Exploring Range of Motion

Hello everybody. It's Sarah Berta Chellie here and I'm really excited to be back at Pele's anytime. Teaching a high level reformer workout. My plan today is to kind of go fast and fun, but also pay attention to details, range of motion, and um, see what happens. I've got Qaeda here to be my student. So what I'd like to do today is go, oh, let me say one thing before we actually get started. Uh, there's a few exercises I'm planning to do where there may be some slipping. So if you find that you have a, a reformer that is a little slippery, you may want to get some sort of pad that will keep you from slipping. Um, I think we'll be okay here, but we'll keep this available just in case we need it.

I've got the reformer here loaded for footwork. I like to use three red springs and a blue spring on the balance body equipment, you may lie down. The headrest is flat because we're going to begin with a pelvic curl. Okay, so heels on the bar slightly above where you would be for your footwork. And we're going to relax those feet. Take a couple breaths and settle before you begin to move.

Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. See if you can find that lovely elongation of your upper spine. If you can sense your whole crust or core engaged, remembering that your abdominals wrap around the back of your body. Feeling a little engagement baby if the pelvic floor if needed, but not necessarily going with that thought of pulling in your abdominals, creating a contraction. Inhale through your nose. Exhale to flatten your back, lowering the ribs a little and curl all the way up through the pelvic curl.

Inhale there as you exhale, lower down and try to create elongation through your spine. Beautiful. The pelvis goes all the way to neutral. Inhale, exhale. Feel the ads first since the hamstrings kicking in at the top. Press the pubic bone. Just a little higher opening through the hips.

Inhale as you lower down. Really elongate through your back one vertebra at a time, and then since that neutral position and maybe even go a little beyond, go a little anterior. Inhale, engage the abdominals, lift the pelvis. Feel the backs of the legs working. Perhaps even draw your heels just a little toward your bottom. Use An exhale to lower down. Feel that the inner thighs are staying connected, which would make sure that uh, your legs don't flop, flop out or in there.

Staying straight in alignment to more exhale. To peel up useful. Yeah, I have to say pelvic curls. I still always love to do a few. Inhale here and as you exhale, lower down, lengthening your spine and we'll do one last pelvic curl. Inhale at the bottom. Exhale, finding the abs heavy arms, backs of the legs, all the way up here. Softening the ribs, a little, lifting the pubic bone a little more and lower down with a breath. Bring the legs together so the feet and knees are touching and lift your hands up to the ceiling. Open your arms to a t position. Option one hold onto the pegs by your ears if you have them.

Option to take your hands to the frame. Option three, take your hands as low on the frame as you can, depending on your shoulder flexibility and your rib engagement. If you will. Inhale to twist over. Exhale to pull back to center. So I'm actually keeping the feet on the bar here. Inhale to twist to one side and exhale to pull back to center. You can use your top leg to push a little further. Enjoy that, stretch, that open feeling. Exhale, engaging the abdominals to come back to center.

One more. Push, push, push and gently come back to center. Find tabletop with the legs and continue on. Inhale to twist one direction and use the exhale to pull back to center and go the other way. Inhale and exhale. So the rules here, we continue moving. I want you to sense that you keep the engagement in your abdominals, so you want to make sure you're not flaring your ribs, especially if you're in an extreme shoulder position.

So it's as if your abdominals are stabilizing your spine from bending. You're just rotating. It's not as if that's exactly what they are doing. Many people flare their ribs when they try to maximize their rotation. Good. We'll do one more each direction, please. Nice. Inhaling to twist, and as you pull back, really think of that upper rib cage pulling back. Okay. Or the upper part of the spine. Really coming down to pull the pelvis back.

Gorgeous. Stay their legs at tabletop. Hands reached to the ceiling. We're going to go right into the a hundred here. Inhale, exhale to lift the head and chest. Send the arms by your side. Uh, let's do a couple more of those. Lower down. Exhale to lift the head and chest. Feeling the engagement of your core and lower down. One more time. Exhale to lift and hold. Make sure you have this wonderful elongation through your upper back so you're not jamming your chin down.

