Kids Mat: Concentration

Okay. Well, welcome. This is Astella Kay and Mackenzie and we're going to be doing a beginner mat. We're going to go through a whole series and today is concentration. So concentration is not very fun. Do you guys like to concentrate the whole time? Especially when you're tired.

Okay. So instead of completely focusing on exactly my quadriceps or my, my rectus abdominis are crazy big words that we don't need to think about. It's better to use images. So we're going to play around with a lot of fun images and we're just going to be doing a basic Matt today and see if it changes the way our body moves or feels because we're thinking of different animals or images. Sound good? All right. So let's get started.

All right, a style. You guys can go ahead and sit down. Good. And Go ahead and lie down. So I love your feet towards me and your head that way. Good. All right. And lie down on your Nice Mat and now reach your arms behind you for each reach.

Reach and reach your legs as if you had a horse like pulling on a leg. And the horse pulling on another one. And then the same with you. You've got like, you're just being stretched in all kinds of directions cause this is completely opposite of what we do in Pele's. We don't go away from our center. We actually pull everything into our center. So now I want you to imagine as if someone came along and was about to punch you in the gut. What would you, what would your body do? Like automatically? Yeah.

Or if I said, you know what? I'm going to come and I'm going to go ahead and put your arms down by your side. I'm going to stand on your stomach. What would you do with those muscles? Go ahead and hug your knees into your chest and employees. We always warm up with an exercise called the hundred so I want you to think of me standing on your stomach and lift your head up to look at it.

And now I just want you to straighten your arms by your side. Keep your head up for me. McKinsey arms reach here and pop them up and down like that. Good. Can you take a big breath? Can you exhale and kiss your knees for me? Good. Stay there. Inhaling, can you exhale?

We're going to just bring your knees a little bit over your hips like that. Good. Inhaling. Good. I need room to stand on your stomach, so I'm gonna do that. I know. And take a breath. Ooh, that's good. And exhale, pulling your belly in. Yeah. And big breath. Big pumps is how fast can we go? Can we create wind? Can you feel any wind? Take another big breath. Willing to stand on your stomach. One more breath. Oh, a little faster. I'm gonna hug your knees into your chest and relax your head down. That's it.

Did you feel your stomach working? Good. All right, we're going to do the roll back. So sit up. We're going to get really coordinated during this series. So you're all sitting up. We're going to bend our knees and you're going to round your back. And I want you to think of an image of, do you guys like ice cream? Okay.

Have you ever scooped out the ice cream? So it's like whole. So I want you to imagine an ice cream scooper and it's all scoops out your belly. Yep. Perfect. McKinsey. Awesome. And you're going to keep your belly and like that. Um, Caitlyn, put your hands underneath your knees and just pull back your belly away from your legs and then come back. That's perfect. And ice cream scooper scoops out your belly. Yep. And then you pull away. That's so good. And pull forward.

Good. And the ice cream scooper comes around, pulls that and goes back. Do you think you can go a little further without losing control and then you can come back and pulling back? Great. Do it one more time. Awesome. Good. Now I want you to stay here and I want you to pretend that the ceiling just like came all the way down here. And I want you to stay underneath the ceiling. Good. And now straighten your legs on the Mat. Good.

And now stay under the ceiling and roll all the way down as if you were a party favor. And I blew you out. Can you do that? Uh Huh. And then you got gotta curl right back into yourself. Yup. And reach for your toes. I, you said you weren't flexible. You can do it and then rule out like a party favor. That's it. And Roll right back into yourself. Curly. Yeah. Give me two more.

Roll out like a party favor. Nice. And then curl right back into yourself. Good job. One more time. Roll out and curl right back into yourself. Awesome. And then roll out one more time. One more [inaudible]. Then you get to stay down. Good art.

Bend your knees and put your feet flat. Some of you say you're really stiff, so hug your right knee into your chest. Good. Try to keep your bottom down. It doesn't need to come up good. And then straight in your leg up and put your hands behind your thigh and pull it towards you. If is that hard? Is it? It's really stiff. Okay.

