Creative Foam Roller Mat

Sarah Berticelli here, we are going to do a really nice little foam roll workout and work in a combination of mobilizing and massaging and also some nice zesty balance work and other things. So let's get to it. Notice that I have a set of weights. I have £3 weights. That's about all I would use, maybe less if you prefer, or you could probably not use weights if you would prefer that too. However, we are gonna use the weights to brace the foam roll.

So you'll want something for that purpose. Let's get started. I'm gonna put my weights out of the way so we don't have to look at them the whole time. And then I'm just gonna slip off the foam roll, and let's lean up against it and do some beautiful, thoracic mobilization. So here, I've got the foam roll in the middle of my upper back, and I'm just resting.

Now I'm gonna do a different arm position here. Can you take your hands behind your head and try to put, like, your knuckles together? So I'm endeavoring to have my underarm open and my arms close to my head, but I want my head resting. So wherever your hands need to be for that, or do you and make sure that you're listening to your body and choosing a position that suits you. Let's relax the head and shoulders over the foam roll and just breathe in and breathe out. So we are going to really enjoy breath in this class, enjoy wiggle room, enjoy exploration, breathing in, and breathing out.

So I'm gonna stand on my feet a little bit to lift my bottom just a little bit and roll up and down the thoracic spine nice and slow. Just kinda survey what's going on. And notice where you might need a little extra attention. Please be sure and breathe. Also make sure that whatever you're choosing to do feels good to you.

Always adhere to the pleasure principle. Settle in a position where it feels like you're in the middle of your back and then settle your bottom down. Adjust your hands if needed, or keep this arm position if it suits you. Make sure you can wiggle here. Slight posterior tilt.

That means I'm doing a slight tuck of my pelvis, And then I'm gonna feel both my low ribs and my head and arms reaching over or molding over the foam roll. Now press into the low part of the ribs, press the low ribs into the foam roll to float your head up and then continue to flexion. So I'm looking for you to begin the movement in extension. So go over into thoracic extension. Feel that.

Feel that you're first going to press the low ribs into the foam roll. To float up and then continue to extension. At any point, if you wanna change your arms a little bit, feel free to do that. I like using the outside, the pinky side of my hand to kinda help stretch my neck a little here, and then we'll reach over. So in that flexion position, as you lift, you'll feel some engagement of the abdominals. And then as you come into deep flexion, increase that engagement by really drawing the belly muscles in and then release.

Just one more time there. So I move my head. I move my shoulders. I'm always looking for a little bit of wiggle room. And the beauty is that I'll sometimes get a chiropractic adjustment. I hope you do too.

So now let's just lift the bottom up and slide ourselves back a little bit. So the foam roll is a little bit lower on the rib cage. I like to think right about where my xiphoid process is, and then you can choose whatever arm position suits you. Again, I'm really liking this maximizing of my elbow bend and slipping my arms behind my head in kind of almost like a reverse prayer position if you're a yoga person. So here I'm inflection first and then reach over and enjoy the stretch. Here, I can actually touch my hands to the floor, and I'm seeking that feeling of touching my hands and my head to the floor.

Give yourself a slight posterior tilt. Try to do that from your abs, ground through the low point of your rib cage, and float up, and then continue to flexion. In help perhaps to reach over, or just please breathe when it makes sense, my dear friends, and exhaled to lift. Beautiful. I find myself closing my eyes because it feels so good, but I do really suggest that you keep your eyes open more often if you can. And see what where you're going.

So we are gonna use that eye gaze today a little bit. So I'm opening my eyes purposefully now looking behind me as I go back. It makes it easier to go down. Grounding through the low ribs to lift, then feel the flexion. Let's keep that deep flexion here.

I've unraveled my hand position, and I'm now just gonna hold my hands, my head with my hands and pull myself a little bit deeper into flexion there and enjoy that. Now we're gonna lift the bottom up. We're gonna slide back a bit more, so I'm at the high part of my low back. I'm gonna send my arms forward, send my legs forward, dig deep into the core, and just pop up. So a nice little assisted roll up there. Yeah.

So now use your hands to prop your bottom back up onto the foam roll and bring your feet close to you. So we're in an assisted deep squat. I find that using the foam roll to help find my way to the deep squat is a really, really useful way to notice where the tension is and maybe learn to soften points a little bit. So If you can, you're gonna find your feet pretty close about shoulder width, maybe slightly turned out. If you need your feet further forward, you can do that. You do wanna feel that you're sitting on the roll, and you're trying to straighten your back out here.

