Creative Mat Flow

Hi, everybody. Amy Haven's here for a math class with hand weights. I've got £1. I wouldn't recommend going being more than 2 or 3. 1 is always surprisingly challenging. So I'm integrating a few reformer exercises with the mat program today. Have a lot of fun.

Keep moving. Keep breathing. If anything feels odd or off, just pause. I it shouldn't. It should gonna be filled pretty full body. So we're gonna start at the end of our mat. Stand in your, parallel position, please, and just feel a nice length from feet all the way to top of head.

Engage your hands around your weights easily. Squat through your hips, reach your arms forward. Your knees are going out over your toes, but I want you to sink pretty deep into your legs and then right up to standing. We'll do four total. You can inhale as you squat and reach Press your feet down, exhale to stand tall, and 2 more.

Really feeling the reach of the arms, but the shoulder blades on your back one last time. Now we're gonna stay low on this one. Stay low. If you can keep coming all the way down, sit down. Pretty gently. Reach your arms as far forward as you can, and I want you to slowly begin to roll back. Feeling your floating ribs, reaching back behind you, reaching the arms forward, and roll all the way down.

Separate your feet so you're in sit bone width position, Organize your pelvis in the level and just take a nice moment scanning again from, hey, sit bones to head. Take a deep breath. I want you to reach your arms straight up to the ceiling and just feel the weight of the scapula down on the mat I like to think that the weights of the weights are actually through my arm bones into my shoulder blade, which is right here on the mat. So the weight is here. Open both arms fairly wide.

Take a breath in. Exhale, bring the arms straight up to the ceiling. Shoulder blades are still wide on the mat. Inhale arms are wide. So we're not we're not pinching the scapula together on your back, everybody.

They're stationary, they're wide. You're focusing on the width of the chest and the stretch and arms come up. Now we're gonna move the scapula into protraction, which is forward, separate those scapula, feel a wide stretch across your upper back, and then gently scapula to the mat. And 2 more, you want that rhythm. Often, we're asking for stability, but we've got to get mobility as well, right, one of each there.

And then just one scissor arm pattern. Just feel it out. One arm down by your hip, one arm up by your mat, or by your ear, and then switch the arms. Just one each side. Check it out.

Wanna feel some good stretch with that an arch lifting in your rib cage and then bring both arms straight down. I want you to press the weight, the side of the waiter, the butt of the weight, sometimes we'll call it into the mat. Press down. So it's a bit of like a chest expansion quality through the arms and upper back, pelvic press or articulation to bridge. So as you're rolling up, I'm pressing the arm bones down feeling a lift with the body now reach the arms up and overhead. I think it's okay to let the shoulders glide up a little. As you unroll your spine, reach the arms in opposition.

It is delicious through your thoracic spine. Ideally, we keep the weights on the mat, come all the way down the level, and then the arms come down. We'll do 2 more of those. Press the arms down first breathe in, press the feet, and roll the spine. So we are going through that articulated spine.

Now as you're here in your bridge position, you've gotta maintain the quality of the leg engagement, the back of the legs, Look straight up to the ceiling, but allow your scapula to elevate up your back. Breathe. Now when you roll down, reach an opposition. Arms reaching an opposition. Really lovely for the lats. And then all the way to level pelvis arms come down, and we'll do one more.

Deep breath. Here we go. Feeling the strong legs, holding you up. Strong hips and lower back. Reaching those arms chin to the ceiling, righty, so you're not looking down right up to the sky.

Take a breath. Roll down through the spine, extra reach of the arms, even 1% more. Just 1% more. Notice where you may have felt more connection. Okay? Hopefully more and then lower your arms all the way down. Beautiful.

So bring your one knee and then the other knee to your chest. Wanna have you roll your head, neck, and shoulders up and just give yourself a little bit of a hug. This is a place you could bring your chin down on your chest, and then we're gonna work into the 100 and some little sparkler arms. Okay. So sometimes the sparklers are the standing arms at the end. We'll do those, but you're gonna add those in your 100. So taking that breath in to prepare, bring yourself up to your control point. Ready? I'm actually gonna go low.

And we're gonna sparkle. We're gonna go 1, 2, 4, 5, and exhale. And to and exhale. So you've gotta keep reaching the arms toward the feet, the navel into the lowest part of your lower back, and kinda up along the lower back. Now reverse the sparkler direction for the 2nd set of 5. Keep reaching the feet, the arms, the back of the head up to the wall behind you. 2 more sets. Last set.

