Quick Reformer Flow

Hi there, I'm Gillian has sold and we're about to do an intermediate to advanced reformer workout. These can be a continuation of my mat class or a standalone workout if you need a quickie. So this is designer hills and this is Michelle Ams. And we're going to start by demonstrating how to sit and get on and off the reformer. So we're going to cross our ohms, feel yourself very centered energy, drawing up through the spine and take a breath in. Exhale, slowly sit to the table, right. And then, and we're going to lie down now and round the bat and just do a little bit of posterior lateral breathing. So we want to avoid lifting the neck and shoulders, but really breathe sideways into the ribs. Go ahead and inhale through the nose, feel yourself expanding like a balloon and exhale drawing in the lower abdominals. And again, inhale wide and deep and exhale everything relaxed in the upper body. So we're breathing here. And one more time. Inhale and exhale, and then plant the sit bones and roll slowly back up to seated.

And now we're going to demonstrate how to roll onto the reformer without twisting the spine. So the ham that's to the outside towards the foot bar is going to reach across to the shoulder rest and reach that shoulder underneath and roll as a unit to the table and send to yourself to get off the opposite hand reaches again, the feet swing to the side, push off. And there you are. All right, so now we've adjusted our foot bars and our springs for foot work. So we're gonna align down. Go ahead and lie down. I do want to show one more transition here, which is when you're making adjustments in the middle of your workout, not standing up, but how to change the springs. So say we just finished foot work, we're gonna bring the knees into the chest a little bit open.

Do your abdominal fundamental of curling your head up between the knees and roll up to seated like rolling like a ball. Straddle the apparatus, scooch back a little bit, reach down, change your springs, Scooch your Tush forward and rolling. Michael Ball. Curl the tailbone under and back down. If you don't roll far enough forward on the table, you're going to hit your shoulder reps. So you definitely want to make sure you've got room. So let's begin. Now we're going to place the feet in classic Palani stance.

The toes are apart, the heels are together and open a little bit wider and drop down just a little. We won't, don't want to be on the highest point of the forest arch, but we also don't want the heels dropped. So you're gonna lift yours a little, right? And we're going to inhale as we extend the legs. 10 reps, inhale, spiral, wrap the buttocks at the top of the movement, and exhale to return. Make sure that you control the recoil of the spring so there's no banging into the stoppers and feel energy lifting through the crown of the head as you bend the knees. So there's kind of a two way action to the springs. I'm going to rely on you ladies to count. Yes we are. We eight and nine.

Draw the knees all the way together at the top of the move and 10 so now this is a little unconventional. We're gonna take our [inaudible] stance and just open the heels, drop the heels down under the bar, have a prehensile foot driving the heels under the Bart. Ready. Inhale, press out. So we're hip with the part, the way we walk. Yes, this is not an original politeness position, but I like it because we walk around in this position. That's nice. As we straight and we want to feel the back of the glutes wrapping together and the abdominals here. Long necks. This is eight and nine and 10 so we're gonna repeat prehensile come on in and bring the feet right together. Now I want you to squeeze your legs together as if you have one leg.

Drive the hills under. Ready. Inhale out, and exhale work to keep those heels coming under the bar. As you recoil the springs. Really use the abdominals to control the recoil. See if you can come in a little deeper. Suzana all the way in without banging. Finesse it. Yes.

Is this five good and six very nice. Ladies. Seven nice rhythm spiral wrapped at the top of the glutes. Good. Now our transition to the heels is next and it comes from the fundamentals in the mat work. We want to take a breath, squeeze the legs together and lift both feet and place the heels.

I like a really high heel here. It should feel almost precarious. So we really engaged from the buttocks. Ready? Inhale, press out. Your feet are a little off center. Yeah, and come on back, squeezing everything together in here and exhale and very, very nice. Four. So one of my pet peeves is do not ride the recoil of the spring. Resist the recoil. Yes, seven, eight and nine. Very good.

And 10 coming on in. Take a breath in and we lift again as a unit and place the toes on the bar. With the heels lifted this time we're going to press out and stay straight. So go ahead and cross out. Now we're going to exhale all the air out before we start.

