Mobilizing Mat

Let's take both knees in and then take your arms right by your sides again and just work some single leg stretch. Just 10 exchanges. Pick up those weights. Actually let's use those three and four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and 10 both knees. And let's take double leg. Okay, we can arch over. We've already warmed that thoracic spine. We probably don't want to take her legs too low, so I'm going to go higher legs.

Archbeck over the steady. Circle your arms out. Exhale and curl. Big Breath in. Exhaling three more. Stretched yourself over. Okay. Exhaling last two stirrups.

Sure. And exhaling in last time stretch. Oof and in, let's take a little Chris Cross, not a criss. Cross a scissor. Put your weights down guys, grab a hold of one leg, take that or the leg pretty well down on the mat. In fact, let's go ahead and put the heel down. So take a second to press the heel to engage your hamstrings.

And then this like let's work some flexibility today. Again. So pull, pull, change. Take that moment, press that heel down, engaging your hamstrings. Get that long hip line. Okay, now we'll take our normal rhythm and okay, four more. One to [inaudible], three and four. And we should be done with that little series. So I'm gonna have you take your ball and move it to your lumbar area. Now take yourself down carefully lift your hips.

I'm going to move it just a Scotia. Okay, so let's take a look and do the roll over with the use of the ball. So one leg up the other leg up both legs to the ceiling. Okay, this today's class, I want to approach this rollover by allowing us to take our hips into deep flection and it just a different way to move off the ball and that's all. And also guide you into that year. If you have a bias of to right or left, you can really feel it here. So steady that hips come into flection.

You're already noticing, you're starting to peel off the ball. So see how far you can come look right up at your toes, right? Take a breath. It's okay to use those arms guys and start to peel yourself off. No, you're taking yourself over. Sitz bone should be facing that ceiling that's flex the feet open to about the width of your shoulders and peel down.

You're going to notice you run into to the ball. And I did that on purpose so that you can really get your thoracic to the top of that Lamar articulated. Okay, now bring your legs and 90 legs together. Just twice again here. Breathing in. Exhale, legs toward torso as far as you can go with your knees straight or if they're bending, that's okay too. So we're like tape or peeling off the tape wheel. Rolling ourself up, flexing our feet as we open.

Inhaling coming down. Take your time, let that mobilization happen. Feel yourself, meet that ball with control and then take your legs at 90 or a little lower. We'll do it again. Inhale, here goes peel your way up and off that ball. Flex and open. I seem to be miscounting myself. Everything's feeling so good. I want a few more repetitions. Come with me if you want.

You can also stop cause I said three. Okay. Should feel good. Right? I think that's a good sign. When does feeling so good? You want to do a few more rather than, oh my God, when is it done? Take it again. Last one, I promise for five. And here we go. Oh, flex. Open and coming down. Down.

And now once you get their legs together, Ben, both of your knees, put one leg down first and then the other one. And then here we go. Lift yourself up off the ball. Take it away. And just feel the solid mat. Cause we've been on the ball now the whole class thus far. So I'm going to have you roll yourself up.

Just move your weights out of the way for just a second. Maybe behind us. Off The side. Watch out. We're going to do rolling like a ball. I don't want anyone to hit that. Okay. So guys, put it behind your calves between your knee and your hamstrings. Okay. And before you even lift your feet up, grout hold of your shins and pull yourself in. Pull the shoulders low, squeeze the ball.

And I just want you to feel how when you squeeze it, it's the back leg line and the stomach that activate to get the squeeze. Okay. That's what we can want to achieve when we're doing our own ball. So try just one more preparation and grab that ball. Okay. You can keep going with that if you'd like to or pick up the feet. Hold on, get that contraction again and let's roll back five or six times.

Inhaling back. Exhaling, squeeze and hold. Inhale back. Exhale up and hold the contraction and round and up and hold the contraction and round and up. And whole two more. Hope that's helping some of us hold and last time. Hello to get up there and place down. Okay. No there still goes under one leg.

I'm going to put it under my left first and it's under the Achilles tendon. Not Quite your heel, but it's not behind your knee. Your calf is kind of the lower lower limb. Okay? And Guide yourself down and put the other leg. There's long for just a minute.