Straighten your legs up and lower as low as you can without losing the height of your curl. Reid, pump the arms. Inhale, exhale two and an annex. With the inhale, send the breath to the highest part of your lungs and with the exhale, deep in the contraction, pay attention to the legs. Still pressing together inner thighs. Feel that the arms are not creating tension, the body, just a little distraction for the abdominals. Beautiful. Keeping the fold underneath the ribs, the heaviness of your low back. I love it.

So I'm in the habit of not counting my hundreds very well. I'm going to give you two more breaths. That might be a hundred it might be 90 it might be 110 exhale all your air out and stay dry. Your knees into your chest and lower your body down and we're going to move into footwork. If you'd like to put your head rest up at this point for comfort, go ahead and do so. I go back and forth there. I'm a fan sometimes of my head rest being up and sometimes being down.

It's really up to you. The heels are on the bar, the arms are by your side. We have an elongation of the opera back to engage the abdominals. When you're ready out, you go. Exhale and inhale. Ian. For the first few mixture. You really organize your standing position, so feel your legs lengthening inner thighs active and then start to pick up the pace a little bit. Perhaps the breadth will change because I do want to work with this intensity speed a little bit. Whoops, that's okay.

One last time with control all the way up. Bend your knees and come on in. Shift to the toe position. All right, so we're on the tow position and pay attention to pressing through all five of your metatarsal is soften the rib cage down. Exhale out you go a little control there. Pull the Kerogen, put some energy in, feeling the hamstrings, the backs of the legs, really working to draw the carriage in there. Pay attention to all five of your metatarsal holes or the balls of your feet. Really firmly connected and as you pull in, press through those toes a little bit more.

I'm not actually talking about the toes, I'm actually talking about the balls. Come back in and stay heals together. Good. Settle into this position. Feel the firm connection. Soften the rib cage down. Out we go. Exhale, control. The exhale and control the now as you start to move a little more quickly, which is fine with me, as long as you have the control here, you may want to change the breath. Perhaps you do an inhale for a full repetition followed by an exhale.

That's okay with me. One more time. All the way out with control. Pull the carriage in the heels. Go wide on the bar please. We're going to flex those ankles, feeling the bottoms of the feet. Pretty soft, right about there. Out You go. Exhale, inhaling, so he literally long Geisha can have the upper back engaging the abdominals, feeling the crust consistent, the abdominals engaged. Beautiful, nice, neutral pelvis. We'll take two more here and gently come on in. Put your toes where your heels are. Again, paying attention to that connection too, as many of the metatarsal as as you can. Putting a good focus on that first one.

For most of us, exhale to press out. As you come in. I want you to really press wait through all five of those metatarsal. So I want you to think about pulling in by pressing down a little bit. It took me a long time to understand that cue. I get it now. Hopefully you're able to get it as well. Good. Two more and gently. Come on in.

Bring your feet closer together on the bar for calf raises. Once again, I want you to really feel the powerful connection through all five of the metatarsal. Press the legs to straight, lower heels down and up one time. Bend your knees and come in. Good. For those of you that tend to want to hyper extend a little bit, you may want to pay attention. I didn't queue. Press out lower down and up two times please and come in good. And press out. Pay attention to the backs of your legs three times and try to feel the engagement of your hamstrings as you lower your heels down. Think about that.

So here we go. Feel hamstrings. So we have a co contraction between the hamstrings and the quadriceps to support the knee joint here. Beautiful flow. Some of you at home, you may want to roll up the towel and put it underneath your thighs. There I was using my arm to help out, uh, Qaeda, but a towel does the trick. Beautiful. We're counting up and we are on what number five? Come on in. We're now on six. Exhale. Now if you find you want to do your calves a little slower, that's okay.

You just might not make it to seven today. Beautiful. And we're gonna then come on in and we have one more time. We're going to go out to seven. Here we go with control hamstrings please. Beautiful. Good. Using those in our thighs. Feel the abdominals engaged all the way around the core.

