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Hi, everyone. I’m Benjamin Dagenhart, and I’m joined today by Ayla and Phyllis. Thank you guys for being here. And we will share a mat workout with you today. It’s an, I would say, intermediate ish, intermediate plus routine, of traditional mat exercises with a focus on neck alignment and the shoulder chance that we do. Pilates doesn’t necessarily lend itself to understanding how to position our head properly unless we head to the equipment and we use the tools we have available.
On the mat, it’s often quite difficult to understand where does my head belong, how long is my spine even at the top, So hopefully, with this workout, you will see that there are some opportunities in the traditional mad repertoire to actually zoom in on what does that mean? How does my neck inform the way that this exercise is gonna go as well as get clear on how do I stand on my shoulders with confidence and no fear around my neck. So with that said, we’re going to start with a bit of a standing warm up using our hands to traction the neck. So go ahead and interlock your fingers. Place your hands behind your head. And you can start with your feet in a pilates stance. Heels touching, toes slightly apart just for a wider base of support and a sense of connection between the legs.
And then from there, I like to call this the cannon ball activation. I push my head back into the hands to the point where I feel traction down my neck. And in fact, if I were to let go with my hands, my head, which is cannonball fling right back behind me, Your elbows are allowed to come forward slightly so that your shoulders can relax down, and you wanna use this to really traction your neck long. So you’re pulling your head somewhat up from here. And then we’ll do a very gentle neck circle, bringing your chin to your chest first feel the back of your spine getting longer. Once you start feeling the stretch and traction, move down towards the bottom of your neck, just roll right back up. To completely upright, still maintaining that pressure.
So even as we come forward, we’re not really letting the hands take over and pull the neck. We’re resisting with the head start to finish. So going again, just chin over chest. We’re going to start our circles here. So once you feel like the stretch is pulling to the base of the neck, start to bring your right ear towards your right shoulder, still maintaining the resistance with your head, the hands cradling the head, until you look all the way up towards the ceiling. So we come around to the right. We look slightly up. The chin moving away from the chest even here still pushing head and hands together, travel all the way to the left side until we have chin on chest again.
And, again, making sure that we’re not letting the hands pull the chin down, we’re resisting with the head and then come back up from there. Fully upright. We’ll do it a little quicker to the other side first. Chin over chest, rolling down, stretching to the base of the neck. Take a turn to the left side. And this is a relatively small circle.
It’s very tempting to let the entire upper body and rib cage move. You want to isolate the movement into the neck till your chin meets your chest, and you lift yourself back up. And we have one more each way, chin over chest rolling down. Rolling to the right. Again, smaller than you think, really feeling the traction down the sides of the neck dynamically changing as you travel all the way up and around till your chin is on your chest and then pushing the head back into the hands, you upright your spine again, to go one last time. Chain over chest.
Notice how the rest of your spine feels here over to the left, left ear to left shoulder. Chin to ceiling away from the chest all the way around to the right. Coming back to center, and lifting yourself back up. Let’s release the arms down. So now that we have our neck a little warmed up, we’re going into the 100, which means that we might start getting into crunchy places with our next.
So for the focus of this class, I want us to really start thinking about, like, How can I monitor the right position of curling for my neck that doesn’t feel constricted? So come on to the front of your mat. And lower yourself down onto your back. So we’re going to light on flat completely. I’m gonna reach the arms overhead to start. So once you’re down there, allow your arms to go overhead. Give yourself a nice little stretch. Press the legs together.
Stretch your fingers one way. Your toes the other. We’re gonna leave the legs down. For a couple of curls. So the arms lift up the head, neck, and shoulders follow, and we roll up to the shoulder blade tips.
We’re gonna stay here for a full inhale and exhale with no additional movement focusing on keeping the passageway for our breath, the front of our throat, nice and open and well positioned so your breath can flow freely. From there, release the head back down, stretch your arms over your head to set it up again. Deep breath into prepare. Use the egg cell to lift yourself up. As you stay here for a breath or 2, start to make little adjustments with your head and play around with this idea of retracting your head like you had that pair of hands behind it still from earlier.
