Class #542

Fluid Full-Body Mat

60 min - Class
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Description

Amy begins this fluid Mat class with Standing Roll Downs and doesn't delay moving right into the work. She includes an inspired variation of Spine Stretch Forward/Horseback (thanks to Alycea Ungaro) with some creative transitions throughout the class. Corkscrew, Scissors, Neck Pull, Control Front and Back, and Control Balance are among the exercises in this full-body workout. Amy focuses on energy and encourages you to feel the benefits of each exercise. Enjoy!
What You'll Need: Mat

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Oct 26, 2011
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Okay. Let's start standing tonight guys. Hop it up. Hop up bro. So we'll do a little standing roll down to warm up. You guys feeling good? Good? Yeah, yeah, we are. We're feeling really good. Okay, let's go. Actually, Palladia stands tonight. It's a little different plots. I don't usually start this way, but Palladia stance is a very small little VE with your feet, gives you a chance to engage your upper rear legs a little differently into your inner thigh.

It's not a gripping of the glutes as much as it is just pressing into the center. Okay? And let's shift her weight just a little bit to the front of the ankles. So we're going to feel like you're light on your heels is take a couple of deep breaths there and exhale. Just feel yourself. Pull you up. Just that energy of pulling up through your low belly, trying to take some of that excessive arch Yeti or low back. Definitely not locking your knees.

Take a check across your shoulders and let's start moving. So we'll take a good breath. Exhale. Here we go. Rounding down. Keep that weight forward of your ankles. I'm going to take ourselves just down walking out right away to get some blood flow into the shoulders, into the body. Just going to pass through that nice plank position.

Let's take about three breaths. Yeah, that nice sense of lift of the abdominals up toward the sky. I'm going to try to start centering your S, your body, feeling that length through your sternum and your chest. Let's all breathe in together. Exhale again. Lift the hips. Start walking back. Hands toward the feet. Now lighten the heels roll up. Keep light there.

Keep light and roll your body up. Nice deep contraction into your stomach. Let's take it again. Inhale at the top. Keep that weight forward. Exhale and round, letting the arms hang and dangle there. As you walk out, try to walk pretty narrow. You're going down a pretty narrow corridor right there. Keep pressing those inner ties together. Three breaths.

[inaudible] let's readdress the sternum. Feel that nice sense of stretch and strength forward without dropping the ribs. One more and the exhale lift. You can think a little round back. Walking the hands back again. Plant the heels lightly. Drop the head and roll the body up.

Okay. Okay, one more time. Breathe and exhale and walking out. God, you guys. Okay, so let's go ahead and jump our feet to our hands or the sit down carefully. Slowly on toward our bum. Oh, some of you are designed as, okay. You didn't know what was coming. That's correct. Yeah, that's good. And taking care of yourself.

Enrolling back down. We're going to go right into the 100 tonight. Okay. So if you feel as though you need to shift a little on your mat, please do so. Let's pick our legs first to a tabletop position. Fall, palms down, roll up to chest lift. Walk your fingers out and extend your legs out. Hold that position for a second. Now again, let's press the legs together.

Soften your feet, curl up a little bit higher. We're going to take inhale for four and exhale for six. All right, so we have inhale three, four, [inaudible] [inaudible]. So try and get more air in two, three, four, squeeze, squeeze. Exhale. Three, four, five, six. [inaudible] challenging not to inhale up into the neck and shoulders, trying to inhale into the sides of the ribs. Keep that vigorous bump going.

Okay? Nine, three, four, five, six, 10. Exhale. Three, four, five, six. Now you guys hold right there, everybody. Just put your hands behind your head and give yourself a little support. Lower your legs down.

See if you can go to a little lower level. Just hold it there. I know. And then continue to lower the legs. Unless this hurts your back. I were pretty strong, so if that wouldn't feel right, you'd bend your knees. Okay. No one's going to get their feet all the way down though. I want you to hover, okay? Oh my God.

Why am I doing this tonight? And extend the arms back long. Lower the body all the way down. Okay. Rolling up. Inhale, arms, head and chest. Go for little power today. Reached the chest forward. Pull the abdominals back. Let's roll back and [inaudible] and again [inaudible] [inaudible] wheezing that air out. [inaudible] [inaudible] and again [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] two more.

[inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] last one. [inaudible] [inaudible], [inaudible] arms all the way back, most likely. We need to do a little readjustment on the mat. Let's go into rollover. Okay, so this is again a little more classical order, starting with your legs, not at 90 whenever we want to go. Just a little bit below 90 to start. All right, now it'd be a little bit below 90 so your abdominals are quite turned on and active. The inhale will be two 90 so inhale to the 90 exhale up overhead.

So I'm going to give some options tonight. If you want to flex your feet and touch the mat below behind you, you can. If you're not ready for that, just don't go for it. You'd stay up with the legs. Okay, open the legs to those width of the mat though. And let's go ahead and begin to roll down bone by bone. Deep.

