Core Strength - Be Like Water My Friend

Hey, everybody. Good morning. Hope you're having a good weekend. Looks like we have notification up. So today we are going to be working on a movement class. So we're going to actually be moving our bodies, or actually, I should say it's lack thereof movement because these are actually going to be isolation holds. So you're going to be staying in the same place for a long period of time and really engaging with your whole core center here. So that's what we're going to do, be focused on. So with isolation holds, what is different from what you're used to when you go to a workout is, you know, most of the time you're going and going for a specific muscle.

Like if you're lifting a barbell or something, like you're constantly just lifting this section and, you know, that's really only doing so much for your body. At the end of the day, if we engage our core and we're in one single position, we can engage a lot more of our bodies with a lot less activity, actually. So without further ado, we're going to hop into it. So we're going to go ahead and start standing up and we're just going to start to engage and feel what we're going to be working on. So if we touch here, it's going to be this whole midsection here, this is our core body.

So if we just kind of feel this out to start. Also, make sure you have enough space. Obviously, I have enough space here. I'm not going to knock anything over. I can kind of move and not worry about anything. I also have a mat, so I would recommend just setting up your space so it's available to not screw anything out. So again, we're going to start here, hands on the hips, and we can feel up to to our stomach here, all the way back to our back. So we're going to go ahead and just start by kind of just shifting from left to right, back and forth, and then feeling, you know, here we can start to feel the side body is engaged right there.

And so we're just going to feel what that feels like. We're going to feel what we're going to start to get into. So move over to the right side again, feeling the side body, feeling it stretch out, become engaged, just kind of warming up this area. And we'll go ahead and move back. Make sure when you're on your back to put your palms down right above your b*** cheek to support your lower back and push your hips out. And we'll also do the same with the front and just kind of feel your body and your back here.

So with that, we can always look at our posture. We want to make straight lines. See, I'm at a 90 degree right here. And let's come up. Okay, so let's go ahead and come down and we can meet in a pushup position. So always getting into a pushup, I find everybody does it wrong. The most basic thing that you can imagine. I've seen a push up done so many, so many bad ways, it's incredible. But we'll go ahead and start and we'll go over just that basic push up position. We're not actually going to be doing push ups because if you get the push up pose right, you're already engaged and you're already doing activity.

So we'll just pop straight into that. So when we go into a push up, you can see right here that's kind of a basic, basic version of this. But really we want to, you can see how I'm sunk in a little bit down. We want to push and give as much space from the ground to our chest as possible. So I'm pushing. I'm fully, fully pushed. And we want to actually shift a bit forward. See how now on my tippy toes. And now my hips are up, I'm pushed against the ground and my full body here is fully engaged. So I really don't even have to do push ups if I don't want to.

I can just sit here and this is plenty good of a workout, I promise you. So from here, just make sure, again, we're not sunk down. We want to push against the ground, shift forward, and we can just stay here, lift our hips slightly, and we can get more engagement out of our core. So we can start to do slight circles just to kind of feel everything that's engaging. And you should feel everything kind of all around this area getting really, really tight. So from here, we can slowly lower down and do our first kind of push up, but very, very slow.

And we're going to hover just above the ground here. You can push back up and then just hold. Just hold and breathe. You just want to hold for about five to ten breaths, for isolation holds. Then from here, we're going to shift over to our side and do basically the same thing. We want to make sure that we're pressed against the ground. Our hip is up. Now we can begin to feel our side body here become engaged. And we just sit. That's it. We just sit, focus on our breath. You can feel this whole area here becoming very engaged.

So with that, we'll switch over to this hand, plant it down, shift into our push up and just flip over. Same thing. Now we feel it on our other side, our other side body here very engaged. We can practice even pumping up and down. Just pump that hip just a slight amount. Okay, let's come back here to our original and just hold. Remember, shift forward and push. And just hold and breathe. Alright, let's bring it down again and hover just above the ground and push. So you. Here we are again. And you already beginning to tell that just being in a push up pose, you don't need too much more.

Honestly, especially just starting out just to get this down is quite important because this is a kind of a stable pose for a lot of things that you want to get into. So with this next, once we have our push up position kind of foundation and it's stable, then we want to slowly begin to play with this. So I want to lift up. You can see my foot is lifted. So let's just try and lift a foot and see how that feels. It's going to engage you more and if you want more of an exercise, then we can bring that foot to our chest and hold.

Let's put it back down. Other foot. It's up. Hold. And let's bring that to the chest here and release. Hold your push up. Push forward. Push against the floor. You know, we're not stopping here yet, so just keep it going. And about three more breaths here. Two and three. Let's bring our knees to the ground. We're going to tilt back and give ourselves just a slight break. Rest your head on the floor and breathe it out. Just breathe it out. Just let it go. Short break. We don't want to last too long there.

And so our next, we're going to be focused on the opposite direction. So before we were kind of over like this, now we're going to be sitting on our butts. This will be the last one because I know this is probably difficult for me, most people here, but this is just the foundation. So, you know, you just want to do your best. And these are more guidelines to focus on in your own time just to make sure you get the right posture. So with this one, we're going to be sitting right on our butts like this.

And let's just go ahead and lift our feet up off the ground, extend our arms. And you can start just by holding this right here. If you want more of an exercise, we can begin to straighten the legs and bring them up and hold. And again, isolation is just holding here. You don't have to do much and you're engaging your whole body. Just sit still and breathe. Okay, let's bring that down for a moment. Reposition here. We're going to lay all the way down and just lift our feet up. So there's a few different practices that we can kind of work on here.

Sorry, I've got a crazy cat running around. He's my practice partner for today. So let's lay down onto our back here and we're going to focus on bringing our toes just up like this. First, start with just your feet. It's a bit hard to see. Let's start with our feet and then we're going to raise our hands overhead. Actually lift her whole body. So now I'm kind of in a banana shape. So you can see right here is very engaged. And we just hold and make sure to breathe. Don't hold your breath, breathe through it if you want.

Good practice. Now raise all the way back up. Watch his heart. There we go, right back to where we're. So if you want to get a few pumps out of this, you can go from this pose here, boat pose, and then lay it down very slowly. There we go. Lay that down. Maintain the banana. We're never releasing. And we go all the way back up and we stay. So from there to here, that rep those repetitions. There's really no break for your body. I think we've been going for ten minutes and I'm already sweating here.

We can go down for another rep. Go down, hold and let's bring it back up. Rest your feet, come back to seated. And just for the sake of the short practice here, we're just going to keep that fairly simple because I know this can probably get quite tough at home. But the point is just to show you some basic exercises, because the core muscle is essentially everything. It connects everything in your body. Arguably the most important muscle in the body. Definitely the most functional and most helpful in your daily day to day.

So I would highly recommend getting into some exercises like isolation holds in order to increase that muscle. You're going to notice a huge difference throughout your day, just even in stretching or whatever that you're doing in your weight lifting, whatever it is. Sorry, I'm a bit out of breath. As you can see, this does really give you a good workout. So with that, obviously this does take practice and there is easier versions to the exercises that I just provided as well. So if this is something that you're interested in knowing more about or getting into, feel free to send me a message, but for right now, that's about it.

I'm always happy to help guide you personally, so please feel free to reach out and I will give you more exercise tips. Thanks, and I'll see you guys next week.