Breaking Down & Building Up

Hey, everyone. Thank you for being here again for another live class with me, "Moving With Amy". So last week I kind of hinted that we would be working on or I would be presenting or giving us an advanced exercise and breaking it down and kind of building it up, right? So breaking down to build up and I love this kind of concept in a workout rather than just doing the mount list which of course is wonderful, but what if we take the elements, right, to create the exercise? So guess what the exercise is, boomerang.

We're doing boomerang today. So if you just went, "Oh shit," don't worry. We're not doing the fancy arms choreography. What I want us to feel about boomerang and think about with boomerang are the skills. So we need spinal mobility always.

We need to be able to go overhead, right? In a little suspension in our overhead, we need a lot of inner thigh engagement and connection that hugging that midline, that really helps in that suspension when we're overhead and kind of makes that reboundedness of that, the kind of never ending it doesn't really stop. And it doesn't really start here. It's like, where's that boomerang, you know that little object, if you were to throw it, the whole idea of the boomerang is that it doesn't stop in midair, it comes back to you. So what can we feel in that, in our movement?

So not such a stop and start and a little bit more of that movement there. That's why I keep kind of doing this. I was on my reformer yesterday and I was just thinking about that like, "Wow, that reformer is so comforting." Right? It just goes this way and this way. And so we can play that, we can bring that into our movement.

I wore blue today because I also want to bring in water and the image and the feeling of flow so that we don't get stopped anywhere or stuck anywhere. Right? And so some of us know we have some sticky spots in our spine or some spot in our spine that are less mobile. So this is our time to really find them, talk to them, work them, and hopefully they'll loosen up and get more mobile so we'll have more fun in the boomerang, okay? So guys, let's go ahead and start.

We'll start with this standing roll down. So I want you just to be legs apart and just feel your legs ground down into the floor and just be for a moment. And then shift your weight slightly forward to the balls of the feet and shift your weight back toward the heels a little bit. I just don't want you to fall in either direction, but I just want you to start playing with a little bit of your forward and back movement. And in that boomerang and all the rolling we go forward, we go back, we go forward and we go backward.

Or we can think of it the other way, we roll back to roll forward, right? We roll back to roll forward. So just keep going there and I want you to start thinking about the breathing that we do often in that rolling back and stuff. It's that exhale forward, inhale back And back, right? Keep that going, exhaling to bring your torso forward.

Inhale as you roll back, I'm going to go one more. And then what we'll be doing first is a standing roll down just to start some spinal mobility. So deep breath in, and then is that chin into the chest or over the chest start rounding your spine. And depending on what time of day it is for you, those of us who are in the morning right now, just check into your spine and you know, might feel less mobile than those of you at the end of the day. And then roll your way back up.

But you know, let's not worry about time of day so much. Let's go ahead and go again. Is what does your spine feel like? Where does the mobility feel easy and where in you right now do you go, "Oh man, I need a little more right there." That might be where you really put your focus to roll up most of the class. Okay, let's add a little to that with the arms coming up just a little bit, not too high.

And as you rolling down now, arms reaching toward legs a like teaser, the arms reaching toward the legs. Pause here while you're upside down, and bend your knees if you want to just a little bit. And I want all of us to pick up our lowest rib cage right here in the front. You don't have to look, but where your ribs are, the lowest ribs, pick them up into your body already. My mind is connected.

I'm going to roll back up to standing. But if this is kind of where I'm thinking of rolling backward, does that make sense? I hope so. And then here I go forward, I'm rolling torso toward legs. That would be my teaser or roll up or roll over four legs coming toward us, right?

From here just lower yourself down to your knees. Let's just pass through a quick cat couch. Just a few. Do what you need right there. So today's class, you really want to have a whole lot of extension in our normal way.

You can cross your legs everybody in lie back on your back. In fact, before you do that, come to sitting, dig your heels into the floor, I've got my legs firmly connected. Let's just start layering in the need and the importance of the inner thighs. So take just a moment to sit here. I will preface also to say your inner your quads and your hip flexors are going to come on today.

They're going to work them that's okay. Roll yourself backward. And I think we need to remind ourselves that it's okay to work your quads. It's okay to work the hip flexors my gosh they're important muscles to help hold our legs up which we need for boomerang. So just be ready for that.

Okay, pelvic curl, let's get some spinal mobility. Bring your heels close to your sitting bones. Arms are pressed back in the mat. Feel the connection of the back of the arms and press your feet down and then here we go to curl. I just want to do three pelvic curls.

