Resist No More

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another practice. I'm really excited to share with you one of my resistant band workouts that I really appreciate more and more as an aging yogini, as a great tool having this resistant band to help maintain and also build some strength as as I'm aging. Because as we might know, when we age, we start to naturally lose a little bit of muscle mass. So it's really nice to use some of this resistant training to try to maintain what you've got.

So if you'll join me on the ground with a blanket perhaps folded underneath your head and a resistant band, or two, close by. If you had more than one, it just gives you options for different tension. So if we meet together on our back for just a moment of centering before we begin, like just to feel the ground underneath, my whole body, the head, shoulders, pelvis, feet, and transitioning from whatever you've been up to today now into your practice time. And with the hands on the belly, try to literally center ourselves by taking a few deep breaths in toward this middle part of your body as you inhale. And as you exhale if possible breathing through the nose, maybe you breathe through the mouth.

That's more relaxing. And a centering breath in through the nose, and breathing out whatever way is comfortable for you. And letting your body feel the support of the ground. Couple more moments, breathe in toward that belly area where your hands might be resting. XL belly softening in toward the back.

Alright. If you're ready, let's go ahead and grab your resistant bands, and let's open it up and take your right foot about the center of your bands. And what we'll do is reach your hands up towards your right foot and then pull your elbows down towards the floor so your elbows are anchored. And you might have to experiment with how much to pull where your hands go. So that you can start to do a little circle with your right leg. Hey, elbows stay grounded.

I'm just kind of exploring how this femur is moving in the joint and you're pushing into your band. So so it's maybe a little bit more challenging. And you start to create a little bit more strength while also working on flexibility and range of motion. If it didn't feel interesting enough, you can always bring your hands up higher, pull your elbows back down, and you could push against more resistance. K. So it's just something to feel out.

And now let's release the tension so we can try the other leg for a moment. And it's not meant to be the hardest thing we're doing today, just a way to warm up this joint. So you pull your elbows to the ground, see if this feels like a good amount of tension to start to draw a little circle with your left foot. Okay. So elbows stay grounded, shoulders aren't moving. We're just moving this left femur, and you're pushing into that band.

Trying to keep your pelvis neutral. And if you experimented last time with creating more tension or less, you might make one more little fine tune adjustment. As we finish that circle. K. Now let's release the tension and open up the band a little bit to put both feet up. Now let's walk your hands up so you have pretty straight wrist and elbows.

Look at your left foot, and it wants you just to push your right foot out away from your center line, push it into the band, and then bring your right foot back to your left foot. Left foot stays put. You push again out to your right. And then back to center. So your left foot is doing a little work of pushing into the band to hold it in place, right, put to the right, re center.

If you want that to be less intense, your hands are down closer to the ends of the resistant band. More tension, your hands are up higher. Now let's do eight together once we've got the right tension. One, two. Left foot stays where it is three. Four, five, six, seven, still looking at that left foot and eights.

Hey, come back to center, relax your hands. Hey. It could reach back up, adjust the tension. So look at your right foot and just try for a moment. Push your left foot out and then back together. Push your left foot out and together. So since our body is asymmetrical, you might need to have less tension or more tension on this left side.

K. Now assuming you're you've got the right tension, let's do eight together. Right foot stays where it is. Left foot out. Center one. Two.

Center. Three. Center. Four. Center.

Five. Center right foot stays where it is, six, seven, and eight. And come back to center relax your hands for a second. K. Now let your hands slide a little bit more down toward the ends and push your feet both out into what would be, maybe as wide as your yoga mat, and then bring your knees towards your chest. Okay. Now walk your hands a little higher up the band. So think of doing kind of a squat on your back.

Pull your elbows to the floor and then push your legs straight, knees towards sides of the chest, and then push your legs up straight. And knees toward chest, legs straight. So you're gonna warming up your legs and the hips for doing squats, but we're doing them on our back, pushing against resistance, couple more times. These wide, legs straight, knees wide, and legs straight. Let's bring your legs parallel. Relax your hands for a second.

I know that's a bit of work there. Now we're gonna keep your legs straight, and we're gonna do a little something for your upper body for a moment. Hans, maybe closer to the ends of your resistant band, and we're gonna pull your arms wide until your hands touch the floor. And then bring your arms back up. Whatever angle works for you, pull your arms down.

And then go back up. K. Try to keep your back neutral. Look towards your feet. Pull your arms down. And it's not crucial that there's a particular angle.