I like to put my elbows on my knees and push open a little bit because I feel that I'm a little tight in my inner thighs. I'm gonna keep my gaze kind of forward and up a little rather than down. So I'm in a more of a straight back here. And just kind of massaging my glutes, massaging opening through my pelvic floor enjoying this. Now, of course, because we are here, our goal is to be able to stand up here.

But before you do, Will you find your little weights and put them next to your foam roll to keep it still for our next piece? So I've got one weight on either side to help really brace my foam roll. So now here, I'm gonna stay still with the foam roll. No more rolling, and I'm gonna see if I can just stand up gracefully. And hopefully, you are able to do so. If not, you'll stand up however you need to.

So I'm standing now for some standing leg work, and I'd like you to set yourself up. So it feels like your foot your feet are about one of the your feet behind the foam roll. That's gonna be pretty close to where you need to be. Stand nice and tall here. Feel. We're gonna work on balance. Okay? So we're gonna first stand just on one leg, lift the other leg up, flex the ankle, put the foot down, change.

So can you do that comfortably? Many of you will be able to do this comfortably. Some of you will find, wow, I need to work on my balance a little more. So rooting to rise, marching, Right? I'm gonna stay on my left foot right now, so I'm standing on my left foot. My right foot is lifted.

Now we're gonna look where the foam roll is, but don't keep looking at it. Step over. He'll lead. Push yourself back to where you came from, stand on your 2 feet. So I purposely want you to enjoy being a little bit maybe off balance if that happens and learn how to recover. Now if you feel that this is a pretty easy task to complete, try sending your leg behind you.

Forward first step. Push back. Send your leg back without actually putting weight on it. Forward reach. Push back and reach back. 2 feet underneath you.

So some of you might find that this is not challenging, and some of you will find that it's quite challenging, other side. So we're gonna balance first. We're gonna step over. Feel it. Push yourself back. 2 feet down. Adding on here, if you choose to, step over, keep your balance, reach back.

Step over. Keep your balance, reach back. Let your arms organically move however you'd like them to. I don't want them to be perfect. Remember, I'm a big fan of the pleasure principle. Here we go. Standing on 2 feet now, we're gonna work just a little bit harder.

We're going to stand tall, lift that right leg up, step over and stay. Bend both knees. You should touch that, foam roll with your knee, use this as an opportunity to feel comfortable, grounded, somewhat relaxed here, maybe a little stretch through your hip. Good. Now, stand on that front leg, ground through the heel, and we're gonna go up and down a few times. Press. Try to dig deep into the glute there.

The glute of this leg that's forward is where we're focusing most of my weight on that front leg, right, one more time. Now we're gonna look twist, right? So I'm twisting toward you and bend and straighten a few times. So I'm letting my whole body move, letting my eyes move, and see how that feels. Good. Now, other way, I'm gonna look away, And Ben and straighten, wow, it is beautiful and glassy and wonderful waves. I love it. So, hopefully, that feels pretty doable for you.

Good. Rotate to center, push yourself back to where you came from, and let's do the other side. Second time around, we'll make it a little harder. Step over without looking down. This is balance challenge.

Bend the knee. Feel. Me is resting on foam roll, so use that rest to just kind of explore a little bit. Move your pelvis around. Make sure you feel like you've got some space to be here. It's comfortable. Now, lean into the front leg.

Use the glute. Press up and down here. Pah. So just feeling that range of motion, feeling the movement, just moving. Moving up and down. Wonderful. Many of my clients find it very difficult actually to touch the knee to the foam roll or go all the way down to the floor, definitely.

So the roll offers just the ground a little closer and a reference point to almost rest a little bit. Now we're gonna twist toward the leg that's front and bend it straight in a few times. So just feel that using different tissue perhaps and then twist away from the leg that's in front. Use your eyes and go down and up. So avoid looking down if you can.

Look out. Look at something and keep your gaze there. Come back to center and we push ourselves back. Whoops. This size is a little harder for me. Now we're gonna make it slightly more challenging for balance. Here we go. Right.

Foot lifts. We step forward. We kick. We step back. We step forward. We kick the back leg. We step back.

We kick, we stay, we bend, we lift, we twist, we bend, lift, twist, bend. So I'm lifting my foot up each and every time, if I can. If you cannot lift your foot up each and every time, just change your gaze, working both on balance, and hopefully pushing the edges of where you can twist too so that you're feeling different parts of your leg. Just one more time on each side. And my thigh is burning a little bit, stand, step back, and let's do the other side. So we step over.

Feel that. Step back. So can you kick your leg up? Kick your leg back. If that's hard for you, choose to keep your foot grounded as you bend each time and just change your gaze. Otherwise, you are twisting.

