Day 3: Hips, Glutes & Thighs

Hi everyone. Welcome to day three of the challenge. Today's workout focus is hips, glutes, and thighs. So here we go. We're going to start in Pilates. V stands going for the standing foot work series here. So I'm going to bring my one arm over the other, pressing down with one as I press up with the other heals wrapped together and raise the heels up and press the heels down.

Raise them up and press them down. Now pay attention to your range. Only lift as high as you can without your heel separating so that you're able to keep that energy of your heels really working hard and draw the heels up towards the seat throughout that movement. If your heel separate, you might not have as much fun. One more time up and take it down. Now add a little knee bend, knees bent. Now from here, don't raise the level of your head. Simply lift your heels up, then straighten your legs and for us your heels down again. The heel. Stay connected the whole time. Let's keep them glued together and press them to bend the knees.

Raise the heels. Think pull the muscles of the thighs uptight and press the heels down again. Bend the knees, heels, raise up, stretch and heels go down. Bend the knees, heels up, straighten. Now reverse that. Raise the heels. Now bend your knees down.

See how low you can go. Press your heels down straight in the legs, raise the heels, keep them together. Then the knees, heels. Touch the mat and straighten again. Bend heels, press straighten. Last time up, bend, heels down. And straighten. Now just hold here. Open your arms out and bring them down. And I want you to really feel the muscles of your legs drawing up.

I like to think of, um, I don't wear a lot of pantyhose anymore, but the feeling that when you push your leg into a pair of pantyhose, that feeling of lengthening up through the legs. So I'm not standing with tension in my legs, but I have an energy throughout the body. We're going to use that throughout our workout today to get more out of it. The next thing we'll do is separate the legs out into a standing dancer. Second position.

So this is a great example of a place where I want you to feel those muscles pulling up and not just hanging in your joints here. So we're going to think lift up through the arches, pull the calf muscles up, pull the fives up just like you pull up onto, into a pair of pantyhose from here. Then the knees down and straighten your legs and bend. So I know this position looks different for everyone. Don't worry about that. Don't think about how it looks, but I want you to think of this pushing your knees backwards while trying to send your hips forward. And again, we're just moving here and down and up.

This time down and hope. Now you're going to take your right side of your body and turn to your left. Turn back to the center. Hold two, three, go the other way. Spin to this. Turn to the middle hole. Two, three again, turn back to the middle.

Think knees open. Hips forward, other side turn and center. Hold. Now we pulse. Go down to three. Four we hold for five knees open, hips forward to one. Stand up and rest. Turn to the front of your mat.

Stand with your feet about hip width apart. Reach your arms to the sky above you. Take a deep breath in. Fail. Hurry around to come down. Now from here, bending your knees as much as you need to to keep your hands flat to the mat. Take your left leg, step it back and go into not quite a plank. So kind of like a high, what's going to end up feeling like a bit of a pike position.

Now we're going to take the other leg and meet it there. So my hips are high and I'm on my toes and I'm real. Did up to the ceiling above me. Now from here I'm going to bend my knees down and I'm going to bring my shins parallel to the floor and I just hover and hold to three. Now I'm going to lift the knees up high to be toe rounded shape of the back.

Do it again. Send the knees down, shins parallel to the floor. Hold two, three, lifts that up again. Take it down. Let those legs, exercise heart, even allow your calves and your hamstrings. And your glutes to be somehow integrated into this just by thinking about it and pick the knees up. Now we come down and we do a one-leg version, so we lower the knees down. We're going to pick one knee up and try to pull it to the chest and hold it for three to one place. The footwear, it was other like three to one. Put the foot down, switch again. Three, two, one foot goes back again with the left hole. Three, two, one. Bring the toes down. Now, reluctantly lower cause there's a lot of fun in this moment, right when the knees are hovering over the floor. Delis pulled tight, knees, hover and rest. Release back through the toes, around out the shape of the back and take a moment.

And from here we're going on to the back to do our a hundred beats. Reach your arms forward, roll down to your neck, bring your legs to tabletop arms reaching long besides you. Nice. Inhale to prepare and exhale chin to chest. Curl up and send your legs out and go pump those arms. Now we're going to think about pulling on that pair of panties again.

So in this position is you're pumping your arms, you're thinking of pulling these muscles up. A lot of times I think we tend to avoid the legs working in an exercise like a hundred I want you to work them, feel those muscles, even allow these hip flexors to get some exercise. Feel free to lower the legs to wherever you want them, but keep that energy going. Okay? Breathe in and out. Two, three, four, five.