Glue those legs together. Suzana don't roll out on the feet. Inhale lower down in three counts down to three. Exhale, rise to three in here. As you lower, draw the buttocks together. Lift the tummy to rise three to three and up to three take three counts down to three and up to three and down to three and up to three is this a and my internal clock is good and nine and rise. Squeeze in wrapped biotics and one more. 10 to three and up. We're going to run in place now so we're going to drop one heel and inhale for two runs. Inhale for two and exhale for two.

So I sniff through the nose and blow out through the mouth. Now if your pelvis is moving around in this position, it's better to take your feet a little bit apart and stabilize the pelvis as you run. Usually we do 10 sets of sniff, sniff, low blow. I'm not quite sure where we are. We want to spiral wrap the back of the leg as we drop the heel under. When you finished called one heel under the bar.

Breathe and really engage the glutes at the top of that leg to keep the knee from rolling in. No internal rotation. Keep the leg there and bend the knee just a little to stretch the calf and switch. Come up and drop through. I might add that if you've slipped on your footwork, you really want to raise the foot a little bit higher. Here we like all five toes of the Manitoba Souls on the bar. It really connects differently to the glutes. Okay, so we're going to transition now. Come on in, hug your knees and let's sit up and change the springs to where you would like them for an abdominal super set arm circles.

Hundreds ordination. Okay. And then we're going to put the foot bar down as well and Ra back down. So remember to scoot forward a little bit. Curl. Use Your, your fundamentals to roll down and grab your handles. And we're going to scoot down now about an inch away from the shoulder rests. I like that because we really want to stabilize the scapula down from not overusing the upper neck and shoulders.

So I like to start in a home position with the hands completely vertical over the shoulders. And we're going to do five arm circles each way. I like to see the legs. Ankles crossed a little bit angled up so that the knee is vertical over the hips. And if your back is tight and you're feeling the abdominals not in control, you can come in a little deeper. But I love this vertical line if you can do it. So we're gonna begin with an inhale. And on the exhale, tighten the belly, bring the arms down, circle one and out to the side and bring it around to soft elbows so that we're really working from the shoulder girdle. And three very nice.

Let's reverse change legs and open the arms to the side. Inhale. Exhale. Close it and up and around. So before we yank with the arms, we want to engage the abdominals one more time. And as the arms come up, unhook your legs and we're getting ready for the breathing. 100 so we're going to extend the legs out in a slight Palati stance. Ready? Inhale and exhale. Blow all the air out. Roll.

They had neck and shoulders up. And inhale. One, two, three, four, five, pap, two. Great, good. So off the elbow Suzana right. So if we lock the elbows, we get end up working in the upper shoulders. We want to keep the elbow slightly soft and draw the shoulder blades down the bat. Vigorous pumping though cause we're warming up. Yes. And when you finished, what number are we on? Seven age and nine I think we're both a little off. So when you finished, blow all the air out and freeze. Stay empty.

Bend the knees and elbows and roll your head down. We're going right into coordination now here. I like the upper arm digging into the mat. So we're going to inhale to roll up and straighten the arms. Hold the in breath. Open. Close. Exhale.

Float the knees back to the chest and bend the elbows. You can roll your head down. Inhale out, hold the in-breath open. Close. Exhale. Pull the belly into, fold back and roll down. Two more. Inhale out, open. Close, deep, lower stomach. Squeeze the air out and release. And one more. Press out.

Open, close, deep, lower stomach. Exhale and roll it back. Very nice. Hook your straps, ladies. Thank you. And we're going to pretend now we're holding a magic circle so you can extend your arms straight in the air about the width of a circle apart, legs, straight, vertical. And we're going to do a mat exercise here. Single leg straight stretch with an old bleak. So we're going to lower the left leg and bring the body up diagonally to the right. Inhale, double breaths. Switch.

Exhale two and switch the legs. Inhale and exhale to think of shortening the rib to the hip. Yes, and keep that circle. Inhale to exhale. Two, one more set. Inhale two, exhale two and fold down and relax. Very nice. Good work. Okay, so now we're going to put our headrest down and we're going to do a corkscrew here. Corkscrew on the reformer. We want to hold the shoulder rests and open the elbows.

Really press them open to the frame, and we're going to do what I call the pendulum first. Just swinging back and forth. This is a great way to do obliques without straining the neck, so we're going to offset the legs to the right on an inhale. Keep the left elbow open to the frame. Exhale, pull the left rib back and center. Inhale off the other way, and exhale, pull back. Inhale off center. So this is just like a clock with a big grandfather clock swinging side to side.

