Get Moving Mat

Hello, welcome. I'm John Gary and I am here to give you what I'm calling an express mat workout. I'm working with Kelly Curtis and Jake Robinson and we're going to get right into it. Super Fun workout. I'm going to give you some modifications for things that I think are particularly challenging. We're gonna get started just mobilizing our spine. So if you've been sitting down all day or sitting down a lot recently, this is a really good way to get mobilizing, get all the joints moving again.

So we're going to start standing tall, feet about shoulder distance apart, shoulders back. Take a deep breath in for me. And as you exhale, you're just going to flex forward articulating your spine from top to bottom, sliding your hands down your thighs and then roll all the way back up. Want you to take your hands and you can place them on the back of your hips or slide them down your back of your thigh as you send your sternum to the ceiling and take your head backward, but not all the way. Let's do that again. Breathe in, coming up XL, flex forward, dropping down. Articulate, come all the way up through. Breathing in. Take your hands behind you. Slide your hands down your legs, draw your shoulders back and just extend. We're going to do that one more time.

Breathe in, stand tall, slide your hands around to the front XL. Flex forward. Let your knees soften a little bit. Don't hyper extend them, come all the way back up through. Slide your hands around to the back and then slide them down your legs as you lift your sternum up. So hands are going down, rib cage is going up, and then come all the way back to the center from here. A little bit of side Bend Work for you. So take one arm up and then you're gonna go over to the side.

Once you're there, I want you to actually stick that hip out even further. Just go for that stretch. Bring your hip back first and then come all the way up to the top. Give me a big inhale. As the other arm goes up, exhale over to the side. Inhale, push the hip out to the side. Exhale, bring it back. Come on up and lower down. We got to do that one again. It feels really good.

Take your arm up. Go over to the side. Push the hip out to the side. Bring it back from me. Come all the way up to the top. Lower the arm down. One more time. Breathe in, do an exhale over. Push the hip out. Bring it back. Come on up and lower it down. Let's get a little rotation in there as well.

So we're going to turn to the side. You're going to take your arms and you're going to reach up and you're going to try and turn as far as you can. And then come back to the front. Do that to the other side. Breathing in, spiral up. Feel your feet grounded as your head lifts, and then come back to the center. One more time to each side. Breathe in, rotate, lengthen.

Exhale back to the center. Last time. Breathe in, rotate, lengthen up, and exhale. Come all the way back to the center. Beautiful guys. Now we're gonna do a kind of variation of the hundreds. I'm calling it the hundred start. So you're going to come down onto your back on your mat for me. That's it. And we're going to start laying down. Knees bent, hands behind your head.

So this comes from also a gymnastics move that's called hollow body hold. So what I want you to do is tilt your pelvis back so that your lumbar spine lengthens toward the mat. Do that by using your abs, not by pushing with your feet. From here, flex your upper body up and bring your legs into tabletop simultaneously. Good. Now you're going to reach your arms behind your head, past your ears, and lower the legs down straight in them as far as you can stabilize. Pull everything back in and then lower back down to the start. Good feet down. Yup. Breathe in. Exhale, flex up.

Bring your legs in. Inhale, reach. Exhale. Stay there. Flatten the ABS. Inhale, pull everything back in. Exhale, lower down. Breathe in while you're down there, exhale, come up. Inhale, reach, stretch away. Get the fingers and toes apart. Now lower the legs as you exhale, flatten the obs even more. Inhale, bring everything in and exhale lower back down. Breathe in. Stay there one more time. Come on up.

Flex reach. Give me a big inhale. Now as you exhale, lower the legs flat and the abs go further. Reach for it. Come all the way back in. Beautiful work you guys. And then lower all the way back down to the floor. Clip over onto your front for me. Yup. Just right over. That's fine. You're going to bend your knees and you're gonna put your heels together.

So the knees will be separated, but not super wide. Here. What I want you to do is a test for me. I want you to keep your heels together. Send your legs toward the floor, try to see how far you can go down without your heels coming and part. If he can't get very far, bring your knees a little bit closer together so you get more range there. So do that a couple of times. Just bring them in. Bend your knees, bring them close to your seat. But when you do that part, don't let your hips lift. Gently press the hips down into the floor.

Then lengthen away. Beautiful. Now just bend your knees for a second. Let's just go through our breaststroke, upper body with your legs, just staying in that position. So I want you to breathe in and as you exhale, you're going to shoot your arms forward and you're going to hover your body above the map. Then as you inhale, it's like you're coming up for air or you're going to lift your chest and reach your fingertips back toward your end of the mat there and you're going to go right back into the next one. You're going to exhale, reach forward. Hover your body above the mat. As you inhale, sweep the arms back really nicely. Done and come up. Now let's add the legs. As you exhale and reach forward, you're going to lower the legs toward the mat. Keep the heels together. As you inhale and pull back, you're going to squeeze the heels together and reach back.

