Foam Roller Connections

Let's go ahead and start. And uh, if you don't have a foam roller, a nearby when I give you one here, wow. I think the one on Saturday morning I teach to who's here, so we will see, yeah, could be a little more, it could be a little less. Uh, and so today's prop days you see foam rollers and we'll do a little magic circle also. But what I'd like to do is start on a foam roller and let's go ahead and start on our back is safe way to get down to the roller. Put your pelvis at one end and slowly roll yourself down so that making sure your head is on the roller. You definitely don't want your head hanging back off the back end. All right.

[inaudible] and then I'm what I'm, I'm just gonna check real quick too on some, uh, alignment. So we do want our feet parallel. Sitz bones with the part is we would start normally right, and the rollers do move around so you have to navigate on them. All right, so let me just check in here. We, sometimes we think we're there but we're not. This is the advantage of being, you know, in class rather than not in class. And I can check to see if you're in alignment.

Bring your feet forward a little bit more. Okay. All right. Now if you haven't done a lot of foam roller work, be patient though. The challenge of course with it in many ways is the stability and the balance challenge that is provided. So we want our feet, again, parallel and Sitz bones with the part you got to come in narrower here. There we go. Yeah. All righty. And what we'll start with guys is just some easy breathing.

We want everybody to take a nice inhale through their nose. Just feel the exhale, contract your abdominals. Inhale as you fill up the ribs and exhale, feel that stomach area flatten and again, full breath in. So what I'd also like to, as we're getting kind of warmed up into the movement, uh, the roller will also can sometimes highlight your lumbar curve and when you're flat on the regular mat, when we say that cue of imprinting, it is easier for us generally to feel our lumbar touch the mat, not as easy up on this roller. Uh, so some it's been, you know, on occasion, sometimes after doing a roller class, people will comment that their back has felt a little bit too. They got a little too much work in the low back area.

So if you know that going into class right now, I'm gonna give you the option of slightly keeping your pelvis tilted just a little bit so that your low back is in contact with your roller. Okay. However, to strengthen that lumbar curve, which is our natural curve, you can, you don't have to push it all the way into the roller, but either way, we do want to deeply condition the abdominals. So, okay. I hope that makes sense. And with different exercises, you're going to feel more context than, than not. All right. So let's take another breath together. We're going to start moving on an exhale. Raise your right leg to tabletop. So you're just moving from the hip joint.

Inhale, as you lower that leg down, the goal is stability and control. Exhale, the left side. Ah, inhale. As we lower paying attention, exhale as you raise your left leg or right leg, excuse me, to table tabletop. Inhale lower. Okay. Paying attention that the abdominal muscles state inward. There's a reflex. Sometimes it'll kick in. The belly will pop out or push.

We want to contract that and go the other way. Pull the ABS in so royally. Let's inhale. Lower. Exhale, left leg. Inhale lower. Okay, so the exhale precedes the movement. Here we go. It's like it gives us permission to move. Exhale, so you feel that stability. Then the movement. Inhale. As we lower, let's do a couple more. Each sights.

You're moving right from the hip joint, keeping your foot relatively relaxed. The rib muscles engaged so you're not letting them ribs arch up. That's an area as well to keep imprinting. Okay, and lower. Let's do one more single leg lift and inhale lower. Last time on the left, exhale and inhale and coming down. Okay. Let's take that a little step farther, harder or challenging.

I'd like us to bring your feet all the way together, knees all the way together, and just notice that might make you feel like you're swerving a little left and right. Um, choices. You can keep your hands down on the mat. I would suggest not to push too heavily into the hands so that you might, that might create some tension in your neck and shoulders. Uh, for those of you who've done the roller work, feel pretty balanced. Go ahead and let your elbows stay down, but raise your forearms in your hands up and just near near your body. You can even just put your hands lightly on your ribs. Okay.

If you don't like that choice, again, just keep the hands down. So on the exhale, we're bringing both legs up at the same time. Let's breathe in together. Start that exhale, bring those legs up and hold yourself there. Inhale and again, we're going down on the exhale. Get into those stomach muscles, the stabilizing muscles and lower the weight of the legs. Inhale, prepare, and again, start the exhale. Then the legs are free to float up to tabletop. Inhale, move from those hip joints. Exhale and low stability in the core.

