Stabilize and Mobilize Mat

Hi everyone. I am here for a workout with you and today we'll need the foam roller and some hand weights or the weighted balls. And so use your discretion if you want weights or balls. Uh-huh. So we're gonna start with the foam roller behind our back for a little shoulder opening and today's class is really just a a movement class. Let's just enjoy, you know, moving with the roller and focusing a little bit once we get on the mat of stability tea and then some good juicy mobility. Okay.

So we'll just have some fun. So let's start out with a pilates stance alignment and have the roller right against your sacrum on your back, the palms of your hands against the roll. You can see how I'm doing that. So that right away sets our upper arm in external rotation. And don't force it. This is probably a lot for some of you just standing here. So do what you can.

If this is not available for you, you may may not wanna use the roller or just do what you can. You might even have to just turn your arms in a little bit more neutral for it, but, those of us that are working on more shoulder opening, go ahead and and try it. Okay? So let's just take a nice deep inhale. We're gonna do a roll down you guys. So just take your head down and start to flex your spine. Go as far as you can. And on the way down, just check and see if you can keep those shoulders rolled back, letting the crown of my head drop, the back of my brain really drop down.

Shifting your weight forward slightly and just check those shoulders again. And then here we go to roll up. So I'm really pressing my sacrum now up against that roller on the way up and just follow your eyes forward on the floor in front of your feet, just straight out in front, and then we look right at each other. Let me take a deep breath. Standing up a little bit taller.

So as you start to feel more warm on these roll downs, you can you can work on more shoulder rotation if you'd like. You can work on opening that up even more and more muscular effort of it, or you can just hold a roller. Let's go ahead and roll back up. We'll take two more of these roll downs. So this time, I'm gonna let my chest come not just up to standing tall.

I'm gonna lift my sternum upward a little bit. It's to start opening up through that upper back and upper chest. Rolling down, get a sense of that hollowing inward of those abdominal muscles up off of the legs, use that to start rolling up Okay. I'm dropping that heavy tailbone down the back of the legs to the feet. Once again, look forward. And as you if you're trying to gaze up, this might be where if you're ready to press your arms against the roller just a little bit.

And then one more time to roll down. Hollowing the tummy. You can do the scoop image if you'd like that. I like to think of my stomach coming up away from the legs away from the floor and roll. All the way back up.

This time again, that last opportunity here just in warming up, lift your chest, rotate your shoulders a little bit more and then stay on the center. So I'm just gonna slightly turn profile And then you guys, most of you know that when you watch my classes, I like to aim the thumb somewhere, for more rotation. So I'm gonna change my hand now to pinky finger right against the roller thumb facing back and then you can kinda see how that sets those external rotators a little bit more in work here. So taking your legs apart, we're just gonna do a very very subtle little rotation of the of the body and I'm pivoting on one foot. I'm keeping the roller against my hips though, the back of my sacrum. So it's not a huge torso rotation.

If anything as you spiral and you're standing this way, contract that glute there. It'd be my right one. It'd be your left one probably if you're watching. Okay. Against the roller. To start sensing that because we want those that hip extension when we get on the roller and on the mat in a little bit. Okay? So just a few more.

This is nothing really fancy. You're just kind of feeling some weight shift The contact of your hands against the roller, the roller against your sacrum, okay, and just changing your eye line. Let's do four more. So there's one and two. It's a nice shoulder opener. If anything else, or if nothing else, I should say. Okay.

And then just a few just warming into your hips, like eight of them, just bend and stretch. So lightly pressing the pinky finger edge of your hand against your roller and the roller against your sacrum. Yeah. And then once we get down on the mat, we'll we'll do that shortly. We're gonna start sitting on the roller just so you know what's about to happen. Okay? So everyone just stand right there and I'm gonna lower my roller and let's go ahead and get down to the mat.

I'm gonna put my roller up on this high mat. Luckily, you are not on this high mat. So it challenges my steadiness and my balance, but where we'll start everybody is sitting on a very very very bottom edge of your foam roller. Grab your weights and we'll start sitting up tall. We are gonna do a rollback. So this right away starts challenging our sense of stability as we mobilize our spine.

