Class #2731

Conditioning for Boomerang

25 min - Class
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Program your body for some really good movement in this Mat workout with Benjamin Degenhardt. He teaches exercises that will help condition your body for Boomerang. By seeing how the pieces fit together, you will be able to understand this challenging movement better.
What You'll Need: Mat

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Hi, welcome to a boomerang inspired map workouts. I'm here with Elisa and with Amy. My name is Benjamin. Um, and we'll take you guys through a little workout that is not necessarily meant to be well rounded, but really specific to I'm getting better at our boomerang understanding and better and seeing how the pieces fit together. Um, it's definitely fun workout to do by itself as well. If you have any questions about boomerang after this class too, there's a tutorial that goes with it. Um, but we'll go right into our little class. You come to the front of your mat, we'll begin with a standing warmup. Um, the component parts of boomerang are really to find a good, strong inner thigh connection to hold our legs up, as well as a lot of spinal mobility, a lot of inversion that happens in the exercise with a good sense of flow. So just to prepare for that, we begin with a standing roll down with your heels, touching your toes apart. Reach your arms up towards the ceiling. Experience the lings inside your body in the space that you have to breathe into, allowing your ribs to really expand three-dimensionally as you take a full breath in and then getting even longer as you take a full breath out, waiting until you're truly empty. Who Do that? One more time.

Just starting with a breath. Begin to become aware of the crown of your head. Let that sink down towards the ground and from the crown of your head. Begin to roll your head into yourself, letting your hands reach towards the ground. All the while keeping super straight, strong legs, pushing the floor away and then rolling yourself back up. Once you're down, take your arm straight up towards the ceiling. Fill up your lungs at the top, and then Shane over chest. Begin again. Curl your head into yourself like you're doing a roll up on the mat, except you're doing it. Standing up, hips over legs, feet, pressing the ground away. Roll yourself all the way back up.

Take your arms up by your ears. Deep breath in. Great way to check in with how your back feels today. Chin over, chest rolling all the way down. As you keep stamping your legs into the ground. Feel how that lifts your stomach up and away from your thigh so that you puff out your low back, middle back out just a tad more. Lift your arms up towards the ceiling. Deep breath in. Exhale, release the arms down by your sides. And then from here, just cross your feet.

One in front of the other. You can choose and then lower yourself unto your seat. Extend your legs out in front of you. We got right onto our back and we begin working from here. Great way to warm up, always our hundred. We take a full breath in just to prepare the body. And then from there, from this unprepared position, pick yourself up, head, neck and shoulders. Lift the arms, lift the legs. Begin right away.

Taking a deep breath in, taking a deep breath out, pressing your legs into one another so they hold each other up. Firing up that inner thigh connection, which we will need an our boomerang later on. Breathing in, breathing out. In fact, in your boomerang, you will pass this position as well, so this is a great way to strengthen it, but more than that, it's really a warm up. Allow your breath to fill you up, maybe lift you up a little and then with the Xcel, get strong through the center longer through the arms and legs. We're more than halfway through. Begin to play with taking your arms up just a little bit high.

You like you reaching them up and forward and away from you, like you're trying to lift yourself up into a teaser like shade, because that's what's going to happen in the boomerang as well. We'll just take one more breath here. Inhale, exhale all the air out. Pause, relax everything down. Stretch your arms over your head. Give yourself that same sense of length that you felt standing up just about a minute ago, and then bend your knees into your chest. Rock yourself up to seated. Find the strap for your feet.

Next exercise is a roll up. I like to use the strap for that if it's available because it's a really great way to work on the proper timing that we need in a roll up. You can start on your back here and take your arms over your head. The legs will be together on this one and I want the strap to be super taut. Now make it your goal to not let the strap go loose and you will find how that strap can really support you in the exercise. If you don't have one, just think of digging your heels into the mat. Take your arms up and forward.

Reach them with that same energy you felt in your a hundred to pick up your spine with what feels like a bone by bone movement until you rounding your spine over your legs and then keep reaching. He hasn't arms forward as you roll yourself all the way back down. This is a slow down version of what happens in our back in that boomerang exercise. Later on, we'll take one more slow before we take it a little bit faster. Shin over chest round over the legs. Still maintain. A nice long curve in your back and then roll back down with control.

Take your arms over your head if you feel ready to do it a little faster. Let's do that three times. Arms up and forward. Chin over, chest rounding forward until your lungs are empty. Come back down. Arms over, head for to keep working your legs into the strap, especially on the way down to keep drawing your toes back. Nice. One more time. Up and forward. Take a deep stretch over the legs. Roll yourself all the way back down. Reach your arms up and back. This time allow your ribs to distend a little bit for an extra stretch to the front of your reds. Lose the strap while you hear.

