BASI® Reformer Flow

Okay, so we're going to begin with the standing cat. We're on one spring, so you're pretty close to your reformer and let's just stand here for two deep breaths. Sort of centering ourselves, getting ready for what I think will be a challenging workout. Let's take a big inhale in filling up the lungs and exhale, letting go. I'm trying to find right away what areas need to be released, what areas we need to be worked out and set an intention for how you want to pace yourself. Inhale, filling up and exhale on this next breath pattern. On the exhale we're going to roll down and find the carriage with our hands. So inhale, prepare. Begin the exhale. Feel the abdominals engage.

Allow your head to fall forward. Finding the carriage with Bell, the heel of your hand. Your hands are wider than your shoulders. From here, inhale as you lengthen your spine, basically downward towards the carriage. Elongating the spine so your back is long. Take a second feel for it. And then from the abdominals we exhale recontract around the back, almost coming back to the stop or with the carriage. And again, inhale. As you reach down to lengthen, I think it's kind of a good idea to bend the knees. You don't have to, but allow for an easy back stretch and exhale to return.

Starting to tap into the spines right away. We inhale feeling both sides of the body. Feel the length on the front end, the back end, the exhale returns. There's not a whole lot of leaning forward and back. There'll be some movement. Inhale, thinking vertically down, a long gating. Stretch the spine a little more than you think.

Let's lift the toes and get the calves to stretch a little more and exhale return. I'm going to give us about three more. Inhale, lengthening, lengthening, reaching the tailbone up, finding that mid-back tends to be the place we either hyper extend and thrust the ribs or we don't go far enough and again, inhaling Willington spreading out the back. Exhale, give it ourselves one more time. Here comes inhale, easy with the arms and shoulders. They're straight than the shoulders. Relaxed and exhale. We'll bring it all the way home. Finding the stopper, keeping the commitment to the abdominals and the hamstrings as you roll all the way up. Okay. While we're here, Mary just reached down and put on the three springs that we're going to use for foot and leg work later. So we'll go three red springs. You can certainly work a little heavier if you like. Um, and certainly a little lighter. So we're going to go with three sort of springs, making it medium to heavy.

Continuing with a little bit of a warm up sitting right at the front edge of your carriage sitting tall. First reaching the arms forward. I'm going to ask for a subtle lean forward or hinge forward from the hip joint. Then pull the hip bones back to create a gentle curve that includes the back of the neck, a long line down your back for the roll up from here. Inhale. Exhale, drawing the hipbones deeper into the body to roll down. Reach the arms just above your chest. Let your head touch the headrest and inhale everything forward. Exhale to roll, preparing the body and inhale. Exhaling down, articulating the spine.

And if the pace feels either faster or slower for you, that's fine, but rather focus on precision. Focus on the uh, the objective of the exercise. This particular scenario, just warming up, but focusing on articulation of the spy, a sense of connectedness and center right from the start. Exhaling down and place. Noticing what needs to be addressed. Inhale to start it. Exhale to roll up. Being mindful of how far forward you go and where your head is in space and try it where you feel somewhat open if you're used to going a little more forward. If you walk yourself into those shoulder rest, adjust. Let's just do two more. There's ways you can make it more challenging, but at the moment we don't need to. We need to just talk to the body, investigate and last one up.

Inhale and exhale down. Carrying on. Once your arms come above the chest, take them out to a t position or reaching long and know that we're not going to go below chest. I just want to enjoy a connected tissue tissue stretch there. Take them back up just for a second. Keeping the collarbones wide is a cue I use a lot. I just mean no need around the shoulders forward or we trim folder forward, opening up to the tee. Again, we'll stay here for the moment and then just reach back and grab the posts.

If you have them where the strap Tang, you could also use your shoulder rest or you could stay in a t. In fact there's more options, but what we're doing is spine to a Supine, so picking up the knees, bolt them together. Going towards the front here we inhale to rotate to one side, letting the hip lift, allowing the rotation to occur at the waist. Exhale, pull it back to center and inhaled healthy other side and exhale. The movement doesn't have to be fast to know that we're taking this workout into a more intense level in a moment. Rather look for the depth now so that when things do get a little bit more challenging, you're ready to go. And you know the connections are there.

Exhaling, sort of building trust with your mind and your body in here. And as far as range of motion is concerned on this, keep the opposite shoulder down. Alright, we don't need to go so far that you lift the shoulder. In fact, it takes the point away and back to center. One more time to the back and from reach the arms around. Find your knees. Hold on to the knees relatively strongly. Allow the elbows to go to the side.

Curl yourself up. Looking forward to getting ready for double leg stretch. Here we go. Inhale, reach back. Exhale, bring it around and hold. Eyes remain forward and around holding stable in the middle. Inhale to exhale. A great opportunity to stretch the shoulders.

Now if you're someone with really tight shoulders, don't let them are movement. Mess up the middle. You can got to keep the powerhouse connections first and foremost. I'm giving us three more, a little quicker. Here we go. [inaudible] and pull it back in. Nail two and pull it back.