If there's a way to kind of combine the two things, meaning stabilize that you don't roll off to the side and also stabilize the dart and roller. So if you wanna put your arms out in front of you holding the weights, if you're ready go for it, you can also just set them on your legs. I'm gonna go here. So let's take a deep breath. So as we start going back, we'll take a a slow one.

Push the feet down on the mat and forward. Don't pull them backward. Okay? Push them forward a little bit. It looks like you're on that moving sidewalk at the airport and you're rolling it your body down. So hopefully success is achieved and you've arrived and you haven't slithered off. Let's try rolling back up.

So start lowering the arm weights. Pick up your head and your chest. Now might be a time to pull your heels toward you. Pull your heels toward you in imaginative way. How'd you do? I didn't fall off so that's a good a good sign. So here we go again.

It's that nice slow roll. You can change your arms to palms face in if that feels better on your shoulders. Really slow. Remember the feet matter so reach the feet kind of like you're trying to stretch your mat forward articulating until you arrive and we roll back up So arms begin to lower. Can lift your head round, pull your heels towards you so you access your hamstrings and that relationship up into your abdominals and spine.

Two more times. Heels push forward like you're stretching your mat, gazing forward, taking your time, creating strength and that mobility there coming up arms, pick up the head, you flex the neck, you flex the spine, you can pull your heels towards you access your hamstrings. One more and we'll stay down this time. You probably know you're not just doing one exhale. Take as many inhale exhale cycles as you need.

Alright. So let's pause here with her arms straight up for a moment and just let the shoulder blades settle against that roller. I'm gonna change my foot position, step them back now. Heels a little bit more, in line with the sits bones. And in fact you can let your knees rest together if you'd like. That is a bit more steady.

If you want that challenge though, that's what we're here for. Keep those knees apart. Okay. So open to close the arms. Pretty simple but again, we're trying not to roll off obviously. So we're stabilizing, but we aren't trying to mobilize other things at the same time. That would be the collarbone chest, shoulder girdle, We're trying to keep our ribs relatively stable against the roller.

Breathe in and exhale close. Okay. Two more times. Big white. So the arms are not necessarily going down to the floor. Amy understanding about the height of the roller, feel free to go lower if you want. Don't have to.

Just recognize how stable your trunk is while your arms are in the moving action. Okay? Now let's do some scissor arm. I'm gonna turn and keep my palms facing in. One arm comes down by the hip. Again, not all the way to the floor. The other arm goes right alongside the ear, feel that wonderful stretch on that upward side, and then they meet in the middle, and then they just pass.

So the one up on my ear, I'm allowing my shoulder blade to come with me. I'm not pulling my lat down in other words. Let it elongate and then come back through center. Okay. So again, you're stabilizing trunk, moving through the arms, and bring it up. And we can inhale on the lengthening, exhale.

Reach on. Let's go for four more old. We have a little quicker. Inhale. And exhale. But as you take a luxurious inhalation, it does slow down your tempo, and one more each arm, getting some good rhythm and reach, and last one. And then we're gonna move into some bending your elbows. Okay. So just bend your elbows like you've Havens the weights down, and then all I want you to do is externally rotate your upper arms again, and then rotate back to the first position.

This is just to get some ball and socket, the humerus in the shoulder girdle. I'm just gonna do four. Holding these weights for a while, I really want you to feel like you're holding more integrity from the back of the shoulder than your chest and not locking down in there. Okay. So there was your four. Now let's take the arms back up again.

Need a little helicopter arm, just a few. So go back to this scissor, one arm down, one arm up. It'll spiral of both of these arms out to that wide tee position where you started. Keep on going all the way around and they join back at the top. Okay. So then reverse it. The one that just came down, goes up, etcetera, all the way around, and start to kind of feel the mobility of your shoulder blades against the roller.

We wanna promote some mobility back there. You don't have to lock down the lats. Okay. Reach wide here. Reach wide all the way around and lift. And all we're doing is one more, guys.

Reach How why can you stretch your arms? Take up the space in your room? Oh, all the way around. So your arms might be getting a little tired, bend your elbows. Now let's bring our ankles and knees together. Take a breath.

Without destabilizing the rib cage and popping that up, just do a simple leg lift and put it down. We'll just do four of them. So exhale and then lift the leg. And just one more each side. So we're just warming up that hip joint where the action of lift occurs.