Good. Now we're going to add a little circle off to the right. Inhale down towards the foot bar around. Exhale, stop. Ah Ha. Let's reverse it. Inhale down or a exhale. Stop. Good. Inhale across and down away. Exhale all the air out and inhale across. Down away. Exhale.

Good. Okay. Bend both knees and we're coming up. We're gonna grab our boxes. So we're going to get ready now to do the swan on the box. This is a great exercise. If you don't have a full studio and you don't have a high barrel, I learned it from Corolla tree air.

So we want to put the handles away from the front. I guess it doesn't matter. For this, we need padding. We're going to take for, uh, the folks at home is sticky pad and then a kneeling pad so that we have extra padding because the pelvis just below the break of the hips is going to be positioned here. I'm going to get out of the waist. You can change your here. I like the springs, uh, to be uh, a medium and a heavy, I won't say colors cause I think it's very confusing, but I also have the ladies moving their bars into second year. This is a tough exercise. You want to, uh, use caution if you have lower doses. So Susanna's going to do a modification and stay with it.

And then Michelle is going to show the modification and then progress to the full swan. All right, so I'm going to get out of the way here. They're going to climb up and position. Everybody has to play with this a little bit at home to find the right position. You want to be just below the pubic bone and we're in a polite stance, a Little v here, and we're gonna straighten the legs all the way out. So we don't want the springs to be too heavy.

Now first we take the back of the hands to the smaller the bat, right, and we're going to keep the legs completely straight and see if we can just levitate the chest, staying long through the body, up on an inhale. Once we've lifted as high as we can, we're going to bend the knees and use the glutes to lift higher into a full hyper extension and then shoot out straight legs and come back to the mat. Good. The Mat is the box. Inhale, reach out and keep inhaling as you come higher. Bending the knees. Wait, wait, wait, wait. We're going to do one more modification. Yep, that's it. Susanna. Good. Bend the knees. Good. And then shoot out through the crown and the head straight and come down.

Now Michelle is gonna do the next version. Suzana stay with where we are. So she's holding one farm with the other. This is a variation I learned from Corolla year. She's going to lift straight, legs straight. Keep them straight. Now bend more. That's an inhale all the way up the arms open to the side. Exhale, the legs straighten and she brings herself back to the box. She lifts up again.

Inhale the knees band again. The thumbs join and she exhales right out and keep the legs twist. Inhale, lift. Now lift more. Bend the knees, lift high, open the arms. Exhale straight the box. Straight knees. Beautiful Michelle. Inhale, reach all the way up and exhale down. So for Susanna, she's only doing the up with the knees, bending and shooting out with the legs straight. Yeah, so we've got a double set of breathing here and a single set here, but we get the same benefit. It's harder with your arms overhead, more stress on the low back. So use your discretion at home, which version you're going to try. All right, let's hop off and we're going to keep the spring bar in second gear, but adjust the springs for backstroke swimming.

So we don't need the pads. We have our handles here before the ladies lie down, they're going to grab both handles in one hand. I'm going to stand at the head here from Michelle. So get lose your pads there. Yeah. Okay. So for backstrokes swimming, which I learned from Karola tree air, we're going to have the shoulders level with the top of the box and I call this position. We are going to be holding the handles or the loops. Crybaby, right [inaudible] we want the hands right near the eyes and the upper body is curled up strongly so it's kind of like the breathing 100 position, the arms and legs. If you have short straps, be careful. I have to go straight vertical on the inhale.

So we extend the arms up on an inhale, hold the in breath as the arms and legs open. Circle and close fist over the thighs. Day empty and been back to cry baby again. Inhale, arms and legs up open. Exhale, use the ribcage to come higher if you can and stay up there as you fold in. One more. We're going to hold it. Arms and legs up open. Exhale and hold. Now little scissors, arms and legs and one turn out a little cloudy.

Zvi Three and four palms down over the thighs. Five, six, good. Seven, eight, nine hole 10 and fold in slowly. Good. Okay, so we're going to hop off the box now. Use your handles on one side. We're coming back. We're going to do teaser now. Teaser on the box. It's an advanced exercise. I would skip it if I were you. A change your springs.