Maybe shake out your legs while you're there, and then take your arms down by your sides. Press your arms into the mat for a second. Almost feel like you're pushing your heels and your arms down so much. Your hips could get a pound lighter on the mat. See if he can make that connection happen. So you fire up the back of your body, loading some weight into your legs and into your shoulders.

This will all be helpful with how we initiate a boomerang later on and then release your hips and body back down. So on the outside it looks like we're not moving very much right internally, it should feel like you're firing up the backend of your body. And then one more time, engage the arms, engage the legs, right, nice. The hips and weight off the ground. They don't live right as much as becoming a little bit lighter.

And then you release them back down your arms. Hold the same tension, lift your legs up. We go into the rollover. Important part of our boomerang. Stretch the legs up and over the head. But think of going up a little higher with your feed and perhaps you usually would. So we're not aiming to touch the toes to the ground. Instead we're looking for nice and lifted. Curve through the back. Then open the legs, roll yourself back down with controlled.

Push the mat away with the arms. Reach the fingers forward. Close the circle. Go again. Up and over. Open the legs and keep waging the legs back as you roll your body down. Swing the legs away from you. Squeeze your inner thighs together, lift open, roll yourself back down. We're going to reverse the pattern. Squeeze the legs together for a moment. Open them again. Then lift up, squeeze together at the top in our boomerang later our legs will be crossed.

There's more of an inner thigh connection, but think of that already here with the legs just side by side. Press your legs into one another. Let them hold each other arms. Press down, arms reach out. This will be your last one down around it up. Squeeze your legs together. Roll yourself down. Let your half pass the lips. Yes, breathe it out. Lower your legs all the way down and then take a moment here, maybe shaking out the legs again, reactivating your arms into the mat.

Finding that same little lift of your hips. You're pushing your arms back, pressing your heels into the ground, firing up the back of your body, getting your hips a little lighter on the mat. Nice and release. That again will just keep coming back to this one more time. [inaudible] so that we can see if that served as in our next exercise too. So your arms hold the same tension. Your hips release back down, your right leg lift straight up. There's hundreds of ways of doing one leg circle. Here's another one for us. We keep the hips super stable this time because we're focusing on that in a thigh connection.

Rotate your left leg almost in and take your right leg across the middle as far as you can and keeping the right hip heavy, the right shoulder heavy and then come right back through center. So it's a very small movement. Try to keep your leg at 90 degrees as much as you can. A mild bend in your knee is totally available if your hamstring doesn't give you that space to take the leg back to center. Just one more time. Almost focus more on that other leg, rotating inwards against it.

So we really fire up that inner thigh pressing into the other. Come back through center. Lower the right leg down, lift the left leg up, and we'll just take that first little motion like one leg. Take. Talk with the hips, staying super stable. Send the like up and out of the hip, the hip down into the mat and come back through center and again, start to observe how your full body is participating here. The arms pressing back, chest opening. There's a hint of chest expansion happening. One more time.

Maybe even reach the fingers a little further away from you. Then you think you can, right? We need that energy later. Take the leg straight up, lower the left leg down, right leg goes up, and then we take super tiny circles. Don't go for a big range of motion, just as far as you just went. Follow through, down around it, up two more across, down around it, up one more, across, down around it. Up Reverse. Open down, across and lift. Oh, bend down across and lift one more and then as fast as possible, switch to the other side. Go three times each way. Again, catch yourself with the strength of your arms here with that reach of your fingers, the crown of your head reaching the opposite way for three, four, two, four, one. Take the leg up, lower it all the way down. Stretch your arms over your head. Take a deep breath in.

Let your ribs just stand in one motion. Float yourself up into your rolling like a bar position. Let's roll out the back a little bit. Roll along the length of your spine all the way to your shoulders. Have some fun with that one. Rolling back, lifting up.

Now typically we try to not roll onto the head and I'd suggest don't roll on to the head, but since we're going into our boomerang later where we do end up that far back, start to explore the ends of that movement. How far can you roll back without pushing your head into the ground and suspending yourself with your hips up in the air for a second lift? You see any return? That's nice. One more time. We're rolling back. Lift the seat. Come all the way back up from here and fold against that your arms and legs forward. Roll your spine on the Mat.

Stretch your arms over your head and allow your ribs to distend because that feels so great, right? Every now and then you just got to leave home to come back home, right? It's one of those things. Next up is our double leg stretch. We're gonna combine that with our rolling back a little bit. It's a very archival, traditional variations. Quite meaningful, especially with what we're working towards. Bend your knees into your chest.