Okay, nothing fancy with them right now just pelvic curl, raising yourself up, chin away from chest. Take that breath. (inhales) And here we go rolling down from the sternum. It's coming down from the chin, rolling through the ribs, that lower thoracic lumbar area, neutral pelvis. Arms pressing, let's go ahead and roll again.

So this is you rolling over. You're getting ready for a little inversion or a roll over in just a moment and rolling down your spine. Okay this last one, think about this, even though your legs aren't touching, as if they were touching. So really get your inner thighs involved right now. I'm going to have a stay up in our shoulder bridge and just imagine and feel the work of your legs coming toward together and adduction, but you're really not adducting, okay?

You will adduct a lot today, take another breath through the nose. Let's roll ourself down all the way down our spine. Okay, once your pelvis is in neutral, now I'm bringing the ankles and knees together, arms long by your side, raise your neck, your head, your shoulders, and just bring yourself into your chest lift, your chest lift. Everyone has a different one, right? Do you want to get up off the base of the shoulder blades?

Raise your arms to the height of your knees, breathing in and out twice. Visualize yourself rolling forward easily into that boomerang position. In a moment, you know we'll get ready with the legs going up, all that stuff but visualize, visualize, and then roll back down. Inhale. One more like that guys kind of easy with the skill right?

But bring your mind into it. Bring your mind into it. Your arms are reaching towards your legs, your chest is reaching toward your thighs. As you unroll your spine, please extend your legs long on the mat until your legs are fully extended. We're not going to arch our spine.

Breathing in. Let's do our hundred though because we need to get some heat. Raise your arms, raise your legs. Now before you pump, make this about your inner thighs right today for the a hundred, make it about your inner thighs. Your breath, the connection of hugging your midline, the strength you'll need in your abdominals to flex spine forward and backward.

Halfway there, your arms reaching towards your feet. Think of teaser. I know we're right now we're actually in the position that we roll through in boomerang. So visualize that, you're in that rolling. One more breath, and exhale, everything down, arms down legs and head down.

Feel the energy in your body. I want you to stay lying flat and activate the back of your arms, shoulders into the floor and your heels into the floor. You're not locking your knees, we're not arching the spine. I want us to connect the back body muscles for just a moment. So I'm pressing my heels to activate my hamstrings, pressing my shoulders to activate my lats, my shoulder back shoulders.

And I'm trying to keep my abs down and my back down. Okay, and then relax. So looking at it, it won't look like much is happening. Let's go one more time. So we'll have this back body connection happen a few times.

Let's try again. So I'm pressing heels, pressing sacrum, pressing back of ribs. This is all kind of light, but deep connection. Okay, there we go. Now take your arms overhead, keep your heels pressing firmly on the floor.

Let's go for some roll up. If you happen to have an ankle strap for your ankles you're so lucky. The rest of us have to pretend. I want us to flex our feet today. Arms, head, neck, and shoulders go ahead and roll up, I have to sometimes use some momentum, feel that nice stretch of the spine, forward your abdominals deep and in, roll yourself back.

So pass through. Remember, this is that now we're in our second exercise in the list, but getting us ready for the boomerang, is the Pilates in you. It's all in here, every exercise links together, everything is linked on purpose and for a reason. This is spinal mobility. Right, think about where you're going to need it for your rolling work.

For me, it's always that lower thoracic upper lumbar. So I've got a really good story behind my solar plexus. Two more roll-ups, bend your knees if you need to, I'm really visualizing if I were on my wall unit mat and my ankle strap over my ankles, that I'm holding my legs connected. I'm hugging the midline with my inner thighs. (inhales) Stay at the top everyone, hug your midline with your legs.

Flex your ankles, hold deep wherever you feel the limitation is in your spine, put your breath there and try to puff up that part of your back where you might feel a little limited. Okay. and then for a minute just sit tall, lift up through your upper sternum. Feel your upper back a little bit more active right now and then inhale arms forward, roll yourself back again. We're going to go into the rollover next, okay? So as you do, I'm going to adjust myself on my mat just a little bit.

Before we do rollover, let's go with that back body connection again. So arms and legs are along. You've got your arms pressed back, the essential and the rollover exercise. Okay, rib cage is anchored, your abs are strong. Let's go ahead and raise our legs to 90 degrees breathing in through our nose.