I want you to pretend your leg is a really sharp pencil and I want you to point your toes as if it's the tip of the pencil. And I want you, we're going to draw a circle on the ceiling in a second. So put your hands down. Don't move your body. Just your pencil draws a circle on the ceiling. Hold. Draws a circle on the ceiling. Hold. Good. Keep going. I'm going to watch you. Yes, let's go the other way though. The cross around it.

I like it straight and that short pencil. Woo. Yeah. One more good. Can you go the other way? Dan are out. That's awesome. Draw that circle. We're going to go the other end. McKenzie. There you go. Good around up two more and I don't know which way you went the first time, but we're going to go this way one more time.

Down around up and now hug that knee and that was it. That's called single leg circles. We're going to put that foot down. Had the left knee in cause it prose. Straighten that left leg up and then put your hands behind your thigh and stretch. How does that feel? Is it like torture or is it okay? It's okay. Good.

And it's going to be a sharp pencil against a press your arms down to kind of hold your balance and it's drawing a really sharp and we're going to cross your body around and up. Good. Trying not to move your body at all. Just draw. Imagine you're like, you can even imagine you're a, I'm a spy and you need to get out of here so you have to carve a circle one more and reverse like a hole in the ceiling. Go the other way. Good pulling in. Have you ever seen those spy movies or like the junior spy movies? I don't know. What do you see Stella to more? Come on. I know you know it and hug the knee in and you're going to put your right foot down. All right, we're going to try rolling. So this is hard.

We're going to straighten your legs on the mat and you did it really good earlier, but now it's going to seem harder for some reason. Remember when the ceiling dropped, then you rolled out like a party favor. Tried to roll into yourself to sit up. See if you could do that. That takes a lot of stomach muscles. Curl into yourself. All right, you guys made that look really easy. All right, so it's really hard for adults. Do you know that? All right. Okay.

So now we're going to lift your bottom forward. [inaudible] and we're going to try to keep that ice cream scooped out of your belly. And Kaitlin, you like tennis right now, you only like volleyball and you like soccer and you like ballet, sometimes tennis. We're going to pick your tennis because it uses a ball. And I want you to picture the stitching on the tennis ball. And I want you to become that tennis ball.

And I want you to picture your volleyball and I want you to become your volleyball and I want you to become your soccer ball. So we're going to pull our belly in and we're going to balance and we're going to picture ourselves like a ball. Does a ball do this? It stays tight and we're going to try to rule. So ready? There went one. So we're gonna use our Tami, like an ice cream sloop scooper. Cause that's gonna keep us balanced. Okay. Hide your ears between your knees and inhale if you want. And then exhale, Tomas. Ooh, that's good.

Tuck energy. Your knees and inhale, roll back and exhale and then stay. Yes, you did it. And inhale, roll back and exhale. Really good. Can you hide your ears between your knees? Cause you're so good. Open your knees a little good. Oh yeah. Two more. Say tight as that. Volleyball and come up. Awesome. What?

Yeah, no over here we go. Let's see. Two more or three more in a row. Let's go back. Roll up and go back. Roll Up. I don't even want to see your eyes because you're hiding them. One more. McKinsey's joining guilt. That's really good ladies. Good job. Good.

So did you picture yourself as a baller? Was it a good good? Did it, did your stomach have to work good? It's going to help with all the other principles. So now we're gonna roll down a little, a bit like you're rolling out, but then we're going to stop when you still can look at your belly. Good. And then hug your right knee in and try to kiss it.

Good. Lift your left leg up. Good. Let's kiss your left knee. Good. Pull your belly in and kiss your right knee. You got it nice and your left good. And Kiss your right like it and kiss your left still has given herself a lot of love over there. Right and left one.

Was that right? Actually two more sets left. Pulling in one more, right? Pulling in left and then bend your knees and relax. Woo. Good job. Have you guys ever seen a dead bug? It kind of looks like this, right? Just kinda like Eh, on the, on the, on the ground. So the next exercise is the double version.

