Polestar Playground

Hey Brent Anderson here, another palazzos anytime. Our excited to be here with my friends. And you know, we've been talking a lot about this idea of um, sort of thinking outside of the box and playing more and not being so regimented and thinking, what are all these PyLadies exercises for anyway? What do they prepare me to do? And so we're gonna take a little liberty today to do a little bit of a warm up, get our bodies warmed up with some pilates mat exercises, but then moving into exploring into some playfulness, everything from crawling, working together teams, doing some functional activities like boxing. Um, and maybe even we'll end up upside down somehow. I'm not promising how we'll get there, but all of it is about playing.

Let's get started. I'm going to have you lay down on your back, knees bent. And what I'd like to start with, it's just simply going into your bridge, articulated in your spine and as you exhale, preparing and rolling your spine up one segment at a time. And once you're up, I want you to take a deep breath in again and just think about sort of the weight of the spine and the ribs sliding down as if you are imprinting onto a nice sandy beach, which we happen to have right outside our window. Taken another deep breath, roll the spine up. And the idea here is, let's see if we can warm the spine up a little bit and see if you can find the areas that feel a little sticky to you and lubricate those so that they feel a little more free, a little more mobile, working your way down. Now if you're at home watching this, this might be a fun class to do with a friend or a family member or a mother daughter team, which we happen to have here, a mother, daughter team and a husband and wife team. So we did that on purpose, um, that we can have some fun with this. Now on this next bridge, we're going to roll up and stay up. Yep.

So all the way up and stay up and drop the chest down just a little bit and slide the pelvis to the right and to the left. And the idea here is to start working with some articulation in the spine, in the coronal plane cause we are going to be moving in that plane, having some fun and then drop down another centimeter and do the same thing side to side and just work your way down through the sticky areas. Now if at home you feel yourself actually rotating or hiking the hip, um, see if you can't be a little more pure as if your pelvis was on a skateboard or something that you're just sliding it across side to side and changing the level until your bottom is dusting the mat all the way down. You got it. Now let's take it one step further with our bridge activity will come up into your bridge. And this time I'm going to pretend we have two little shovels, one on each side of our hips and we're going to go into our figure eight or infinity sign and rob the right hip down into the sand.

Bring the shovel up and then the left hip down into the sand. Bring it up and just continue to do that. Working your way down through the spine, filling this slide of that movement. And the idea is to really let go of anything that's sort of getting in the way of the spine. Moving in that infinity sign you got there has to be all the way up and over and drop the right hip down, up and over and left hip down. You got it. Good.

And let's just do one or two more of those and then bring that down and then we'll take our hands. When you're ready, all the way down, you're going to be in the back of your hands to your chest, fingers pointing down. And we're just going to work a little bit on the articulation of our upper body. So as we exhale, sending the elbows away and rolling our bodies up to the base of the shoulder blade and then roll back down. And that's practiced at the image is as if I was grabbing your elbows and pulling you up a little bit so you can actually sort of feel like you're pushing yourself in the head. It's cradled inside the trapezius muscle.

Set up one more time. Good. Now keep that height there. Stay there, bring the hands behind the head and then open up towards woken up the same direction. Open up towards the camera so you're gonna rotate towards the camera and then come back up to the ceiling. Rotate towards the window again, the same thing we did with the low spine. Come back up to that nice high spot. Rotate to the front and up and rotate to the back and come to center and roll down. Very good. Bring the legs up to 90 90 grabbed the back of the thighs and let's send the thighs away. Combining these two motions of the bridge and the chest lift by sending the feet down, rolling ourselves up into a seated position.

We call this the assisted roll up, taking a deep breath up high. Exhale, roll the pelvis back down and we're getting ready to get our body ready to get into some playtime here. And again, roll it on up nice and easy. Now here's the key. We're going to play a game called red light, green light, okay. And the idea is that when I call red light, you have to stop greenlight. You Go. So you're just gonna keep rolling up and down. And what I'm looking for is if I can catch you and I can see you at home.