Lift kick your foot. Twist. So I like just kinda keeping my hands out to the side. I'm doing this in my mind almost like a little bit of a dance. Feel free to shake your shoulders. And I'm purposefully allowing my body to get a little bit off balance at times so that I have to catch my balance, trying to find the edges of my range, how far out can I get my leg to go?

How twisted can I get? How twisted can I get? That sounds funny. Good. Come back through to center. We're gonna step back and put your 2 feet down, and then we're gonna go back to the floor.

So I'll just step over my role, have a seat, I should have done a deep squat there, but I saved you from doing that. You can get down however you'd like. I've moved the weights out of the way, but where I'll be able to get them, slip off the roll, place it again underneath, I'd say, the center of the upper back. Now slightly different feel here. Feeder wide. I'm gonna slip back just a little.

Feeder wide, a wide stance. Now start with taking your arms straight overhead if you can. Class the hands, or press the hands together and try to rest the head in the hand. So that's an option 1, which may not feel feasible for some of you, but let's try that first and just kinda reach over. And then a nice little lift up, a nice little reach over, looking with your eyes, and a nice lift up. Now one more time like that, feel free to modify the arm position at any time. But if you're game, you're gonna try something for me.

We're gonna take our left arm and bend it a lot. Take the other hand and hold the elbow. So you're gonna pull the arms so that it's underneath the head, as much as possible, and the head is trying to rest on that arm. Yeah. Now I'm gonna reach over into the, into the roll or onto the roll, if you will, and lift up. So I'm stretching a little bit more on my left side, and I'm using my eyes to go in the direction of up to the left.

Now let's do that one more time. So I'm up to the left. I'm gonna stay there, use my feet, to push myself over into like a mermaid stretch, and then round as if I've been punched in the belly back to where I came from. Now, I feel like I wanna be just a teeny bit higher on my back, so make adjustments, as needed, you're going to push over with your legs and roll onto the side body and round back flexing the spine a little bit. So I'm in extension and, And my eye gaze makes me lateral flexion. So as I push over, I'm keeping that.

But as I come back, I am rounding back to where I came from. Let's do it one more time. So lots of things going on here. Hopefully, this feels good to you. Push over. And round back.

I think I lied to you because we're gonna do one more and add on. So push over and stay here. Keep your legs pretty much still, and let's roll on the shoulder by moving the rib cage. So your going to think about pulling the bottom rib up and rolling up the arm. And then as you reach out, look with your eyes in the direction of the floor to maximize that stretch. Let's do that just a couple times really enjoying both the stretch of the ribs and also the massage you're getting in the shoulder region. So now round your back, come back through.

Let's make a few adjustments to feel like you're comfortably on your role, and we'll do the other side. So Here, you'll take your your other arm, so that would be my right arm, and I'm gonna bend it a lot. And I'm gonna take my, other hand and pull that elbow underneath my head so that my head feels supported the whole time. Now if you have to modify, you modify your arm position here. So we'll go over into the stretch here and then come up. So now you're gonna go over into the stretch and look to the right with your eyes, opening up a little bit more the right side, and lift, and over into that stretch. And one more time here, and then we'll add the rotation.

So here, I'm using my eyes, I'm standing with my feet, and I'm pushing over. And then as I come back, I'm rounding my spine. So I'm doing a spinal movement here. I'm inhaling over pushing with my feet and then kinda rounding back. So that should feel really nice on your shoulder region.

Also nice, thoracic mobility. I'm very into trying to mobilize my thoracic spine these days. So let's try that one more time, and we'll stay here this time. And we're gonna use the eye gaze to help you roll a little bit into, so the the foam roll's going lower on my body. And then I'm gonna pull the rib up and the foam roll goes more toward my shoulder and make any adjustments you need so that it feels good to you. It should feel like a really nice, opportunity to stretch and mobilize.

So sometimes you might need to roll a little higher or a little lower. And let's just do one more here, stretching, breathing, please, and we'll slowly come out of that. And let's just readjust so you feel like you are comfortably on your foam roll kind of at the lower part of your thoracic spine, high part of your low back, and that you feel you can access your abdominals there. For this next piece, we are gonna use the weights, maybe. So put one on either side so it's available for you when you're ready.

So first dig deep into the abs and feel that beautiful ball shape. Try lifting a leg up and then another leg up and make sure that that feels comfortable for you. If that feels comfortable, then go ahead and try straightening your legs and staying in this shape and maybe lift a leg up. Lift another leg up and feel good with that. Now keep the engagement in your abs, reach over with your hands and your eyes, not all the way, just to where it feels kinda like you're going to a straight line, maybe a little further.

