Pilates Warm-up Exercises
Welcome to the warm up; let’s begin.
The first thing I want to have you do is kick off your shoes and then you're going to adjust your seat height, so your knees are slightly lower than your hips. Let your feet rest flat on the floor, hip distance apart and take your hands and place them right onto your rib cage. Let the elbows be soft. Take a deep breath in into the sides of your ribs and as you exhale draw the abdominal muscles right into your spine. And again, deep breath into your hands, exhale and blow it out and bring the arms down by your side.
Now, as you inhale, reach the arms of overhead, shoulders sliding down your back, exhale and let the arm just float right down to the floor. One more time just like this, inhale, big reach up, exhale and just let the arms float down. Now, as you inhale, let the eyes move up towards the ceiling; good! And as you exhale, let the eyes come right back down to the horizon. One more time, gently slowly inhale, lift the chin, exhale and bring the chin right back to the ceiling.
Leave your eyes forward, inhale, reach up towards the ceiling. Now as you exhale, interlace the fingers and press them up towards the ceiling as you slide your shoulder blades down your back. Hold it here as you inhale. As you exhale, roll your belly away from your thighs and let your hands come down in front of your chest. And now, as you inhale, go ahead and contract the belly muscles and pull yourself right back up to sitting, good. And again, exhale, flow it all out, so your belly muscles scoop, inhale and lift. I'm going to turn to sides, you can see exactly what I'm doing.
Exhale; notice how my belly moves away from my thighs and I round, eyes to the horizon, inhale and I reach my head right back to the ceiling one more time, exhale. Keep rounding, keep rounding soft in the shoulders one more time, inhale and stack yourself up. Now from here, exhale and slowly drop your hands right to your shoulders. And begin to make big circles with the elbows gently, slowly, warming up those muscles right in between the shoulder blades. And now let’s just reverse that action, and notice the kind of shape that your elbows are making. Are they round? Are they square? What exactly does it look like? Good, one more time and then released your arms and let them fall right down by your sides. Take a deep breath then.
As you exhale, float your ear right over to your shoulder and use your hand to assist that stretch just to bring a little more tug at the end. Good, inhale come up to center. And again, exhale use that hand to guide your head over to the shoulder. And then, use the opposite hand to press to the floor, great. Inhale, bring your head to center, exhale and drop your arm to the side. Let change sides.
Inhale here, exhale. Now, float your ear to the shoulder, take your hand and gently assist it at the end; good! Inhale come on up and exhale; one more time. Use the hand to guide the ear over the shoulder, pressing to the floor with the opposite hand. Excellent, inhale come on up and as you exhale release the arm right down by your side.
Now take your arms out to the side and readjust your feet so they're a little wider than hip distance apart. As you inhale, reach one arm to the ceiling and one arm to the floor. As you exhale, gently slowly curl to the side lifting through the chest. You don’t want to collapse in the middle but stay lifted. Hold it here as you inhale and now as you exhale, blow it all out and reach the arms long reaching through the fingertips; other side. Inhale again, one arm up, one arm down, exhale and curl; good. Hold it here as you inhale and as you exhale gently slowly come to that T-position and slowly lower your arms down lower your arms down by your sides.
And now you're ready to move on to any segment of the workout. I highly recommend doing the warm up at least twice a day. Remember stretching your muscles is a sure fire way to revitalize your mind.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services