Think Outside the Box

Hi everybody. This is Amy. I'm about to do a reformer class with us and you'll need a magic circle just for a few things with feet in straps, a one hand Wade, I've got a two pound weight. Feel free to use more or less depending. Uh, and we'll start the re the class with the long or the short box set up here. So I'll just put these down and also set up with the foot loops here hanging. And I've got two red and one blue spring on.

And these are a balanced water reformers. So I chose to think outside the box a little bit with some of the workout that said for starting on a box for our footwork. So I'm gonna have you and have us put our heels up and in parallel and why I'm choosing this, I'll just tell a little story. I have a new client at my studio and she's a little buxom here. And she lying flat on her back is, um, for footwork is not great because she's not comfortable, but she's not yet steady enough in her pelvis to understand how to feel vertical and feel set and that, so I didn't put her on the one to chair yet.

So I thought, okay, want to sit her up cause she needs to breathe better, but, and she needs to learn about tracking. So I chose this and I've kind of combined the two. So two red and one blue for us heals parallel. And just take a moment and feel your sit bones. So this is another reason why I'm choosing to do sitting a foot work.

You can get the pelvis oriented, very vertical. You'll want to watch and feel for that slight bias to tucking back or sliding back or soldering back. Um, but feel free if this isn't great on your knees to adjust yourself front or back so that you can get right up on those sit bones and feel level, organize your rib cage. And, uh, also if you feel uh, excited you can put your hands back, just be careful not to reach the, our ribs forward. So hamstring work. Let's exhale, push out and inhale, return and exhale. So if you want to even get in there and touch with the uh, fingertips and fire up those hamstrings. But again, maybe back to a new client or pregnant client or overweight client, they need to be able to see their tracking. Sometimes the lying on the reformer, they just, they're passive. You can't really see anything. So you can really take a look at your hip, knee, ankle study, that weight distribution. So your evenly weighted, not pronating and supinate in the feet.

You can really establish your vertical and start to feel the relationship of your back muscles with the front muscles, the back body in the front body. So I'm shooting for 10, I may have done 12. So here we go. We're going to move down to balls of feet and same thing, exhale, press and in. And again, if you have a dominant leg, one that likes to push more than the other, you may be able to sense it differently, sitting upright than lying flat. And how you might feel that is that your pelvis could lift on one side or your sit bone might unweight. So just feeling your bones, feeling those bones on the box, watching your tracking and eight, nine and 10 and n.

So pull out these v. Same thing. Exhale, press. So hopefully again, this might inform your hamstrings a little bit differently. We want those hamstrings working both on the push and the pull back in. Does that matter of really thinking about that as I come back in that I'm lifting my knees up, but I'm actually contracting my hamstrings to bend my knees. So that's the relationship there. Nice.

A hip flexor strengthening. Also, again, very vertical in the pelvis and the spine and nine and 10 I'm going to go back, open to parallel and press and do some heel lower lifts and press and lower lift and making sure to avoid any hyperextension of the needs so there's just a little breeze underneath to keep the knees lifted slightly and seven really use that foot bar. Push in. There's another great place you can see if you're using all parts of your foot evenly. Again, on these heel lifts when you're lying supine, sometimes you can't see that so you can really see it here. Now if we go into the prancing, no, I'm not stretching the one calf. I'm not going to emphasize the stretch. I want to emphasize the lift of the heel, the arch, and recruiting the calf muscle, so I'm going to push into that foot bar.

Lift this side, push and lift and push and lift. Here we go. So using that bar, not for the stretch, but for the lift of the foot and contraction, you can speed it up for 10, nine, eight, seven, six grade to help establish a sitting posture, which comes important for so many other exercises that we do, nine and 10 and so single leg I'll take off just one red which leaves one red and one blue or one and a half if you're on a Stott or a different piece of apparatus. So again, I'll go to the heel and ah, eight presses and then I'm going to do some pulses. Something I like to do for my knee tracking is take my opposite hand and put it right inside that inner quadricep and a little feedback hand to leg so you can feel yourself ad duct slightly in that femur. And Eight, eight little pulses, one to sit up tall, three and four even on your sits bones and six and seven and eight other side. And this'll show up also from the ball of the foot. So hand at the inside of the five press.

Okay. And three remember hamstrings are what helped bend those knees. So you want to fire those, can track those as you come forward up to lift the knee and seven and eight little pulses and one to press the femur against the palm of his hand and vice versa and four and three and two and one same choreography, ball of the foot and press. And so not changing the ankle joint. We are changing the hip and the knee joint and four, three and two and one little pulses for eight one.