And if that gives you a different relationship to holding the weight of the head, release back down, stretch your arms up and back over your head, And let’s take one more of these arms up and forward chin over chest, letting the shoulder blades leave and clear the ground holding that c curve from the center, but again, with a focus on the neck and the well-being of your breath. And then release your head down, stretch your arms over your head, going into your hundreds. So you choose your working level for your legs, Same lift to start, arms up, head neck and shoulders lift, find a working level for your legs, drive them together, stretch them out, and begin to pump, breathing in, 2, 3, 4, 5 XL 2, 3, 4, 5 inhale, and exhale. That those shoulders be really free, but again, start focusing on that neck alignment and how it might change as the exercise progresses halfway through breathing in switching up and forward through the arms, reaching far through the toes, legs pressing together. And every now and then, remind yourself of your focus for the neck.
One more breath in. Nice. XL 2, 3, 4, 5. Release everything down. Stretch your arms over your head. Our first roll up will be without a strap, arms up and forward, and over chest, peel yourself off the ground.
But since we have a strap on these mats, you go ahead and place that over your feet. Totally doable without a strap if you don’t happen to have one. But if you do a highly recommended, it makes life a little easier. Life’s hard enough. Press your legs together.
Lift your spine up nice and tall. Roll yourself back down. Let’s start it from there with a nice sense of rhythm. Also, still focusing on maintaining that space in the front of the throat, inhale, lift up, roll yourself forward, exhale, stretch over the legs. Come back down with control, inhaling, pulling the strap with the feet, unroll the spine, reach the arms over your head to start again, inhale lift, Ex, they are round over the legs.
Key pushing the heels away from you as you roll down inhale. On switch back over your head. This looks great. Let’s go a little quicker. Inhale. Fold forward.
Roll back down, hanging onto that strap, unroll the spine reach the arms overhead. Last two up and forward. Pulling the strap with the feet as if you’re hanging off of them one last time, arms up and forward, chin over chest, roll over the legs with control, roll down. Reach the arms back and then shake the strap off your feet and hold on to the corners of your mat with your hands. So if you’re in a position to grab around them and keep your arms mostly outstretched. Try to go to that place.
If you need to bend your elbows for this to become doable, you can always screwed back a little bit. Alright? If you’re on a flat mat at home, you can drive your fist overhead into the floor as well. If you’re on an elevated mat, this gives us some really nice traction to work with. We’re not doing a full rollover yet. We’re just going into a little bit of a hanging, connection of our grip strength down the arms into our back, which will help us later with our tripod.
Your legs lift up to a ninety degree angle. You pull with both hands as if you’re trying to slide back over your mat towards the back of it and you lower the legs down to 45 degrees maybe even a little bit lower. The lower the legs, the harder you pull connecting your back, deepening your shoulder blades down, pressing your head into the mat, exhale legs lift to 90. Do that again. Pull the legs away from the body. You’ve tried to get really heavy on your shoulder blades and head Exale pull the legs back to 90 degrees.
So it’s like our double straight leg stretch with the arms supporting us. Lower the legs again. Stretch them away from the center, keeping the ribs against the mat, exhale, pull the legs back up. Beautiful ladies one more time. Pull as you lower, pull as you lift.
From there, bend your knees in place, your feet flat on the mat and let your arms come down by your sides. We’re going into a little shoulder bridge moment, not to do a shoulder bridge, but to Get a little bit clearer on that tripod that I keep talking about. What is that? It’s the head and it’s your two shoulder blades. Your arms press into the mat to support the tripod we’re building. Your feet, push into the floor to lift your hips up, and then we are on our tripod. So go ahead and press your feet down, lift your hips up.
And just feel by way of pressing your arms down, how your shoulder blades deepen into the mat, and then against that, also press your head ever so gently into the mat. Similarly to how you pushed your head into your own hands in the very beginning. And as you roll your spine back down, try to keep that energy going. So your shoulder blades deepening, your head gently tractioning into the mat. Until you release your hips down, you go again. Press the hips up.