We're rolling over our first inversion. Now I don't want just to take the toes to the floor overhead version today. Don't look, just listen. Raise your legs up toward the ceiling a little bit, but also think about this as your back is elongating up to the sky. Even though we're in flection, it can be a long flection of the spine.

Now you can separate the feet do the flex and roll down the spine. We'll do our legs circle with the legs circled together. It's that inner thigh connection overhead right and legs aren't dropping toward chest flex feet. Open legs, inhale, roll down. Use your arms to help you slow in now.

Remember, at any point that could actually turn into a boomerang, right? One more here, flex and open inhale, exhale, roll down. Use those arms, use those arms. We are going to reverse the boomerang today. Three times legs open as you roll over.

Seal them up now here it is, hug that midline, hug that midline, flex your feet, roll down, make those legs work. Make those legs work. Open the legs once you're down at the bottom. Together, flex those ankles. So I'm almost doing more inner thigh and shoulders than abs in my mind.

One more, flex together hold, here we go rolling down. Rolling down. Once you get your pelvis down, legs down, try to lower your legs without lifting your head without arching your spine, keep those shoulders back and feel that back body connection again. Legs are down. You can put your heels on the floor, press them down.

Okay, next exercise is single leg circle and what I'd like to do with that is prepare it. Raise one of your legs up, I don't have a preference. Now, the leg that you kept down, flex the ankle as if you're on that raised mat with your foot underneath the strap. If you're there, go ahead and do that. The leg that's in the air, I'm going to softly point the foot.

The leg that's on the mat, I want to turn in little bit so that the inner thighs aren't connected. Top leg crosses over midline. And just for a moment, imagine the letter X right there in between your legs. Okay? That connection and then take your top leg open just a little out to the side.

Do it twice more. So cross it over. I'm also working the bottom inner thigh a lot. Adducting it into the central line. Top leg out a little bit.

One more, just connect that. So the top leg, the hip hasn't left the mat, I'm actually plugging that back in the mat, trying to get adduction. Okay? And then change legs real quick. Keep breathing, leg on the floor is flexed.

Top leg is pointed. Bottom leg is slightly leaning in just a little bit. You should feel that abduction kick in right away. Top leg crosses over. Right, imagine that little letter X way at the top of the groin and then leg out to the side and cross over and out to the side one more time.

Cross, cross, cross, and then out to the side. Bring that leg down. Let's do the full leg circle. Only three reps and they're small. Here we go.

Cross down around and up and cross down around and up and cross down around and up Other way, leg on the mat slightly leaning in, open down cross feel that inner thigh work, Right? Change legs, here we go. Cross the midline, swing the leg, cross the midline and swing the leg and cross and swing. Other leg, the bottom inner thigh, slightly leaning in and two and three. Good and lower the leg all the way down.

Excellent, let's go into rolling like a ball. Before we do, lift your head and shoulders up. Start to reach your arms toward your leg just like we did in the hundred. Start bringing yourself up, hug your ankles, hug your ankles. No rush to roll.

You can go about picking up your knees towards your shoulders. Heels close into your buttocks. Ready, have some fun with the ball, you're water, your flowing back, you're flowing forward. We're inhaling we're exhaling. We're inhaling, we're exhaling.

Three more. Preparing for the boomerang. And our last one, roll and lift. And yeah, let's go ahead and place the feet down. Extend your legs, hold into a sitting tall position.

Lift your arms up just for a moment out of your way. They don't really need to be here right now in this exercise. Once again, inner thigh connection. Reach your arms now towards your legs start your roll back. We're going to move into a double leg stretch exercise.

Okay? And as we do, bend your knees bring your legs towards your chest. Inhale, exhale, lift your head, neck and shoulders. Okay, so arms aren't going to go overhead today. They're going to extend your legs hands by your thighs inner thighs working, bring your knees in and hug.

Just that. Extend your legs, hands are hugging the thighs. I'm really hugging my midline, I'm trying to flex my spine forward and I'm bringing it in and I'm small and I'm gonna pick up my butt a little bit with that strong abdominal curl and extend and flex three more. Let's feel the breath with it. Inhale extension, exhale flection.

Two more, inhale extension and exhale flection. Last one. And then we'll stay in our little ball shape right here. As you have your hands on your ankles, hold on them a lot so that you almost bring your thighs closer to your chest and pull your butt and your sacrum up off the floor a little bit like a rollover. You're ready for it?