So you're almost like a ball where you hide your ears between your knees. So lift up but then pull your belly in and straight and your arms and legs up, like touching the ceiling with your hands. Touch the ceiling with your toes and then hug in again. Good. And then reach, reach, retreat and then pull in. Good. And reach like a dead bud.

Maybe think of a turtle and like hide your head in its shell. Yeah. Two more up and pull in and hide your head one more time and hide and rest your head. Good job. Sit Up anyway you can hopefully straight. Good. And now you're going to straighten your legs. Okay. And you're gonna open them about as wide as your mat.

And one thing's really hard to do nowadays and that is have good posture because we like to relax a lot. So we're going to try to sit up really tall like you're a puppet and someone has your strings and they're pulling you up to the ceiling. And if you can't do that because your legs are hurting or it's gripping here, you can bend your knees but feel really tall and straight and your back. Can you do that? Good job. Nice a stellate. Since you can't, can you flex your feet too? Good. All right. Now I want you to put your hands on the mat and then just pretend you're a, I like to pretend I'm a banana peel.

I'm against my the banana and I'm just going to peel off the banana and then I'm going to roll back up the banana peel goes right back up. Good. Get Tall, tall, tall. I'm going to straighten my legs, do whatever you can. And then again, exhale this time, squeeze out all your errors, you go forward, forward, forward, and then inhaling up, up, up. Nice job and head down and exhaling forward. Forward, forward. Awesome. And then inhaling up. Good.

Now we're going to bring our arms up and we're going to tighten our arms and we're going to pretend like there's a magnet pulling our arms and pulling our legs in our stomach is like trying not to get pooled. Yup. And then sit up tall. Then there's a magnet pulling our arms and pulling our leg. Then we're going to try to resist with our belly. That scooped. Look at your belly for me, Kate. Yeah.

And then inhaling up and one more than we're gonna pretend we're a seal and then exhale forward. Good. Is it a big stretch? Good for you. And then sit up tall. How tall can you sit up? How tall and relax. Good. Last exercise. We're going to bring our legs together and we're going to go fishing. We're going to grab onto our feet and we're going to use our tummy to pull our feet towards us. We're going to use that belly. Yeah.

When you're in the knees are a little part and you're going to put your arms between your legs and under your ankles. Good. And we're going to balance with our feet up and we're gonna try to stay here and clap bar fins, our flippers together. How are we doing? Good. I'll show you where you're going to go and then you'll join me on the next one. Okay. So I'm gonna Roll, you know, rock and roll, almost like I'm on a rocking chair and I'm gonna stretch my flippers behind me and then I'm going to come up and try to balance with them up here. I know.

Okay, here we go. We're gonna and we're gonna reach back and we're going to come up. She didn't make it back up, did she? Just so we're clear. That's my daughter. Sit back here. All right, let's try that again. So Center your bottom, at least on the mat. So you're in the middle to start. Give yourself a fighting chance.

Grab underneath your flippers. Good. All right. And reach your flippers behind you to rock back. Good. And now use your belly to come up. There you go. Where'd you go? Try to imagine you have a, you're on a rocking chair. How bout that? And Rock back and rock up.

You did it easy. Three more. Here we go. Rock and rock and rock and hold. And one more rock. And we got to end on a good note. Still. Come on back here. One, one, a good note. Here we go. Rock back. We're rock up. Very nice. Okay. That is the last exercise, but it's really nice to stand up and think I'm going to leave you for the last one. So Center yourself. We're going to finish.

You always want to finish like I've, you know, not like a, I'm on the ground and I'm so tired, right? The you want to feel like you did something fun. So put your hands on your ankles. Good. And do another one. Say you're going to rock back now. Now. Good. And then next. Now I, if you feel like you're going to fall back, just reach for me and I'm going to pull you forward. Okay. So rock back and good, and then reach perfect to you.

I'm little worried about it. Let's try it. Good and rock back and now look at me and try to stand up. Ah, good job. Nice work, ladies. Great work. So that's it for class one and we will see you next time. First. Centering.