Inhale and exhale. Two, three, four, five. Try to progress the height of the legs. Two more breaths. Inhale and exhale. Two, three, four, five. Inhale. Exhale, two, three, four, five means to just hug those legs and place the head down. Bring your feet down onto the floor. Now for a bridge with the feet pressing with a lot of energy down into the floor already, I want you to feel the muscles of your glutes and your hamstrings, even your calves, the bottoms of your feet.

The whole lower body is working here to give you some support so that now we exhale. Draw the belly in and we do an articulating bridge to come up. We have a little more freedom in our spine has we use our legs for support? Big inhale there at the top. Let the exhale roll you down through the back. Now I'm only halfway down, but I haven't lost my connection through my seat.

Try to keep that. It's easy to lose it. Let's keep the hips working throughout inhaled back to neutral position of the pelvis. Exhale, pull the belly in, tuck and roll up. Squeeze the seat. Press down with the feet strong through the lower body minds shaken and then the exhale hurls you down, down, down and down again. Exhale, pull the belly to the back. Squeeze the seat, roll it up. Holding at the top.

This time we're going to do a little heel. Raise the heels, come up. Exhale, press the heels down. Now when my heels raise up, my bum is going to lift automatically a little inch, but when I press my heels down, I'm going to try to keep pushing up with the backs of my legs. Once again, my heels come up. I press the heels down and now roll all the way down through the spine, going for the sidekick series. Roll over to your side. And we're going to first do the clamshell position. So hand underneath the head, we're going to stack the knees over each other and the heels over one another.

So really try to get your top waistline long so that your legs are not, not connected. We want them connected. Push the knee up first and just hold there for today. I want you to actually flex the foot of the leg of the top leg to make it, um, give your legs some energy. Okay, so I'm pulling back with my foot and that sending muscle work all the way up to hip and we're just staying on purpose because I want you to find your limit in my own body. I find that I think I'm done and I'm really not that if I just stay there for a second and kind of relax into it, there's usually a little more lift and then I bring it down again. Take it up. So my heels are together, my knee just keeps opening.

And if I just relax a little in my hips, my knee often just gets to, it gets a little more range and then high. Bring it down again. I'm going to bring it up, the heels stay connected and when I hit the point where I think I'm done, I just try to give a little bit more and then bring it down again. Take it up, let the knee open, stay there. Really think about the way that you feel all of this working right now. As you're pushing your knee open, we're going to use that feeling in a moment.

Once again, we'll take it up and we're just going to stay here. We're going to just barely think of a pulse like sensation, so it almost doesn't move. You're going up a little down and up. We're just doing six, three or use the foot all the way up to your seat. Hold now from here, keep the heels together and extend your legs out and try not to lose all of the work you just found in that leg. That's why we just did the exercise. So now we try to keep that going as we lift the leg up, flex it and bring it down.

So what I'm trying to do is make my leg feel very heavy. Okay, so as I'm reaching out here and rotating to get that connection up to my seat, suddenly my leg feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. Maybe it does, I don't know. Point Lu flex and bring it down. Now reverse that, flex it up, point it and take it to him. Flexing point and flex heavy leg point.

Take it down once again, flex point and take it down. Now from here, this is the posse. So we're going to do a heavy leg version and then we're going to make her feel light. So here's how it works. We're going to try to just work from here and my leg feels really heavy as I'm dragging this leg back and I'm working for kind of a lot of perfection here, minimal movement of the pelvis. As I move my leg. Then I get to relax and chill a little and I'm just going to let that like float and then bring it down.

So I stuck heel over heel and I think about the way we started with the clamshell and I get that feeling that wrapping through the hip and leg. Then I get to kind of release and then I bring it to him and again, get the reps. Start with the feeling of the clamshell shell as you pull the leg up and bring it down. Once again, drag the leg up and take it down. Now it reverses before you lift your leg. Think about that clamshell feeling. Get that first. Then try to lift your leg up straight, vended through and reach it down nice and long.

Regroup that sensation through the hip. As the leg goes up, bend Henry and and this is three. Bend and reach it long and four bend and reach it long from here. Flex your foot, turn the leg parallel and bring it back. You want to be stopped from your head, shoulder, hip. And when I looked down, I don't want to see my toes pointing forward. I'm trying to, I'm trying to hide my toes with my leg, so I want that leg pretty far back is what I'm trying to say. Now lift your leg up and bring it down.

Lift it up to and down. Reach the leg out of the body and damn, four and five. Six, two more. Inhale up. Exhale, lower. Okay, and down. Now for ground Ronda, John, we're going to point this foot and send it back to where you can without falling over. So it takes a lot of control from your center as you challenge yourself to move that leg back. Now from here, Grunder our is going to come forward first forward up, around and down and back. Don't miss the back.