After that last seventh one, we bend the knees in. We press back out and do slow princes for your prints. My friends, I want you to put as much focus on pressing up through the top foot as you do on pressing down through the bottom foot. So feel the press forcing that arch position and enjoying a stretch through both feet throughout the entire exercise. Again, elongating the upper spine. Find the calm of the breath and feel beautiful stretches through your feet and ankles. One more time each side please, and then you can hold your stretch for a couple of breaths.

I often like to adjust my foot so it's a little more secure on the bar and then allow my foot to really reach down and nice way to assist this stretch on your own is to take your other foot, stick it underneath and flex back, and then you get a lovely little stretch through the back of the leg. Go ahead and press up out of that and switch sides again, making sure that you're connected with your breath here first. Find the position that you and then you can add the little assist here with the other foot. Breath, breathing and moving. I've been saying that a lot lately. That's all we're doing here is we're just breathing and moving.

Pressa bend your knees and come on in. Draw your legs into your chest and pause for a moment. We're going to do, I'm using a red and a blue spring, which is like one and a half springs, and we're going to do a combination of abdominals and single leg work. So heels are on the bar. Scoop down a little cause you're going to be doing a chest lift. And here's where if you're slipping, you may want to put a sticky pad underneath you. Lift your head in chest, doing an abdominal curl, reaching your arms, just continuously reaching.

Take one leg to tabletop, and now you're going to press out with the other leg. Exhale to press out, really maintaining the height of the curl and maybe even increasing the height of the curl as you pull in. Now press out this next time and stay. Turn your palms to face up and clap your hands together so that you're twisting toward your bent leg. Undo that and come in. Now press out and twist the opposite way. Hands reached together. Undo that. Lift a little higher and pull the carriage in.

Press out twists. So we're reversing directions or switching sides each time and pull the carriage in. So you're really using that solid anchor of your leg that's pressing to create more abdominal work. It's gorgeous. One more each side please and reach. Undo it. The more anchor you are in your pelvis, the less slipping there will be.

Unless of course you have a really slippery reformer, which I've had before. Come in, pause for a moment, putting your head down, put your other foot on the bar for me. Lift the other leg to table top and we stay. Go ahead and give me a nice abdominal curl. Lifting the head and chest, reaching the arms for me. We'll press out two times in this straight curl or non twisted position.

Intensifying the lift. Thank you and intensifying the lift as you come in. I love it. Adding rotation to the bent knee. Exhale. Inhale, lift higher as you come in. Exhale other direction, rotation and undo it and come in. Remember to really feel that idea of pulling the carriage in with that back hamstring. Beautiful. So reversing directions each time. This is the last one. Each side, big exhale, unwind and come in and last one, exhale, unwind and come in. Take a pause. Gorgeous. We're now gonna put feet in straps, same spring tension, so go ahead and put your feet in your straps. I'm going to start with a frog.

Most importantly, I'd like to make sure that the pelvis is nice and neutral here and the abdominals are the whole core stays engaged. So elongation of the upper spine to feel the connection to the core. Exhale to press the legs out to straight. Inhale to bend. Good real simple frogs here. See if you can feel as though the frog movement begins from your core, so from your crust engagement, if you will, and then also pay attention to the idea of the backs of the legs moving.

You don't think about your knees. Don't think about your feet. Yes, I want your feet together, but I want you to feel the backs of the thighs moving to more. Please exhaling out and one more circles are happening. Next. First, lift the legs up as high as you can. Maintain your neutral pelvis. Second, we pushed down through center with an exhale. We circle the legs wide and then we bring them back together.

Exhale to press down through center, circle the legs wide with control, tailbone heavy, and again, so I really like to punctuate my circles. Whoa. What that means for me is that you really bring the heels together, you make a straight line, you feel the end, and then you actively open one more. Please. Good. Feel the engagement to the core. So from the top we reverse same punctuation. You're gonna open the legs, rotate the thighs a little more, feel that the knees are not locked and come up through center. Inhale, open the legs wide, slight softening of the knee to make sure they're not locked and we'd come up through center. You look beautiful there. My friend and again she is working hard here.

