Buns n' Guns on the Mat

Hi, everybody. It's Amy Haven's here, and I have my friend, Andy Davis. Again, we did our buns in and guns reformer a couple of years ago, and we're here doing a matte version. So you will need a towel. You'll probably sweat. A yoga block and some hand weights. Light set is fine.

Maybe one heavier one if you can. Let's have fun. We're working our buns and our guns. Okay? We're gonna start at the back edge of the mat, and we'll do a little bit of breathing, rolling down, getting centered, and we'll get going. So nice breath in. And let's tip the head down, bend the neck, bend that thoracic spine.

Take it easy for yourself. If you wanna bend your knees right here, Start to anchor the feet into the mat. Everybody drop that head. Let your head hang. We all going to bend the knee so that the low back goes through a c curve shape.

Press your feet into the mat and begin to articulate back up to standing. Just a nice little warm up. Big breath in. And again, neck. Thoracic. Lumber. Arms loose. Let those shoulders relax.

Let your neck go. Let's everybody bend the knees again. Round your pelvis more around your low back more, start to lift the abdominals, ready press the feet down, and roll back up to scanning and do another one, but we'll add a little stretch over the arms up, breathe, and same roll down sequence. Hold the way down. Saddle that you're nice in the level on your feet tripod.

So you're not too far back, not too far forward. We will bend the knees the same way. Let your arms hang loose, roll back up. All the way to standing. We'll do one more and start to add.

Big inhale and roll. Okay. So what I want us to do here is everybody walk out onto your hands or elbows, depending on where you are in your body, today right now and just hold long stretch position. Bend your knees. And stretch your knees. You can have your feet apart or together.

One more time just kinda getting the bigger joints of the lower body ready, but we're gonna walk our hands back. Back back. Back. Bend the knees roll ourself up. Okay. And we will do one more and start adding, yep, arms. We'll stay down there.

We're gonna round. Walking out to that long stretch position. We'll take a nice breath in. We're now gonna jump our feet to our hands. And we get to sit back down. Okay. Good.

So we'll warm up our hip joints with some internal and external rotation. I think I'll just face You can face that way, Andy. I'll face this way. And let's just put your hands behind your back, everybody, and just lean back on your hands. Have a little bit of shoulder support already.

And just a little bit of assessment and, angle warm up internal, external rotation of the femurs. Because we're doing a lot of glute and lower body, we want these to be ready. Let's do about 4. On 3. And most of us don't have the same sensation in the hip joints. So we recognize which one might feel little sticky and we might put more breath and focus on the 1, or you might be the lucky person with an even sense.

Lucky you. Okay. That's all we'll do there. We're gonna now bring our pelvis forward. Grab your lush, small weights, everybody. Okay. And let's bring our yoga block also.

We're gonna put that between our knees. We will roll onto our back. And I want us to start so the the bock is up with the knees to give us some, you know, midline orientation and awareness. If you can get a sense that your heels are straight underneath your knees, you might be able to even touch your heels with your hands. We wanna be fairly close. Start out with your arms right above your shoulders.

Grip your weights with your hands and feel your shoulder blades flat on the mat. At any point this gets fatiguing, you just ditch the weights, okay, or just put your hands down, but we'll breathe in 4 articulated pelvic curls. And just rolling yourself up, reach the knees forward. Breathe in at the top, exhale articulating down. Try to elongate space between the vertebrae and hail level pelvis, exhale again, using those abdominals to really manipulate the motion of the spine, inhale at the top, and exhale come down.

So the arms are steady in two straight lines. Shoulders are flat on the floor. Curl up again. You may start to now press a little bit more energy through the heel part of your foot on the mat roll down. We know the heel and the hips have a relationship.

Let's go one more time all the way up. We'll stay in our bridge, and we're gonna just open the arms, like a fly or little hug a tree, even an exhale close. We'll do 8. Breathe in as you open. Controlling how you lower your weights.

Of course, controlling how you lift. Trying not to fall out of the bridge line. 4 more. Elongate the neck up, out of the shoulders. Heels pressing into your mat.

One more, everybody. The arms will stay up, shoulders heavy on the mat, and roll out of your bridge position. And all the way to neutral. We'll bend our elbows and rest them on the mat. Take a breath through your nose.

