Class #2867

Nuanced and Controlled Mat

55 min - Class
162 likes

Description

You will work on the nuances of every movement in this Mat workout with Alan Herdman. He teaches a blend of pre-Pilates, traditional Pilates, and a few things in between. He includes variations that require a lot of control for exercises like Single Leg Stretch, Swimming, and so much more!
What You'll Need: Mat

About This Video

Dec 19, 2016
(Log In to track)

Transcript

Read Full Transcript

I'm Allen Herdman and we're going to do a class with a mixture of [inaudible] and classical polarities and a little few things in between. And I've got four lovely ladies to help me on this. So to begin with, we're going to just stand facing the camera. Just separate your feet into a comfortable position, roughly hip with the part standing up really straight. Have your arms by your sides. And what I want you to do is to lift this arm up and slide your left arm down your thigh as far as you can, keeping your pelvis completely straight.

This is breathing out. Then as you breathe in, rich your left arm out and reach away with both arms and then lift up through your left side to the center. And then your right hand onto your thigh. Slide it down, breathing out, breathing rich, the arm out and stretch more. Stretch more stressful and lift up through your right side and then to the other side. So place your arm down, slide your palm down. Keep the pelvis very square.

Now lengthen your left arm out and reach. Reach out, reach out, recharge. Now lift up through your left side and down to the other side and breathe out. Let the left arm just come naturally over as you reached on. Now stretch your right arm out. Bring your left arm over a little more. Reach out into the side of the studio and lift up together.

And one more to each side and reach over keeping the hips really square as you do this. Now lengthen your left arm up. Now bring the right arm over a little more over, over, over. Now reach out to the left side and lift and last one and stretch over. Reached on. Now stretch her right arm out, left arm over a little further. Think of your hands being in line with each other and a reach up and bring your arms down. Good.

Place your fingers with the knuckles touching and the thumbs up into the center of the sternum. And imagine your nose is caught between your thumbs that you keep that alignment. Now as you breathe in, turn to your left, but keep the hips very square. Feel the right hip pulling away from you. As you turn, pause, breathing out and breathe in and go a little further, pulling back on the opposite hip and then breathe out to come to center and breathe in and turn to your right. Pause breathing out and breathe in a little more. Have your fingers band along on that. Fingers Long. There you go. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, and returned to the center and breathe in and turn to your left, putting the hip back. Pause, breathing out.

Breathe in and turn a little more. Now hold that and lift your arms up just in front of your ears. Now reach up and turn a little more with your arms stretched as if you're going to look out onto the beach center. Breathing in, bring your arms down and return back and breathe in and turn, pause, breathing out and breathing and turn a little more. Pull it back the opposite hip. Lift your arms up, bring your hand slightly close together and I reach around as if you're going to look out center and arms wide and done and relax. Lying on your back with your feet. On the floor, lying in supine position. Have your feet roughly in line with the outside of the foot in line with a greater to a counter and your thighs at the button.

90 degree bend and check that your pelvis is in neutral and the weight is across. The metatarsal is on both feet. Ribs wide. No, just gently take hold of your head and feel. Give yourself a little traction pulling away and bring your arms by your sides. Now from there, rotate your palms outwards from the shoulders. Feel the stretch across the chest and are keeping that stretch. Just turn the hands back onto the floor with your elbow slightly bent and just check. The ribs are flat down. Okay, and soften through the sternum. Take a deep breath in through on those.

Just take the breath in. Don't worry what's happening with the muscles, just a deep inward breath and slowly as you breathe out, as you're through your mouth, just lengthen the exhalation. Imagine you're breathing through a straw. Breathe in through on those. Okay. And breathe out through the mouth and again, breathe in through the nose and breathe out from us. This time. Imagine you have a belt, just the distance from the hipbones to the floating rib.

You've got a belt around the, as you breathe out, you tighten the belt and narrow the waist. So take a breath in, okay. And breathe out and feel that belt tighten. So you're narrowing your waist. You'll feel the work into the obliques and the transverse. And then relax. Breathing in and breathe out.

