Stabilize and Mobilize Mat

Hi everyone. I am here for a workout with you and today we'll need the foam roller and some hand weights or the weighted balls. And so use your discretion if you want weights or balls. Uh Huh. So we're going to start with the foam roller behind our back for a little shoulder opening. And today's class is really just a movement classes, just enjoy, you know, moving with the roller and focusing a little bit once we get on the mat of stability. And then some good juicy mobility. Okay, so we'll just have some fun.

So let's start out with a Pilati stance alignment and how the roller right against your sacrum on your back, the palms of your hands against the roll. You can see how I'm doing that. So that right away sets our upper arm in external rotation and don't force it. This is probably a lot for some of you just standing here. So do what you can. If this is not available for you, you may or may not want to use the roller or just do what you can.

You might even have to just turn your arms and a little bit more neutral for it. But those of us that are working on more shoulder opening, um, go ahead and try it. Okay, so let's just take a nice deep inhale. We're going to roll down you guys. So just take your head down and start to flex your spine. Go as far as you can and on the way down, just check and see if you can keep those shoulders rolled back.

Letting no crown on my head, drop the back of my brain, really dropped down. Shifting your weight forward slightly and just check the shoulders again. And then here we go. Roll Up. So I'm really pressing my sacrum now up against that roller on the way up. And just follow your eyes forward on the floor in front of your feet.

Just straight out in front. And then we look right at each other. Let you take a deep breath, standing up a little bit taller. So as you start to feel more warm on these roll downs, you can, you can work on more shoulder rotation if you'd like. I can work on opening that up even more and more muscular effort of it or you can just hold the roller. Let's go ahead and roll back up. [inaudible] we'll take two more of these roll down.

So this time I'm going to let my chest come, not just up to center, standing tall. I'm going to lift my sternum upward a little bit just to start opening up through that upper back and upper chest rolling down. Get a sense of that hollowing inward of those abdominal muscles up off of the legs. Use that to start rolling up and dropping that heavy tailbone down the back of the legs to the feet. Once again, look forward and as you, if you're trying to gaze up, this might be where if you're ready to press your arms against the roller just a little bit and then one more time to roll down Halloween. The Tummy. You can do the scoop image if you'd like that.

I like to think of my stomach coming up away from the legs, away from the floor and roll all the way back up this time. Again, that last opportunity here just in warming up, lift your chest, rotate your shoulders a little bit more and then stand to center. So I'm just going to set the term profile and then you guys, most of you know that when you watch my classes, I like to aim that some somewhere. Um, for more rotation. So I'm going to change my hand down to a pinky finger, right against the roller, some facing back and then you can kind of see how that sets those external rotators a little bit more in work here. So taking your legs apart, we're just going to do a very, very subtle little rotation of the, of the body. And I'm pivoting on one foot.

I'm keeping the roller against my hips though the back of my sacred. So it's not a huge a torso rotation. If anything, as you despise oral and you're standing this way, contract, that glute there, it'd be my right one. It'd be your left on probably if you're watching. Okay, against the roller, they start sensing that cause we want those, that hip extension when we get on the roller on the mat. And a little bit. Okay. So just a few more. This is nothing really fancy.

You're just kind of feeling some weight shift. The contact of your hands against the roller, the roller against your sacrum. Okay. And just changing your eye line. Let's do four more. So there's one and two. It's a nice shoulder opener, if anything else or if nothing else I should say. Okay. And then just a few of this warming into your hips, like eight of them.

Just bend and stretch. So lightly pressing the pinky finger edge of your hand against your roller and the roller against your sacrum. Yeah. And then once we get down on the mat, we'll, we'll do that shortly. We're going to start sitting on the roller just so you know what's about to happen. Okay. So everyone just stand right there and I'm going to lower my roller and let's go ahead and get down to the mat. I'm going to put my roller up on this high mat.

Luckily you are not on this. Hi Matt. So it's challenges, my steadiness and my balance. But where we'll start, everybody is sitting on a very, very, very bottom edge of your foam roller. Grab your weights and we'll start sitting up tall. We are going to do a roll back. So this right away starts challenging our sense of stability as we mobilize our spine. If there's a way to kind of combine the two things, meaning stabilize it, you don't roll off to the side and also stabilize the darn roller. So if you want to put your arms out in front of you holding the weights, if you're ready, go for it. You can also just set them on your legs.

