Here we are again. It is a beautiful day in February, so we had to take advantage. I put my sunscreen on. If you have the ability to do this with me outside or near a window or if you want to just join me in my scene, put some sunscreen on. Anyway, I have the balanced body reformer set on one red spring. Let's do a little warm up and we'll see what happens standing at the end of your reformer feet parallel. Fuel your feet, so important, right to feel the ground, to feel floor, to feel yourself as you rise up against it. Take a deep breath, inhale and exhale and push the air down. Let the energy inside you rise. I'm going to do one more, but I'll take it into a roll down. Inhaling up and from here I've got my shoulders up, my ribs up. I'm going to let the shoulders drop and start to exhale and round over finding my hands to the edge of the carriage. Pretty much just off your shoulders, maybe a little wider. If you feel stiff, let your knees bend.
We are inhaling to push the carriage out to wake up the back to elongate. Exhale, drawing deep. It's almost like the springs move. You inhale and exhale. Let's keep the legs still. Basically they can be straight or bent, but let's not have them go forward or back and just finding the natural energy within the spine by moving it right, the movement generates the juices so to speak. Inhaling out, stay out this time. Check in with the ribs. Are you thrusting a ribs forward? Pull them in if you are, let your head be in line. Xcel. If you haven't, then inhale, bend the elbows. Exhale, stir at your way. Keeping the shoulders away from ears. Inhale, bend, exhale straight and I'm doing just two more. Inhale, bend, exhale, straighten. See if you can get more length in the back of the legs. Last time.
Hold the arms straight. Inhale, start the exhale and as if you were trying not to let the carriage in. Create the space or the curve in the spine and make the spring. Bring you in. Let go of the carriage and stand up tall. I've got the head rest down and the foot bar down on purpose cause we're going to do a little bit more warm up here. So have a seat put on your legs. Springs. Now I, I'm going to go for three red.
Yeah, that's enough. Stretch your legs out over the front and you're going to be at the edge. Ah, all right, I'm going to have to close my eyes, but that's all right. Hopefully sitting tall for a roll. You're going to squeeze through the midline and squeeze is probably not the best word, but draw it in and let it elevate you rather than pull you down. Right? You should be ready to go. Exhale, roll back. Finding the place, letting the vertebral drop into the mat one by one. Reach back lightly.
Touch your head. Inhale, arms forward. Exhale, reaching. Allow for that curve. And down we go. Most likely you're gonna want to stop your arms right at the shoulder so you don't get hit with them. Inhale, reach forward, forward. Start that exhale, picking yourself up and not collapsing. You can go as far forward in your stretches you want so long as you're hollowing or maintaining a sense of integrity through the middle. Let's do a couple more. If you inch back, just move forward. It's hey, stretch, stretch, stretch, but it's not the arms, right?
It's the whole body spine. Moving forward in that stretch and down we go. I'll do just one more inhale to exhale all the way down. Can you imagine sending the legs forward out from underneath you reach back, grab onto your posts. If you don't have the posts, you might slide down and hold onto your shoulder. Rest, bring the knees up, elbows wide if you can. If not, they can be up, but it's going to limit your little in range and it should. Here we go to the right. Inhale. As you rotate, keeping the knees together, exhale and draw them back to center to the left. Inhale up and over. Exhale, bringing it back.
Just preparing our body a little bit for the rotation that we're going to do.
You can hug the knee and close or you can leave it away. I'm going to start away at first so I can feel that help. I can feel the arms you want to work the arms. Let's go change change and slightly faster. We go press and press and press a single leg stretch reaching, reaching now maybe hug it a little closer to the ear, pull it in, pull it and use the pressure of the fi into the body.
And allow that to help you to pull or press the Arrow. One more each leg. Bring them both in double leg stretch. Inhale, reach back. Exhale, circle and squeeze out the air. Tailbone is still down. Inhale, reach school and again, oh all open yourself up and then contract in. Let's not overthink the next three. Just go a little quicker. We go out and in out, and one more out and hold. Head down for the moment.
Curl the legs up or stretch the legs up. Nice and high. Slide. If your arms are straight at the side of your knees, slide them up as you curl your head. Neck and shoulders reach way up. Way Up. If your shoulders come out, pull them back down. Lift the tailbone, set it back down. Lift the tailbone, but nothing else. Set it back down. Leave it down. Stretch the left leg away. Pull the right leg in. Elbows. Why?