So what we're after with single leg circle today is maintaining some activation on the opposite leg to help us keep our hip center control. Sometimes you'll see us do big circles. Today is not that day. I want you to feel a little more work on your hips and your supporting leg with stomach. Okay? This, I guess to do a little bicycle and it comes up right above your hip or a little lower. So just even in that, can you feel the effort of pushing down on the opposite leg? It should be kind of intense. Okay. Now let's go ahead today, flex this foot and you're going to do an inhale as you cross your midline. Exhale around. Inhale, cross, exhale around. We'll do five.

So what can you press down more with? Could be the other leg, could be your spine, could be your arms, any in all are acceptable for stability. That was five other way. If you're a mobile person, hyper mobile in your hips and things, this is a great way to do the ball or the single leg circle because you can't rely on your mobility. You have to work more muscle this way I think is good for everybody. Okay. That's enough change legs. You may have to reorient your other side. So first get it pretty low on near that Achilles tendon.

Press down shouldn't be locking the knee out so you feel that really good, strong connection behind your a stable fi and bicycle. That second leg up, flex the heel. Okay, ready to go. Cross over, around and left. Sometimes it's about the what's not moving body part that you can think more about. Other way for five, bringing in our principle of concentration control and five. Oh goodness. Okay. That's plenty. Everybody come on up and I want us to, now I'm going to turn around the other way. Let's use the little theraband piece and I want you to put this, we'll put this around our ankles. Okay, so I don't know if it, if you agree with me, but sometimes I find it hard to keep that connection of stomach and butt. So in the Fletcher work that I did, it was the butt belly.

We cued that all the time, but belly butt, belly. So let's just feel that here. Flex those ankles. Pull out on the mini theraband. Hopefully it's strong enough that you feel the side of your hips right where your leg meets your pelvis, those stabilizing places and just hold. That should be enough. Reach forward. Grab your weights, reach your arms for respond, stretch forward. Don't lose the pull on the bear. The band. Take a breath. Pull out on that theraband. Leave your stomach back.

Remember you're not pushing that out. You're pulling up the stomach away from the band or from away from the direction you're going in. Round more. Don't lose that contraction. Here we go. Roll yourself up. You can lower your arms. Take a breath in. Sit Taller guys and round. Pull out in the Theravent. Flex your spine. You're doing a butt contraction, a belly contraction, and a spine stretch. Roll Up. Lower the arms. You've got three more.

Inhaling. Okay, exhale. Sometimes it takes different feedback to get those muscles connected. Okay, last two or rest. If you need to and round, stretch, stretch, stretch, roll up. We have one more. See how tall we can sit. Rounding over stomach, back, stomach, back. That's the spine stretch forward, right? We know that, but this is also going to be our open leg rocker.

So as you roll up, lessen the tension just for a second. Thank goodness. Take your hand weights out of the picture. Okay. Bend your knees, bring your hips up toward the, uh, your feet. And then let's go ahead and check into where your balanced on your sacrum pulled out in the theraband. Extend. Yeah.

Okay. So I'm not quite where I need to be with my engagement on my hips. I want to pull out more and a little external rotation with the legs today. Wherever you need to hold your legs is fine. You choose it. Stay connected to this feeling here with your stomach. Ready to go. We roll. We pick ourselves up.

We're going to find connect. Don't be surprised if that happens to you. Yeah. How much contraction do you need for the exercise? There we go. Three more. Oh, hold that stomach wall back. Everybody against that spine.

So your spine has a chance to flex, but lift the spine tall. Any upper back last one. Oh, hold on head. Okay, this'll be fun. Keep your quality. Bring your legs together. Try One role like this without the pull on the band. It's an interesting sense and it prepares us for the corkscrewed.

Now what are we going to do with that therapist? We're going to take it off of our ankles once we get down and just take it away. Okay. So the corkscrew today, go ahead you guys to stay on your back. Use your ball again and underneath our lumbar. Okay. Or sacred action. Not lumbar. Sacred. So get yourself there. Leg Up, leg up, pause just for a minute while you stabilize on your ball. Okay, so here we are on our getting ready for corkscrew.