And then start a little gentle rock. Okay, rock back all the way up. Now let's do about four or five more rolling like a ball, believe it or not. And play with the idea of a little bit more suspension while we're back over our shoulders. Okay, just a little bit so slowing it down and here we go.

Pick up your ankles. Have fun, suspend, let the current of the water kind of hold you back there a little bit. So and you hold yourself back exhale out. Not so long over shoulders that you're on your head, but almost how far can you go back without really plopping on your head? Right, you suspend, you've got to lift your hips up, two more, you've got to suspend and pick up and we'll lift the hips.

Nice you guys, one more time. I can tell you're connecting that differently. Okay, and everybody rest. Great, come on down, take your feet apart for just a moment and let your hips just kind of your knees just drop from side to side, just wiggle from side to side like that, okay? So where we're going next is up again to spine stretch forward.

And then we're going to get a little bit of legwork in here that might feel a little quad and hit flex three. So just I wanted to give you a moment to kind of loosen them up, okay? So come bring yourself up. Sit yourself in your spine stretch forward position. My legs are just the width of the mat.

Feet and ankles are very strongly flexed. My toes are directly up and not turned out and what I want to do today, everybody, is have put our fingertips in the side of the legs on the mat. And I've gotten myself up on my fingertips like this. Diane Diffenderfer used to call that spider hands. Little spider hands, I like it.

So you're just up on the fingertips. What I want us to do with that is push the fingertips down. Make sure your shoulders are back. And as you push your fingertips down, give yourself an opportunity to experiment with unweighting your butt bones and your body weight on the mat. In other words, try to lift on your interior self by pressing down from the fingertips.

Okay, it's less if you could pick your legs up you'll need that for boomerang and teaser. Of course, of course. Okay, and then relax and do it again. So your fingertips are pressing down. It's the sense that you could pick up your legs.

Some of you try to push your legs in your hands. Try to pick up your legs. Okay? Don't burn out yet. So there is that, now start walking your hands forward.

Keep that feeling in there. Even though you're rounding into your spine stretch, you can reach your hands forward, that's fine, but I really want you to stay connected to the sense of yourself lifting almost getting lighter your legs on the mat, and then roll back up to sitting tall. We'll do two more, breathing in, lift first. Keep how light can you be sitting is another way to think about that, how light can you be sitting on a mat that and lift, lift, lift. The lower back is rounding the lower lumbar rounding but the upper lumbar for some of us is really rounding that lower thoracic is rounding.

Roll up just sitting one more, ready and press your fingers reaching out lower lumbar back, upper lumbar back. You're lifting your body weight up off of the mat slightly, hold his position please, flex these ankles, touch your hands, your toes. You can hold and even pull your core back away from your legs even more right now. The head is rounded, your neck is rounded, but I'm not just hanging my head. I've got a very active flection in the spine.

And then hands on the side just roll up to sitting tall. Okay, open leg rocker is next, you really just prepared for it. Now just from my spatial awareness here in my room I do need to move forward a little bit, I don't want to kick my plant or my Cadillac. So I'm going to come this way, and I like to put my heels right in the corner. Okay, hands are reaching forward.

Let's roll back everybody. And what I want you to get to, where I want to get you is on your sacrum. There is a nice platform that sacrum creates underneath there. And you can actually just hang out on it or roll back to it. You don't even have to lift your legs, right?

And then roll back up, it's like a rollback with open legs. Here we go. Inhale back to a restart or you're going to roll back and exhaling out. Try one more, we'll stay back there on the next one. Rolling to that sacrum.

Okay, now, even though the inner thighs aren't together obviously because legs are apart, act as if the legs are together, raise your legs up. Try to stay on that sacrum. Walk your hands onto your legs, wherever they are, hold this position. So I am thinking about my inner thighs working even though they're not touching, we're going to roll. We're going to go through that spine.

Inhale, exhale up, inhale, exhale up. It's an easy boomerang. Three or four more suspend the tiny bit when you're over, suspend a little bit, just like you did when you roll up. I'm going to do two more or roll over hips up. Hips up.

Let me up there for a minute, come on up and hold. Bring your legs to teaser position. Don't let go yet. Hug the midline, make it be the inner thighs right now. Okay, and as you let go reach your hands towards your legs.

That'll be where you come into your boomerang, you're already doing it. We've been doing it. Breathe and hold, breathe and hold. And then everyone tuck your knees and let's roll back on our back. I hope you're feeling great.