Give yourself a squeeze in a hug to start for this version. Don't be afraid of lifting your tail ever so slightly off the Mat, right? Make sure your back is okay with that. You draw your knees into your chest. You want to think of the position you're in. When you're doing your stomach massage, you're rolling like a ball, and when you're in a squat right, you draw your knees in towards you as deeply as you can.

Heels to seat double x stretch. Extend your legs down and are pressing your palms into the sides of your legs, holding them together. Then draw your knees into your chest with your XL. Rock your tail off the Mat for little rock back. Three, two, one. You lower the hips down to switch the legs back out. Catch yourself in your double x stretch. Exhale, come in for three. For two, for one. Hips down, legs out. Catch yourself with your center, pulling back.

Xcel knees come in rock for three, two, one. We'll take three. More like that. Legs down and out. So good x, there've been three. Two, one. Feel the energy of your legs reaching down. It almost feels like it's lifting your back. Three, two. Once you really have to pull against it while you hold yourself in shape.

Nice eggs are rolling in. Three and two and one. Let's do one more. In fact, stretch your legs out down in low. Take this next rock into a seated position. Pull in for three and two and one. Lift yourself up to seated and then take a moment here for your spine. Stretch. Open your legs as wide as your mat for the next two feet. Strongly take your arms down unto the mat between your legs. In fact, use your fingertips pressing down into the mat to give your spine a little boost upwards, right?

So your fingers in your arms become a little scaffolding right now. We're gonna need that later as well. Take a full breath and get Tyler. Take your breath out, but get Tyler to do not even round your spine yet. Just keep pressing your fingertips down. Lift off your seat, activate your legs. Inhale again, and exhale. Lift your rib cage off your head.

So not too interesting to look at perhaps, right? But internally you want to feel like your body just creates more and more space between those vertebrae. One more time. Inhale gets super tall and then exhale. Go for it. Round on down that the bending of your spine. Bring your fingertips between your heels or between that spot between your heels. Inhale, lift back up, take a deep breath. Then we go twice more. Chin over, chest.

Look for the longest curve possible and even curve between upper middle, lower back. Nice. Inhale, lift yourself back up. Just one more time. Chin over, chest rolling forward, rolling down so there's never a sense of collapsing. Stay in your final expression. Press your palms into the mat to puff up your back in one new spot where it didn't stretch into just yet. Take a full breath here and then lift yourself all the way back up and then we're done with that. Lay down on your back. More of this later, you're on your back for a version of the double straight leg stretch with the legs crossed. Just in preparation for the boomerang, you take your hands behind your head, one on top of the other. For the support of your spine, lift your head, neck, and shoulders up.

And then take a moment here. Remind yourself of your neck, pull how you can use your hands there to press your head into your hands. See if still you can have an even bend through your entire spine, elbows wide, and a lot of space in the front of your throat so that your breath doesn't get stuck in your throat. Now from here, send your legs out of your body. Pick them straight up to 90 degrees. Place your right leg on top of the left where your inner thighs squeeze them and then lower the legs away from you. They come down as far as you can. Keep your back happy and then lift your legs back up. Do that twice more.

Stretch your legs up and away from you. Lift them back up. You take one more inner thigh squeezing together, head pressing back. Lift back up. Switch your legs around. Left leg on top. Lower for three. Pick it back up. Lower down to without getting shorter in the front of your throat.

Either lift the legs back up. You've got one more here. Lower, lower, lower lifted up. Bend your knees into your chest. That is that. Rock yourself up to a seated position. We go right back into our spine. Stretch forward. Hands between the legs. Press your fingertips down and get super tall. Just one time this time, Chin over, chest roll on down. Press your fingers into the mat at the end. See if that can result in your low back, pulling back into my hands. So yes, I've felt that. Now from here, lift yourself up.

Take a deep breath in this time. Do lift your arms out in front of you. Relax your toes away from you. Roll yourself back as far as you need to to be able to pick your legs up and grab a hold of your feet and then just stay there and breathe and try to make friends with this position. Try to lift up and out of your way straight. There's a nice long, even rounded backs. In fact, your spine stretch forward just that the world around you has changed a little bit, right? Hold it there. Keep reaching through the legs and then have some fun with it.

Roll yourself back onto your shoulders, legs, reach back and then come back up. Keep going. Rolling back. This is play time for your own body a little bit, right? We pieced together a lot of things we've been working on. As you come down from your overhead reach, can you think of that resistance you gave yourself in rollover? How you came down with control to lift yourself back up so it's an active rollover on the way back in act of roll up on the way forward. All the while holding that spine stretch. It's all the same thing, right?