Poor, poor, poor, poor, poor Paul Paul. Paul, get one more notch on your belt. That's it. And relax. Breathing in and breathe out and know the wave. Just relaxed with that. Well, yeah, you go. And one more time. Breathe in and breathe out and know the waste. Hello, Paul. Paul. Paul.

Okay. Remember when you're doing this, this the low, the lumbar spine stays soft. You're not pressing down. Okay. Place your hands on your hips with the thumbs around to the back of the pelvis and the fingers on the top. Or you can use your arms to keep the waist really long. So as you breathe in, lift your hip bone straight up to the ceiling, into a bridge position and breathe out. And lower down all in one piece. Don't articulate the spine just up and down and lift.

Breathing in. Keep the lens of the waist and breathe out and [inaudible] and lift and uh, and lift. Now hold it here as you breathe. That just spiraled down with your right hip towards the floor. Use Your hands to help center breathing in and breathe out and turn to the other side. Center breathing in and lower your arm. Lower your pelvis to the floor.

We'll just do it once to each side. And breathe in and lift street art and spiral center, spiral center and lowdown. Put your arms by your sides. Bridge. Again. Breathe in and lift. Put a little extra pressure on your right foot and without moving your pelvis.

Lift your left knee up towards the chest. And now slowly go down with the left knee up. Lift. Keep your knee lifted and lower your back. Ah, now placed the leg back down and lift up. Breathing in. Stabilize and lift your right leg. Oh and slowly and lo one more to each side and lift.

Keep the waistline very long and lift the left leg up. Lower down slowly and last one good. And lift and lift the leg up and slowly learned on place your hands behind your head. Interlace your fingers and place your hand is at the base of the skull and bring your elbows up so you can see your elders in the peripheral vision tech. Now I want you to feel the weight of your head into yours, into the hands. Okay. So take a deep breath in, narrow the waist and gently lift your sternum forward. But keep the head onto your arm so that the neck is open. So lifting your sternum, feeling you've got a string on your stone and pulling you forward and breathe in and go back down and breathe out.

Stabilize and lift, and just feel sternum coming forward. Keeping the tailbone down. [inaudible] and back down. This time as you call forward, you're gonna slide your leg away from you so the leg is going to help you to come up. Okay? Keeping it now just one. We'll do the right leg first. Keep the leg down on the floor, said, breathe in, breathe out, lift and slide, and bring your leg back. Keep the lift, keep the left as you bring your leg back, and then down and the other side, and lift the sternum. Keep the head into your hands. Slide the other leg away and lift your leg back. And then done.

I'm going to change the breath. We're going to breathe in to lift and curve. Okay, so same thing. Breathe in, curl forward, and slide your leg away. Now as you breathe out, slowly press the heel into the floor and draw it up. So you're using your hamstring and lifting the sternum forward as you come up and then down and breathe in and curl forward. Not Press your heel down as you breathe out. And I lift the sternum up higher as your heel comes to meet you.

And then one more time, I'm changing it. Sorry. As you breathe in, coe forward, rich, now slide your hands out towards your knee and as you draw the heel back, reach your hands beyond your thighs. As you come up, reach your hands beyond your thighs. Hold the, place your hands back behind your head and then go down other side and breathe out and curl. Sorry, go back. My fault. Breathe in. As you cope, pull it in and cut forward. Stretch your arms out and not reach forward as the press the heel down and pull out. Come on, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift and rest. Hands Behind your head and let rest start. Okay, good.

Lying on your side. Facing the front so you're lying on your right side, your on your left, sly on the side so you're facing the, the fourth was facing forward. Now look over your shoulder to make sure that you're in a completely straight line. I don't mind the legs being slightly in front of the hips but not behind. Okay. And have your the arm in front.

Just balancing on the floor to give you support. I hate gently squeeze, sit bones, but not too much. Now your bottom leg is the working leg. The top leg is a passenger. So as you breathe in, lift both legs off the ground and the head comes up at the same time, not too high. Just so that the head's in line with your heels and breathe out.