So instead of the rollover component of corkscrew, less work on the leg lowering component and then the possible, um, unfortunate event that happens with hip hiking or that kind of shortening one side, not, not, not necessary in this exercise at all. So we're going to think both sides of our waist long past the ball. Okay. Or sits bones. Pass the ball. It's an image. So here I go either right or left, says as you tilt your legs to one side, that weight shift, that's the opposite hip. You don't want to shorten right that side as long or however low you want to take your legs. Guys, they core shoe that shape and then back to center.

Other side, your both of your waistlines day long or horseshoe does not change at size. It's a metal frame, right? That steel that's you from hip to pubic bone to hip all the way up other direction. Okay, one more. And if you notice a hiking, okay, just notice it and we practice on the next time not repeating it right? This is motor learning as Miss Karisa would say, I love that phrase so much is you have to repeat the pattern in order to break down the movement pattern if you've done an incorrectly. So right, so we had in height. Now from this place, go ahead and bicycle one leg up.

I want you to flex that foot. We don't have to actually come off the ball with the hips. You could. I want you to activate the standing leg though as if you're going to come up off the ball. So it's a lot of glute and hamstring work, but not thrusting the ribs to get up off the ball. It's actually pushing down into the ground that unweighted us off the ball. Okay? From there, point in, lower your leg.

You can go all the way to the Madam. Sure. Flex your foot and lift lower all the way down. Flex your foot and left lower. Hand that [inaudible] and lower. You're not really waiting on that ball or you know you're not. You're a little bit lifted and up.

Re Bend your knee and step the foot down. Now settle for just a second so you feel the contrast of that versus the other, which here we go to the other side. So taking the leg up still on height in your pelvis, press down with your standing side. Up you go however much point in lower. See if you can touch the mat. You've got such a long reach of that leg. Flex up, lengthen, flex and lift.

Even the whole upper spine where your chest is. His long, not puffed up to the citylink as long to the wall behind you. Last to stretch, lift and stretch and lift rebend and let's feel the mat. Ah, all the way. Okay. Just toggle your knees a little bit from side to side. And let's come up. We'll leave our ball off to the side for a moment. Let's do some arm work.

So I'll just sit facing you guys some easy arms just as a little interlude. So go ahead and fold your legs and let's just work on some shoulder stability. Okay? For just a moment, reach your arms out and then reach them a little bit more from your breastbone, across your shoulders, even out through that middle fingernail. Then turn your palms have face me if I could see you. And then let's go ahead and close. Just straight in front of you.

Now as you open, I don't want you just to arbitrarily open your arms, press the arms back as if you're in water. We're in the ocean right now. Press the water back and close. Press and close three more times. You could also press your knees down. Why not press your knees down, arms back, and last one press from here, bend your elbows, puts your fingertips right on top of your forehead. And I want us all to lean forward just a little and then pull the elbows back a little more stomach in.

And let's just salute right on and fold elbows back. Some of us need to be reminded of elbows back. You know who we are and very last two and our red package doesn't leave us. He stayed nicely connected to that. And last time press and in. Okay.

And then just lower for a minute. So I'm going to do one more. I'm going to face sideways because we need our legs long for this one. So one of the rowing's planned it with the ball. Okay. Why with the ball on the reformer or even in a matte class, if you're learning the rowing, sometimes we are told that, well we are often told to flex the feet, which is what I'm doing here.

But see how the back of the knee is pushing down into the ground or the Mat and my heels have popped up. That's, that's not ideal with that. So it's a little bit of overstretched behind the knee and I'm really not using my leg to its maximum here for support. So why not try that? If you place your feet on the ball or a block today, we've got our ball and press down. I can't cheat now. I don't think you can see. I mean hopefully you can see it. I probably could, but that doesn't feel so hot. So I'm going to have this focus mainly on pressing the feet down.

It's almost a sense the shins are being lifted up there. Okay, here we go. Roaming. So from the chest, just reach your arms straight forward. Lower your hands down. You can actually look, reach your arms forward and then up as high as you can. I'm going to try to aim for that window frame position than I warmed up with. And then as a lower the arms, I'm pressing the water down that imaginary water. Okay, four more times. It's a breath and yeah, press your legs down. Don't bend those knees.