And to really feel the femur press against that hand and to thigh four and three and two and one other side. Is this a nice way to get some quadriceps in here and hamstrings together and to stable ankle three, four and four and three and two and one are little pulses here and one, two and three. Press the thigh against the hand and four and three and two and one and arrest. So you could also add some magic circle work in there. Uh, you can get creative with other arm things. All right, so that's the footwork I have planned for now. And I'm going to have this lower the foot bar.

We really don't need it for quite awhile. And for our abdominal work, I'm going to have, I'm going to be looking out the window not to ignore you, but I just want to uh, be on a different orientation for a few pieces of movement. So I'm going to start my and do my 100 okay. Reaching my feet right out the window. This is lovely. Arms by the side as if I have my feet in the beach, we'll say, and out there, inhale, three, four, five. Exhale, three, four, five, two. Okay. Four or five. Three, five. Exhale, three, four, five, four.

So I am trying to squeeze my seat just a little bit and relax my feet up off the tips of my shoulder blades not getting comfortable in laying back. So encourage that curl. Take it down a little for the last couple of pumps sets. Nine, three, four, five, 10, two, three, five. Exhale, three, four, five and fold. Okay. I think I'm on here centered at any time. You could take your head back and rest your neck and rest your abdominals if you'd like to. I'm going to curl back up, interlace the hands, support the skull and extend my legs back up into that 45 degree position.

Now you can see my shoulder blades and I don't want your shoulder blades way back here. We want to widen them as if they're reaching out toward the elbows and elbows to the corners of the room. Curl up. We're going to do eight frogs like we're doing footwork on the reformer want. So I'm trying to push the window out to the ocean and three [inaudible] for my heels are strongly pressed together. It's another image like almost like pulling my tailbone out.

Seven and last one A. I'm going to close parallel. Same thing eight times and one [inaudible] to encourage yourself to keep those shoulder blades wide and four, four, three, last two and one more time and in, I'm not going to rest. Go ahead. If you need to double leg stretch five times. Ah, arms right by the side of those ears. Shoulder blades just barely off the box. And seven, whoops that that was actually four and here's five. I'm going single leg stretch and one and one and two do not take four more sets and three and two and last one and scissors, right leg up, left leg.

I'm going to have to flex my foot because I am actually really close to the window and a pull pool and a pool pool. [inaudible] you can maybe imagine that instead of being on a really solid box here, that you're on a balance beam or even maybe a paddle board, they're out in the ocean that you don't want to wobble. Left, right, steady yourself right in the center. One more each leg and there I'm going to bring my knees back in once again, hold the head and extend the legs to a 45 I'm going to do some crisscrosses. Take that up toward 90 and down to 45 and up toward 90 down to 45 two more times down to 45 and up four and down to 45 parallel. And in last set criss cross. So twist, just hold yourself.

Now here's where you, if you're getting pooped, don't lay back. Courage yourself up to squeeze and twist like you are going out to that ocean to cool off and twist and whist one more and twist and twist and come all the way up to finish. So sufficiently warmed up in my abdominals there. I hope you are as well. I'm going to take the box away and for now we'll get back to it shortly and now come some magic circle for some abduction. So here we go and I think I'm going to keep it on one red and one blue.

If you feel like you want a little extra, go to red. Here we are. Oh, so picking up the straps, make sure either the even, even length is even as the can be and step in. So the magic circle will go at the ankles there. And what I'd like us to start with first is the a frog position, kind of a frog. So basically I think of that as if I were table top with my knees apart. So you're virtually 90 degrees here and slightly squeezing the circle, which is a little challenging. Okay, so from here really focusing hamstrings, adductors and extend and fold in.

Okay. Just get a test for it so you can see what's happening and feel what's happening. But we're going to play with this instead of staying in frog angle turnout, let's start adding a little roll to parallel. So as I extend, I'm going to roll the parallel as a fold back out to turn out and parallel and rotation three more. So you're really starting to warm up the ball and socket joint. You did that in the foot work, but now we're taking more of course a different angle. Keep it parallel as you come in. So this time as you go out, you will externally rotate, come in parallel and externally rotate parallel.

Find those external rotators that turn that head all around that upper leg. And in two more rotate. Turn to parallel. Last one, hold your in. External rotation and let's squeeze. Release. Squeeze, release from up here. Squeeze, release and squeeze. Release for four more. One, two.

This is external rotation and eight hold it. Go back into parallel. Eight more little squeezes. Go a little deeper. One release and two and have your hyperextend extender like I am. Keep your knees a little released so you can isolate and strengthen above the knee. Three and two and one more. That is plenty. And we're going to take the ring away. Ooh, I'm going to just tuck it under.