And tuck it in. Good. Everybody roll up to a sitting tall position. I'm just gonna adjust on my mat. So let's reach the arms forward. Bring your body nice and tall, and I want you to round over your thighs.

Lift those abdominals up the last floating ribs back and up and then bend your elbows. You're gonna roll your arms back. Row your arms forward with palms face down. Palms up. Row your arms back. Roll your arms forward 2 or 3 more.

Just feel the continuity of your arm movement, the connection of your abdominals to your spine, and your floating ribs reaching back and up. Holding here. Now really reach the arms forward. Take your time. You're gonna roll yourself down.

Roll yourself down. Even though you're almost to the mat, you're continuing to reach your arms all the way forward. And now setting your arms out to the side, you have choices. You can go all the way to a t or a low v. Check it out.

I'm gonna use this one, but of the weights are down. Bring one leg up to the ceiling. I'm in parallel with both legs. For now, flex the bottom ankle. Feel as though that leg is pulling to the midline, the working leg on the top, we're going to go over the midline back to the center and a little bit out to the side prepping for leg circles. We'll do that twice more.

The other leg on the mat is actively adducting It's not just there. It's long and it's pulling in to the midline. This leg goes out, cross it around, and then bring it down. Takes that onto the other side. We'll come back for the circle.

The leg that's up, parallel, bottom leg parallel foot is flexed. Take the leg across the midline. I'm actively pressing my arms also into the mat, but letting that thigh up in the air there, just gloss across the hip joint. Over. The other leg is adducting. So is the top leg.

2nd leg abducting. Trying to really hold the pelvis in control. The arms are helping hold the body in control as you push down. Okay? I think you can feel that. Now we'll do 3 circles each side.

So the working leg, now we're gonna do a little external rotation, but still a parallel flex foot on the bottom. Cross, I'm doing smaller circles. I'm working the other leg also. It's adducting. That was 3. Use the arms, everybody.

They're there for a reason. There's your 3rd. Now keep the leg straight as you go down. Once it's down, flex the foot. Bicycle the other leg straight up.

It's a little externally rotated. Bottom leg is flexed and parallel. Cross, circle around, and up. Cross circle around and up. 3 other way.

Use those arms and your third pretty nice and lower the leg all the way down. Now I want you to slide your arms to your body, slide your legs in, bring your upper body up, and give yourself that big hug again. Now reach your arms forward. Reach your chest toward your thighs and generate a little rocking motion. I'm trying not to kick my legs.

It's very tempting, but I wanna reach my arms more than kicking my feet Two more little rolls. Should be a little massage for your back. Hold at the top and roll yourself back. Keep reaching the arms, floating ribs reaching back, floating ribs reaching back, and land all the way down. Series of 5. So we're gonna play with the arms in the series of 5 here.

So bring your head, neck, and shoulders up. Stretch one leg forward. Reach the arms up and whichever arm is or knee is in, bend that elbow back. So the opposite arm is reaching forward. This one is bending back.

Pull it back. Change. Pull it back. So I'm not worried of thinking really about the arm going forward. I'm the one pulling back and back and back and back for 3, use the back of that shoulder, 2, and 1, and then take a rest. Double leg stretch is actually going to be coordination from the mat.

Here we go. Bring your chest up, coordination from the mat. And the reformer and reach open clothes in and in. 2 more. Nice, easy brisk, and 3. Okay. Now for your scissors, take your arms up first.

Shoulders on your back and on the back. Chest comes up and legs come up. Now both the upper body and the lower body. I wanna fold in so that your weights are touching your shins, put the weights on one shin, and change. So it's not we're not kicking the weights We're trying to bring the leg to the weights, but the chest toward the leg as well.

4, 3, 2, and 1, and take a little rest. Double straight leg, lower left, take your arms straight up, shoulder width apart, body goes up. Now I want you just to bend your elbows, lightly rest on the mat, and extend your hips. All the legs do is up and down. Only three. It's straight leg, lower lift.

Exactly. Fold back in. Chris cross is next. Cur it up. Same as you did for single leg. Now punch forward and punch forward.

So the rotation is happening in the upper body. I'm punching over the shin. The other leg is coming back, but I'm focusing on over the shin. Here we go for 4. 3, 2, and 1, and tuck it in.

