Day 9: Upper Body

Hi everyone. Welcome to day nine. We are almost there. Today is one of our hardest workouts, yet it is a mostly upper body workout, but of course we're going to be integrating the whole body. You're going to start by standing in your Pilates. These stance, that means that your heels are wrapped together and you're sending energy all the way up through your legs. So if you think back to our hip workout from earlier in the week, the way that we pulled the muscles up through the legs, that's what I want you to have here. Nonstop. Don't lose that. As we take our hands and turn the palms forward in this position, create a fist with your hands that creates an energy through your arms without tension in the neck. You're going to take your arms, press them up so that your arms are parallel to the floor. And again, the fist that you've made is just creating an energy through the arms.

No tension. This is like a little bicep curl. We're just bending and straightening. Inhale to keep wrapping the heels together so you really do feel that full body workout and reach to more bend and reach, pull and reach. Now take that out to the side. From here we pull one and reach. I want to imagine that you have handles on your hands and you're pulling those handles with something heavy attached to them. Just pull, create energy through the arms pull.

You don't need weights. You've got your body pull and reach. One more pull and reach from there. Bring your arms down and turn your palms into face each other. We're going straight up with the arms. Press down with the arms as if you have a holding those handles with something heavy attached. Lift up and press down again.

Press them up and exhale. Keep the heels wrapping. Lift up down. One more. Inhale, take it up. Exhale, take it down. Turn your palms to face the front of the room and lift up here and press grow tall. Inhale, lift. Keep the E, the shoulders and the neck. Easy. As you're pressing up with long, strong arms, you're using your shoulders. Just don't let yourself create tons of tension there.

Inhale up and exhale down. Now from here you're going to turn your palms into face each other. Pull your elbows up high and you're going to get down into kind of a low squat position here. Send your shoulders back and down. Now we're going to extend the arm straight, but we're going to hold and want you to imagine that you have some type of object between your hands, like a big basketball or something. Think hug in on that basketball. As you hold your fist strong, bend your arms. Do it again. Extend out and hold, and if you do this just right, you might get a little tricep cramp, which kind of feels good and then again, take it back.

Reach yearned for that little muscle cramp. It feels good to feel those muscles working again. Take it back. This is for reach and then this is five and Ben, last one, six and Ben will come back up to standing, returned to your Pilates V stance. Palms are facing forward. This is just a low bicep curl. Pull and reach it down again. It's like you have those heavy objects attached to the handles you're holding so that as you pull up, you're really working hard to pull the heavyweight.

But when you lower your resisting those weights from dropping down onto the floor again, pull again. Two more. Pull and lower. Last one, wrap the heels. Don't lose the lower body and down. Last thing here, turn your palms into face each other again. Circle two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Go down. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and up. Keep wrapping the feet. Squeeze the heels. Exhale. Five, six, seven. Reverse that one. Five, six, seven, eight. Exhale, five, six, seven, eight more. One, five, six, seven, eight and down. Two, three, four and hold. From here you're going to turn to the side. Step up to the front of your mat.

Take your arms to the ceiling above you. You'll walk down your legs. One to the floor too. And we're going to the floor three. Now let's take a moment here. Bend the knees as needed to be able to stand on your hands. Just drop your head down. Let's take a second to get a little stretch. Exhale, stretch the legs as much as you can.

Then the knees inhale. Exhale, stretch the legs as much as you can. Inhale them then. Now exhale last time. Enjoy the stretch cause it's about to get real. Y'all look out one, two and you're in your plank. Now we're going to progress our pushups series today. So the first version of our pushups series is going to be with our feet wider than the mat you're on and with your elbows wide. So we go inhale, bend, exhale, push one inhale, exhale, two. Inhale, exhale three. Now we have to sneak our feet back together. Tuck the head, walk back to three and walk up two and three.

So now we do that all over again without all the stretches. So it is dynamic. We go one to the floor, two, three out to the plank to three. Sneak the feet apart and go. You should notice that these pushups feel a little more doable with your feet separated. Now walk the feet back in. Tuck the chin, walk. One, two, three, one, two, three. Last time. Take it down to three.

Walk it out to three. Open the feet, three pushups. Inhale. Exhale. One, three, walk the feet back in, chin in, walk up to three, up two and three. We're now coming down to the mat. Go ahead and have a seat and bring your feet flat. Reach your arms in front of you. Roll down through your spine.