Now this particular body in front of me has really lovely range of motion. Some of us will have to keep our circles a little smaller until you can create this range of motion. One more. I know I already said that, but I decided to add on a little openings. So here we're going to play with opening range of motion. We open the legs nice and wide. Now. Most of you will stop right about at hip height or 90 degrees at the hips.

Glide the heels back together for me. Beautiful. We'll do that one more time. Open, nice and wide. The feet travel along the same horizon. Okay, so open to your wide position with control, with support and stay. Now you're going to keep the carriage still and bring your heels together. Beautiful. It's kind of like we're going to make a square here.

Open your legs wide again, keeping control. Good. Pull the heels together. Up. Yes and then open them wide and now we're going to take that wide position. Travel along the same horizon, stretching the springs, bringing the heels together. Notice we've gone lower. Open again here. Stay connected to the core here. Sorry I was holding you a little and exhale, pull back together. One more time. Open to that wide position.

Still in control, a little elongation of the upper spine. No movement in the carriage. Bring the heels together. Keep the rotation. Open the legs wide again, but feel control. Good and lift up again. No, Kayla is going so wide. This is going to be such a yummy final, last movement. Go Out, widened.

Stay now from here. Travel along the same horizon and glide your heels together. Find it ribs in, abs in. That was lovely. You have one more in you, my friend. Open nice and wide. So what we're doing is exploring range of motion, but still staying very connected. Pull those legs together one last time and take a pause. Short spine is coming next.

It's important that you make sure your headrest is flat. If it's not currently flat, please put it down. Let's start with the knees. Ben, use an exhale to press the legs to straight at that point. Point the toes, fold at your hips all the way until you touch the stopper. Pause at the stopper for a moment and then actively use your abs to roll up onto the shoulder blades. Be there for a moment and really enjoy this long rounded position. Bend your knees so that they frame your face basically or about shoulder width.

Start to roll down one vertebra at a time and really feel that that upper part of the back goes first. And then there's a place where you Kinda, something has to give. This is the point where you continue to move with your back and bring your legs with you. Beautiful. And then press them out to straight fold into your hips all the way til the stopper. Whoo till we touch the stopper. Exhale to roll up, engaging those phenomenal abdominals. Bend your knees big. Keep the height of the spine here, the engagement. Roll down with an exhale. Bring the legs with you, using your core, your abs, and your back muscles.

And press out one more fold at the hips all the way until we touch the stopper. Use An exhale to roll up. Feel the heaviness of your arms. Not pressing so much, but heavy. Exhale to roll down again, articulating through your back one vertebra at a time, bringing those legs through, exploring a variation on the long spine. We come to a 90 degree angle at the hips and pause here.

Roll up, keeping those legs glued together. Feel the backs of the legs really powerfully engaged. Gorgeous. Now stay here and make sure you've really got it. You have to air on the side of a posterior tilt. That means Tuck your pubic bone toward your nose a little.

You're going to slightly bend your knees, but no movement in the carriage. You're going to straighten and feel the opposition. Bend your knees again, the opposition of tucking pelvis while extending your hips. Do it one more time. Keeping the legs straight. You'll roll down. Wonderful. Once the pelvis is touching, press the legs down and open to finish a circle. Finished with a circle.

Exhale to rollout. Again, you want to feel the opposition talking your pelvis, feeling the hip extension to bend the knees. Three little knee bends and press up. It's a mini mini frog and we're hoping to keep the carriage still to keep a really profound engagement through the core and through the backs of the legs with straight legs. Take a breath, lower down through your back. Once the pelvis returns to neutral, push your legs down through center and then circle around to the top position. Go ahead and bend your knees and enjoy a rest there.

So with the bottoms of the feet together and the legs open, take two or three breaths and we'll prepare to get up. You can take your feet out of your straps for me and we're going to come on up from there. So we're going to move into a nice little lab knee stretch series here. I like one red spring for the knee stretches, so the feet are up against the shoulder rest and you want to make sure that the pads of your toes are down, your toenails are up. We start sitting on the feet here round through the low back and one place I want you to pay attention to is the idea of engaging the back adds that come all the way around here. So there's an engagement back here. From here, we're going to let the carriage move out from underneath you and stay in that rounded position. Inhale to slide the carriage back. Exhale to pull in.