Exhale. Now sweep those legs down to that lower level so that you stop. It's about 60 degrees and he'll become to the 90 exhale, hips up and roll over. So I'm gonna pick up the tempo a little bit. Guys. Inhale, rolling down, sweeping the legs in and held a 90 exhale up and over. Open, rolling down.

So we are going to do the reverse tonight with the legs apart. So they go open. Pull them up to 90 exhale up over. Touch the toes, pull them in hard flex, breathe and exhale rolling down. Ah, nice control in your body. Open to the width of the mat. Exhale up and over. Flex the feet. Pull them in. Inhale. Exhale. Rolling it down.

[inaudible] lower at about 60 degrees. Hold those abs strong. Inhale, exhale. Up and over. Flex the feet. Pull them in together. Rolling all the way down, keeping your left leg going to the mat. Stop with right leg up to the ceiling, a little turnout and everybody take that leg again down a couple inches. Leg circles crossed to the right. Oh, excuse me. You knew better.

Cross to the left around and center. Cross around. Let's focus on the other leg for a minute. Pause at the top. Just pause. What's your other leg doing? It's stretch long. Contract your hamstrings and press your leg to the mat. Okay, let's do the right leg to the right five times. We open down around, pull up, open down, around, pull up.

So we are still searching for stability, always working with control. Two more open around lift last one and circle. Just keep the leg straight and change them. Okay, so focus on your other leg when you just put down solid. Here we go. Cross to the right. Inhale around and center. [inaudible] taking that little moment of pause to deepen your abs.

Last one did this direction. How other way [inaudible] you really kind of seal the deal there with the low waistline, Cole and for around and lift five around and lift. Lower that leg. Let's reach your arms overhead for a roll up to get to the top. [inaudible] bring those heels right in. Let's go into that. Rolling like a ball. So again, first, find that position. Establish your position. I've got one hand on either shin. You can also put both hands across whatever space you have between your knees and your chest. Let's try to keep that the same. Okay, we'll go six repetitions.

Here we go. Lift the hips up. Try to put the brakes on in the belly. [inaudible] it's up. XCL and curl. Squeeze in. Three more. [inaudible] two more. I'm counting. Funky. Last one won't hurt us and lift. Okay guys, extend your left leg. Roll on down to the shoulder blades.

Now, tonight let's go with pulling that knee. The right knee. A lot closer into the chest, but not really so much with the arms pulling in cause that's easy, but your hands are light on that shin. It's the abdominals that really helping you pull that Scion. As you curl your chest up, your elbows are open. Shoulders are unsure. Now focused on the other leg. Also, this is the single leg stretch, so we want to focus on the stretch. Let's just take a couple slow ones.

Stretch and stretch. Got two things going. Extension flection. Okay. Ah, dominoes is doing two different things. Pulling deeply to get that thigh in, but stretching to get the other one out. [inaudible] okay, we're going to pick up the tempo. Double breath. So we have inhale, inhale, exhale, exhale. [inaudible] yeah, the muscles are tugging and stretching, tugging and stretching.

There we go. Four, three, two and let's bring it in. Double leg stretch. You're kind of close tonight, so just do what you can with your arms. Inhale, stretch in a hole. Go open slowly. Exhale, squeeze. Let's hold that, uh, that hammock shape. Stretch. Go wide and squeeze. Two more. Squeeze your bottom a little bit here and exhale around in. Nice you guys. One more stretch around.

And let's just rest the neck for a second. Maybe three Carroll up for the scissor. So again, let's go for some stretch tonight. Still with control. Let's pull that leg in for the double count and pull. Pull, pull, pull. It's the same thing as we did in single leg. Abs are pulling in to help bring that site up, but there's some abdominals that are helping stretch. See if you can curl a little higher off your shoulders. Good.

Some of you are getting that shit into the forehead. Why not if you can. And four and three and two. Last one. Let's hold both legs up. Hands behind the head. Okay. Elbows wide guys, flex your feet. Let your legs drop a little bit at a 90 and 90 degrees. Okay, so all go down, just like we did a minute ago.

Think about 45 point your toes and spring the legs up. Shh. Flex. Lower chest doesn't drop and spring them up one more time and everybody's favorite is the last one, which we know. Exhale, come up, bend your knees, let your head come down for a second or three. Exhale. Let's curl up now. Don't move your legs yet. Let's twist to the left to with twist like you're ringing out that wet rag, which might be your body right now.

Schoolies and then center to your right. Keep curling up, especially during the transition. Curl a little higher. Good, Annie, now let's go for it. Inhale, inhale, exhale. Exhale higher in those transitions up and exhale. Exhale there going in hip. Inhale and four, three, two and one and let's all take a much deserved rest. Very nice. How'd your knees okay, and roll all the way up and move your hips back.

I'm borrowing something that I was shown last night in a class that I took from an amazing teacher from New York. Her name is Alicia Anncaro and I will hopefully, I will do praise to that. Um, what she gave us. And some of you might like this a lot. So let's go to our regular spine. Stretch forward, fingertips on the floor, flex the feet, take a nice deep breath in, sitting as, as tall as we can. So the exhale is just walking those fingertips out there really nicely warm. I think your bodies are warm, so gets it.