From here, we're going to go into the a hundred beats. Let's start by just taking the arms, reaching them long and take a full breath in. As you exhale, find the connection of the belly pulling down towards the back. We talked about on our back, strength day, pulling the back up towards the front of the body and drawing the sides. Then let's take one more breath. Preparing like that. Inhale, fill the body up with their exhale. Four under the body drops down, back of the body draws upsides.

Draw in now with that strong connection through your body, pick your feet up, tabletop, big inhale to prepare. Draw the chin in, curl up, extend your legs, pump your arms for a hundred. Inhale two, three, four, five, and exhale. Now listen to your body, hold your legs where they need to be today. Remember, you can always come back to a tabletop, but if you're up for it, go ahead and lower the legs down, breathing and okay, we just did the heel wrap while standing when we did those standing arms. I want you to also think of the way that you worked your arms and you felt that energy going all the way up into your shoulders and a happy, healthy way. No tension, no strain, just lots of energy through the muscles of the body. Two more long breaths. Inhale and exhale. Two, three, four, five. Inhale. Exhale, two, three, four, five, and hold.

Let's draw the knees into the chest. Hug the knees and place the head down. Extend your left leg all the way down onto the floor. Impress that leg down with energy into the floor. Place your hands down onto the mat. And because our focus today is upper body, that's what we're going to think of here.

So the hands are not only pressing down into the mat, but I'm thinking of pulling my hands apart to create even more energy through my arms and I'm already trembling. My little finger is pressing down really hard and I'm almost thinking of lightening my thumbs on the mat so that it gets me a little higher up in this tricep area where we all love to work. So from here that is the consistent challenge is to maintain that we begin our single leg circle by extending our leg up. Inhale to prepare. Cross the body with the leg. Exhale. Inhale, hold one, exhale, two around. Inhale, stop. Exhale three around, up, four, around five, around reverse, five times. Exhale. Inhale one, keep pressing the hands. I lost mine. Let's keep it going. Push their hands down and pull them apart. Four around, up and five around and up. Hug that knee down.

Send it back out other knee in. Give the like a little hug. Now let's leave it there. Bring the hands down and set that up first so the hands press down. The elbow is straight, almost locked, and the valleys pulled tight. They go, pulling your hands away from each other, extend your leg up.

That's your inhale. Cross the body. Exhale to around and up. Exhale, three around. Really work through those arms. Four around, up, five around. Reverse that one around. Exhale to exhale on the circle. Inhale, pause at the top. Inhale, last one, and whole. Hug that knee in and now other knee in. We're taking this into the roll over in the focus is the same.

It's going to be a lot of reaching with the arms. So as I press my hands down, the shoulders are rolled open. Extend the legs up with your inhale. Let's flex the feet today and lower the legs down. Now from here, press your arms right away and then roll yourself over.

Open your legs. Roll down, and as you're rolling down, reach your hands all the way to the ends of the mat. Close the feet. Go over again. Open, roll down. Make sure your elbows stay long and straight. Close the legs. Exhale over open. Inhale, roll all the way down. Close and open. We reverse that three times overreach. He long through the fingertips.

Close the feet, roll down open, exhale it over close. Let the inhale roll you down. Last one, open. Inhale, take it over. Reach long with the arms. Don't lose the energy there. Close the feet and roll all the way down. Draw the knees into the chest and take a moment.

The next thing we're going to do is just stay laying on the floor. Bring your feet flat onto the floor and hold your arms up for this position that we'll call hug a tree here. So the arms are just slightly bent and it's like you're reaching around and hugging a big tree. You're gonna open your arms out to the sides of the room. That's going to be an inhale and now with an exhale, close the arms. So we're trying to make this more than it is.

I'm imagining that I have a really heavy weight in my hands as I'm opening the arms. So right here I'm actually working really hard. You can probably see a little tremor happening and it's very similar to the way that we started and we did the arm series standing. We're just creating resistance by thinking of pressing out against some type of resistance. Sometimes thinking of like moving through peanut butter, like the natural kind that you get these days that you can't even stir. That's what you're trying to move your arms through. One more time like that. Take it out and then squeeze through that healthy peanut butter.