Inhale back, exhale, pulling in. The idea here is that the whole body stays still, just the legs are moving. Think about really engaging the hip extensors as you go back. That means the hamstrings and the glutes are working a little. When the legs go back to more exhale in one more.

Stay in the middle range of motion with your legs, straighten out your spine, naming your tailbone back, and I actually want you to try to straighten out your spine, not create neutral. Okay, that's going to be option one. It's beautiful, nice connection to the abdominals. Option two, you can actually extend your upper back slightly, but be very careful not to go into your low back too much. We want to keep those ads really active all the way around onto the back. Slide the carriage out and pull it in. Inhale out, exhale in the knees. Stretches should have a little intensity to them, but of course stability comes before intensity so you certainly could move slower if you needed to. Last two and last one, sit back on your feet and bring the carriage to rest for a moment. So it's important for this next exercise that you try to have your middle spring on. So I'm on one spring. On the middle. But if you don't happen to have, um, the red spring in the middle, then you could use a lighter spring or you could in fact use a different spring.

But you'll see why in a moment you're going to have a seat right at the edge of your reformer and put your feet on the foot platform to push out. Again, if you feel slippery here, you could put a nonstick pad down. So what foot is going to go up on the bar? Uh, let me say this actually, option one, you'll keep one foot down here. Let's go ahead and take the right leg and put it down into the reformer. Well, so this is going to be a nice stretching option for anybody who's a little tighter. Now the body I'm working with here, I know is not too tight for this. So bring this other leg up for safety and then lift this foot up and put it here. Okay, so I've got the left foot on the bar, the right foot down, supporting slightly. The hands are by your side helping you sit upright. Okay.

Now I'd like the ankle to be slightly flexed of the up leg. That's the left leg. Inhale to bend your knee a little bit and exhale to press the straight. Really enjoying that hamstring stretch. Inhale to bend and exhale to press. Really enjoying that hamstring stretch. Good. We'll do three like that.

Now stay there for a moment. Sit Taller, feel that nice straight leg, knee cap facing up and try to fold just a little forward, ah, and sit upright and use an exhale to fold just a little forward. Some of you may fold a lot forward, but I'm looking for more of a hinge at the hips and then a fold at the back. So be mindful of that. Good. Sit Up nice and tall and we want to move to now a turned out position. If you need to use your other foot, bear some weight in it and you can make that shift from the heel.

Actually I like the heel better, although the toe position would be good too. We'll try that next time. That'll be the next class. So really pressing through the heel. We're going to do the same thing where we bend the knee. It's a lovely stretch. Stretch through the back of the leg here and straighten good.

Those of you who have a dance background and who are quite flexible, you'll probably enjoy this quite a lot and beautiful. So the focus here is really keeping that pelvis aiming backwards so you can enjoy the maximum stretch. That was three. Let's do one more exhale to press out and hold. Now just see if you can fold forward a little [inaudible] and sit up. And again, big exhale folding, mm hemming and hawing and Ming and moaning and groaning sounds about right and come on up. So now you'll switch legs. You may want to put your foot on the, on the wood part, and then you'll take your heel and put it up on the bar.

Now certainly another way to adjust this would be to put your bar on a low position, make it easier, and then your foot is down. So by pushing away into the heel here, you get to experience the stretch a little differently in help to bend and exhale to straight. And sitting up tall, gorgeous. Watch the ribs and straight. And so the movement will be small for many of you so that you don't shift in your back too much. And that's what I'm looking for here. Good. Stay there. Fold forward.

Also be mindful that I'm actually letting the arms be active here folding forward so that you're using the arms as a slight assist to stay very upright. And one more time folding forward. Good. And we're going to shift shift to the externally rotated position. Many of you will find that you can simply do that with your foot connected bend and straighten. Exhale to press all the way out. We did four on the other side, so we will certainly do four here.