Inhale from the hip joints and pull the legs up. Inhale, hold. Exhale, Anil, lower two more times. So this might be waking up your stabilizing abdominal wall more than just doing this regularly on the map. It's happening because we're our body's fighting for being a steady, so lots of layers and lots of sections of muscle are alerted right now and turning on. It's kind of exciting and exhale. Here we go and pull them up. I'd like us just to stay there and then open the knees just a little bit.

Sometimes we on the reformer, we'll call that position the frog. My heels are still touching. The toes are pointing out. My elbows are resting on the mat. My abdominals are very active. I'd like us to do four frogs on an exhale. Push your heels out, kind of a slight diagonal out and up. Inhale as you bring your legs back in. So think of the action starting at the hip, then through the knee and out through your heels, Beth, staying on your roller. Inhale, bring them in.

We may have to do five. Exhale and press and for the diagonal of the ceiling, wall connection. Inhale coming in. How are we doing? Any money rolling off yet. Exhale and press. Inhale, return, exhale and press all that air out, flattened, flattened, flattened and inhale coming all the way in. I'd like us to close the knees and then just carefully set one foot down than the other and you can stand there with your feet separated again.

Yes, it's bones with the part. Okay, we'll get back to that area in a little bit. Let's go into the shoulder girl for a few things. So arms straight up everybody to the ceiling, palms facing in. And we do these often the the shoulder blade movement. So right now if we all let [inaudible] reach the arms, you know generously to the ceiling, just reach retreat.

Notice how those shoulder blades move forward. There are not on the roller any longer. There is, you're spreading your upper back. That might feel good. Hopefully it feels good to stretch that area. Now if you drop the shoulder blades kind of percussively, boom. Yeah, like puppet, puppet arms.

That's how I learned this puppet arms and we reach up, hold, hold, hold. Now a, you drop kind of too heavily and we inhale, you reach, exhale, you feel the weight of those bones falling against this side of the ruler to stimulate the musculature up there. Again, inhale, lengthen and exhale lynch. Inhale, stretch. [inaudible]. Exhale n one more. Eat a with that inhale, checking in. Exhale, drop. So one arm only inhale. Now when you take one arm, the spine and the ribs kind of want to start rotating a little bit.

Try to avoid that. So when I reach my right arm up and I really go for the highest reach possible, I feel my left abdominal wall catch kind of turns on to help me so that I don't roll it out. So you know I'm not going to roll too far that that that is helping us stabilize. Okay. Then that shoulder blade is going to drop. So the other arm, same thing. Reach it as high as you can. Stay steady on your feet.

Try not to roll to the other direction and exhale you drop right arm. Inhale and exhale. Shoulder and left arm reach and exhale drop. I'm going to take a look. Keep going at right arm and heavily drop and the left arm and drop. Pretty stable guys. Right arm and exhale, drop.

Good left arm last time there and drop. Okay, great. Well actually a couple more. So this is her arm. We do this regularly, and Matt, I'm going to have you take your right arm down by your hip, left arm, back, or up towards your ear. So the arm that goes up, we're looking, we're getting a stretch in that lap, but I also want you to pull that shoulder blade down toward the hip so it's active. Okay? It's not, you're not shrugging that shoulder to the neck. All right, that's that scissor arm stretch. Now both arms paths over the chest, right arm comes up by the ear. There's a rhythm that the shoulder blade does. It pulls down as the arm reaches back. We want to find that rhythm. Inhale, arms up and exhale. Left arm back.

Inhale both up. So a couple of you I know are what probably thinking can I get a little more challenge, Amy? Just still something. Maybe I'm going to invite you to lift your heels. You'll kind of be standing on a little tiptoe. Inhale, arms pass. Exhale, right arm up, left arm by your hip.

In good. Inhale, both arms center. Concentrate on the work in the sides of the back and the belly is nice. Often described as our, you know, powerhouse or Palladio's muscles, the abdominals, the lats. I'm even starting to feel a little bit in my hamstrings as my heels are up. Inhale, arms up. Let's take this our last one guys and right arm back.

Alright, now both arms up to this ceiling. Palm still facing each other. You can stay up on tip toe if you'd like to keep safe in your back. If you're feeling any low back tension, go ahead and just tuck your hips a tiny bit. Let's do some chest stretching. So I'd like us to open the arms wide, not all the way to the floor, just wide. You can just hold your balance there. So right off of our sternum, her breastbone. Yes, those chest muscles.

