At-Home Exercises

I was doing Mr. Robinson's workout. Everybody's workout, you guys are amazing. Thank you, at home, wherever you are, all over the world, for tuning in today. I just wanna take a minute before we get on with my little section here and just thank everybody involved. Mostly all of you who took time today to join us, to hear us, and to share in a little bit of movement for this movement.

Tom and Zack, I'm just so impressed with how you have taken the baton here in having your finger on the pulse of what's going on in the world. Obviously we can see it's not yet, you know, the straw that broke the camel's back here, God bless Mr. Floyd and his family, and thank you Chris for handing it off. I'm winded here 'cause I was doin' my best, man. I've been trying to do my best with everyone. So, I'm gonna pause here, I'm gonna come back at the end, and I need to start my clock.

So we can get going with a little bit of a transition from what we just did, with a very rigorous kind of blood-pumping routine with this. So. Start. And here we go. So what I did is I took a few notes, because I wanted to share with all of you who may still be under a quarantine for the sake of your health, and your community, wherever you happen to be.

So I've got a little bit of a cheat sheet, 'cause there's so much I wanted to share with you, but I tend to lose a little bit of focus, so I have my guide here for focus. I have a chair, so if you need a moment to grab a chair at home, you can see here I have a little bit of accessories that I'll be using throughout my little 20-minutes that I have here, a few minutes less. So I have a chair that kind of sits me back here, and I'm very comfortable here, but I don't want us to get too comfortable for the next few minutes, so I'm gonna ask that you just bring yourself a little bit forward. And I wanna give you a little exercise that I didn't know, for the longest time, until I really had to do it and understood it in my body, when I started training at Drago's years ago, and it was called the Pull Yourself Together. So, that starts with your feet.

I think you can see my feet. They're basically in alignment with my hips, my knees, and you can see that my foot is also having some attention so that my heel is between the two points of my toes. So, right angles at the edge of your seat, make sure that you're not gonna fall off your seat, sitting forward, and again, here's the right angle. 90 degrees, our right angles parallel lines, also classical lines, the defined classical lines, right angles and parallel lines, and we work with those in our movements in Pilates. So find your space at the edge of your chair, and pulling yourself together, which will be your queue, to make sure your feet are firmly planted, pressing into the earth, thanking Mother Earth for giving us some grounding and footing to stand tall and step forward.

Align your knees, your hips, and sit so that your back is not in that comfortable spot like this with the remote, which I love. Not for now. We're gonna be here, forward and up. So the shoulder line is just slightly forward of the hip line, hip to knees. So you're lightly pressing into the earth to give you some resistance to lift the skeletal body with that muscular structure in and up.

Here's a little tip for everyone at home. Best time to do your Pilates? After a good BM and a shower. Now don't laugh. I know you can identify.

My favorite time to do my Pilates is, hey, listen, after a good one, cleaned up and ready to go, I have in my facility where I can pull it in and up. Can't cheat here, 'cause I don't have the floor to kind of, like, hang loose. I gotta use my body, fight the resistance of the gravity that's pulling me down, and in and up. So I wanna give you a variation on the 100. So the advantage of doing 100 in the chair is that, you can go through a range of motion in the shoulder and the arms that you're not able to on the performer or on the mat.

So once you've pulled yourself together, you know what it is, in and up tall, hold that belly in, no ribs out, you arms are just gonna hang down the side. Shoulder line here, arms here. And tilt your arms back towards the wall behind you, and then bring 'em back to your midline, under shoulder hip here. Back to front. Back to front.

From the center midline, shoulder, hip line, we're gonna go forward, back to hip line. Forward, and back. Ya got it? Till we have this range back here that we can use for movement of the arms to lift and fill those bags in our chest with air to oxygenate the body. So we inhale here.

And exhale there. Use the natural filter of your body to know to fill the line. Breathe in. And exhale here. One more breath here.

And exhale here. And you can get to five pumps behind, back to front, et cetera, you know the rule there. From the midline, shoulder, hip, center line here. Towards the front we breathe in, pump towards the hips. And work up from your alignment, once you've pulled yourself together, to fill the lungs and then challenge your breath to coordinate with the movement of the arms for five pumps to breathe in, and exhale for five pumps here.

Now we're gonna go full range, so I don't know about you, I'm feeling all the tingling. From the earth, through my feet, through my hips, all the way up my center line, through the crown of my head. We're gonna go full range. Front to back. Filling the lungs.

And exhale. Breathe in, two, three, four, five, and exhale two, three, four, five. And one more breath in. And exhale here. So if you have your Wonder Chair at home, sit on the edge, flip it around so you're on the curved side here, you can find where, if the Wonder Chair is too tall and you don't have the long legs, you can put the kuna boards, or you can put a box to lift your feet, and you have something that brings you more to right-angle alignment.