Beautiful breathing and moving my friend's breathing and moving. Nice position there. Press the leg to straight and hold and then you're gonna fold. Enjoy that stretch. Sort of wishing I was doing it with you right now. Sit Tall, not sort of and full, beautiful and up. And one more time. Fold.

Good. Sit Tall. Okay. And carefully get out of there. So I would recommend putting your feet on the wood platform. Scooching back to about the middle of the reformer. That for me was a preparation for a single leg stomach massage, which is where we're headed. Okay, so for this I would like there to be a one and a half springs.

So a little more than one is ideal. We're gonna put both feet on the bar in a v position and you want your hands to be able to gently rest up against the edge of the reformer. Rounding the back. Go ahead and exhale to press out, keeping that round shape in hell to come in. We'll do two with two legs. Exhale to press out and inhale to come in. Press out and hold.

Remove your right leg and threaded under the bar as you continue on. Exhaling. Depress out chest is open. Inhale in. Feel the organization of your core staying consistent. Three, we're going to do five on each leg. Good. I believe that's five, right? One more. Stay. Put your heels back together, take the other leg under and there you go. So notice that it's quite a challenge to keep the one leg hovering all this time. It helps to really, um, in some ways engage the abdominals more, which is nice. Beautiful. And again, here, if you find yourself slipping and sliding, the little sticky pad would be nice.

Both feet come back on the bar and we come in, press out one more time and hold. Now you're going to straighten your back out. Sending your arms up. I want your arms as close to your ears as you can be. I'd like them close to touching if possible. And then I want you to sit even taller for me.

Sending the arms back if possible. Yes, I'm gonna take this [inaudible] take your right leg under the bar and here we go. Five. Keep the sensation of up. Four. Beautiful. And three. I love it. And two and one more time. Hold for a moment. Shift legs reaching up.

Here we go. Good. And one more time please. Both feet are on the bar and gently come in. Good. We're going to step to the down stretch. Okay. The down stretch. You're going to want to be on probably just one spring on your knees with your feet. Again, up against the shoulder rest, and never ever miss an opportunity to get a good foot stretch.

You're going to shift forward into your knees undulating through your body, sending your pelvis forward and lifting up through the crown of the head, lifting the sternum and finding the upper back. Feel that tucked pelvis active backs of the legs. Slide back. Let's use an inhale today and use the exhale to intensify that upper back extension. Keep it consistent as you go back and up. Up, up. It's called the down stretch, but I always like to focus on the up lifting, lifting, lifting. Gorgeous. We'll do two more, making sure that you're staying very connected to your upper back. Good. One more and lift. Lift. Undo that. Sit back on your feet and take a moment's pause.

[inaudible]. From here you'll shift your knees forward so they're close to the very front edge. Okay. Sit back on your feet and push the carriage out until your elbows are straight. We're going to aim the chest down, but try to straighten out the back a bit so you have to really aim the tailbone back and app. Feel those upper back muscles very engaged in how to bend the elbows and exhale to straighten. Good as you bend your elbows. Think of stretching the bar, feeling a little bit of external rotation in the arms without letting the elbows go down. Another thing to think about is the widening of the Scapula, the shoulder blades and the collarbones. One more.

This is gorgeous stay. You're going to take your right hand and just put it down by your other knee or your right knee, I should say, and now we're going to do with the single arm the same thing. Many of you will find quite a bit more challenge here. Keep that little bit of extra gentle rotation as you bend, yes and keep the sensation of almost pulling outward. It will help you to spread the collarbones and the Scapula.

We want to do five good or more or less if you need to, but do equal numbers. So we'll shift arms. Now again, if you find yourself moving at a slightly slower pace, then count and maybe just do three. If you find yourself moving a little faster, maybe you can fit eight in. I think five is a good number. Again, think the, I think about this idea of spreading the collarbones in the scapula. This is an absolute gorgeous execution of this exercise. My good.

