Hey, guys, Cassie here. And today we have a special edition of Pop Pilates. Pilates for beginners. Today we're going to really focus on your breath, your posture, your form, and really the whole essence of pilates. I'm going to take it down a notch, really be explaining everything as we go through all of the moves. So this is really good, even if you've been doing all my other videos. But you really want to understand where all the moves really come back to where they come from. So if they're your first time doing pilates, watch this video.

Go ahead and try it at home. Get out your mat. That's all you're going to need. No tools whatsoever. If you don't have Matt, just go on your carpet. So, guys, let's get started. All right, I'm going to be standing, but you're actually going to be lying down on your mat right now. And I want you to go ahead and place your hands on your lower abs, okay? Right here, right below your belly button.

And we're going to practice lateral breathing. Breathing is one of the most important principles in pilates because it really helps you with the movement, okay? So, lateral breathing, you're going to go ahead and inhale through your nose, okay? And exhale through your mouth. What you probably did was puff out your chest, right, to make it lateral breathing. When you inhale through your nose, you're gonna go ahead and take the air to the outsides of your rib cage. Okay, let's try that again. Inhale. Okay, so, puffing out to the sides. Exhale.

Suck that belly button in. Okay, so did you feel that difference? We're gonna do it again. And when you exhale, I also want you to suck the belly button into the spine even more. We do this to really create that nice flat ab look by squeezing those abs. And you're really working the transverse abdominals. Here we go. Inhale. Lateral breathing out to the side.

And exhale something even more. Again. Inhale and exhale. Okay, so in all of the exercises, you'll be exhaling when you're exerting the energy. So whenever it's harder, you'll be exhaling. Okay? So if you're doing a crunch, exhale and then inhale down and relax. That's it. Alright, so you're lying down flat on your mat.

I really want you to focus on a few things here. Place your hands under your low back, right here. Can you touch them? If you can, that means you're not having a flat back. In pilates, we really want to keep a flat back as we do all of the exercises, unless I say you don't. So in order to do that, you're going to set that belly button in and kind of give it a nice round curve. So now when I place my hands underneath, I can't touch no more arch. Okay, so that really makes you in the belly button the whole time, really helping you create those flat abs. Knees into tabletop position.

You're going to pretend you're holding some plates on top. That's why it's called tabletop. Okay, your back is nice and round. We're going to take it into pilates stance, which is the head, neck and shoulders. Lift up. Now, the most important thing here is that you're not simply just straining your neck to lift up into the ceiling. It's actually going to be all in the ab. It's ab action, not NECK action.

So inhale on the exhale. Go ahead and lift up from the abs. As you can see, I'm really curved on the back here. My low back is on the mat completely. My abs are working. I'm not even doing anything. They're working. Okay, in tabletop, heels together, toes pointed.

We're going to begin with 100, a very basic pilates warm up. Here we go. You're going to inhale, two, three, four. Exhale, two, three, four. Inhale, two, three, four. Exhale, two, three, four. Now, keep counting. With that same breath, you take the inhale into your nose.

And exhale. Release through your mouth. Very good. If you're already feeling those abs working, good job. That means you're really lifting those shoulders up. If you don't feel your abs working, you're PRobably straining your neck. Now, if at any point you get really tired, I want you to place one hand behind the nape of your neck, give it some support. Or if it's really just killing you, head all the way down and come back when you're ready.

Okay, we're gonna do a little bit more. Keep pumping from the upper, okay, we're not just flapping like this. You are pumping with force. Here we go. Inhale, two, three, four. Exhale, two, three, four. Keep those shoulders up. And good.

Sucking the belly button in all the time. Okay, let's go. Really getting that heart pumping here. This is a wonderful warm up exercise. Come on, keep the shoulders up. Keep it up. You can do this. Give me two more breaths.