Deep Hip & Knee Work: 21-Min Yoga for 40+ (Part 2)

Inhale exhale inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale. Roll down to your back again and try to pull your leg straight towards your face.

So keep the knee straight and just pull until you can't pull anymore because the hamstring is telling you stop stop stop. Then just stop there at 95% intensity. Take one more breath and release the leg. Bend your knee circle it a little bit.

Wiggle it around knee and hip. Let's do the same sequence. Foot number two. Wrap the belt around your foot one time and then bend your left knee as far down as you can go and straighten out the leg again.

So between 10 and 15 reps. Relax your face. You don't need to clench your jaws or frown or concentrate. Just do what you're doing without any disturbances.

The hard work is setting off time to practice yoga. The actual practice is the reward. That's like the yeah that's the reward of the practice is the practice itself. The difficult thing is to actually start doing it.

Four more reps. Nice. Grab with the right hand. Let your left foot fall over to your right side and twist your spine open.

Try to stay absolutely still here. Come back to the center. Rock up to your butt and stretch your spine and stretch your leg. Take three breaths first.

And then inhale lift your chest and exhale round your spine and push your leg straight. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale.

Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Two more.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. And exhale.

Roll down to your back and pull your leg towards you as far as you can for two deep breaths. 95% intensity. Now release the belt and hug your knees in. Pull your knees in and rock up to a seated position.

Straighten your legs out in front of you. You're probably going to have to use your back muscles here if you're stiff on the backside. Try to keep your legs straight. It's going to be a workout if you're stiff but that's okay.

Lift your arms and try to sit straight up here. So like a perfect L shape. So inhale and lift and then exhale. Just hold the box in the front of you.

So inhale lift and exhale move the box in front of you. Just like this. Inhale. And exhale.

So it's not a relaxing thing. For some parts of your body it's a bit relaxing but it's mostly work here. So inhale up and exhale forward. Five more.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Try to point your toes up all the time.

Exhale. Engage the front of your thighs so you're almost trying to lift the heels off the ground. Almost. Two more.

Last round. Stay here with your chest forward but move your arms back. So push your belly and chest forward. Point your toes up.

Spread your toes and squeeze your shoulder blades together. Drop your head and go slightly deeper and then sit up into a squat. So squat down and push your knees away from each other. If you don't get your heels down to the ground never mind.

If you can't bend your knees all the way because the knee is hurt that's okay. Just place something under your hamstrings that presses into your calves. So it's okay if you get a lot of pressure in the hamstrings and calves but you should not feel pressure inside the meniscus here and a lot of people have a lot of you I know have knee problems so it's okay to sit on your toes it's okay to sit a bit higher up but try to sit here for a minute and just contemplate life and your hips. For me it feels very natural to move my neck around because when my neck cracks I know it has not got enough mobility in the last hours so slowly moving the neck around in many different directions feel really good for me when I squat.

Another thing you can do here is to actually press your forearms into your knees and thighs so you're opening up the groin as well here. Don't point the knees forward because when the knees point forward and the feet point out you put more pressure on the inside of your knee. Take three more breaths here. Nice.

Now sit down on your knees and flatten out your feet. So try to sit with your butt on top of your heels. Again if you have pressure somewhere where you don't want pressure just pad something up put something under so you can sit here comfortably for at least two minutes. Start by placing your left hand behind you on your fingertips lift your chest and stretch the other arm up so it's a back bend and a twist so you lift your chest and then you look to the left and then you swing your arms over to the other side right hand behind you lift the left armpit look up and towards the right.

Switch sides again and the top arm should be active don't have a limp arm but really try to reach back. Reach back, back bend and twist. Go from side to side. If you need to bend the arm that is in the ground that's okay but don't bend the top arm try to keep it straight.

So length, back bend and twist. Keep going but now when you lift one arm circle it in a big 360 degree circle and especially when the arm goes behind you try to move it all the way around three times before you switch sides. So if you want to place your bottom hand down flat in the ground that's okay but try to go slow and get deep into your chest your pec muscles and the front of your shoulder. Again first side and you can feel now you start to get into it.

The first rounds were just awkward and painful but now we start feeling better. The body constantly adjusts to what we're doing so give it time. So three more on the first side and then last round. Three more.

Alright place your hands down and tap your feet in the ground like this and place the toes in the ground and squat back to stretch your toes and your soles the sole of your feet. We did cat cow yesterday we're gonna do it today again but differently. Move your fingers back turn your hands so your fingers are pointing backwards and then instead of going up and down cat cow let's go from side to side in big circles. So you move the belly to the left down right and up round and round like a let's find a good metaphor like a tumble dryer big circles go a bit slower and a bit faster stop and switch directions but keep your hands like they are we're gonna have a really nice feeling sensation in our forearms after we're done with this.

Make sure to not tense up your neck while you're doing this. Go a bit slower and a bit faster. Nice. Sit down on your knees again and gently shake your wrists and your elbows out.

Nice. Let's do down dog pose so if your hands are slipping it's okay to grab the ears the corners of your yoga mat if you can keep a normal placement of the hands in down dog do that. Let's stretch our calves by just bending one knee and stretching the other so try to get your heel closer to the ground and if the heel is in the ground push your knee backwards. If you can't feel this in the calves just walk back a couple of inches and you are likely to feel this in your calf muscles.

Ten more switches. And sit down on your knees yet again and grab your belt. Grab the belt quite wide and move it back so that the hands are in the same level as your shoulder so not so high you shouldn't be able to see the belt in the mirror. The belt goes behind your shoulders so you can't see them and very gentle gentle movement maybe 15 degrees from side to side just slightly right and left.

Make sure your chin is not sticking out pull your chin back and breathe. Small movements. If it feels really weird in the shoulders just release the grip slightly so you have a wider grip. Five more.

And release the belt down. Let's do some big circles with the arms. Three more. Give yourself a big hug so try to grab your shoulders or even your shoulder blades behind you and curl up crunch your elbows down to your belly button and your chin towards your chest.

And release. That's it for today. Thank you guys for today. See you tomorrow.