Let that tripod be informed by your arms pushing back too so your chest remains open. And again, especially if you’re not used to pushing your head back actively play with that as we go one more time. Feed press down, hips lift up. The arms push back to expand the chest. Gentle push back of the head, like a little neck pull, and then we roll down through the spine till the hips land close to the feet. Beautiful.
Now we’re gonna put some of these things together into the actual rollover. Again, I like to have my hands overhead holding on to the corners of the mat if that’s available. Just again, because it just highlights a bit where those shoulder blades are and how you can use your back to really slam on the brakes as we roll down. We’re gonna start again with the legs up at 90 degrees. Bring your legs to a forty five degree angle or lower wherever you can make maintain that strong pull overhead. And then we go into our rollover.
The legs lift up. Pull with the hands to lift yourself into your rollover position open the legs as wide as your mat now, especially on the way down, reengage the pole. Like, you’re pulling your head towards the end of the mat, in opposition to your spine coming down. Circle the legs together and go again up and over. Very good. Open the legs. Pull with the arms to decelerate the coming down.
We’ll work them nice and slow today. One more time together and up, rolling over Open the legs. Use the pull of your arms and the connection to your back to decelerate. We’re gonna reverse the pattern of the legs, open to lift, circle up and over, press the legs together, pull to roll down. Two more times. You can keep going at that rhythm, I wanna draw your attention back to the back of your head and how gently pressing it into the mat can actually benefit the sense of shoulder blade, and shoulder stand control that we’re gonna need for variations that we do later, like our jackknife and so forth. Bring the legs all the way down from here.
You can keep your arms there if you like that sense of sensation, bring your right leg straight up to the ceiling, and we’ll go into a one leg circle. Bring the leg across. Allow the hip to lift circling and twisting through the low back to come back through center. Four more times across down, around, and up. Now, even here, you can still use those arms to pull to connect your back and find your shoulder blades to head tripod supporting you here one more time down around and up and then reverse. Open the leg circle it down across and lift.
It’s on the crossing where your hip is allowed to lift. In fact, I’ll encourage you to find that twist in your back and then think of your standing leg, the one that’s on the floor, press it out strongly. Nice. Lower the leg. Switch to the other side. Left leg lifts, bring it across, twist, and circle it down, around, and up, nice, and 4, down, around, and up.
Every now and then check-in with your hands, and let go of that pool. Make sure you keep it going one more time across down around and up and reverse. Open the leg, circle it down across and pull it back through center. Even here, allow your head to press gently into the mat. See if you can traction the back and sides of your neck one more time. Open down across and lift.
Bring the leg down. Finally, let your hands come off the edges and then pick yourself up into your rolling like a ball position, lift up your arms, head neck and shoulders, Find the ball at the top, find your balance, grab a hold, and now have some fun with it. Roll yourself onto that tripod. And pull yourself forward to come back up. Again, rolling back. We’re not necessarily suspending in that moment as we roll back, but already here feel as though you’re approaching a stand on your shoulders. Go again, rolling back and back up. Now that we’ve had our head on the map for quite a while and actually pushed it down, keep on going. 3 more. We don’t have to be afraid of letting the head approach the matter.
It doesn’t have to land. It doesn’t have to touch, but we can roll a little farther back than we think. One more time. Beautiful. Pull yourself forward and up. Let’s grab the right shin with both hands, left leg long, bring yourself down for your single leg stretch We have our single and double leg stretch to get our center nice and strong, switch to the other side and switch, establish your rhythm, establish the heaviness of your hips evenly weighted on both sides.
So there’s no rocking from side to side and switch switch pull pull and pull pull and pull pull, elbows nice and wide. So that space between your shoulder blades really gets to widen. And since head and neck and shoulders are up, check-in with the passageway for your breath. Is it nice and open or constraint? Nice. One more time. Right? Or one more time left, then bring both knees into your chest, right into double leg, stretch arms and legs, extend away from each other. Big circle of the arms, knees draw up and in.
4 more inhale reach, exhale knees up and in squeeze tied for 3, exhale to return last 2. Still checking in on that deep breath, especially the exhale. Make sure it’s not constricted. Last one draw it in rock yourself up to a seated position. And for today, we’re gonna use the strap for our spine stretch forward. Alright? So again, can do it without a strap at home, but if you have one, use it. Alright. We’re gonna do a short box variation on our spines stretch.