You nail three and pull it back. Hold. Extend your left leg holding onto the right. Let's take outside hand to the ankle. If you want, you can draw the leg in closer. I'm going to keep mine out a bit and change. Yeah, so even here you're feeling the connection to the powerhouse. You feel a light glute contraction.

You feel stillness in the body and I'm just doing an exhale each time I land that straight leg. Inhaling as I change and four, three, two and hold. Take the hands behind your head, fully laced the fingers and gently as you let the head rest in your hands. Draw the shoulders down. Twist right into the knee. That's already up. Here we go. Change and yeah, feeling the elongation of the leg, but not with a bunch of strain. Let the leg be relatively relaxed. Go back to the source of why you're doing the work.

Strengthening the middle, feeling the rotation. Reach and reach. Thinking shoulder to hip, giving us four more single passes as a one. I'm sorry. One, two, three and come back to center. Bending both knees. [inaudible]. Exhale. Let your head go. Release the hands. Find the back of your legs to rock yourself up.

Swivel off to the one side to put your foot bars up. I go high bar, it's appropriate for me. It's going to put me at about um, about 90 degrees at the knee, maybe a little less, a little more head rests up if you're used to that. That's where we like to go. Heels parallel. You'll get about five foot positions here. So starting with neutral spine, really important doesn't mean your back is really arch. Feel the weight of the ribs on the Mat.

Feel the open chest energy through the glutes. Here we go. Exhale, pressing all the way out. Take a second. I always like to just make sure I'm really there. That would mean I'd have a sense of reaching the hamstrings down into the springs without hyper extending and shoulders relaxed. Here we go. Inhale, pulling in and exhaling out and now start creating something for yourself. What I mean is you're working both directions. You know that. Can you create a sense of lengthening the waist as you go?

Press. Can you give yourself the idea that the feet aren't involved, the lower leg rather relaxed. That just stuck on the bar and you're moving from above the knee. Go on for three more here. Exhaling one. Okay, and exhale and pull in one more time. Three, keep those connections as you come down. Slight pick up both feet.

Slide into the balls of the feet and off we go. Exhale, press out. And energetically we never really stop. We retreat reaching and then just before we run out of space, we reverse it. That's not to say we go faster, it's just that we're working evenly in both directions. Notice your your heels. They should be very still and go on for two more here, one and two. And with that, come on down just for the moment. Check your neutral spines. It's God is still be there. Just swings.

So the heels are together for the [inaudible] stance or a small v. Here we go. Exhale, press out [inaudible] and return all the way out. Take a second. This time. Hold it. They're regrouping here. You want to feel full stretch through the front of the hip joint, right? It's really tempting to force of tech here. So do squeeze the glutes.

Find your rep but don't force the Tuck. Here we go. Come on in. Inhale, exhaling out. Okay, and drag it back in. Okay. Trying not to put any more pressure on that foot bar than how you start. In other words, you don't come down and then repress into the bar.

You're already there. Lift off the bar is what I'm trying to say. [inaudible] and come on back from they're holding it here. We're going to a foot position that is wide on the bar. Sir. Take your heels all the way out to the edge of your foot bar from that place externally. Rotate from the hip a little so your toes are going off on the diagonal a little, but the knee follows that line. All losses the same. Exhale, push out.

Here it is. Reach and pull it. Being mindful of being balanced in your feet, feeling the whole of the leg. I mean the quads and hamstrings working though not the point they are. It is a great chance to work the legs, so let's enjoy that. Yeah, the main point I should say, still have a modest amount of glute work involved. Just to help with stability and just do one more here, reaching out, out, out, out, and come on back.

One more foot position down to the toes. Otherwise it's the same. Lift your heels right so that you're not as high as you could be in. You're certainly not hanging down on them. Sort of that mid range where you have to use the lower leg muscles for support. Here we go. Exhale, press out and bowl in, right for five more reaching.

Another thing you can think about is if you don't have enough to do is drawing, acting those legs, right? Drawing those innercise toward each other. So as if you had one of the magic circles there. Yeah, one more. No matter what I said, here we go. Reach, reach, reach, and pull back in. Keeping your powerhouse connections to take your feet back to parallel on the ball of the foot. We have them about two to four or four or five inches apart. Prs yourself out to full extension on the legs, lower the heels under the bar and stay there for a moment without lifting your heels. First of all, think inner thighs.

That just means I'm trying to wrap right without lifting your heels. So this is more image than reality. I'd like you to engage your hamstrings as if you were about to bend your knees as as if you were about to pull your heels towards your butt, flexing at the need just to feel those hamstrings. Keep that and now add in the heel, raise. Keep the hamstring as you go back down and the left. Not An easy thing to do, especially if you hyper extend, but really important to be aware of lifting from the back of the leg as well.

