Hydration Mat Class

Hello, I'm Sally Anderson, and welcome to Hydration Mat Work. We're going to go through some movements that move hydration in and out of our tissues, creating more whole body tissue hydration. Andrew Rustian is joining me to help demonstrate. Let's get started. We're starting with some micro movements, with the head first.

So starting with the nod movement, simply yes. Going nodding forward and back. And then we're going to build that to create more of a pump movement. So pump the head in that nod movement, and then pause. Now we're going to head walk, which means one ear walks to the ceiling, the other ear walks to the ceiling.

So we're trying to get traction out of the cervical spine, out of the neck muscles as we walk and then make it a little pacier. So pace is one of those things that starts to really pump hydration around the body. So we don't get too pacey too soon. Come back to the center. We're going into a rotation.

So rotate the head over one shoulder, back to the center. Rotate, and we are just finding our range. Look and look, then pump it up, and look. The range gets smaller as you start to pump and pace it. So this is your, No.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, that's our little pump, and back to the center. Moving into our arm swings. I want a nice loose swing of the arms taking the body with it or taking the torso, keeping the hips as front as possible, but let them just kind of be easy as you swing around. Now add a little slap at the back with that back hand, hits the kidney, just a little kidney slap. And rotate, two more, one, two, and back to the center, let that settle.

We'll bring the arms out for our T-rib movers. So turn the right palm up, left palm down. And we're just gonna start by rotating the arms in the socket. So we're gonna let them be fairly loose so that it moves those upper ribs with the humorous moving in the shoulder joints. So as we keep going we need a little pace here, just a little.

And then add the head turn to the palm that's up. Just look to the palm. Look, let the arms rotate the ribs. Good, and then we're gonna add a little shrug to take it across, we're just lifting and releasing. Reach those arms further away as you go.

Now coming back just to the head with a little more pace. Pace it up. Look, look, last two, one, and now head back to the center just for the last four, three, two, one, and take those arms down. We're going into a rolldown series that will incorporate a shoulder shrug. So take the shoulders up and over and around.

A shrug and a circle. Feels a little '70s, but it's good. And around and down. Two more, just shrug the shoulders up, letting the tissue release, let it just relax. One more.

And then we're going to turn to the side. So you can see the positioning for the roll down series. So starting with that shoulder shrug, inhale up and around with the shoulder shrug. Exhale, rolling down, softening the knees, you're going to bring the hands to the floor in front of your feet. Two knee extend.

So extend the legs and bend. Extend the legs and bend. Hold there, take a breath in. Exhale, curl back up. When you get to the top, inhale, circle of shoulders a little faster.

Exhale rolling down. Hands turn to the palms up, wrists down. Legs extend, one, inhale, exhale, extend, inhale, bend. Exhale rolling up all the way to the top in house shoulder circle. One more set.

Exhale rolling down. Now this time the fingertips turn in and the palms go down to the wrist. Bend the knees, exhale, extend. Inhale, bend, exhale, bend. Take a breath in, peel the hands off as you curl up all the way to the top.

Inhale, roll the shoulders. One more roll down to take us into a pike. So scoop and roll as you exhale, walk out. Find your pike position and pause for a moment, just take the stretch through the back of the body. Heels pressing down into the mat.

Arm pits are pressing around and toward the mat, holding their rise up onto the toes. And now we're pranting with the feet, one heel goes down at a time. To starting with the range of movement, and then we're going to get a little faster. Just stabilizing the upper body with the armpits wrapped around, head hanging and get a little faster. So now we're pumping those legs.

Pump them last, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, pause. Going into head circles or nose circles. Relax the head first, send the tailbone high, armpits around. And now circle the head one direction, 10, nine, eight, circle. Just breathe through the movement.

And when you finished your 10, settle in the center and go to the other direction. Exhale, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Holding this position still, we're gonna lower the knees to tip the mat coming into a little cat curl and extend back up, we've got four more. Knees tip the mat, let the body just adjust over the arms a little bit as you go. And we can go a little faster, tip and press, tip and a lie will do two more, so that's six.

And up, tip and hold. Coming into your plank, you're almost through the upper body work here, hold this and we're gonna bring a knee under, change under now faster, under two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, Last four, three, two, one, and hold. Pipe back up. All right, take a moment, grab your breath and walk your hands back to your feet bending the knees. We're going to sit and turn onto the mat.

So you should be relatively at one end of your mat ready for role over and up. Just make it loose and flowing. So here we go. Goes over and up, and over and up. So just let it flow.

