 Welcome back to the school of calisthenics. This is a follow-along yoga flow specifically designed by our head of yoga, Jude, to help us improve our calisthenics training. Tell us what we've got in store, Jude. So we've got a 15-20 minute flow that's going to work through all parts of your body that's going to help us build a little bit of strength for calisthenics. It's going to help us with some flexibility and some movement elements of calisthenics as well and you're going to enjoy it. It's going to feel nice at the end. So we'll just, I'm going to take Tim through it and there might be a few coaching points along the way where I stop and explain a few things to him. I hope you enjoy it. Perfect, let's get started. For our first practice we're going to start lying down. So make yourself nice and long, Tim, and have a shake and a shuffle. How's your lie down on the mat? So we're going to shake out the feet, we're going to bring the hand back at the hands just onto the floor, palms up towards the sky, just get yourself nice and comfortable. Now if you're doing this at home you can lie here for a minute or two until you feel ready to move. I'm not going to give Tim that long. We're going to start moving pretty quickly. So let's take our right knee up over the belly, wrap your hands around the front of it and we're going to squeeze the knee in towards the chest. So you should feel your lower back just flattening into the mat a little bit giving you a nice big stretch through the back of the body and into that right bum cheek, that right glute. We're going to keep our hand, our left hand on this right knee. Why don't you take your right arm away from your shoulder. So palm up towards the sky and you should feel that right shoulder blade just nestling down into the mat and that's going to stay there as we draw this right knee over the belly towards the left side. So a nice little spinal twist here. So take it as far as you can, Tim, but without that right shoulder blade leaving the mat. And you can turn to look over that right arm, get that twist all the way up through your spine, just take a nice deep breath there. From here we're going to roll onto our left side. So leave the knee where it is, take the right arm all the way over and press your right hand on top of your left. So you've got your kind of crocodile arms in front of you and your right knee is pressing down into the floor. So from here on a big in-breath we're going to take those right fingers up to the sky, our open book stretch. So all the way up to the top, all the way over the back and as if you're trying to rest the palm of that hand on the floor behind you. Now it might not get there, it might do. Let's take it back. And we're going to do two more of those. Big breath in, reaching high over towards that right side, coming back and one last time. And then coming back to the left, draw up the knees. We're going to roll over onto the back, keep hold of your left knee but lengthen out your right leg. So we're going to do the same on the other side. So give that left knee a nice big squeeze in towards your chest. So use a little bit of strength, get that knee as close as you can. We're going to keep the right hand on the knee, left arm away from the shoulder. And again, drawing that knee over the belly as we keep the left shoulder nice and close towards the floor. Good. Looking over that left arm perhaps, just to get that twist all along the length of the spine. Nicely done. And then let's take that left hand over to the right side. So left knee's coming onto the floor now if it wasn't already. We're going to roll onto our right side, left hand pressed on top of the right palm. Let's take a big breath in, reach up to the sky and take that left hand behind us. Should feel like a nice big stretch for that thoracic spine. Let's come back and do two more, Tim. Big breath in for the last time. Let's go back over to that right side and then push up to seated. Find a comfortable position on your mat. So we're going to just move the bum cheeks out of the way. When I feel these sit bones nestling into the floor, so I physically lift them up. Feet are planted just in front of us, hip distance apart. So we're going to have a spinal twist here. So let's start on the right side with the right fingers behind the tailbone. Let's take the left arm onto the outside of that right knee. As we breathe in, we're just going to find a little bit of height through the spine and as we breathe out, we're going to roll the belly to the right side of the mat. You might find you can look over that right shoulder. Let's come back to centre. Let's try the other side. So left fingers behind the tail, right arms long. We're just going to hook the elbow onto the outside of that left knee. Big breath in, reach high with the crown of that head and then let's twist to the left, looking over that left shoulder. Good. Let's come back to centre. Cross those legs for me. Finges hips onto the mat just in front of the shins. So keeping the body nice and long, all we're going to do is walk these fingertips forwards. Just stretching through the back. You'll probably feel this in the lower back. You might feel it in the knees and the ankles as well. For some people, this would feel really nice. You'll be able to get the nose all the way down to the floor. For others, you might find you can come a couple of inches off centre. Doesn't matter. Just go with the way you feel. Just breathe into that space for a breath of two. Does that feel all right, Tim? Yep. And then walking slowly back up to centre, we're going to have a side stretch. So fingertips are the side of these hips to begin with. Just walk them away from the hips so that you can feel a little bit of a tug into the shoulders. We're going to take the right fingers up to the sky. Keeping that right sit bone glued into the mat, let's bend over to the left side. So we're