To go down and breathe in and lift. Leave the top leg resting and then breathe out to go down. Breathe into lift. How did that turn out? Both legs. Turn them in and [inaudible] and breathe into lift. Reach out through the legs and rotate them outwards from the hips.

Turn them in and the [inaudible] keep them parallel. Lift point. Nice is fact. Let wrap top leg forward back leg behind you and says it too. This is a three says a four as wide as you can see as a five, six, seven, eight and come to the center and loaded on [inaudible] and just rollover on to the other side so you're facing the window. When you lift both legs, think the head almost as if you are just listening to the inside of your arms. It doesn't come up high.

Just lifting away to stop the tension in into your neck. So the top leg is resting. Just check your position and breathe in and lift. If you let the elongation through the whole spine and then breathe out, go down and breathe into lift and [inaudible] quite so high with it. Just as if you're listening to your arm and lift turnout. Turn in and the and lift. Turn out, turn in and low and lift.

Top, leg forward and scissors. One and two and three, four, five, six, seven and eight. And rest with the scissors. Don't get excited because you're what's happening if you don't allow the body to move, it's just from the hip joints. Okay, rollover. Let's turn around. So your head's facing the ins into the center.

Lie On your front, resting your forehead down onto your hands. Stretch the legs away. Less likely a part. Yeah, that's it. Okay. What I want you to focus on, your greater trocanter.

So as you breathe in, you're going to focus on that area and think of squeezing the thighs together from the greater decanter. Breathe in and hold one, two, three, four and then relax. Breathing. So when you do that, you should feel a gentle lengthening of the lumbar spine. Squeeze. Keep the legs relax, squeeze and lengthen. Hold for four and then relax and squeeze. [inaudible] and relax. One more time and squeeze and relax. Stretch your arms out in front, palms down, and your nose just hovering above the floor. We're going to do swimming, but it's going to be quite slow. So as you breathe in, just float your left arm and right leg off the floor about two to three inches and breathe in and [inaudible] and the other side and stretch. And then done the slow deep inward breath. You read sh and uh, and rich and low and rich.

No very carefully. Both arms and both legs and left and breathe in and lift and low and lift. And a good Ben. Bend your elbows and place your forehead onto your hands. Your arms are out in front, not pressed down onto the your upper lower arm. Pressing them down onto the floor. And as you breathe in, lift your sternum away from the floor and draw the scapular down and feel your arch in the thoracic spine. And then breathe out.

Breathe in and lift. Okay. And breathe out and breathe in. And lift. Not so much the head on it. Just the sten and last one and lift.

Yeah, and Nice. Stretch your arms out in front straight arms. As you breathe in, slide your hands towards you. Bend in the elbows and lift your sternum up much higher. So your elbows come. Just bring your elbows from here. Just bring them so that just under the shoulders of lift from the, and then stretch down and altogether. So breathe in and slide drawing the scapular, Don, drawing the SCAP down and learn. And cool.

Now hold your hands where they are now. Slowly straighten your arms as much as you can up. So you're lifting. Now take your right arm off and stretch it into the center and [inaudible] and left arm and low and not bend your elbows and slowly go back down. Is that okay on your back there, Jen? If it doesn't go too high, don't even fully straighten your leg, eh, your arms.

Okay. This time what you're going to do is lift. I'll talk you through it and breathe in. Slide your Elbers and straight. Stretch out your left arm and stretch out your right arm. And [inaudible] and low [inaudible].

Okay, let, let's, are you ready for the next one? Okay, good. And then breathing in, stretch out your right arm. Take it out to the tee position. Turn the arm and bring it to your hip. Lift your left arm off the floor and stretch it out and spiral towards your bent. Your arm that's near the hips. So your spiral to the, that's nice. Center change, arms change arms and spiral change. Arms into the center and lower down.

Lower Dark Christie. That's fine. Um, try and breathe on this rather than grunting. Sit Up and stretch your back out. Great. So we're getting the extension as well as spiral, which is nice. Okay. Sitting up, not at the edge of your mat. With your feet into the center.