And then you'll put both hands on the bar and gently come on in. I like it. Let's do the advanced shoulder push. Yeah. So you're going to come up first. All right. Same spring tension. You're going to stand for me. I'm not actually, I'm the reformer. Come over here. Come over here. Okay, so in order to get into the position, you want your hands on the shoulder, wrists with your elbows down. Okay.

So you're gonna come to your knees. That's okay. All right. So this is where we start. You want to take this idea of really waiting your elbows, but making sure you don't let them go out. So there's a little bit of external rotation here, right? And you do need a good grip here with your hands on the shoulder rest. Yeah, so it's a little squishy at times to get your foot in, so hopefully you can arrange your body so you can get your foot on the bar.

Press the leg to straight and stay there. You're going to then lift your other foot up and put it on the bar. We want to stay in extreme plant. Our flections. We want this forced pointed position. The hips are in a low enough position. The abdominals are very active. Gorgeous.

Think about slightly extending your upper back. That means you're elongating. That was beautiful. Now you're pushing with your arms out and you're pulling in. This is beautiful and pushing out. Now I like to ask people to think about what's actually moving. You think about the tops of the shoulders and really feel the force actually being generated from that top of the shoulder there. Beautiful.

Good. Can you do one more for me here and if you're up for it, you'll bring, bring your elbows in underneath your shoulders. Okay. We're going to add on here. You're going to lower your head and lift your hips into a pyramid or a dolphin type position. Try to come all the way into this. Stop or let the heels lower if needed. And then you come back to where we came from. Planking good.

Feeling the hinge around the shoulders and the hips. Push the arms out. Pull the arms underneath you. Keep them underneath you as you shift, continue to pull the carriage in. A little more engagement here, but I like it. Good. Now come back to the plank position. Shifting at the shoulders in the hips. Push the arms out. You have one more in you. I can tell. Good hinge up with those hips.

Feel those abdominals. Very engaged. Good. Push back out. Lower the hips and gracefully bring one knee to the mat, followed by the other. Beautiful. So we're going to move into um, a nice variation. I'm going to say a preparation to a variation on the twist. For those of you that are comfortable with the twist, we'll move into the full form if you want. So step down for me. Okay, you're going to put your hands one hand on the shoulder, rest one hand straight across from it on the reformer.

Now before you try the exercise, I want you to pay attention to the fact that most of you will appreciate the barbing down a little bit and or you can use the foot. Some of you will decide to not even choose to step up. And I have a great variation for you. So in this position, you want your outside leg to be your standing leg. That's the one that's going to end up over on the foot bar at some point. So your inside leg is going to cross over like so.

So you're just going to kind of rest there, bring your weight into your arms and then think about a little Shakira dance with your pelvis and you're going to rotate your pelvis underneath you and release that. Try not to move your shoulders, but rotate your pelvis underneath you and release it. And one more time rotate underneath you and release it. Now you choose. Are you going to step onto the foot platform or are you going to step onto the bar? I'm going to give Kay to her choice. That's going to happen with your right foot. Her right foot. She's going to keep the carriage impeccably still as she does that and she's going to square off here. Beautiful. So we have this wonderful twist.

Slide the carriage out of it. Right about here. The hips swing down. Yes. Swing back up and we pull in. Good. We reach out here. We swing down. Big huge stretch.

You swing up and you pull back in. You have one more in you. Beautiful. We swing down, we swing up, we pull back in, we organize ourselves and we stepped down with control and we switched sides walking to the other side. The preparation comes first. Okay? So we have the hand in the hand and you want to feel that your standing leg stays your standing leg. Okay? So we don't need to worry about right and left here and you're going to dance with your pelvis. It's a little Shakira and undo it.

Feel your weight is in your upper body as you do that little rotation. Beautiful. And again, little rotation. And one more time and rotation. Pause for a moment. Undo the rotation first and think about where your foot is going to go. It should be the same place that's on the first side.