So don't think I can't see you at home, but when you're rolling, I want to know that you're not thrusting and that you're not falling in your assisted a roll up. You got the idea, so you're going to try to really control it. Greenlight, red light, green light, red light, green light, green light, green light. Keep going. Red Light, green light, red light, green light, red light, red light. Oh, you're out. All right, good job. Anyway, you get the idea that we have this smooth. Roll yourselves back up onto the front of your mat, grab your legs, hug them in Nice and tight. Let's go into a little bit of rolling like a ball. I think Joe's applied. He's put some of these exercises in place so that we could make it fun, right? So the idea is you can either hold the back of the thighs or you can wrap your hands around and grab your wrist, grabbing the ankles.

Now create the space between your knees and your arms. So the ideas, if you could take your belly button and sternum and pull it away from the thighs, making this nice round surface. Thank you. There's no sharp objects behind your head at home. Taking a deep breath, rolling back. Exhale, roll up. One continuum movement. So this one is just the opposite of our other roll-up. Keeping that so your balanced on your sit bones. That's the whole idea. Roll back and roll up. Roll back and roll up.

Now it's important that you breathe here. We've had a lot of accidents before this one where if you hold your breath, the air might escape from somewhere else, right? So, depending on who your mix company is, you gotta be careful with that. One more time. And let's go right into the seal. So we're now going to grab the ankles underneath. Yep. So the theater together and you should be able to clap your feet together.

Can you clap your feet together? Good. So we're going to inhale. Rolling back, clap, clap, clap. Exhale. Rolling forward. Clap, clap, clap. All right, let's do it together. Here we go. Everybody on balance. And inhale, roll back, clap, clap, clap and up, clap, clap, clap. And inhale back, clap, clap, clap in, up, clap, clap, clap. Now where are we missing being that we're so close to the ocean. What is the noise that are seal mix, right. So again, the idea is playing with this. So at home it makes a big difference to vocalize. So here we go. We're going to inhale back, go or, or, or, and uh, or no, I'm not the noise, but I want you to make it loud enough that they can hear in the microphone all the way in your house. And I want to hear you too. Here we go. Don't be embarrassed. It's just the thing that we do right here.

We go in hell back one more time. Louder. Now your seal sounds a little bit like a pig, but that's okay. Hands on top of the ankles. And let's go into an open leg rocker. So let's take the one leg up. Let's take the right leg up to begin with. Yeah, just see if you can find it and bring it back home and take the left leg up and bring it back home. And just trying to keep that balance right leg and left leg. You're doing it at home, right? I'm watching you and right leg. Leave the right leg up.

Leave the left leg up. Yep. Bring the legs a little bit closer together. If you can. Pull in the body back and we're going to inhale back. Exhale up, open leg rocker and exhale up. Try to find that balance. Inhale back, exhale up. Try to find the balance again. Balance. Last one. Here we go. And held back. Exhale up all the way up. Cross your legs in front of you and pop back into a pushup position.

Love it. Yeah. There we go. Now in this position, I want you just to hold it for 15 seconds and I want you to sort of think about 15 seconds, how long that actually is. Um, it can seem like an eternity if I was to start counting now, right? One, two, three, 10, nine, eight. Going down onto your forearms. Go onto forums, play good. Now from here, take your right foot and just disconnect it from the mat and bring it back down. Take your left foot disconnected from the mat. Bring it back down. Now let's pick up the pace of that as if we're marching. Okay.

There it is. Find it. Stay with me on the beat so it's right. Left, right, left, right, left. Smooth it out. We're going to go a little bit faster. That's a slow walk. Let's go a little faster. Walk. Yeah. Five, four, three, two and relaxed. Knees down. Quadramed position. Good. Now from here, go into your angry cat and saggy Horace. Just allowing the spine to move. Right. We just held it still for awhile.

Now allow that spine to move the head and the tailbone will move together, right? So as the head goes down, the tailbone goes down. As the head comes out, the tailbone comes up and let's see if we can move this into multiple dimensions. So we're going to move it into circles or circumduction and see if you can feel that relationship moving the head and the spine and the pelvis in circles. So for example, if your hair was hanging down like mine does and you were swinging it around, right, you could see the Swish, right? Same thing with the tailbone, the Sh of the tail. If we had to tell, and then reverse the direction, little bits faster, a little more relaxed. Again at home, just make it feel good. Just articulate the spine. This is where we get a little bit of a break. And then find your optimal position here where the shoulders are over the hands, the hips, over the knees. The spine is as long as it can be.