Stretch your arms out, palm spacing, knees bent. Right slowly, very slowly. As you exhale, roll down onto your lumbar spine, right? Imagine your tailbone sliding towards your heels as you go down. Okay. Lumbar spine. Everyone know when you'll get w oops.

When you get that, so, okay. Bend your right knee and take hold of your right ankle with your right hand. Bend your left knee and take hold of your left ankle. Left Elvis up. Shoulders down, smile. Now let's do the single leg stretch and stretch one and two and three and four and five and six, seven and eight.

Bring your legs back to the center and relax down. Okay, what I'd like on the single leg stretch. Can you come forward, Christie? And I'll stretch one leg out. Now I would like this leg to be here. This, so pulling forward, even if it means holding onto your knee with both hands. So rather than pulling that towards you, the energy is coming into the center.

So you're working into the, so now when you change, you have to held a little more. That's it. Okay. This time what you're going to do are your right to say so far when you get to this position, you're going to flex your foot and turn it parallel and then pull it across the body and then back. So you did four times like that to get the doctors working, change legs and do four on the other side. So let's start in the same way so you can cut. Lift to sit up. Let's slide down into the Ras hell and your lumbar spine.

So think of the stall up muscles taking you down, not the back. So sink into the lumbar spine as you go down. [inaudible] bend one the up and then the other leg up. Now stretch your right leg out and hold of your left knee. Flex the foot and pull across the body. One, two, three, four, change legs and pull up right across. One, two, three, four change.

And one to keep it steady. I'm coming forward four and change and put oops hands the other way. And pull one and two, three and four and rest. Nice. Is that to hold your legs together? Okay. Stretch your legs out, pointed feet.

Going to do a roll up, but stretch your arms back. We're gonna do it slightly differently. Bring your arms up straight, no breath to 90 degrees. As you breathe in, lift your upper torso forward and take your arms parallel to the floor. And pause.

Focus on just below the navel and richer fingers forward. As you lift from that focus point, there we go. And stretch over flex Dorsiflex as you stretch over one, two, three point plantarflex. And then slowly pull yourself back. Don't come up straight, pull back into the curb and then stretch your arms back. Bring your arms up, upper back and head forward. Breathing in. Pause. Focus on just below the neighbor and lift flex. But as you stretch over, stretch with your spine and keep the shoulders down on the back point reading in and then slowly breathe out as you rolled back and stretch this time. Come up, shoulders over the hips, up to a straight back. Okay, so arms first, upper back and head forward. Breathing in, breathe out and lift. Lift, lift, lift, lift and sit up straight.

Take your arms out to the side, palms down and pull the hands back just a little so you'll feel the scapula pulled together. And now as you breathing, turn to your left and center, breathing out and turn to the right. Keep lifting up through your center and stretch and stretch into and turn center. Turn. Hold it there. Turn. Turn to your left. Sorry. Turn. Now lift your arms up and reach out to the hips. Reach up, reach, turn a little more. Come through the center, open your arms and turned to the other side. Lift your arms up. Reach and turn more to one turn, turn, turn center. Open your arms and reach forward and relax and sitting up.

Open the legs, not too wide. Let's do the saw. What I want you to do on the soar is you turn, you stretch and the back hand is going to go onto the floor just behind your hip. And as you reach forward, you're going to push without hand. Push down at the floor and then lifted. Okay, so let's turn to the front first. Everybody at the same time. So you're all, both. Everybody turned to this side and turn and reach.

Now the hand there is going to push you to get forward. Got To push, push, push, push. Now lift your arm up and reach and come up straight and center. Reach over the hand on the floor and push. Drop the head down and push. Lift up that arm and reach up and sent a little faster and rich and stretch.

Come up quickly. Turn rich and stretch. Push and come up. Keep the opposite of on the floor. Turn and reach and lift. Turn and reach and lift. Nice.

Put your hands behind your onto the mats and just curl back slightly. Just round your back and just be support with your hands, not too far, just a little bit. Open the legs, a little wider. Flex the feet and a very slight outward rotation. No the the front leg for everyone. As you breathe out, slide it across the floor towards the other leg and read in and take it back. Now the the other leg and slide across.