We're don't overlock them. I should say press your feet down three more times. [inaudible] I'm also trying to really elongate my whole body as tall as I can. All the wild last too. Last time. Yeah. Lift and lift and lift and rest. Okay.

My Gosh, there's so much work in there. That's what it's for. Okay. Put your those prompts down. Actually we can move these out of our way and let's go here guys. Okay, so the interesting little interlude, put the band around your ankles. Yeah, we're going to go face down and we're going to put the ball right between the chest. Okay.

Might have to just take a second. Kind of navigate that. So it's not on your ribs at the bottom of your sternum there, but it's not all the way. The collarbone is kind of halfway between large breasted gals. You just have to move those suckers out of the way and deal with it. Just kind of go through. Okay, so here we are for right now.

Just place your hands right off of your eye line. Take a breath and as we exhale, I want you to just to feel yourself somewhat, pull up off the ball just a little. Now next movement is inhaling, lifting your head, looking forward to the top of your mat. Almost like you're rolling your eels ears backward so there's, you could accidentally be pushing yourself on the ball. I don't want you to push. I want you to lift your body weight off the ball a little. Okay.

And then exhale as you come back around, like you're wrapping around the ball. Now let's try that again. Full breath to lift and left. Where are your shoulders? Hopefully they're low. Coming back down around the ball. Let's take it two more time. So it's a bit like a reverse at chest chest lift. Really. So as you check your chest up, your chest is up.

You're rolling the ball forward, slightly increasing the work in your upper spine. There we go and down. Last time, I haven't asked you yet, but make sure you think about what your stomach muscles could be doing here. Not Pushing out, but they're coming inward and upward toward the effort of your upper back. Oh Wow. It's amazing. See Motor skills, right? You repeat and they get better.

Each one. Okay, let's do something with the arms now adding that. So everybody just float your head. Don't look up yet. Okay. Float your hands up. I can still see my fingers out of my peripheral. I haven't gone too high. And then from here, stretch your arms out to a tee position. Just holding there.

Concentrate right between your shoulder blades and pull your shoulder blades towards your spine and release that five times. So I really want you to activate the rhomboid muscles. Think upper back right between your shoulder blades. Lift some weight off the ball for two more for last one where you bend your elbows and place your hands down in your head down. Okay, so now instead of the arms going out to a t, they're going to come more in front of us like a swimming. Slightly like a swimming. Okay. However, the hands ever so slight now just one arm at a time you choose one arm goes forward. The other one doesn't move. First.

Arm comes back in second arm, bring it in first arm. Exhale, second arm, sad, a little pattern, single, single, double, single, a single and both to come in and single, single and both to come in twice more and reach and reach and both to come in. Last one here, reach and reach and both to come in and then everything down and they'll add a little more movement with your arms. Take a breath. Exhale. Just let it out. Oh, inhaling as you're lifting your cervical spine into your thoracic line, however those hands, four times the both arms at the same time. Think like you're in the ocean.

Moving that water back towards your legs and two, three and for all the way back. And then we can relax. Okay, everybody, probably enough time to be laying over that thing. So move that away. Stack your hands, put your head right on your hands there. Take just a moment to Elongate your low back and you'll see me kind of look like a tail tuck right now. So I'm just going to Elongate by, um, pressing the front of my hips on the mat. Really is what's happening. They're activating the hamstrings because here we go.

Now lift your thighs up. The theraband is there. What I want us to do is just think of pulling the band open a little bit more. So once again, you feel that lateral hip engagement, okay? And then ever so slightly externally rotate and we're going to flex the feet, pull the band apart, bring it together. 10 of these pull apart, bring it together. You could do this in parallel.

You can do this in an internal rotation as well. I just happen to go a little external here. Here's five. Okay, five more and one and two. Three. How long can you have with these legs for last one? Five. Bring the legs together parallel and lower them down. Okay.

