Downward Dog & Plank Variations: 11-Min Core Flow

And then you just keep going giving them the freedom to bend their knees, to wiggle around. It's really nice to create space. So that's our two dog variations for the warm up. We have the dog squats, hips down and back and we have the dog twist, hips and heels from side to side.

And then we are moving into our plank. So variations here from plank is the shoulder push ups, so the straight arm push up. So this is a really nice way to warm up the shoulders. Sebastian is resting his wrists on his knuckles, optional to be on your knuckles or on flat hands.

So here you just want to move your body down without bending the elbows. You drop the chest down and then you push into the floor and you think about the cat action in the upper spine. And then you release the chest down and then you push the floor away. So nothing happens with the elbows, it's just the shrug down and the push up.

So here you can do it about five, six times and then release and move on to the next. Another option in plank is, I call it the diagonal plank. So it's really nice for balance and also learning right and left again. So first the plank check that we already have seen onto the fingertips on the right hand, you want to lift the back foot.

So you stay on the fingertips on the right hand and you start to lift the left foot off the floor. So this is the easy option. If you want to make it harder, so please, yes. If you want to make it harder, you reach the right arm forward as you reach the left leg back.

And you take an inhale and you exhale, put it back down, fingertips on your left hand, lift off the back foot, stay or stretch your left arm forward, inhale here, exhale, release down. And then you can do that three, four times. So you do both sides equal times. But it's really nice to create heat and get people frustrated and make them want to work more on their plank because it reveals pretty easily.

If you lose your balance here, you have to connect more to your core. And that's our next step. It's the core. So we want to work on our core here from plank pose.

One of the options here is to go from high plank to forearm plank. And you put your forearm down and the other forearm down, put your hand down, the other hand down. So you move your plank, forearm plank. And you want to do so without wiggle from side to side.

You don't want to use your hips. You want to just try to move straight up and down. And a way to cue it is if you come to high plank, right forearm down, left forearm down, right hand to the floor, left hand to the floor. And then when you do the other side, left forearm down, right forearm down, left hand to the floor, right hand to the floor.

OK? So we don't just go on one side the whole time. So we change. We do right, then we do the left.

OK? Another core here is also one of my favorites. I call it the floating. So we start in our plank, high plank.

So it's the floating cobra. So from plank, you go through the low push-up. So you shift your weight forward, elbows in, and then all the way to the floor. You don't move anything here.

You just roll the shoulders away from the floor. You lift your hands away from the floor. So you're floating your hands off the floor. You're floating your legs off the floor.

So everything is floating. That's why the name floating cobra. So you really activate the back body here, which is great. And now we're going to transition into working the front body.

So from the floating cobra, you inhale, exhale. Then you push the toes and the hands down, and you come into the low push-up. So you squeeze the belly, draw the ribs in. And then through plank, inhale here.

Exhale the low push-up. All the way down. Inhale floating cobra. Exhale low push-up.

Plank. Inhale. Exhale low push-up. Floating cobra.

Lift everything away from the floor. Push everything into the floor. Connect to the core. All the way back into plank.

Okay. So that's a nice sequence. It's a lot going on, so it's nice to have some training before you start to cue it. But it's a really great balance between working the back body, which is also our core.

We have the core all around, not just the front. And then moving from working the back to working the front. So it's really great for balance. And then from our...

So now we're moving into the belly twist. Also a nice drill to do when we're on the floor. So this sequence is called core and floor. So after core, we move into floor.

You can take your arms out to the side. It's different the way you can do it. You can have straight arms. A lot of people prefer that.

And then you just take that one leg and you twist over to one side. You just take a breath. You go over to the other side. Some people want to be higher up, so you can also have the hands closer, the elbows bent and move with the chest a little higher.

So we call this the belly twist. So here you don't want to be too specific. You just want to have people moving in a way that feels good. So one way to cue is, of course, you come onto your belly, stretch the arm out to the side, pick one leg up and start to move it the opposite direction.

You can adjust with the arms. You can try to be higher up on your arms, lift the chest more. You can try to bring your opposite foot to your opposite hand. So many options here.

It's nice after a lot of plank and a lot of shoulder work to do this stretch before you move into the more dynamic flows. Just one thing I noticed, as soon as I say bring the foot to the hand, many people mix that up and they start moving the hand down towards the foot. And that doesn't make sense at all. So as soon as you say that, just be prepared that some people will mishear you and they will do the pose completely incorrectly.

Yes, and if you already are aware of stuff like that, like you will become aware of that after you start teaching, then you can be here and you say something like pay attention, not the hand to your foot, your foot to your hand, and then you show. So just to be, you will see where you need to be clear like that, but just be ahead of them and let them know what you mean. Okay, so a quick recap of this section. The dog, we do the dog squats.

We do the dog side to side. We do plank where we do the shoulders, shoulder pushups. We do the diagonal plank. We do the core where we move from high plank to forearm plank.

And we do the core where we work from low pushup to floating cobra to low pushup to plank. And then we do the belly twist, arms to the side, stretch the leg over. And that's our section of dog plank core and floor.