Heat Building Classical Mat

Hi. I'm Jamie Isaac. Welcome to this Matt workout, a short, but effective workout with some foundational exercises in there to connect us to our core and our powerhouses. But I'm gonna pepper in a few reformer on the mat exercises just to spice things up along the way. So join me on this. We'll begin with a little balance challenge that we're gonna start with and finish with.

So we have a reference about whether it feels easier at the end or not. So let's see how this goes. Let's do this. Start standing in our pilates stance, heels together, toes, apart, arms come out in front, Nice and strong through the arms, strong through the whole of the body, and just see if we can circle the arms quickly and stop them right in front of us. Let's do that one more time.

And now come up onto our toes. Heels pressed together. Can you balance here and do the same thing. This is the real challenge. Here we go circle.

Stop. Bend the knees. Come down to whatever you're comfortable with. Hold circle again. Press all the way up. Lower your heels down.

Great start. With control, let's come to that. Cross one foot, one foot behind the other. Arms folded like a genie, and we'll lower ourselves down carefully onto our seat. If this is too much of a challenge, put your hands down. You gotta look after your yourselves here. So, no falling onto our back side. So, just with control, we come down all the way onto the mat.

Place our feet out in front of us and then just lower gently down. We'll begin with a little mobility into our hips. So hug both legs in. Let's have a little rock from side to side that can feel nice on the lower back and then hands on tops of our knees. Let's stir the femur around in the hip joint.

So it's like it's a big spoon. We're just stirring a big pot of porridge. Legs are going along for the ride. Let's reverse it. And then bring the feet down.

Thighs press together, arms down by the side of the body, and keeping your shoulders pressing down into the mat, lower your knees to one side. Let that stretch through the waist, through the side body, come back through the center, and we do the same on the other side. So just let them stretch, let them reach. We're keeping the legs together, shoulders down, So as much as it's a stretch, it's controlled, and we're controlling it from our powerhouse. Here we go. One more on the other side.

And back through the center, that let's really switch up our house on. So upper body stays quiet as we flow our legs up to tabletop, and we can come a little bit off of tabletop so that we're not hanging out in the hip flexes and just tap one toe down. Change legs. And we'll do this a few times. Working on just moving the leg.

Nothing else. The rest of the body is gonna stay quiet, strong, controlled, effortless if we can. Make it look effortless. We know there's work. And then let's turn it up. Let's press the thighs together and see if we can do this both legs together, which is actually way more challenging than you think.

Oh, yeah. We're getting that right. In our core muscles fired up. Let's go one more time and then bring the knees in. Have a little rock from side to side. Okay. So we're ready to begin now, and I figured we'd begin as though we're on the reformer.

Would do footwork. So this version, take the hands behind the back of your head and bring your chin to chest, nose to navel, bring your legs up, heels stay together. We're gonna do 5 reps of each. So we're not overcooking it because there's plenty more work to come later on. So here we go. Abs, deep, heels pressed together, and we press out and back, and we do this five times.

3 more. 2 more. And one more. Bring them in, feet together, thighs together as though we're wrapping our foot over the foot bar. Same again, 5. And if it feels too much, just press a little harder. If you want it harder, for the last two maybe, you press a little lower.

Bring that in. Now pull your toes back for heels, press out and back for 5. Again, so it's just good core connection. One more. And then the real fun leave them out there. We're gonna point and flex for 5. Point and flex and point and flex 2 more.

One more. And then bring your knees in at a little hug, a little rock, ready for our 100. So find whatever level of this you want to do. Okay? Make it challenge you but without losing quality. So if you wanna start in here, you can. If you wanna just have your head back and rest your neck, find that space, find that exercise level challenge that's just perfect for you.

So here we go. I'm gonna bring my legs out here. Pump my arms strong. And breathe it in. Breathe it out. So full breaths in. Full breaths out.

Keep working. Abs in and up. Legs reaching long if they're straight. Otherwise, press your thighs together and keep it connected into your bike. Arms reach long, strong movement from the back of your shoulder. Let's do two more breaths. Here we go. Still with me.