We're ideally getting the crown or the head to the mat. We've done this focus of spine stretch forward many times. So yes, you guys, so you're bending into yourself. Stay right there for a second. So what if I said there was a wall right in front of where your head is and it shoved you back back towards your body. Larry, you go Lindsey, girl, do it. Keep. That's that. That's the feeling. See how much you pull back into your, into your body. Okay, now let's all walk back up the wall. Restack up to sitting tall. Okay, let's try one more like that and that'll add on that fancy thing.

So we round down, curl towards yourself. That's like that pipe. Clean your bending skill deep your abdominal so strong, but they're also flexible to allow you to do that. Nice read. Flex your feet, you guys. Now as we roll up, inhale, make fists. Put fist right here by your high inner thighs. And I want you to lean onto your hands and try to push. Lift your hips up. Nice. And don't worry, she can't get it. Okay. This might be their horseback on the reformer and D one to cheer and the ladder, bro. So we're going to put her hips down carefully. Reach the arms up, breathe in spine, stretch forward.

Now we're going to go forward a little bit more with the arms. Still try to get the crown of the head down. Let's inhale. Roll all the way up. Exhale, fists and lift. Now if you really want to go for it, try to lift your legs up a little bit and legs down. Good. One more time. Breathe in and exhale. Carol.

Hope we did. Okay. Elisa and rolling back up. Make those fists. You've got to contract your abs. Of course. Lean in as some shoulder work and yes, your quads. It's going to be some quad work and place it down and Rast. Okay, good. Come all the way. And let's go to open like rocker. So finding your balance point.

Press your legs out into your hands a little bit so you feel that kind of a little guard rail. Let's go. Six repetitions. Inhaled round back. Look into your body. Exhale and come up. See back in that C curve of your low back a little as you open your chest again. Roll as you inhale. Keep pressing out on the hands a little bit with the legs.

And one more like this. [inaudible]. Sure. Let's go ahead. Three more. Our regular ones roll back. Ah, and two more and rural. And last one was rollback and up.

Place the feet together. Bend your knees tonight. Roll yourself all the way back. Okay, let's go into our corkscrew. So bicycling the legs straight up to the ceiling. Breathe in. We're going to take ourselves up and over the shoulders again tonight for the court screw with the rollover rolling down our right side of our back. Don't worry about swiveling the legs. They'll do their own thing.

As you get that hip down, drop those legs. If you want to go lower, some of you are feeling pretty strong tonight. I can tell. Go for it. You roll up the left side of the back squarely hips at the top. Now coming down left. Remember Pilati is control. Even if you've got flexibility. That's the kind of, sometimes the component that's left out because we've got range that just goes on and on. So we need to control that range with muscle, with breathing, with focus hopping over down the left side, feeling the flow. [inaudible] right side up and over. I've got one more each side you guys coming down [inaudible] and around and up and last time, rolling down [inaudible] and around. I'm gonna take a little moment to deviate.

Last week we worked on something. It was, Whoa, we had our little squishy ball for assistance. Do you remember? We're going to try to work a little bit of scissor in the air. So I want you to tuck your elbows in, put your hands at the back of your pelvis, bend your knees. Now you've got to arch the low back and that I think that's the part that we kind of get a little freaked out in doing. But you've got to arch that back and sit. Sit into the heels of your hands.

Okay, so it takes a strength in the back. Strengthen the abs, definitely strengthen your shoulders. Now let's go ahead and extend the legs to the ceiling. What's gonna help you keep the weight off of your wrist is to think hips up to the ceiling. Okay, so take your left foot forward guys, and your right leg towards your head. Focus more on the left leg. The right leg is going to want a drop easily. The left will not want to stretch easily, so you've got to stretch that one.

Inhale center and exhale and reach out. Inhale, reach up and exhale. Reach out less than the one that comes towards you. Increase the one that goes away from you. Inhale, exhale, reach out from your hip. Good, Rachel. Inhale. Exhale, reach out from your hip. One more each side and exhale out from the hip and up. And exhale out from the hip. Tuck your knees in.

Roll up for saw this. Move your hips back on. Stagger. Let's go to our left. Inhale, twist, exhale, and spend a moment stretching those arms in opposite directions. Are you seated evenly on those hips? Inhale, let's roll up. Twist of the other side. Take a moment. Reach both arms equally pulled back onto that other hip. Inhale up. The transition is just as important. Go ahead as the stretch.

The inhale going up. Show your height. Show that strength. Exhale as you stretch. Beautiful shapes you guys up. Nice. You fond, very strong here. Anchor in those hips. Inhaling up, exhale and stretch. Get one more each side stretch and one more to that pinky toe and all the way up and then spring the feet together. Ah, legs around.