Send the back of the leg right out through the heel, but send the sit bone into the springs. Slowly changed sides. Give yourself a minute. Send the back of the leg right up through the heels, whatever that means. Sit phone down. Ready? Here we go. Pick them up and switch. It's pulse. Pulse switch, pulse, pos top like reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, two more. Sorry, starting now, two more. One, one. Here's two. Both legs up, hands behind your head. Let your head go down. Hopefully your position that you can do that with a shoulder rest. Exhale, come back up from there. A little bit of energy through the midline of the body.
Again, inhale, reach the legs. Act like you're going to roll up into a city position. Exhale, pull the legs back up. There's a sense of your head pressing backwards as you draw deep into the belly to come back up again. You inhale to exhale. Inhale. Exhale. We'll do one more. How long can you be? Don't go so low that you're throwing your body and from there bend the knees.
Rotate to the right. Hold it up on it a little more. Switch, rotate whole. Get up on it. Watch your head and now we'll go a little quicker. We go, exhale. Exhale. I do a little inhale as I pass or at least that's what I'm doing today.
Hold on behind the thighs will rock yourself up. Swill do it. Your legs around. It's a set your bar up for footwork. Okay. Our bars are up. We've got to move a little quick cause I don't want this much sun on my face. I'm all good with 10 15 minutes, but then I got to turn over so that's a lie down. I like my head rest up a little bit. Just a little. You do what you need.
You take responsibility for your workout to the extent that you need to enjoy it and be safe. Right. I've got my heels and parallel body set off we go. Exhaling out. The breath pattern doesn't work for you. You can change it up. I'll turn it to cue it too much cause honestly, well I suppose it could matter but I'm choosing to believe it doesn't today for this level. I'm reaching out, I'm pulling it, I'm reaching out. I'm pulling in. It's as if the energy never stops.
I often think of like that infinity symbol of energy, never quite hitting a peak or hitting a peak, but then instantly moving through it. Let's just do one more out. Come back in. I'm still about sitz bones, distance apart. Slide both feet down. Anchor heels are halfway up and reach out and in. Make sure you're getting full extension. Feel the back of your body as if your whole back could be the wheels of the carriage sliding you out and you pull back in your legs.
Mimicking in the springs, rich, rich, nice and long. I'm giving us three more from here. I can count that bar one, pull it in, press out too, and in three swivels so the heels touch each other. Make that affirm contractions so that you feel not just through the inner line, but definitely through the outer line. Now if you go out and pull in and regionally and in, can you feel the sense just keep going. It's like you're delaying the return of your spine trying to hang on out there. Not by stalling actually, but by controlling the rhythm and the energy inside, giving us three more again, one in to finish it and income down.
We'll go heels wide and go out to pull in and I, every time I do this, what about you? I swear I've all of a sudden gotten off center and I, I now know it's just one leg doing more than the other side without shifting. I'm playing with my own energy here. I'm trying to go, oh no, no, not, not so much, right. Christy not so much. Right. Cause it's even, I don't have to look anymore. I can feel when I need to make an adjustment, I'm doing two more. Here's one, here's two, come down, changing and go parallel with the feet. Go again out, pull in still quite wide. By the way, it's a little strange. I don't do it this way very often, but I took a class from Brent Anderson and I liked it when he did this press and pull and press and pull in one more then for just a few. Let the knees come inward and inward rotation. So, and it's out. You may not.
Um, well anyway, just come with me. You don't have to do a lot. It's a little different. And one more time. All right. We're going to come down and we're just gonna kind of circle them. So I'm taking him out and in.
I'm going inward rotated so the knees are almost touching. They turned out and I straightened it. I rotate in, circle them out, some kind of light on the heels. Just one more for four. And then from here I'm reversing it so I'm still out straight. I bend with the knees wide. When I met the bottom, I rotate them in and press out, turn them out, come down, turn them in. Go out to more out and down. Turn him in. Go out. Last one.
Huh? Finish it by turning back out. Come on down all the way. Go to the center with your feet together on the toes for a little calf work for us out. I do like to check with them straight here. Straight enough. Stretch the yield under the bar, but oh, can you find opposition? This is just heavenly. It seems like not much, but look for something there. I guarantee it's there and lift up one same thing down and up.
Now. Yes, it's footwork. You got to stay in the feet, but can you transfer that energy from the foot, not just to move the carriage from your shoulders all the way up through the leg. It's almost like a letting go, but keeping the center line connected. I'm doing five more. We lift up where you reach under. We lift lower lift, lower lift. Oh God. I can only count to three. I'm going into running now, so it's up. Let one leg pass now before you get going, make sure the knees pointed straight up.