Laure your legs down. Lower your head down. Take a moment just to rest. Ready for the roll up. Stretch our legs out long. Now, from here, I wanna make it accessible. If you're not feeling that your roll up's quite there yet, you can always grab the backs of your thighs.

So let's do the the first couple like that. I pull on the backs of the legs, chin to chest, and pull yourself up. Take a big stretch here and then lower him back vertebra by vertebra. Once again, you can hold here. Support yourself on the way down, and we'll do the same as we come up.

Stretching forward, navel pulls back, lowering with control. And then if you're feeling ready, let's take a big inhale here. Without using momentum, whole body stretches up. And then rolls down with control vertebra by vertebra back to the mat. Reach beyond your toes.

Stretch look down to your knees. Lower back with control. Big in house here. Open up your rib cage. Last one.

Stretch and forward. Reach and then lower back with control vertebra by vertebra. Arms come up. Everybody take a stretch here in an in house. Arms down by your side. Alright.

We're ready for one leg circle now. If to get your leg straight, you need to bend your other knee. That works for me. Focus on this leg. If you can straighten it without and great.

Give it a little pull. And I want everything anchored down. That's the key with control, the range of movement as big as you dare, but don't lose control. Keep the control. Here we go. Let's go across down around and stop at the nose.

And again, 4 more. And 3. 2 more. And one more. Now let's reverse it out down across and up.

Stop at the nose. That's showing control. 2 more. One more. Alright. Hold that leg up.

I want you to change legs with a little transition. Let's switch and switch one more time. Switch. If you need to bend, remember, that's absolutely fine. Strong and active through the supporting leg. Here we go. Cross down around and up.

Stop at the nose each time. 2 more. And reverse. Try and keep your hips pinned, shoulders pin, head presses down even. Two more. And then let's switch again.

Here we go. Boom. And again. Boom. One more time. Both things down and let's roll up to sit at the top of the mat, ready for roll like a ball. So I'll give you a couple of options with this. If you're feeling a little tight in your back, just take your hands behind the back of your thighs, and let it be a nice massage.

Let your spine just enjoy the ride. Or there's always a way to turn it up, or take your ankles, hug it in nice and tight, and get your head up and over and in between your knees. The tighter you hug, the harder this exercise becomes. Keeping your toes from touching the floor Let's do 3 more. Abs in and up. See on hills pressed together.

I think one more for luck. Here we are. And then move in our seat to the middle of the mat, ready for the app series. Now, now the minute I say that, it kind of puts people off and they're like, oh, no. Absers. Just stick with this. Do the best you can and choose the repetition amount that works for you.

Some of you might maybe just pause in the video and do an extra. Good for you. Let's go for it. So stretch one leg out, hug the other leg in nice and tight. Lower ourselves gently onto our backs. We're gonna do 5 on each leg.

If you wanna lower your head down and bring the leg up higher, that's absolutely fine too. We're still doing the work. Here we go and change and change, hug it in stretch long. Let's go one more each side. And then both legs in together for double leg stretch.

Arms and legs reach long. So sweep the arms around, hug the legs in. So it's a tight hug. And again, we got 2 more to do after this. Last one. Reach it out.

Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Sweet and, good work. Lower your head down. Move it from side to side. Alright. Turn to chest again.

If it's coming up straightened both the legs, for scissors, 2 pulls, strong switch, strong straight legs. Both legs really strong, really straight. Let's go one more on each leg. Almost there, you see. Both legs together for double leg lower lift.

Now this one, let's get the hands behind the back of the head and bring the head up as high as we can. Doesn't matter how far you lower your legs as long as you just do your absolute best and keep the shoulders up. Here we go lower, lower, lower, lower. Boom, lift up to 12. Here we go. Lower and down. Up to 12 o'clock. 2 more.

And up. 1 more. And up. 1 more for luck. That means 5. We've made it to Chris cross.

Let's go. Chris, and cross. That's it. Really enjoy the stretch element here. Press it out. One more. On each side, here we go.

Reach and reach, and then let's come all the way up to sit. Ready for our spine stretch forward, but I figured I mentioned the reformer exercises. That's now a great opportunity because after all, spine stretch A lot of that core connection, a lot of the abs drawing back. So bring the legs together, knees bent, hands reach back behind you, and with your tendon stretch. So lift your hips up press them forward.

