Core Wake-Up & Maintenance Flow: 23-Min Strength Class

And then drop your head to the mat here and look between your legs towards your feet. Take an inhale here. Take an exhale. Take one more inhale.

And then keep looking towards your feet. Exhale, come up, back up your hands and knees, keep that curve in your back. As your shoulders come over your wrists, take an inhale. Take an exhale.

Take an inhale again. Exhale, sitting back to heels. Good. Now that we're back on our heels, keep your breath going, but bring your belly up towards your spine.

Take an inhale. Exhale, come back up, keep looking towards your feet. Keep that shape in your back. Inhale here.

Exhale, back, nice. Okay, now that we're back here, look forwards and almost turn your hips back and up to the ceiling. Inhale here. Slide out.

And then keep looking forwards. And next inhale, come up, turn your hips up, keep your belly up towards your spine. Exhale, stop here. Inhale.

Exhale, come back, good. So just moving your hips and your head. So looking towards your feet again, inhale. Exhale, come up.

Inhale, keep looking towards your feet. Exhale, come back. And now we'll link the two. So inhale, come up.

When you get to the top, look forwards. Exhale. Inhale, keep looking forwards. Exhale, sit back, keep looking forwards.

Inhale, come up, looking back. Exhale, look forwards. Stay here. Inhale.

Sit back on the exhale. Nice, we'll shorten that now. So take a big inhale as you come up, but keep looking towards your feet. At the top, look forwards, exhale, and sit straight back.

Good. Keep this movement going. And back. Okay, and I really want you to think about your core here, or your abs here.

So really feel that crunch on the way up. I really feel you activate your back on the way back. And just do a few more of these. Just kind of feel a bit of a flow here.

And think of the areas you're trying to activate as well. At the bottom, bring your core into it. Bring your abs into it, a little crunch. And then as you go back, feel your back activate.

Everything, shrug your shoulders back and everything. Good. And just find the areas you want to work, and think about them firing up. And how you'd use them on the mats at Jiu-Jitsu as well.

Because you use them without even thinking about it. But then if you start to think when you're using them, that's gonna really help. Good. Nice, and now from here, just stop when you get to all fours and meet me here.

And now just come back to a plank position. So tuck your toes, come to a plank. So feel that plank and then activate your core again. So almost pushing into the mat.

Feel your kind of abs, feel your bum like tense. Feel everything tighten up here. Take an inhale. And now exhale, come back to down dog.

Almost change the position like we were just doing from that turtle position forwards. So you can feel everything else activating. Good, and if you normally walk your dog out when you get to it, feel free here. So just dropping one heel at a time.

Bending one knee at a time. Feel your shoulders and everything open as well. Good. Okay, next time your right knee is bent, keep it bent.

Take a little bit of weight in it and now just pivot on the balls of your left foot so that your left heel comes in between where your feet were before. And now start to send your hips over to the right and open out the left of your body. Good, and take a couple of breaths here. Really stretch that.

And as you stretch that, feel the right side of your body crunch here as well. Good, so you're almost crunching the right side which stretches the left even more. And if you want, you can put a little bit more pressure through your hands and your arms just to stretch out your shoulders more. Good, one more inhale.

Exhale, lift that left heel. Pivot on your feet back to dog and then bend that left knee now. And pivot on your right foot and drop the right heel. So now, stretching the right side and crunching the left.

Good, really wake that side up. Should feel nice on the left, you just stretched it and now you're kind of crunching and activating it. And now in your own time, just switch from side to side of them. So come back to dog, bend your right knee, drop your left heel and crunch.

And then move over to the other side. And switch, good. And really feel that crunch which will bring on more of a stretch. And over to the other side.

So you're kind of controlling the movement whilst waking things up too. Good, do one more each side and then meet me in down dog. Good, and from down dog, we'll do what we were just doing when we were on our hands and knees. So we need to look towards your feet, take an inhale.

Then exhale, roll forward to plank. When you get to plank, look forward. Bend your knee slightly and come back to down dog. Good, inhale, looking towards your feet.

Good, inhale, looking towards your feet. Exhale, come to plank, rolling forwards. Inhale, look forwards. Bend your knees, exhale, come back to dog.

Good, look towards your feet. Come towards plank. Inhale, looking forwards. Bend your knees, exhale, come back to dog, nice.

Take a breath in dog. And now that you understand the movement, inhale forwards. Bend your knees, exhale, back, lift forwards. Good, inhale, roll forwards.

Exhale back. Nice. And again, keep your breath. And keep thinking about everything you're working here.

And feel your core, everything helping you through the movements. Good. After your next one, stopping dog. And then just come down to your knees for a second.

Then you can sit back on your heels or sit cross legged. Just give your wrists a little bit of a rest here. We'll come back onto them in a second. Good, just move your wrist around a little.

Nice, okay, back to plank. Take an inhale. Back to dog. And now bend your knees a little more than you would normally in dog.

Take an inhale. Let that go. And now bend your right knee so your right heel comes to your bum. Now start opening that knee out to your side so that you turn onto the outside of the left foot.

And then your right foot comes behind that and then you almost sit down here, good. So if that confused you, just meet me in this seated position. And what we'll do is we'll take an inhale in the seated position. And exhale, fold forwards, stretch towards your left foot or past it.