Thinking of the abductors as you slide across and back and slide and back and slide. Pull up the stomach muscles as you do it and keep the leg on the ground. Try not to lift the leg and slide and back and slide and back. One more to each side and slide back and slide and back and bring both legs together. You should feel your inner thighs on that and the stomach muscles good and not lift. Come forward to the edge of your mat and Ben. Johnny, right at the front of the Mat. Sorry, not the edge of the front edge of the Mat.

Now Bend your knees up, point your toes and take hold of your ankles and the back and round your arm. So we're going to do rolling like a ball. Okay, so we'll do four times. So breathe in to go back and breathe out and balance and in and balance and breathe in balance. Breathe in balance. Hold it there. Stretch your legs up. Open the legs and open.

Neck rocker and back and lift. Balance and back and balance and over balance. Past one, over Balance Ball. Bend the knees and go into the ball and back. Lift rocker over up. Ball. Yeah, and back rocker. Hold it, hold it, hold it back.

I you go and hold it. Bring your legs together. Take your hands away from your feet and stretch. Turn the legs out. Flex point.

Turn in and slowly bend your knees. Take your toes onto floor and rest. Nice. Very nice. Okay. Lying on your facing the front here in a straight line. Okay, rest your hand in front again.

Just look over the shoulder to see where you are. Now from the slowly bend your top leg up so you're sliding your big toe up the inside of the leg until you get to your knee and press the foot down into your, onto your knee. Press the foot down flat and [inaudible] onto the. Place this onto your knee here. Pull the stomach muscles up. Now point now lift your knee so it's at right angles.

The thighs at ratio angles to the floor. Now slowly extend the leg, turn the leg out a little more in that position. Turn it out, bend your knee and place it back with the big toe back and then slide down your leg and bend up. Push down, keeping the hips square. Point your foot. Now lift your thought only to right angles. Now slowly extend and feel a muscle at the bottom of the quadriceps.

During the work. Turn out in this position. Turn Art. Bend your knee and place your foot down and slowly lower. And then push down. Lift your knee up, extend the lower part of the leg and rotate. Bend your knee to the foot, goes to the knee. Now from there, take your leg back behind you, keeping the rotation and stretch the leg back behind you.

And now from the richer arm forward off the floor to balance, flex the foot dorsiflex and take it further back. Further back by the back. Brigid back to the hip or the heel point and start again. So bend, push down first, lift your knee up. Extend. Yeah, 10 [inaudible] bend attitude. Take it behind and stretch and reach forward with the other arm.

Rich flex and pull back. Feel the pull up through your abdominals as you stretch the leg back. Return it and [inaudible] other side. Okay. When you take, when you get the leg to hear, really press the whole foot down point and just that lift and then you're using the lower quadriceps to get the leg straight. Okay, so we'll just do the simple one first. So stretch heart really elongate first and our then pushed on point.

Lift the knee not extend. Turn out a little more. Pull up the stomach muscles that little more. Bend your knee. They sit down and straighten and bend. Push down, lift your knee up. Extend. Keep it forward. Yeah, keep it forward. Rotate.

Okay, Ben did back and straight. Try and keep the hips on top of each other all the time. So your band, we're going to do the one to attitude this time, the same. Start. Lift your knee up, extend, turn out, bend the knee, place down and attitude and stretch away. Stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch. Pull up the abdominals. As you do it, stretch away. Flex and push away even more. Push away, push away and slowly come back. Pulling up the abdominals as you do it. Nice. What I want you to do.

As you bend your knee up. Think of lifting up through the center as well as almost as if you're standing as you do it, cause you're turning to drop back. It has to be lifted. Asked one and bend, pushed on point that your knee up. Now as you extend the leg, pull up the ABS. A little more. Turnout. Bend attitude, pulling, uh, keeping the hips square, keeping the hips square and reach or arm out and reach.

Reach, reach, reach, reach. Pull up the abdominals a little more. Pull up right from the pubic bone. That's nice. Good. That's better. Do you see the difference there? And come back and relax. Good onto your hands and knees. Let's have the heads into the middle. Yeah. On Co in quad repaired.