Now roll back up into an articulated bridge. Right? And we know we've got a right pelvis and a left pelvis. So we're gonna just press the right pelvis higher to the ceiling and then center. Left pelvis higher to the ceiling. And center. Right side, center, left side and center.

Arms straight up for more. Right hip, center, left hip, and center, right hip, and center, and left. Okay. Now we do a little dance. We do double bump on the right hip, double bump on the left, and then single. So we do right, right, left, left and then singles. Your buns are gonna start feeling this again and a right for 2 left for 2 and single.

Single. Squeeze the block. Again, right for 2. Left for 2 and singles. Again, how are you doing, Andy? And mighty fine, okay, and single single single, single. Level the hips. Open your arms halfway out.

Hold nice, strong chest, shoulders, arms. Lower the hips down. And roll them back up for 87 and 6. We'll try to roll 5. And 4.

Really stay focused on the backside right around your sit bone, the heels into the mat. 2 more. And last one. And everything comes down. That includes the arms. Just give that a little rest.

Okay. Place the weights down just for a moment. Bring your knees to your chest, take the block out from the knees, roll up, and we're gonna do a single leg version. So you put your yoga block on your mat One foot on the top of the block. And then the other foot on the mat, you do wanna have your heels on the same plane. And then we wanna measure that. Right? So get pretty close to your block and then come back down.

Right? We don't wanna have the block too far away. Okay. Press strongly this foot on the block, and, of course, you will feel the booty. Grab your hand weights. You can either have elbows on the mat, arms straight up, or that little hug position.

I'll let you decide, and you can move through those at any time. Okay? I'm gonna start down low first. Let's bridge up. So you are standing on the block now with that foot. Raise the other leg to your 90 90. That leg will do down to the mat and up eight times.

So we lower down 1. 2. 3. So it is, of course, more challenging if your arms are not touching the floor. We want not to drop the pelvis.

So if you feel like you're gonna not make it, right, or not hold that integrity, lower your arms Last one, I'm gonna lower my elbows so I can show it. Lower the pelvis now, everybody just down. Don't articulate. Just lower and power it back up, press your heel into the block. 7 more.

6, heel to the block, direct line up to the glute, 4, 3. Hello. You doing? These go right to it, I think. The last 2. Okay. Last one. Now the leg that's in tabletop street in it will do just 4.

Lower the pelvis. Lift the pelvis. Lower the pelvis, single leg strength, down with that pelvis, up with that pelvis, last one down, and lift. Now the lake that's into up in the air, bring it through table, touch it to the floor, and all the way down. Okay. We've gotta do the other side. I like to measure it first.

So come on up. We wanna make sure that it's relatively, if not exactly where the other side was. Get those feet ready. Okay. Back down. So once again, if you if you played with arms up and it well well, great.

Do it again. You can take it down or arms out. Before we start, feel the heel into the yoga block. Bridge yourself up. Ready. The other leg comes to tabletop. That leg does down and up, we go down.

And, 2, just easy movement on that hip. Keep pushing your heel into your yoga block. If your arms are not on the floor, it's also some wonderful balance challenge. We are holding up. Now the pelvis comes down. 1, pelvis comes up.

Down up. I needed to return my elbows to the mat. I wanna stay with integrity of balance for connect the heal. We can turn out to thrust our ribs to get us up. It's hip extension, hamstring glute.

Last time, We hold the leg, now we straighten it up. The whole pelvis comes down in one unit down, touch the mat, and then push to the block and lift the hips. Good. 2. 3. Press, press, press, last one.

It's, I wore the red pants on purpose for fire. Ready to put your foot on the mat and then lower the hips all the way down. Okay. Put the weights down for a moment. Tuck your head in, bring your legs to your chest, and just stretch things out. Take a nice deep breath.

And roll ourselves up. Okay. We're gonna turn the yoga block now this way. Okay. And we're gonna set the size of the feet on the yoga block. Get pretty close to it. Come back down. So it's a little butterfly position over the legs.

Alright. Now You can use the the hand weights and just put them right on your pelvis, right, on your ASIS. Okay. Check this out, everybody. Drop your legs open as far as they will go, and it's not a contest.