It didn't bow out and you're not hyperextending on the lower leg. Then we lift up. They both line up. You're in a high heel pass. They brush that other knee. Now point straight up. Here we go. It's up and down and up and down and you got to work from the center to not just the feet long, easy. Next and down and up and down and up, down and up, down and up. Here's four, three, two, come back up. Lower yourself all the way down.
Just rock yourself up. Take off your springs to go into the hundred and coordination. So I'm going down to a red and blue.
From here, start to send the legs, the arms, everything out. Let the straps pull on you a little. Hang on the stretch just a little so we're not overly pushing there. And Inhale
Now inhale, keep scooping. Exhale up. Open, close. Bend and then go down. Exhale, curl up, open close. Ben, do something fancy if you want. I'm giving you two more. Up. Push, pull, drag and on. You're still working down here. Last one and down feed on the bar. Press out, step into it. Same springs usually work and from here it's the frog. Take a second. Let's again, that's the springs be heavier than maybe they even are. In other words, you want to let the legs sit in the hip sockets. We don't want to always be so committed that we're working things we don't need.
Reach out, feel opposition, allow it to come in, but we're resisting it a little. And by resisting, and I mean you don't just let go, but you're also not fighting it a lot. It's like maybe I'll let you in the, now I want you to go away. Is that infinity sign of energy again in my mind. Oh, I hope that works for people. Last one there from here. Extend the feed a little bit. You don't have to overlay point, but can you feel this drafts?
Can you feel the legs being kind of pushed into the hip socket so then you can latently contract the glutes, lower down both legs separate and bring them up in together. XL Two and three reaching long. Feel the opening through the hips. Here's four. I'm only giving you five so enjoy. Exhale down. We'll start up now. Inhale, come up. Open. Exhale, breathing in. All that good air.
Exhaling out anything you don't need. Two more. Oh, one more. This next one is just an opening, so maybe don't go as low as you want cause it's harder to find s and not as high as you could see around 45 maybe slightly higher feet flexed. Let the legs stay at 45 degrees. That's the hard part, right? They usually want to go up or down and they come back at 45 let's get some pure abduction here and sweep it out. It's like they're getting longer reaching through this drafts and back and reach
Roll up some energy through the back of the body. If I didn't say, say you're needed to put your head rest down there, so sorry about that. Bend your knees. Now when you do you bringing in these near those shoulder rests today, we leave the feet in the air and we're going to traction almost ourselves down. We imprint without letting the shoulders pop up. Focus on the Vertebra, getting back to the mat when you've gone as low as you can. Then you pull the heels to the glutes and over you go. Exhale, press away.
Inhale, folding maintains. He would just taken a little more hamstring stretching. Now Peel up carriage should not move. As you know, you know that. Not In this version, in any way. Inhale, bend. Okay. Now here, before you go, can you lengthen? I don't mean straightened. I just mean don't hang out on your upper, back and neck. Lift yourself, your light. Fill up yourself with air, with energy. Then place yourself down.
It's a little things. We can do, a little explorations that make it so much more fun. Let's do it again. Exhale, press out. Inhale, touch the stopper. Exhale PLF. Find your arms as legs. Use Them. Inhale, bend and exhale and heels to Gluc. Last time. Reach, fold. Keep those heels glued together the whole time. Prove to yourself that you are all one piece. You are all one. Then deepen. It's not just abs here.
Want those hamstrings working a little bit and down where you go. We're going to take herself out of here. Put the straps away. Come on up and set yourself up for knee stretches. Um, I'm going to leave it. Sometimes. I often dropped to a red, but I'm gonna leave it on a red and blue, which on this reformer is, is really nice. Um, for those of you who are used to or heavier, you can keep it heavy. Sit back.
This is how I get into it. My feet are, is what I'm thinking of because I feel like that's an essential part of this. Now scoop up, lift up. Now if I didn't use my arms, you want to almost feel like you're pushing the carriage away already so the hamstrings are already there. So the rest is like walking the park. Here we go. Let's go for it. Inhale out. Keep the shape of round. Emphasize in
I'm exhaling away. Inhaling up. Get a stretch through your abs and nothing wrong with stretching your abs. How about they need it? I don't mind. Do at least one side of them and all right, coming and staying in right upon the stopper, but keep your shape. Keep your shape. Come to your fingertips, keep your shape, keep your shape both arms up. Look up. Oh, you got to love that arms. Come back down.