I'm going to go here. So let's take a deep breath. So as we start going back, we'll take a slow one. Push the feet down on the mat and forward. Don't pull them backward. Okay. Push them forward a little bit. Almost like you're on that moving sidewalk at the airport and you're rolling it, your body down. So hopefully success is achieved and you've arrived and you haven't slept slithered off. Let's try rolling back up.

So start lowering the arm weights. Pick up your head in your chest. Now might be a time to pull your heels towards you. Pull your heels toward you in imaginative way. How'd you do? I didn't fall off. So that's a good choice. A good sign. So here we go again. It's at nice slow roll.

You can change your arms to palms face in if that feels better on your shoulders, really slow. Remember the feet matter. So reach the feet kind of like you're trying to stretch your mat for word articulating until you arrive and we roll back up. So arms begin to lower can lift your head round, pull your heels towards you so you access your hamstrings and that relationship up into your abdominals and spine. Two more times, heels push forward like you're stretching your mat. Gazing forward, taking your time, grading, strengthen that mobility, their coming up arms because the head, you flex the neck, you flex the spine, you can pull your heels towards you. Access your hamstrings. One more and we'll stay down. This time you probably know you're not just doing one. Exhale, take as many inhale, exhale cycles as you need. Oh right.

So let's pause here with our arms straight up for a moment and just let the shoulder blade settle against that roller. I'm going to change my foot position, step them back now, heels a little bit more in line with the sitz bones and in fact you can let your knees rest together if you'd like. That is a bit more steady if you want the challenge though, that's what you're here for. Keep those knees apart. Okay, so open and close the arms. Pretty simple. But again, we're trying not to roll off obviously. Okay, so we're still stabilizing, but we are trying to mobilize other things at the same time. That would be the collarbone, chest, shoulder girdle. We're trying to keep our ribs relatively stable against the ruler.

A breathe in and XL close. Okay, two more times big. Why so the arms are not necessarily going down to the floor. My understanding about the height of the roller, feel free to go lower if you want. Don't have to. Just recognize how stable your trunk is while your arms are in the moving action. Okay? Now let's do some scissor arm. I'm going to try and keep my palms facing in one arm. Comes down by the hip.

Again, not all the way to the floor. The other arm goes right along side the ear. Feel that wonderful stretch on that upward side. And then they meet in the middle and then they just pass. So the one up on my ear, I'm allowing my shoulder blade to come with me.

I'm not pulling my lat down and all the other words, let it eat, elongate, and then come back through center. Okay, so again, you're stabilizing trunk, moving through the arms and bring it up. And we can inhale on the lengthening. Exhale, reach. And let's go for four morals. We have a little quicker inhale and exhale. But as you take a luxurious inhalation, it does slow down your tempo and one more each arm, getting some good rhythm and reach. And last one. And then we're gonna move into some bending your elbows. Okay. So just bend your elbows like you've done, taken the waist down and that only want you to do is re externally. Rotate your upper arms again and then rotate back to the first position.

This is just to get some ball and socket, the humerus in the shoulder girdle. I'm just going to do for holding these weights for a while. You really want you to feel like you're holding more integrity from the back of the shoulder than your chest and not locking down in there. Okay, so there was your four. Now let's take the arms back up again. You need a little helicopter arm, just a few.

So go back to this scissor one arm down, one arm up. You'll spiral of both of these arms out to that wide t position where you started. Keep on going all the way around and they joined back at the top. Okay, so then reverse it, the one that just came down and goes up, etc. Of all the way around and start to kind of feel the mobility of your shoulder blades against the roller.

We want to promote some mobility back there. You don't have to lock down the lats. Okay. Reach wide here. Reach wide all the way around and lift. And all we're doing is one more guys reach. How, why can you stretch your arms?

Take up the space in your room all the way around so your arms might be getting a little tired. Bend your elbows. Now let's bring our ankles and knees together. Take a breath without destabilizing the ribcage and popping that up. Just do a simple leg lift and put it down. We'll just do four of them. So exhale and then lift the leg. Just one more each side.

