- Thank you for making Quick Fit a part of your day.

If you're new here, I'm Cassy Vieth.

If you haven't worked out for a while, this class is the perfect place to begin.

We'll be working on basic core strengthening exercises.

Since all strength originates from the core, we wanna wake up and strengthen these most important deep, stabilizing muscles so you can then build on a strong foundation.

[gentle music] We'll be going down to the floor in a moment, so grab a pillow for your knees if they're tender.

I'd like to practice a strategy for getting down to the floor for those of you who find it difficult.

It's a great way to stretch those tight muscles in the legs and feet that are preventing an easy transition.

Just have your feet right under your hips and get as low as you can, and then allow those heels to come up if they need to and get your hands on the floor.

As your heels come up, you can lower your knees, and voilà.

All right, first thing we're going to do is we're going to do these vacuum holds.

But remember, you can use a pillow under your knees if your knees are tender.

If your wrists get sore, you can either make fists or maybe find a little stool that you can put your elbows on.

Just do your best to find a way; otherwise you can just stand and pull the belly button in, keep your back flat.

I don't want you to round or arch, just keep a neutral spine and just pull up the abdominals.

So they take a little bit to actually activate.

So this hold is perfect.

It doesn't look like there's a lot going on.

[inhales] Just exhale, pull in more, deeper.

You can push on your lower abdominals, those muscles between your hips, all the way up under your ribs, press your hands into the floor.

And I hope you've got a nice posture so your neck is long, your elbows are straight, hands are pressing into the floor, wrists right under your shoulders.

All right, good.

From this position, we'll start real basic.

Let's just lift one hand off.

Stabilize, keep pulling in your abs, and lower.

We'll do the other hand.

[inhales] Exhale, [exhales] stabilize.

Like I said, we'll start from easy and we'll make it a little harder as we go on.

When you find a move that begins to challenge, you're going to just use that one for the rest of the class.

All right, lift that hand.

Hold it here, stomach's in.

We're not releasing that hold, that vacuum hold to our abs.

Put it down and the other hand.

[inhales and exhales] Nice, all right, now, a little bit bigger challenge, let's extend a leg.

Keep your toes down.

We still have both our hands down, long spine.

Reach as far back as you can with that leg, stomach's in, keeping the hips level.

Don't let one lift up.

Keep them both level towards the floor.

Good, long neck, knee down, and let's do the other leg.

Reach it to the back.

Keep your toes down and make sure you have this nice box.

In other words, your knee is under your hip, wrists are under your shoulders.

Stomach's in, neutral spine, long neck.

Just keep doing that inventory, two knees down.

Other leg again, extend.

Pressing your hands into the floor.

And back down, other leg.

[inhales and exhales] Almost done with this, and then we're gonna make a change.

We're going to give those wrists a break, all right.

So extend your legs and then just roll down, and you can release your hands from the floor, palms down, lifting that chest off the floor as much as possible with those hands back by your hips.

Remember, palms are down.

You can do a little circle with your wrists.

Good, hands under your shoulders, we'll push back up into that quadruped position again, meaning you're just on your hands and knees.

And now I'd like you to extend your right arm right from your shoulder.

Now, keep your neck neutral.

Try not to arch the neck and don't just let it hang.

Just keep your neck neutral to the rest of your spine.

And once again, we're still pulling up the abdominals, we're not rounding or arching.

Wrist is under your shoulders.

And switching arms, [inhales and exhales] extend, do you have a nice, straight elbow?

And if your elbow's bent, maybe you need to move it out to the side a little bit so you can completely straighten that elbow.

And then the one that is holding your body up, that elbow should be straight too, not pulling your belly.

I can feel that I'm getting into bad posture, so I remind you to remind myself.

And switching hands, one more time.

Extend, lengthen, there's something you're trying to reach.

Stomach's pulled in, neutral neck, and switching sides again.

All right, we'll get one click harder.

If this was already hard for you, then you can just continue at that level.

If you want a little bit more of a challenge, extend your leg, toes down.