And so I want us to notice that's not a lot of muscular support for the hip, knee, or ankle. So bring your legs up off that splayed position. Press your feet together and you should feel more muscle engagement. We'll keep that. It's really easy just to go boop and splay out.

Okay. Neutral bridge again. 8 times, we're gonna do the dancing hips again and some big pulses. Alright? Wherever you want your arms, I'll let you choose. Take a breath. Press your feet and lift your feet.

It's a strange rhyme, but it works. Bring your hips down. Press your feet and lift your seat too. And, so I'm not articulating. I'm just lifting into that bridge.

If it bothers your knees at all, find an angle of external rotation that your knee feels supported. We have 4 more power the feet down, lift the hips up, hips down, and up and down. Exactly to and down. It's gonna get fun. Hold it up there. Hold, hold, hold. So we know the right and left. Ready?

Right goes higher? Center. Left, it goes higher. Center. Right. Center, left, and formwork.

Really contract to move the pelvis The glutes contract, and that's what causes that rotation. Okay. Now we have double double double on the right, double on the left, and single, single, single, single. Again, double bump and double bump. Single single. 2 more sets. Rap.

I hear some music in my head. One more round, double right, double left, single, single, single single. Hold both hips up. Let's raise the arms. Go fly open with the arms or hug a tree and pelvis down and up for 8 down. And up, down, and up.

Keep pressing that lateral edge of your foot onto your block. 4, 3, maybe a little bit higher with the hips. Last two, Last one and hold. We're gonna move the arms, close, and open for 8. Keeping the hips up.

2. 3. 4 more. Keep those hips up. 5. 6. Press the feet together pinky toes also. 7. Holy macro. And 8, open the arms, lower the hips, and just rest your arms.

Ah, weights to the floor. Knees to our chest, chest lift, hug, hug, hug, and that puts a nice stretch on what we just use there. Okay. And then we're just gonna do a little roll up off our back for a second. Doing okay? Easy, he says. Alright.

Bird dog time. A little bird dog hip opener jabs. Whoop whoop. So come on. Hands and knees. Have your weights nearby, the light weight still. Yoga block can be where your hands go if you'd like.

But first, get yourself set up in a nice 9090. Yeah, quadruped. Okay? So here's the d I'm actually not gonna use this. You can if you want. I'm gonna go here.

What I want us to do, extend one leg. We'll do our right leg. Just toes on the floor. Now lower to your left elbow as you raise that right leg up, parallel hip extension, We're gonna take that leg handy and arc it around, touch your toes to the floor on the side of the mat, big arc backup, square the pelvis, lower the leg come up on your hand. We're gonna do the same thing again.

So we go leg, to the knee and leg lifts. Turn the pelvis. The leg makes a big arc. We lifted nice and high around down and in. 2 more same side. Leg first. Lower to the elbow lift that thigh.

So really turn that pelvis. It'll freeze up the joint, yeah, to arc the leg. Now big lift, up, up, up, gorgeous, square, and bird dog one more this side, leg first to the elbow of the leg lifts, Turn the pelvis. You can even watch the foot and say up a little higher, a little higher around the back, and up to center. 4 on the other side, and then we're gonna alternate Yahoo.

Ready. Extend that leg. Left leg back. Down to the elbow as you raise that leg. Turn the pelvis, start to arc the leg to the side of the mat, arc back up Parallel back to the bird dog and up to quadruped. You've got it. And leg goes first, down to the elbow leg lifts.

There we go. Turn that pelvis. You can look. Watch the leg come around. Touch the floor. Lift. Try to square those hips and we come back up to quadruped. Good. 2 more. Legg.

Lift and come down to elbow. Arc keeping it high during that arc lifted as high as you can through the arc. And then back up to quadruped. One more on this side. Lay.

Come down to elbow as the leg comes to your extension. Turn the hips, tap the floor, and all the way around. Alright. I wanna alternate. We'll do at least 4. We'll see how we're doing.

Right side first. Extend and lift. Big r. Good, Andy. And touch. Raze it back up and square back up to the quadruped other side.

Leg lower, arc, and touch, lift, and square quadruped. We'll just do twice more. One each side leg and lower. Can we get it up a little higher? And arc. Excellent. Up and back square.