So you're going to keep the carriage impactfully still. As you step up, you want to feel that wonderful twisted position so the shoulders are stacked over the wrists and there was a real wonderful twist here. Slide the carriage out a little bit, and then we swing down. Oh yes. And we swing up and we pull all the weight in. You're gorgeous. You reach out, a little use swing down. You swing up and you pull in. Feel the upper back.

Last time you swing down, you swing up and you pull in and you find the control gracefully. Step down. And we're gonna finish with a very gorgeous stretch. Please come around to the side. It's a nicer angle. So puts your right leg up, okay. And you're going to put your right leg up in a position that would stretch your glutes here. Okay, I like to wedge the pelvis right up against the edge of the reformer.

Allow the back leg to be bent here. So kind of relaxed, but there is weight on the foot back there if at all possible. Try to get to your leg a little bit more, um, 90 degree or have a straighter line with the Shin here. But that's okay. So rule number one, we're going to really press down with the thigh. You can use your hand, but you can also access your hip extensor a little bit to do that for you. Beautiful. Now the back legs gonna move here.

You're going to bend the knee to release a little bit, the stretch in the flexor, and then you're going to press back and up to feel hip flexor with also a little glute back here. And then the knee inhale and exhale to stretch. So your goal here is to keep your pelvis of the leg that's moving connected to the wood part back there. And one more time. Hold the leg straight, lift up through the crowd of the head, and then try to fold forward a little bit. Beautiful. Some of you will appreciate having your hands resting on something and some of you will feel that you don't actually need your hands. It depends on, on, on kind of your flexibility in your balance here, you're going to shift your weight into your front leg, unweight your back leg and pull it in. It's like a little attitude, so the need bends and comes in. Now from here, we're going to feel that glute working as you lift the leg up, the back leg and up. Beautiful. Now if you want to continue to intensify this, you're going to let your arms float up to the ceiling.

You're going to find some beautiful back extension and you're gonna continue to use that gorgeous glute fold forward. Let the back leg rest and take a break. Beautiful. Let's do the other side please. Oh, you know what? You can just do it right here. Yes. There's no reason to do the backfill. What a great idea.

What a great idea. This is such a beautiful view. So, um, certainly if you were using the shoulder rest or the bar in a certain way, you could change sides. But this is a good choice. So we want to try to take that shit as much as we can to a 90 degree or so. It's parallel with the front edge. We've got the pelvis kind of heavy and oppressing, but that against the wood piece if you can back there. And then the back light, let me say this too, this thigh is heavy down. So the front leg is actually pushing a little bit down into the mat, the back knee bands and straighten and it bend and straightens.

So here I'm focusing when I do this on my hamstring a little bit as I lengthen my leg, trying to actually deemphasize the glute of the back leg, which gives you more range. Good. One more time. Beautiful. Start to bear more weight into your front leg. Leaning a little bit. Drag your back leg in for me. Find the position of your hands so you can achieve it. You take that back leg into a bent knee position, which is like an attitude and you're going to lift the leg up and keep it real small cause I don't really want the pelvis to lift here, which means for those of you that do have quite a big dance background, it's not going to be quite as um, exciting. Has a real attitude.

Good yet. Now stay here and decide if you are comfortable continuing lifting your arms up, finding a wonderful back extension, beautiful and maybe a few more lifts with your leg. Ah, it's gorgeous and beautiful and you're there all by yourself. Rest fold forward. Enjoy a couple of breaths. [inaudible] in classic Bassey PyLadies form. I'd like us to finish with a couple of roll downs. [inaudible] recommit to the ending here. Let's go out into the front.

So standing with your feet underneath your hips, take a breath and peel forward one vertebrae at a time. Let your head go rounding through the upper back, through the low back. Allow your arms to dangle, but stay connected to your abdominals. That wrap all the way around to your back. Take a breath and round and roll up. And when you find yourself standing nice and tall, elongate through the crown of the head and exhale to peel forward. Head, upper back abdominals, nice and active. Beautiful.

Let the arms dangle, but the shoulders don't really let go completely and then round and roll up. And I'd love one more. Roll down please. Healing forward. Beautiful and round. And we'll have, thank you so much for playing. I hope you have a great day.