Go forward up. It's back there and again, three, one more in that direction for up around now bring the leg in front of you. Pause for a second. Enjoy all that hard work you feel through here. Reverse it going back first, then up. Now when the leg comes in front, get a little moment and then take it back.

That part's hard. It's easy to skip right in front of the hip if you can and take it back three up around, four up around and together. Other side. Go ahead and just swing the legs around to the other side, line up with the back edge of the mat and then stock your knees and your ankles. And we start with a very thoughtful clam shell. So I find sometimes these get thrown away. And for me the challenge is when I think I'm done yearning for a little bit more, even if it's not there, it's using the muscles that would get me there if I had more range.

And then I come down so the heels stay together, we're gonna flex through that top foot, use it to give us a little more energy. When I think I'm done, I almost just relax into it and then bring it down and again, take it up, rotate the knee up. Oh, bending at the hip and lower the knee down again. Oh, okay. And I just hold and see is there a little more? And that just makes these muscles kind of wake up a little bit more and down. And again, take it up little more and bring it down. And last one, take it up and just hold.

Now keep the heels squeeze together, extend the legs out, find that front edge of your map. Try to maintain this fun work. And now we pick up that heavy leg and bring it down hand. Lift it up and lower it down. Lengthen the leg out. Find that rotation, that clamshell muscle work lifted up three and lower down. I think this like weighs like 35,000 pounds for full X and now we reverse four times with a flexed foot. It feels even heavier.

Point and flex point. Keep that rotation. I almost forgot. So when I flex my foot, I've got to regroup that feeling. Then take it up, point and down, flex it, rotate, take it up. Point and now. Now the POS going for a lot of control at first. Then allowing that leg just to move a little more freely and lower it down again. Bend it through knee open, open, open, and lift and take it down just like the start, rotating that knee and lift one more time, four and now reverse it. The leg is long. Regroup the clan shell muscles.

I keep smacking my butt for that. I don't know what lift up somehow. I think it helps. Try it at home. Reach it out long and again, take it up, rotate it that way and shut up. Reach long last one, then the knee and reach it long. Now flex your foot, turn the leg parallel. Bring it back. For pure abduction, I like to look down and see if I can see my toes. I put just push my foot back a little bit farther. Now I lift the like up and lower it down.

Lift it too so the hips stay very still here. Just the leg is moving and it's moving within the range that I can go in without changing the position of the pelvis, which doesn't feel very high sometimes, so that's okay. Up and down. Inhale, lift again up. Okay. Exhale it down. Last one, up and down. Now we're going to point the foot, we're going to rotate the leg out and send it back for [inaudible].

Trying to hold myself strong from my center here. I now swing the leg forward and take it up and around and I challenged the back portion of the exercise and forward up all ramp again. Three around for Lyft around. Now from here we're going to bring the leg in front and hold it and enjoy this feeling. Think of pulling up those pantyhose. Nice, tight, long, long, strong legs and reverse leg goes back and we come up in a rebel hold again to lift and take a moment. Enjoy this three. I'm having a blast. These are really hard for me too. So feeling sad at home. I'm with you.

Up and around together and see that I lost count cause I made a joke. So now we have to do one more cause I don't know if I did three or four. Yeah. And together we're going over to the stomach now. So you're going to roll over and just make a little pillow for your forehead with your hands and you'll place your forehead down on your, um, on your hands and find a diamond shape there with your legs.

So this is a very elongated diamond. Okay, so don't have the knees bent into a tight frog. I want this to be pretty elongated out at the knee and from here, draw up strong through the tummy and have a small pressure of the pubic bone down into the mat. Don't overdo that. Allow your back to get a little exercise on this by maintaining neutral. Try not to overdo a topic, squeezing the heels together. Let's think back to the way that we were standing and did the standing foot work. Feel the muscles of the legs all activated as we're squeezing the heels together.

And now we're going to press the legs up and then we're going to lower them down and press them up too and lower them down. Don't lose the connection of your heels. There's a lot of fun in that. So keep the squeeze of the heels going. We lifted four and down and lifted five and down. One more. Take it up. Six and hold. Now from here, listen to your body. No pain or strain. If you can pulse the thighs up to recognize that this is going to work your back a little. Even though our goal here is this.

Squeeze of the heels up through the inner thighs for the glutes and the hamstrings. Now let's lift and hold. You're going to straighten your legs now with your leg straight tournament and now try to turn them out like a ballerina. Turn them in and turn them out. See how much you can turn them in and then see how much you can turn them out. Think about the clam shell. Rotate with those muscles parallel. Rotate parallel and rotate.