There’s also a little bit of neck pull in here. We’re gonna take our hands and to lock them and bring them behind the head again like we did in the very beginning. Now, the tendency for us typically is to open the elbows really nice and wide. I wanna encourage you to bring them forward enough so that your shoulders kind of glide down naturally. Alright? We established that cannon ball. Again, your head pushing back into your hands.
We’ll start with our spine stretch. Take your exhale, round over your legs, If you were to let go of your head, you would come back to an upright spine, slowly roll yourself back up, take a deep breath in at the top, and go again. Exale. Your head pushes up into the hands as you round over the legs, stretching forward, stretching down. So it never quite feels like you’re pulling your head to the knees instead you’re pushing your head up into the hands, to lift, deep breath in. One more time, exhale rounding up and over pulling the strap. Now from here, we roll halfway back like we would on the short box on the reformer.
So keeping the spine around, roll yourself right to your bottom rib Keep hanging onto the strap with both feet and then pull yourself forward and up, still pushing the head back into the hands. That is really tough to do slow as we go a little faster. Rolling yourself back halfway. Excel. Come forward. Check in with the openness in the front of your throat for 2 more rolling back halfway.
Nice and strong, exhale. Pull yourself forward and down. One more time rolling back. Except hold yourself forward and up. Now sit up super tall.
Hinging the spine with the same sense of engagement through the upper back, hands, and the head hinging back and coming forward. Take a deep breath in to hinge back. Except pull yourself forward and up. Think that for every inch you lean back, you wanna pull your head far away from the hips by at least 2 inches. Let’s take 3 more deep breath in, becoming taller and taller, excel up. And 2, really utilizing the strap if you have it. Otherwise, your range of motion might just be cut a little shorter, and that’s totally cool.
One more time. Take it back. Lift it up, still keeping the hands behind the head, still keeping the legs together. If you need to micro bend the knees, that’s fine. We’re going side to side by stretching the spine slightly forward without rounding. Keep pressing your head back into your hands. Now shift towards the right.
Stretching the right side of your torso long shifting left hip still heavy come back through center. Same thing. Go forward to go left, pulling the strap with both feet, still pressing the head back into the hands and come through center. Forward to go. Right? One more time each side. Nice. And back through center.
And one more time, still tractioning the neck Come back through center. Final one twists to hinge, hinging the spine back on a twist pull yourself back up, untwist at the top, and go the other way. Twist as far as you can without shifting the feet, hinge back Keep the twist as you lift and twist at the top twice more. Twist and reach back. Nice. And lift yourself up.
Final one twist and reach back. Pull yourself back up untwist at the top. That your arms relax and shake out your legs for a second. Nicely done. You can shake the strap off. We’re not gonna need it.
Might come back later, but not yet. So it’s your arms out long and fun to view. We’re gonna transition into the open leg rocker. So on this one, we’re just like enrolling like a ball, approaching that tripod of head to shoulder blades again. This time with the leverage of our legs, we might just get there. Alright? Let’s see.
Stretch your arms and legs forward, roll yourself halfway back. And once you feel like your legs start to lift off the mat, use it, draw the knees in, bring your ankles towards your hands by bending the knees, and then unfold your legs from here any amount. Right? You both have enough space behind you to go into your open leg rocker from here, establishing your c curve, pressing your legs and hands together, finding the balance. That’s totally fine. You kind of meant to fall out of it, right? You roll yourself back onto your shoulder blade tips lifting your hips up, approaching the tripod of your head and shoulder blades, and you lift back up to the top.
At your own rhythm, go back and forth a few more times. Now, again, by allowing ourselves to go back a little farther than we used to maybe to the point where your head is starting to graze the mat, Right? As long as you have the control to then come back up, it allows you to actually find a moment of suspension that helps you to then come back up into your balance. Let’s take 3 more rolling back onto the shoulders, maybe beyond, lift back up. Beautiful, and 2 rolling back. Lifting up. Final one.