You can't bring your legs completely together and could feel the band taught, but I do want you to know internally rotate your femurs and move your feet apart. Just that you'll feel your hips contract. Okay? So one leg at a time only lift one leg up and slightly back on a diagonal. So it's up and back and all the way down other side internally rotating to lift in slightly. Pull it back and down. We're alternating up and back, down, up and back and down. Keep going. Exhale. So you may be feeling a little bit of instability in your pelvis. So again, again, try your best to stay concentrating to hip points and pubic bone.

We have four more here. Yeah, so being prone is not always about our hamstrings. We really do want to get our gluten involved and this is a sure way to do that. Okay. Plenty. With that come up onto your hands and your knees. If I had a secondary theraband and have it around my wrist, that'd be kind of wacky.

Do and I'd be pulling out so we can imagine that going on with our upper body, right? You know that shoulder work. Now guys, go ahead and step into your front support. We have to have our feet a little wider. I want you to keep the theraband taught and just hold yourself in your head. Blank line for just a moment. [inaudible] all right, now let's give me an interesting step.

Step in and it's going to go slack and then steps up and goes taut. So it's in, in taught, taught in, in taught, taught and en in taught, taught. Keep going. Start with the other foot. This time coming in in, in taught, taught [inaudible] in n one more set. I'm going to have you bring your knees down. Okay. Bend your knees and go back a little further.

Just take a little preliminary stretch. We're coming back up onto the arms. If your wrists are bothering, you don't want to go to front support, you can do it here. You can also come all the way up. Step a little closer together. Take one leg up, hold it there, move that leg out, move it parallel five times. Move it out. Think up to go out, up to come in. [inaudible] two more. No hiking, right for her and an other way up to go out.

Apt to come in, uh, to go out. Up. She come in up to go out, up to come into more dreaded you sexify there and up to go out. Oh, and in headrest. Okay, we're done with the band on the ankles. Thank goodness. Take that away. Come on to sideline. Just real easy. Use Your Ball. Okay, so I'm going to have you put this right underneath your ribs. Just get yourself set for a minute. Extend your legs slightly in front of you down and just get that out of the way. We can know that that's not what we want.

I do want you to lift your ribs off. Put your other hand behind your head. Take your top leg lifted for just a moment, front and back. So just start the front back and let's start adding some thoracic movement. So thoracic spine can rotate toward the ceiling. As your leg is in front of you, the Rassic spine rotates down as your leg is behind and up, up, down, down three more so not resting on the ball. I'm just letting it inform some extension rotation of the spine.

Last one, hold your leg behind. You. Take that top, the back leg a little higher for 10 and nine we can reach eight seven, four, three, two and one and bring your legs together. Okay. Just not on the other side. We don't need to do a whole lot. Just wanted to get a little more complete gesture with your leg. Legs. Sit together slightly forward. Top leg, hip height. You've got your hand behind your head and front front. I knew it and back, back. So here we go. Start the rotation.

Chest up, chest down, chest up. Just it's a re, it's more about your thoracic than your leg. Let your thoracic have some freedom to move. Last one in each position. Hold. Stretch your leg and we lifted. And two, three, four not resting on the ball. Seven, eight, nine and 10 and rest. Okay.

Every morning I'm going to finish up with this stretch. So just move your props out of the way. Come up onto your knees, get a lunge position with each leg. Okay. So one foot forward, your heel right below your knee and go ahead and extend the other leg back and just hold yourself here for a moment. I'm just going to hold myself hands on my thigh. You could do elbows, really stretch your back leg.

But what's more fun with this stretch is when the knee comes down and you place that foot down and you take your arms up. So with this, let's think up, up and maybe back and up and back and up and back. Oh yes. Okay. And our other side, a lot of the prop work today was kind of stabilizing stuff and this is really a good way to, I think to finish with quite a bit of sense of open feeling in your body. So just take a moment, try to square your hips, knee above ankle. You can stay right there or come along for the really big one. Press that foot down. It's almost as if you could lift yourself off though the back knee right there.

Okay. First thing up, then back up and back. Up and back. Take the space. Yes. And Open. And all the way. Okay. How everybody thinks they're joining me. Hope you had a good time with all of our props today and I will see you next time. Thank you.