And then circle the arms and come back up. So try that just one more time. Make sure you feel safe here. So only go as far as you feel safe. Yes, my friends, you should be using your abs there.

So hold your weights and decide if you would like to use them for this. So I'm keeping the energy in my abdominals here. I'm just gonna lift one arm up. How about we start with the right? We look up, we watch it, we circle around, roll a little bit into that side of the rib cage, and then put the weight down, other side. Lift the arm up, look at it, roll around toward the left side of the rib cage, reach out with the arm, put the weight down. That feels good. So here we go.

We're gonna look at it, and then we're gonna look as we roll around to seeing where it feels good, and I am feeling such lovely little bit of oblique work here. So look at it. Roll around into the left rib cage. So I'm alternating each time if that's not crystal clear. Please just make sure you're breathing my friends. I'm not queuing a specific breath.

And if you feel confident here, you're welcome to take the movement bigger. So perhaps you'll wanna go a little bigger with your arm and roll a little bigger with your body into a little more thoracic extension and then come back around. Let's go again 2 more times on each side. So look where you're going. Roll into the rib cage.

Press the ribs into the roll. Hand down. Look where you're going. Roll around. Press the ribs.

One more time, please. Nice breath. So I'm getting a wonderful mobilization of my spine, but I'm also really having to stabilize. In ways that maybe I wouldn't normally be challenged, so it's really quite nice, I think, and come around reaching through the arm, and then put the weights down. Beautiful. Let's put them to the side here.

And then roll back just a smidge and really press into the roll, point the feet, energize the legs, and just float yourself up. Wonderful. So I'm going to shift the relationship of my foam roll because we're gonna move into lying on our backs here. So you can do whatever pleases you for that. So I've got the foam roll in alignment with my mat, and I'm just gonna pop right up on it and sit at the forward edge. I do wanna use the weights for this, so I'm gonna have them in front of me so that I can pick them up easily in a moment. But here, Would you spend a little bit of time kind of rocking and rolling over the tissue that you're sitting on? So this is gonna stimulate a little bit of pelvic floor movement, hopefully, or, loosen up some of the tissues that get stuck in that area. So if it feels a little tender, then you probably need it more.

Certainly if it's too tender, you could put a towel down. So I'm rolling back to my tailbone, kind of rounding a little bit, and then I'm gonna tip forward. Now here, I'm gonna tip forward and do that kind of deep squat position again. So I'm trying to keep my chest lifted. I'm pushing my my arms into my legs a little bit and keeping my chest open, and I'm just gonna roll a little side to side.

Now if your knees don't bend this much or your hips don't bend this much, you just take your feet forward. That's an easy solution. Just kind of enjoy that. Now we'll sit. So pick up your weights, take your feet a little bit. Actually, you need to be very close to the front edge of your foam roll to be on. So make sure when you look down, you can barely see the foam roll. So the feet are out in front of you, the arms are out in front of you.

If you need to put your hands down, go for it. If you can, you're gonna curl yourself back and try to roll down with control, one lovely vertebra. At a time finding your balance. Lots of balance in this class. Once you lower down, make sure that your head is resting comfortably. So once you're down, take a moment and make sure that you're in the right spot for you on the foam roll.

So what does that mean? I've set my weights down. Like you to feel that your head is is comfortably on. More importantly, use the reference of the roll to really feel that your rib cage is very grounded and that your pelvis is as best as possible, relaxed, and neutral. But I want you to put the emphasis on grounding the rib cage or the spine where the rib cage is at the very bottom on this foam roll. So I shouldn't be able to get my finger underneath that low rib area. Yeah? So check that out. Feel that. If you wanna work balance, bring your feet all the way together, or have them just slightly parted for a little bit of help with balance.

Because I'm speaking right now, I'm gonna keep my legs just a little separated. Now we're gonna do something interesting. Pick up your weights, place one weight across your Xyphoid process. So that's, like, on your low ribs where you have the the fleshy part. So one weight goes there.

And then the other one goes and hooks on top So I have a piece of it on my sternum, and the other pieces just sort of hooked over the handle. And I'd like that weight to help me remember how to keep my rib cage grounded while we breathe. So just breathe in deeply through your nose and try to really feel that lateral posterior breathing that we talk about a lot. And I think a lot of times we don't get it. So use this feeling of the weight across your chest here to make sure you're not lifting and lowering the weights when you breathe.

So you're breathing in deeply into the ribs, and then you're gonna exhale completely. Now you don't have to stick with my words right here I just want you to hone in right now on your breath inhaling completely into the rib cage, into the roll, and then exhaling deeply. Your hands can go wherever they wanna go. Maybe you're putting them right underneath that one rib, to keep it down as you breathe. Feel the beautiful depth of that breath, and that's what we wanna focus on while we're working on the foam roll.

