20-Minute EXO Warm Up

Welcome, everybody. If you only have a few minutes, say 10, 15, this is the class for you. Or if you want a little bit more to add on to another class, this is a class for you. So let's just see how much we can move around the exo chair and have a good time. I have 2 slastics on actually 3, but I have the arm slastics on on the lower level up front here.

And the one red long one attached at the top that we'll use toward the end of our short time together. As far Springs are considered. I have a low spring. I'm on, cactus. If you start from the top 1, 2, 3, 4, going from the top to the bottom, I have a light spring on just one. I have it on, I'll call it 3, the second one from the bottom.

Let's begin go ahead and sit down. We're gonna just wake up the body, move all around. I'm actually gonna lay down put my heels on the back of the chair and just take them all my here with my arms by my side. Take a deep breath in. And exhale, I'll be glad for even the 10 minutes that you have right now. And what we do is we inhale.

Without changing your spine, exhale, and just feel the connection to the back of your legs, bring the bar down, I don't know, halfway, three quarters of the way, and up All we're trying to do is tap into the back of the body, tap into ourselves. I'm doing not pulses, but down and up. So I'm exhaling drawdown, not straining my feet, not straining anything. I just wanna move my joints my spine, all those joints too, and my breath. Truthfully, I just wanna move myself right now, and I hope you do too.

So let's do a few more of these. The idea is that you use as little as you need to keep the rest of the body shape as is, but to go, oh, yeah. There's the back side of my body that obviously helps the front. How about one more? Then you may need to back up a little bit.

You'll know we're gonna bring the bar all the way down so that arches of your feet are on it, and you can really step on it. From here, arms close. These parallel. I have them apart. We'll do some pelvic curls in hail. Exhale and roll the hips up off the floor.

Stepping into that pedal. Looking for the long line. If your body inhaled the top. Exhale roll down. Now you may have decided you wish your spring was a little lighter because we're gonna do our best to keep the the pedal pin to the floor, inhale, exhale roll up again.

Feel the back of the legs now, I hope. And inhale it's up. Exhale down. The fun thing about the pedal, especially when it has this bit of a curve, which I think they all do, is that you you get to see what the natural tendencies of your feet are. Don't strain your feet, but just know if Do I roll out?

Do I roll in? And do your best to keep them parallel. Inhale and exhale. Again, a massive bottom. I go back to oop, back to that neutral place inhaling there. Starting the XL 2 roll up, almost like lubricating the spine, if you will. Again, when you only have a little bit of time, everything counts.

You could also just add this to a longer workout and be more warmed up. I'm doing one more, stepping into it rolling up. Stay up there when you get there. Test yourself. Okay? Don't worry too much about your feet. Again, we know we're trying for parallel.

Reach up the pelvis, pubic bone towards sternum, then really use the back of your legs and lift that position higher. Okay. Your knees are still pointing where they were, not out to the side now. And let's take it back down. Then now you may wanna move closer. You'll find out. I'm gonna I think I want to, so I'm gonna do that.

And I'm gonna bring the pedal up all the way. And take it to the back of my heels. It's not directly on my heels, but a little closer to the Achilles tendon. And here just draw it halfway down sort of like, oh, we did before. Maybe you wanna move back. Slide your hands behind your head and really support yourself.

Lace your fingers fully together, let your elbows come up. The bar is sort of in this halfway weird, middle position, and then you get to see if you can keep it still as you curl your head, neck, and shoulders up. Exhale as you do. Hold. Inhale.

Back down. I feel like I want a little more action on my hamstring, so I'm backing up a tiny bit. You make your own adjustments where you need so I could pull the bar a tiny bit more down. Here we go. Inhaled for prayer. Exhale up.

Hold. Inhale. Oh, it's shaky, but that's alright. And exhale down. Hold it there. Doing your best.

Watch what you do with yourself, with your feet, with your breath, and down. Inhaling at the bottom. Exhale curl up. I'm gonna inhale reach to the back of the legs just to see what I can do in terms of curling up a tiny bit more. I don't really mean higher. I mean, literally curl forward towards my thighs.

Now my hands are back. I've inhaled, and I'm going down. Exhale. Holding at the top. Can you go any higher on this in here?

Head is falling back into your hands. I exhaled him. One more will stay up there. I suspect you know what's coming. And Do your best to relax your toes.

Mine were just kinda freaking out for a second. Stay up here. Inhale towards the window or to the front or one way. Exhale shoulder towards hips what you could do is push on that opposite heel a little bit more, and it kind of drives you into the position more. Inhale through the middle stay up, go the other way. The opposite heel can push a little more.