So from the crown of the head to the tailbone, and then just fill a little bit of support from the ribs. And what I want you to do is we're just going to sweep the right hand out towards the middle of the class and sweep the left leg back towards the outside of the class, keeping the pelvis as square as we can. And from here, now moving on a diagonal. We're going to move back over the right hip and ankle. So just allow yourself to sit back over that right hip and ankle and then come up over the left hand, right that left hand, sending the body over as far as you can, sitting back over the right hip, coming back, back, back, back, back, way back. There it is. Good. And then forward. Yep. Find that diagonal.

Really opening up that hip all the way back. Lift the ribs just a little bit for me. There it is. Good and back forward. Good. And then let's switch arms. Same thing. Find that nice position shifting back over the left. Yep. That was ribs up for me a little bit and then shipped over to the right hand back over the left hip. Really find that diag or the lower we go, the better because this is where we're going a little bit with some of our crawling exercises.

Very good. You bring both hands and knees down. Let's take the arms towards the window and the legs towards the window and we're going to lift them up into the star. So that means you're gonna Shift your weight away from me. Reach the arm and leg out and open up with your back to that space. You have a good look at me with your eyes. Find me with your eyes.

Reach along with the leg and the arm. Okay, now control. As you shift the weight back over that arm and that hip to bring the arm and leg back down. Nice and easy. Let's do it the same thing, the opposite direction. Shift towards me. Open the opposite arm and leg up. Looking away from me. Reach the arm in the leg. Reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, and slowly shift the weight back over the shoulder, over the hip, bringing the hand in the knee, back down to the ground. Let's do it one more time, but a little bit quicker. Open up to me.

Hit it like nail it, right. Come back down. Open up away from me. Try to find it back down. Let's go a little bit quicker and up me, down, away from me, down to me, down a little faster away from me. You're going to find you hit a little bit easier. Let's go. The faster we go, you notice that like how much better you're doing already. And go one more time and relax. Come up into high kneeling. Shake your hands out a little bit. Good. Now from here, curl your toes underneath and I'm just going to have you sit back towards your heels a little bit.

You're going to sit back towards your hills and then come back up forward. Sit back towards your heels and come back up forward. Now this time points your toes underneath. Sit back towards your heels and come up. Sit back towards your heels and we're going to do alternating now.

So you're going to curl the toes. Sit Back, come up, point the toes, sit back, come up, curl the toes. Sit back and up, point the toes, sit back and not knock. Curl the toes cause a tricky one. Can you from here, sit back on your heels and then roll back onto a squat position on your toes. You're ready? Try it. Sit back on your heels and roll your body back into. Yes. Good. Just like that. All right, aside, it's a tough one. I know, I know.

Are you doing this at home? Be careful right now. Slowly lower the knees back down to the mat. Lift the hips up. Point the toes. Sit back on your heels. Come up. Now your toes are pointed. If you, if you come up on pointed toes, I that that would be a one of those freaky feats that we see sometimes that people on the Instagram. All right, so you should be down. Toes are pointed. Let's try that again. So just sit back on the hills.

Come back up into high kneeling. Curl the toes. Sit back on your heels. Roll up into a squat. Stay there slowly take the knees back down. Control. They control the controller. Good. Come up and forward. Last one. Point the toes. Sit back on your heels. Very good. Excellent.

Come forward into your quadriplegic. Now from here what we're gonna do is I'm going to have you lift your knees an inch off of the mat. So curled toes, knees are an inch off the mat. Let's take a couple steps forward. Alternating hand and foot. We've already practiced this in a pattern. Let's see if we can put it together in a crawl. So right hand, left knee, come forward. Then left hand, left knee, come forward, right?

Go back the same way. Yep. And for the same way. Yeah, you got the idea. Now here's the thing. I want you to imagine that there is a floor that is above you and you have to stay under the floor, but you can't touch your knees. I'm going to have you play a little game here where the ideas can you take the hand or the foot out from the person in front of you. You get the idea.