Hug your shins. Chest comes up. We're doing that reaching arms, rolling ball, reach and all the way up. Good. You guys put your hips back. Spine and stretch forward with some rowing arms.

So get up on your sitting bones the best you can. Take your arms forward, easy shoulders down. Take a deep breath. Round forward, spine, stretch forward. Now we know rowing on the reformer.

I want you to bring your arms down and back. We did it a little bit a few minutes ago. Now from here, as you lift your arms a little higher, scoop your tummy more, circle your arms around, and I want you to round forward and put the weights on your toes, pull your stomach back, roll up to sitting tall. Just two more. So it's 1st round. Stay in the flexion.

Bend the elbows. Bring your arms behind you. Pretend you're on that reformer doing the arm choreography. Circle your arms around. Scoop the stomach more. Try not to come out of that curve, touch the weights to your toes, lift more, roll yourself up last time.

So it's really about hooking into that c curve, the lowest ribs, back and up. Right? We're not extending the spine, and I want you to roll all the way up. Lower your arms, bring your legs together. Spine twist. Now the spine twist, let's take our arms out to a tee.

Flex the feet. Just sitting here for a moment. Do some circle arms. Without losing the height of your spine, other way. So let the arms move right now.

We're in trunk stability other way again. 876 4, 3, 2, and 1 other way. So get the arm movement out of the way. 4321 because now the arms will mom move. I want you to move your trunk It's so tempting to pull the arms with us.

This is trunk rotation. Put the weights in your shoulder blades that are sitting on your back. Feel the work in your back. Yes. Your abs, but also your back. Once more around, you can look, and you can turn and look.

Come forward and relax your arms and just feel what you feel. Good. We're gonna go prone. Okay? So as you go prone from on over, same thing as we did a moment ago, you could have a high V arm position which we did for leg circles or a tee. I like the tee. Feels pretty nice. You can put the butt of the weights down that puts the upper arm in a beautiful external rotation position.

I want you to take your legs close together Slightly internally rotate your thighs if you can. If that's not accessible, separate the legs, but still try to have them parallel. I don't wanna send Pilates V. Notice it might compress the lumbar area. Parallel or even close together can open that.

Put your tailbone a little longer to your heels and then press the butt part of the weight down. Reach your breast bone to the top of your mat. The arms are down, and I'm accessing the chest reach. The navel's pulled up into my body the best I can, and then I'm gonna come on down. 2 more. So it's pressing weights reaching through the sternum.

I'm not coming very high. My ribs are still on the mat, so I wanna really focus on the arching of the upper back, right, and the length of the lumbar. So the tail has to keep reaching to those heels. Let's take 1 more everybody. Only go as high as feels comfortable for you.

Everybody is different. Everybody is different. So the base of the ribs are on the mat. I'm reaching long. That's where my effort is.

Now it's gonna get a little more challenging. Please try to stay where you are. Bend the elbows, hands towards your shoulders. Reach one arm out to the side off the mat. Height. Right? So it's off and then back in.

Other side, challenging to stay relatively level or evenly weighted. Now both arms. Notice that even weight is easy there. Let's go again. One arm. It's not easy to keep even weight because there's more weight going over there, and it's okay that you feel a weight shift.

It's part of how we move and then both arms. And we'll do one more pattern. Single arm and in. Single arm and in. And both arms hold lift the arms a little higher for 3 and 2 and one bring them in.

I'm waiting to bring your forehead down. Wiggle your pelvis and your tail. Think of, pull straps 1 on the reformer. Okay. It's gonna be kind of fun. You've gotta keep a little lift here.

Take your arms forward. Three rounds. What's gonna happen here is that elbows will bend. We bring the arms alongside the body with the palms face. Up by the time we get back. Okay? You've gotta lift that body. Here we go. Bend and reach. Bend the elbows reach forward weights can go down.

Two mores. You establish that back strength. You move the arms. You move the arms and one more. And reach. You've gotta have enough clearance, right, to clear that skimming of the mat, and then everything comes down. Shake your hips.

Put the weights down for a minute. We've been holding on to him the whole time so far. Come up onto your elbows and place your palms down. Spread your palm. Your arms are externally rotated.

Your navel is up. Legs are close together. Let's do a single a kick. Just alternate and down. Kick, kick, and down.