I just want you to feel comfortable arms go wide and maybe your shoulders meet the floor. Find that angle that works for your shoulders. We'll try a few more, pull down, and come up. And the interesting part of the resistant work is I feel like you need to do repetition in order to start to feel a little bit more engagement and tone in some of these, in this case, upper mid back muscles. So rather than just doing one or three, we maybe work towards doing this movement for maybe close to a minute or maybe something like eight or 10 reps.

Alright. Let's go ahead and relax your hands for a second. So slide your left foot out. You can have that band angle there for a moment. And let's move the, blanket out from under your head. Reach back up for the bands.

And from here, we're gonna pull your elbows back to the floor. Now try to push your foot into the band and lift your hips up a tiny bit. One, lower down, like doing a little bridge pose. Two, lower. Doesn't have to be a big lift. Three, lower. Four, lower. Five, lower, six, lower, seven, lower, last one.

Let's do eight, and release. We're gonna take a moment where we're holding the band above your shins. So shins are parallel to the floor in between. Let's take your arms back towards your ears, and you might pull a little bit more on your band. And then pull the band tight as you curl up.

Take your arms back towards your ears. Start to pull on the band as you curl up. You might release some tension. Pull on the band as you curl up. Roll back?

So two more. Pull and curl. Well, back, last one. Pull and curl and roll back. Alright. Let's switch now and put your left foot in the band, maybe about the center, and then, find that comfortable amount of tension as your elbows meet the floor here. K. Keep looking at your left foot, and we'll do a little lift up and lower. Again, lift up two, and lower. Three, lower, four, lower, five, lower, six, lower little bridge, seven, lower, and eight, and lower. Open up your band, both feet back up in the band.

Lower your heels, and let's get the, strap the band again over your ankles. K. Let's put them down on your ankles, shins parallel to the floor, and look at the ceiling as you pull your hands down to touch the floor, and then back up pull your hands down to the floor and up. And you work with whatever tension works for you, so you have to keep your legs engaged so they don't drop as you're pulling down and feeling that work more in your upper mid back. Pull straight down and up. Straight down.

Up straight down. Let's do two more. Down up. And down, and up. Alright. Grab your legs, and let's go ahead and bring yourself up towards sitting.

Okay. So if you all stretch your legs forward and you put your, band around your feet, and we've got our loose ends here, So you might wrap your hands around if you've got a long strap. It's okay to have the knees a little bent. So we're gonna pull the hands towards your waist and then legs straight. Sorry. Your arm straight. Pull the hands towards your waist. And then arms again straight.

Pull back and forward. So we're trying not to speed up. Trying to move mindfully. So the releasing the arms forward is also part of the workout. So we pull back, maybe pause and release slowly. Okay. That also helps to build strength. Release slowly and pull back.

Couple more. Look forward and pull back. Okay. Now let's release, and we can release the band from the feet, and let's turn and come to our tabletop position. So this is where you might enjoy having some padding underneath your knees for a couple things we'll do here. Alright. So if I take this one end and put it down under my right knee, and I'm gonna just pull to make sure it's anchored down under my right knee here. So in this one, I usually gather quite a bit of the band in my right hand and make a fist and just gather that extra fabric that you might have.

So you can point your toes straight back as one idea. And one idea here is we're just gonna pull the right arm forward and up, and you might need to get rid of some tension so you would kind of unravel the band a little bit and experiment what's the right tension for you? K. So once you experiment with that, second idea, you could take the left leg back if you want, and you could add the lifting of the left leg as you reach forward. So I just wanted to show that as another way to build a little more strength. So I'm gonna keep at that one.

And let's do six together. So we're gonna reach forward and maybe lift your back leg one. Definitely reach forward together two and release. And three, and release. Four, release, five, release, and six.

Release. Wonderful. Now as you come back around, put the band under both knees. And curl your toes under as you hold on to the ends. So from here, we're gonna look forward and pull up at maybe 45 degree angles, and then bring your arms down.

Pull up and down. Keeping good posture awareness. Pull up and down. Up and down. Let's do two more up and down. Last one. Up and down. Alright. Now, let's put the band under your left knee.

And you bring that extra out in front, gather it in your hand, and, might keep your knees down or might keep your back right leg straight. Test bringing your left arm forward and see if you've got the right amount of tension. Then if you're going with your back legs straight, let's together again do six. One. And release. Two.

And release. Reaching forward. Three. Release four, release five, release, and six. And release. Alright. Both knees, on the ground, walk your hands back towards your knees.

And let's go ahead fold your blanket, and let's get that out of the way. So now let's come up for a moment to stand. And as you stand, you're gonna have the band down in front by your thighs. K. We're gonna take the arms up overheads and take a nice full body stretch, and now raise your heels as your arms come down and you're pulling the band wide. Heels down arms up, lift your heels.

