Warm Up For Advanced Mat

Hi. I'm Misty Lynn Cotton, and this is a warm up that should take you through any of the work that you're about to do because it's important to remember whether you're doing an advanced workout or a beginner workout or you just wanna get your body moving, the best way to do it is to provide it a proper warm up before you get started. Speaking of getting started, we're gonna lay down on our backs. Find your comfortable place. No tension. No working to get there. And allow yourself to just give into the mat. So you're releasing and you're breathing and you're centering.

I like to use this moment to really feel where I'm holding tension, to work out my inner squirms, and to just settle into my body. We'll start with niece ways. So I'll start by taking my legs over to one side. And I'm gonna keep the first few very soft gentle. I'm not pushing my body because, again, I'm warming up in a way that's preparing it for the workout, and I don't wanna get all of the working out in in the warm up. And now as I continue, I'll let that sway go a little farther see if I can roll my hips a little bit more off of the mat and go the other way letting the twist happen breathing into the top ribs.

Last side. And now come over to the first side and lay on my side. You may want a pillow for under your head if this is uncomfortable for you. I'm gonna let my head hang here. My knees are stacked.

My palms are stacked. And this is telescope arms. I'm reaching my arm long, and I'm stretching in my bottom shoulder, taking a big breath. And then as I exhale, I'm drawing my arm across my body across my chest and keeping my knees stacked I'm reaching for the back wall. As if someone's got me by the middle finger and they're pulling me away from my torso, then I'm going to reverse it Let my hands come across, and I'll reach further.

Let my head go along with. Drawing across, flexing, opening, stretching away. And one more I reach I stretch and I twist. I'm gonna take a big breath here because this feels so good in my bottom shoulder. And then I'll exhale drawing back across, letting my fingers trail across my chest, and I open wide.

And I'll return to the center and lay back on my back. I call this one wash your face because I want my arms to be parallel and right over my face, and then I'm going to slide them up and over my face here. And then I'll pull back down. Now my inner elbows and my outer blades of my hands are touching and I'm maintaining that touch. I inhale into my upper back.

I really feel this stretch across my backs of my shoulders. And now I'll add on. I'm going to reach back and open my elbows. Let them go as wide as they want to go. And then I'll pull them back into my side body. This is where I get a little bit stuck.

So I'll bring my arms back into the washer face. Open to the cactus and around. Elbows come together. 1 more. Open and around, and now I'll reverse it.

So I'm pulling down toward my ribs, keeping my elbows touching, open through my cactus, my arms come up, elbows come together, and I pull down, And, again, 2 more like this, I try to find my fingers here. I rotate my inner elbows together, and I pull back down last one, finding the fingertips over the top letting the elbows come in, and pulling back down. Now we have to go to the telescope arms on the other side. And, again, the hands are stacked. The head my head's gonna float here.

For this side. And I'm gonna reach my arm past my bottom hand. I'm letting my head turn for the stretch. Then I'm going to let my arm pull across my chest, my chest will open, and I'm reaching. On this side, I've got more mobility so I can let my hand open. But it's okay if it doesn't go there. Flexing, bending, pulling across the body and turning, And unwinding, dragging, and stretching the chest open, and one more.

Reach, stretch, turn each time I try to reach a little farther without collapsing into my hips. And I come back to the center And we're gonna go into bridges here. I'll give you 2 options. Either let the arms stay here in cactus or you can bring them up a little higher into sunbather. Either position is good for opening up the chest and It's also just good reminder that we don't need our arms as much as we like to use them for bridging.

So big breath, And then I'm pressing up into my neutral bridge. I really wanna think of my pubic bone going up not bending my rib cage, sitting back down to more pressing to lift. And sitting, and I'll do one more here. And as I'm lifting up, again, thinking about my pubic bone going up, not my ribs going up. And then I'm sitting back down to the mat.

Both arms will come up. Find the natural most comfortable width for your arms. And then from there, let's make fist. This is puppet arms I'd like for you find the stretch of your elbows and think of lifting your fist toward the ceiling and then ceding your shoulder blades down to the mat. Ideally, this is a glide of the shoulder blades around the rib cage, not a pecking of the neck and head.

Let's do 3 more because I really like this one. And 2, and 1. And since I did this last time in the sunbather position, I'm going to come to Cactus, bringing my heels in again, and I'm returning to bridge. This time, it's an articulating bridge. So I'm thinking of curling my pubic bone toward my nose, lifting. And, again, without my arms in the equation, I have to negotiate this lift in a different way.

2 more like this, exhale scooping curling up being sure that your weight is even on both legs and rolling back down. One more for good measure. Pubic bone curls. Think of sliding your sits bones up the far wall, keeping your arms light and airy. Hold it here.

And then exhale. Let's slowly gently articulate down to the mat and bring the hands behind the head. I know you're familiar with the abdominal curl, so we're going to do it here. But let's talk about it. Rest the head weight into the hands.

Take your big breath. Let's nod the chin toward the chest and curl up towards your shoulder points without bringing your pelvis to the party, inhale to lower back down sequentially. And as we're doing this, we're making sure we can see our inner elbows in our peripheral vision, and we're not pulling on the neck. Think of the hands as steering the position of the head without forcing the position of the head. And now we'll go into an oblique abdominal curl here.

So As we curl, we're thinking of bringing the opposite armpit to the inner thigh. We're looking over the elbow and coming back down. Remember, this is rotation, not side bending. So I'm not changing the distance between my trunk in the end of the mat, edges of the mat as I'm going through. One more like this. Exhale curling and twisting.