keeping the chest square to the front of the mat. We're not going to turn the chest to face the knee. We want to get that stretch through the lats and into the side body. Coming back to centre. Left fingers reach high. And we're going to take the left fingers over to the right side. That's it. Nice. All the way back to centre. Let's bring the fingertips behind the tail bone. So I'm going to turn to face my back to the camera, but you can do it from the front. So fingertips nice and close together behind the tail. We're just going to push the shoulder blades together and lift up the chest, see if we can show the chest to the sky. So stretching through the front of the chest, squeezing those shoulder blades. Good. Coming back to centre. Well done. Still feeling all right? Yeah. From there, we're going to plant the hands and step the feet back into what we call downward facing dog. So it looks a little bit like an inverted V pose. The feet are hip distance apart. The hands are shoulder distance apart. We're going to spread the fingers as big as we can. So Tim's going to spread his hands as wide as possible. And you'll see that he's got a lovely inverted V shape here. Now if your hamstrings are tight, what you might find is that your legs pull you into more of a U pose. So if that's the case, keep the knees nice and soft and send those hips all the way up to the sky, to the top of the room, wherever you're practicing. Let the head just hang in between those biceps. Give it a shake. So we're going to take a look at the space between the hands and have a big step forward with the right foot. Now if you can't step that right foot forwards in one big step, then the thing to do is to bring it as far as you can and then drag it forwards if you need to. So using a little bit of core strength here, we're going to reach the fingers forwards and then float all the way up into our high lunge. So sinking into that nice lunge position. That right knee stacked on top of the right ankle and my hips are nice and square to the front of the mat. Shoulders are relaxed. So sometimes when we take the hands above the head, the shoulders come up to the ears but we're going to just draw them down the back. You see how much space Tim's got between his ears and his shoulder blades. And to challenge the balance a little bit, you can take a look at the space between the hands. Now we're going to have a little bit of a fun with some balancing here and for that, which is hard enough in the wind and on the grass, but for that we've got some blocks that are going to help us. So if you just place that block about eight or ten inches or so in front of your baby toe, it's going to help us just to get into one of the positions that we're going to transition into in a moment. So let's cross the hands across the chest and what I'm going to ask you to do Tim is just push into your left big toe and begin to transfer the weight onto your right foot. And then let's see if you can just lift those left toes and then float down into what we call warrior three. So your toes, your knees and your hip bones are all pointing towards the floor. So flex that foot for me. Nice. And your hips are nice and square. Your hips are going to want to just lift up a little bit. We're going to push it down ever so slightly. So try and keep that standing leg as straight as you can. Nicely done. And from here we're going to make a little transition into our half moon pose. So bring your right fingers down towards that block Tim and then we're going to start to turn the toes, the left toes, towards the left side of the mat. And you'll see how your knees start to turn to the left side, your hip bones start to turn to the left side and then we can perhaps reach that left hand all the way up to the sky. Nicely done. Good. Now, this first time Tim has done this, he's doing really well, but if you, as you practice this and get used to it, you can start to take a little bit of pressure out of the right fingers, maybe release the block all together. Nicely done Tim. Fabulous. So let's drop that left foot to the floor behind us. Arms shoulder height, big bend in that right knee, that right knee tracking towards the baby toe side. So just take that right foot ever so slightly forward so that we've got the knee stacked on top of the ankle. Nicely done. And we're in worry too. We're going to turn the right palm to the sky. Without moving that lower body, let's just inch forwards and take that right hand all the way up to the sky. Good. Reversing our area. Left hand is just resting on your left leg. Brilliant. From here, we're going to wind all these arms, plant them either side of that right foot, pick up the left heel and step back into our down dog. So you can have a little paddle of the heels here if it feels good. Stretching through the body, down dogs and resting pose. So take a moment or two just to find that nice long breath again and we're going to do the other side. Are you ready for the other side? So taking a look at the space between the hands, big step forward with the left foot. Reaching forwards, we're going to float into our high lunge. Good. So sinking when we get there, that knees on top of the ankle, nice and strong through that back leg, hips nice and square to the front of the mat and these shoulders are relaxed. Good. Let's bring the hands together over the chest. We're going to make that transition into our balancing posture. So warrior three. So push into that right big toe. Let's move our weight onto the left leg. Now if this one big leap feels a little bit too much, you can shuffle your right foot forwards and then just have a go at floating into that warrior three. Really good for developing strength in that standing leg, for developing our balance, our proprioception. And then let's try that transition into half moon then. So the left hand goes down to the block, Tim. We're going to start to roll