Now let's go back to the first leg, whichever one you started with, and hold it there. Feel where your elbows are on your mat and I want you to pull them in toward the roller a little bit. So once again, setting that shoulder in a little more external rotation. Okay. Pick up your head and your chest. You can do a little chest lift Okay.

Just kind of gaze, check things out. You'll feel pretty stable. It feels pretty good. Now concentrate on the leg that's down on the mat. And once again, I want you to not pull it towards you, but think of reaching it away that way. Okay, stretch your mat a little bit away that way.

And then what you'll have happen now is extend your leg to the ceiling as you lower your head. Okay? Pick the chest up as you bend the knee and just a couple more. So this is a stability challenge. Really rely on your standing leg down there on the mat.

Okay. It's like your foot is stuck. It can't really lift. Let's do one more time and pick it up, exhale. Pick up your head, I should say, and then lower it down. Okay. It stays down now.

Legg circle three times very small inward, down, around and left. Relay on the stability and the strength and connection of your standing leg on the mat. Alright. Three of the other way, they're very small. Whoop. This is about stability in the trunk. While we mobilize in the hip. That was my three. Okay.

Time for the other leg. So set that one down. Anch her that and then here goes to the other side just through your tabletop. Pick up your head and your chest. Make sure your hips are in a good position for yourself and then your standing leg again is reaching a little more forward energetically.

You're not pulling back. It could make you over arch your back. So I want you to feel that solid foot. Now as you lower your chest, the leg extends to the ceiling. Exale, fold the knee, lift up the chest.

Inhale lower it down. Nxa, you'll pick it up. And again one side should feel a little less easy. That's okay. This last one, we'll take it down and hold it there.

Okay. Three leg circles and in around and lift. Your last one, how you're relying on your solid standing leg. Hopefully, you are. Reverse your direction. Go into those external rotators of your shoulders. Last one. Okay. So I want you to bend that knee and put it down.

Pick up the other leg again through a folded knee and then straight up to the ceiling. Okay. Flex the ankle, everybody and just point flex your foot has something to do. Now, in opposition to this leg being up, we can keep it pointed. Take the opposite arm up. So you're gonna have two limbs straight up and two limbs bent and touching the mat. Okay? That's hard enough.

You can just repeat that or hold here if you'd like. I'm gonna do four times lowering the leg and lowering the arm. They go away from the center. Okay? So you wanna try to time it. Now, you can take your leg down in the mat if you're ready for that in your back. You certainly don't have to go that low.

Let's exhale up. Three more inhale as we lengthen. It feels so good. Exhaling up. Last two, feel free to flex your foot. Don't do anything you want with your ankle.

And lift. Nice to change inhale. So once again, the standing leg really helping me so that I don't lose control. Okay. Other side. So bend up the other knee Amy a nice straight leg up to the sky. The opposite arm that comes straight up that shoulder blade stays back, though you don't protract the scapula.

Okay? Flex and point your foot a few times. And then here we go. So timing it, arm and leg move at the same rate with length, the ribs stay against the roller, and we need an exhale to come up. Our stomach work. Inhale as we lengthen.

About thrusting the ribs, exhale, and I'm gonna flex the foot this time. And two more. Good work on the abdominals. Last one, And the next failing up. Okay. That's plenty of that.

Let's bend this elbow. Keep that knee up and bend it. Pick up the other knee. And let's just go for just a kind of a quick little change of rhythm, some toe taps. Okay. I'm just toes first.

And now 10 with some flex angles, n, two, n, three, four, five, six, and eight, n, nine, n, 10, and then just take it down. Okay. Stretch both of your legs long. Put both arms down. Let go of the weights for a second and just recognize you've got this really wonderful open hip angle. Kind of what we were doing standing with the sacrum against the roller. Lengthwise, but we had it, or widthwise. Now we've got it lengthwise. Okay.

So just recognize that openness, and then grab the weights again. One more round, bring both knees up, bend those elbows, tuck them close into the roller, pick up both legs, flex the ankles, and extend, and flex, and extend last two, flex and extend and flex and extend. Okay. Four times, external rotation of your femurs and back to parallel. And external rotation Havens parallel. So think of peeling the legs away from the midline, peeling it back to it one more time, you'll stay turned out and let's slowly take the legs apart. Hold that flex your legs and pull the legs together.