Press your hands and legs together. Lift yourself all the way up into your balance. Close the legs at the top. We’re gonna tease her out. Arms stretch towards the toes.
You roll yourself back down. At the bottom, hug your knees into your chest. Just give yourself a moment of rest. Nicely done. For our cork screw, we’re going back to reaching arms back overhead And just as a reminder, if you don’t have something to hold on to driving your fist back into the floor behind you is very effective here as well. The legs go straight up to 90 degrees. We’ve been here before.
We lowered the legs to 45 degrees. We start with a rollover. So you bring your legs back up find your shoulder stand on your head on your shoulder blades that your legs lift up ever so slightly for our quirks. We we come down on the right side first doesn’t have to be a big circle. I instead want you to focus more on standing on those three points shoulder blades in the head.
Start to finish, left side down, around and up on the right. Still keep pulling with both of those arms to utilize in the twists. So you feel supported to lift. You feel resisted as you come down. Left side down, right side up, one more time each way.
Right side down. Left side up. Final one. Looking good. Left side down. Right side up.
Find your center come down the middle again pulling with those hands like you’re dragging yourself back that your legs come all the way down from here. Roll yourself up to a seated position, and we go into our saw real quick. Hands behind the head for this one as well, just to give us a chance to find that twist through the entire spine all the way up to the very top right between your ears, which is where your neck is, which is where your spine starts. Press your head back into your hands, twist to the right. Now with that sense of pushing the head back round over your right leg, feel like you’re puffing out your spine using the power of your head, retracting into the hands, and then slowly rebuild, untwist at the top, and twist it to the left twist, head pushes into the hands as you round over the left leg.
Find your hips into the floor. Your heels pressing out to boost you back up back to center. A little quicker to the right. Egg say rounding down. Inhale it back up, twist left, exhale around over your left leg. One more time each way to the top and twist Twist to the right, round over, back to center, all the way left, twist, round over, Take it back through center, come down, feet stay where they are.
You can flip over into your stomachs next. So we’re gonna give our tripod a little break, as we are in a prone position on our stomachs here, but especially when we’re approaching our Swan, neck alignment becomes yet another thing to watch out for and other rules apply. So I want you to start with your, hands on top of one another, like you may a pillow, bring your forehead, your hairline on top of your hands, and starting from there, press your hips into the mat, your legs draw close together, lengthen your legs back behind you so much. They start to lift of the mat. And then with your hands staying with your forehead, pick up your chest as well. So your hands float up off the ground with you.
Now same as with our hands behind the head, since you have your hands right here in front of your forehead, push those 2 together, forehead pushing down, hands drawing back into the head. Use that to lengthen through the back of the neck. See if you can find a bit more lift. And then lower everything back down. So it’s a very small motion.
You really want to focus more on lengthening and lifting everything to the same height your head and your heels rather than coming up super high on top or on the bottom. So let’s do that again. Hand stay with the forehead. You pick yourself up. Elbows nice and wide.
Hips pressed down. The heels lift to the same height as your head. No higher. Feel that energy in the back of your body from the very top to the bottom and then release back down. Excellent. One more time. Press your hips down.
Press your head and hands into each other. Find length to lift. Stay for an inhale. Come even longer on your exhale and then release everything down Now arms go out to the side into a t. That’s right. From here, we go into a proper swan, but we’re building it up from that same sense of alignment through the neck.
So imagine you still had your hands where they just were pressing down through the forehead lengthening through the back the neck, then lift everything up, your chest, your thighs, your hands, your fingers, head, and heels are on the same height that your feet load off the mat as well. From here, rock your chest up and die forward and back six times 6 and up 5 and up. Nice. 4 and up. Continue to lengthen out through the back of your neck. 2, up 1. Up, really sit back over your heels. Amazing. Give yourself a count of stretch.
Push through the hands that you had completely relaxed here for a second. Next step is our single leg kick. So come forward again. Prop yourself up on your elbows. And move your elbows away from you far enough that you can let your thighs float about a millimeter of the mat. If that feels too wrinkly in the lower back, you can always move your elbows out a bit in front of you to give yourself more space, but let’s really hone in on that hip extension at the bottom.