Let's come on to our tummies. Alright. Hands down on your mat legs together. If you can pull your stomach up and then before we start going into some back extension for the full back, I want to just work as on the upper back for a moment or two. So is your hands, you're on your mat as if you're going to pull your hands back towards your chest, but you don't really drag your hands back. You'd just pretend as if you do. So you activate that musculature in your upper back to pull that tissue down.

Yeah. Now take a breath on the XLS lifter head. Only like a laser beam pointing right through the crown of your head. Just stretch forward first. Okay. Now just stay there for a second. Feel how your chest, where it is on the mat. Press your chest more into the mat to activate the back extensors to peel up.

So there's a relationship of pressing in to peel up a little bit, if that makes sense. And then using that to come back down. So use the mat and down we come. We'll do that a couple more times. So the chest presses should switch on those deep pair of spinal muscles. It's like sticky tape being ripped off a piece of paper with muscle.

And so that should put you pretty strain free right in your neck and in your hands. You don't even have to use your hands. So let's do that again. Pressing the chest like as quick sand, push into it, turning on those deep back extensors are right along the spine. They're helping you extend, but they're also helping you go tall. Okay. And then coming back down. Now keep that integrated. But we're gonna work on a lower half for a second.

So everybody re tilt your pelvis, put a bit more weight on the pubic bone and take a breath. I'm going to take both legs up and fire those hamstrings so the legs are straight, trying to keep the leg squeeze together as quite a challenge. So if you can do that, fantastic. If you need to separate them, that's absolutely fine. And then lengthen them down as you bring them to the mat so they don't just drop. You reached them. Let's take another breath. Exhale and lift. So don't forget those abs. They would love to drop out here.

And then lower back down. Keep the integration through the upper back if you can. Exhale. Last one of just the legs. Of course. We're going to put these two together into a very nice little rocking motion. So let's take a breath. We're going to take a full Swan. Press the chest, peel away, and lift.

Now as we open and we rock, we're going to take our arms just a little bit out towards the T position like that and catch your hands underneath you. Here we go. Reach, catch, reach, catch, reach, catch. Two more. Reach, lift, last one, and lift. Beautiful work. You guys come all the way down. Now put your hands back farther towards your shoulder. Do your ribs and lift your stomach up. Use that transition as an exercise and instead of going all the way to child's pose, just round that lumbar as much as you can. Try to swing that tail under. Stretch your low back.

[inaudible]. Very nice. Okay. Coming out into a front support position. Open up those hands. No, close your hands. Just make your hands closed and stand on those tip toes. Go ahead and be in a little plot is via if you'd like to just hold yourself nice and strong, reaching through this journey and and making sure we're not locking those elbows. And I wonder would you do the pull walk, pull forward under the wrists or control front so you're pushed through the feet, which is going to make you travel out over your risk quite a bit.

Now to pushback, use from the lat and the tricep and your back extensors. Beautiful read, push back without any sag in your body. So we pull forward and we push back. No sagging, one piece of steel, head to heel. Pull forward and push back. Two more guys. See if you integrate your inner thighs, if it makes it easier, if you squeeze some muscle there and pull forward and back.

Now find the center position on your feet and pike those hips up. Walk your feet in a couple of steps to enough that you feel some nice hamstring stretch and I want you to put, walk your hands back. Do a nice just easy transition of a roll up to stand up. Of course we are nowhere near done. Just kind of change of scenery for a second. How are you feeling? Do you hopefully feeling tall and we roll back down.

Carrying on. So I'd like us to step the feet back then walk the hands if you need to back into that plank position. Going to be on the wrist for a minute here. So we did this a few classes ago. It's kinda some agility. You're moving left and right on the mat. So take your left hand right next to the right hand.

Swivel your hips and your feet and take that right arm over. Head by your ear. So your arm. Yeah, arm is by the ear. So now we're going to work side bend. Now side bend, there's several of them, but the classic one that I'm thinking of is put your hip to the mat, but you don't ref drop it. You stretch it down. You look at your Paul and then push through that left shoulder up into increased side. Bend to the other direction and look down to the bottom wrist. So you do that again, this is a ton of shoulder work.

You guys know that if you need to break, please do set that hip down and lift and side. Then really trying to get the waistlines up one more time and down toward that hip. No dropping up. Big side bend. Okay. Level the waist. Guess what other side without coming down. Let's see what we've got. Okay. Unless you need to please take care of yourself. Of course. So right hand over to left. Swivel the body.

The left arm first is over the ear. Now when you go down to dip the hip, it's a stretch. I'm actually internally thinking of lifting up through my abdominals as they reached the hip down. Push through the mat with that right arm. Look to that right hand. Increase that side bend, and two more times we inhale and exhale, stretched out, right waist, growing taller there. Exhale and lift up and over. And one more time. Breathe. Feeling the work in the body. Feeling the challenge of this exercise. Oh, over level, the waistline.

Place at hand down. Come off those hands. Nice, easy. Now you can rest pose. Move the hands back towards your knees if you need to. Couple deep breaths. Yeah, right net pool coming to the front. Okay.