Not just pushing the foot into the bar and Dan checking your positions that you are in fact balancing big total little toes best your body can, and I'm just exhaling up. It's not a huge move, not a big range. So the breath tends to be a little bit more shallow for me on this one. Check out with those hamstrings if you can't fill them at all. Probably too much energy in the back of the knees. A couple more here.

Here's one boy and one more. I'm just going to go straight into letting you stretch. So let one, he'll come down. Again, being mindful of the knee, it's very easy to just drop resistance into the back of the knee. You, I'm not saying relax the knee or soften the knee. I'm saying use the hamstring, maybe gluten. Then come up and change, stretch and up. Bend both knees to come on down. We're gonna work our way up to change the spring tension to medium for a a hundred so a red and a blue works well on the balanced body. Two Springs, maybe on the grass or peak, but in any case, medium to medium, medium to even light really turns out you don't really need springs from us to the staff. All right, so scoot away from your shoulder rest with Meredith and I are going to start with our arms straight up. So for now, push out just enough that you can have your arms directly above your shoulders. It is not going to be about the hands.

Imagine you had the handles on your upper arm and hold from there. For the a hundred inhale, prepare. Exhale, curling up, head, neck and shoulders, finding your position. Just inhale, and now it's Xcel for five o, one, two, three, four, five and in [inaudible], yeah. You know, feeling all sides of the body and for two, three, four, five, our feet are parallel. Still working through the mid line. [inaudible] six two, three, four, five. Anyan. Kibo reaching those armpits toward the foot bar and eight, two, three, four, five straight arms and nine two, three, four. Keep fighting for it, but get calm.

And 10, two, three, four, five. Inhale. Hey, stay lifted. Exhale, draw those knees in. Keep reaching the arms forward. Now come on down. Take a moment. Going into what we're calling abdominal openings. It starts like the a hundred position. Inhale, prepare. Exhale, curl up again.

Externally, rotate the hips and the arms or the shoulders. Inhale, open both the arms and the legs. Keep your height. Exhale to reach almost under the hips. Inhale to open. Torso is absolutely still you do not come up and down on this version. Inhale and Exhale, blowing out everything you've got from the power Ozzy and nail. Open and exhale, reach and squeeze. Cementing the spine into the mat because of the position we're in.

So you are very much pressing abdominals to spine, spine to mat because we're curled up so much on more inhale, open, exhale, close. Draw the knees in and down. We go feed on the foot bar, push out to place one foot in the strap, extend that leg loaded up and caress it out to put the other foot in this trap. Make any adjustments you need to. Now, and we're heading into down circles, so let's start rather, I don't know, as high as you think you're going to end up going and you'll determine that by where can you maintain your neutral spine. Inhale, prepare in external rotation, please. Exhale, initiate the glutes, lower down, inhale out around all the way up and together. Then exhale and down. Kind of turns out they're almost almost square, maybe not. But what I do want you to think to do is to make the feet come all the way back together prior to lowering them down so you have a real strong awareness of, hmm, I guess the powerhouse is what I will say. I was going to say glutes, but they're not working that hard. I just want them involved.

That's a big factor in keeping us stable. Okay. Feet pretty soft. It looks good when they're pointed this, don't put all your focus there and as you're doing this workout or this particular part, pay attention the pressure points. Who are the bony landmarks of your body? They really shouldn't change. This is going to be the last exhale here, right here. Reverse it. Pick the legs up. Inhale, open, exhale. Right?

So as you're moving through the exercise and you notice different pressure on different areas of your body, it means you're not stable enough. Make the position smaller. Maybe the springs are too light and it's not offering enough support. Things you just have to really check in with, especially when you're working out alone or without a mirror. [inaudible] imagine picking the legs up rather than riding the springs up, which is so nice to do. But pull the legs up, push the legs apart, draw the legs together. Two more up, checking the back of your neck. I'm talking mostly to myself on that one.

I think, and okay, we're going into a little exercise rail taught us extended frog, so we're going to start by separating the legs wide from that place. Keep your carriage still keep your neutral pelvis. You're gonna hinge it the knee to draw the heels across the center line here. No emotion of the character until now. You do get to move the carriage and press out through that frog.

It's inhale open [inaudible]. I'm going to just keep that along. Inhale as I draw across, take as many breaths as you actually need to and press out. Inhale, opening. I just sorta continue slowly inhaling or if I run out, I just wait and exhale, press and squeeze waiting. I can tell you what I tried to do in this is right here. I try to relax my legs almost totally and see how little effort in the legs or what little effort it takes to take the legs out ends up hitting the inner thigh more when you do it that way, I think, and here we go all the way.

I'm going to reverse it after that, but finish it. Make those knees touch and reverse it. So you come to the frog first. Don't come so deep. You have to move the carriage. Or you put the joint in maximal stretch. Reach out to the side and now the legs don't lift or lower.

They come across on that same level to touch and inhale. Bend, reach to the side. Hang onto the middle of your body so the legs don't have to grip at this point. My quads are quite soft. I hope yours are too, cause you don't need them. Stretch. Yeah. [inaudible] to reach. Press.