Two more. You should be nice and loose for the next exercise which is going to be a single leg stretch. And halt. So then roll back onto the mat, draw your knees into your chest and we've got nice pacey, single leg stretch, right leg out. And we'll change two, three, four, we've got eight, seven, two, one, knees back in, hands behind the head for your crisscross same pace, pump it out, and go.

two, three, four, five, six, six, five, four, three, two, one, and hold. Good. Hug those knees in place the head shoulders down and feet onto the mat for your bridging. So with the exhale, roll the hips up to the ceiling, pause on the inhale, arms reach overhead, return. That's one long inhale.

Exhale, uncurl back down. We've got four more. Exhale up, inhale let the ribs go with the arms, and uncurl down. Press the feet into the floor to lift you up. Arms move the upper ribs and uncurl down.

Two more. Exhale up. I don't mind if you lift or you curl. On the way down, I'd like the curve, that eccentric control. Up you come, arms over, back, uncurl back down.

Now we'll take one more lift up and pause. So exhale, curl or lift up into your bridge position, hold. I want the shuffles. So these are an exercise I learnt from Deborah lesson, and I call them the Deborah lesson shuffles. So I dunno what you wanna call them but that suits me fine.

And hold knees over toes, uncurl back down. So that's really done some good work up the back line of the body. Bringing the head shoulders into a chest lift and tip toes so that the legs are supported by the lower abdominals, and we are going to pump out some fifties. One, two, three, four, five, Breathe in, two, three, four, five. Exhale, long exhale over the whole duration of those counts.

Same for the inhale. But we're really using the arms to pump fluid around the body. Last set, exhale, two, three, four, five, inhale, two, three, four, five, and hold. Now we are going to roll onto our sides underneath arm long, underneath leg bent at 45 degrees or, that's not 45 degrees. 90 degrees in the hip and knee and the top leg long.

We're going to kick it forward, use this front hand to balance and kick forward and back, swing it, and back. So that concept of pace, pump we're getting it with a nice kick through the hip. Keep that pelvis as stable as you can without locking it down. Last two, one. And bring that knee back in to match the bottom leg.

Now the top arm is gonna do a nice circle rotation, twisting through the torso. Reach it all the way overhead, all the way back taking the torso and scapula to the floor behind you. Comes around, three more. Nice big circle, as big as you can make it, really stretch the tissue all the way around. It's your moment to kind of really just let everything decompress, elongate, catch your breath because that pace does keep everything pumping in the cardiovascular system as well, which we want.

That's great. Last circle coming back around and to the front. Just pause. We're going to flip over to the other side. All right, underneath arm long, underneath leg bent, that kind of tabletop position.

Top leg long, front hand counterbalancing you a little. Here we go, kick foot and back, foot and back. Keep the torso long. Try not to think of locking anything down, just hold it as stable as you can while you get that pace and kick. Last four, three, two, and last one.

And bring the knee in. Front arm is going to circle all the way around. Try and reach past the fingertips on the bottom arm all the way back. Take that scapula to the floor or as close as you can get. And we're getting a good twist.

So we're twisting the lungs. Joseph Pilates always spoke about ringing out the lungs. Brilliant, that's going to be instrumental in not only hydrating and getting tissue hydrated but flushing, getting lymph moving out. One more circle. Round we go.

Exhale as you come around, arm comes back to the front, and we're rolling onto our tummies. Okay, so prone. All right, so start with the arms nice and wide, I want the scapula kind of moving wide across the torso. Forward down, we're doing a little cobra. So head goes first, let the head come up into those upper ribs that have been moving so nicely.

Press with your forearms, just get a thoracic lift. On the way down, don't change where your arms are, but traction forward using the arms to pull the body forward. Two more, forearms work, head shoulders bring you up, you're into your extension and draw forward coming back down, one more. While you're doing this, just make sure legs are lengthened out in line with sitting bones. I don't want them too close together or too wide apart.

The more the front of the hips open into the mat, the happier I am. One more coming up. Typical Pilates instructor, there's always one more. Stay there, press the arms into the ground, we're doing single leg kick. Start with the right leg and kick two, change two and in.

Two, see how fast you can get without losing your form. And pump, two, last six, five, four, three, two, one, and legs down. Could lift them both off the floor, just off the floor, keeping them long. Front of the hips open. Let's take our arms out to a T.

And we're going to do swimming legs, just the legs, pump them, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. This is the time you get to do swimming fast. Okay, and go, front of the hips open. Swimming in hundreds are perfect hydration exercises, they really do the trick. All right, hold it back to the center, legs down, arms in and lower to the mat, good.

Use your arms to sit you back onto your heels, tucking the toes under. So now we're gonna have just a little plate of fascia release by sitting back onto your heels. So everything calms down, we can just take a few breaths. But we are getting this nice stretch of the fascia under the feet. Not necessarily the most comfortable.

Try to be on your toes or your big toe joints as much as you can, but take a bit at a time. Progression is everything. Ah, two more breaths. From here we're going to go into an arm series using a bit of a thigh sit-stretch kind of movement. Let's turn to the front where we can really make this visual.