That same reach of the sternum is going forward. I'm also dragging my elbows back. 4 more. Kick, kick, kick, kick, last one on this leg. Last one on this leg. From here, everybody just press into a little, somewhat of a swan.

Just feel that length of the stomach and then all the way. Down. Okay? So shake your hips again. Now we gotta go to side lying, and I wanna turn toward you. Up on your elbow, one weight, leg slightly forward. Now you're on your elbow. We've got a nice space underneath here. Right?

You're pressing your elbow down, but for this first little part, let yourself gently sleigh slide down. Just so you feel that moment of somewhat relaxation, but we don't do our side work there. Right? You know that. So we push herself up. Notice the work underneath here. There will also be work over here. Let's do one more.

So we slide it down. Just noticed kind of a contrast. Not a lot of support here or certainly strength. There will be more instability here also. So get stable.

Push. Use the floor. Now this top arm and this top leg are going to go up and down for 5. Just some simple AB deduction that I'm reaching though. I'm always reaching away and law and just one more. So that's kind of the easy part.

Now think star on the reformer. The arm and leg are gonna go forward now. And forward, you may not be able to go as far with the leg and that is certainly fine. Keep pushing the elbow into the mat. K. And one more time for 5.

The arm stays forward. The leg will go behind and center. Reach. You may have to roll your top hip a little forward and to And last one, we'll do the whole pattern 3 times or so. So it's up and both forward, arm forward leg back. That was one star, two stars, We'll do 3 stars. Okay? 3 seems like the right number on this pattern.

Here's the 3rd hand reach. Now we're gonna embellish this reach. I want you to take the foot, bend your knee and place your foot on the mat, whole foot and open the front body. Push the elbow into the mountain. She feel really almost exaggerated.

It's so lovely. And then release. Okay. As a transition, bring yourself up. I have not don't worry. Have not forgot my other side. So as you're here, bend your toes and sit your hips on your heels.

This is known as toe sitting exercise for your toes. It can be a stretch. It can be steamy. Some of you probably right by now are not wanting to stay here. You can come out of it if you wish. I'm gonna ask you to stay for about 5 to 10 more seconds if you can.

Yep. Nice. And, it's such a good one for your feet. He'll just leave it that way. Okay. Take your body all the way up. Now you can choose to keep your feet like that.

I'm going to, or you could put your feet down. Either way, reach your arms forward. You're gonna do a little thigh stretch. Nothing too intense, or you can go far if you're ready for it. As you come up, you'll chest expansion your arms, and you'll turn the head and the head and center.

Size stretch arms, and you'll come up, turn the head the other way. Now remember, what are the legs doing here? Even though they're not together, they're adducted. The energy is in the legs. Press the arms back. Hold.

Turn your head. Turn your head. Send to one last time. Thigh stretch, and up, and head, long arms, center, and release. Good job. Other side. So you only need one weight.

Lie on your side, legs slightly in front of the pelvis, and then let's do the assessment because it is nice to feel what the support is versus what it's not. So just kinda get that out of the way and press press press and one more. We just did 2 and press, press, press, ready for star. So we did 5. Now what are we doing here? I'm also taking the bottom leg and really trying to press it down on the floor. Is these limbs are reaching to that end of my mat and 4 and 5. Okay.

Legg and arm forward. Remember, you may not have to go very far. You should be feeling some pretty intense connection in your abs, certainly your hips, your lats, your whole body, push down with that elbow, and then here's your 5. Right? So the arm keeps going forward. Leg goes back into extension. You may have to roll your top hip a little forward. What about the arms? Pulled up.

Okay. 3 patterns. It's side. It's front. Leg goes back arm comes forward. 2nd pattern and keep it moving.

Abdominals back, leg back arm forward. 3rd one. And then we do that beautiful, luxurious, kind of exaggerated stretch, put bend the knee, place your foot down, and then arc. You're not collapsing. This arm is pushing down. Open your hearts.

Open your sternum. Back bending a little bit. It should feel so good. And then come all the way in. Wonderful. Let's find our way up to standing, you guys. So just bring your weights with you.

I might go through a little crouch since I did that toe stretch. Let's make use of that here right on those toes. And we'll roll up and do a few extra arm exercises. So here, pull the stomach up, pull yourself up to standing. Okay. I'll turn to face you.

