Pilates Anytime, Anywhere

Hi everyone. Today's episode. What I've got planned are my top favorite five exercises that you don't have to have any equipment you can do anytime, anywhere and let's get started. All right, so we're going to get started with the first one. This is the pelvic curl, so you're going to start with your feet apart, a little bit, knees about pelvis with the part. This is great for flattening the tummy, for toning the legs, toning the backside of the body and mobilizing the spine.

So starting with a nice deep breath in through your nose. As you exhale, flatten your tummy, roll your hips back and your peeling up wall bone by bone up your spine until you're about at the base of the shoulder blade. So I want you to pull those abdominals down just a little bit. Yeah, so squeeze these tummy muscles, pull in and visualize yourself and there's a really nice long plank and squeeze the back of your legs up and your hips up. Good. Now when you roll down bone by bones, you're going upper back and the middle back and the lower back all the way down and level out the hips. We're going to do it five times. Inhale, exhale, roll up. So this exercise is great. Mobilizes the spine. You get this articulated motion through your bones. You in initiate and start the exercise by flattening the tummy.

You're feeling the back of the legs working the glutes, working. Pause just for one second. Just bring your ribs down. There you go. And roll. Now, if you didn't want to do this on the flat ground like we are here, um, you can always put a towel down. That might be one thing you could add into this and roll down. I'm gonna have you do one more and keep the knees a little closer.

Feel like you're hugging my fist a little bit there. And then pause right there. Hold. So as you take your last one, you can do five to 10 of these. Hold it, squeeze, squeeze, and roll yourself all the way down. It's a great exercise. My second favorite exercise anytime anywhere is the 100 and it is a classical Pilates exercise. So I'm going to have you start with your knees to your chest first and just come up and give yourself a hug. You can lift your head up. Yeah.

And so this is going to emphasize primarily tummy muscles, breathing circulation, getting blood flow. So I want you to start with your legs either right up to the ceiling or a little bit out on diagonal. Make a V with your feet. Yeah and arms by your sides with your palms down and make your arms lift off the ground and reach like crazy. Just this is an exercise so just flattened like crazy with your tummy and I'm going to have you start pumping your arms up and down and it's a vigorous pump that gets the circulation going. Look right at your mid thigh and eventually you might have rhythm with the pumping. Two breaths in, two breaths out.

Today we are just pumping and breathing and focusing on the strength and the tummy muscle. She's going to curl up. She's reaching long through these gorgeous legs and pump and pump and pump and pump. You can do this anytime, anywhere. You might want to towel underneath your back. Again. If you feel like the floor is too difficult, keep going flat and flat and flat and flat and flatten. Good and exhale. Exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale.

One more breath in and exhale all the air out. Finished with hugging yourself because you deserve it. That's a hard exercise. Good. So the third exercise we are going to do is a basic back extension or something I like to call flight or taking flight. So I'm going to have you turn over onto your tummy and you can just start with your forehead down on the ground.

Hands are going to be right by your shoulders and we're not going to forget this stomach muscles. She just worked those in the last exercise. So right here she's gonna pull those up. Again, this whole setup is an exercise, but to make it a little bit more challenging, I don't want you to pull those shoulders down your back and this is a great exercise to contrast the abdominal muscles. And to start working the spine, correct posture, open up your shoulders and get a really good long use of the back muscles here. So it's going to start with a float of your head. It's a float of the hands off the floor and just hold right there. There you go.

All I want you to do is just lower your chin a little bit and slightly look out on a diagonal. Yeah, I'm just going to do this so we can see more of your alignment. Yeah. So T uh, tilt your chin down slightly first. There you go. That's the taking flight position. And then bring all of that back down to the floor. I'm just going to hold your head. Inhale and exhale. So reach out through the head, but keep your gaze down. Open up the shoulder.

So here's that. Squeeze for the upper back muscles. There you go. Yeah, you can bring those shoulder blades together and just hold. Visualize yourself long and strong and straight. Really stretched and come all the way down. And five, three to five repetitions is good. So should, here's her third one. Here you go again, a little less of the head. There you go. So try to feel the work of the abdominal muscles.

You're trying to maximize your effort here and lower all the way down. So the little variation is going to be with the hands on the floor and a bigger range of motion. The Swan, and this is maybe a little more traditional Palladio's exercise. If you place your hands down and now push with the arms and start to come higher up, higher up, higher up. And I like to think about, there's something above my head. I'm reaching my head up into there is that beautiful posture. You can see that strength in the back muscles and then coming down bone by bone through the front of the spine all the way. And one more Swan.

She inhales and exhale up goes the torso. Little less with the chin there. Like you're pushing the sky up through the heavens or something. Yeah, there you go. Lift, lift, lift, and then rolling all the way down through the front of the body. So the third favorite exercise of mine, this one. So my fourth favorite exercise is uh, on the side of the body.

So you're going to start with your elbow on the floor, your hips on the floor, you're a, a knees and feet are stacked. And what this exercise does is gives you a chance to sense your balance. Actually in a sideline position, strengthens the side of your shoulder side of your back. You're pressing your elbow down into the floor, raising your hips up, and you're just going to hold it. And maybe this arm can go anywhere. I'm going to let you choose.

So the downward elbows straight down underneath your underarm, you get a hold like that, five to 10 seconds as beautiful. And then come on back down and set the hip down. Let's do that again. Take an inhale through your nose. Exhale and lift. So the muscles here on the side of the body are in really deeply working to lift the body up, gives you a sense of support through your hips. There's a little tone going on here. Again, you're sensing balance on the side and then go ahead and lower your hips down.

And then before you do it again, I'm just want you to take this shoulder blade and just snug it down into the side of the ribs. There you go. Now let's make it just a little more challenging and straighten your legs out to the side and stack your feet. So this would be a way to up your level if you're interested in that. And then same thing a lot harder. You've got a longer lever to support and balance on and she's going up, maybe the arm will go overhead and down.

And the third variation of the sideline exercise, you're actually going to start all the way up on your hand, your elbow, not touching the floor any longer. So you'll bring your hand closer into you, bend your knees a little more, cause you're going to want your feet to help you push up as well. Yeah, you're gonna want your hand even a little closer in towards your body. Walk this back in there. Okay. So you're gonna push onto your feet and onto that straight arm and your upper arm is going to go overhead. So this is the third variation of that low level, uh, sideline exercise you can see is a little more work for balance and stability but still maximizing the strength of the side of the body and a great stretch and opening up on the top. Good. And you can come all the way down. Fantastic. All right.

And my fifth favorite exercise to do anytime anywhere with new equipment is a standing, squat and S variations. So you'll stand with your feet apart, feet pointed straight ahead and hands in the prayer position or Palm to Palm and really push. He gets some upper body kinda continue. And then I'd sit back and really stick your hips out. So just that his workout for your thighs and your rear and your back muscles. So then as you exhale, I'm just going to have you brief first exhale. Just come up to stand in, squeeze your legs, squeeze your butt and then sit back and stamped.

So you can do 10 20, 30 how ma you can decide how many repetitions you want to do. You can go a little faster, which will start to increase your heart rate. If you're looking for that. Yep. So you keep going. And some variations you can do with this is to lift one leg up. When you come up to stand, just lift and then go down to two feet, one foot, two feet, one foot and two feet. Yep.

So that's just going to give you a little different push off. Strength off the one side, give your legs and hips a little different work. And let's go four and three. So standing squats are excellent strength builders, toners for the legs and the lower half. And there you have it. Number five.