Let's have the feet, uh, pointed easy. Just so there's not enough. Not a lot of pressure on your knees. Okay. Start in a neutral spine. Just okay. Now as you breathe out, start with a posterior pelvic tilt and slowly go up into the cub, allowing the head to drop forward. Now as you breathe in anteriorly, tilt the pelvis and articulate the spine in the opposite direction and breathe out. So pelvic position first [inaudible] cut up and drop and reverse. Feel the spine working. If you just hold it out in.

Is this all right on your back here and pelvis? So I want the lumber spine to get the run before it goes up into the thoracic spine. And you think of the pelvis doing all the work. Draw the scapular down as you lift the sternum and bring their head forward and color. Probably not quite so much into it. It's bit too much now he, that's, that's about it. Okay. And curl up this time. Stay in the flat pack. And so holding this position as you breathe in, slide your right arm and left leg out.

Okay. Parallel to the ground and lift and breathe in. Breathe out to come back. We'll do it with an inward breath as you go out. Breathe in and stretch away and breathe out to come back and breathe in and out and breathe in. And then at this time go into the curb back again flat. Now flatten your back. Now stretch your right arm and left leg.

Now from the, as you breathe out posterior pelvic tilt, elbow and knee into the center and head down and then reach out. We'll do four and four but it's all initiated from the pelvic movement. And then on the other side, when you've done the four, so you out and pelvis and cut on the elbow, head and knee into the center and stretch. Sure. And back and rich.

And when you've done the full, sit down towards your heels and relax and just feel the weight. Imagine you've got a weight on your tailbone. As you stretch forward and stretch your arms out [inaudible] and sit up, roll over onto your back. And let's do double leg stretch on two counts. Okay, so I wanted to be and one and two so you get into the position. So it's really, I like this with the arm straight rather than doing little numbers with your thing, with your arms, just out and in. So it's just that and back. Yeah.

So going into the position, we'll just do four. So, and one and back. Two, three, war and rest. Now we're going to do it on four cuts. So Christy has volunteered to demonstrate. So you bring your head forward, slide your hands to your ankles.

Now that's your starting position. So as you breathe in, you're going to stretch your arms and legs to their flex and turnout. Now take your art, rotate your arms and take them back. Breathing out. Breathe in and bring them around. Reach up and point your toes. Bend your knees and go back down. So one, two, three, and then four. No, four times, four times. Hold onto your ankles, elbows wide, knees in line with now as you stretch your legs out, think of rotating them as you stretch into Dorset election. So breathe in and reach. This is a slow one.

Breathe out and take your arms way back. Breathe in and reach up towards your toes. Bend your knees and take hold of your ankles. And one arms too. Um, s three and then down four. Don't forget the flex one. Flex the feet in a thighs, arms, back, arms, Iran point and then dad and one headboard, a little more. Um, s ums and undressed.

When you take your arms back, really pull, you know, get your shoulders into your ear so you get a full rotation in the shoulder joint. Six counts. One, two, three, legs down, four legs, up, five Ben, six, four and five are quite slow. Great. Okay, ready? Okay, so breathe in. Flex and turnout. Breathe out. Breathe in, flex legs down. Point the legs up. Bend your knees and take hold.

Breathe in, arms back out, arms in, legs down, out. Point, lift up in and then down. One, two, three, legs, down, legs up. Bend your knees and that, and just rest for a second. A little more articulation of what's happening with your legs. Flex. I want to see a definite flex and point. Okay, so from here is, I'm going to lie on my notes. All right, so if I stretch my legs out, I flex. So I get the stretch through the heels as I take my arms back and then I take them down. Flex then reach and lift. So there's much more, much more elongation in the leg.

Can we have one more time? Yes. We stretch the legs out first and then it's, it happens as you do that. So the final thing, you stretch and into the flex. Yeah. Okay. I want to miss a much more stretching. Yeah, exactly. Much more, Eh, more energy into the legs. Okay, good. Ready? And one, two, three pod, plex, strong point up. And then dad, last one and one, two, three legs down. Point up and bend. Good. Yay.