Pull the band wide. Come ups. We're working on good posture. Also, heels up. Pull the band wide. Release. Heels up, pull wide, release, heels up last one, pull wide, and then arms up. Let's lower your arms down and take a moment and relax your shoulders.

Alright. Now we're gonna take the band underneath your left heel. And as you step on that with your left heel is maybe the hardest part, open your legs wider apart, and do a little test to make sure it's anchored down. K. Your legs a little bit wider than your shoulders. Hold on to the extra band with your left hand. I'm going to start with your right arm as your side.

So hold your left arm out. We're gonna reach up and a little bit over to your right. How good does that feel? Really slowly, arm stays out to your side, lift up, arch over to your rights, and slowly release out. Again, head over to your right.

Slowly release out. And number four, going to your side. Release number five, one more time, tipping to your side. Alright. Now come out. Now we're gonna make a turn towards the short end of the mat and head toward warrior one legs.

So bend your front right leg. We're gonna reach behind your head and grab your band. Now, anchor your back heel down, and we're gonna push up and get a little bit back stretch, tricep work as we bend the elbows, and push up, bend your elbows, and then push up, going down, and up, can stray the head, arms down, and then arms up, down, and up. Let's do one more. Going down, and up, and then release and release your right arm, release the tension, and then turn your feet forward. K. We're gonna slide your band over to your right side, pin it down, pull, make sure it's anchored.

And then again, feet are a little bit wider than your shoulders. Left arm at your side, right arm holds the band to the right. K. Now we're gonna tip and slide your left hand down your leg. Slow release. Reaching to your side, two.

Slow release. Hold that arm out. And three. And slow release. And four. Slow release out and five. Join that opening through your side body, release last one and six.

And slow release. K. Now a slight turn of your feet towards the short end of your mat, and now maybe your left leg is bent, release some of that band and reach back towards the back of your head. Hold on with both hands. Keep pressing into your back heel, and we're gonna push up with our arms, and then bend the elbows. Push up and release down.

Try to keep looking straight ahead. Push up and down. If you want more tension, gather more band in your hands, always adjust so that you feel the moves are safe, and maybe you start to feel like you're challenging some muscles here in your arms. The shoulders might even get a nice little stretch in your back calf as you're pressing the heel to the floor. Last one, push up and release. Now release your left arm, release some tension in your right hand, and then turn forward. Alright. Let's get the bands now behind your back of the shoulder blade area.

So I'm gonna turn and face the short end of the mat and have a little bit of room behind me. K. Bring your feet a little bit closer together. So we're doing a little balance move. We're gonna move the arms forward, so you might test where to put your hand so you can easily move forward. So as the arms go forward, transfer your weight to the right foot, lift your left knee.

And then we're gonna bring the arms into your side and then out to the side as you tip a little forward with your left leg back. Well, let's come back to where we started. Okay. Arms go forward. Same leg, left knee up, elbows back, open your arms wide as you tip a little bit toward warrior three. Elbows in or back to where we started.

Pull forward, lift your left knee, elbows in, slowly tip back, like you're doing warrior three, elbows in or back to where we started. Let's do one more. So we're doing four. Pull forward, left knee up. Elbows in, left leg back arms wide, warrior three.

K. Recenter yourself here. Look forward. We're gonna try our second side. So right knee comes up as you pull your arms forward. Elbows in, slowly tip right leg back, arms go wide, or your three. Elbows in, feet on the ground, pause.

Pull forward, right knee up, elbows in, arms wide, tipping toward warrior three, elbows in, recenter two. Pull forward, right knee up, elbows in, arms wide, tip forward. Could be some turbulence there. You're back to neutral, last one. Pull forward right knee up.

Elbows in. Going toward warrior three, elbows in feet on the ground. Alright. Nice job. Hope you had fun with that. Alright. Now let's turn and face the long side of the mat and get into a familiar warrior two stance. We're gonna keep the band back around the shoulder blades.

Let's start with your right foot turned out, bend your right knee. Just get the right angles. Look for that neutral spine. Alright. Now when we bend your right knee, we're gonna pull those arms wide and open up through through the front of the chest. Straight in your front leg, hug the elbows in towards your waist.

Two, just pull out wide. And then take it back in. Three going wide. Take it back in. Four, pull it in.

We're gonna do five, pulling that wide, and then take it in. Turn your foot forward. Hold the band behind you. And with your toes facing forward, just simply gonna stretch the arms away from your back and then towards the buttocks. Away from your back towards the buttocks.