We want to broaden them out into the shoulders, out into the biceps, even down through the fingertips. Let's make that an inhale. On the exhale, the arms are coming back up, engaging the chest. Arms will stop at shoulder width. We'll do a total of five. So we've got four more. Hey, tad, lower your arms a little bit. Yes, here we go. Inhale, open. Receive that space. And exhale we close and in a, that's okay. She'll smack you back and exhale and close.

Now can you activate your abs a little more on the exhale? So it's not just a passive kind of flopping of the arms and open and close. This should be very work, extremely working. You know your abs. Exhale and close. So that probably was five, but we'll go one more time. Inhale and exhale. Let's close. Okay. Lower your heels.

Lower both arms, bring your ankles and knees back together. We're gonna do a little opposition and we're still dealing with the feet. So guys, take a breath to get ready. I'm going to have us lift the right leg and left arm at the same time. Here we go. Exhale. So it's a little cross crawl, oppositional movement. Inhale as you lower.

Exhale, right arm. I think I just did the wrong thing. I did. I did the opposite of you. And Go ahead and lower down. Did I say left arm first? Yes, I did say left arm first. Okay, thank you. Left arm, right leg boy. Talk about brainwork. Inhale and lower. It caught me and right arm, left leg, but you know, keep going. What's interesting? Well forget it.

I'll tell you later. Exhale. Left arm. Right leg. Inhale. As we lower, tap into the stability. Move. Slowly try to stabilize that movement. It's looking good though. Inhale, that's come down. Exhale. Just once again, each side and yeah. Huh?

Inhale as you lower. Good work. Exhale and lift and inhale as we lower and let's rest. Okay guys, now go ahead again. Separate the feet and I'm going to change my mind on that. So I was going to go somewhere. Let's roll off to the one side, either side, just enjoy the flat mat for a moment. Ah, I love that. Never. It never gets old for me. I love that feeling. I can just drop down into the ground. Okay.

But we're not done with the roller. Of course. What I want us to do now is come on up to sitting, just turn it sideways and then bring yourself up so that you're starting with your vertical. Sit. This, the rollers gonna come right to the back of your pelvis. This being the Sacrum, okay. And then this rule, the uh, ruler up toward kind of the, or actually our body's gonna roll. Now have you go to right at the base tips of your shoulder blades.

You should be able to locate those with those bony landmarks. Okay? And let's just start seated for a second. Knees bent feed in line with our sits bones. And let's have our hands behind her head. We are going to do a little bit of abdominal work here.

So if we are taking that lead as we extend our thoracic spine, we're not, it's definitely not a drop of the head back. All I'm doing is kind of trusting that roller and pressing my upper back onto it slightly. That's an inhale. Now the exhale is going to come from those upper abdominals. Push those in and flex the spine. I want us to get our chin down a little bit so we're rounding through here.

Okay, and again, inhale as we Lincoln Bat. Now be careful on Tad, your hips are down. Keep it down. Yeah, that's okay. You know what's coming. I think exhale and we curl. So we want to engage the abdominal muscles. Inhale, we lengthen back. It didn't exhale and curve I think of pushing into that roller. Inhale, still working the abdominal, so I haven't let that go that I'm almost working harder on going over and exhale and push in three more times. Inhale and exhale.

Ah, two more. Inhale. Exhale. Hold on for one second. Just stay where you are. See if you can see the difference. Something here. Okay. I'm going to show two things because I've seen two things. One, I'm a little worried about for your neck health, okay, you did do see that making it rather obvious, be very careful to do a head movement. All right. I know I'm strong enough to be able to show that the wrong way and not be worried about myself, but it's not the head. It's the spine that's moving.

Let's try one more like that. Okay. Be a little careful. We don't want whiplash. We want abdominal work and exhale and pull in when we're trying to make a little c curve in the mid spine. Let's hold right there. Take a breath. Stay curled. Now the right leg is going to come up to tabletop one. Inhale, set it down. Curl a little higher. Exhale the left side up. Inhale, you're trying to curl a little high.

Guys get so you're not relying on the roller as much. Now exhale, curl. Good, so g and lower and exhale left curve and lower. Let's just do two more. Each side. Exhale from the hip and down and from the hip and down. Try something for me. Blue from your hip rather than your knee, hip and down and from your hip, you probably didn't know what you were doing. Okay. And then just, uh, go. Now we can go into more of a thoracic extension. Chest stretched.