Don't worry about the subtle movements. Just try not to lift the bar, go way up or way down, emails through middle. And XL. First side. Email. Excel sync.

Drive yourself more forward, more internal into yourself. Part of the point of pressing a little more on that one heel, like, as I go to my right and pressing a little more on my left is so I keep my pelvis still maybe think about that for a couple more here, one each way. Email back to the center. Go ahead and reach to the back of your legs, exhale sink your spine into the ground, Pulling yourself forward. It's alright to tuck a little.

Let your back stretch and then lower yourself down. Allow the pedal to go up. You can take your feet off and just rock yourself up to seated. From here, stretch your legs out on either side of the chair. Again, you might want a little lighter See what you got here.

I have my hands wide, and it's really the almost the heel of my hand rather than fingers. Fingers are just not gonna make it fun. Sit. Let's do this. Sit as tall as you can. If you need to bend your knees to get a flat spine, that's no problem.

What's kinda nice is to be able to hug the chair in any capacity as you can. So from there, we're in a slight lean forward do your best to sit up tall as you draw the bar down so that you really are as upright as possible. For just a few draw the shoulders down, press 1 in how press 2. It's small. Think of those upper arms doing the work. And for our ab work, we inhale our my my bar's almost to the top. I'm a little bit leaned forward, Exel, you can round back a little, press the bar down. Oh, didn't it get heavy all of a sudden? And then inhale grow back taller.

Scoop back if you need to, but that means you're gonna have to lean forward with the straight back. The inhale. Start the exhale. Roll the pelvis backwards a bit around and go ahead and slow shoulders down, sinking the belly deeper into the spine, inhale up, and exhale. Down with the bar.

Inhale. Get this back extension where you can. And to that point, check this out after you finish this one. Go back up, inhale. Lean into it. Again, I wanna you want a flat back. So if you have to bend your knees to do that, do it. Take your hands off the pedal. Reach them right alongside your ear thumbs. Up, pointed to the back, put them back on the pedal, and around it down again.

So it's the same exercise with a little addition. In hell, go ahead and let that lean forward, find the flap back, float the hands off the bar, thumbs point to the back, lean into it, reach for it. Let the arms come back to the pedal. Exhale. Round down. Inhale.

So there's motion of the spine. There's motion of the arms. There's a heck of a lot of work in back and, hopefully, the abs too. Exhale. And up and reach hold it there.

Can you lean into it more? Again, it's not so much about the legs. It's can you get the long spine from here? Go ahead and move those shoulder blades backwards 1. 2, I have my feet flex, 3, 4, not critical, but let your legs be involved, 6 ish, 7 more longer 9 ish and reach long. Let your hands fall to the bar. You don't have to push down on it.

Just sit up Tall, let the arms go out to the side, flip them over, and we twist to the front, exhale 1, 2, center, other side. Twist Kristi tall. It's amazing. Like, how little it takes to just go, alright. My body's still working for me and working well. And it doesn't take much to get the energy back or get you started. Right?

Alright. Take it to the center. Let the arms come down. And from here, I'm gonna use those arms elastic. So just grab hold of those. They don't need any change in springs.

You may or may not. I'm gonna back up a little bit. But if you're on the floor, you may have to anchor your feet to the to the bar. We're just gonna do a little rollback. And here we go.

Just roll back. I have my palms turned up. I'm holding this elastic. My legs are straightening out. As I go down, let your head touch, and then start to roll back up. Bend your elbows.

Let yourself yourself. And Benjamin needs to sit up tall. In here, let me change that for you. I wanna keep the knees bent. And let's just let let keep the arms bent.

Go down. Exio come up. Inhale. Exhale down. If you want more work straight in your arms, you don't really need them. Right? Watch your Cooper bounce. Oops. I said straight, didn't I? Let's go down.

We'll stay here. And hang out with a bicep. That's new. Hold the bicep and roll yourself up just when these autos over straighten out your legs if you can't, you wanna sit up straight, you might even wanna back up. But, again, if your chair moves, just come back into it or even put something in front of it. From here, we do a row.

We pull straight back. And we go forward, and we pull straight back, and we go forward. I know you have to grip the handles, but do as much as you can with your back first. Right? So you you feel the sense of I'm contracting through my back. I'm getting taller too. It's not just your back.

So you don't wanna just lean forward and round. Let's do a few more there. If it's not enough, you're gonna back up. You know what to do. Okay.