Now if you go to straight legs and same thing relatively start in an external rotation. I want you to come up to 90 degrees, relax your toes and drop your tailbone down away from your heels. So if you're have a habitual Tucker, drop yourself, Elongate your tailed down to the mat. So moving the legs down on the way down. Roll the parallel on the way up. Roll to external rotation. Five of these.

So it's virtually the same movement pattern. It just feels different. You've got these long leavers now and it feels a bit more steady. Stay parallel. Come up on the way down. Rotate externally and up and finding that rotation. If you like the word wrap, that's what I'm doing.

I'd like to imagine the muscle fiber pathway rotating around the my leg coming both directions out and up. Hold it up at 90 go out again to external rotation. Check your tailbone and we're going to do two open-close without moving the carriage a little bit there and then lower the legs. Pretty darn low. Challenge yourself in your stability of ribbed pelvis and then back up to 90 okay, same thing. So we're opening, closing twice, dropping the tail and now finding those rear legs down flat and up. A couple more patterns. Open.

Pull in and open and pull in. Lower the legs and up. Thinking two more patterns. I'm trying to hold that carriage. Strong. Rear legs down and up. Last pattern. Open and close.

Open and close. Last time going down and up. Now just bend your knees, push the, you can kind of little frog here, push your hands up on the rope and let that pick up your pelvis. Ah, little nice lumbar stretch there and down. Now do the same thing. Kind of lift my bum already.

Push up on the rope and just let that kind of help pick up your pelvis and you can just release your lower back instead of short spine. This is today, okay. And that's plenty. We're going to take those down. Now the next series I have is uh, an arm series, a sideline arms series. So we don't need to change any springs. Um, I'm gonna use a hand weight instead. Okay. And so I'll face you first. I'm gonna roll onto my side and just get yourself comfortably in a sideline position. Had rest stays up.

And if you don't feel as though this has enough neck support, you can absolutely put something else under or take it down and put a larger object here. But what I'm going to start with in a nice side stack position, oblique supported here is a front arm raise. All right, so it's coming towards you and I'm not going to bend my wrist. I'm going to work very diligently on keeping the wrist stable. The arm is coming straight towards you. That shoulder blade, relatively steady and down. We're going to do sets of five on these down, so deltoid work, absolutely, but lat work as well. Feel as the connection of the energy through the top of your head. And here comes your number five and I'm going to switch it to a bicep curl.

So you'll have your palm come up toward your shoulder and down the elbows right at the waist or the hip and down this collarbone, knees nice and wide. Sometimes I even do this and just try to hold my collar bone and open four and five hold it there. Rotate your palm. We're going to come down to about a 45 and work external rotators of the shoulder. So pressing my forearm is pressing to the ceiling and then to the back window, but I'm trying very hard not to take it at the wrist or go so far that the shoulders move. We want just the humerus. That was a better one for me. So we'll take two more after that and humorous and one more.

I'm going to do an overhead reach. So this hand is going to start at the shoulder and slide over my ear. Basically the arm reaching up from sideline, kneeling five times in opposition to my arm going overhead. I'm sliding my shoulder blade down my side a little bit and letting it somewhat rotate. Two more there and a long set of neck muscles and last time reach.

Okay, so I'm going to put the bicep curl and the overhead reached together. So bicep curl, rotate and reach overhead and return and bicep curl, rotate, reach, overhead and return. I'm just doing one more of those. So bicep rotate, reach overhead. One last piece here, and that's a lateral raise. Palm down to start. Raise the arm. So I'm coming up as it's when in line with my shoulder, I'm going to rotate again and take a really luxurious stretch over and lift, rotate and down and up.

Over and up and down. Just one more lift. So three to five Reps. I did five and then I backed it down to three and lower and all of that facing the other side. So I'll face away from you and I need to move this a bit. Okay. And here we go. So good sides stacked position and holding this shoulder rest and then the front arm raised. So here we go, five repetitions and sometimes inside line people get a little excited and they over lift that bottom waist. It doesn't need to be much without a mirror. Here it's, it's um, I hope I'm in my muscle memory, but sometimes I've been a little unknown to get too high. They're a bicep curl for five too. So the upper arm stays nice and stationary.

You're working at your elbow joint and four and five. Now we're going into external rotation. So I want that risk. Steady elbow pressing in and then forearm and down. Exhale, forearm and down. Okay.

And four and last one, five. Their overhead reach, pom staying face down toward the floor and to the shoulder. Initiating by moving my shoulder blade a little before I take the arm overhead, shoulder blade, arm, arm and down two more. Ah, and lower last one. And then it's that bicep combo that evolves a little bit of this. So first I'll come all the way down and bicep curl, rotate.