Side that out. Take another inhale. Side that out. And then we'll reverse this.

So as I inhale, my right hand's coming up. So are my hips, I bridge my hips up. And on the exhale, I'm turning back to down dog and sit on my feet again, good. Take a breath in down dog.

And then we'll go with the other side. So curling that left heel to your bum. Opening out onto the outside of the right foot, sitting down here. And stretching forward towards the right foot.

One more breath here. And on the inhale, bridging everything out, pointing up to the ceiling. Exhale, side down. Come back to down dog.

Inhale, roll forwards to plank. We'll stop in plank this time. Take one more inhale in plank. And then lower yourself slowly to the mat.

Good. And from here, bridging your hips into the mat. So tensing your glutes here. Bring your hands just by your hips and then palms facing down.

And then on your next inhale, stay bridging into the mat, but lift your shoulders and chest up. Exhale that out. One more inhale, maybe get a tiny bit higher. Exhale down.

Good, take a breath here. Okay, next inhale. Bridging into the mat, lift your shoulders. Exhale, stay here.

One more inhale. And down. Good, you should really feel your back activated here. So bring your hands where they were when you came down.

And now, next inhale, lift your shoulders and chest. Pushing into the mat lightly, exhale down. One more inhale, but lift your shoulders up and back. And down.

Nice. So push ourselves back up to plank. You can use your knees or tuck your toes and come up. Take a nice deep breath in.

Looking forwards, bend your knees. Exhale back to dog. Take a breath in plank, down dog. And now, next inhale, bring your right heel up to your bum again and turn yourself to the outside of that left foot.

Bring that right foot down. Good, just keep breathing. So take a breath here. Pointing towards the left foot.

Then next inhale, brush your right hand through your hair. Bridge your right hand up to your left foot. And then bring yourself to the outside of that left foot. Bring your hair, bridge your hips up, but with staying up.

Look down towards your hand, let that sigh out. Inhale again. Sigh that out and slowly bring your hips down. Pointing towards that foot.

Good. Inhale one more time here. Exhale out. Then next inhale, brush your hair again.

Come up, feel that sigh of crunch. Sigh that out as you look down towards your hand. One more breath. Exhale down, point towards your foot.

Now next inhale, brush your hair again. Come up. Exhale, come down. One more inhale, up.

On the exhale, turn down to dog, so hand down. Step back to down dog. Good. Just find your breath.

And then inhale, slowly roll back to plank, more staying plank. Then exhale, lower the front of your body down. Keep breathing. Bridge into the mat, so tense your bum.

Get ready to engage your back. You can either have your hands palms facing down or palms facing towards each other, hovering off the mat. Shrug your shoulders back. And next inhale, come up.

And back down. Come up a bit further. And down. Hands where they were.

Inhale, push yourself up into a cobra. Exhale down. One more of them. And down.

This time tuck your toes or come up to your knees. Push yourself up to plank. And then roll back to down dog. Good, take a couple of breaths here.

And this time we'll go for the other side. So curl the left heel towards your bum. Open that knee out as you turn onto the outside of the right foot. And sit yourself down.

Taking a breath here. Next inhale, brush your head with your left hand this time. Bridge your hips up. Crunch that right side, look towards the right hand.

Inhale. Exhale down. Take a full breath pointing at your right foot. Inhale, brush your head.

Feel that crunch, exhale. One more inhale. And down. And down.

And down. At the end of this exhale. Inhale straight away, brush your head up. Exhale down.

Inhaling up. Good, exhale down. Last inhale up and on the exhale we turn down to dog. Down to dog, down to down dog.

And take a breath. Let's do one more of those spine rolls. So looking towards your feet, inhale, roll forwards. When you get to plank, look forwards.

Exhale, bring your knees and come back. One more inhale, just a plank. Find that plank and exhale, lower the front of your body down. Good and then in plank, just bring your hands forwards in front of you and then drag your elbows back so that your elbows are under your shoulders, tensing your bum and you're lifting your belly off the mat here.

And just feel that stretch out. Good and tuck in. Tuck your chin here, look kind of diagonally in front of you and not doing this. Just feel your abs stretching out.

And then however you're comfortable, just lift your hips, bring your knees under your hips. Keep your hands kind of where they are stretched out and then sit your hips back just to kind of stretch out your back a little. And you can either rest your head on your knees or on the mat. Just stay in this nice little stretch and chill pose for a second.

Good, now come up to all fours and just turn your, so bring your heels up and then turn them away. So I've turned mine to the left, doesn't matter which side for now, we're gonna do both but keep your hands where they were and now sit your hips back and just feel that stretch so I can feel it down the right side of my body and the further I send my hips on the side that's opening away from my body, the more the stretch comes on. And just take three breaths here. So this is a really good stretch for like that side of the body, we've kind of just been working a bit and also the side of the back, that kind of QL which gets so tight, so it's always good to stretch this area.

Take one more inhale and sigh that out. Come back up to all fours, lift your heels, turn them over to the right or to the other side and sit yourself back. Three breaths here, it feels so tight at first when you sit back, doesn't it, compared to the other side? It's amazing what three breaths can do.