Please do. Keep holding onto your head and then open those elbows guys. And you know the weight of the head is being held by those hands. I'm going to have you look just up to the ceiling. Still focus on the abdominal muscles. You haven't let that go. Definitely not a pop out of the navel. Okay.

And if this doesn't feel good in your head and neck or back, you just stop. We're only going to take three breaths as a group. Inhale. Just two more. Last one, curl up, put one hand on it or on the mat and get yourself out of there. Okay, now just we're going to do a couple of roll ups with the roller.

Let's start seated up. Moving my microphone here and then just hold your roller on the ends. Alright. Find your c curve position. So the crown of your head reaching ahead of the roller. That's agreed to do three of these. So inhale and exhale.

Here we go to round the lower back. Feel free to bend your knees if you need to articulating that spine. And then again, getting yourself all the way long without an arch in your back and begin to roll up. Inhale, arms, chest, exhale and rounding through to the crown of the head. Following that rover, keeping the abdominal moles pulled back. Inhale and again, exhale. Anyone want more challenge? You could keep the ringer, the roller higher above you as you roll back. Cool. Okay. Inhale, exhale en.

Oh keep rounding. Rounding, rounding, running low tummy in. Here we go. Easy. Neck and shoulders. Breathe. Rounding back bone by bone. Alright, one more is going to get us up to the top and we start up and over and then go ahead and let the raw ring roller. Gosh, I'm calling it a ring cause I'm looking at my other prop and let your head come down. Get a good stretch.

Okay, what I'd like us to do now, what's your feet or your roll it out in front of you. Your feet are going to go on that the arches of the feet, it's gonna be fine. Hips forward. Okay. Rollback. Yes. A bridge. And yes, you're about to feel your hamstrings quite a lot. So monitor if you need to. All right, so starting in that level, pelvis, arms long by your sides and space between your feet and your knees. Everybody take a breath in now, the exhale articulating your spine. So again, you're starting at that tailbone, lumbar spine and curve, making sure that you don't Thrace those ribs out.

You may start just kind of halfway up. You don't have to go all the way up. This first one, take your breath, exhale and roll down. Trying to keep that a roller. Very steady articulating down to your sacrum and tailbone. Did you cramp up? Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it?

Inhale and exhale and articulate. So if you cramped, oh, there it goes again. I was gonna say, it might just be with you. You might just have to, yeah, just hold on and stretch your hamstring out. Take a breath. Oh Gosh. X Sail, an articulate upper back, middle back, lower back. Coming down to the mat. We're all the way at level pelvis. Again, inhale, exhale, and articulate. No, let's just stay here. All right. What I'd like you to do is, believe it or not, it's a f. I want you to try to flex your feet. What'll happen is the Achilles tendon is going to stretch.

My role are moved toward me a little bit. If I think about pointing my feet, my ankles extend and the roller moves forward. Feel free to hold your pelvis with your hands if you'd like to. So there's a rocking of the roller toward you. That's a calf stretch, Achilles' stretch, and then point reaching in a way. Let's say inhale, flex, and exhale point. How are we doing? Two more times. Inhale, flex. I told you we're gonna feel your hamstrings. I warned Ya points and last time for Lex and appoint, find a neutral foot or level foot. Take a breath and return to the mat.

Upper back. Pull those ribs down, pull the lumbar spine to the mat, anchor your tailbone, and then just go ahead and give yourself a little hug. Straighten your knees slightly. Just let that hamstring area stretch a tiny bit. Yeah, that's a pretty big one. Okay. But I warned you so I can't say I didn't bring it. Okay guys, let's come up to a a, we're going to do another, well w put our shins on this roller. Okay.

So it's in the front support family of exercises. Hm. I want you to start on weight on your hands, which are shoulders over wrists and then your knees or mid Shins on the roller. Okay. Check this out. And ideally we would be like if we were regular, all fours, hands and knees.

So bring the roller under you a little bit more or towards you or backup. Yeah. So you want our knees just directly down from our hip joint. A little more so perfect that reach your hips back. [inaudible] there. There's your start. There's your start. Okay, got it. Now shoulders engaged in the lats engaged you guys. We're going to do some rounding back or round back work on the reformer.

It's kind of the um, knee stretch round back. Similarly. It's not quite the same on the on here, but yeah, let's take a breath on the exhale. Contract your abdominals and round your back. Pull your spine, get to ceiling and think of rolling that roller toward you just a little bit because you're pulling with your abs. Now inhale as you roll the ruler back and kill more into your level spine. Exhale as you pull your tummy, drop your heads please. Yes, pull that tailbone under pubic bone too on your forehead.