Now open your arms and you're going to stay right here. All right, so now we're doing little pulses where the back of the arm kind of comes down closer to the floor and you're just lifting three, four, five, six, seven. Hold on eight now, straight in the arms, and as you straighten your arms here, remember how we pulled up our pantyhose on leg day, we're pulling up arm, so it's the feeling like you're reaching your arms into something, stretching out through the every muscle of your arm is being pulled tighter to the bones of your arms. Now circle your arms. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, reverse fat, eight, seven, six, three, two and hold rest your arms all the way down to the floor. We're going to come up to standing so that we can do our next set of pushups, them to be a little more challenging so you can just rock yourself up and will come up and stand to the front of the mat. The arms are reaching up high. This time we're going to have elbows wide, but the legs are going to be together. Okay, so the arms are going to walk with dynamic energy going down one to the floor, two, three, walk it out, two and three so my feet are going to go wide, but my elbows are going to squeeze in bed. One, two up. Now it's not a whole lot easier than when you have your feet together, but you should notice it's a little bit easier. Let's walk that back to three and up.

Two and three again, take it down to three. We walk it out to three feet. You move apart. Elbows squeeze the body. One, two, three. Walk the feet back in, chin in, walk it up to three. Up to we do that again. Take it down to three. Walking it out, feet move apart, and we go hang up.

Your pushups might be getting a little small and that's okay. Walk the feet together, Shannon. Walk it back to three and up two and three. We're going to come back down to the mat now, so sit with your feet about hip width apart and your hands behind you. In a slight diagonal here, we're going to come up into a tabletop shape here. Press down into your feet, push energy into your arms. Remember from hip day, we connected all of this before we even bridged, so get that feeling right now. The whole body is already working. Before we even do the exercise, pick the hips up and you're just going to hold here. Now we add a tricep dip.

It's three little dips. It's going to be bend, straighten one, bend, straighten two, then straighten three. Now it gets sassy. You're going to send your hips backwards, tuck your head forward and exhale. Hold two, three, hips, come back up. Let's try that part again. Ready? Exhale. Pull the belly. Send the hips back. Hold one, two, three. Send them forward.

Do it one more time. If your butt gets stuck, don't worry. Just hold where you hit. Ready, go. Exhale. And we hold two, three, come up. Now take a quick rest. So now we're going to do a little series. So it's going to be three tips. One pipe, three tips, one pipe, three tips, one pike, three sets. Here we go. Pick the hips up and we go, Ben, one, two, three, exhale. And the hips hold.

And again, go down. One, two, three, hips, go back. Hold one more time. One, two, three. And that hold two, three and re lax. That was hard. Now we're going to come up and go through a Swan series that has a little bit of a pushup inspiration to it. So come back up to standing. You're gonna reach your arms to the ceiling. This is going to be a little bit slower, not quite as dynamic as the pushups.

Take your arms, just dive down. Bring your hands onto the floor. Let your head release now. Now just walk out and find your plank from our back. Strength day. We did nice straight knees, lifted the chest and came down to a Swan without letting the legs touch. We're doing that again here.

Now chin in and just walk back again and let's walk up again and let's do that again. Dive it down, walk it out. Let's breathe in and send the hips forward. Oh, been through the chest. Exhale it up. Inhale, stand tall. One more time. Take it down, walk it out, take it through. Enjoy that extension. Open the chest, arch, the back, chin and lifted up. And we walked back and we roll up to finish our upper body workout. Today we're going to go through the pushups series one more time.

The first set of the pushups is going to be with the feet wide and the hands wide. The second set is going to be with the feet wide, but the elbows squeezing in. And then the third set is what I call big daddy feet together. Hands together, Elvis, shaving the ribs again. So it's our hardest variation on our last thing. That makes sense, doesn't it? So let's do that. Reaching the arms up. We begin by walking down one and two. Nice dynamics. Walk out two, two, and three. Spread the feet. Go elbows wide and up to three.

Bring the feet together. Tuck the head, walk back to three. Walk up to again, take it down to three. Walk it out to three. We're going to take the feet out again, but the elbows squeeze in. Then one, then two, then three feet back in chin and walk. One, two, three, up two and three. Big daddy. Here we go. Hold on. Two, three. Walk it out. Two and three. We go bed. One, two, three, chin in.

Walk it back to three and up. Two and three, and we did it. Thank you so much for joining me, you guys. We have one day left in this challenge. I will see you tomorrow where we're going to put it all together.