All right. [inaudible] choices and I'll let you play with it. You can have your legs squeezed together. Some of them that works better for some of us. If you know the other one and you want to have your legs apart, you can do that too, either way. But wherever we are, let's just focus on the stability. First of rib cage to hips, so we're not going to throw those ribs forward, which just increases the backbend. This is not a backbend. We want to keep a nice flat position here. So elbows are open.

Let's take a nice hinge. No, don't go any farther than just your hinge. Okay? Just stay there for a second. Just stay there. Just stay there. That's crazy. Exhale as you come back to center. So it says if someone was kind of, you lift through the lower back and the low belly and carry you back like they've got a hold of you. There's something there. There's a strength there. There's a band of strength within you that holds you there and exhale, use that to come back up to center. Okay, just that again, the hands are helping the head. Our head is heavy. Hands are helping. The lats are helping the hands. Ready. Exhale, come up and we're going to see what we've got.

Come forward into the flection just like we did in spine. Stretch forward. We're trying to bend toward the body so pull those ribs back. Well almost like you're going to put your head on your kneecaps. Okay, there we go. We're going to rule up to vertical. Let's try to full neck pole so that means we go through the hinge. Where are you? Can you control your roll back?

Do you not get comfortable down on the mat as soon as you touch down, come up trying to keep those elbows open. Flex forward. Head on the knees and let's roll up to sitting tall. One more time. It's that lift up and back. Lot of upper back work. Exhale, low belly. Good read and come right over cause heap round round. That's it Brittney.

Tighten, tighten, tighten. Stay there guys. Stay there. Stay in your curve. Yes. If we're head is going to land right on the kneecaps and you're not pushing on your head, you're pressing your stomach back to your back. That's gorgeous. You guys roll all the way up. I think I'm, some people are changing in that exercise. It looks like. Okay. Come and face me on your left side and do a little up in here. Let's go all the way down tonight. My power box underneath. You're navigating. Okay, so line yourself up with the back edge of your mat as best you can. Yep. And leg slightly forward. Okay.

We're going to get a tricky here and put your other hand on your head. So this both hands are, you don't have anything to help you other than your internal structure to find your balance. Most of us tend to cheat a little and we know we lean back on that back hip or backward. There's more soft tissue there, the glutes to lean on. So by Le kinda me forward, you're on right on the side of that hip that it can be a little painful, the it band and that notch of bone. So hold up in your abdominals, squeeze your inner thighs together. I'm gonna have you guys turn your top leg out. Okay, we're going for up and down.

So let's lift flex and lower and lift. It's as if we're pulling the air down with that leg, pushing it up and pulling it down, pushing it up and pulling it down. One more with this foot work. Good. Keep it flex coming up and pointing down. Get leg to the elbow and down. A couple of you can do the elbow. Good. And Dan, this is where range of motion and flexibility kind of comes in handy and lower down. Okay, now keep the hand there. Let's take our leg up still in external rotation.

Five little circles, trying to keep the upper body quiet and still three, four and five other direction. One. This is very hard in the balance. Two, three, four and five and leg down. Okay. I want everyone to take that hand and put it right by the chest. Kick your elbow forward a little bit and pull that shoulder down. Take the leg up and, and go more on a parallel. Okay, so front back kick before we front and back. Take the hip, your right hip and reach it toward that wall.

So we've taken that hip any long gated. So hopefully when we kick we won't hike this waist up. Okay, we want a long waist through this as we kick. So let's breathe first kick into the elbow. We have one, two, and let's go back, back and front and front and back and back. Front and front and back. So we're trying to paint that sidewall with the foot, which requires us to keep reaching from the hip, front and back, and front, shoulder down. There you go. That's an anti front, front and back. Front, front. And hold right there. Taking the leg into a Rhonda XOM lift.

Now I want you to point that foot up and bring it right down to the other legs. So kind of a quarter, Rhonda, John back first into hip extension. Lift is the strength in those hips and pull the air down one more time and we do the reverse direction up and pool now going forward so you can get it pretty far in front of the hip. Lift and down. Oh, halo thighs. The quad is probably gonna contract. It's okay. Ready? Last one, breathe in and exhale up with a thigh and down.

Okay, inner thighs. Move the legs back a little bit. Lower that head down. Step up, hold onto that shin and foot and I'll use that as a upper trapezius stretch. I want you to get that shoulder blade down. Get your body very long, almost as if you're pressing your pelvis toward the heel. Let's take a breath and pull the bottom of fire up. So we'll take an eight and lift and stretch and remember not just the foot, it's the whole leg you're focusing on, right?

We have pot up and go a little higher with each one if you need, if you don't know what that means, just feel going higher. I lost count. I think this is eight. Flex the heel as hole through the heel. Is that shoulder still stretching? Little pulses for eight. I'm thinking paulsey high inner thigh and two and three. Four, four, three, two and 1.2 foot softly two circles, one direction.

Each one goes higher than the previous one. And lift other direction. We pull up and we pull up and we lower. Okay. Put that leg there guys. Let's do a little walk in place. I haven't done this for awhile, so again, reach that hip long.