Make sure that initial pulling back together. Last one doesn't force a tilt in the pelvis either. Anyway, keep it neutral. [inaudible] let's come back to the frog. Check out your knees on the frog. We're about to head into short spine, so just look at where your knees are now. They're basically shoulder distance. I would hope. And if they're not adjusted, maybe shoulder rest distance puts your head rest down.

Absolutely critical. Make sure it's down. Double check it. You may need to Shimmy away from the shoulder. Wrestle a little. It shouldn't be too, too bad. Reaching the arms down. This is short spine, body arts and science version that we're giving you. Um, if you've never seen it, you must stop. Sit Up. Watch is not so different. It's a PR, uh, often used as a prep elsewhere. Um, but please don't look while doing. Here we go. Inhale, prepare. Exhale. You'll reach your legs to straight, softly pointing the toes.

We're going to inhale. We're going to external rotation, keeping the leg straight, trying to keep the back down until we hit the stopper. If your hips come up, it's okay, but you're trying to hold down from here. It's abdominals and hamstrings to peel you up off the mat. Encouraging the hamstring. Work here for extra support. Maintain the stillness of the body. As you inhale, bending your knees to frog from here. Start at the very top of your back.

That means your throat is basically going to start progressing down your upper back, the middle back, going down as low as you can. You can stretch the legs out a little bit once you get here. Just so your hips aren't very high. Flex the feet, no change at the knee now and pull the whole position over so I will not cue it that much every time, but that's the point right there. Exhale, press out. Inhale to fold. Keep the inner thighs glued together. Heels glued together. Exhale, peeling up. Filter in more glutes as you get up there.

Inhale, bend. You still have hamstring work here. You've got to to keep it safe. Exhale down. Flex the feet. Inhale, draw the whole position back to the starting for organic sail. Press out in here, folding over. Wait till you hit that stopper and once you do, you do not come off.

No growing into it. It's like a pelvic curl in the air. Inhale, bend. Try not to look down too much here. Either. Look straight up and exhale as you rule, using the abs to press the spine into the mat. Flex the feet. If your hips are really high, he allow the knees to stretch a little, but they're nowhere near straight. When you pull over, let's go one more time. Press out. Inhale, coming over. Anchoring down.

You may find more flexibility in Xcel to peel up there. Tension on the strap. I don't, I'm not pulling on springs, but we're not letting the straps go loose. Inhale, bend, scoop the belly more and exhale, take it down. Flex the feet full. The whole position over there is those hamstrings and Wallah. Okay. Just reach up and grab both straps.

Take your feet off and re peg this posts. We're coming up to do a stretch. So we'll go to kneeling lunch. So take your springs probably down to just one full spring. And I'm going to lower my foot bar down.

So I'm going to low bar down from a high and our feet are at the shoulder rest. Okay, so as best as close to the, try to get as much of your foot up on the shoulder, wrist as possible to go left leg up the rest. Yeah. All right, so from here, the best you can, you're thinking level hips, you are lifting through the front of your body, but that shouldn't mean that you're also lengthening through the back of your body. It's never about just releasing onto the hips. It's, it's if your chest is rising pubic bone too. So here we are. You may already have a stretch. If you're too close, you're maybe tell you can push the carriage off the stopper. That's not a problem. We are going for hip flexor stretch on our right hip. Maybe quad stretch too. We've been here for a couple of breaths. I hope.

Let's do one more deep one. Keeping the chest open on the next exhale. Keep basic shape and you're going to press the forward leg out. Now whether or not you get a straight leg isn't as important as getting your flat back. You notice how slow I'm going into it because it just feels like the right thing to do today. Just be nice and find out slowly. So I'm going to bend the knee a little just to examine my back more, looking for a straight and then I'll play with possibly getting it all the way to straight. Oh, that feels like that must be right. And Inhale, take your time on these. These are, they're beneficial. When you take that time, we're going to head him head back to the first part of the stretch, the hip flexor stretch. Maybe you'll find more.

Notice the relationship between the sternum and the pubic bone. If the sternum is lifting. Pubic bone is too pretty sure I just said that earlier, but it's something I think about all the time because it does not come naturally for me. Big Inhale. Exhale, straighten yourself out. Checking that line on the collarbones, right? Avoiding a curve or the back. You do that and you've missed the entire point.

Plus you're on your kneecap more. Probably [inaudible] one more out of the deal and help yourself in gloriously changing sides. So just sort of see what you need. Again, you may not start on the stop or I'm only barely off and uh, has a little to do with height. Little to do with flexibility. So just honor what you need. Trying to get that sense of lift. There's big inhale, exhale, extending it out. Again, each side is different. So see what you need.

Looking for the flat back first. Oftentimes you'll get a better or you will get a better stretch of that hamstring if you don't round your back. Okay. Even if your knees bent with each breath, just allowing your body to open up a little more, allowing your mind to become a little more quiet. There's more to come. So don't consider it a break. Consider it a way back to the center.