Inhale and reaching it back. Exhale again and curve. So it's that dynamic from the tummy. Yes. Inhale, as you lengthen back into level spine, and again, exhale, seal. As you're doing these a curves of your spine, try to keep the shoulders relatively relaxed. You know the laps are of course, quite active. Inhale, go back into level spine. Exhale and pull tail under. So try to fill this space up even more right here.

And inhale, lengthen. And just one more time everybody and exhale and contract and inhale, lengthen. Rest just for a second. Find a way that to rest. That makes sense for you. Okay, good. Now I'm going to have this go into a little bit of a pushup work or plank work. You could also just hold a plank line. So where I'm thinking, uh, for most of us you want to go up also, it might be like girl pushups, sorry, Tad. You can do real pushups of course. But something like this line.

Okay. Let's just see what that feels like. Okay. Happily I can tell this Lisa's favorite exercise right here. All right. Yeah. So yes, if you're turning your knees, you just do it without the, absolutely. You don't have to do it on the ruler. Okay. So what I'd like to do, we'll go three to five pushups. You don't even, yeah, I'm going to think a little bend of the elbows and Exhale, caress.

Inhale and press. Hold that roller. Steady. Inhale. [inaudible] once again. Inhale. How are we doing ladies? Okay. Walk your hands back.

Get off that roller for a second and just shake your wrists. Okay, so a little more than with the roller. And we're going to do a few ring ring exercises. So come back around. Hmm. And this set up. Again, the roller will be right at your sacrum, so if you pull it toward you, that bony landmark that you intersect is the sacred. We're going to go back over it now. We do lift the hips, your shoulders and head. Come back onto the mat.

Okay. Yeah. Feed are separated. Again, shoulder with the part. I'm going to let you decide where you would like to put your hands. You could hold the roller if you'd like to. You could put your hands, your abdominals, and your hips. You can put 'em on the mat where it feels comfortable.

What I want us to do with just this set up is work your abs for a second. Okay, so let's take a breath together. As you exhale, just like that beginning warm up, really draw this in and feel very taught in that midsection. Inhale again, you can let go of it a little and exhale and you're really feeling the energy and strength in your midsection. Inhale one more time and then as you exhale, raise one leg, then the other, and then we're going to go into a little scissor work. So if you can take those legs straight up to the ceiling. What I know about doing this, it's um, the, the abs like to get a little lazy because there's a kind of maybe a little feeling of, oh good, this is holding my body weight and this gets a little little lazy, which makes more of the arch in the low back. We don't want that excessive arch.

So that's what we've got to really keep the tummy working firmly okay to protect that and assholes also to strengthen. So I'd like everybody to take the right leg toward their chest, left leg forward, but not all the way to the Max. Just stay right there feeling like you can square this right hip, that right sit bone, reaching out to the other opposite end of the Mat. Inhale, both legs come up and exhale the other side. Inhale both legs coming up and exhale and switch inhaler. So if anybody wants to go farther, I guess you can just don't want you to overstretch the hamstrings.

A couple of you that have some Tinder, hamstrings, work knee, more your stomach if you are feeling tender in the hamstrings. If you're feeling okay, we can push it a little bit. Exhale, I'm going to go for bigger scissor. It feels good to me to open up this hip and to let that hamstring stretch. Exhale and open. Inhale, lift. So on the leg that goes down, can you squeeze that dairy air a little bit?

Inhale him. So the back of the leg is active, your hamstring in your low glute or actively helping them pull your leg down. Inhale up, exhale and reach. Inhale up. [inaudible]. Exhale and lengthen and inhale up. We'll do one more. Each side looks good. You guys exhale. Stomach is working and lift. Exhale and over. And uh, okay. Now, um, let's see what happens with this.

It's called the helicopter. I'm kind of thinking that one of you, Samantha or Tad may have to Samantha move forward a tiny bit. Okay. These long legs that you own. Yeah. Okay. So the the helicopter go it really, we're working more of the rotation in the, the hip joint with this exercise. Very Fun. Uh, I think so. Take the scissor again, right leg towards your chest.