Palm faces the floor, lower and bicep curl. Two more by Isa. Rotate and reach. I'm trying to talk to my trapezius muscle and say relax. Trapezius don't need to jump up. That was better. And now the last one is the lateral reach. So arm is extended, I'm coming to shoulder level or t position.

Then taking the rotation and again, reaching overhead and lift come out of that rotation. Palm will go down. Really allowing ball and socket glide rotation last time and up and over. Head and lower all the way down. Alright, so if a, we're going to come up off of this side, give me one second to adjust and hook this back on. So it's that dangling there. Okay, good.

Now I'm going to bring us up on our knees and I'm dropping off the red spring. We're going to work with just one blue and get yourself fairly close to the uh, if not right up on the shoulder rest and get a good kneeling position first. So we've been lying down for quite a while and take a moment, even weight on your knees. You could press your shins down. What I'm going to have us do here is open. I'm making a fist and open the arm out in front of the body.

I don't want you to rest it in. Your shoulders should be very well and ready for this. The opposite hand at your op, at the pelvis here. So I'm going to rotate toward the foot bar. I'm pulling, I'm thinking rear shoulder. Now, very often when I rotate, my pelvis will twist. I bet yours might too, depending on who you are.

So this other hand is going to be the police to say, nope, no hip. I'm actually reaching my hip forward into those fingertips. I'm gonna try eight of these and I'll exhale. Ah, so that I stay well organized. That's why my left hand is here. You may not need it. I don't really think of yourself as a top, this being spun on the ground, possibly your ribs rotating right above your pelvis and seven, making sure your eyes are tracking where you're going as well.

Eight and rest. So the other side, quietly setting that down. Knees, well organized, shoulders are set and that other hand is on this opposite hip here. You could start slightly faced toward the rope. And here we go in exhale. So once again, as I twist away from the risers, I'm pressing my uh, opposite hip forward. Look out on the horizon. I've got something gorgeous to look at. So you probably do too. If you're watching this video, you really want to feel your front body working with your side body around your back body to the other side, very three dimensional.

I'm thinking two more now, seven and then get ready for some weightbearing and rest. Okay, so we've got our co middle body really well ready. This is some fun stuff. So a short box orientation and I'm going to go red spring. I like a middle red for this reformer. Uh, I'm gonna move this bar out of the way. I'm to just slide it forward. You might want to do that or if it doesn't bother you to have it here, just know your foot might intersect that with the arch of your foot.

So I think get it out of the way. If you're a sweater, you may want stickies here for your feet. Okay, so we're going to come down into a crouching position. Now Watch your wrist angle play with your wrist angle. If you want more padding, you may want to choose this. But again, some clients have some wrist issues. So I'm trying a few things here and now as you crouched down, there is a crouch and I'm really unsupported. Nothing's really kicked in on my knees or you know, I'm just kinda hanging here.

So I wanna start at the ready, almost like the knee stretch, not almost, but like the knee stretch series there. So I'm in my quads and my glutes. Now I'm going to go from crouch to plinking and I'm going to look at the back of the reformer right between the two risers. And then to come back in, I'm going to initiate it, my tailbone and come back in and exhale. Yeah, tail though. So I've got the middle red spring attached.

Why I like that I'll tell you is I like to look at it. I'm looking at it as if I can see underneath the reformer and is if it hooked to the back of the reformer, that side. So it's a continuation of head and neck and eyes and push. Couple more here. I didn't quite move from my tailbone that last time. They're seven hold eight. So I'm going to go into control, front push and right underneath my shoulders and push. Keep your legs strong. I've got my glutes integrated, my quads working [inaudible] six, seven, eight. So three more.

Keep that chest seven and last time in eight. Now I'm in to come back and for just a moment I'm sweating a tiny bit, so I'm going to be safe and I'm going to move my hands to the white that corners for some pushups and feel free to go with the Polonius pushups. I'm just going to choose this one and no movement of carriage, if I can help it and push and, and we'll show. I'm going to shoot for five and three. Aw. Starting to shake it for oh my God, and press and last one five.

MMM. And come in gotta dig deep on that stuff. Okay. Now wipe off his hands and I've got a little bit more single leg from crouch to plank. So let's check that out. And three each side is probably all I've got and maybe you have that. Ah Ha. And so here I go. I'm going to keep my knee into my chest and extend and core out back and remember, follow the line of where that spring is under the reformer as if it's going to continue and carry on and catch to the back of that, uh, frame three on the other side and knee into the chest extent and in stand and in three.