Just feel that engaging the upper mid back and your triceps. Pulling it back and forward. K. One more time. Pull it back. Kind of a good posture and then release.

K. Slide it back around shoulder blades. Left foot turns out. Ban your knees straighten your leg. Find your comfortable warrior two angles. Let's open the arms wide as you bend your front knee.

Elbows in front legs straight. To open up wide and release. Three open wide and release. For and release. Five.

Release and let's pause. Turn your left foot in. Bring your legs and give your legs a rest and have that band at your side for a moment as you shake out your legs. And they'll meet together in mountain pose. Alright. Let's get ready to roll those shoulders and separate your feet again out to the side now for triangle base, so maybe not as wide as your warrior two.

Let's have the hands about shoulder distance apart, and let's turn your right foot out this time keeping your right leg straight. So we'll pull down a little bit on your right side to create a little bit of tension, and we're gonna hold tight, keep a straight right wrist, We're gonna focus on pulling your left elbow down and then coming back up. So if you find this fabric might get in your face, gather that lower end, pull your left elbow down, and then back up. Little more challenge, you tilt a little bit more to the right. Pull left elbow back and reach up.

Left elbow back and up. And we're just pulling that down so you're feeling some engagement of side body that right wrist is trying to stay straight, long through that right side. And let's try maybe two more. It's kind of generally engaging that left side of your body, lengthening through the right side. Come up, lower your arms down. Turn your toes out, bend your knees, and in between, we're gonna just pull wide into a little squat.

Arms narrow come up. Pull wide, a little squat. And come up. Pulling wide, come up. Let's do one more, wide, and come up. K. Relax your arms and then adjust your feet so you're pointing to the left.

K. When your arms come up, and we do little side tilts. Again, I'm gonna recommend gathering your band with your right hand, so it's not in your face. So you're pushing out straight left wrist, pull your right elbow down. And release that arm slowly up. Kind of feel for that move and how to adjust your band so it's not hitting you in the face and how you can feel that right side of your body engaging as we pull that shoulder blade down.

Hopefully, that feels pretty good down and up. Left arm stays strong. You might even tip yourself a little bit more to the left. Alright. I'm gonna finish that up. Bring your arms down in front of you and bring your legs a little bit closer together.

Open up and put both feet about hip distance apart on your band. Gonna turn a little bit sideways to see here for a second. So we're gonna move the arms back. And then as you come up to standing, bring your thumbs up towards your shoulders. Bend your knees, swing your arms back.

As you come up, thumbs to your shoulders. Bend the knees, back, thumbs to shoulders, chair, pull back, thumbs to shoulders. Pull back, Let's do one more thumbs to shoulders, release, and let's step your feet out. So if we work our way back to the floor, and we might like a little bit of padding to sit on, If you have bony sit bones, just like a little bit more padding, I'm gonna come here and take the band around the feet again. So we did straight legs earlier in class. We're gonna keep our knees bent and do a little bit more rotation where we pull the right hand towards your waist.

And if it's too much tension, your hand should be closer to the end. If you want more tension, your hand closer to your right foot. So pull back, right hand toward the waist. And then come forward. Bring your left hand towards your waist.

And then face forward. Let's lean back and pull both hands back. And then release forward. Right elbow back. Look right.

Face forward, left elbow back, look left, forward, and lean a little bit back, elbows back, hands to waist. Let's come forward one more time. Right hand back, look right, forward, left hand back, look left, forward, lean back both come back, and release. Alright. Let's go ahead and set that to the side. And just give yourself a moment to sit in a good way.

Alright. So as you sit in that good way nice and tall, grab your bands, let's go ahead and just hold that up in the air. And let's bring our arms to 90 degrees. Stretch your arms up, find that good posture look to your horizon, pull wide, and then come up. Arms at 90 degrees hold that tension. And come up. So we'll do a few more and hopefully just feel through doing that resistant work a little bit more connected to some places in your body that maybe we don't get to in our regular practice. Encouragement to go slow, keep these bands visible so that you're inclined to grab them and do a few of these moves more regularly throughout the day, and certainly throughout the week.

One more. K. And then we'll take our arms down and set that to the side. And just take a moment. You might roll your shoulders a little bit. Shift your weight left to right.

And just a little acknowledgement for bringing yourself to the mat today and to celebrate all that you were able to do. And I hope you enjoy that feeling of having more maybe warmth in your body from using the muscles and more flexibility, more strength. Thanks so much for being here to practice. Namaste.