Day 7 New Year Challenge: Gentle Stretching | Seniors, beginners

Hey there, it's April Yes and X with my mom, Aiko. Hi. Welcome to day seven of the New Year Challenge. You made it, excellent work. Good job. We're so, so proud of you. And today is a day of rest or gentle stretching. Okay. You've made it through the entire week and you deserve that. And it's very important actually to incorporate rest into your workout routine, okay? So if you're feeling a little bit sore one day, then take a break and let yourself recover and then go back at it, okay? Cause it's very important for your muscles to recover. All right. So we're going to do a quick little stretching session here for you today to get you started on your fitness program for the year. And we're both going to do it seated. Oh, well, maybe we are. Well, semi-seated. Semi-seated. Someone's taking our seat, as you can see. All right. He wants to do, he wants to get in on our stretching session. All right. So we'll take a quick pause here and we'll get started on the other side. Let's get this gentle stretching session started by just relaxing, taking a deep breath in and exhaling out. And inhale in, exhale out. Give me one more inhale and exhale out. Very nice. Okay. So let's start by just pedaling our feet. Okay. So heel up and down. Just warming up. Just getting our body moving here gently. Yeah. Okay. Pedaling up and down. I feel this in your calves waking up in your feet. I really feel it in my calves. Yeah. Okay. Very nice. It's good for the feet. Yeah. Give me four more here. Four, three, good. Two and one. Good. Let's get that upper body going. Our arms up and down. Inhale and exhale. Good. Three more. Inhale and exhale. Nice. Inhale and exhale. And one more. Inhale and exhale. Very nice. Okay. Let's go right into some shoulder rolls to the back. Here we go. One, nice big circles. Two, breathe. Three and four. And reverse it. One, two, three, and four. Very nice. Okay. So the next thing we're gonna do is called a cat cow. So I want you to somewhat at the edge of your seat. Not, yeah, just, yeah, not too much so that you fall off, but don't want to fall off now. Yeah. So your legs hip distance apart with your knees stacked over your ankles. Okay. And your hands on your thighs. And what we want to do here is we want to take an inhale and arch our back gently. Look up. Okay. And exhale. Pull your belly button into your spine. And yeah, rest here. And so your shoulders should be stacked over your hips when you do this. Okay. So let's do that again for three more times. Inhale. Arch and exhale. Round your back. And inhale up gently and exhale down. And you do this as far as you can at your own pace. Okay. One more. Inhale and exhale. Bring that belly button into spine. Ah, wake up that spine. What's that? That felt good. Yeah. Nice. Okay. Now we're just bring our hands up. Okay. I just want you to spread your arms, your hands out and then close. Spread your hands out. Close fingers out. This is again. And one more time. And out. Oh, hello. You make another appearance. Hello. Thank you for giving us the chair back. We appreciate that. Okay. All right. Our next move is we're just going to do that same inhale up. We're going to clap our hands at the top, prayer hands. Bring it down. Okay. I love this move. So inhale and exhale down. Good. Inhale and exhale down. And one more. Inhale and exhale down. Very nice. Okay, good. Rest here for a minute. Take a breath. Good. Next move we're going to do is a forward fold. So we have our hands on our thighs. Okay. And we're just going to follow our hands down our legs and come on down as far as you can. So what I want you to do is to feel a nice stretch in your back. You feel that mom? Yep. Okay, and go down as far as you can. You don't have to go down all the way. You just go where you feel it. And bring up. Good. Nice. Let's do three more of those. Okay. It's a nice flow here. Down. Come on down. Nice stretch. Hold. Breathe. And come up. Nice. Let's do two more of those. Here we go. Down. Breathe. And come up slowly. And just one more here. Okay. While your hands down. Breathe. And come on up. Very nice. Okay, good work. All right, so we're moving on to the lower body here. Okay, so what you do, you're still seated where you are. That's great. And I want to bring the knee to the chest. Okay, so as far as you can. So you can grab your thigh underneath your thigh and just pull it in. Our goal is to kind of have a stretch here in the rear part of your thigh and your glute. Now, so that's great, mom. Do you feel a stretch? Yeah. Okay, great. Now, if you're a little bit more advanced, you can pull it in tighter or you can even like bring your ankle here. That's okay. I don't want you to do that. I'm just saying, if you can. This is good. That's good. Okay, bring it down. All right. Good, do this other side. So lift that leg up. Yeah. You feel that? Oh yeah, feels good. Yeah, and I'm just going to bring it in. I feel a nice stretch here. If I do this, I can stretch my piriformis here. Okay. But you don't have to do that. Okay, just do that. Okay, let's do that one more time on each side. Okay, so bring it up and keep that head up. Pull that in. Or you can just keep it here like this. Okay, and down. And bring that leg up. Breathe everybody. Good. And very nice. And down. Okay. Take a breath. Ooh, I like that. Did you feel a nice stretch in the rear thighs? Okay, good. Now, feet solidly on the floor. Let's kick one leg out. We're just going to point and flex our feet. So point and flex. Ooh, point and flex. Give me two more. Point, flex. One more. Point and flex. And let's make some big circles with that toe. So really get that ankle. I want you to make a big circle with your toe. One more. And reverse it, okay? Reverse. Ooh. That feel good? Yep. It does. Poor feet get so little recognition. That's so true. Okay, bring that one down solidly on the floor. It's true. Okay, and let's point that one. Point and flex. Good. Point. I don't know if you heard that. That was a crack in my ankle. I heard that. I did hear that. Good, I'm going to give you one more. My feet, there it goes again. My left side, I get that. Okay, big circle with the toe. One direction. Oh, yes. Yeah, on my left side, I- You need an oil can like the Tin Man. That's right. Squirt, squirt. And it's very normal for one side to be tighter than the other or to have imbalance on one side than the other. Sure. So doing these stretches is really great. Okay, and bring it down. Very nice, everybody. Okay, let's do three inhale and exhales. Okay, up and down. Inhale. Close this out. And exhale. And one more. Inhale. And exhale. And one more. Inhale. And, oh yes, clap at the top, please. Thank you. Inside out hands. And lean to your right. Very nice. And center. And lean to your left. That's good. Ah, center. What a wonderful, gentle way to end our seven-day New Year challenge. So congratulations. Yes, good job. On completing this challenge. And again, wherever you are in your fitness journey, you know, just start out slowly and build up gradually. Hey, we hope that this was helpful to help jumpstart your fitness goals for this year. And do check out our website. We have an extended plan for you for the whole month where you can use our videos to continue your plan. So we look forward to helping you get stronger and healthier this year. We wish you joy, happiness, and good health this year and are so honored to be by your side. So thank you for joining us and we look forward to seeing you real soon but in the meantime, see you soon and keep moving.