So are like this here and we won't be walking around and I want to take his arm away. Right? So let's give it a try because it's going to test and challenge your ability to control your body weight. So be light on your feet, your knees bottoms down. Try to home with your partner. You can move around here. We're going to stay inside our consigned space so that we can stay on the camera, but at home you can chase each other around the house. Okay, let's give it a go. Just try to outmaneuver the person. Don't hurt anybody. No bad intentions here, but do try to see how the practical elements of a quadruple exercise might help you out in a martial arts. Five, four, three, two. Nobody's down. We're safe and stock.

Very good. Come back up into high kneeling. Yup. Now in high kneel and you should have get that energy rolling, right? You can feel that adrenaline pumping. The competitive spirit. Joseph Paez is very competitive. He spent a lot of time boxing, wrestling, grappling, doing a lot of activities that were in standing. In preparation for standing.

I want you to just bring your right leg up into a half kneeling position. Boom, hit it and then bring it back down. Left foot, hit it down. And you might want to curl. Your toes. Might feel a little better too. You can see how you feel. Try it again. Right leg and uh, and left leg and down and right leg and down. Left leg down. One more time. Right and left and relax. Very good. How are we doing? Okay.

All right. So now sit back on your heels. Yeah, toes are curled. Come up into your squat position. Now drop the bottom down with the heels going down into the full squat. Want me to make it easier for you? Why don't you find your partner in front of you? Come a little bit closer. Crawl. All right, grab hold of your arms in the Roman handshake. Right?

So the Roman handshake is grasping forearms. Yup. Heels go down. So position yourself so the hills can go down. Good. And now from there we're going to be massaging our ankles a little bit as a team. So you just sort of pull each other around circles. You can also do this at home by yourself, by grabbing onto a piece of furniture. If you're in the studio, you can grab hold of the foot bar or the chappies table or a doorknob, but you can practice the idea of doing this. Now here's the secret to it.

Can you get your chest up right in this position of squat? So the key is thoracic mobility, ankle mobility, and hip mobility. Moving around. So let's see how that feels. I hear some crunching in people's ankles. Good. Now change your grip to an inner locked finger grip.

Yep. So the hands of palms are facing each other and push the hands up towards the ceiling. So you're going to come up towards me here. Yep. As high as you can. Keep pushing. Now bring your chest together as you push the hands up and stand up from there. You got it. Beautiful. Good. Stay connected. Yep.

And let's see if we can do three of those. Squat stands leading with the chest and the hands. So we're going to s squat down all the way down. All [inaudible] way down at squats where the hanging on each other. Push the hands together, chest up, look at each other all the way up.

Lead with the chest and back down. Tailbone goes back, chest stays at pushing the chest into each other all the way down. One more time. All the way up. Very good. And you can relax there. Very good. So we're going to take our therabands now. Yeah. And what you're going to do is one of you is going to hold the theraband for your partner. Yup. There's one, you all have one. Um, but what it's gonna look like is I'm going to hold the theraband behind you, right? You're going to grab hold of the theraband in a rapid in your hands.

Yeah. And you're going to make a fist. Like you're going to box, right? You got it. And you're going to do boxing exercise. You can step forward with your left foot and your right hand and box come just like we do off the long springs off of the chappies table and back. And give me a little weight so I almost lean into it. Megan stepped forward and punch there and back and step and punch.

You got the idea. So with your partners you'll take turns, one of you behind the other, do a couple rounds of boxing and then we switch it. If we want to make it fun, you could face each other as if you're actually, we're boxing each other and somebody is you just now don't do that. You might hurt somebody. I will tell a story. When I was a kid, we were in this Otto store and they only had one set of boxing gloves and my best friend and I both 12 years old, we each put on a glove and I'm a south part and I got the right glove and he hit me in the face and I hit him with my real fist. I felt so bad I never wanted a box again. All right, here we go to here, right? And we're just going to take a punch. Boom, lean into it. You know, away from your partner and back and punch and back and punch and back and punch in backness go a little bit quicker. Hit it. Strike it right out from the shoulder. Yeah, straight from the shoulder and don't go up and over. Go straight up.