Neck in line with the spine. Your chest pulls forward by way of your elbows pulling back on the mat and then the right heel begins. Kick it twice. 1, 2, switch. 1, 2, switch. 1, 2, keep on going. The ideas try and keep both eyes lifted start to finish while also pressing the elbows down, dragging them back so the chest remains open head on top and left left. One more said right, right, and left, left. Stretch both legs back, take your hands to your lower back, and bring your forehead straight down onto the mat.
Without a turn of the neck today, we’re gonna come back to this position. So your hands can just rest on your lower back, elbows nice and bent exactly so that your shoulder blades widen by way of your elbows falling down. Bring your legs close together, lift both of them a millimeter off the mat. Kick twice. 1, 2. Stretch your feet and hands back.
Your chest forward and up in opposition. Neck in line with the extension. Release the hands, head straight down. Go again. K. 1, 2, feedback, hands, back, chest forward, and up in opposition. And release. Again, kick once, kick twice, stretch arms and legs one way.
Chest the opposite way, neck in line, Release one more time, kick 1, kick 2, hands back feedback, chest lifts up, up, Up and release. Here’s another counter stretch such as our back over your heels. Beautiful work, you guys. Now next up is our neck pool, which obviously has neck alignment and tripod written all over it. It’s also the exercise we do before we go into our high scissors and bicycle.
And I think that is because for scissors and bicycle, we will be standing for an extended period of time on head and shoulders. So let’s think of that in our neck pull. You can use the strap again. They beat me to it. This time you can pull the strap slightly apart with your feet by opening them a little wider Hence behind the head, we go into the full exercise.
We’ll start it from a seated position round over your legs. Remember to push your head up into your hands, sit up tall, round your spine back down until you’re completely flat, let your elbows open at the bottom, pull with the feet and go inhale lift up. Exit round over the legs. Sit up tall and roll yourself back down. Down, down like you’re hanging off the strap.
Go again up and forward. Exale at the top. Lift to inhale. Exale to roll down. Three more times lifting up.
So even as you stretch over the legs and as you come back up, your head is pushing actively as you roll down same rules apply. Your head continuously tractioning itself with the help of your upper body. Lifting up. This is our last one. Roll yourself back. And down, release the head.
Arms come down by your sides. You can shake the straps of your feet And here we are for scissors and bicycle. Bring you a leg straight up to a ninety degree angle. Find a roll over with your arms by your sides. So we’ve built some trust into our tripod already, but we have a little extra support by way of our forearm.
So I want you to bend your arms, bring the palms of your hands against your hips with your fingers pointing up towards your butt cheeks. Essentially. Right? It shouldn’t really feel like you’re making a shelf with your hands to sit on. You kind of just wanna lean against it. What’s keeping you from falling into the hands is the uplift of your center.
So as you lift your legs closer to a ninety degree angle relative to your mat, See if you can avoid putting any weight into your elbows. If you can keep yourself almost lifted out of them, which is what our control balance will be later. Even here with your shoulder blades down, can you gently push your head into the mat so the front of your throat stays Now let one late fall away from the center for your scissors to start. Switch. Once you’ve reached your end range, and go again. Switch. Keep that rhythm going and switch.
Go into a mode of exploration of really standing on your shoulder blades and your head and not so much on your elbows, even though that seems the invitation here, right, to really let the elbows hold us, but it feels kind of wrong when it happens. See if you can keep yourself lifted away from the hands and elbows Instead, press the shoulder blades down, push your head down. Go a little quicker. 4, switch and 3, switch and 2. Switch and 1, change it into your bicycle, bend one knee at the bottom, bring it through, and cycle on through. But again, be more fascinated with how the weight shifts in and out of your elbows onto your tripod that at some point, you could do this with your arms as long by your sides. 3, 2. 1, let’s go the opposite direction, reverse.
Check-in with the passageway for your breath since we’re here, right, That should never really feel constricted when we’re standing on our shoulders. Then lift both legs up, release your arms by your side, and roll yourself down with control. Very nice. Hug your knees into your chest. Give yourself a squeeze and a hug for a second. Maybe a little rock side to side.