Last time, stretch. Lower to the elbows, the leg raises. Look and scoop that leg around to the side. We come all the way up high. We come into quadruped for a moment and then we sit back and we just take about 3 breath cycles to rest maybe wiggle a little bit, let the glutes get some stretch.

Excellent. Okay. Coming back up on our knees, and put your weights right here in your hands. So your quadruped, but you've got your weights in your hands. Simple stuff. Little tricep kickback. But get a nice neutral line in the spine, everybody, abdominals up, shoulders low.

Pick up one elbow. It's my right one. We're just doing basic tricep kickbacks alternating sides. So we'll do left up and extend and bend and down. So we've chosen fairly lightweight, but we also know how to use our muscles more We don't have to have such heavy weight.

Right? So try to contract even deeper in the muscle tissue around your bones. And one more on this side, basic little setup and left and extend and down to the mat. Now slide the weights closer to the knees. We're still in this kinda hingey long back position. So chest is a little lifted tail is open.

Both elbows up eight times with both. Easy breezy. Easy breezy. Lower the shoulders. Good long neck for 4.

Check those abs. I think the next one gets fun. So we press the hands Oh, I'm sorry. We don't. Keep go head back to this. You press your hips, and then you lift your press your hands back. My fault.

Bend back to this crouch position. So it's more about the hips. There we go. Yeah. Right? The back of those thighs. It's gonna be easy to thrust the ribs forward.

We don't wanna do that. We want our hip extensors, and we pull those arms back. Yep. Excellent. And every time we go down, there's a little stretch back there, and then we use it to come up. We'll take twice more.

Press and press and rest. Okay. Great. Coming down to quadruped. Okay. Waits to the side again. Don't think we need this book keeping near the top. We will need narrow weights, so put them up on the mat, I should say. Okay.

We are going to I know. Take one foot and step it to the side. I'm gonna come to the side of the mat and lunge on that. So we're a little bit turned out. It's okay. I want us to push this foot into the floor and come back onto our knees.

Other side. You gotta step out and lunge into that leg and push back. Alternating. Really push. So every time we lunge down, we're getting some good deep stretch and then we push. You'll free to move forward and back and forward and back. We're doing great. 4 and more in 1.

And to push into the floor that gets those glutes. 3. Yeah. Nice. Last one. Okay. Now take the right lane forward, pick up that right weight. Churn and look toward the ceiling, reach the arms straight up, bring it back down, and hand on the mat.

Change side. Right? So we're gonna go left side. Step up first, grab the weight turn, reach to the ceiling, bring it down, hand down, leg back. Here we go. Leg. Turn lift. There we go. Stretch.

And down return leg. Rotate. Reach. Now we found our little rhythm. We're gonna just keep moving through and Lots of breath.

Turn. Alright. We've got 4 more. So lots of repetition but this allows us to really get the form, reach. Yes. Last three We're also getting some nice stretching these big hip joints, which prepares us for standing work. Left and down one more, Andy.

Turn reach and down child's pose again. No weights. You can just let them go. Just take a couple breaths. Keep on breathing. Keep on breathing.

Good. Alright, my friend, roll on up for a minute. We're just gonna take a quick scan. You doing okay? You're doing great. Perfect.

He says, well, fine. Bring your body up to standing. We're gonna do a little standing arm series, pretty traditional mat arms series. So in the traditional sense, we'll stand in our pilates v. 3 by rounds. So first round of biceps, you're gonna have our palms facing forward, shoulders are set, and just easy. Yeah.

This is the easiest of the biceps. So because it's simple, we can put more integrity in the legs the abdominals, the posture of the spine, and we'll do 7 all the way to 10. Actually, and 9 and 10. Okay. No. Twice a 2, he reminded me that his glutes are firing, and they should be. Yes.

Arms straightforward. Twice up to. Now I'll tell you, if your arms are straightforward and your shoulders feel icky, Open it up. Drop your shoulders. And biceps extend and extend. 3. I also like to think about my elbows reaching out on those diagonals as I bend my elbows so they reach out.

We lengthen the triceps to shorten the biceps. 4. 3. And 2. Thanks for that reminder holding in here.

Open out. I don't be squeezing. And then biceps 3, this is tough. And we do one. You can just come to right angles of your elbow. 2. 3.