It's a nice stretch of the abs after the abs series. Scoop your abs. Draw your hips back and lift and press back. And again, Pressing back. One more time. Press your seat back.

Push push. Push. Very nicely done. Lower your seat back down. Take your feet wide off the mat.

Spine stretch forward. So toes draw back. Heels, press away and sit as tall as you can. It's a great opportunity to bring breath into your body. Alright. So breathe it in. And then as we reach forward, we're going to press all that air out.

So hands pressing down. Chain to chest x. Hit it out. Press all the way. Press it out. Stack your spine up nice and tall breathe in.

And again, let's go up and overhead between the knees. Read it in. We got one more of these. Feels good. Good stretch at the back. But driven from the abs as well. So a navel is pulling back.

The navel has been pressing all the air out. Inhale. Nice and tall. Take your arms back behind you. Take a moment just to breathe in. Very nice. Alright.

Let's bring our seat forward for open leg rocker. So seat comes forward. Take hold of your ankles, and we'll take turns with this as we lift both the feet up. Let's try and balance with one leg up. Let's change sides. You get your leg as straight as you can.

It doesn't have to go straight. We can be here hands behind the backs of our knees if that feels easier. And you can happily carry on just balancing or if you wanna go for the rocker, Let's do this. Scoop our abs rounding back and then coming back up. It's in top. Wobbly one for me.

Here we go. I gotta improve on that. Abs deep rounding back. Oh, the way up. One more time. And bring my legs together, bend the knees in, and lower on to our backs.

Arms by our sides. Alright. We started with a little twist. Let's turn the heat up on that with tiktoks. So press your thighs together, really good center line connection, and we'll lower our feet to one side back through the center controlled. You'll notice how the shoulder stays down. We don't have to go any further than we can control. Let's go one more each side and then we'll add a little something to this.

Let's pretend we've got a compass points here. Let's go north. Let's go south and then east and west. And now if you want as you go north, you can lift your seat. And south east West one more time.

North, south, and then east, and west, and then hug your knees in rock back, cruising forwards. Come all the way up to sit. Take your feet wide again. Ready for the sore. Arms out to the side.

Sitting up nice and tall. Be again. How to take our arms back. Open up the heart so we can, you know, fill it up with oxygen, exhale it out as we twist, reach a little finger for your little toe and pulse. 1, 2, 3 in head up. Exhale and twist.

Inhale, up tall, anchoring down strong through your sit bones. Let's twist and reach again, and press all the air out your lungs. Ring it out. Inhale. Last one on each side. Big tall spine here.

Fill up your lungs. Here we go. Exhale it out. Breathe it out. Reach. Press out. Oh, yeah.

Fill it back in. Last one on the other side. Inhale. Nice and tall. Let's turn over onto our tummy for a little bit of swam work and another reformer exercise.

So up and over as much control as you can, lower gently down onto your front. And let's begin with pulling straps. So four head down. Arms out to the sides. Press your feet into the mat.

Lift your head. Chest and shoulders thinking long through the body. Lift your eyes and then press your arms back out to the sides. Lower down. Up. Press back. Reach. Reach.

Reach out to the sides. Link and head down. Still two more. Reaching lengthening. Length is key here.

One more. Back out, lung. And then bring your hands by your chest for swamp prep. It's all about growing longer rather than lifting up. Now, let's do the same here. Press the nose to the top of the mat. Lift the head, the chest, the shoulders. Little push through the hands.

Inhale. Exhale as we lengthen back down. And again, inhaling up. Let the eyes lift up the wall. Exhale long back down.

One more. Lift it up. Let's stay up and meet at the top here. We go. Turn your head to one side. Change the chest around to the other side and center, and it into the other side. And then lengthen as you lower back down, we go back into rest position.

So that we get a chance to really stretch our back out. So take your seat towards your heels and take your head towards the floor, but scooping your navel away from your thighs. And just breathe. Woke your hands to one side, stretch back through that side of the body, and then to the other side. And then back on to all fours, ready for knee stretches.