Okay, and you're visualizing the most beautiful, easy boomerang today possible. Okay, we're going to do a shoulder bridge real quick. You might need the stretch in your hand or quads. Okay, so feeder close into your sits bones. Arms are by your side.

They're actively pressing into the mat. Roll again up into shoulder bridge. Nothing fancy, no leg kicks, unless you want to, you can do that. I'm going to enjoy the simplicity. And again, the visualization of a rolling into boomerang very easy.

But as I'm hearing this boomerang or this bridge, I'm going to hug the midline with my legs even though they're not there, they're together, they're apart. And as I unroll the spine, I'm now I'm going to lift my head and chest just up again and reach the arms toward the legs and roll up to the shoulder bridge as the arms go down and the chest goes down. And unroll the spine as I get about halfway down rolling my upper body twist chest lift. That's that boomerang roll again. Part of it.

And then rolling down, lifting those hips. Get a beautiful stretch from your ribs to your thighs, energy out your knees, hug the midline with your legs and unroll. Keep your chest down this time. Okay, what's about to happen is a fairly long series for your inner thighs, supine. This kind of brings back some old work from my dance life that is so great for conditioning the inner thighs, getting that midline, your legs start as if you're doing your single leg teaser prep.

Okay? So your knees are together, your ankles are together and I want you to extend one leg, your knee to knee, okay? Arms are by your sides. All we're doing with this straight leg is you're going down, sliding it down to the ankle. So I've got that long leg and I'm really making contact against the other shin and then raising that leg all the way up to the knee.

So we go down to the ankle in four counts, up to the knee in four counts twice more down to three, four up two three. And my leg is in parallel here, down, two, three, four, and up two, three, four. Now down just halfway down the shin just halfway down and hold and all the way up to the knee. Halfway down and hold and up to the knee twice more, down and hold. Adducting like crazy hug the midline and up and hold, last one halfway down, and up and hold.

Now the leg that you have extended externally rotate that femur and knee and ankle. Same exercise again, sliding all the way down to the ankle, pelvis stays level and slide it all the way up. Inhale, leg down to the ankle and exhale (exhales) all the way up, twice more (inhales) told you it was going to be a lot of inner thigh, exhaling up one more all the way down to the ankle and all the way up. Now you just do halfway down and hold it, halfway down to the shin hold. Two, three, four, all the way up.

Again, halfway down hold two, three four and up, but really get a lot out of this exercise. You're adducting two, three, four, and lift how's that in her thigh, I can feel some heat coming from the monitor. Two, three, four, and all the way up. We've got one more. Stay with me back to parallel, flex your foot guys, flex your foot all the way down to the ankle.

Two, three, four, and up to the knee. Three and four to the ankle. Two, three, four, up to the knee, two, three, parallel flexed foot energy, two, three, and four and up two, pelvis down on the mat. One more, two three, four, and up your favorite part comes now halfway down and hold all the way up. Three more of those, halfway down and hold and all the way up body long on the mat, halfway down and hold and all the way up.

Holy cow, last one down and hold two, three, four and all the way up oh my gosh. And rest. We have the whole other leg to do. It's going to be fun, ready? It's going to make a most successful boomerang.

We have a few more things before boomerang. Okay, so your second leg, knee to knee extend. This one is parallel, foot is in a point. I like the pointed foot and here we go. You're sliding it down to the ankle of the bottom leg slowly and up slowly.

I like this kind of a four count. So it's down two, three, four and up. I'm really visualizing all of this happening from my adductor muscles. You know, my quads and hip flexors, yes, of course the abs, but really that inner thigh way up on the flesh of the inner leg and up okay. So now halfway down and hold it halfway down and all the way up knee to knee, halfway down and up knee to knee.

Two more, halfway down up knee to knee and halfway down and up knee to knee. And then externally rotate the leg, flex the foot, same thing all the way down two, three four, and up and down two, three, lengthening and pull it up, inhale down two, three, four, and up really connect hug, hug, hug, and down two all the way to the ankle and lift halfway down hold and all the way up. Halfway down hold, hug that midline all the way up. Halfway down, hold and up. I know you're getting tired, I can feel me too, but this is the work.

Hold it down, we're conditioning right? And lift. Okay guys, one more round parallel extend the foot. Flex the foot, excuse me. And you're down two, three, four, and up and slide down hugging the midline.