Christie's arms, Ruby. Decorative as you came forward. You head straight. Arm, state, leg. Okay. Okay. Everybody, y'all are suffering because of, because of the arms. Right? And stretch arms. That's better. Back around point. Lift as head down. Yes, there are more cans but we worked at, it's, you know when you're doing the um, on two cans where you're here, it's the same on, we do it on four, it's back to get, I want this. A lot of people want to do this sort of thing and that's getting no movement.

It's pulling. So you're getting them ability in the shoulder joint and also the stretch in the leg and the rest. Yeah. Okay. Onto your knees, high kneeling and one leg up. Other leg up. Okay. Right standing very straight.

And just drop the head forward and slowly down. Just let your upper torso hang. Breathing out. If you need to bend your knees, do stairs so it helps with the lower back and are slowly come up. Stacking the Vertebra, one on top of the others. You come up very heavy arms.

Bring your arms up. Now from there, using the whole leg, just slowly lift your heels off the ground, keeping your body completely straight or keep the lift. Lower your heels down to keep the lift to the torso and bring your arms down and go down. Okay. [inaudible] now bend your knees and place the hands flat on the floor. Just bend your knees. Now keeping the hands there. Just try and straighten your knees as much as you can to get a bit of stretch in your hamstrings and bend and stretch up and then, and stretch through the hamstrings one more, and then stretch through the hamstrings.

Now let your arms hang and slowly pick yourself up slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly that bring your feet into a small v with your inner thighs pulling together now from the bring your arms up. Okay, now work from the inside of your thighs to lift your heels off the ground, but stay up. Stay up. Now hold that position with your upper torso and lower your heels with trying to lift through your torso, away from the direction of the heels so you pull out through the waistline and then bring your arms down and around. [inaudible] ladies, thank you very much.

Comments

2 people like this.
Great class from "the master". 2017 wish is to attend a live Alan Herdman class??
Laurie C
2 people like this.
An amazing class! And it doesn't hurt that you can have a little fun while doing your practice. Enjoyed all the variations! I am curious as to why the mats were folded in half? Thank you so much Mr. Herdman! I hope there will be more videos coming soon from you.
superb!
Loved this class
I came away from this class with an appreciation for the skill with which the teachers who offer moderate paced classes (rather than this deliberate paced one) are able to give much easier to follow instructions than these were. I'm sure taking this class again will be easier but for now I am comforted that Ruth was as confused as I was by some of the cues. It was insightful to see how comfortable the teacher was with the misunderstandings. rather than becoming flustered. I suppose for teachers there is a lesson right there! If I were a Pilates teacher I suspect that watching an experienced teacher give feedback would be very helpful. i would have prefered to watch the teacher "do" rather than describe.
1 person likes this.
Great class. Alan's voice is quite soothing early in the morning. I could feel the little muscles getting their stretch too! Working slower and more deliberately is extremely valuable the older one gets, like me!
After running more distance this week, this was the best class I could have done to stretch myself out. I felt like I was too tense in my torso, which we focused on in this class, and my shoulder blades have a more optimal range of motion after class. The exercises worked my muscles, but I'm not tired at all. My overall impression is that I worked on all areas in a balanced way to re-invigorate me! Thanks so much, Alan! Fantastic pacing for the exercises you used.
Outstanding instruction. Loved the different variations. Thank you so much!
Tuuli V
How totally relaxed and joyable athmostphere in this class! I loved how Alan focused on elongation and kept the pace slow enough to really feel the moves:). This is why I love pilates!
Sarah Honer
Thank you so much for sharing this class with us, Mr. Herdman. I appreciate your slow timing that allows the body to truly access a deeper connection. So precise and challenging! I feel so elongated and centered after your class.
1-10 of 16

You need to be a subscriber to post a comment.

Please Log In or Create an Account to start your free trial.

Footer Pilates Anytime Logo

Move With Us

Experience Pilates. Experience life.

Let's Begin