Let's get Jake going the right direction here. So keep your legs right there. Pull back, lift up. Yes, now. There you go. Stay right there, Heather. Heather, stay right there. Kelly, who are you again? Stay right there. Kelly. Here we go. Breathe in now. Exhale, reach the arms forward. Send your legs out almost to the mat. There you go. Now pull around, lift your chest, squeeze the heels together. Yes, they're both on it.

Are you on it? Let's do it again. Xcel reach forward. Inhale, pull back. Open Up. This you feel really good right here. Whole back of the body is being worked and now just relax down on from the mat. Put your hands down on the floor. Bring your legs together, push back into a nice shell stretch for me. Shelf stretch means your seat goes toward your feet.

Your abs are hollowed out. Shoulders are stretched out. Really nicely done. From there, we're going to move on into our planks, so I'm going to have you spin around guys, so your head is in the, toward each other here. That'll give me a better view of what's going on and go right into your plank position. Now, from here you can do this from your forms as well. If this is a little bit too much on your wrist, I want you to turn toward me and have your feet. Yeah, your feet are separated. Rock your feet to the side and just lift your arm up.

Now from here we do a twist and elephants are you're going to reach under your body and hinge back toward your feet. Now go back to that side pose and then come all the way back down to the floor. We're going to do the other side. You're going to inhale. As you rotate to the side, you're going to exhale as you reach under, look under and hinge back toward your feet. You're going to inhale as you go back to the side and then you're going to rotate back into your plank position. Watch that your hips aren't lifting up.

Good. Inhale, rotate. Sorry, Kelly XL. Reach under. How to fix Jake. Rotate back. Inhale, come up to the side and then exhale. Go back to your plank. Are going to do the other side here. Inhale, rotate. Reach up. Now Xcel reach under. Look under good range there and come back up to the side and then go down into your plank and just sit back down onto your heels, into your nice shells, judge again, and just take a breather. That was good.

Laughing's good and works your abs. We like laughing. You're going to shoot right down onto the mat and you're going to go into a swimming position for me. So just lay right down on the mat. That's it. And reach your arms out in front of you. That's it. And come into a hover position. Perfect right there. So legs are up, spine is slightly extended, and without moving your torso, you're going to alternate arm and leg lifting. Breathing in for four counts, two, three, four. And exhale two, three, four. Keep going. And we want to bring our attention to the knees here. You really don't want flection in the knees.

You want to move from the hip joint, so keep the knees as straight as you can and think about the glutes doing the work. Shoulders are lifting up and down. Head can be a hair higher here. Lift it up into my hand right there. Good. That's it, chick. Good. Nice position, Kelly. And that's probably enough. So hold it there. Breathe in steady. Exhale, release all the way down. Good. Now you're kind of coming into your plank. Again, this is one of the coolest looking exercises.

So you're going to want to do this one. Come on into your plank. We're going to do a plank and you're going to walk into a tuck. So it's all about knowing where your body is in space. So here you want a perfect plank. You're going to walk your feet toward your hands and drop your head and flex your spine and come into a tight ball. And then you're going to walk back out.

And I want you to lengthen your spine so you go right back into your full plank. Now try to come forward with the other leg first. If you don't remember, just remember this time which you're coming forward with. And then walk back. Make sure you get into your whole plank. Good. And then walk into your Tux. Starting with your other foot. Come all the way in. Drop your head. It's almost like you're going to kiss.

Your knees are going to get really tight and then walk all the way back out. I think that's three. We're going to do one more walk all the way back in. Find that tight tuck position and then walk all the way back out into your plank. Gently bring your knees down to the mat and sit back for a second. Really Nice. All right, you're going to swing your legs around and we're going to go into a reverse plank. So this is a really good kind of prep for an extra advanced exercise called leg pull. So from here, yeah, so if you notice, they both have their fingers pointing out that's much better on your shoulder than having your fingers pointed forward.

So pointing out is going to feel better. You can also do this from your forearms. Again, if that's too much on your wrist or your elbow. From here, what I want you to do is just lift your hips slightly off the mat. That's it. Now as you do that, I want you to see if you can find a neutral alignment through your pelvis and lumbar spine. Typically we kind of want to tuck under, so keep that more neutral alignment there. Feel good from there, you're going to lift one leg up and then lower it back down. Lift the other leg up and lower back down. What I'm looking for, keep alternating. Exhale as you lift is no rotation in the pelvis. I really want to see that the pelvis stays stable as they lift and lower.

