the feet.

Okay. Now put your hands back inside your inner thighs and squeeze your legs together. So I'm also squeezing my hands together. I want your shoulders open now let's come back to that feeling in descemet right now you're going to open. Hands are going to help you get more rotation and open.

Let's come up in four counts. We have one, two, three, four open, and one, two, three, and four. Resists with your hands. Two, three, four. Open. Two, three, four. You get the idea with the slow tempo. Think about really the hands are helping facilitate more of that external rotation of your thighs. Okay, and open. Let's do it in two counts.

We have one do open, open, squeeze, squeeze. Control the open. The hands are there for resistance instead of the band who are magic circle. You've got your arms to help. We're going to do four more into counts. One to open to one to open and two and lift. Use those inner thighs guys and up and hold.

Now parallel and just relax your legs for a minute. Okay? Find that band. That was a short break, Huh? With it? Now you don't have to do anything fancy. It's just right in the cricket. The thumb again, just like a nice little uh, holding place. Legs back up. Externally, rotate just softly, softly, softly stretch the band by using the sides of your shoulders and your upper.

Okay, we're going to do leg changes. So what I mean, the beats beat beat. Just keep doing this with me for a minute. So you're crossing your inner thighs, cross cross. It's like braiding hair. You've got a really tightly braid. Pull it in and in and in and in. So that's what's going to happen. But you're doing two and then open. It looks like this. We do cross, cross, open, cross, cross, open, cross.

So easy breezy. You can also do this with your chest lift and up, up of course, a little more work. [inaudible] you can also pull in your band a little more and open, open there and cross and cross and open. Cross and cross and open inner thighs. Let's go for more in this pattern stretch with control and up, up and open and up, up and open and bring them together. For a minute. Just take a neck pause.

So let's add something. We're going to keep those beats going. It's kind of get it going. And I want to bring my chest up to chest lift. I want to do eight of these crosses while I lower the legs. One, two, three, five, six and seven. Eight up for eight, two, three, four. When I do the legs, I'm gonna take my arms behind me. One, two, three, four, five, six. Getting long in the body. One, two arms. Come up. Five, six, two more patterns and cross do some coordination.

Six and seven and eight and three and six in one more. Set in one, five, six and seven and stretch in one to four. And I need a little break in my neck. Okay. Come on down. Get just relax for a second. So scissors up we go. Turn out. Just start your scissors. One leg down, one leg down, one leg down and opposite. Arms go up. Straight up.

Little pull on the band. Chest lift up here. We going for like that one and two and three and four. And this'll be interesting. The leg that goes down, you pull that arm on that diagonal just like we warmed up with earlier and diagonal, diagonal, diagonal, and I had no, keep going guys. Exhale. Exhale, exhale. I'm going to just take this four more and then we'll add a helicopter, two and three and four, but let's go like this. Bring your chest down. Let's do the legs first. So helicopter is one lane four with one leg back.

Why you are already there a minute ago. Keep it spiraling. They come up, whatever came up, goes down around so you can see them kind of layering all these things. First, phase, second phase, et Cetera, et cetera. Legs first, then the chest and arms, et cetera. Okay, so let's keep that going. Arms go up. Let's go one of each and we'll add chest lift with one of each. Here we go. And [inaudible]. No, we'll add the diagonal deal.

This'll be fun and send that diagonal scissor yet around [inaudible] center. I can see why she did it. And extend and pull and reach and one more of those each side and reach like you're inside a big ball. Kinda touching the circumference of the rim of the ball. Last one, open and out. Alright, my coordination felt a little challenged there. I hope yours did. Let's come up. Okay, so, so leper comes or kind of mischievous.

I think maybe that's what this is about. I'm not sure. So guys, we're going to put our band across our foot once again, have a little bit of um, who at the top of it there. Oh right thigh work, hip flexor work. It's important. So we've worked quite a few things in our body right now. We're gonna work our thighs parallel. Accentuate your heel for a moment. Pull your toes towards your knee.

But I don't want you to do that and do watch my knee. That is hyper extension. And that's not what this exercise is about. The exercises almost for controlling that hyperextension. So I want you to reach through your heel but not jam the back of the knee. Now they, it's a really important thing.

Your knees will be very happy that way. Okay. Now options with your arms here. Easy here. More shoulders. I'm going to do at my chest like I'm rowing on the reformer and I'm just doing four straight leg lifts. One down. We shouldn't say just the idea here is to not lose your back position and that's not really going to do much for us right now. Lift up.