We’re going into our shoulder bridge next. So when you’re ready, place your feet close to your seat on the mat, arms long by your side. We lift the hips up. We’ve been here be 4. This time we change how we use our hands.
We’re gonna wrap our palms around our belt lines. Alright? You basically make a spine corrector with your hands feel like you’re pulling your hips towards the feet away from your head. Using your forms and your hands to create traction. Now, right leg extends along the floor, and we go for 6 vigorous kicks, kick it up, press it down. And 5, press it up, press it down for 4.
Think of your standing foot that left one. Keep it nice and steady. And again, focus on head to shoulder blades. Can you stay wide between the shoulder blades? Final one, drag the leg in once you have it down, place your foot to the floor.
Other side, left leg long, kick it up 6. And down. Kick it up 5 and down. 4 and down. Keep the space between your shoulder blades nice and open, gentle push back of the head one more time up and down, bend your knee, release those arms, and slowly roll yourself all the way down. Getting ready for spine.
Twist sit on up. Again, we can use the strap lift yourself into your seated position, put the strap over your feet. And just because of the theme for today, hands behind the head yet again, we’re going into our twist, which we’ve done before. So we add a little pulse to these. Alright? Bring your legs close together, pull on the strap, lift yourself up maybe slightly forward. And with your exhale twist to the right for a policy 3, little deeper. 2, a little longer and deeper. 1, come back through center. Take it to the left.
XL twist left. And too tall or 3 inhale, lift to center. Take it to the right. Twist 1 and 2 and 3 inhale, lift through center. Keep pushing your head back into your hands. 2, one inhale, lift through center, one more time each side to the right, and 2, and 3, coming back final 13 and to highest and tallest one come back through center, arms forward, roll yourself back down, and shake the strap off your feet once you’re there. How are we doing? Doing alright?
We have our jackknife next, which is just a rhythmic challenge to our tripod. Again, we’re gonna slow down just a little bit, because this is a moment to really zoom in on how we stand on those shoulders. Let’s take our hands back overhead. Let’s take our legs back to 90 degrees. Another moment. Right? The shape comes back quite a bit in traditional Pilates. Lower the legs 45 or lower wherever you can maintain that grip strength overhead and then roll yourself over. Now the idea is your hips stay exactly where they are as if you add a pair of hands behind them, like we did in the previous exercise.
Instead of bringing the hips closer to your head, Just dial your legs straight up to the ceiling. Try to touch your toes to the ceiling without bringing your hips closer to you. It’s all center. It’s all arms and it’s your tripod of head to shoulder blades. Now roll down with your feet above the eyes. Lengthening the lower body away, lower the legs, and then go again, roll up, roll over Keep the hips where they are and use the backs of your legs to pick your legs up, stretch your feet up and away from you to point where it feels like I have to come down now and then just slam on the brakes.
Use those arms. Decelerate the return. Let’s go a little quicker. Legg’s lower. Roll up. Lift up.
Take your time as you come down. Monitor if one arm is pulling more than the other. Try to keep that even. Keep pressing your head into the mat one more time. Roll over, lift up.
Oh, with the hands. Create space in the front of the throat, roll through the spine, let your legs come all the way down at the end of this one. Nice work. We’ll do our side kicks next, and we’re gonna give that a bit of a rest. But we will have our hands behind our head, so there’s an opportunity there. So roll onto your right side first.
Take both hands behind your head and line yourself up with the end of your mat, right, especially if you’re on a high mat, make sure you have enough space for your feet to come slightly forward. And since we have our hands in this position, right, we will always use it quite actively. And in this one, I want you to use it as if you’re pulling your head away from the hips, alright, creating traction and length not just in the neck, but through the entire spine. Your top leg lifts up, and it switches back behind you to start. Let your chest lift forward and up against the leg reaching back really make this a full bodied event.