Two, three, four, and lift and down two, three, four, and lift getting really strong dominoes inner thighs that'll help really successful rolling and come up. Halfway down one, hold it there and all the way up knee to knee. You only have three more of this one. Halfway down hold up knee to knee. Last two, pelvis stays level, resist that urge to tuck that tail.

Last one, excellent you guys down halfway there. And you're lifted. Bend both knees into your chest. Oh my goodness, and just relax, do what you need to do for just a second. Okay, do what you need to do.

All right. Now what I want to do next is a little prep for the leg position. We warmed up the right muscles for something else, for a boomerang. Cross your fingers, put those behind your head. Right?

Extend your legs up to the ceiling, they might be shaky, that's just part of the conditioning. Cross your legs, not your ankles. Cross your legs, okay? Now hold your scapula onto your ribs, elbows up and lift your head, neck and shoulders chest lift. Your legs are connected, you're lowering your legs.

I'm going to have you go as low as you can keep your back in a comfortable position. Imagine you're walking and then legs up. Float with this leg cross on top, inhale takes you down. Exhale brings the legs up. You could also do the other breathing, you can exhale down.

Inhale up. I'm going to do one more here with this leg on top and up without dropping your head, cross the other leg, it's leg on leg, not ankle ankle, and lower hand up and hold that upper body position, and lift, last two lower it down. Lift it up. We have one more. We're coming up and then everyone rock yourself up to seated.

Hope you're doing great. We've got a few more bits. Okay, this next little bit again, is from some dance conditioning from way back in the day. Oh, so good stuff. Flex the ankles, legs are together.

Still hugging the midline. I want you to put your fingertips now right by your hips. Okay? And flex your spine a little bit. So you're getting that lower curve again, that scoop here we are on the reformer maybe something massage, that kind of thing.

I'm going to take one of these legs as if the leg is right here. Not at the hip flexor so much, but deep up here in my stomach, I'm going to lift my leg up off the floor a little bit and put it down. Same leg. It doesn't have to come up high you guys, if it gets off the floor at all, that's fabulous. Right?

But in boomerang, as we know, we have to get those legs up and yes, you're going to feel your quad. You're going to feel your hip flexor part of it, three more, four more exhale. And down, and down, last two and Well I'm almost thinking my stomach is picking on my leg, which I know it's not but it's part of what's picking up the leg, okay? Second leg. So from here, you can kind of see what's happening.

You don't go this way. So it's this leg and I'm pulling my stomach and lifting that thigh. I'm thinking about this as kind of the shape of that boomerang, right? And then down, fingertips can help, you can press them down and, and lower. And as you're doing this leg lift, our shoulder stay above our pelvis.

We're not leaning back. Four more times, you can use your hands, press them down, lift and down, last three. We're gonna roll over so well today in that boomerang. Okay, twice more and down and last one and down now it's really fun. Relative, I would like to do my fist to push down, flex the feet and then dig your heels into the floor to everybody still with this scoop and this curve.

If you want to push your hands down to lift your butt up off of the floor and pull your stomach back. And lower your hips, bend your elbows a little bit. You could also do that from your little spider fingers. I'm going to do my fist and push down to lift your hips up. Imagine yourself taking that lift of the hips into your roll over for boomerang and lower down.

Two more to go, push exhale lift and down and push and lift and down. Okay, I'm going to teach you something that I learned from Pat Guyton, one of the teachers who I highly regard and helped me quite a bit along my, and I, she still will if I reach out to her, is the plop point, plop P-L-O-P. It has to do with finding the placement on your sacrum, where again, we balance like think teaser cause that's what it's leading to. And that's also we're gonna role through that plop point when we do boomerang, okay? So your plop point, I like to think is that placement on the sacrum.

But if you come down on your back for a second guys feet on the floor, shoulders are open. This is kind of silly, you balance your pelvis or kind of plop it seven times. There's research on seven, but right now we'll do this. We just go plop two, you're locating the center of your sacrum, five, six, seven, float your legs. Place your feet down.

Let's try it again twice more. It's just little but kind of quick. So we go plop, two, three, four, five, six, seven, float your legs. The next one will also float the chest, ready? And one, two, three, four, five, six seven.

Extend your legs, you should be on your sacrum, you should be able to easily come up to your teaser. Hold your position. Hopefully that feels easy, did it get you there? Did it get you kind of in an easy place? Roll your teaser a little bit.