And then we're gonna stand pretty traditional Pilates stance. Okay? Now the bicep curls that Mister Pilates shown us to do, he's really buff and he's got his shirt off and it's kind of Looks very ego y. We don't have to do that, but I want you to feel strong in your arms, even with one pound. Turn your palms to face your head or ceiling in this point. Bend your elbows I think of reaching my elbows out and underneath me to each wall.

Now as I extend my arms, I'm not just it's I'm pressing through the air. And then as I bend, I'm pulling through the air. And I'm pressing through the air. My legs are engaged. My abdominal's engaged.

We'll do 4 more, everybody. So even though these are only one pound, you're using extra muscle effort and really thinking of lengthening my triceps, shortening the triceps once more lengthening shortening. Turn your palms face down and lower your arms for a moment. Bring them right back up for 8 hugs. Take a breath.

Squeeze the air out, and they'll press the arms open. And each one of these hugs, you can think of wringing out the wet rag, right, or wringing out the water from a sponge or the air from your lungs. Really work from inside. How are those one pound weights feeling right now? There are more and open.

And who I really love this little approach to this exercise. You're gonna hold there. Flip your hands. You can salute. You can take a hat off, or you can shave.

I'm going to Salute. So I'm pressing on a forward diagonal and bringing him in. Same thing. Using the breath inside just really empty. And you'll notice the abdominal work that's happening just by breathing with intention.

Yes. The arms are internally rotated for 4 more and in. Shoulder blades. What are they doing? They're not yanked down. They're not up on my ears. They're somewhere in between where I can manage that position.

Here's your last one. Bring it in. Close your elbows and bring your arms down. Okay? Remember the sparklers we did in the 100, when you hold your hand weights with the the style, I'm just holding my fingers around the edges here, and I'm gonna lightly hold. Now pull the stomach up lengthen your tailbone down below you and just feel that posture. Right? The arms are going into our little small circles going from low to not fully up over the head.

I like to work where I can control my rib cage, which is about here for me and down. Okay? So with the sparklers, we're energetically reaching forward with the arms, but the shoulders back The legs together, the tailbone to the heels, feel the how much your whole body is really working to perform this little exercise. Again, 8, 4, 3, 2, 1, and down to 3, 4 will do 2 more sets. 1. The higher the arms go, you may need more ab work to go on down. Last one and one. Holding there.

Open your arms back out now. Expand yourself. Circle these arms here. I'm circling towards you. You can change your grip if you'd like to.

Now circle the other way. Gray shoulder work. Alright. So bring your arms down. Here's the deal. We're gonna go up, open, and down with sparklers.

I'm gonna change my grip just for a second on these wait. So I'm going up for 4. Open for 4 and down for 4 again. Forward and open and down. One more of that pattern, then we'll do 3 the other way and open and down. Alright. Now forward circles arms up 2, 3, 4, and forward and down to the sides.

Come forward and down. One more. Sides. Forward and down. We go.

Reach one arm up. Let's take the legs in parallel. This arm, I want you to reach as high as you can, side bend. This arm is reaching down, but I want you to look up with this arm. Look up. Look up.

Look up. And then bring everything down for the other side. Reaching the arm, reaching the other arm down. You're still working the abdominals, but you're stretching and turn and look up. Will do one more each direction, everybody, and all the way.

So both arms are reaching an opposition. You just happen to wanna gaze at the top. It changes the stretch a little bit. You certainly could look down You could do a down and an up. The up is a little balanced challenge too.

I'm always up for a little extras like that anytime we can and reach both arms active. Both arms active. And then bring yourself to center. Last exercise for today, spin the heels back to your Pilates V. Soften your knees.

This usually was done against a wall. It's lovely against a wall, but right now, we are really just going to take a forward flexion of our upper body. If you had a wall behind you, your mid back is still on the wall. So, again, it's those floating ribs are back, and then just puppet energy with your arms and make those little circles again, like little pendulums circling. Your legs aren't locked. Your abdominals are held up reverse.

Just breathe these light, easy circles, everybody. If you were against a wall, really pull your late naval back to the lowest part of your lower back and pause the arms. We are all going to take 5 counts just to simply roll up to standing 1. You're done contracting to and 34 and 5. Well done, everybody.

Pretty nice little class. £1. Who did £2? I'm curious. Who did 3? Leave me a note. How did it feel? One pound is fine. Come and tell me how you did.

I'll see you next time.