Rotate. Rotate at the hip now. Little beats of the heels. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight more and hold now little crosses of the heels. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, eight more heels together. Rest them down. Push up to the hands and knees. Get a quick counter stretch. [inaudible] going back onto your stomach. Let's use the forehead pillow again, so one hand over the other and we're basically going to be doing swimming without arms. I'm using the platform of the hands. Um, and then we're going to add the arms so that will come next. So with the legs parallel, a little bit of space between the feet. We're just going to pick the legs up and hold them for a second. All right, so we want that same muscle activation through the whole leg that we've had.

Don't do turnout, but think about your clamshell muscles. So try to find those muscles even though you're parallel. Now the whole leg is going to work as we swim. So it's really that pantyhose feeling really trying to pull those muscles up tight and we're just swimming, kicking at the feet, breathing in and breathing out. Now we hold, you're going to take yourself and prop up just a little bit on your elbows. Now from here, thoughtfully moving both arms at the same time are going to shoot out and we swim. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale and hold and lower.

Push up to the hands and knees. Sit back for another counter stretch. Just one big breath in. One long breath out. All right, on your back, going into more bridging lie down and just bring your feet close to your seat. Arms reaching long beside you. We did an articulating bridge earlier. This time we're just going to be doing a flat back bridge, so press down into the feet before you even your hips. You need to commit.

So as you push down into your little toe and all your toes, dig into your heels. Think pull up through your arches and feel the muscles of the legs active here. Now we're going to bridge up and we're just going to hold for a second. Have a little awareness of heavy through the sternum and the ribs. Get a nice neutral position of the pelvis as you are pushing those feet down with energy into the floor. Now the flat back is coming is coming down, so we're going to lead with the tail to come down on this.

We're going up again, pressing down into the feet, back of the body, strong. Push the hips up and lead with the tail to come down to the spine. Remains neutral. Pick the hips up to reach out long through the front of the body. As the tail comes down last time, lift it up. And with icing on the cake, we're going to take the right, like slide it down and kick it up and down to hand down three and down.

Bend the knee. The foot is flat. Other leg extends down the front of the mat and up. And then two, three and down. Bend the knee. Take a moment. Stand on your feet. Feel the muscles of the legs of working, the backs of the legs, the insides of the legs, the sides of the legs, the tops of the legs. Find an exhale and roll all the way down to the neck. Coming up next we're going over to the hands and knees and we're going to set up for a kind of downdog aerobatic, fun little Ceci combination. Um, the focus on this is going to be that side, but so here we go. Tuck your toes under.

You're going to first just find your down dog. Reach your tail up towards the ceiling above you and really push down into your hands. Place your right foot at your center line. Just look down at the foot and bring it right to the middle of the body. The left leg is going to reach up and we're going to take that leg. Allow the hips to open as much as you'd like, and you're going to try to feel your hip working to lift your leg up, up, up, and then bring it down. Switch legs.

So you have to put the left foot at center line, right leg goes up and you're gonna allow your, I call it the side heinie. You're assigned him to work to lift your leg up, up, up, and bring it down. Switch legs again. The leg goes up. Now this time as we take it up, we're gonna breech a little higher. So I think up into the ceiling up even more, and then bring that leg down, switch the legs and it goes up as you hold. It's not just about like think move the thighbone out of the hip socket.

That's where I'm able to feel my side, but working a little bit more and then bring it down. Now from here, switch feet. One last time the leg comes up. We're going to memorize how our highest position feels. Breathe in right here. As you breathe out, you're going to shift your weight forward and bring your knee into your chest. Now send the leg up and find that spot, that place where you feel your hip working, and bring the knee forward and move the leg up and move it forward and reach it up. One more. Move it forward, reach it up, and we hold it for three little higher.

Two LinkedIn out of the hip one and bring the leg down. Switching legs. Now get to your high point and memorize it. Memorize how those muscles are working. That's how we we, that's what we returned to each time, knee to chest. Exhale. Inhale. Leg goes up, up, up, and bring the knee into. Inhale goes up, up, up. Bring it in. Three.

Inhale, up, up, up. Bring it in. Last one is four, reach it up, up, up, and put it down. Separate your feet about hip width. Begin to walk your hands back. Then the knees as needed to be able to bring your hands down to the floor.

Drip the head down. Guess what? You're still using those hips and legs. Right now I have my weight in my heels and that somehow translates all the way up into my hip so that I have a strong lower body to stand on. Now I begin to articulate through my spine to come up and I'm using those strong legs that we just worked so hard on. Take your arms, reach them to the ceiling, circle the arms around.

Okay, and that one cooks you for today. If you're like me, you're grateful because that's a really hard class. Hips and legs are my hard one, so we just did it together. Thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you next time.