Left leg forward. Okay. Now let's go ahead and open the leg. I'm going to have this thing right leg is going to arch to the right, left leg arcs to the left. You kind of, you're okay. What kind of bypass this open view or straddle position and then continue going around until now you're back in the opposite scissor. Your left is over you. Your right is a way. Right now we go the other way. Just take your time.

It's a great stretch for these abductors hip muscles there and who? Your scissor, endless open. Take it slow and exhale. Yeah, letting those femurs rotate. I'm thinking, Oh, turn out. Turn out. Keep the turnout as long as you can back into the scissor.

How are we doing? Sometimes that voided comment. I, yeah, I think you're probably okay. Huh? He's not airborne yet and open now. Reach for the walls. Reach for those walls all the way around the front wall, the back wall. You're exploring the flexibility now and open. Exhale. Are Your abs still working? Are Your ribs pushing out?

Probably one more each side. We love the flexibility work. Exhale. Last one, open and exhale around. Okay. Bend both knees into your chest and just rest for a second. Great. Okay. Uh, if you take your legs to tabletop, well let's not, let's go back. Um, okay. Feet to the mat.

Let's do one foot down the other foot down all the way to the mat. Okay. Now we're going to do a spinal rotation. Here is a little awkward. I would suggest keep holding onto the ends of the roller if you weren't already up rather than just somewhere else. Take your right knee towards your chest and it can fold all the way in.

You can extend now the left leg down long. You'll let hip extension. That might feel really good in the hip. I'm going to have us now take the right leg and rotate it over toward the left so your hip is going to lift. You don't have to go too far or if you're feeling you want to go a lot, you can keep rotating so that the right knee comes to the almost the edge of the ruler. It's a great rotational stretch. Good. I like how you're holding the other a knee with your hand.

[inaudible] little awkward, but do you feel some of the benefit in the back and the hip? Kay and coming back to center. We'll just do one on the other side, so I would say the bottom leg. Bring it up, stretch the other one down along. Rotate left knee toward the right and yes you can use your right hand and guide it over. Nice. Full breath and exhale and coming in. Okay, now both hands again on the edges. Both knees up. I'm going to just scoot my cell phone rolling off a little.

Now let's do you know when we do regular knee, knee, side to side in the mat. Work without the roller. We're going to do it now. Here, hold on. Work your obliques. Take a breath on the exhale. Let's rotate to the left. I am going to have us go all the way over to that left hip. This right hip is coming off of the roller. Stay right there, field the control, and then exhale as you come back into center. Inhale, exhale to the right, so your weight shifting to that side of the hip.

Inhale and Exhale, come back to center. Inhale, hold. Exhale while we move, fuel those abdominal muscles. Contract. Can the chest stay open and exhale, come back. Inhale, hold, and exhale. Rotate to the right, working to keep the knees and ankles bulleted. Let's breathe in. Exhale, come back to the center. Once again, each side, exhale. As you rotate, inhale, hold, and exhale. Come back to the center. Once again, guys. Inhale and exhale as you rotate, inhale and exhale, come back to the center. Okay.

Now the way out of here, you can really just lift your hips and just push it out away from you. Okay, good. Let's roll to the side. Come all the way up. I'm going to go onto our tummy now, and we've done this before. This is some back extension. All right, so as you come down onto your front, lengthen your arms or put your arms up on the roller. Now if your shoulders aren't feeling like they want this much, reach in this height, modify it by just, this came in earlier this morning, someone needed a modification and I just had to come down to that kind of basic chest lift from here and her shoulders are been bothering her, so I just had her keep her hands down. Okay, but if you're going the full version, yeah, we'll go arms up nice and long. Now I don't want your forehead on the mat.

I want you to hover your forehead up just about an inch or two. If you can gauge that eyes are down on the mat, pull your shoulders down, your back, hold that position for me and then reconstruct your stomach muscles. Really think of this first set up is almost more about your abs than anything else. Okay? Now how light can you keep your hands on the roller and don't have to answer out loud, but just really don't push too hard. I want us to exhale and start to engage the back extensors, the back muscles, and begin to float the chest up.

Shoulder blades. There you go. Good. You guys hold here. Inhale and then exhale as you lower down, almost as if you aren't allowed to put your tummy on the mat at all. If the mat were really hot, you don't want to let your stomach drop downs. He really staying engaged in there. Again, inhale, exhale and lift. So the stomach is supporting the back. More shoulder blades. Got Samantha [inaudible]. Yeah, light hands on the roller.