So arms are wide, toes are still tucked under at the back. And you're going to sit down fold the arms in at the shoulders, and up, and down. Good, we're gonna do six more. And pump it through there, a little bit more pace but still keep control of the movement, you don't wanna lose the form that you've got. And hold.

Now up here I want you to start just pumping hands. So I used this once before in a class on Pilates time for circulation, same sort of concept for hydration. We're gonna pump everything around the body with the hands going inward from the head. So as you come down pumping, and up, and pumping, and up. Two more, and open the chest.

And we might do one more just for luck. And halt. Now we're going to turn into quadripets. So coming onto your hands and knees, toes can come untucked, I'm sure that's a relief right now. And we're going into our variation of thread the needle, which I call pump the needle.

We'll start with elbow lifting up to the ceiling. And then a little walkthrough, fingers are like a spider walking through. Elbow up to the ceiling, spider walks through. Now we're gonna pump it out, one and two, up and two, let it pump and twist at the same time. And one more.

And staying on this side, we're going to go to part two of pump the needle, which is the armor reaches head locks, and rebounding in and up, in and up, four more. Pump it under and let it twist, let that arm throwing up twist you further. Last two. And bring your head back behind your ear, we'll go to the other side. You can all do that.

Starting with the elbow we've got six, and elbow, spider, pump and three, four, good. Exhale on the way up to the pump, if you can. Last one, and part two. Hand, arm and rebound, rebound, four more. Let that arm twist you as you go up.

Three, two, and one, and hand comes back in. Excellent. We're going to do a little variation on cat stretch now. It's called a cat sit. Starting with our hands in normal position round the back and sit to your heels.

Think of the abs lifting you up so that you don't use your hands too much. And a little extension at the top. Round the back, sit, lift, extend. And two more like this. We'll get a little more pace, but not too much here, we're just working through the movement.

Because, now we're going to change our hand position to what we did in the roll down, the last variation of the roll down where the fingertips are in, the wrists are down. And as you sit back, you get that long stretch of the tissue through the arms. Up and extend. So round the back, sit, up, extend. Now think about trying to keep the wrists connected to the mat, but they won't stay there as you sit back.

Round and sit, up, extend. Round and sit. Good, two more. Last one, round, sit, up, and extend. Good, come back to the center.

Change your arms back. You're going to use your hands just to sit you back onto your feet again. This time parallel feet. Use the hands to sit you back. I'd like the feet to be just hit with the part, not too wide, so that we sit back and get a little soleus stretch.

So sitting into those feet, try to take the weight of the body back over your heels. No, they possibly won't get to the mat. We're aiming for that, we're a work in progress. And take two breaths there. Nice exhale, let the long exhale empty the lungs ride out.

And then to standing we're going to press the heels down just to slightly bent knees and roll up through that spinal elongation movement. And we are coming back to our closed up shoulder circles, standing with our arms reaching. So press the palms away to start with then bring it in just halfway. So you want a loose shoulder elbow hand position. We're gonna draw circles around the sternum.

So just to find that circle. Feel all the work coming through, humeral heads in the shoulder joints. So even think of, I'm just gonna reverse for a moment. We're gonna do it both ways again. I want you just to think of the upper arms doing the movement.

Good, let's go back to the first direction and get a little faster. So think of those upper arms creating the movement for us though. And four, three, two, one, let's go back to the second direction. Round, two, three, four, Last six, five, four, three, two, one. Good, stretch it back out.

Now we're going to do those above our head. So same position with the palms away, elbows shoulders soft in a draw, circles around the crown of the head. Wherever that might be for you, try to keep the palms facing up to the ceiling. And just take your range first, and then we get a little faster. six, five, four, three, two, one.

Other way, just four in a slower pace. And then thinking of those upper arms doing the movement, we'll pace it up for six, five, four, three, two, one, and let the arms come down. Let them hang by your sides. We're just gonna go back to our little arm swings. Not so much slapping the moment, just let it loosen up, take the body with it a little.

Just swing. Last four, three, two, one, back to the sender, we are finishing with a roll down today. So shoulder roll, exhale, roll it down. This time no connection to the mat with the hands just let the arms and head hang. Take a breath into your low back and use that breath on the exhale to roll you up around in the back stacking spine on top of the pelvis and bringing you back to the center upright where we'll finish the class for today.

So that should have really pushed some fluids around the body, both in and out, I hope. Think about when I'm wanting you to work with a hydration focus, we incorporated the micro movements, and we really incorporated the concepts of pace, pumping, and twisting. So they're all going to help move hydration through all your tissues of the body. I hope you feel nice and warm, nice and free, nice and fluid. And thank you for joining us.