Come on back in India. Looking for the long lines, looking for ease on the low back by lifting yourself up. And on your next exhale we'll go one more time out to the hamstring stretch. So the focus now becomes the forward leg, the hamstring, the back of the leg, and maybe you'll still feel some on the back. I'm modifying prep a little bit due to [inaudible]. I don't know, I don't want to call it an injury anymore, but I don't want to go back, so I'm, I'm babying it.

He might still feel some hip flexor stretch on the left, but not as much of a focus on this part of the exercise. All right, next exhale. Bring yourself home. Finish it, finish it. We always finish it. Okay. Moving on to the short box series. So grab your box keys, you can put your foot bars down. And the way our bars are set up is we have the spring bar out, which is neither here nor there, as long as you felt like your work was medium before, but our straps are below it. So that's what we're doing now. We're just moving our spring bar more closer to the carriage. Um, loading up the carriage because it's not to move.

So I'm putting five all five springs on and then this, the strap will be free when I get my book, once I come back with my box. So the way we're doing this is um, box in front of the shoulder rest. I'm bringing mine forward a little bit just cause I know that's what I need to do for this version of it. Sit at the far front of your box please. Both feet under and under enough that you can actually gently press down on the bar with your feet. So this version of it is a way of minimizing the hip flexors.

The truth is is we have to use the hip flexors. We want to use them, but we want the hamstrings to kick in, round, back, palm or form over form. They're not crossed. Sorry. Let's go up. Alright, shoulders are down. Just let your arms hang. Inhale, prepare. Start the exhale. Pull the hipbones back. So you're going to see this curve to the back and then we'll go with it. And we're still trying to curl the pelvis underneath.

You won't really see it cause it's, you just won't. Inhale. Exhale. Keep the sense of holding the hipbones back. Keep the c curve as you come forward. Shoulders about over hips, maybe a little forward, and then inhale up. So we're going to pass through all those ranges. Exhale, leaving the arms behind for a moment. They'll just kind of get held there as you roll away.

Gentle downward pressure of the thighs. So you've kick in those hamstrings. Inhale and exhale forward. Mary, you want to go further and, and inhale up to straight. All right, inhale Mike, play with going a little further here. Exhale, roll back. You decide if the hamstrings are kicking in. You can perhaps go a little further over the box. I'm not going to say you have to. I wouldn't. And then inhale, Curl Chin toward Jess.

You must kick in the abdominals even more here to keep or to go right back to the curve when possible and then inhale, lengthen up. And only one more. You decide if you want to go over or not. Exhale, roll back. Keeping the collarbones wide is tempting to let the shoulders reach in front. If you are going over, you must use the hamstrings here and inhale and sitting up tall. All right, taking the hands behind your head, fully lacing the fingers, or you could go hand over hand. But main thing is that as the head gets pulled, your head gets pulled up or back. The shoulders pull down. This is flat back, so I'm going to suggest a teeny tiny posterior tilt so that you in fact are flat. Inhale, hinge back. Take those hips with you. Whatever you do, do not arch. Exhale, bring it forward. Eyes are forward.

You look up at the ceiling, you probably gonna arch even if you don't think you are. Yeah. Another wonderful place. Given the position we started and that you can kick in the hamstrings a little bit, shouldn't move the carriage. That's more quads. It's just going to allow the ABS to do their thing and yeah.

Email one more time. Keeping the hands here. We'll go right to the tilt. I'm just going to turn sideways for this one cause I don't need a strap. It's going to be an inhale up to go over, so we're basically staying in that side or that same plane without the rotation. Exhale, come back.

Creating the sense of using both sides of your body as you go up and over hardly hardly feels like you're moving at all though. Hopefully the intensity will come in. Inhale, working both sides so you're not collapsing on one and just bring it back again. Inhaling up to go over trying to anchor that opposite side and two more. Watch those ribs. Those of you, those of us that want to thrust him and his a cit. Was that it? Here we go.

Okay. One more to make it even or is that it? That's it. Okay. Thank you to the twist. So again, you don't want to have that low back arch. Keep flat. Let's go to our right. Anyhow, rotate leaning back on the diagonal. Start the exhale. Come on home and center. Inhale, rotate, leaning back on the diagonal.

Take those hips with you and exhaling and center and inhale, spiraling taller. The hips basically don't move in terms of shifting forward or back, but they definitely go with you when you hinge back. And inhale, Julie. Good and excellent. [inaudible] oh, I'm growing to like this one a lot. Yeah. Next is so much happening in the short box series. And don't forget the gentle downward pressure maybe of the feet to kick in the hamstrings and Walla back to center. Okay.

Release the hands. Let's go into a climate tree. So take your right leg out and again, possibly a different version than you know. So I think we can talk you through this one. But if not, watch watching. Here we go. We're right up on our shit's bones this time focusing on the back extension here. So holding and close. We're going to exhale for three counts. It's Xcel, one pull in into bull and three, hold the spine.