Help yourself up into the up stretch position. Heels are up. I am going to go one little here, so I'm just on a red now. Either way, it's absolutely fine. Inner thighs, we press back. Inhale all boy, where'd that spring go? And the reason I did that is I want to feel the end and I sometimes need need it to be the light to look for it. Otherwise I overdo it. Overdo it. Okay. Relax your neck one more time and in.
Now we're going to go from here to a plank, but we'll come back here. We're not going to travel, so you push out, rotate around the shoulders, hit your plank, boom, bring it back so the body is moving a lot. The arms really don't inhale. Hit your plank. Feet still connected to your shoulder. Rest. Exhale, bring it back. Yes, yes, they are. Inhale, exhale. Or at least they're trying, right?
Don't just push with your toes. Toes are are pretty relaxed and back. One more time. Stay here. Travel forward in the long stretch. Come on, come on now. Again, don't, don't forget about your legs. Push the yields through. I know you're already there, but we can't just rely on one piece if we're going to expect results here and staying strong. Thinking of the Corolla documentary, I wanted the German accent, but from the, what is it? From the feet to the head. Oh shoot. Something with steel. I think I'd know that by now. All right, from there we're going to just step one foot forward on the bar. Oh, just stuff she says. All right, so going into this hip flexor stretch on my left side.
Hopefully you're as tooth or it doesn't matter honestly, but we don't want to hang out on the leg. Keep some energy in this right leg and push the carriage back. Literally like tried to push the carriage back with that left leg. And I don't mean to straighten the right, I just mean push it backwards to the left. Now you can straighten the right now some of you have go lower than I, but I'm going to concentrate and keeping the back straight and I want you to too. So if you're in splits with the flat back, awesome. But if you're not, you might have to be higher. Look to the flat backing.
I just want the hamstring stretch, not the split.
You might have to push carriage out a little bit. Here we go. Right leg is now being stretched on me. And you've switched legs too. So as I think of pushing that straight leg back means the back glute is going to come into play a bit. So that's okay. It should, right? That's a contracts. It's more likely the front is gonna let go. If not actually, here we go straight in the front life.
Don't hesitate to rise up if you need to. Oh, pulling that front, hip back. Play with it a little bit. Watch the foot alignment. Lots to see and feel on this. So it's worth the exploration. Bend the forward knee. Again, deep breath. No death grip with your hands. Hopefully that is so good. Stretch it out again, reaching the tailbone, mindful of our next as well.
We come in to the stop or all the way and let's step down and grab our box. We're doing this short box series. Let's begin right at the front edge arm over arm, sitting tall, inner thighs. Together we inhale. Exhale, roll back. Oh, keep the knees together. You may not go that far through. I take an inhale. Exhale, scoop.
Keep the shape and at the last minute rise up and let the arms fall. Inhale, I've got my arms kind of resisting into each other. Roll back. Inhale forward to come up. It's as if your hips or your spine gets pulled out from here. The arms kind of lag a little there. Do you want to go further? You can if the boxes and a good spot for you. Oh, it feels good.
Rolling up sequentially. Think of those hamstrings a little so it's just not all hip flection and up you come. Last one. Inhale, exhale, roll back. I'm limiting this one. Inhale and exhale. Taking your time to come back up from here. Grab the pole if you have one or you can just lace your fingers behind your head. Reaching the bar up overhead.
I'm keeping it slightly in front and I'm using it so I'm drawing in a little. Lifting up, keeping the flat back. We inhale back and exhaling. Inhaling back, back, back. Keep the long line. Get longer as you come up the donor arch, you know, Eh, you know that long line and we stay up for the tilt to the right.
Inhale, keep the opposite side anchored. I am going slightly forward. Exhale mouth. You don't need to inhale anchor, anchor. It's a long return, not just shortening and back and exhale and inhale. Oh, there it is. There it is. Exhale, one more each side. One more time staying up. We'll go right into the twist. The sit tall, rotate, right. Inhale will be eating long in the exhale and center. Inhale road, reaching long, long, long queue, but drawn in an up center. Again, rotate, reaching back. Keep rotating, keep rotating.
Can you rotate anymore as you come up and center. Last one. Rotate, reach, reach, reach, and up center. Put the bar away. We'll do a little climate tree. We put one leg out for climate chain holding on nice and tall, and this version we're going to just lengthen the spine as we draw the knee and three times. It's just one. Exhale. Two, exhale. Three, extend the leg from here. Bring the body back. The other lego probably straight. Now walk down. The leg stays at 90 down to three storages over. Enjoy.