There it is. There it is. That's better. Good. This is another movement we have incited Pollstar to make sure that all of our uh, practitioners are able to protect themselves. We have a movement going on inside and switch. Very good. Wrap. 'Em Up. All right, you ready? Round two.

I don't even get it. So it's almost underneath you yet. Good. There you go. Underneath the arm though, like around your chest. There you go. Good. And let's go for a strike. Opposite arm and hand and back. Lean into it. Strike it. Boom and back. Strike it. Keep the hands here. Strike back, strike back. No rotation.

Keep it nice and solid. There it is. And forward. Go a little bit faster now the bunch, there it is. Good hands and tight. Hands and tight. Co he be going left two more times. Keep going. It's a little hard, right? People think it's easy, but when I take boxing lessons, man, I am exhausted. I think I had a heart attack once the so much and relaxed. Very good. Now person in France, you're going to go down into a plank position, no theraband plank position, and the person behind is going to lift your legs up, but not tell you when.

So the idea is you need to be ready and they're just going to lift your legs up. You got it. You can do one foot two. You could just do one leg and then you could try two legs. Be a bend your knees. So you gotta use a good body mechanics. Youtube engineer's good. Ah, good.

That's it. Just remember that what goes around comes around because if you're the first one, you're now going to also be the second one. Okay? Now bring them up and lift their legs up into a wheelbarrow position. And let's see if we can take a couple steps forward and back. Yeah, good and back. Both directions and Fordham back. Let them know if you're going to lose it.

We don't want you to lose any teeth in this, in this filming and relax. Woo. Well done. Switch places. What goes around comes around here we go. Playing position. They're sweating. Yeah, just on the playground. Whenever you're ready. Surprise. Attack.

That was the same strategy she used on you. She wasn't going to fall for that one. Okay. And when you're ready, you go into wheelbarrow and walk them forward and back. So we get this nice control. Now try to wiggle as little as possible on that.

Yeah. And forward and back. One more time. Big steps with the hands. Here it is. And back. And let your partner down softly. Very good. Now sit back to back. Sit back to back. Why don't you guys take the Front Mat here?

Yup. That looks good. And in Brett, lock your arms out to the side to arms are straight, but sort of. Yeah. Good. You got it. And what I want you to do, and you can bend your knees a little bit, kin good, because we're just gonna work on our spine twist. But the spine twist has to be in harmony with the person behind you. So if everybody rotates to the right, it's the same direction. Correct.

So everybody rotate to the right. Try to stay tall on that, rotate, rotate, rotate. And then come back to center and then rotate left. And you know, we're getting ready to go into the saw and I just want you to suffer a little bit thinking about how you're going to do the SAR in this position. But it is possible. Straighten your legs out with the legs in an open V. Yup. Good.

Now we're going to rotate to the right and we're going to go forward. Keep your arms connected. We're going to go forward towards the door on the front of the studio, right? So you're going to reach this direction. There it is. Good. And then you're going to come back to the left side towards me on this side? Nope. Nope. Keep the rotation to the right still right it. Yep.

And come to the left foot. Left foot. You're gonna have to stretch. Can a little bit more. This is, oh, there we go. Good. You come on up, rotate left, go to Ken's left side, your right side. Good. There it is. And then come back to the opposite side. So what you ended up doing is you're going diagonal, a, so you rotate here, come back to the other side and then rotate. Go to the other side. Let's make it a little bit smoother. Now I'm working together, having to work with somebody.

It's very different than doing it on your own and having to listen to their bodies and what their bodies are telling you. Very nice. Now let's try something here. Let's scoot you guys just a little bit more this way and you guys a little bit more that way. Yeah, that's just a little bit. Yep. Good. So it's, you have plenty of room with your legs straight out in front of you. Now one of you is going to have your knees bent. It doesn't matter which one. The other one has her legs straight. Okay. And frat.