Take the inventory.

Stomach's in, stabilize, and extend your opposite arm.

Neutral neck.

[inhales] We're going to hold it here about 10 more seconds.

Hold it as long as you can.

[exhales] Continue to take that inventory.

[inhales and exhales] And hands down.

And we'll switch sides.

Extend your other leg.

All right, and take your time.

[inhales] Stomach's in.

Make sure your hips are level to one another.

They're both facing the floor evenly.

You don't have one tipped up, okay?

[inhales and exhales] If your wrists are bothering you, you could make a fist.

Almost done.

[inhales] Stomach in.

Reach long with your arm, reach long with that back leg.

Three, two, and done.

Good job.

Let's get onto your side.

Have that elbow right under your shoulder and your legs are stacked.

Slight bend in front of you.

[inhales] And we're going to do a plank, a modified plank.

So push with your hips.

Push them forward, get them up off the ground.

Extend that top leg.

Good.

[inhales] Hold it here.

Now let's do some down ups.

So down up, down up, down up.

If you need a break during any of this, you just take a break.

Count to about three and then join us again.

Down up.

Okay, if you need a greater challenge, find the bottom of that foot and get the other leg extended.

Hold it here, extend, reach under and up.

So if you still have one knee down, that's fine.

That's just perfectly fine.

Continue with a hold or your down ups.

Right here and down.

Good job, switch sides.

All right, nice form.

Try not to let your shoulder come up by your ears.

Press that elbow into the floor.

All right, ready?

And hips are up, push them forward so you have a nice, straight line.

Let's extend that top leg, stomach's in.

[inhales and exhales] Nice, strong lines.

Try not to let your head hang, okay?

And let's do some down ups.

Release and up, release and up.

[inhales and exhales] And for those of you that need a harder challenge, find the bottom of your foot, put that back leg around.

Everybody else just keep doing your down ups or your holds.

Extend the arm, stomach's in, reach slowly under and up.

Under and up.

One more.

Good job.

And done.

Well done.

Now let's lay on our backs with our knees bent.

Do a few bridges.

So roll back slowly.

All right, start with your feet and your knees wide, hands on the ground, and lift the hips so that they're in line with your knees and your shoulders, and lower.

Let's do about 10 of these, okay.

At the top, a pause.

Good job.

Hands are just at your sides.

If you want to make this more challenging, you can always add a dumbbell across your belly.

What's that, about six or seven, eight, nine, and last one, hold.

Walk those feet together.

Feet and knees together as much as you can unless your knees are uncomfortable, just come to a comfortable width.

Just hopefully a little more narrow.

Makes your core have to stabilize with a smaller base.

And up.

Let's do about five more.

Five, four, three, two, then we'll hold.

Hold it at the top.

Hands at your sides, little marches, keeping the hips in the air.

Alternate legs up, up with a press.

And imagine there's a balloon that you wanna pop, so lift and pop, lift and pop.

Good, keep it going.

Press it down with some force.

Press and press, press and press.

Left leg for five.

Five, four, three, two.

Right leg and press.

Two, three.

Almost done, four and five.

Good job, now let's roll it down.

One vertebra at a time.

Hands behind your knees, and we kick up to a sitting position.

Very good.

Roll over onto your hands and knees and we'll practice getting up.

All right, so bring your hands a little closer to your knees.

Push, getting the knees off the floor.

As your heels get closer to the floor, walk your hands closer to your feet and then we'll just roll up slowly.

Nice, big breath in and out.

[exhales] Very good.

As you may have noticed, these moves progressed from fairly easy to more difficult.

This is the perfect class to repeat several times a week, using it as a guide to measure your improvement.

With consistency, you can perform this entire class with ease by returning to pbswisconsin.org/quickfit each day so you can age well and live better longer.

Plan tomorrow's class right now, and I'll see you then.

- Announcer: Funding for Quick Fit with Cassy is provided by Greg and Carol Griffin, founders of ElderSpan Management, Focus Fund for Wisconsin Programming, and friends of PBS Wisconsin.