So we're just warming up that hip joint where the action of lift occurs. Okay? Yeah. Now let's go back to the first leg, whichever one you started with, and hold it there. The feel where your elbows are on your mat. And I want you to pull them in toward the roller a little bit. So once again, setting that shoulder and a little more external rotation. Okay?

Pick up your head and your chest. You can do a little chest lift. You can just kind of gaze check things out. You'll feel pretty stable. Those pretty good. Now concentrate on the leg that's down on the mat and once again, I want you to not pull it towards you, but think of reaching it away that way in case, stretch your mat a little bit of way that way. And then what you'll have happen now is extend your leg to the ceiling as you lower your head. Okay? Pick the chest up as you bend the knee and just a couple more. So this is a stability challenge.

Really rely on your standing leg down there on the mat. Kids like your foot is stuck. It can't really lift. Let's do one more time and pick it up. Exhale, pick up your head, I should say, and then lower down. Okay. It stays down now. Leg Circle three times. Very small. Inward, down around and left. Rely on the stability and the strength and connection of your standing leg on the mat. All right, three of the other way. They're very small.

This isn't about stability in the trunk while we mobilize in the hip. That was my three. Okay. Time for the other leg. So set that one down, anchor that. And then here goes to the other side, just through your tabletop. Pick up your head in your chest, make sure your hips are in a good position for yourself, and then your standing leg again is reaching a little more forward. Energetically you're not pulling back. It could make you over your back. So I want you to feel that solid foot. Now as you lower your chest, the leg extends to the ceiling. Exhale, fold the knee, lift up the chest.

Yeah, inhale, lower down. Okay. And exhale, pick it up. And again, one side should feel a little less easy and that's okay. This last one, we'll take it down and hold it there. Okay.

Three legs, circles and in around, and lift your last one. How you relying on your solid standing leg? Hopefully you are reversed your direction. Go into those external rotators of your shoulders. Oof. Last one. Okay. So I want you to bend that knee and put it down. Pick up the other leg again through folded knee and then straight up to the ceiling. Okay. Flex the ankle everybody.

And just point flex your foot has something to do now in opposition to this leg being up, we can keep it pointed. Take the opposite arm up. So you're going to have two limbs straight up and two limbs bent and touching the mat. Okay, that's hard enough. You can just repeat that or hold here if you'd like. I'm going to do four times lowering the leg and lowering the arm. They go away from the center. Okay, so you want to try to time it now you can take your leg down to the mat.

If you're ready for that in your back. You certainly don't have to go that low. Let's exhale up. Three more inhalers. We lengthen. It feels so good. Exhaling last to you. Feel free to flex your foot and do anything you want with your ankle and lift.

Nice to change. Inhale. So once again, the standing leg really helping me so that I don't lose control. Okay. Other side. So bent up the other knee, get a nice straight leg up to the sky. The opposite arm that comes through right up. That shoulder blade stays back though you don't protract the Scapula. Okay, flex and point your foot a few times and then here we go. So timing it, arm and leg move at the same rate with length.

The Rib. Stay against the ruler and we need an exhale to come up our stomach work. Inhale as we liked them. How about thrusting the ribs? Exhale. And I'm going to flex the foot this time and two more. Good. Work on the obs. Abdominal, yes.

Last one. And the neck failing up. Okay, that's plenty of that. Let's bend this elbow, keep that knee up and bend it. Pick up the other knee and let's just go for just a kind of a quick little change of rhythm, some toe taps and then k and just toes first. Ah, and no. 10 with some flex angles and two and three, four, five, six and eight and nine and 10 and then just take it down. Okay. Stretch both of your legs long. Put both arms down, let go of the weights for a second and just recognize you've got this really wonderful open hip angle. Kind of what we're doing is standing with the sacrum against the roller lengthwise, but we had it, um, or width wise. Now we've got a link twice. Okay.

So just recognize that openness and then grab the weights again. One more round. Ring both knees up, bend those elbows, Tuck them close into the ruler. Pick up both legs, flexing ankles and extend and flex and extend. Last to flex and extend and flex and extend. Okay. Four times x external rotation of your femurs and back to parallel and external rotation and perilous and thinking.