Elba's reaching out ribs pulling in. 5 more. Don't forget to lift and stand tall and proud and strong here. 3. We're gonna bit lower the arms just in a second.

We're gonna go from here to here to all the way down before we do book opener. So book opener, let's come through that vise up here. Palms are facing you as we've opened the covers of our book our hands are still facing us. That was one close. You go for 10.

And I've heard different things on this. Bring your shoulder blades together. Try that a couple times. Bring your shoulder blades really deeply together on your back. And now don't.

I'd prefer that one for all of us so that they're wide. 5 more. Long neck coming up out of their shoulders. 4. If at any time you get pooped, you put your arms down.

And 2, last one, everybody. You'll close your book. You are gonna lower your arms. It's all the way down. Overhead press is coming.

So we go back up through the book opener. Ready. Turn your palms now and push up. So we reach end down. So there's a real press and pull coming from the back of the shoulders and the lats. That's fine. He's got a elevated stern, and why not?

Press the latch up, use them to pull down for 5 more. 1. Pull. You're not just lowering your weight. You're using the muscles of your back. 2 more.

Use the muscles of the back. Last one, we're gonna come out of the vocal opener, lower and rest. Good. 2 more in the arm series. This is parallel now. And let's come down to a hip hinge.

This is the dead bug. I don't know the name. Weights together in this beautiful crouch position, make sure the shoulders aren't rounded forward and internally rotated. So we wanna get gapula back and a little external rotation of humerus. And then it's from the back muscles around the shoulder blades, that contract to pick up the arm bones.

3. I think we can go lower in our lakes because we're pre yeah. Can have 4. I think we probably can go a little lower if we want to, 5. Remember, preset it in your back. It's run the shoulder blades first, then arms, shoulder blades guys first and then arms.

We get 3 more, even weight on your feet. I'm glad I have a light weights here. Woo hoo. And last one. Now we're gonna stay low. Put both weights by your shoulders.

I'm gonna step apart parallel. One arm goes forward, one arm goes back, and both palms turn. So palm is the front arm palm down, back arm palm up, and then weights to the shoulders, other side. It's the back arm that needs to be lifted more. So put attention on the back of that arm and lifted up. Front arm is usually fairly well, knows where to go with the back arm. Let's deepen the squat.

Reach. Anne. Reach. 4 more time. Dan. Good.

2. Now two more. One front, one back. Great, Andy. And front and back. Woo hoo. And we rest.

Unless roll the shoulders a lot. Okay. I want us to switch to using the heavier weight from a a set of movement. A little sumo stance, please. So our sumo stance were not dancers who was, but I'm not doing it now. It's not super turned out little more toes, shallow diagonal.

Check into how wide you can have your feet and bend your knees and we relatively wanna go plumb line. We're just holding the weight here. You can hold it like this. You can hold it like this. K. Let's just go down and up eight times.

And just a deep and up and deep and up. And pressing the feet into the floor to stand. Down. Alright? So four more there. And then we'll add a little lift of the heels and a raise of the arms.

I'm gonna turn my weight this way down and up. Stay with that. We do down, legs, heels, and arms down. Hips and hips heels and arms. Yeah. And lower.

This man has a deep plier, everybody. He's No. No way. Use it 4 more times, but we'll go post, post, post, 3 times, and then we'll jazz it up. Oh, and down. 2. Good.

And down. Yeah. I push the heels into the floor and lift and down. Okay? Then we'll come all the way back down everyone to that nice deep pli. Hold here. Lift your right heel.

A lot of us have seen this before 8, 2, 3 stay low. 6, lower the shoulder, switch to the left foot, and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Yep. We know how to count alternating, 87, 65, 4, 3, and 2. Both heels up. Let's pulse 8 and you will. 1, a little lower.

We're shaking. And for and 4, and 3, and 2, and 1. We're gonna go all the way up arms overhead and lower in front. Even up on his toes. Double points. Okay. We're gonna put the big heavy weight down.

That was only £5. The big heavy weight, but it's good. We'll pick up our other ones, or you could have used that one, but I'm gonna go back to these and hold them together. So lateral movement can be a little tricky, but we wanna do it. It's really good for our hips.