And, and, and set the foot down. I'm going to rest once again. I'm going to wipe my hands off. Okay. And then going back out. Starting in a plank, I'm gonna set my right foot right on the top of the foot bar. You could probably see where I'm headed. I love the Arabesques. So as I let the carriage come in, I'm guiding it in carefully, but I want to accentuate this leg.

But take a look at your standing leg as well. Where is your heel? Or you parallel? Take a second. Get on that leg evenly. Lift, lift, lift, lift, lift. Now as you press out, go looking at that spring again. Set that foot down and continue your upper spine, your head, neck, and eyes. And again, I'm going to go with three each leg, steady that foot. Are you parallel and coming in? And I'm taking last one here.

[inaudible] using those hip extensors, raise that leg. Of course you could add pulses. I'm not going to today. Often do, but not today. And I know three times steady to fabulous hamstring stretch for this standing leg and lower. Coordinate the timing and lift and lower. One more Tuffy and then we stretch up, up, up, and set the foot down.

Okay, why? No, I'm going to take my right foot up here, left foot back, and where I'm headed is that the lip of the heels right over the edge of the box. And let's do a hamstring stretch first and soon as we do a hamstring stretch, I'm going to do two different things and first of all, score the pelvis and let yourself bend a bit into flection with your spine just to experience that, making sure you're not hanging on this knee, meaning locking it out. Now see what you can do and hold the carriage steady. Can you get into flat back? I am not going to be able to to my liking.

So what I need to do is actually back the carriage up a little bit and lift. I have to come up on my fingertips and I'm still not quite where I'd like to be, but I'm pretty close. I'm going to bend the knee heel underneath the knee. Three presses of the carriage, one n. N. So again, a thinking outside the box. This is a normal choreography of course, facing the back, but without the box may challenge you may give you a little change of scenery.

Now I'm going to go into this kind of a split. I'm going to go further. I'm going to go further challenged myself. [inaudible] breathe it in and come in. Not quite done on that leg though. So if I come into a more of a lunge, nice right angle, challenge those quads and see how tired they're going to hold myself here. Now I like to keep an hand on my leg.

You can reach this arm out and I'm going to go into some upper back extension. I'm going to lift my chest, my lungs, my heart up. [inaudible] keep that cared study. You don't want to lose ground and return. All right, other side. So starting with hip extension, hamstring stretching with a little flection of the spine, square your pelvis. Lots of opportunity to check your alignment.

So I'm looking back at the back foot, making sure I'm not ruling in or out on the foot and just experience your, your stretch. What does it feel like if it's not challenging you, perhaps you need to come into back extension a little bit. All right, like that me too. Whole different story from you. If I get my back and it's integrated with my hamstrings, Yup, and square the pelvis and then taking it into the larger split stretch. [inaudible] ah, luscious. We're right over that spring. I like to play with that spring. Imagine that's me. I'm stretching. Those coils are my muscles.

Stretching and controlling the return up into the Quad Square. Hand on thigh. Carriage doesn't move. What moves is this spine up into extension? The origins of the internal structure. Stretch and lengthen internally. [inaudible] we breath flows freely and I know I love my arching back but it feels so good and coming down one more major muscle group. We're going to go into guys, it's the pure form us and a glue complex. So here I go.

I'm going to try my best to keep my ball of foot back. They're parallel. Look at it. Chin near the front edge of the box if you can. If you can't, you'll get there. Don't feel bad. If your Shin is at an angle on this box, you'll probably still feel this, but for those of you who have the flexibility, challenge it, get up there on that edge. Get yourself really close to the front and you may enjoy coming over and just let yourself melt into the stretch and it's really clearly up to you how long you want to stay in a stretch, how much time you have for your class.

[inaudible] for me, I'm going to do one more big breath cycle. Good, which was about five. So we're taking the other side. [inaudible] okay. Foot parallel, hip square shin, pretty well in line, right up on the, on the edge. It feels good. And then better as I go down, just ask yourself, are you really letting their bones hanging on the box or be supported by not just hang, but be supported here. Check in. Are you holding back and releasing your stretch?

It's often you have to ask and look for that. [inaudible] see I was, no, I'm not. I'm gonna feel that just melting right over. Once again. [inaudible].

I always know when I've let go because I feel like I'm about to jewel, which is what you're sapping there. Okay, so that is class for today. You may want to finish a something very simple as standing role down. I'm going to finish facing back this way and just allow myself to do nice, easy flection to feel centered, and then I'm going to roll back up just to complete how I began. All right. Thank you very much.