That will help you tremendously with balance here. So if you're ready to move on, go ahead and pick those weights up, place your arms up to the ceiling holding the weights gently. If you can balance here, stay here. If you feel nervous, put your hands down, so your weights are resting on the floor. Otherwise, you're gonna stay here, and you're gonna try to lift one foot up off the mat and put it down. You're gonna stay here, and you're gonna try to lift the other foot up off the mat.

Put your attention on your breath and change again when you're ready. Keeping the rib cage super grounded. Balance will be much easier here if it's not a leap of faith. If you're really committed to breathing and keeping your 3 body weights, your head, your ribs, and your pelvis still. Oh, hard to do while you're talking, my friends. Let's do one more here, please.

Trying that marching. Remember, you can put your hands down should you need to. So if you feel safe, bring your feet and knees all the way together, or keep them slightly parted as you open your arms wide, and you lift back up. Now when you open your arms wide, can you try to stretch your fingers without losing your weights? And then as you come up, just gently hold the weight so they don't fall on you, please. Now as you open your arms wide, could use key into key into, because I garbled my words there a little, key into your shoulder blades. So if you just let go, your shoulders will hug the foam roll. I want you to really feel that the shoulders are spreading. So that's your serratus.

So here, when I open my arms, I'm reaching east west with my hands, and I'm feeling no shoulder blade connected to the foam roll, but rib cage, yes, connected. So here, open out to the side. Stay here. Take the hands in the direction of overhead if that suits you, you touch them. Open back to where you came from spread. Lift back up. Let's repeat. Open a little faster.

Feel your breath touch. Back to where you came from. Lift. Let's go again. Open spreading. Reach tap.

And open spreading, lift back up. 2 more like that. Please, open, breathe. Touch. Back to where we came from spreading, lift. Now, on this next one, we're gonna work on range. Even if the shoulders are not perfect.

So from overhead so my hands are not overhead, but they're over shoulders. We're gonna open the arms wide to the tee. Continue opening until maybe you can tap the floor. Perhaps your shoulder blades are touching the foam roll, that's okay. Think of spreading them away as you lift up back to where you came from. Let's repeat that. Open.

Spread your fingers if you can, but don't lose your weights, and then reach wide touch if you can. Spread to lift up. Beautiful. Feel so good in my shoulders. And surprisingly, this is quite challenging. Think about your breath, please, and feel your balance.

One more time. And up. So now let's turn the hands so that the weights could touch, but keep them just from touching. Take the arms overhead, keep your rib cage grounded. Could you touch the floor? If you can, great.

If you have to lift your ribs, don't. So keep them down and lift back up. Don't stay there for very long, or you won't feel that you have the power to lift up. And if it doesn't feel good in your shoulders, please stop before or stop where you need to stop. Okay. So I like working a deeper shoulder movement here, but it's gotta feel right for you. And, boy, I'm talking about the arms here.

That's what's moving, but it is the abdominals that are being challenged the most here physically. And this can be the last one here. Bend the elbows and place the elbows on the mat as close to your foam roll as you can. Again, we wanna avoid flaring the ribs here. So you're gonna pull the rib cage down. You are rolling your shoulders a little bit around the roll, and that's fine.

My elbows stay bent at about 90 degrees, and I'm gonna externally rotate. So, ideally, my elbows stay the same amount of bend as I take my weights to the floor, and then I pull them back through to touch my body. So I'm pivoting around my elbow, getting a nice shoulder mobility, key into your rib cage, key into your breath. So I'm continuing with the movement at just a pace that is not, specific to my breath, I'm just moving in and I'm moving out for shoulder mobilization. That's what I'd like you to think about.

Good. And that should feel good. So one more here, and then let's just take the arms up for a moment. Turn the hand. So once again, you could touch the weights together and then bend your elbows like a pec press here out to the side. Can you touch your elbows to the floor? Now if that is too much for you right there, you're welcome to slip off your foam roll and try this.

If you can handle this, it's a really beautiful shoulder mobilizer. So here, my elbows stay bent at about 90 degrees. I'm trying to spread my shoulders, but my my, shoulder blades are, in fact, touching the roll at this point. And then I take my hands, up. So my elbows stay bent, and I'm rotating into external rotation, and then I'm gonna try to rotate into internal rotation touching. So the weights take, go up.

Good like a goal post, and then the weights go down. So I'm pivoting at the shoulder joint. My elbow bend remains the same. My feet are just softly grounded. My three body weights are where they need to be.