the right toes to the right side, the right knee, the right hip. Maybe reach those right fingers up to the sky and then see if we can let go of that block altogether. Some of you might not need the block at all. I find it just helps with the transition. Let's drop that right foot to the back of the mat. We shouldn't make our way back to something that looks a bit like warrior two. Turning that left arm to the sky, let's reach forwards and reverse that warrior right hand resting on the right leg. Lots and lots of space down the left side of the body. Let's win all these arms. We're going to step back into our down dog and just pause there for a moment. Still feeling okay? Yeah. Brilliant. So a little bit of work for the core. Let's float into a high plank position. So the shoulders are coming back over the wrists. We're going to squeeze the bum cheeks together so that the heels, the hips and the head are all in a nice long line. So we've got a couple of variations with this. If you're new to side planks, then we can drop the right knee onto the floor and roll onto that right knee and reach the left fingers up to the sky. If you feel a little bit stronger, let's come back to plank, Tim. We'll do the other side. We can roll onto the side of the foot and reach those right fingers up to the sky. Final option, if you're feeling super strong, let's roll back onto the right side. We can reach that left leg up into the sky as well. Good. Hands and toes back to the mat. Let's drop the knees and send the seat back to the heels. Have a bit of a stretch in extended Charles pose. We're going to swing the legs around and sit on our seats. Let's take the legs a little bit wider. So a little bit of work for the hips, hip mobility, some forward folding and a little bit of side bending as well, which is also a really helpful posture to do for any niggles around the lower back. So we're just going to push the heels away so the legs are nice and active. I'm going to slide my right hand down on the top of that right shin. Maybe just hook it around the top of the ankle and my left hand is going to go on this left hip. So I like to think about taking my ear down towards my knee because that starts to get me into this side body. So can you feel that? So if you find that you start to take your chest to the knee, it's a completely different stretch. So we want to get that right ear down towards the knee and if that feels super comfortable, then we can take the left hand over the ear and reach for those right toes. Perfect. Nice. Let's come back to centre. Try the other side. So sliding the left hand down that left leg. Right hand on the hip. Let's take the left ear down towards the left knee. If that feels all right, let's see how it feels to take that right hand all the way over the right ear and reach for those left toes. Coming back to centre. Let's have a forward fold here. So fingertips onto the mat just in front of the body. We're going to keep the front of the body nice and long and just like we did with the cross leg fold, we're just going to have a little walk forwards. So stop when you start to feel the tug. We talk about playing with the edge in yoga and you feel something that feels like it's just at the edge of what's comfortable. That's where we want to stop and breathe for a few moments and you might find that you can just inch into that posture a little bit more. That feeling all right? Usually on the out breath we can just inch those fingers forwards a fraction and don't worry if when you first try this you're kind of just an inch or so off centre. It's perfectly normal. We just need to spend a little bit of time and be gentle. Just coach the body into these shapes. Walking back up to centre. Let's pick up these knees and lengthen out of the legs. So I'm just going to shuffle towards the front of the mat because we're going to roll down. So we're coming back to where we started our final posture but we're just going to roll down to get there. So push your heels away from you, take the arms nice and wide and we're going to pretend that we're wrapping the arms around a big beach ball. So draw your belly in towards the spine, wrap the spine around it, wrap the arms around it and then ever so slowly we're just going to roll the spine back down onto the mat. So imagine you can visualize that spine just lowering super slow, as slow as you can. So you take your time if you're following at home. Take as long as it takes and once your shoulder blades hit the floor we're going to bend the knees up and hug them into the chest and have a little rock from side to side. And then lengthen out the legs, give them a shake, pick up the shoulder blades, let's spread the shoulder blades apart, rest the backs of those hands on the floor again, turn the palms up towards the sky. Let everything go, so fingers are soft, curling in towards the palms, close your eyes, flick the bugs away. And again if you're at home you want to stay here for five, ten minutes as long as you want to but Tim that's you done for the day. Done. How's that feel? Three, five minutes. Back in five. So we hope that you guys enjoyed following along with the yoga flow. Just remember that everything that we do in calisthenics is often focused around strength and stable positions but the real foundations of that is actually having that movement options and yoga is so good for helping to keep you moving well so that when you want to introduce a new movement or do something different you've got the raw basic movement capacity to be able to teach yourself to move in a new way. So we designed that flow today to be quite short so that hopefully you can fit it into your training schedule relatively easily. If you can get around to doing that three times a week even more if you can then I think you'll find it will really benefit your calisthenics training. So nothing else to say until next time. Class dismissed.