We just go forward and back into a double kick 1, 2, and stretch it back behind you, lift the Go again. Kick it. 1, 2, stretch it back. Press your head into your hands. Get longer on top. Kick, kick, stretch it back. The out of the waist, kick, kick, stretch it down, stretch it back, head pushing into the head one more time, kick, kick, stretch it up, stretch it back, and then from here roll over to the other side. Do these ones relatively quick focusing on that side activation as we use our hands for traction in the neck.
And let that determine again where your head is supposed to go here. Right? We’re highlighting the top of the spine pull it away from the bottom of the spine, top leg lifts, top leg reaches back, that the front of your hip open, that you chest almost lift into a bit of extension against that when you’re ready. Go. Kick it once. Kick it twice. Reach it back and up. Go again, kick it forward forward, stretch it back and up, 4 to go. Hips staying on top of each other, But again, for today, let your leg go wild and really focus more on what your hands and your head are up to and how you can create traction and length up there. One more time.
Kick it forward forward. Stretch it up and back behind you and release it down. Have a seat face in towards the center of the room for teaser. Now teaser has nothing to do with our head or with our head and shoulders in that regard, but boomerang does. So we’re gonna put those 2 together today. Alright?
Almost at the head. We’re almost at the Stretch up and out of your waist. I like to start my teaser seated. Roll yourself halfway back to the point as an open leg rock or where your legs become light enough for you to pick them up and then stretch your fingers and your toes the same direction. Keep lifting out of your waist so much.
Your legs start coming down and then tilt forward and over your legs end up in the end of your So that’s just how teaser portion. We’ll do that one more time before we add on. Lift yourself up. The assignment is to find your c curve, carry it back and till your legs start to float, then finding your teaser at the top. This is the shape that we’re gonna continue holding on to in a little bit.
Now let your legs come down and your torso come over the legs. Nice. And now we’re going to combine that into a very simple variation on Boomerang. We’re gonna find our teaser, hold it, roll into a rollover position, arms by our sides, find our teaser again, and release. Alright? Let’s see how this is gonna go. So no complicated choreography. That’s the win in my book, but we’re going to focus obviously on our little tripod and neck alignment.
So reach the arms forward. Find that teaser shape again by rolling back, picking up the legs, reaching for the toes, Now hold this shape this distance towards the two legs. Roll onto your shoulders. Let the legs come closer to you. Find your arms on the floor to find your rollover shape.
Establish your tripod, head pushing back, shoulder blades down, let your arms reach away from the floor to find your teaser again, Gonna hold it there for a sec, reestablish it, then let your legs come down, stretch over your legs to finish. There was one repetition, and we’ll do 2 more. Lift yourself up nice and tall. Find that teaser again. Stretch your legs away from the center to find your position. Take it with you now.
Let your arms come down by your sides, roll up and over, stand on your shoulders, push your head gently into the mat, and then let your arms reach to find your teaser again, lifting yourself up so much. The legs have to come down so much. You round over because this is your teaser shape as well. You lift yourself up one more time. We go into our teaser, into our rollover, and then we’ll stay there for a little bit, for a little game time. Jack knife your legs up from here.
So keep pressing your arms into the mat. Stand on your tripod. Lift your right leg up and away from you like you’re doing scissors again, but this time without the control of your hand. And switch your legs. Nice.
And switch one more time. And hold. So staying with one leg down, can you reach both arms back behind you? The answer can totally be no. We’re just testing. Of this is gonna go.
Can you reach for that foot, possibly hold on to it? And as you pull it towards the floor, stretch the other one further up, and then can you switch your legs? Pulling down, pulling up, and switch again. Now think of your jackknife and how your hips were lifted away from the shoulders, how your head is pressing down. Your shoulder blades are wide. Play around it with it a couple more times.
Ultimate test for your tripod. Let’s do one more switch, and then we’re gonna come up to standing from here to close it out So allow yourself to roll down, land on your feet, come to standing any way you know how. Come to the middle of the space so you can give me a high 5. You guys were incredible. Thank you so much for sharing that with me. And I hope you at home had a really good sense of how to translate these mat exercises to become a little bit more aware of how we can stand on those shoulders in a safe and fun way.
Thank you guys. See you next time.