I'm moving when it makes sense to me, not staying anywhere for too long, mobilization here, and breathing, please. Last one. So I'm gonna finish on the up, come back to a neutral position push my weights up, gently place your weights to the side here. And then please slip off your roll and lie flat on your back for at least 3 or 4 breaths. I like to straighten my legs and be in kind of a shavasana, if you do yoga, basically my arms and legs and my whole body is relaxed.

And return to that idea of really feeling your lateral posterior breath. Perhaps your eyes are closed here, I do recommend it. Feel how grounded your body is and enjoy that for a moment. Now we are not finished with this class. We have more work to do.

So carefully bring one leg into your chest, and then the other leg comes to join, give your low back a nice little massage, side to side. And here we go. More to do. So roll onto your side and come on up to a seat. We're going to change the relationship of this role now and place it out in front of you while you're on your knees. Now should anybody have a difficult time kneeling? You'll have to modify as you see fit. I do wanna work both on knee flexibility and foot flexibility here. So you could always get a cushion or something and pad yourself up.

So we're going to place our hands on the roll, and we're going to come into a quadruped position. So I do like to do this when at all possible with my toes tucked. So I'm getting a really nice foot stretch. So I highly recommend that if that suits you. Spread through your fingers and really press through your first finger and thumb as you stand tall in this quadruped position. Hollow the belly inward.

Keep the head back where it belongs and be here for a moment. Do you feel safe in your hands here? Hopefully, you do. Slide one leg back to a plank position. Can you slide the other leg back? That doesn't work. Go back to quadruped, or just do one at a time. Hold this for a little bit.

Feel the power in your arms, the power in your abs, And just little baby rolls, little baby rolls. So what I'm trying to do is get a little stretch in my wrist as I roll just a little bit into it, and then I roll back to neutral. So I'm stretching my wrist a little bit. You could do this in quadruped as well. If that feels like too much work for you. Okay? So everybody come down to their knees, sit back on your feet, stretch your arms out in front of you. The foam roll is about on my wrist.

You'll change as needed when needed here. My head is relaxing forward, and I'm stretching my shoulders here. Now press up through your hands and draw the foam roll in so that you feel like you are leaning forward a little bit, And you can flatten out your back a bit while sitting on the feet here, and your arms are straight. So now we're gonna roll into the stretch, head toward mat, pull round up, straighten out, look forward, round in, reach forward, deep into the stretch, round your body in, Good. So once you feel like your fingertips are on the roll, you're gonna reach forward pressing just a bit into the roll, thoracic extension, and then round in and reach forward. Certainly, you could do this lifted off your feet as well. One more time rounded and extend the spine and round back in and rest that.

So tuck your toes again for me. Okay? And so if you can, your your toes are gonna remain tucked for this part. We're gonna do another thing here for our, a little push up here, a tricep push up. So what I'd like you to do is feel your hands grounded on that foam roll again, and you're gonna bend your elbows and try to touch the floor. Here's where you might move your feet back a little bit. If you'd like to work harder, you're gonna move your legs back, and you have your booty up in the air.

If you don't wanna work as hard, keep your legs closer to you. So my elbows are down. My wrists are grounded as best as possible through the foam roll, I'm gonna shift forward so I could touch the foam roll with my forehead. And I'm gonna lift my forehead up. Good. And we're gonna press up with the arms to straight.

Then you're gonna bend your elbows and go all the way down to the floor, getting maximum elbow flexion there, make sure you could still touch your forehead to the foam roll, because it's a lot easier when you come back. I'd like you to stay forward. And we're gonna push up, really using those triceps quite a bit, And then you're gonna come down. Elbows tap. Make sure your forehead is still in the right spot.

You don't have to touch it if you don't want to. Abdominals are definitely working to stabilize. And be sure too that you are working bull farms here. You're staying puffed up through your back, strong through your core. So this is hard. I hope you can feel the challenge there.

I'm wiggling. I'm shaking my friends. Let's do two more. And breathing plays one more. Good challenges.

Poof. So now let's shift off of our arms. So I brought my legs forward, and let's put that foam roll underneath your knees, actually, really on your shin, not your knees so we can get a little bit of, massage for the fronts of the feet or the fronts of the legs, I should say, the front of the lower leg. So I like using my feet to kinda push forward and back here. And if you have a specific, spot that you wanna linger on, feel free to. This is also really good foot mobility, so play with it. If it doesn't work, you can take your feet out of it and use your hands to roll a little. That is where we're headed.

