Pilates: Roll Up - part of the women's fitness video series by GeoBeats. Hi I am Charlotte and this is Alice and we are here at Streamline Pilates Studio in Brooklyn Heights, New York. We are going to show you a series you can do to strenthen your abdominals using the roll up excercie from Pilates mat work. We are going to use 2 pound handweights and you can use any level of weight you want. I recommend something close to 2 or three pounds, not much more. If you have any shoulder injuries or anything like that, you might want to use one pound. Laying on your back, your legs are drawn together, so you can feel your inner thighs drawing together, and pressing down, so you can feel the back of your thighs pressing into the mat. Let's take your hands up towards the ceiling with your weights. Just take a moment, feel your shoulders down along your back. Feel your ribs relaxing into the mat behind you. Take an inhale through your nose and exhale. Scoop your belly button back towards your spine, so you can feel your abdominals drawing into your body. Beautiful. Inhaling through your nose, let's bring your arms up over your head, keeping those shoulders down along your back and exhaling, scoop your stomach. Bring your curl up, trying to keep your arms to either side of your ears. Beautiful. You are just rolling up over yourself one piece of your spine at a time. This is great for stretching out your back, excellent for strengthening your abdominals and for sequencing trough your spine, getting that movement trough your spine, keeping that flexibility that we are all trying to maintain. Keep each part of your spine down on the mat as long as you can and curl up over yourself. Imaging you have a porcupine on your lap, and you are trying to sort of curl up over that porcupine so that you do not get quilled. Keeping those abdominals drawing back into your spine. Shoulders down along your back. Back of your thighs pressing down. Inner thighs are connected into your pelvic floor muscles, into your abdominal muscles, shoulders are down along your back. Beautiful. We will do this four times. And then in this next one, roll yourself back part of the way. You can challenge yourself by rolling back further or a little less hard would be to not roll back quiet so far. Naval back towards your spine. You will think you are drawing back that seem of your pants down into the mat. Imagine you are hugging a tree with those weights. And you are going to inhale, bring your hands apart and exhale, scoop in your stomach and bring your hands back together. Try not to push your ribs forward. Keep those ribs reaching back. If you feel yourself sort of wobbling, make the hands come less far apart. Shoulders are down along your back. Fabulous. We will do eight of these. Two more. Great. And now let's just bring your hands in closer to your chest and further out. All the while you are doing this, your abdominals are strengthening, your low back is stretching out, your legs are stabilizing the rest of your body. So they are working hard too, even though they are not moving. And your shoulders are down along your back. Your chest is nice and wide. Eight of these. And then let's straighten your arms out and do a bicep curl. Eight here. Beautiful. Inhaling through your nose, exhaling through your mouth. And then bring your hands back into that hug a tree position and we are just gonna twist and draw your elbow down to one side and the other. Try not to walk through your feet, so your heels and your feet and your hips are staying steady and squared off as you twist through your waist, keeping your abdominals scooped back towards your spine. Beautiful. Four to each side. Great. And then stretching your arms out, palms down, just roll yourself down an inch and back up an inch. Down an inch and back up an inch. And you want to keep the punch from coming too much in your hips. Punch from here, so this part is down. So this part is up. And your hips are staying nice and wide and relaxed. The back of your tights are pressing down into the mat. And after eight of those, roll yourself down one piece of your spine at a time and relax. You did great.