Extend your leg is straight as you can without losing the spine. Roll back until the leg is at 90 I use that lower leg again. Exhale, walked down. One, two year, rounding down, three arching back. If you're going to, or you could just stay there. Then exhale, Chin towards Jess. Walk up, use more abs and arms. The support leg will bend or as it needs to sit up tall, straighten it and we go again a little quicker now that we know it. Exhale, press one and two and three. Stretch the leg up. Inhale, start pulling the abs in, but take the leg back to 90 degrees. Walk down the tree. XL One, two, three.

You can reach into the box or continue holding the leg as you inhale over. Exhale, reengage to walk up to three sitting up on top of the Sitz bone. Straight spines. Lift that up or back and one more like this. We pull in one, two, three. Inhale, stretch. Taking it back still on that inhale or I start exhaling when it feels right to three. Inhaling, stretching back, connect the whole body and up to three sitting right up on top. Let's keep it here for a moment. Flex the foot if that's available to you.

Even if you have to bend the knee, it's kind of a nice addition and then cross the leg over the knee. Sit Up Tall, straight spines, either the box and I think you should hold the box and hinge forward first. That may be more than enough after you've hinged forward at that point, you can round over. Stretch typically would focus on that, right hip. No, that's not exactly what we worked as a good opportunity. Let's change sides. Let's keep the energy up. Adjust yourself again, a little more forward on the box than you probably used to. Sitting tall. Ideally we could hold our knees here without a whole lot of uh, effort with the arms, but use them enough to get your back straight. Here we go.

Exhale polsen one and two and three. Stretch it up. Being nice to it. It will get more warm as we go. Coming back to 90 and now from the pelvis, you start lowering yourself into the well and inhale long lines at the body. Exhaling up to don't just rock or hinge up. You want to roll up using more abs. That tall. Inhale starting again by folding the leg and one and two and three.

Inhale, stretch up. Maybe it comes closer to you. Roll it back. Walk down to the Ri. If you're using the arms on the box, using the arms on the box, let it help you. Chin to our chest and up we go. Square hips still working within the box. Inhale, ta [inaudible] and falls and we lift on one and two and three and stretch. Taking it back.

Feel the hip bones draw down away from the leg without you collapsing hamstrings or helping us stretch. Yeah, two, three n inhale. This is the one we stayed here. We flexed the foot we held on near the ball of the foot. Again, it's never going to be at the expense of the back because that would defeat the whole purpose. So feel free to bend the kneel at all. [inaudible] and cross the leg over the knee up pretty far above the knee, sitting tall, hinge forward, take what you need and then round over [inaudible].

Okay, here we go. We're going to turn to our left to do side overs under the box. So now you may decide and it probably for a lot of people it's going to be a good idea to cover the box over the shoulder rest. I happen to not be one of them, so I'm keeping, but I am going to push it right up against it. Do you have to cover yours? No. Okay.

Mary's significantly tolerant. Doesn't need to do that so maybe you don't. All right. Tears are set up. Our hands are on the headrest top arm at the leg just as Mary has it. And then take a second in your body and start maybe from the crown of your head. Just feeling where is your head in space and lining up with your neck, with the rest of your body to really on the side the leg. It has to help you, but let's hit let it help us by reaching the hip through the strap so you have the sense of length already. Both sides of the waist are long.

This is going to be our high point of the exercise. Actually there's my high point. All right. As you let go of the lower hand, bring both hands behind your head and we go down from here or lengthen down from here. Inhale, start. Exhaling to bring you up hold and you nailing over. Exhaling feeling the whole front side of your body, pulling you up, bottom side of your body, most certainly working and Ah, don't you love the pace for doing excruciating. Keep your focus go deep. We're going to give you six.

Here's five [inaudible] and one more. Keep it just as precise, just as calm and the lower your bottom hand starting to go ahead and go into that stretch. You can either lower to your forearms, so it's on the headrest, depending on the height of your reformer and the length of your arms of course. Or you can go all the way to the floor where you allow for the stretch. Hm. Main reason for doing the exercise sometimes and then we're going to put our hands on the frame. We help ourselves so that the right harm on the right side left on the left, still reaching through the leg that's in the strap. It's still up in the air.

We guide our shoulders down in slightly arch the back or better said, reached the chest forward and before we get too relaxed, let's help ourselves up. Use Your hands. Please don't use the just the leg, especially not in this position to change sites. Set up as everything. Sit on the side of that hip. Find your head rest. Stabilize that lower shoulder even though there's not much weight on it yet. Reach through the hip. Check your neutral spine. If you arch, it's not going to be okay for you.

Let's go one hand, commit to the other hand and here we go. Inhaling down [inaudible] exhaling up. Oh yeah. Smooth. Minimize the tension in the arms, maximize it where you really need the help. [inaudible] [inaudible] two to go. Staying in between those two plates of glass, not allowing ourselves to deviate. One more time [inaudible] and then an easy graceful exit.