The one with the knees bent is going to lean back on the person with their leg straight and do a bridge. So you have to support yourself. If you're the one that's being leaned on, you can use your arms a little bit, but really want it to come from the rips. Are you ready? So let's do the bridge onto our partner's back. Lifting the sit bones up. This is like going into leg pour. Yeah, get your hips up. Come on. There it is. Good. And back down. The good news is, is now you straighten your legs out the journeys in the middle and arch back on your partner. You got the idea all the way up into the bridge.

Get your hands off the ground, trust it, and rob down length in your legs. Bend your legs on the other side and reach back over them. Arching back over them, supporting you. You got it? She's strong. Get your butt up if you support yourself as not so bad and down. And again, let's go a little faster, a little smoother.

You know what to do and up in your arch and down from your arch. Forward bend. Bend your knees, arch up. Good and down. And reverse. Last one. Good.

And relax. Very good. How are we doing? All right. Very good. Now let's everybody turn and face that direction right where you're sitting. All right? So are we going to do, is we're going to come up into standing, but just cross your legs where you are without your hands coming up. Joseph Palati style spin around. So you're actually facing me.

Can you come up and spin around? Good. Okay. Walk this way. And we're gonna partner with each other to do a handstand. Okay? And that's going to be the end of our class. A little bit of standing work. So the handstands going to go like this. You want a demo for me?

Do you know how to do a handstand already? See, that's totally okay. All right, so your hands are going to go down by my feet. Yeah. And head on my knee. Bend your knees yet and just coming in here. Keep the knees bent, keep the knees bent, roll the body down, roll the body back up. So this is learning how to do a press into a handstand with your partners. Roll all the way down. Touch the feet, roll back up, leaning into me.

Reach the feedback up. Good. Just to there. Roll back down and relax. So we're going to go that far. The spotting is holding onto the hips. The leg is the spot. Okay. So let's give it a try. Facing this direction. Yeah. And it's going into the front one. Who's going to help? Who? I'll help Ya. So yeah, so your hands are going to go on the side of her feet.

Head would go to the back and you're going to keep the knees bent. Yep. So come on up. Keep the knees bent in. You're holding her there. That's the exercise and up a bit. Go keep the knees bent and don't kick him. And hips bent. There it is. So the exercise is letting your hips come down a little bit and back up. Keep the knees bent. There it is.

That's the whole move without kicking Ken in the face. Working on that. And I get your back back to him. Yeah. So you're going to be here. Make it easy on yourself. There we go without kicking him. Go down like you're going to come all the way down. I'll see if you can bring, yeah, come back up the hair.

It is and down and relax. You think you can do it with Ken? I help you. I'll help Ya. Alright, for switch rows. Ken, how's your hands stand on? Sorry. All right. All right. So let's just do it very slow. So you're going to put your hands down. You're not throwing yourself up into her. You're going to get closer to him.

Yeah, there you go. You come on up. Good. So hold onto him right on that pelvis right against you. And now you're going to roll the pelvis down and bring it back up there. So a lot of times what you're seeing on the videos at home is how people are actually learning how to press into hand stance. And that's one of the things we're learning here with your partners is how to start using that articulation that we get and roll ups and bridging and rolling like a ball and how to get that strength up against gravity to be able to do a handstand. Wonderful. Come on down and let's all stand facing the center. So find your mat.

Yup. There we go. And let's just finish up with a nice roll down and roll up. Staggered coming in just a little bit. You guys are good out there. It's a great place. Good. And from here, just gently tilting the head down. Finishing off with a nice articulation, the spine, one vertebra after the other, dropping the spine down all the way down.

Now I like when you get all the way down, send the knees forward just a Smidge to keep the center of the gravity right between your legs. Let the back of the head drop down. Shake the head up to loosen anything that might be tight from your handstands. Taking a deep breath. Send the tailbone down, lift the pubic bone up and stack the vertebra up one at a time until you come all the way back up into standing. Taking a deep breath. Take your right leg, shake their right leg out. Take your left leg, shake your left leg out. Shake both legs, shake both arms, shake both faces, right arms across the chest. Bounce the diaphragm. Ah, let me hear it. Ah, good. Taking a deep breath. Hands up.

Bring the hands down into the chest and may you play long and prosper. Thank you very much. We'll see you in another please. Anytime class.