Head comes up. Find the tree. Walk back up. Keep it high. Keep it high. Bend the knee when you need to sit up tall and take the leg away only as you need to. Taller, solid, taller rebound and one, two, three. Stretch it up. Big Inhale, tilt it back. Use the support leg. It's like you're sending that leg out into the frame of the room.
Keep your shape except for the leg. Inhale, tilt it back. The right leg now is, or the down leg is working to the Ri. Everything extending. Come back up. Walk, walk, walk your light. Lifting up tall and bend number two to three and sister tilted back. Walk down, sending the leg up in the hip stays heavy.
Unfor chin to chest or near it and up. Up last one gets hell. Pull that leg up. Almost like a drawing. The shinbone up to the sky. Stretch it out. Tilted back. Whoa. Roll, roll. Extend that right leg.
Roll it up.
Swiveling to one hip, other leg is just right up on the box. Come down to your headrest, reach through the strap and let's take the arms behind our head. We're ready. We inhale, go down, we exhale, hold. You've got to use that like send the heel through the strap to, Oh, can you get longer? Here's three in letting those ribs open really to the side.
Last one, hold, hold, and then come down. You can either touch the floor or rest your forearm on the headrests. Take the stretch, reaching in both directions and carefully. Help yourself up to switch sides. Oh, how am I taking my time on the side? Good, nice and long. Lining ourselves up. Hands behind your head. Off we go. I'm intentionally not coming all the way up, meaning to vertical place number two, I'm, I'm trying to come out to that straight line and here's three.
Reaching longer each time. Pressing the back of your head into your hands. Only one more. Don't rush it, milk it, and then take your stretch. Keep reaching through the foot, reaching to the arm. You can even open it up a little. All right, let's move on. One red spring for breaststroke. Thumbs in body. You're ready.
You're going to draw everything forward. Hold on. Climb aboard chestnut quite over, I don't think, but near the edge. And then here's the good part, right? I find that level line with the forearms and upper arms as opposed to this. This is not what we're going for. All right. You want that external rotation and maybe do it on the floor.
First legs together. We inhale. I'm inhaling the whole way around, the whole way around. Exhale I refold and lower. Inhale, lift. Keep lifting, but reach the arms and and inhale. Now's really like you're swimming so it's fluid breathing.
Let your legs drop down just a moment and then help yourself up. Step off the same last thing, little hamstring, cold slash rocking. So sitting down you can cross the straps. I've got my right over left. My right stuff is over. Left. Whichever strap you have on top. That's the direction you're going to turn to, but you gotta do it knowing you want these to remain on your feet. So as gracefully as possible, I'm still on one spring, that's plenty. And I'm moving forward so that I can hold the box here.
I see pushing the forearms into it, allowing your chest to expand. Like if that's all we did. That's cool. Just put some resistance on the straps. Lift the knees so there's even more resistance. And do your best not to turn the knees out. Here we go. Draw in. I'm going to keep them in close.
I want you to feel that it's almost like you're trying to lift the thighs and you can use those for, and you're either going to stay here or you're going to reach back and grab onto them to the ankles. I mean, so there we go. And you're gonna lift up. So it's the same start position, right? Then you lift the knees higher and look down and up, down and up. Now you could also just lift and lower. You don't have to try and rock kind of wishing that I did, but here we are. It's not about the head. It stays in line for three, two and one slowly lesson. Let go the ankles, straighten out the legs, drop this drafts and just drape over your box.
It's a funny place on your knees. You can just separate your knees and cross the ankles or just let your legs hang. I'm not one if you play with it, you know anytime we put straps on some time for that rocking, it tends to force the knees to the side cause we're trying to get action out of it. Make it small, but keep the knees parallel. Let's take a deep breath. I'm going to look this way. Finishing up the workout like we started. You feel your feet.
We'll take a deep breath. I'm not going to overly round your spine even though we did all that extension cause I think why not leave it a little bit. If you need an arrested, you can take it. I'll do one roll down. Just let the arms come forward that your head go forward. Go about halfway bend the knees and as you do, let the whole spine curve more like an actual, see hands on the knees, extend the spine, sticking the tailbone out, let your head come up and find flat, but pass through it to little arch and then round breathing naturally, maybe still somewhat deeply or chicken. Don't forget the shoulders a little bit back. Find what feels relatively neutral.
And from that place you just roll all the way up and we're done. Thank you.
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