Rolling back, lifting up. Now stay. Find your balance if you can without moving your legs at all. Can you feel like you're trying to pull your legs towards one another to fire up your inner thighs and then take three more like that. Rolling back looks the same field, super different. Lift yourself back up. Two more. Rolling back. Lift your heads up and over your head.

Roll along the length of your spine. One more time or rolling back. Lift yourself all the way up. Let's tease her out of that. Bring your legs together. Stretch your arms up and forward. Try to touch your toes. They're like kind of right there. See if you can get their left foot out of the way.

It's take a full breath and come all the way down and then relax your knees into your chest. Give yourself a squeeze in a hug. [inaudible] rock side to side. Great work you guys. We're almost there. Almost the word had nobody wants to hear. Almost. Take your feet out in front of your hips and bring your arms down by your sides.

We'll do a little shoulder bridge as to see if we can get more comfortable bringing more weight into our tripod between the shoulders and the head, because again, boomerang, we might go that far back. Go ahead and get your feet so close to you. You might just be able to touch you heels with your fingertips. That's right. And then stamp your heels into the ground. Begins to lift your hips up and forward, meaning away from you as you go into your shoulder bridge.

And what that means is even though the hips lift up and there's some weight that comes off the ground, that should never fall into your head and neck, but rather be stretched forward through the knees. So we get a massive thigh stretch there as well that you're told spread wide that the toe mounds release a little bit and then take a little bit of weight until your arms. Again, just like you did in those rollovers in one leg circles earlier, press the arms back, stretch your fingertips forward and then very slowly melt the spine down. Aim to sit down on your heels as you come down and then do that again. Lift yourself up. Remind yourself of that little drill we did earlier when you were on your back straight leg and you try to lift your hips ever so slightly, right?

Think of this as another version of that, a clearer version of what we're looking for in the body needs stretching up and forward. Knees not caving in or out. There's an inner thigh connection, but we don't touch the knees together. Feel like you're dragging the match together between the feet. Come all the way down. Get longer as you roll the body down. Just one more time. See how in all this time your head can be super relaxed, right? There is weight there. There is weight in your shoulders, but there's no impact, right? You're just resting there.

You try to unweight your spine away from your head, finding length, finding breath, breathe into that space that is now lifted off the mat. And then as you roll down at the roll down, be what excels the air out of you. Nice. And then once your hip sat down, one more thing before we do the whole thing, bend your knees into your chest. Rock yourself up to a seated position. We've essentially done our inner thigh work. We've done our inversions.

We have figured out our body, even in a teaser like position, right? The only thing that's missing is that initiation of Boomerang, which is a little elusive and hard to get. So we'll do a little finger stand, um, hip lift to prepare for that. Bring your legs out long in front of you. Know that you have options, right? Depending on how squishy your mat is that you're working on, you might have a different wrist finger or fist alignment. For this, we want to be able to take weight into our hands right next to our hips. Let me join you for this first part.

You press your legs together in front of you. You sit up nice and tall and let's just take the hands down flat, right and next to the hips. Remind yourself of how you lifted your hips up with straight legs earlier on when you were on your back, right by pressing your heels and your hands down into the mat. Remember that we'll do the same thing here. Lift a pound of weight out of your hips, pressing the hands and heels down, and then just stay there for a second. Notice of that.

Curl your shoulders in or see if he can open your chest while you do all that nice and then release back down. Not that much happening, right? If this puts a lot of wrinkles in your wrist and it doesn't feel so great, trade with FIS next to your hips, impress them straight down. Again, your goal is to keep the chest wide open so that you can breathe undisturbed. Press your legs into one another and then slowly lower yourself back down. And for those of you who have super strong hands and super strong fingers, unlike myself, you can take your hands down right next to your hips, make spider fingers or whatever you want to call that, and then you press down into your fingers to lift yourself up. Super hard to do that on a squishy mat of course, so you can make up your mind about how that felt right now and then find a position that works for you. On this next one, we're going to take the hands a little bit further forward, closer towards the knees in whichever hand variation worked for you.

Bring Your Chin over your chest and roll down. If you have worked on a reform and you've done your rowing right, this is the from the hips variation, you press down into your hands. This time though, you've take your eyes forward towards your toes. Then maybe one leg at a time or both. You try to pick up your legs holding that bend in your spine and then lowering yourself all the way down.