Peeling the legs away from the midline. Peeling a back to it. One more time, you'll stay turned out. And let's slowly take the legs apart. Hold that, flex your legs and pull the legs together. We'll do four. Inhale as you open. Exhale as you close. Okay. Inhale as you open, we'll do something in a minute. I'm adding onto this, but in a slightly different position on the roller.

This is plenty hard right now. Okay. And then point parallel, bend the knees, take your feet down. Ah, take your arms down and then we probably should do a roll of sit up. Right? We should chest ourself and see. So walk your feet more forward. Reach your arms up. Here we go. Guys, lift up your head, neck and chest, and roll our way up to a successful sitting position. Okay, but the weight's down. We may not need those for a bit. Okay. Maybe not at all. I don't any more today. So how I want us to work this, in fact, I will probably just go there is sit facing me, but one hip, right against your roller. I want you to turn your trunk toward it.

Look right at it. The goal is that we can put arch the center of our chest right on top of that roller. Here we go. So roll it out. You've got to stretch yourself to it. Now it's a little odd, I have to say, cause you're, you know, you're laying on the roller and a twisted position. You could do one of two things. You could actually just come to here with your forehead on it. That's fine.

But what I'd really love to see if you can do is stretch this arm and turn away from that arm. I won't go all the way down with my cheek on the roller because I've got my microphone here. But if you can everybody try it. Put your cheek down. Okay. What I'll do for right now, just for filming purposes is just here, but you'll notice if you've taken your head all the way through, you've got a cool spiral all the way through your back. You mobilize into this really neat tail to head spiral and all the way even into your ear. It's really lovely. Nothing happens other than being here and you get to take three to five breaths.

Okay? So I'm just going to walk my arm a little bit more. We'll just enjoy the twist. Enjoy that twist. Maybe this is something new that you've never done on your roller before. It feels really nice on a stack of pillows or a, uh, a yoga bolster and just saying it feels really nice. The foam roller is a little bit, um, well you know, not as forgiving, but it does give you something to achieve.

Something that I love to think about is that central access. So we are right in line with it. We're not after the side. Okay. You know that. So then go ahead, walk your hands up. Now let's turn this open up the legs into more of our mermaid set and we're going to just carry on. Our spine is probably ready for a little bit of side bend to do the leaning and then a rotate.

They should feel a little easier than some days to rotate after you've just done that. Nope. And we'll come back up. We'll do a total of four. This is just have fun, lean stretch. You do want to turn your chest, that central axis, rotate that rotate back to facing front and all the way up. I don't have a lot of pressure on my hand on the roller. In fact, you don't need any, if you don't want any in turn and return lift. And just one more time and enjoy and west getting that nice sense of mobility through our thoracic spine. Okay, the, let's take that the other way.

I'm just gonna move around. We'll stay facing each other. Of course. Not always though. Don't fall off. All right, so we're right there. Knees are stacked, your feet are on the back side of your hips. One side is bound to feel different than the other. This is my different side from turning. Okay. Aim your chest for that center roller and you would have to stretch your waist across it. Stretch your waist, chest, stretch your chest. Okay, now I am going to take advantage of the Mike not being on this side and then follow that twist all the way through so you can maybe kind of glance and see.

Okay. Now I can tell on this side of my own body, because I know myself so well. I'm not quite centered access on through my abdomen area, so I just want to recalibrate a little and make that adjustment. So I've just turned my stomach tissue a little bit more. My arm is reaching, getting a length in this side. Body ribs, three to five deep breath cycles guys. So what's mobilizing in this? Well, we're not stabilizing much. We are definitely mobilizing some tissue.

Let's take one more and feeling a new exercise. New position on your foam roller. Okay. Come on up and then move it here in your mermaid legs. Hand is there and we go to mobilizing it to side bend and twist side bend or lean. And we did four of them. Just let it go. Feel more free and west.

Yeah, and center last to and lean and rotate and open. And I've, we've got one more and then we're going prone after this center and up. Okay. So our shoulders should feel pretty ready. Let's come on down. Face down. Okay. Legs together if you can. Is is my goal for us all if you need to have, I'm a little spacious. That's fine. Um, I'm not a huge fan of the turnout and wide legs. I think for me in person kind of just gets a little too much compression here.