Even if you just barely lift your leg off the mat, you're doing more beneficial work for yourself. Okay, now do it in turnout. It's now inner thigh. Again, you're thinking they've already had enough, but no they haven't. Three, four. You've got two more. Keep on reaching out through that heel. Okay. Now let's turn back to parallel to add a little, oh, I'm sorry. Stay turned out. I forgot one lift up. Now it's an attitude. Bend your knee. If you can have your heel on the same line as your naval, that would be great.

And extend four more, three more. I mean, and stretch bend. You'll get to do more. Don't worry. Bend and stretch and then take it parallel and down. So the pattern will look like this. Now up rotate. Bend, straighten, parallel down. It's a lift. Rotate knee out to the side. Straight.

Parallel down. Two more patterns and then we have a little extra, Huh? And turn whole. The attitude. Polls this up. We do eight, seven. It's not so easy. Three, four, four, three, two, one. Stretch, parallel, leg down. Round your back. Give it a little rest. We do our other side, Ms Gvs little thing. Okay, good for your legs.

Find your pose, your position. Reach through your heel. No locking, hyper extended knee. Your back is tall. We lift just for basic lifts. Use your thigh muscle. Use Your hip joint muscle. Use your belly. Use your back, not your throat and down. And last one in there. Rotate it four times. We go up. I'm thinking of reaching my leg forward.

Forward on the up and the down. Keep it up there. Bend the knee, straighten the knee, bend the knee out to the side. We did that earlier in that lying flat on the mat bed and two, I'm shaking. Three, lift up tall and four. Okay, now we've got that pattern so we parallel lift, rotate, bend, stretch, back to parallel down. [inaudible] always go up a little more in the spine. So tempting to do a little, huh? When you're tired, but fight through that strong postural muscles leads to a very healthy spine.

Up and hold. Here we got the pulses. I'm thinking I'm a heel going up to, oh, I know what I can say. There's a little leprechaun would part of gold on the heel lifted up and three and four extend parallel and down release round. We're almost done guys. Let's find our way up to standing. And you can probably just keep your band in your hands or if you're tired of it, you don't have to use it for this part. So we've done quad, we've done a lot of inner thigh. We didn't do a ton of hamstrings. That's okay.

But no, we're going to work on lateral hips more on the side. Okay. And some balance. So beat together. Please do a very small knee bend real small, but your body stays upright. No hindering this way yet. And see if you can lift one foot.

It's not as easy as we think. Okay. Requires a lot of ankle stability. Now [inaudible] push your heel to the side. It's like you're going to skim your heel. I'm just not going to use this heel. Skims right along the surface of the mat.

I just got an image of silk for some reason that the heels sliding across silk. Let's take it four more times. So I'm choosing to let go of the band. That's all right. We don't need it. Slide, slide, slide. Keep it out here. Now lunge to it. I am gonna move my arms at this way. Lunge over, push from this hip and put the leg up to the sky.

So it's going to go one. I'll do eight of them. Ben, push up. Whoa. And over and up to know how to put your brakes on. I almost didn't do it right. And so you'll notice now I am adding a forward to hinder the torso speed.

Skaters get low lift. Last one. Everybody up down and then just find your way in. Okay. Other side, little bend released, one foot, the other foot, and that foot's flexed. I'm going to keep my ribbon hip alignment. Slide your heel across the silk.

You could skim your mat if it's not a sticky mat. Concentrating on the stillness of your ankle or the challenge of stillness in your ankle. For more heel side, glute heel side hip. Two more. Ready? We're going to stay off their arms that lunge to it and one push lunge up, down, lift down, lift, lunge, rise. I'll get it.

I promise down. One more or less. Try to balance. Cool. No, I want you to put your hands just out of your pelvis. We're going to go to the side, open lunge, and we're going to stay nice and low. We are going to just do a little speed skater.

Wow. Wow. Just do a little bit more pushing from lateral hips. Okay, so I'm going to count down from 10 here. Starting now we have one, two, three. What the heck you could do this. Four and five. Six stay low. Seven. Eight. I think we deserve a little stretch and nine and 10 we'll stay here. Very traditional turn. Let's put her knee down.

[inaudible] get low. Reach out, lift. You can put your hand together. Squeeze that back. Lift your chest up with that chest. If that chest lift that chesty low in this stretch, it's that chest. I'm trying to create a little rainbow arc. There we go.

With a little leprechaun theme and down the pot of gold at the other side and stretch. Okay. Easy breezy guys. Other side, come on down it low without falling off your raised mat reach. Enjoy what you've done. Enjoy the work that you felt in your arms, your inner thighs, your thighs and hip joints and open [inaudible]. Step forward, round up. Let's just take one more of those.

Nice big reaches up the last one. Press the Arrow down and I want to thank everybody for joining me for class today.