I'm going to pull the little waist lift there. Hover both thighs and we take a little inhale. Inhale, exhale, exhale. [inaudible] trying to think of the legs being parallel. Definitely not turned out. Lighten on the fingers. [inaudible] good. And I'm four and three.

I'm really feeling those hips too. And last one and bring both legs together and come down. Let's bend the knees. We're going to take the bottom knee and pull it forward. Back knee goes back and come up and we're going to take a nice side bend toward your, uh, your right. Yeah. This side bend a little funky. If this doesn't work for your knees, you can go into more of a diamond set. There we go.

We're going to do a little double percussive breath pulse over an inhale. Inhale, exhale, reach open. These ribs like an accordion just opens up. Nice. You guys. Ribs back. Open the chest. Three, two and one. Okay, beautiful.

Hands back and just swivel other side of the body. So here we go. Hand at the head, hips, back leg, slightly forward, another hand on the head. Okay, so getting focused. Pull that strength deep into the abdominals. Turn that top thigh out just a little bit underneath. I shouldn't have missed that on the other side.

The tailbone should be slightly slipped under just slightly, so that keeps your low back long. Okay, so we're taking up and down. Let's lift and pull down and lift. We're pulling the air down to the other thigh. [inaudible] trying to stay balanced on that hip. Last one with this foot work. Now keep it flexed as we lift and pushing down.

Lift, pushing down. Can those elbow stay open? Inhale, exhale and down. And last one. There we go. Small circles forward to three, four and five. Whatever breath works cause it doesn't really make sense. On double breath. [inaudible] use a little glute squeeze that might help stabilize four and five and legs together. Okay. Front and back. So hand on the mat.

Legos to parallel and hover the thigh. Let's get that shoulder stretched and then once again guys reached that side and the hip very long. Okay, breathe. And here we go. Double kicks. We have front and front and back and back. Front and front and back. So we're hoping the shoulders don't rotate forward. When the leg goes back, that takes them upper body control through that lat, front and back. That's right.

And or a smaller range of motion back. Feel like you're in control. [inaudible] and last one and hold. Okay. The arabesque where you've stretched the shoulders, I'm getting a little Mickey. Okay, lift.

Did feel that rotation and then pull the thigh to the other thigh. Find the arabesque, reach way back and up and pull in her thigh. Inner thigh. Last one from the back, from the front for that lift and pull the fide and front and lift. Pull the thigh down. Last one could see the looks on your faces of Oh my God.

Okay. Parallel. Let's come on down for inner thigh. Hip happy. Okay, so hand on the ankle. Feel that long neck can stretch that neck really long. Once again, underneath your tailbone should be slipped under just a little bit and the bottom leg parallel. Here we go to pull the fight up and lower pull up. So creating that strength way up high and lower and pool.

Good summer for more and lift. Nice long sternum. The whole body's integrated and up. Lower. Last one, love lifted whole flex through the heel. Feel that long line through the inner thigh. Get longer and we pulse and we go eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two and one. Soft 0.2 circles.

One direction we've got an up and a little higher up. Other sway and up and a little up. Hand down. Stretch the legs together. Hold your balance there on your side. Restretched that shoulder down. We've got our walk in place, check your tailbone and track your ribs. And so we're looking for the inner thighs to really brush each other.

We're parallel. Let's go another round to the percussive rhythm ribcage in feel those muscles taught [inaudible] four, three, two and last one. Bring both legs together. Lower the thighs. Okay, we come up for that mermaid. So the top leg goes back, Bottomley comes under, we'll we'll those arms around. It's direct. So your left arm is going to be parallel to the floor, right arm overhead and we reach. Inhale. Inhale.

Remember these are stretches Rett rather than a bounce, we're reaching over, opening the spaces and these ribs a little bit farther. Shh. And for three nice work you guys two and one and let's come all the way back down onto her tummy. Heads facing in single leg kick. So let's press onto those. Elbows and forearms. Really press up. Hands down. Now again, it's as if we're pulling our elbows back that way, but we're really not. It's just helping us get those upper back extensors working now. Now. Why don't you everybody to hover the thighs up? The infamous question.

The thighs are just the feet, the thighs. If we can get those legs up. So really maximizing the strength in your derriere and your hamstrings. Look forward now lift your chest higher, even higher. Read either. Okay, he's been holding out, but everybody else can go a little higher. I bet that you want to maximize that. Now beat the right heel in. We have kick kick now reach it back. Don't go anywhere yet. Other side kick, kick, reach it back.

Hold kick, kick, lift and reach left and reach again. Kick, kick reach. So you've got to really feel that length back. It's more back than down. Once again, each side, kick, kick, and kick, kick reach to keep those legs hovered, keep them hovered and let's roll down and put the right cheek on the mat. Stock the hands, then let their legs rest. Let the elbows rest.