Just start rolling that teaser visualize that boomerang. It's there, we're already there. Okay? Now bring your legs down, we're going to go for it now. I want you to put your hands right by your hips, cross one leg over the other one, you choose which one.

Now press your fingertips into the floor. Lift both legs up, roll back, you've already done it. Suspend the hips, do that quick leg change. Now as we come up today, just come to teaser, don't do anything fancy with the arms. Just roll up to teaser.

You're on your plop point. All I want us to do is drop the legs, swing your arms behind you and bring your body up. We're going to do it all over again. The fingertips press down. You're flexing your spine and you're lifting those legs.

Rolling over, suspend your hips, cross the legs. Roll up to your teaser, should be easy. Lower your legs, swing your arms behind you. And then just come up to sitting. Three more, sorry, that was weird.

Four more, four more times. Here we go, and roll over up with the hips crossed legs teaser. Now this doesn't let it stop or start, remember I brought that in at the beginning. Keep going, boomerang doesn't really have a stop or start. Let every piece flow into the next, flow is the name of the game.

Last one. Now of course you can rest for a second. There are days where we hold that shape, we hold, we hold, we do all the arm choreography but when we're looking at building some success in that rolling work and that timing, I like to just flow and let it roll a little bit. How did you guys, pretty good? We have plenty of time to warm up and stretch out our lats, stretch out our quads, come into this a cross-legged position.

Yeah, so that's kind of a little glimpse into sometimes if you take an exercise, right? No matter what it is and you build it, you look at all the components that you need to build an exercise and then you create a whole class around a whole little workout, around that buildup. It's really a nice way to put your creativity on it. And for all of us teachers out there, it's a great way to keep other other students' minds engaged. You know, because the list is wonderful but sometimes if we take an extract and put other things in, it's a different painting, right?

So I've got this leg back, I'm going to lean back on my elbow back here and then press this hip forward a little bit. Because we did a lot of quad work and leg lifting, you might be a little bit active in your quads. You can just you know, rock that forward and back a couple of times. Okay, and then as I've been doing, I love these stretches, I'm going to have you come up onto those little spider fingers and walk your chest forward over this leg. Get your chest down as low as you can.

And then use that lower lumbar and the upper lumbar roll back shoulders over hips. We'll take two more up into little spinal extension and out over your thigh and down, down, down as you start rolling back in the sacrum back, lumbar, ribs, shoulders over hips. Head comes up and walking fingertips out a little further this time. It's like the longest stretch you can head over leg, chest over leg, using your hands to help you go back up. But we could keep going with the series of stretches but I'll just do that on the other side.

Okay, so you've got yourself almost in a mermaid sit. You can lean back on just your hands, on your fist where you could go all the way down to that elbow. And I want you to allow this leg to get very long, press your hip forward and back a couple of times, just feel the elongation of those quads that are part of your body. It's good to have your legs strong in that leg lifting work. Okay?

And up we go, and then here we are. We're coming chest up, we're lengthening out over this thigh, trying to get a good stretch in the glutes now. Yeah, and as you start rolling up, I'm thinking sacrum back, restacking lumbar over sacrum, ribs over hips, all the way up twice more take a little more breath into this now and down, and reaching back sacrum over hips, pelvis over sacrum, all the way left. Last time everybody, all the way out. Rolling yourself up, we're going to finish this with a good old fashioned straddle stretch.

So you can just open both legs, as wide as you'd like to go, hands in front of you can come on spider fingers again. And what I'd like to do actually is just take my hands flat and start to lower my elbows down and then just reach the elbows up. So it's just a little bit of rocking forward and back. We did a lot of adduction so I want to give these muscles a little bit of stretch and just lowering the elbows and lifting the elbows and lower the elbows trying to get a little lower each time. Two or three more.

Don't forget to breathe. I'm going to do one more everyone, and for me, I'm staying down low this time, I'm going to allow my head to also just flex or my neck to flex forward. Wonderful. And then roll yourself up to seated. Bring your legs together.

Wonderful class. I hope you had fun with that. I hope it kind of gave you some new ideas for the boomerang or other options and other exercises and that you found something new in your body. Thank you again for joining me, I'll see you again next week. And this week we have Mariska Breland joining us.

So keep looking on the Pilates Anytime live schedule because we keep adding new people. So stay on the lookout for some amazing classes from Mariska as well. Okay, take care everyone, have a great week. And again, thank you for coming and taking class with me. Bye bye.