And let's unlock the elbows a little bit here. Beautiful. That's it. And then set the hips down. You got it. Lower the hips down and straighten your legs out. And then just do a stretch over your legs for a second and breathe and come on up. And we're going to take that into what we call a spine stretch forward. So take your feet just about as wide as the mat and you can rest your hands right in the center on the Mat. And then just flex forward. Exhale, starting from the heads of the tail. Now stack the spine up from tail to head.

So we want to see that Nice, neutral alignment. If you need to sit up on top of a cushion or something like that, you can do that. If you're not quite, have the length in the hamstrings to get right up into a neutral position. Let's do that again. XL forward, flexing forward. Good. And then when you come back up, you want to make sure that you start from the base and stack the spine up really nicely. Done. Let's do that one more time. Breathe in and XL forward. This is your breather. We're even down there.

And then exhale and stack the spine all the way back up. Now I want you to go back into your reverse position. Same way we started the other one. We're going to change this just a little bit. It's a bit of a progression toward our leg, Paul. So again, lift your hips but not too high here. You want to be, yeah. So what we're going to do is walk your feet out into the leg pole position, walk out good, and then walk back in. So when you walk out, you should be in a straight line.

So both of you can probably lift your hips a little bit more to start with. Good step out. And then step back in. The missing thing here is that they should be stepping out into lateral rotation with toes pointed. So step away and away. Come back into parallel and parallel. It's getting better every time. So we're going to do it once more. Step out and step out.

Step back and step back and have a seat. Stretch your legs out. One more spine stretch fours sitting tall. Breathe in. Exhale, flex forward over your legs. Breathe in and come back up. So we have worked all around the shoulder girdle, all around the hip joint and all around the spine and let's call it down. So what I want you to do is just stay seated, but cross your legs.

We're going to do are the warmup that we did, but we are going to do it as a down seated. So take your hands and you can just rest them on your legs. Breathe in or on the sides of the Mat. Doesn't matter. You're going to exhale. Just flex forward. I just want your arms to be heavy here, so just let them get heavy and just have gravity kind of pull your body down toward the mat. Take a deep breath in there, and then like a puppet being pulled up by springs. You're gonna see strings, not springs. Strings are going to come all the way up to the top. Let's try that again. Breathe in, exhale, flex forward, and just kind of melt toward the floor here.

Breathe in at the bottom and then Xcel and come back up to the top. Stacking the spine up. Beautiful. Now I want you to take your hands behind you on the mat. You can go to fingertips and then you're just going to extend the spine, so you're going to lift up through the sternum. You're going to draw the shoulders back, and this is a beautiful position with your head right here, Jake. That's great.

The head is back. You're not cranked all the way back. You're going to breathe in and then you're going to exhale. Just go to your neutral, nice tall position again. Let's do that again. Reach back, lengthen up. Just open up through the whole front wall. Open the shoulders. Feel really good here. We sit like this, most of us all day long, so it's really good to just open back up and come back into your regular position three times as a charm. Let's do it once more. Reach back, give me a big inhale through the nose. Fill the lungs with air, and then exhale. Just come back into that neutral position. From here, we're just going to do a seated side bend stretch, so raise your Arma and just stretch over to the side and let the other arm relax. Let your obliques hold you up.

Now come all the way up and lower that arm down. Let's do the other side. Reach the arm up Bree. Then now Xcel, just take it over to the side. I want you to feel like the pelvis is staying in the same place. You're moving away from the pelvis to do the stretch. Come on up. Sit up tall, breathe in and XL. Lower that arm down. Let's do it one more time to each side. Reach up, stretch over really nicely. Done. Good.

Just reach into your fingertips a little bit more on that top side. There you go. Get the last stretch involved. Come on up and down. Last time to the other side, breathe in. The arm goes up. Then you're going to exhale. Reach over to the side. Come back up to the center and lower it down.

Let's do our rotation strips the same way we did at standing in the beginning. So you'll turn toward me. Reach your arms up and stretch right up out of your sit bones. Come back to the center. Relax your arms down. Do that same thing to the other side. Reach up, lift up Lincoln, come back down. One more time to this side. Reach up. Lengthen, breathe in, and exhale down. Nice. One more time to the other side.

Reach up, lengthen and come back to the center. So I hope you enjoyed our express mat class. Thank you, Jake. Thank you Kelly. And thank you. See you again.