Lift yourself back up to Seton and it's way too hard to do that. And Talk. So I'll let you guys do it and take a deep breath in Shin over chest. Rounding forward, press down into your hands and Wade your hips and perhaps your legs lift up and then you take one more breath. Amazing. And then you come back down. We'll just try one more time. This is less about accomplishing it and more about trying it right, because that effort is what's going to set you up into a nice floating boomerang. Woo Hoo. All right. And lower the hips down.

Shake out your risk for a second. Do a little rolling. Bring the backs of your hands together and shake them out this way too. All right, I am ready for a boomerang. Are you ready for Boomerang? Alright. It's actually quite a simple exercise and we've done all the ingredients. We just piece them together and we have a nice flowing motion.

What is a boomerang? It's a devise that flies and doesn't stop halfway through, right? So we want to think of it that way as well. Plates your right leg on top of the left. Squeeze your inner thighs together where they meet. We've done our double straight leg stretch with crossed legs. Think of that here. Take your hands down by your sides.

We're not actually going to lift the hips, but we are pressing the hands down as if we would curl your head down a little bit and try to lift your legs towards your head. Let that be what takes you into a roll over. Switch your legs around. Now reach up through the arms to lift into a teaser. Swing the arms behind you, head on your knees, arms lift up. Take your hands down by your sides. Lift yourself back up. We're ready to do the second side. Press down into your hands. Roll down, lift the legs up against you.

Swing the legs open. Close them the other way. Lift yourself up. Reach the arms. Swing the arms back and down behind you. Lift them up. Take your hands down by your hips right away to come back up so we can even skip that last bit of a circle. Are we clear on that? Correct. So now you get four more repetitions. You go at your own pace. Try to let that boomerang fly from start to finish.

After you got press into your hands, lift up and over. Switch the legs around. Reach the arms, swing through. Lift the arms up behind you. Go right into your second one. Lift back up. Swing the legs over your head, Chris. Cross the legs. Lift up, arms swing up behind you like the end of rowing. And then you take your hands down by your sides. Start two more here. Rolling back. Open. Close. Let it fly. Swing it up.

Take a big stretch over the legs. Hands by your hips. Take your last money. Got It. Nice rolling back. Open-Close swing on a roll forward. Take the arms up high behind you. Now this last one, you can take your arms over your head and cross your feet. Hold onto your toes. Give yourself a nice little stretch. Take a deep breath. All right, now from here, sit yourself up. Cross your feet.

Bend your knees, rock over your feet onto your knees, uncross your feet. Take your hands down in front of your knees. Super Fancy transition. Roll yourself back onto your hands and feet. Nice and flat. Let your head relax and then roll yourself all the way up. Bring your heels together, your toes apart. Let's finish the way we started.

Take your arms up towards the ceiling. Take a deep breath in. Exhale, Chin over. Chest. Roll yourself all the way down with your legs. Still pressing down to the ground. Fire up that inner thigh connection, that link through arms and legs that, and then roll yourself all the way back up. So even this is now suddenly your boomerang, right? If the arm straight up, take a deep breath. One more time. Chin over. Chest. Start to compare your body to what it felt like when you started.

See if there's more space where the region to receive that energy of the legs is more familiar. By now, lift your arms back up. That just means you programmed your body for some really good movement. Take your arms out to the side, relax the arms down, and that was your boomerang inspired workout. Great work. Ladies, thank you so much.

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Comments

Benjamin I so very much appreciate the imagination, the praxpctise, the work and energy that you have put into these Mat breakdowns.

Every time I do one of your classes I fall in love with the Mat exercises all over again xxx
And my apologies for typos ... iPhone fingers x
I love these short workouts breaking down a particular exercise. Benjamin has a gift of deconstructing then rebuilding all the pieces together so by the time you get to the exercise it is already in your body. You understand it. Thank you. If only he could do this for the entire Pilates repatoire!
1 person likes this.
Btw Benjamin, it is a tease that you are offering your new training in Calgary. Hopefully some day you could offer it over in Vancouver :)
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Benjamin, thank you so much for yet another of your amazing PA classes and tutorials. The breakdowns and cues always give me a deeper understanding and new appreciation of each exercise. Can't wait to see you in Phoenix!
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For a good and deep understanding! Great class, thank you!
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Best boomerang I've ever done! Thanks!
Benjamin I Love the way you prepared each part of the body and then broke down the movement and then re-constructed it into a beautiful flowing and logical movement Masterful LOVE it x
Yay, thanks everyone! So happy to hear that you find more success in Boomerang. It's simply too fun a movement not to include in our practice. But: build it first, then throw it. Happy boomeranging everyone!
1 person likes this.
Love the visualisations given in this and what a great way to break down boomerang. Thank you!
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