So another reformer exercise that we're sneaking in there just for a little extra heat. Not that we're not warm enough already. So round your back, take your seat towards your heels, and to begin with, just lift your knees just off the mat. Can you hold it there? Couple of breaths and lower down so the navel pulling in and up, lifting your navel towards the ceiling. You can just repeat that one.

But if you wanna turn it up and join me as we move our legs, as well. Alright. So round back, float the knees off stretch one leg out. Let's move it in and out 5 times. 4, 3, 2, One more. Stay with me. Bring it in. See if you can just change legs.

If you need to come down, come down. Otherwise, here we go for 5, 4, 3, 2, wow, one more. Yes. Lower the knees there. Take a moment just to take a little bit of a breath before we turn back over onto our back. So let's get there with control.

Don't just roll over haphazardly. We're gonna do this with a little bit of Pilates in mind. Lift the knees, turn the seat over, and then lower gently onto our backs for some bridge prep. Now take a moment just to settle in heels, level with your sit bones, press your hips up, up to the ceiling, and then take a big inhale, exhale, and lower down through your spine, vertebra by vertebra. Introduce them one at a time. All the way down to the mat.

Let's go up again. SIP bones towards the backs of our knees. Lift lift. Lift. Inhale and exhale down.

Down. Down. That might be you just doing that if you want to. Repeat that. Otherwise, let's turn it up just a little bit by bringing the feet together now. Press the hips up. How does it feel to lift one leg and point the toe up to the ceiling? What I want us to do here is hold this nice and strong hips nice and even and push your toe up through the ceiling five times. Push push.

That's it. One more. Let's change legs. See if you can keep your hips up as you change. It's gonna really challenge the support and leg of the glute there. So here we are pushing up five times. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 more. Come down with control.

Remember how important it is to maintain control and then hug the knees into the body of your little rock from side to side. Okay. From here, we're just gonna turn on to our side. So stretch one leg out, other arm out, and just roll over ready for some side kick series. So just resting your head on your hands. If that feels tight on your neck, once again, just lower your head down.

It's absolutely fine. Press the feet down into the mat and just leg kick front and back. So once again, just work through whatever range feels comfortable for you. It might be just here It might be a big kick. Whatever you've got, here we go. 2 more.

And one. And then we're gonna change sides. So sit up, feet to the front of the mat, Let's see if we can repeat facing the other way. So once again, just reach long through your body. Rest your head on your hands, legs to the front corner of the mat. Long through your leg.

Here we go. So we kick forward. And back. Let's do 4 more. 3. Think long. 2. Last one. And reach. Now from here, just turn it over onto your back. So lift your seat.

Bring it forward. For everyone's favorite exercise, it's certainly a that moment for your Instagram, the teaser. Alright. We'll start with one leg. So a great way into teaser. Is using support with the hands behind the back of our thigh. Let's give it a little kick as the chin comes to the chest and then control the momentum, lifting tool, reaching our arms forward.

Change our legs at the top and then support from the leg as we come down. Let's go again. Kick and lift and change and lower. And this time, see if you've got it, but without using the hands on the leg reach. And change and lower with control. And, again, reach for your knees for the toes, changing legs, and lowering down. Should we try one with the whole body now? So stretch your legs out, stretch your arms out, This is our moment to shine.

Here we go. Everything engaged. Change to chest. Reach for your knees. For your toes. Whoop.

Caesar in up. Reach. Reach for the sky. And then with control. And again, straight back up. Whoop. Had to work through that one and then lower in with control down to the mat. Take a moment just to stretch here and then roll up to sit as we turn over onto our tummy for swimming.

So up and over, lower down with control. Now think long through your body here, arms reach long, legs reach long, continue to grow as we lift everything up off the floor. And whatever you've got here, let's just swim. Brush your feet if you can. Lifting a little higher each time, and your navel pulling up from the floor.

Can we do a couple more a little faster? And hold and lower down. With control here. Ready for leg pull. So bring your hands by your chest, curl your toes under.

And on your exhale, your whole body's gonna lift up in one unit. Alright? So get those knees up as well. Here we go. Think long through your body and press. Holding nice and strong in our leg pool position. So let's just hold the feet down for the moment and see how it feels to explore the space Just rocking backwards and forwards.