So I'm using my hands now, and I'm gonna roll forward and back a little more. Mhmm. And then I put the feet down, and I'm would like you to readjust so that you are not on the kneecap, but you're kind of just below the knee. I'm gonna take your hands forward. That was your short break for your arms, my friends. Are you ready for it? Here we go. So we're gonna power power up those arms again.

I like to do this with my legs pretty close together. Lift the toes up. You can point them if you'd like. I actually think I wanna move back a little bit. So the further back you are, the harder it is. So challenge yourself.

Bring your arms so your shoulders over your wrist first, round your back, squeeze your knees together, and pull in. And reach back just to about the knee, not to the kneecap, just below the knee. Pull in and reach back. And rounding the back as you pull in and reach back. So I'm looking at my knees, which keeps my neck in a little bit of flexion. And go back. Now I'm gonna try a little bit of rotation.

Both legs are connected, meaning I'm not lifting one, but I'm turning my knees. So I'm going in the direction of one wrist with both knees. So I'm doing a nice little rotation of my spine. We'll do one more on each side, please. Woo hoo. Good oblique work.

You're also getting a nice little roll out of your shins, right, little massage. Take a break. So once again, foot stretch. If it suits you, don't do it if it doesn't, so I'm just gonna enjoy this for a moment, rolling forward and back. For me, this is a little bit of a break. If your knees don't do this, you do you. Are you ready? Are you sure? Cause we're now going to do this from plank position.

If that doesn't suit you, you will return to the position we just did. So I need to be back on my mat a bit more. I'm gonna put my shins, basically, at the center of my shin on that role. I'm gonna walk forward. Nies get to come down.

Hands come into plank position. Power up the upper body, suck that belly in. I've moved my foam roll back just to smidge and straighten your legs. So I want one long line through those legs. You're gonna first pull forward with the arms as far as you can keep that.

Power up those abdominals and pull in bend your knees so you're just at the tops of your feet and reach. So I'm rounding and straightening. Now let's do that same thing with rotation. If you're up for it, toward one knee and reach back. Toward the other knee, I call this shakira.

It's quite hard, though. Right? Let's do a couple more, please. Nice, beautiful oblique challenge, nice upper body challenge, and last one here. So put the knees down. Keep the feet. Tops of the feet on the roll, sit back so you can get a nice little stretch through those quadriceps. Again, if this isn't work for your knees, adjust, I like my feet to be kind of flexed here.

Now engaging the abdominals, I'm just gonna hinge back a little bit till I can feel a little more of a stretch and then just shift side to side. So that feels nice for me. I hope it feels nice for you. So now let's go and just lean over to one side and reach an arm up. And lean over to the other side and reach an arm up.

And let's do that one more time on each side. Reach. So I don't care where your arm goes. I don't care where you go. It should feel good. I'm going where it feels good to me here.

This is a good stretch. So let's transition here. Put your hands down. Bring yourself to your feet. Take your foam roll to about the middle of your mat.

Why don't you put your hands on that foam roll? Press your legs to straight. I'm gonna walk mine forward a little more. So with your feet flat, your hands on roll, let's round through the back. And then let's extend a little bit, tailbone back, getting a nice little hamstring stretch that should feel nice.

Let's round through the back. And extend a little bit. So my hands just make the floor come a little closer and allow me to, just kinda play with this position a little more. Let's do that one more time, a little cat cow type thing here. Right? Round in, shift the weight to your legs, engage those inner thighs, engage the abdominals, and see if you can roll yourself up.

Hopefully, your foam roll didn't roll too far away. So let's work a little more with balance here. So you're gonna gauge where it is. And once again, you'll just find a stand. We're not gonna stand on my left leg first, okay, and I wanna feel that my left leg is involved.

My whole leg is involved, meaning my glute, my inner thigh, all my things are working. I'm gonna try to look forward rather than down. Maybe out would even be better. And we're gonna see first where the foam roll is and put this whole foot, the heel, middle of the foot kinda, on the on the roll with the knee bent. And just play with rolling your foot, out and in or rolling the roll through your foot out and in. So just moving that leg a little bit, distracting your balance, keep your gaze forward. Now, keep the knee bent, have a little tiny bit of attention on the roll, but no weight. And we're just going to lift the other heel up doing a calf raise and lower down and do that again. Lift.

So what's nice is having this role here here for your front foot gives you a little assist in balance, but eventually it's going to challenge the position more. So that's exciting. Good. Now lower down. Send the leg to straight. I'm gonna move my foot. So it's more my toe on the, foam roll. So I've got, like, a little bit of a prehensile foot here I'm working toward a rounded foot.