When you're done with that, turn your palms down. Set even taller in your spine and can feel free to bend your knees and back up a little bit more. Think posterior deltoid for those of you who are wanting to really get something action in the shoulders, pull straight back. So I turn my palms down. I'm taking my elbows wide to the sides of the room.

And then once I get to the direct side, that's when I really squeeze the shoulder blades and pull further. More to the point is think real wide with your elbows, and the streets behind. Let's do about 5 more. One end. 2n, 3, 4, and 5.

Right. Alright. Time is short. Go ahead and set those babies down. We're gonna change our springs, to legwork. For me, that just means heavy. I I I told you where it was.

I was down on 3. I'm gonna go up one with that one spring I had, and I'm gonna get crazy and go one on the very top one of the cactus. Sitting tall, heels parallel. As far as your positioning, I go go as close as you can where you can sit up straight. Right? So sometimes what I like to do is hold the edge of the chair, find that spot, see if I can handle the weight on any given day. And if I'm gonna slide back and for me, I gotta go more forward today. And all we do, you could hold the handles.

I'm not going to. I'm just going arm over arm and we press down and up. And down, up, down, and up. And I'm using sort of this pressure with the, forearm into forearm to help me kinda keep my shoulders open or my chest open. How about one more? Hold it down.

Use your hands. If it's heavy, you can change it. Otherwise, just go to the balls of your feet, lift the heels, bring the bar up. This thing heel's a little not as high as you can, but a little. You can take the hands to the back or out to the side. I'm gonna hold him to the back. Holding ankle still press down and lift down and lift.

Get those legs working, get the heart pumping, or at least the blood pumping. Let's get 5 more out of it. 1, 2, and 3, and Voila. Small v Pilates dance slide forward. If you need to, this time, I'm holding in front with the intention, none of hanging on, although that's a little bit I'm sliding, but also to press into it so I can find that upper back again, led go, heels are up in the same position, but together this time, go down, up, down, up, down, up, posture still, 5. 4, 3, 2, and one all the way up. Great.

Take yourself around the back, lighten your spring. And by lighten, we're doing back extension to finish this baby up. So I am, I'm on 2. I have one spring on the second cactus, and the fun part is stepping into the red band. Lean forward. Oh, so I'm in I'm in the band. I'll adjust it when I get there.

It's gonna help me. Right? I'm gonna step up to a little cat, to run the kneeling, and we'll finish off our final back extension after this. So you the band is so cool, the schlastic. Is so cool because it holds you and reminds you to use the back of your legs as we do cat. Here we go. So your upright. Fingers are down. They're gonna reach for that bar like you're doing a roll down. Inhale.

Exhale head goes first. Find the bar, hands on the bar, and you know it's not that heavy. Right? So be gentle with yourself. Take it down. When you get almost all the way or as far as you can, lengthen your spine a bit. Ideally hips over knees in here. Except from the belly, allow the spring and the plastic to help you up. Oh, and there you are at the top.

Let go. And you stand tall. Was it too easy? Back up or move forward. You decide to inhale. Exhale. Rule down. Heal of the hands or palm of the hands.

On the bar and roll it down, extend the spine. That's where this elastic is so nice. Excel roll up. Now next time you get on a chair that doesn't have a slap, pretend you have one, inhale. Exhale down.

We are so close. Moving all those parts, Anna. I'm doing just one more. Down it is. Like then try not to overly arch your neck there.

And up we come. And I'm going to step out of my schlastic. You can actually keep it there if you want, but I'm gonna step out of it, leave it where it is, go right over the top, hand first come onto my abdominals. My hips are right near the front edge of that chair. Arms are straight.

I'm looking at the ground. I now wanna come to where I feel like I'm level. I start at my legs so they're not hanging down. They're up about level of the chair. My shoulders too.

And then it's just joy. From there. Leagues the legs where they started. Lift up. Lift up. Lift that light in the middle of your sternum and go back down. Just to the level position.

You don't have to thick ground. Come up again. We're only doing 5. And down. And, like, you end up kind of getting to use the bar, the pedal, as, like, a pressure point to almost drive you energy more forward. I believe there's 2 more.

If there's only one in milk it, because I'm doing another one after this. Here it is. Legs are straight. They're strong. They're reaching your is up and your heart is up and you moved your body, take yourself to the floor.

Keep one hand on for support. Help yourself off the back. Take a little stretch here with a round back. Roll yourself up. Either add 2 class or get back to work.

Whatever it is you have to do next, but thanks for joining me. Appreciate you being here.