That's enough work just holding that plank position. Let's do one more of those, and then we'll try it with one leg. If you feel you wanna join, stretch one leg out. Explore that space. How long can you make your body? Change legs and press.

Reach. Press. Reach one more time. Still with me? And then coming down onto our knees. We do reposition again, but a different variation this time. Top of the head, onto the mat. And I want you to bring your hands by your head and curl your toes.

So it's just stretch the back of the neck. So I'm not putting too much weight through the neck. I'm supporting it with my hands. I'm just rocking forward. Give the back of my neck a little stretch.

And with my navel drawing in and up and stretching my back as well. Let's do one more of these. Alright. Before we move on to, and I side bend snake combo. Alright. So we're adding matte and reformer. We're gonna make them work together. So one foot forward in front of the other.

Other arm nice and strong here. Let's give this a go. So it's quite a few combinations in this. So Just join me. Play with this. See how we get on.

Here we go. Lift in tall pressing up big stretch now as we rainbow over big arc. Reach. Now reach up to the ceiling. Our hips are gonna go back. We're gonna touch our ankle.

Bring this hand to the mat and then here comes a snake. Big arch, big lift. Hit sit out if you want. Hiss and then come back through the abs once again into our side bend. How was that? Should we go again? Up and over up to the sky, touching our ankle, hand to the mat just in front of the other hand.

It's good. We're just playing. Here we go. One more time. Back. Up into our side bend. Last time on this side.

Up through. And then our snake has rear hiss. We come back. And then let's return, and we'll repeat this on the other side. So swing your feet around or turn around on the mat, top leg in front of the bottom foot. Let's go. We know what we're doing now, right? So let's make it flow together, lifting lifting up up to the ceiling.

Touching our back ankle. Hand to the mat. Snake cliffs. Up. That's it. Really reach it out. In and up. Pull the abs, and then we come back through.

Up for that side then. Reach it out up to the ceiling, thread the arm through, hand to the mat, find our snake. Call the abs up. Comes up. We lower down. Last one Stay connected.

Whole body working now. Everything engages. We extend forward and lower all the way. Back down with control. I'm gonna swing my feet to the front of the mat now.

We're coming into the end. Last couple of exercises. So join me for the seal, which is possibly the most fun Pilates exercise we have. So hands go through the middle. Take your ankles.

Alright. Pull the feet in. Use your powerhouse to do so. Strong connection here. Elbows into thighs as we clap. 3 claps rolling back.

See if you can balance as you clap again, and we roll back up. And again, 1, 2, 3, rolling back, clapping here, coming back up. We got 2 more of these. I think we have. Here we go. Abs deep.

Hold that position strong on your shoulders, not on your neck. Last one. Alright. Nicely done. Now, crush your feet over. Stand all the way up. I'll get up however he feels available to you all the way up.

Spinning around ready to finish with our push up, and then of course our balance challenge right at the end. So just for push up, let's do one with our arms up, feet down, roll down, like wallpaper just peeling off a wall. Our hands go to the floor. Bend your knees if you need to. Let's walk it out. Hold, strong plank, and then we're ready.

One beautiful push up. Best you've got. Walk your hands back and roll up with your arms by your ears. Up nice and tall. Let's try that with one leg now.

So reach one leg behind you. See how we go balance in here. Roll down one leg off the floor. How does that feel? Does that feel available to you? Can you complete the whole push up now with one leg?

Walking your hands back. Now this is the tough bet. Here we come. All the way up. Yeah. How do we get on? Let's try the other leg, see if there's a difference through the sides of the body. Rolling down.

Gotta really work through the standing leg That's really tough. Walking out. Push up. Walking back. Now can we come all the way back up without wobbling?

We made it. Finishing with our balance challenge as we started. Now, this is a great moment. After all the work and the connection in the body, do you feel more connected Or do you feel fatigued and less connected? So it's just a good reference point to finish up on now. So here we go. Lift up onto our toes. Circular arms.

Down into our squat. Hold. Circle again. Coming all the way back up nice and tall. Wobbly one for me and then reach our heels back down. Stan tall.

Take a moment just to reconnect with the floor. That's really good. Hard work from everybody. Thank you for joining me, and I'll see you back here on the mat again soon.