I had so much fun posting March MATness last month. Here are the last 5 exercise tutorials to finish off March MATness 2021!
- March 27th: The Boomerang –Strengthen your core & hip flexors while increasing the flexibility of your hamstrings & shoulders. Improve balance too!
- March 28th: The Seal & Crab – Improve balance and get a stretch
- March 29th: The Rocking – Strengthen the back body while stretching your front body
- March 30th: The Control Balance – Develop core strength & control while stretching your hamstrings
- March 31st: The Push Up – Strengthen your entire body!
March 27 – The Boomerang: 4 reps
SETUP: I start seated with one leg crossed over the other. Get up on sit bones, get the pelvis aligned and everything stacked.
MOVEMENT: Instead of the rolling down part of this exercise, I hinge back, come down onto my elbows then I plank down taking my arms out to the sides as I go for support to keep lengthened in my spine vs rounding down.
Instead of the roll-over part of the exercise, I do the prep. Widening through the collarbones and allowing the shoulder blades to glide down the legs come up to the ceiling. The pelvis rolls away from your head and back towards you to get the hoovering feeling and abdominals active.
Instead of crossing the legs while in the rollover, I play with crossing my legs while my pelvis is down. Scissor, scissor, open.
I roll to the side to come up and find my teaser position. I choose the elbow down variation.
I lower my legs and find the chest opening with my palms together clasped behind my back. I open up and stay lifted vs rounding forward.
RECAP:
- Sitting tall with one leg crossed over
- Hinge back to plank down
- Rollover prep & scissors
- Teaser
- Chest opening staying lifted through the spine
March 28 – The Seal & Crab: 4-8 reps
The Seal & Crab are both rolling exercises. For low bone density we can play with the balance for The Seal or do a figure 4 stretch and we can do a modified version of the Crab and play with legs crossed.
SETUP SEAL: seated with knees bent, hands under thighs.
MOVEMENT: hinge back, find the curl of just the tail, and unweight your feet to come to a balance. Hands move onto the ankles while you keep lengthened through the spine and open in the chest. Feet come together to clap 3 times.
STRETCH: Come down onto your back for a figure 4 stretch if the balance is too much.
CRAB: Try to cross both legs after the figure 4 stretch if it’s comfortable for the knees.
Switch the legs to cross the other way.
The other idea to modify is to sit and stand from the cross-legged position without rounding in the spine. (Only if your knees are ok with this)!
March 29 – The Rocking: 4-6 reps
I’m showing the one-arm rocking modification for low bone density that I learned from Sherri Betz. It’ll be a good quad stretch.
SETUP: I come down onto my belly placing my forehead down, try to keep knees in toward midline while trying to keep my hip down.
MOVEMENT: Reach the arm back long as you bend the knee to find your foot. If you can’t reach you can use a resistance band.
I think about my upper arm externally rotated and open.
See if you can lift up the thigh a bit.
PROGRESSION: Come up onto the forearm to get some upper back extension and opening through the front of the chest. I’m still anchoring down into my pelvis.
Try to lift using breath and feel the low belly helping to take the ribs off and leg up with the arm straight.
March 30 – The Control Balance
I start with the rollover prep that is the safe low bone density option for inversions.
I scissor one leg towards me and find a place that is comfortable for me to pull my leg in as I use a sniffing inhale breath to pull in twice and an exhale to switch the legs. It’s the single straight leg stretch.
It’s a combo move that you can play around with alternating the 2 exercises to make it your low bone density control balance!
March 31 – The Push Up
Standing, breathing in as the arms rise up, hip hinge down to grab weighs if you like. I play around with an overhead press and hip hinge back down to set the weights down.
I walk out into a plank and show push-up bars for those who may have wrist issues. I also show using weights.
- Option 1 is to hold the plank
- Option 2 knees down to perform push-ups
- Option 3 pushups from plank
- Option 4 forearm plank with shoulder blade pushups
Coming back up, pike or down dog to then walk the hands back in
Complete list of March MATness low bone density safe Pilates exercises to use as a reference for your personal practice.
PROPS: These are all the props I used throughout the tutorials so you are able to gather them before your practice.
- Bath towel folded or small pillow
- Rolled up small hand towel
- Yardstick or dowel for tying on your back – or you can stick it in your shirt
- Resistance bands
- Foam Roller or small ball (can use rolled-up bath towel)
- A yoga block or thick books
- Push up bars
- Ankle weights
- Light hand weights
- The Hundred – head down 10 reps
- option to add 2lb ball weights & 5lb ankle weights
- The Roll-Up – hinge back keeping neutral 3-6 reps
- option to sit on a towel, yardstick tied to back & resistance band for rows
- The Roll Over – rollover prep
- legs together to go up & open legs at the top to come down. Reverse it after 3.
- The One Leg Circle – Small & large 4-8 each way
- option to use a resistance band
- Rolling Back 6-10 reps
- balance modification keeping a neutral pelvis (can use yardstick) and allowing a slight curl of the tailbone.
- bridge curling from the tail to get the “rolling” motion.
- The One Leg Stretch – head down 8-12 sets
- towel under my head, rolled up sticky under lumbar, 5lb ankle weights
- The Double Leg Stretch – head down 3-6 reps
- option to use a low back support
- The Spine Stretch – hinge forward 4-8 reps
- yardstick with resistance bands up on a towel
- Rocker with Open Legs – 4-8 reps
- balance modification w/yardstick
- The Corkscrew
- Low back support
- The Saw – 4-6 sets
- Lean back version
- The Swan-Dive 3-6 reps
- Towel under hips
- The One Leg Kick 6-10 sets
- The Double Kick 3-6 sets
- The Neck Pull 3-6 reps – hinge back w/yardstick
- The Scissors & Bicycle 4-6 reps on the roller or rolled-up towel
- The Shoulder Bridge – 3-4 sets
- The Spine Twist 4-8 sets knees bent option
- The Jack Knife 3-4 reps – resistance band under hips
- The Side Kick 6-10 reps
- The Teaser modified 3-6 reps
- Elbow start position
- Hands start position
- The Hip Twist 3-6 reps
- Swimming 15-25 sets
- The Leg Pull Front 4-6 sets
- The leg Pull Back 4-6 sets
- The Side Kick Kneeling 6-8 sets
- The Side Bend 4-6 sets
- The Boomerang 4 reps
- The Seal & Crab 4-8 reps
- The Rocking 4-6 reps
- The Control Balance – rollover prep w/single straight leg
- The Push Up 1-3 sets
Check out my photo collage of all the exercises!
View the entire playlist below and of course, skip through if you know the exercise because it’s over an hour and a half of content!
I filmed a zoom class that goes through the entire sequence for a better flow. Let me know if you’d be interested in that option vs watching through the tutorials.
April is all about the growing season & when trees and flowers begin to “open”.
My home Pilates studio has also grown to include a wall tower which can offer up 95% of the exercises you can do on a full Cadillac. This new addition will surely grow my home practice and allow so much more variety in exercises. I’m playing around using the Reformer and Tower together, also known as RTC (Reformer Tower Combo) which is really a cool double spring effect where you just feel everything working! Springs from the Reformer carriage as well as springs from the Tower are quite challenging and fun!
Here’s a tour if you didn’t catch it on my Instagram page @michiko.myers.
Weather is nice out and I’ve got a poll below for locals input! Thanks, Michiko