Let your body take a mental break for just a second. Double leg kick. Inhale. Exhale. Three squeezes the heels. Come in, the thighs are up again, two, three. Now let's take our time. You guys stretch. Take your time, feel the muscles open, feel the joints open. Go a little higher as you turn to the other side, place the hands in the back. And here we go. Three, two, one, stretch. And take your time. Open the very important moment right here. Stretch and turn again. Exhale. One, two, three. We're really wanting to combat gravity. Go up into that space over to the other side of sale and one to three, little higher.

It's maybe your last one for awhile here and last one to this side. Exhale, two, three left. See a little higher. It's the heart. It's the lungs lift and other side. Exhale, N one, two, three. Inhale and hover. Just float this float. Just float there. Breathe. Look down just a little bit.

[inaudible] separate your arms or your hands are right against your thighs and paddle the legs. We've got a paddle. A little bit bigger. Kick there. Miss Rachel. Splash your way to you know where? Four, three, two, one, everybody rest. Great. Put your hands by your shoulders. Bring yourself back again. Up just to cap back please. Just to cap back. Pull that sacrum and tailbone under your upper back. Nicely open.

Take a few deep breaths. [inaudible] [inaudible] okay. I'm going to have you come down for spine twist spine to us, so come back into facing each other. [inaudible] and as we have our arms open tonight, I'm a little bend in your elbows. Palms face up and really work to spiral your pinky fingers up. Yeah, so your shoulder blades can drop nicely into the like a pocket in your ribs. Yes. You may want to stagger just a titch on the mat.

Almost like you're holding a nice large ball above your head. All right, let's take a breath. We're going to spiral to our left and remember it's not the arms that pulse our body, it's our abdominal and our back relationship that help us go farther around and a little farther around an exhale, a little farther around an Hale center to the right. Exhale, abs in the arms. Don't go anywhere. The waist and the spine rotate. Bring a center to the left. X one, two, three and center wouldn't be out of the question. I think that you get so far around that your shoulders are square to the side.

You're turning to center again and twist, twist to West and center. Add to West, to West, to West and center once again to the left to now. Hold the rotation. Hold the rotation there. Place your left hand back on the mat. Put some weight on it, lean on it and stretch that right arm up overhead. Just stretch. Lift your hips to the ceiling. Lift your hips to the ceiling, stretch back. Breathe in. Let's exhale carefully. Set the hips down.

Bring those arms back up into that spine twist position and rotate toward the right place. The right hand back, fingers are facing away, leaning into that arm and lift up onto that hip, under that arm and lift those hips. Use this just as a stretch. If your pelvis is tilted, that's okay. It's a stretch. Let's breathe and exhale guys, bring everything down. What I want us to do now is just bring our body forward. Flex your feet, reach through the heels, and walk your sitz bones back a little bit and a wiggle your sits bones back to lengthen those high hamstrings and see if he can get even a lower to your shins. Still feeling the abdominals. Pull up off of the fines, the wing and the back support rolling up to sitting tall.

Let's place our hands behind us. Fingertips facing in. All right, opening the chest, feeling the elbows pull back. Let's take a breath. Putting significant weight on the arms, but use your hamstrings. Let them help you. Let your glutes help you. Let your back help you open your chest. Now look up.

Look at the wall right in front of you know, walk out like you're watching a spider. Crawl up the wall. It's now met the ceiling. Let a walk on the ceiling just for a couple of steps and look at it there. That's it. Okay. Now we're going to lower the hips with more like a hinge, like action in our back. Just gently put the hips down and exhale, hinge right back up. Look right at that spider. There may be one, I don't know, two more times and bring it down and press it back up. Nice.

Giulia focusing on that might help you lift your potty to it and one more time bringing it down and taking it up. Anyone want to go with me? Three leg kicks, right leg we go up, exhale down and lift. Exhale down last one and other side and up and let go a little higher down with the leg up and down. We did it. Bring the hips down. Flex those feet again. I know poor risks come off those risks. Few deep breaths guys.

Okay. Okay. We're going to go into balance. We did a few weeks ago. Did we? I think we did. Come on, come on down to your backs and I'll show. Don't watch me through it because you don't want to turn your neck. It's one of those we're rolling over our shoulders.

If you turn your head while you're doing it can kinda mess up your neck or just make it feel a little off balance. So I'll try to be nice and loud and clear. There'll be some variations with where you put your arms that could help you a great deal. Okay, so control balance is a lot about all of that. Control in balance with strength. Okay. Lotta hip extension, lot of back extension. Okay, so if we start our legs up over our hips, first arms down by your sides, just like a basic rollover. So let's go ahead, feel that easy. Roll [inaudible] and I want you to please the the tops of the feet down on the floor if you've got it there. Okay. Now if you're nowhere close to the floor, that is okay. You can still do this exercise with your legs hovered up.

And I might just show real quick for people who are watching, you could practice control balance with your hands behind your pelvis, your legs above the floor. And we work on reaching a leg up. This is a tremendous amount of work, just that. But as we build on our levels of ability, of course we, we change it to some other things you're going to see here, but if you want to play with it tonight like that, that's how I started. I know I did. So if you're going farther the feeder down so you could also just keep your hands down here on the map and work the leg lift. Okay, I'm going to show one like that. If anybody else wants to go around the hands, they're going to go around near the feet and hold on lightly to your left ankle.