Allow yourself to work your way down to the forearm or perhaps to the floor. Whatever's going to allow this top side to stretch but still feel supported, right? You wouldn't want to just hang. If you need more, you take the arm over head. He may enjoy opening up the chest a little and then we'll move to the next one which is left hand on the left side of the wood frame or the frame of the reformer and then reached the foot or the leg, the hip and then the sternum. The opposite way. He might like to round over here too. I usually don't, I got enough rounding in my life but if that feels good, go ahead.

I'm going to help myself up and take your box to a long box position. So wherever it is, you just going to pick it up and turn it so that it lines up pretty evenly and at least sit. It's not, you've got the same amount showing on either side of the shoulder rest. And we're gonna do hamstring curl first then into breaststroke. So let's just, yeah, that's a good idea. Let's do, we'll do the arms first. So just put the box in your by, sorry, put the box nearby. We'll do the arms for us. That makes way more sense, doesn't it? Okay.

And what I'd like to do is arm sitting. So we're taking the springs back down to one full spring. And for us we use, we'll put the spring bar back out though. We could leave it where it was. All right, sitting at the very back edge of your carriage. This is going to be a lot about spinal stabilization and work.

So legs are side by side or you could cross one over the other. Taking your hands into the straps, reach them downs. Put there slightly in front of you and then just put your focus on energy through the spine. Squeeze your glutes so you get that lift in. Here we go. Exhale to pull down and back and then the arms go down and forward. We won't go back to complete release of the strap, rather, I don't know, 2030 degrees in front of you and return.

And as you pull there's a subtle sensation, a maybe of rotating the arms out and it's so subtle on, maybe I shouldn't mention it, just make sure you don't feel that when your hands go back, your shoulders go forward. That will not help you at all. Go ahead and look at them. Good, tall working both ways. Inhaling forward and exhaling back and inhale forward to exhale back. One more time coming at ya just as tall as when you started and then return the arms in front. Sorry Mary, we're going to the bicep or you just done or was I just queuing bad? Who knows? Collarbones wide. Squeeze the glutes and here we go. Biceps. So again, it's not going to be so challenging to the biceps. You've got it.

That's the pace. But perhaps see the back perhaps to the ABS. Even just for holding yourself here, if you start to notice too much in the front of the hip, bend your knees a little or sit on some things. But I know what we're focusing on is just prior to bending the elbow, we are gently pulling down on the shoulder blades. They're already down, but we want to initiate from there. Let's go two more. One, one more. Okay. Going into the Rhomboid. So we will take this strap up to our um, forearm, top of the forearm. And for the first part of this, what we'd like you to do is not move the shoulder blades much. So start with the elbows at shoulder height in front of you.

Palms facing your face. I suppose without a whole lot of work besides what's happening in the trunk, start to move the arms to the side. If you could see it from the back, we're not pinching. It would look a lot more like that if we were. And then we return. So I'll get to allowing these shoulder blades to move in a moment. But let's see how we can do this without a lot. Exhale. As you pull apart, notice in your body that the wrist is still over the elbow and return [inaudible] and as you gently, easily pull apart, you think to grow taller.

And on the next one we'll add just a millimeter more of a pull, which will mean the shoulder blades will come together. But for now it starts the same. Pull apart and then continue. And you can allow the shoulder blades to come together, but do not rest the ribs and return. You probably won't see much of a difference from the angle, but it's keeping this shoulder blades wide and now they've come toward each other a little and return just two more opening. And then you'll feel that little pinching of the shoulder blades and return one more. It's all about the height of your back.

And Richard. Okay, let's finish this series. So just repaying them for a second. Spin yourselves around so your back is at the shoulder rests still on the same spring, one fall. We're doing hug a tree, which is going to be with basically straight arms. So go ahead. We're out. Wide Elbows or my supposed slightly bent but not, I wouldn't focus on that cause we basically straight feel the Pec muscles right away and it's exhale to hear just opposite your own hands. Okay. Don't want to have this today. Let's just play with it here. Inhale.

So you have space expansion across the chest and the back. Yeah. Feel how broad your back isn't when your arms are forward. It should be just as broad when they're apart. Yeah. Ah, honestly, I almost tried to relax the arms other than what it takes to keep them in this position so that we can work more through the trunk, all the back extensors working. Notice that you're not resting on those shoulder rest.

This will be the last one forward. The next one is the salute or triceps. We're taking the hands forward toward the face. Shoulders are down and you just extend out on a bit of a diagonal in hell to return and exhale. Just like before Karen, we're initiating from the shoulder blade. The arms are going to get what they need.

It's full extension in here. Just prior to putting all the resistance into the hands, you gently press the shoulders down knowing they're down already. Just just make sure you can still feel it. How about just two more [inaudible] and one more? Ah, surprisingly hard and return it in yours. Let the hands come out. Okay. Right. Hamstring curl. It is long box please. Thank you for doing that.