We all know that. Okay. He's gonna measure his self. Step to the right, everybody pause here. We really wanna get alignment. Right? Neover toes. Hips back. But right now, just push that foot into the floor, come back to center.

Other side, let's just check it out. Is to push into the floor that I want us to get, so other side. Push into the floor and push good other side. Again, Right? So you could always stay with this relatively basic pattern, but we're gonna jazz it up. One more.

And the jazzy up, here it goes. We go to the side. Now just switch your weight to the other leg That's the one that's gonna push us back home. Perfect. Yeah. Then we go to that sign. Left, we switch over to the right, You're fine, and that one pushes us back in.

You got it to the you're fine. No. I apologize. To the right. The right. Now, Salos shift to the left. The left leg is gonna push us back to the right. Yep. Now step out left.

Shift right. Right foot pushes us into the center. Yeah. Right. And left It's a brain teaser and left and right. 4 more. Good.

Right. Stay low. Left. Down. Left. We go way back.

Okay. 20 years here and right and left push with the left. Left. Good. Left, you're fine. Right. I think we'd be throwing up.

We're good. Okay. These go down. You're fine. Pick up our yoga block. Oobly.

So we're gonna do some standing balance, single leg balance. This is just in our hand for now. So, Sam, just on 2 feet. Let your heart rate come down a little. And maybe we'll just do this.

We'll just shift their weight Lift on to one foot. I don't have a preference. K. Put the whatever foot we're on, put the weight in the other block in the other hand. And I want you to bend your standing me and put this on the ground, kind of closest to you, but not too close.

Come back up. Leave it there. Come back up. We're gonna go down and pick it up. Now there's lots of extraneous movement in our body and our foot and our ankle. We're allowing any and all just not falling and put that foot down, other side.

K? So we are gonna move a little. The leg we're standing on hip and glute, getting tons of work in a kind of a fall prevention kind of strategy, and load. There we go. Pick it up and back in. Okay. First side again, this time, we're gonna do twice as we lift it up. If you want some challenge, everybody, put the block farther away from you.

That requires that standing glute to stretch, then a bigger contraction to bring you up. Ready? Gotta go pick it up. Same side again. Ready? We're doing good. I like to watch where I put it.

Focus my eyes. Darn it. Pick it up. And it's fine if your foot if you don't stay balanced the entire time, Right? These are skills and drills. Other side for 2? Skills. Skills and drills, people. Here we go.

Yeah. Coming up. And as we know, We all have a preferred side strength balance coordination. Right? Here we go.

My plan was to get to at least 3 reps. So we're gonna go down and pick it up and do each side again for 3 reps. Push into the floor. Push, push, push. Okay. First side, 3 rounds. Ready? We're almost done. Can I go farther? Yeah.

Good. Push into the floor. Maybe this guy goes up here. Yeah. Push. Reach. I'm gonna get jazzy.

Testing it out. Leigh. Push into the floor. Good, Andy. Pick it up. Here we go. One more on this one.

Who yeah. Alright. I'm gonna go down and pick it up, and we have 3 on the other side. Here we go. Awesome. So I I hope you're feeling, and as well as everyone taking class, the foot muscles Right? The intrinsics of the feet and ankles, they relate all the way up to the hip complex. Use it pushing in a 4.

You've got it. Make them work. Down we go. Push in the 4. We're trying to have our kneecaps stay pointing forward. Down we go. If you want, you can lift that leg in 1 more round.

Yep. Oh, no joke. Last time, picking it up. Good. Stand with your feet side by side.

Take a nice deep breath. I'm just gonna round down. We're gonna leave the block on the floor. Step apart with your feet. Come down in a little sumo y.

Just a little bit of stretchy back and forth. Good. Well, bring your heart rate down. And then just kind of rotate shoulders and spine in here too. Oh. Alright. We are gonna do one plank, Andy. And if you want some push ups, go for it.

He will. I may not. You know what? I will. I'm gonna do my push ups from here. Here we go. How about, I don't know, 5 for me, 10 for you? Bonds and gums. I think we got them.

I'm gonna go 5. One more for me. We'll watch him to do 5 more and 5. And 4 because you can. And 3, 2, And one. Thank you, Andy.

Thank you, everybody, for digging class with us. I hope you a little. I hope you had a little bit of fun and feel your bonds and your gun. Thank you.