Okay. I'm going to go ahead and put my hands back where they were just for demonstration purposes. Now we're going to take the right thigh up. This is where the hands can help again, so I've got my hands helping to lift my back and to let that leg reach confidently up to the ceiling. You don't want to go backward on your neck. We're going up to the ceiling. Okay. It's out of the corner of my eye. It's looking very good. Bring your leg down, contract your abdominals to bring your leg down. Now the other thigh is going to go up.

There's a little secret that may help you. You can take that bottom foot, slide it back a little as you're efforting, reaching this leg up. Okay, hold. Is your hips up as high as they can? Yup. And bring the leg down. Let's go one more time you guys and right thought, even if you don't get it up as high as you just did, that's okay. Maybe it goes higher and down and other side [inaudible] I did better with my hands behind my hips, but that's okay. Feet down. Now what I'd like us to do as a transition out of this is just let your arms rest back behind you.

Let your legs drop toward your chest and very slowly roll down your spine. Good. When you feel your pelvis get to a level pelvis position, just bend your knees, place your feet on the floor. Okay. And drop your knees to the right and drop your knees over to the left and back over to the right.

Just easy does it after all that big extension for your back and work for your back. This probably feels good. [inaudible] okay, well let's come up for a little crab. So rock your knees towards you. Roll up. So the crowd, we're going to cross left foot over, right foot. Hold onto the feet. Oh, all right. Now I'm going to say press your elbows and your knees towards each other.

So there's a little resistance being created at that point. Good Pat. And really good. So find that, that curve like you're inside. You're inside that little shell, the crab in the shell, the shells on your back. When we roll back, we of course switch feet and switch hands. You have to kind of suspend yourself over your sh just on your shoulders.

And we come back up and hold. So here we go. We roll back little suspension, cross the other way and up and a hold and roll back. A little suspension up and hold. Feel that again. Rural. Feel the elbows and the knees pressed together against each other. Feel that curve. And again, roll back. Switch [inaudible] couple more. Each side.

Continuous circle of energy from your head down to your tailbone, up your back, over your shoulders. Over your head. Let's go one more each side. [inaudible] well, the last one. Oh, bomber didn't make that last one. Okay guys, place your feet down. It's gonna move my hips back. Let's just finish tonight with our hands right on our shins and just you. Yeah. Use your arms for support.

You can have your feet a little wider than hip width. And this might cause you might think of this as another Swan. Little Swan for the upper back. So I'm pulling on my shins lightly, pulling the shoulder blades down, trying to lift the waistline up and the upper back into an extension. So I'm not even thinking about moving the head. The headwind dropped back. Might think of that spider again.

[inaudible] some other object that might be a pleasant experience. This is lift. Turn to open up through the and open up through that lung right and left side across the collarbones. Yeah, the strength in your back. Oh, it moves down through the sides of your body. Through your hips. [inaudible] just bring yourself up to sitting for a second and just let your legs open. I'm just going to have you sit naturally just for a little closure, no judgment. Just notice how you're sitting. Hopefully feeling well-grounded. [inaudible] maybe some muscles shaking a little bit, a little warm body.

[inaudible] [inaudible] just thank your body for participating with your mind, your mind, with your body. [inaudible] this is all take one easy roll down, so we'd let go of that work in the back. Let go of the work in the spine. Let's take a nice generous breath into the sides and back of the body. Just say thank you to your body because it really did a great job.

Roll yourself all the way back up to finish. Oh, thanks. You guys got a great path. Did you hear that little phone? That was very nice. You guys.

Comments

Loved the class and your deliberate faster pace.
Fabulous! Thank you for the Horseback and the Crab!! I always want to teach crab- now I have some great pointers to help out with the exercise! Thank you!!!!
Hi Elaine.........yes, I'm trying to offer more classes that move a bit quicker. I just get so busy cueing sometimes that I let things slow down. I appreciate your feedback and encouragement to "keep it moving"!
Laurel, yes the Horseback was fun wasn't it? We need to thank our mentors for that one!! What specifically about The Crab worked for you, I'm curious about that. Others have difficulty to so if I knew what worked for you, perhaps that would also be what works for others. I appreciate your feedback!
CJ
this is a fantastic class. vow, it was soooo good. thank you for sharing it with us. blanche.
Thank you so much Blanche!!
Fantastic pure sequencing. Loved "one piece of steel from head to heel" - esp from a Steelers household. Also can't wait to incorporate horseback & your Side Leg Series transition with pulsing reach. Thank you....cheers!
I do love the traditional order of the Matwork too! Thanks always for your wonderful and positive feedback Jennifer!
Once again the workout doesn't dissapoint! Great class, teaching and cues are spot on as usual. Love the faster pace because it allows time for more exercises.
Thank you Valerie! I'm enjoying offering faster paced classes as well so keep watching, there will be more! Happy Holidays!
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