And then we're gonna try to keep the leg like that and do the same thing. So a little bit harder with the leg straight out in front of you, in my opinion, and lower down. So all those little wobbles that happen are great. You're lifting as high as you can with good mechanics, meaning I don't want you to roll out on your ankle. Good. We'll do 2 more here. So notice it's challenging sometimes to stand on one leg and lift and lower.

Hopefully, this offers you enough balance. Good. Now we'll bring the roll back in so that your foot is more in the middle on the foam roll. Are you ready? Are you sure? So you can choose to do what suits you. We're going to shift into the front foot, shift out of it.

Yes. We're gonna try to stand on it, shift into the front foot, and shift out of it. If this makes you nervous, step down, put your weights, embrace the foam yourself a little bit. Hold here. I'm gonna keep my weight in my front foot. I'm lifting my back heel up. I'm gonna see if I can maybe lift up to where my just my tiptoe is touching and maybe stand for a moment.

And then put the foot down. Right? So if you're a little off balance like I was, that's okay. Hopefully you're doing you, not me. Lean into it again. Transfer the weight. Keep the foot down if you need to. Just feel the idea of how can I maybe stand on that? It's always a little trickier when you're on camera and find your balance if you can and step down.

One more time, please. So you're doing you. See if you can find your balance. And all those things are good. Being off balance in a safe environment is so important.

Here we go. Let's do the other side. So once again, I'm gonna place kind of the center of my foot on the foam roll with a bent knee. K. And you'll make adjustments as needed. And here, we're just gonna kinda feel this. You can just kinda roll out and in, notice what that feels like. Right? Notice the movement.

Now we hold it. Yeah. Using my glute hamstring inner thigh, all the things on my standing leg, and I'm gonna press up. And, yeah, nice. Now you could go fast here if you wanted to. I like the slowness of this. I like working on the details here and letting my body kinda learn how to adjust to all these little wobbly pieces. So last one here, and same thing with a straight leg.

So I'm gonna move my foot a little bit so that I feel like I can kinda wrap my foot a little bit around the foam roll and keep it like that. All the things are working. Focus on a point that's not moving as you lift and as you lower. And you're breathing, right? I'm not queuing breath.

I'm assuming you're breathing. If you're still with me, you've been breathing. I hope. Whoop. And how about we do one more here? Good. And then we try the transfer.

So here, you're gonna bring the roll so it feels like it's in position. You have a front knee bent, right, and I'm gonna shift into my front leg first and press back. Right? So just feel that. Now, that could be the option 1. You don't need to do anything more, but if you feel up for it, you're gonna shift, you're gonna use your back foot to lift up, transfer the weight fully, maybe you lift your foot off, maybe you keep your toe down. You decide you do you. And let's do 3 total.

I think we did 3 on the other side. Do more if you feel comfortable going faster. It's interesting how it's never crystal clear which leg is going to be easier. I would have thought that today, this side would have been harder, but today, this side is working way easier for me. Find your balance, be off balance, and then step down.

Alright. Let's just get that foam roll a little bit out of the way. And let's stand on our 2 feet. Take a big breath up together. Feel your body. Take your arms down.

Let's do a nice roll down. Just enjoy. Head, relax. You can go floppy knees bent. You don't have to organize this today. Maybe your hands make it to the floor, maybe they don't, maybe you're gonna sway, shake your head out, bend your knees, do all the things. Hopefully, you feel good here today.

2 feet grounded, hollow your belly inward, and roll yourself up. When you come up, feel your head stacked, your heart open, lift your arms. Arms down. Roll down. Let's do that again. Feel your inner legs.

Your inner thighs are working. Your knees can bend. You everything can be sloppy here. Your arms, your shoulders, your heads. You don't have to hold it together. You can go into the deep stretch if you want, meaning as far as you can go.

And then hollow your belly in, reorganize, plug your shoulders, stand tall. And we look forward one more together, inhale, and exhale. We're gonna roll down. This time, let's keep it organized. The knees are bending, but the core stays engaged. So you're not gonna flop completely.

Shoulders stay plugged. Arms are relaxed. This is a classic bass you roll down. Roll yourself up. And I think I lied to you.

I'd like to do one more like that. How about that? Here we go. Arms stay down. I'm gonna exhale and curl forward. Our classic bassy roll down here. Arms stay plugged.

Abdominos are active. Both legs slightly bent. It's like the roll up position right here, and then roll yourself up. And with your eyes softly closed and your palms open, feel your body. Feel light, inhaling, and exhaling. Try to find that lateral posterior breath, inhaling.

And exhaling. Flutter your eyes open. Feel yourself looking forward, not down. And I thank you so very much for playing.