Next at home exercise I'd like to share with you, or a few that I get from our apparatus on the Reformer, once we've found our alignment, the rowing series, I love. And you can keep your knees bent, if you don't have the strength and stability and you feel you might fall off the edge. You wanna take it up a notch, just straighten your legs as if you were sitting on the short box, hmm, because this is the angle that your legs would be in on the short box, given that we're on the chair. So from the chest, we'll go through some alignments, and then we'll add some resistance, because we obviously don't have any here. You're gonna reach, pull down, reach up, up, up, and circle around.

Got it? We'll do one more. Forward, reach through, and lift, and lift yourself from your seat taller, taller, taller, taller, taller. Next one from the hips. Be very careful with this one.

Only go forward where you're not gonna get dizzy or fall off the chair. And bend forward first, stretch through where you can, sit tall here, reach here, keep lifting and lifting and lifting and lifting. One more. From the hips, we lift. We're on the apparatus, we press onto the carriage to lift our bodies from the seat through the gut, through the crown of the head.

We bring it forward, we reach through, we sit tall, we lift even taller, we grow taller, we grow taller, we grow taller. And next one we have, I love this one, shaving. Fill the great weight from the air. And make a fist. Bring your fists over by your ears.

And I've changed the leg position here to give you a little more lift of the spine, in case you're starting to cheat and get fatigued and hang back. And from here, we're just gonna stretch up and bring it down right by your ears. Don't lose it, don't lose this. In and up, and one more. Here we go here, and down.

And our transition here, for the next one, is going to be just straight out to the hug. Straight in front here, we're gonna come out to the side and front. Out to the side and front. And we'll finish this with a combination. So we're gonna shave, and lift.

Okay? So from the shave we drove to the hug, or straight arms. So we need a little resistance. So you've got the alignment and you have a little bit of health. Couple of cans of Progresso will do a body good.

So I don't have the sprint, I don't have the carriage to create some of the resistance that we find on the apparatus. If you need to bend your knees for stability from your powerhouse, do that, or extend your legs so they can be a little bit straight. And we're gonna take it from the top. These are some big handles, aren't they? Inhale, exhale.

Lift through your seat and lift yourself high, high, high, high, high, high. And again. Reach out, reach down, reach up, and stay tall. And last three, here we go. (exhales) Inhale.

Exhale. Higher. Taller. Taller. Taller.

Relax. From your hips, we bend, we stretch, we lift, lift the arms, reach high, don't lose that belly, grow taller from the seat to the crown of your head, lift, lift, lift, and here we go. Last three. From the hips we lift. We bend.

We reach down towards the feet. Up, parallel to the earth. Lift to the sky. And lift through your seat, and reach the like out of your crown. Last one.

From the hips, we bend. We stretch. We lift, sitting taller, lift taller. Keep lifting and out from your seat and down. I don't know about you, I'm feelin' the burn.

I hope you're feeling the burn too. If you're not, pull it in, pull yourself together. Here we go, and stretch-bend shave. Salute, arm press, shoulder press, whatever you wanna call it. But don't lose your gut, don't lose your butt.

In and up. Here's three, and two, and one, and. Parallel arms in front. Now if the weight you have is a little heavy, I use Progresso light in my right arm, because I'm right-handed, and I need to strengthen my left side, my weaker side, so I use the regular Progresso. And here we go, your choice, your call.

Inhale and exhale here. Again, feel the great weight reaching out. Feel a great weight coming home in front. Last three. Fill the lungs, in through the lungs.

Last one. And we're gonna do a lift. From here we're gonna lift. Again, feel a great weight out wide to the side. And feel the great weight lift.

Last three. And two, and feel the great weight up, and resist the great weight down, and reach wide to the far east and the far west, and relax. Sorry for the intro here. I'm in San Diego. It's just after 11 a.m. here.

Not sure where you are in the world. Hope you and your loved ones are safe. And really ironic how we have these events come at this time, after having so much time in quarantine, the opportunity to reflect, and then to be given this opportunity as Tom and Zack and this next generation has clearly pointed out to us, that we need to pick this up and carry it forward. So what are we gonna do about it going forward now? Because of my glitch in the beginning, I missed an opportunity to share with you a thought of the day, and the thought that came today is, you know, what do I do when things get rough?

Well, I really have to avoid being overwhelmed. So one of the things to do, that I have to do, when I feel things getting rough, and I have those feelings of being overwhelmed with so many things that I think I need to do, that need to be done, that I can't do, and you know, we've all heard accepting 90% of the battle and understanding and I think today what really pops out to me in acceptance and understanding is really the understanding. The understanding that I need to lift and lower. And that I can better understand how life is unfolding and what it's offering to me, and what I need to do about that. And I need you.