Inhale and exhale as we come down, take another breath. Exhale and lift. Just checking these what sometimes get fussy for, you know, it feels good. All right. Inhale, exhale and lower. Good. Right? So the work is not happening up in the neck and shoulders. It doesn't look like it is for you guys. Exhale again, engaging the back extensors. Watch those upper shoulders had there.

No, stay right there for me. Pull more of your belly up often, dad. Yeah. Are you pushing on the roller with your arms? Of course you are wrong. Yes. No Way. Me, I'm not. All right. Yeah, no, there is a little push, but we have to be careful not to. You know, that's not the only effort that's happening. It's really the lift of the back. Good Samantha. Oh yeah. Right.

So your back is more important than the arms at this point. Okay, so let's take that one step further. And this is something we've done in regular mat work as well. We're going to start adding an arm lift. So again, let's inhale to get ready. Exhale. Find your position. Your, your back extension. Your Swan. Okay, now, right arm.

Can it lift up off the roller slightly? Yeah. And he'll lower it down. Exhale the left arm. Yeah. Inhale, lower it down. Let right arm again. Exhale. Inhale, lowering down. Palms face in guys, try it with your palm space then. Okay, and the other side, left arm. Do you want to feel it from this section of your bag?

Vast difference now. And inhale lower. Just do one more. Each side. There you go. You feel that differently? No. Okay. That's all right. And down to, okay. Yeah, that is. Are you all feeling your arms more than your back at that with that arm lift?

No, no, no. Oh, well you just put, yeah. Yeah. Eventually I, you know that there would be less feeling of that on the roller and more just lift. Tried this. Try One more thing for me. Okay. As you're there, go ahead and find, go into your back extension one more time. Okay. Could you lift both arms off the roller? You can. So that, that's kind of our swimming position, right? With the upper body. Somehow the roller dis got us a little off of our confidence.

Maybe that's plenty. Go ahead and just push it away. Let's come into around that position guys. Yeah, so again, the use of the props can sometimes be, you know, the good thing about them is the feedback when challenged, but they can also trick us a little bit. They make us think that it's harder than it needs to be. Your body knew what that was. Yeah. Okay. Time for a little bit of easy stuff or easing and kind of stuff for your tissue.

Let's, I'm gonna have us do some iliotibial band massage or yeah, some people think of it as a massage. Um, I'm gonna face you. You can face me. It's easier if your sideline on your roll, uh, Madden on your roller so it'll go up onto it on the side of your hip. Okay. I'm on the side of our hip and thigh. There's a, there's a bony landmark. Some of you can feel it easily, some of you maybe not as much. Usually we, all of us can feel it pretty easily. It said greater trow canter if you want to know the bone. All right. I would say then the other leg, put that foot in front.

You want to use it as like a little pedal almost to help you push back and forth. Now, uh, yeah, you can go down onto your elbow if you need to or like to. You can also stay up on the hand either way. All right, so we're gonna move that roller down the side of the thigh. I'm gonna pull with my arms and letting that roller move down the side of the sigh just before the knee. It's definitely not going to go go all the way to your kneecap or the side of the knee joint. Okay? That's the line of that tendon and that connective tissue.

Any roll back up, you roll back down and you roll back up. Okay. Let's say supporting into your abdominals here and back. Hmm. In the role, how are we doing? Get so quiet. Whenever this happens, you're introspective. Yeah, it's that, you know, this is a Tinder. Here's a really tender area of our by have or body.

There is a very thin sheet of connective tissue that is responsible for a lot. Um, when it's sticky or tight, knees get a little fussy. Low backs can get a little fussy thighs and hips. Okay. But I don't wanna kill Ya. So you can continue if you want to on that side or let's just change on, think I'm going to choose to change.

Go ahead and do, do, apply good shoulder girdle principles when you're weight-bearing working on your lats. Of course. All right, so you rolling that up towards your, down toward your knee and then again up toward the side of that hip. And Yeah, it's fun to watch us all perceive this because intuitively you kind of, your body kind of rotates forward. You all feel how you're doing that. It's great to get more angle on that, that uh, that she's, your body kind of knows where to go to get more sensation. One side's different, maybe just a couple more passes. Oh right. Gotcha. Okay.

Now let's go onto hamstrings. All right. Yeah, this is all. Yay. Even more fun. Actually that's not bad, but I was going to end with something like that. So can you wait just one second. That's good. And this is extremely helpful for hamstring. So you may wanna join in cause your hamstrings are a little longer. But that last little bit there for neck stretching is pretty neat. Okay.