And inhale, lowering back down. Arms come down to the sides. Let's bring your arms a little bit wider than your mat here turn your palms to face down, but allow your chest to be broad. This is the leg slide. You know, I love these leg slides because They're going to help me wake up the back body.

So I'm sliding my leg away, and I'm really thinking about how much length can I get without displacing my hips? And then I'm exhaling to drag my heavy, heavy leg back in. To the start position. And then on the second side, same idea. I'm not thinking of straightening my leg.

I'm thinking of reaching my hamstring to the floor, and it just happens to straighten my leg. How exciting. I'm reaching. I'm stretching. I'm lengthening. I'm opening the front of my hip. And then as I'm bringing my leg back in, I'm creasing into my hip joint as I go, one more sliding away, stretching away, and pulling back in.

I'll bring each leg up here and we'll roll up to sit up. Now we'll flip over for child's pose here. This is an active child's pose. We're not going back and taking a nap. You can open the knees as needed, and I would like for you to press back in towards your heels as you stretch forward here.

Let your neck be long on the spine. And breathe into your upper back. Two breaths here really think of the widening of your back with each breath. And then we'll go into what I call the black swan here. So as I exhale, I'm going to let my palms turn up.

And that rotation is coming from in my shoulder joint. And with the reverse breath, I'm going to let my arms rotate inwards. So now I've shrugged my shoulders. I feel a little bit dramatic, but what I'm really doing is waking up my shoulder girdle here. Rolling and stretching 3 more because it feels really good. And two, Continue to breathe.

Last one. Release that down, come onto your forearms and just stretch forward onto your abdominals, Arms will reach long. This is mini Swan. My shoulder blades are down my back. My palms are facing each other, and my forehead is down.

From here, my eyeballs are going to take my head up, and that's going to allow me to lift my chest. I'm not going to my maximum height because I'm still warming up. And now I'm sliding back down, and I'm not done until my nose hits the mat. And then I do the same thing. Gaze initiates the action.

I lift. And then I slide away. And one more eyeballs. As I'm lifting, I'm thinking how much lift can I get before my arms assist? And then I'm slowly coming back down and holding here While I'm here, I'm just gonna turn my head to either side just as a reset, and I'll come back stacking my hands Just a small head float here.

I'm lifting my head from the back of my neck and I have slight pressure into my inner elbows, bringing my head to the level, and I come back down. Just two more. And I lower and I do one more. Lift hold it here. I release the arms just for a hold.

I bring me our my arms behind me just for a stretch. Two breaths here. Big breath in, and I exhale. One more. NI exhale we're turning down.

Put the other hand on top this time. Let your knees relax. Curl your toes under. And, really, I know this is a difficult position for a lot of us, especially if we have any arthritis in our toes. Which is another reason why we should do this stretching out the soles of the feet, just a little bit of basic foot articulation here, no cramps in your workout.

That's why we do it. And then we relax, find our neutral toes are down, and think of pressing your knee pit, your back of your knee, toward the ceiling to straighten the leg. That should turn on your under butt without turning on your low back. So this is quiet for me. And then I'm pulling it back down.

Knee pit to the ceiling and pull 1 more knee pit to the ceiling, stretching through those toes and pull it back down. Unfurl the toes press back. Take another child's pose here. And this time, you'll curl your toes under. Revisit that child's pose and your wag side to side. Coming back up to quadruped.

We'll bring one hand behind the head. Staying square, and we'll rotate. Breast bone turns us to one side. And then we'll bring the hand down, dive it through, threading the needle, keeping the hips balanced, right to left, So as I'm coming up and I'm twisting, I'm not leaning away because that takes away some of the stretchy goodness. One more up and twist down and under and square it up.

We have to do the second side, and this is never my favorite side, but, alas, here we are. I'm going to rotate and then I'm gonna dive. And 2 more twisting up up up Again, checking in to make sure we're square in the pelvis, diving down and through. One more, up and twist, Breathe breathe, breathe, and down through. We'll go back down onto our sides. Here, we're almost done. Tuck the forearm behind the head.

You have 2 options here. You can either bring your foot back behind you, which will make the balance more difficult or keep the knee in front of you, but this is just a basic leg slide, we'll call it a hip hike so that it's easier to relate to. So you're gonna pull this hip up towards your ear, And then you're gonna slide the hip away. And you'll notice you're seeing some play in my rib cage here, That's okay. Again, I'm releasing things. I'm engaging things, and it brings more awareness to my pelvis so that when I'm in my workout phase, my more challenging workout, I can tell where my pelvis is. And stretch to the other side.

Shall we? Same idea, starting with hips stacked, I'm sliding the leg away, and I'm pulling my leg back in. 3 more? 2 more? And let's do one more here.

Bring it in. Come up. And let's just do one more thing just to open the chest. Finger tips will point behind us. Chest is high.

Lift the breast bone. Think of pressing the breastbone up toward the ceiling and then exhale rounding the spine, let everything round in. And 2 more. Up. Inhaling spread your fingers. Keep electricity in the fingertips.

Keep enough weight into your hands that you feel like your cheeks might just suddenly lift off of the mat. Round? And let's do one more. Up and stretch, opening the chest, rotating the elbow pits forward, and scoop. And then you can release. Thank you for warming up with me today.

Let's get to working out.