I need all of you to stay in connection with each other and bring us back into the loop. It is so humbling and an honor for me to be here and share with you some at-home things that I do, and now I think I've given our upper body arms a little bit of a rest, so I'm gonna resume back to the program here, but I just wanted to go back to where I missed because I was, like, so involved with Chris. You know, little side note here, Chris and I met in 1992. He was kickin' my butt at the sporting club with his three-minute circuit training classes. I remember Chris like all over the place, rapid fire arms, just like he's today, and bzzt, the damn buzzer, bzzt, three minutes, next station, bzzt, fast forward 2000, I'm at Target, Chris Robinson's at Target, and he's like, "Hey, you're Moses?" We start trading Pilates.

So here we are. Another little side note, we're both Houstonian. Yeah, what a blessing it's been for me, personally, to have my teacher, my friend, my colleague, and my brother the rest of my life that we knew from 1992 when he was finishing up his studies at San Diego State that we're in this for the long haul. And after finding Pilates, what another world has evolved for us. Okay, here we go.

So after some rowing series, we can get into a little bit of stomach massage. And I like to bend my knees here, back to a position where I can pull myself together. So find your position on your seat, pull yourself together, and if this is the edge of your seat, you can push your hands in front or on the sides. For me, I feel like I need to pull on the side of the chair, which is great, and I really don't need to do so much rounding today. Maybe you do, maybe you don't.

You can see that if you turn to the side, and maybe you have a little bit of rounding in your upper back. Let's just pull up today. If you have too much of that, you need down lower, then go here and bend forward. So we're just gonna do a lift. Pull yourself together, and a lift.

So resist by pulling your arms, feel your chest open and your shoulders from the back and the front just spread out for the lift. Lift, lift. And again, you can do 10 of these isometric lifts, pressing into the earth, pull yourself together, be strong, clear your mind, focus. And again one more time we're gonna lift. And this is my version of a round.

I can, from my lift, start to round a bit forward. And then come back up. And here's the last one. We're gonna lift. And tall.

For the flat back, reach back and just lift. You can press into your chair, slightly bend at the elbows, don't lean back. Resist doing what I did and fall back. So adjust yourself so you're pulled together and you're lifted and you can slightly use your fingertips to create the resistance that radiates through the fingertips, through the arms, right into the gut, shooting straight out of the top of your head. To lift.

And there's your flat back. And lift. And if you get fancy next time, you can hold back and you can stretch your legs out in the air. We'll do that next time. Reach up.

Hold that position. I dunno about you, but I feel that great weight in the burn. And here's our lift. Our lift comes from the seat, don't lose it here, feel it here. Are you seeing me lift?

I can't see each of you, but I'm visualizing you all lifting and reaching to the sky. There we go. And. You can also do your lift with, remember, use the light for your stronger side, and use the regular for your weaker side to strengthen. And here's your reach, so you can do a little to the crown on your reach.

Five to seven will do you good. Keep the lift, don't think like I did to flex the arms. Stay lifted and keep lifting more for your reach. Reach, reach, and bring it down. The other thing I like to do is extend on my stomach massage.

The reach, the reach is here. I like to circle the arms in the front, this way, and this way, come in, and I like to circle the arms at the side, this way and this way. And come in. I also like to use these for my circles in front. And in the back.

And to the side. And reverse. And I think I hear a timer. Can't be possible. I wanted to finish with one thing.

If you have, since we started a little bit late. Since we started a little bit late, the rice bag, two-pound bag, five-pound bag. Hold 'em out in front, out in front here. If you need a little bit of height, you can use your chair. Come here.

And walk. I got lots of fun stuff for you guys, I can be here all day. And open to rotate. Open to rotate, open. All the way down and all the way up, three times.

If you have a string that's really long, stand on top of the Wonder Chair. That'll up your challenge. I wanted to share one last thing that Chris and I were able to, you know, have a moment and chat about. And it was just a lot of the current events that are happening, and one thing that we heard together and we really resonated with and we actually found ourselves doing was, there was a suggestion to, if you have a black friend, go and talk to your black friend. If you don't have a black friend, get a black friend, and have a chat, a very candid chat but a very honest chat.

It was so cathartic, and I'm so grateful for that. I know that I have lots that I need to do, and I hope that you're alongside with me as we do it together and I wanna thank you very much for your time, and I love you, my brother, Chris Robinson, and I love you all for joining us today. Okay, until next time, peace, thank you. Oh, wait a minute. (laughs) I want to send it off to my girl way out on the east coast, from California to Florida, and here we go, get ready for Ms. Cathy Ross.

Now here you go baby.