Cause that would just be weird to end it like that. Okay. So the big trick, right? So I'm going to keep mine on one. I think it's more than enough for what we're doing. Um, if you do add any, I would question your form first of all, but secondly, um, make it light, you know, maybe a yellow. All right, so we're going to do the whole shoot to do, you can get into this however you want, but we're going to try to make it part of our workout. So let's, um, cross the right one over the left and then put them on our feet. So we've just put a so by the way, when I took the right one over, the top of my right strap is now on my left foot and the left strap is on the right foot. As I look at it, we are going to turn toward the leg on top. So whichever strap is on top, that's where you turn. Ah, taking yourself forward on the box enough that you can I say hug the box, but really it's forearm into box form into box so that you can also pull the collar bones back. Feet are parallel, they do not need to be together.

And these are parallel. And from here, before we get any too high in our back extension, in fact, come down a little initially, draw the abdominals up, almost off the box so that you feel linked to your back. You're on the stopper. Float the knees a little or flip the thighs a little and then good. Extend the legs if they're not there already. So as you reach back with one hand, you should be very much in your hamstrings and glutes already. Now extend your spine. And here we go. It's an exhale. As you bend the knees, catch, tension and pull. You're going to hit your stopper, but you're going to keep the tension in your hamstrings as you continue to straighten the legs out all the way. Keep the resistance in the in the legs, not the spring. Pull it back in.

You'll catch attention right about there and you'll pull the spring all the way into the glutes and press to press. So as you're doing this, you do not want to feel your tailbone lift up. You don't wanna feel your hips lift up. You keep the front of your body firmly planted into the box in terms of bones. Pull the ABS in, and as we been inhaling all the way, still working, nothing given up there.

And exhale. I'm going to do this in that class. Next time. Yeah, one more time. Recommit the pubic bone toward the box. Here it comes. And well Paul Paul and okay, keeping this drops on your feet for the moment. This is one way you could do, you could also start from scratch. I'm going to try it like this. As we know I'm not.

Come up onto your hands and knees. Why be risky, right, and step all the way off. Good. All right, so you have an option here. We're about to do breaststroke. One spring is maximum I would use, but you may decide to go down to a half spring if you have that as an option, placing your thumbs in the straps. We didn't cross the body, but right here in front we've got one leg in front and our powerhouse is tight. We're going to lean forward to grab the front of the box. Climb aboard chest is right at the edge on this one, maybe slightly over.

Now you should feel your hamstrings already from the last exercise, so let's just kind of kick that whole thing back in. The legs are together this time abs are in, and then finding the starting position with your upper body, your forearms, basically parallel to the box of the floor. Elbows as well before going anywhere else. Shoulders down, neck, down. Here we go. Inhale to extend lifting as you do. Circle all the way around until the arms are back at the hips.

Exhale to skim the arms across that box and here we go again. That was an exhale. Inhale, lift. It's a long inhale as you continue all the way around. And exhale, lower chest in return arms. Inhaling, do extend all the way around. Exhale low. Try to keep the elbows. I'll tell you when we get there. This is all you know.

Once your arms are at your ribs, keep that up around. I'm pretty stationary. Just fold the lower arm and inhale, energize through those legs, putting our focus at the upper back, giving you two more on your own. Yeah. Oh, holding onto the box with your hands. Let your legs hang for a moment. If it feels better to keep them bent, that's good too.

And then the same way we got off with step off to the one side before you even think to let go of the box, which you're not really going to do. One set in front of their abs tight and just start to slowly let the box go back to the stopper. Good. Replace these. Let's come back around to the front. We still have the one spring on right? We can do our cat with a box on it. So finishing like we started taking a deep breath in here. On the exhale, round down your arms. We'll go to the edge of the box, but still on the front so you can hook shoulders down. And now let's go.

Inhale as we press down so you won't go quite as vertical as you did before. You get a little longer. Avoid the rib thrust and then from the inner thighs up. Exhale and we're spreading out your back. Opening it up. It's still thinking collar bones and again, inhale, [inaudible] stretch and reach. It feels appropriate. Add more hamstring to it or you can keep the knees bent.

I do it more for the spine than I do for the hamstring stretch. For those of you super flexible, be careful about over doing it here. You want to keep it all contained. We're just doing one more and [inaudible] oh, let's stay outta here for an exhale. When it's time, feel the heaviness of the shoulder blades, the ease of the arms. Inhale once more here and on that exhale, bring it home all the way. Letting yourself roll up, arms hanging will stand tall here balanced.

Just let the arms go forward in front of you. Inhaling. Okay. Stretching up. They'll come down the side. Exhale, feeling the spine rise, feeling the ease. You've put enough resistance in your body. Let it all go again. Same thing. Any Alinka, hey, and as the arms just naturally float down the spine and everything around, it eases up. I got to go for one more. Here it comes in Hale, and with that, let everything and thanks for working hard. Good job.