We'll do four, inhale as you open, exhale as you close, inhale as you open. We'll do something in a minute adding on to this, but in a slightly different position on the roller. This is plenty hard right now. Okay. And then point parallel, bend the knees, take your feet down. Take your arms down.

And then we probably should do a sit up, right? We should chest ourself and see. So walk your feet more forward, reach your arms up. Here we go guys lift up your head neck and chest and roll our way up to a successful sitting position. Okay. But the weights down, we may not need those for a bit. Okay. Maybe not at all at Amy more today.

So how I want us to work this In fact, I will probably just go there. Is sit facing Amy, put one hip right against your roller. I want you to turn your trunk toward it. Look right at it. The goal is that we can put our the center of our chest right on top of that roller.

Here we go. So roll it out. You've gotta stretch yourself to it. Now, it's it's a little odd I have to say because you're, you know, you're laying a roller in a twisted position. You could do one of two things. You could actually just come to here with your forehead on it.

That's fine. But what I'd really love to see if you can do is stretch this arm and turn away from that arm. I won't go all the way down with my cheek on the roller because I've got my microphone here. But if you can, everybody try it, put your cheek down. Okay. What I'll do for right now just for filming purposes is just here. But you'll notice if you've taken your head all the way through, you've got a cool spiral all the way through your back. You've mobilized into this really neat tail to head spiral and all the way even into your ear.

It's really lovely. Nothing happens other than being here. And you gotta take three to five breaths. Okay. So I'm just gonna long my arm a little bit more. Let's just enjoy the twist enjoy that twist.

Maybe this is something new that you've never done on your roller before. It feels really nice on a stack of pillows or a, a yoga bolster. I'm just saying. It feels really nice. The foam roller's a little bit, you know, not as forgiving. But it does give you something to achieve something that I love to think about is that central axis. So we are right in line with it.

We're not after the side. Okay. You know that. So then go ahead, walk your hands up. Now let's turn this, open up the legs into more of our mermaid sit, and we're gonna just carry on. Our spine's probably ready for a little bit of side bend. So just leaning. And then rotate.

This should feel a little easier than some days to rotate after you've just done that now and we'll come back up. We'll do a total of four. This is just have fun, lean, stretch. You do wanna turn your chest at central axis, rotate that rotate back to facing front and all the way up. I don't have a lot of pressure on my hand on the roller. In fact, you don't need any if you don't want any and turn and return and lift and just one more time and enjoy and twist.

Getting that nice sense of mobility through our thoracic spine. Okay? So let's take that the other way. I'm just gonna move around. We'll stay facing each other. Of course, Not always though. Don't fall off. Alright.

So we're right there, knees are stacked or feet are on the back side of your hips. One side is bound to feel different than the other. This is my different side. I'm turning Okay. Aim your chest for that center roller and you have to stretch your waist across it, stretch your waist, stretch your chest. Okay. Now I am gonna take advantage of the mic not being on this side and then follow that twist all the way through so you can maybe kinda glance and see.

Okay? Now I can tell on this side of my own body because I know myself so well, I'm not quite centered access on through my abdomen area. So I just wanna recalibrate a little and yep, make that adjustment. So I've just turned my stomach tissue a little bit more. My arm is reaching. Getting a length in the side body ribs. Three to five deep breath cycles, guys.

So what's mobilizing in this? Well, we're not stabilizing much. We are definitely mobilizing some tissue. Take one more and feeling a new exercise, new position on your foam roller. Okay. Come on up. And then move it here in your mermaid legs.

The hand is there, and we go to mobilizing into side bend and twist. Side bend or lean, and we did four of them. Just let it go feel more free and twist. Yeah. And center last two and lean and rotate and open. And now we've got one more and then we're going prone after this center and up. Okay? So our shoulders should feel pretty ready. Let's come on down, face down. Okay.

Lags together if you can is is my goal for us all. If you need to have them a little spacious, that's fine. I'm not a huge fan of the turnout, you know, wide legs. I think for me in person, it kinda just gets a little too much compression here. So I'm trying to open that up.