So I'm trying to open that up. Almost turn my inner thighs down and up actually toward the ceiling as it legs are together. Okay. Okay, so forehead is down to start again. If this is too much shoulder flection for you, you know who you are won't feel good, so you can actually start this whole thing with your head elevated. But for those of us that are making improvements, we're going to keep that head down and let's go ahead and do some elevation of the Scapula. Weigh up how much that can you lift, let those shoulder blades come toward the hears and then scapula down four times. It's really mobilize. Okay, last you shoulder blades up. You can do palms facing in shoulder blades down the back one more and then down.

Now I am in a hover my head, so my head right between the two arms for four more of those, it does feel different and can go a little bit faster. Scapula up, Scapula, down and down. One more. And then as these, as you roll them down, keep them down, not aggressively. Just set the shoulders down. Okay? So as we elevate our chest higher for more back extension, let's not worry about going backward in back extension. Go upward skyward.

I'm lifting my sternum and my chest up to the ceiling. Yes, there's pressure down on my arms, but I'm not necessarily, I'm going to show one weird one. Don't pull backward. Oh, think more up. Okay. And now down and forward just four of them. So it's a head lift. I am moving this, the shoulder blades a little more downward, but I'm lifting up, looking straight forward and lower. Good back extension never hurts. So you more times we're rising. Why do the chest and one more time and we live, we rise higher, not necessarily pulling backward, rising higher. Stay there.

Let's add a little bit of single leg kick. So I'm going to flex my foot. Kick, kick down, kick, kick and down. Let's go eight times. So you want to keep lifting, not pulling backwards. Keep up, up, up, up and last one, right heel. Last one left heel and lower the way. Okay, let's just do a few more things in this little mini kind of class and I want it big shoulder flection coming. Okay. So I wore the cat pants for this cat exercise.

I have like a cat neighbor and I just love walking this cat and it's really cool. It's a little black hat but I'm going to channel that little thing and his work on stretching my shoulders and getting my hips are right above my um, leg bones and stretching my chest down. I'm gonna start it again guys cause I need a little more room. And I know some of you are commenting in, we're making improvements or me and our shoulder flection, but it's also our third rassic range of movement and then articulation. So hip should be above thighs, heart and chest down to the ground and reach your armpits towards your hands.

Okay, now we need to come out of it and use your stomach. You did a lot of work to prepare for that. We'll just do a couple more. So ideally your hips are right above your hips, your knees though. Roll it out and reach your chest down. Okay. Reach your sternum, reach your armpits towards your hands. Drop, drop, drop, drop, drop and coming up. Okay, let's take one more.

I know a lot of you are working on this because you've messaged me in the forum section, which is great. So all those shoulder opening classes I'm, I've been doing, you're liking. So carry on. Let's get to it. Let's get more range. More freedom. Alright. And okay, I think we're winding down. We're going to do one last little bit. This is what I did want to get to. So let's feel good on your back and you're going to come over on your back.

Put that a roller organic at the sacrum. We're on top of it. Hold on to the cap, the ends of it. Take your legs up and let's do some nice Sisera movements with our legs. And we want to mobilize hips and hamstrings. So go for as much scissor split as you can without forwarding the rib cage and moving that around. Okay, so let's just change.

Gosh, I feel good. And Shane and Shane and change for more and change. And Shane, I'm going a little turnout change and change into a bicycle movement. So we bicycle reach further away with that leg as you go out and down. Four more man. Six and seven and a this reverse our bicycle legs and two, three and four and five.

Are you stretching as much as you possibly can and both legs seven and eight and then come into a helicopter. Okay. This like rms did earlier. So one, they can scissor, four would, one is back, then go all the way out to that big wide v position. Both legs, keep on coming around. Reach that maximum stretch and then to center or reverse the legs. One scissor. And how far, why can you stretch those two legs? Mobilizing through the hip joints and again, scissor. Both legs are rotating.

I'm going to feel those glutes kick in all the way around. And Center and scissor. No one's thwarting their rib cage because you're focused on your hips. We just have one more cycle each side. So we got all of our body parts in. Did you know that we got our ass, we got balance, we got our back, we got our sides, we rotated.

We've opened our hips. Almost a little kind of understated little mini sash. Thanks for joining. The next time.