So the hamstrings right now as you're seated, you're, we're all, I think all yeah. As we look out pretty well up on top of our sits bones. So the hamstrings attached there and kind of also into the inner sign, kind of inner groin ish, that area. And then of course all the way down and back behind the knee. So getting those in, rubbing on those here. I would say put your hands on the sides, lift your, lift yourself a little bit.

I'm using my hands to kind of support this cause it can be a little abrasive right at that attachment. Not for everybody but and then you're letting your chest come down. I'm letting that roll or move into my hamstrings. You might even have to use your feet a little bit. I'm flexing my feet. That seems to work well for me and a walking back a little bit.

Uh Huh. It's like a slip and slide and then coming back forward. Now this is, we're doing both at the same time. Mainly for time, but if we had time I would probably do it one leg at a time. Maybe next time. Boy, how many times can I say time, right? Just yeah. Now it might not be doing a lot for you. I'm going to just have this rule couple, three, four more times through.

Or if you find a really like a ah spot, you can stay on it and just let your weight sink. Hmm. That'll work. Absolutely. It looks a little more fun too then. Yeah, the flight for me, what feels like I connect the best to it with, I'm doing both legs at the same time, getting my chest to Kim down. I'm still employing my abs and I do the flex and point of the feet net rocking. I'm used to what that feels like though. So I kind of know what's coming.

If you don't know, if you've never done it and don't know what's coming, you know this is a, this is kind of like breathtaking. There is a lot of sensitivity in the muscles and the tissue, you know, so we definitely don't want to do too much. So that's gonna segue into coming up off of the sits bones. Now go ahead and just sit yourself back down and we will do the next stretch that tad was demonstrating. So where you'll go with this. B please be a little bit careful again, but you are, it's like a, you know, you're on the beach and you have a towel or a pillow kind of propped up behind you.

Ah, then that's kind of Nice, isn't it? It's worth coming to class just for this I think. Huh? Okay. Now I, I'm suggesting definitely not to push on, on your neck, on the roller. Just be there. All right. But rotating the head is useful because again, those attachments right there, the neck muscles to the skull kind of underlooked sometimes are overlooked. We don't pay as much attention to them. So I'm going to carefully rotate my head to my left.

I'm not going too far. It's kind of a little nook and cranny there. I'm going to feel right on the base of my skull and then I'll carefully rotate to the right and please, if that doesn't feel good, just, just wait. You can come off the roller. It's easily rotating the head. We're going to go again each side. Well, I did have magic circle planned, but I, it'll have to wait next time. I have some new things. I was going to have a suit too. But um, there's always time I got lost in roller land.

Hm. Oh, is it really better than getting lost in magic circle land? Yeah. And why not? One more time over to the right. Oh, we got the very best one for our back. Well, in my, or one of my favorites. Can we do one more thing? I have to do the, okay. And selfishly I have to do it. No, come on up.

Just sitting all and you can rest. You can sleep as this one. Rolling the roller up the spine. My goodness. So what I long for, I do this every day. So hands behind the head, the roller starts right again, kind of mid, mid back, right between the shoulder blades. Lift the hips. This is, we do this a lot and rolling that ruler up the back between the shoulder blades. Oh, that's it. That's worth it. See, now listen how happy you are. Oh, it feels good. Yeah. Now feel free to close your elbows towards your head if that feels better.

That I kind like that. I like to get the muscles between my shoulder blades and that. That feels better for me when they're close. Then when they're open, so that's where I'm going to go. You can veer off to the right side a little bit or the left side. I wouldn't go down too low on your back, just maybe behind the our back behind the last rib that's going to be low enough on your back.

This can be some good abdominal work too. If I don't know if anyone's feeling that. Just holding your body weight up. Oh, well you guys, it's been a really wonderful class. What I'm just noticing too is we've managed to make the blue sky come out. When we started class at 11 it was gray and this last hour we've rolled out the gray and incomes of blue sky. All right, so let's do this.

Go ahead and bring your hips down. One last thing to kind of put the period on the sentence and one last chest expansion. Just take those ribs, open them up a little stretch. I'm going to actually overarch my back. That feels good right there. Keeping my abs working in three breaths. What was your elbows again? You roll yourselves all the way up.

You can use your hands back behind your knees. Thank you guys. Have a great weekend. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you.