Almost turn my inner thighs, down and up, actually, toward the ceiling as the legs are together. Okay. So forehead is down to start. Again, if this is too much shoulder flexion for you, you know who you are, it won't feel good. So you can actually start this whole thing with your head elevated. But for those of us that are making improvements, we're gonna keep that head down and let's go ahead and do some elevation of the scapula. Way up how much can you lift? Let those shoulder blades come toward the ears.

And then scapula down four times. It's really mobilized. Okay. Last two shoulder blades up. You can do palms facing in.

Shoulder blades down, the back. One more. And then down. Now, I am gonna hover my head, so my head's right between which you arms. For four more of those, it does feel different. You can go a little bit faster.

Scapula up. Scapula down. And down one more. And then as they, as you roll them down, keep them down. Not aggressively. Just set the shoulders down. Okay? So as we elevate our chest higher for more back extension, let's not worry about going backward.

In back extension. Go upward skyward. I'm lifting my sternum and my chest up to the ceiling. Yes. There's pressure down on my arms, but I'm not necessarily I'm gonna show one weird one. Don't pull backward.

Think more up. Okay? And now down and forward. Just four of them. So it's a head lift. I am moving this the shoulder blades a little more downward, but I'm lifting up.

Looking straight forward, and lower. A good back extension never hurts. Two more times. We're rising. Wide through the chest.

And one more time, and we lift, we rise higher, not necessarily pulling backward, rising higher, stay there. Let's add a little bit of single leg kick. So I'm gonna flex my foot. Kick, kick, kick, and down. Let's go eight times. So you wanna keep lifting, not pulling backwards. Keep up, up, and up, up, and last one right heel, last one left heel, and lower all the way. Okay. Let's just do a few more things in this little mini kind of class.

And I want a big shoulder flexion coming. Okay. So I wore the cat pants for this cat exercise. I have a a cat neighbor and I just love watching this cat and it's really cool. It's a little black cat. But I'm gonna channel that little thing and this work on stretching my shoulders and getting my hips right above my the leg bones and stretching my chest down. I'm gonna start it again guys because I need a little more room.

And I know some of you are are commenting in. We're making improvements, aren't we in our shoulder flexion, but it's also our thoracic range of movement and then articulation. So hips should be above thighs. Heart and chest down to the ground and reach your armpits towards your hands. Okay. Now, we need to come out of it. Use your stomach.

You did a lot of work to prepare for that. We'll just do a couple more. So ideally your hips are right above your hip, your knees though. Roll it out and reach your chest down. Okay. Reach your sternum.

Reach your armpits towards your hands. Drop drop drop drop drop drop. And coming up. Okay. Let's take one more. I know a lot of you are working on this because you've you've messaged me in the forum section, which is great. So all those shoulder opening classes I've I've been doing your liking.

So carry on. Let's get to it. Let's get more range, more freedom. Alright. And okay. I think we're winding down. We're gonna do one last little bit.

This is what I did wanna get to. So let's feel good on your back and you're gonna come over on your back. Put that roller again at the sacrum or on top of it. Hold on to the capped ends of it, take your legs up, and let's do some nice scissory movements with their legs. We wanna mobilize hips and hamstrings.

So go for as much scissor split as you can without thwarting the rib cage and moving that around. Okay? So let's just change. Gosh. I feel good and change and change and change for more and change. And change. I'm Amy a little turnout, change and change into a bicycle movement. So we bicycle reach further away with that leg as you go out and down.

Four more and six and seven and eight. Let's reverse our bicycle Havens. And two, three, and four, and five. Are you stretching as much as you possibly can in both leg seven? And eight and then come into a helicopter.

Okay. Just like our arms did earlier. So when they can scissor forward Havens back and go all the way out to that big wide v position both legs, keep on coming around reach that maximum stretch and then to center and reverse the legs. One scissor. And how far wide can you stretch those two legs? Mobilizing through the hip joints.

And again, scissor, both legs are rotating. I'm gonna feel those glutes kick in all the way around and center, and scissor No one's thwarting their rib cage because you're focused on your hips. We just have one more cycle each side. So we got all of our body parts in. Did you know that we got our abs, we got balance, we got our back, we got our sides, we rotated, we've opened our hips, almost a little kind of understated, little mini sash.

Thanks for joining. See you next time.