We're going change to one heavy spring in first year in first gear. Okay. Um, if you have a lower doses problem and you can't do teaser on the Mat, skip this one. It's an advanced exercise. We're going to position ourselves this time with the shoulder blades off the end of the box. Okay. Foot bars down. So short, you're going to be a little bit higher. I remember backstroke. We were level with the box. Now the back of the shoulder blade has to come all the way off you. Okay there.

Alright, so we're going to start in a complete arch. I call it the star. The arms are down at the sides. There's airspace under the low back. The legs are extended out over the foot bar pressed together. The arms are down by your sides and you're going to have pressure on those handles as you exhale and come up into teaser all the way up.

Hold. Now, hold that shape and just lower the arms. Inhale. Exhale, scoop. One deep, lower stomach. Inhale, exhale, two. Good. Inhale, exhale three, and control the descent all the way down. Lower the legs arch. This actually feels really great to hang upside down again. Take a breath. Exhale, lower abs and S. Arms up. Now, little circles open and around what you can go. Either way, we're going to reverse it. Don't worry. Two and three, so Michelle's going one way and roll back down. It doesn't matter. And Release Arch. Last time you're going to reverse your circle.

However you would go and take a breath and Scoop d right now. Lift your eyes a little bit people and circle the other way. And three, that's it. Two and one. Hold. Beautiful and crow down and relax. Okay, hang up your straps and we're going to turn the box short ways. Now you need the thick kneeling pad.

We're going to do Karola tree heirs version of stomach massage. Now, you may not have done this before. You want your handle out of the way, turn it the other way, right? Because Corolla always liked to use the box as a brace. We need a little bit of extra padding behind the small of the back. But first put your foot bar up and put your original foot springs on, maybe minus one. You'll have to play with it and see what feels good for you. Okay, so we're going to sit down. Now it's a little tricky to get in.

It's just the hardest part. You have to kind of push yourself out to get into the position. But you can put your feet up there or put them on the platform and press out and you're gonna put your feet in piles stance on the foot bar. And for this I want you to round over like your in a contraction for um, rolling like a ball. So the shoulders should be over the hips and used to go around and Paul on the hand, you want to hold the front edge of the carriage here, right?

So the knees are going to go inside the upper arm and the knees are open about halfway between your armpit and your elbow. Good. Hold onto the carriage. Suzana hold on. Yeah, really hold as if you could lift the carriage off the track. Now as if someone punched you in the stomach, go ahead and inhale out and drop the heels down, up and lift and come in and come in deep in as you can. Yes. Press out lower down, up and lift to come in. Now if you've got that pole on the carriage, go ahead out.

You're gonna feel a big stretch through the upper back, which feels kind of Nice. One more time. Press out, down, up, and come in. Good. Now let's roll up and we've got that box to help us sit up straight and bring the arms to hug a tree position and press out. Now we're tall. Inhale out, down, up, and come in. So as we do it here, we don't want the upper back to splay back behind that vertical line. Two more down, up, and come in and press out, down, up, and really wrap those ties a little more Suzana as you lower the heels, right? All this has to work good. Let's do a rotation. So now there's no he'll drop.

We're going to inhale and lift the right arm up as we press out. Look over and come up, back and in and left side. Inhale out. Exhale, lift through the crown of the head. Inhale up and round. Use The obliques, not just the arm motion. Rotate and come back in. One more. Sit.

Lift up and around and back and up and around and back. All right, now one more deep stretch. Take one spring off or lighten it just a little bit. We're going to hold onto the foot bar. Now the hands are on the outside of the feet, but the arms are on the inside of the knees.

Press out and dive your nose towards your knees. Drop the heels down, up, and come in. Now you've got a bird's eye view of what's going on with your knees. As you press out, be sure your knees are not rolling in. As you drop the heels, really hold from the top of the glutes. It's a great place to see what's going on, probably in your footwork if you're rolling in. All right, and let's come in and we're going to move the boxes now.

Okay, so we're going to go into some arm work and we want to set up with the head rest up, and I would put one heavy spring on or one heavy and one light. We're going to be doing arm work moving into thigh stretch. So remember for thigh stretch, the more spring you have, the easier. Okay? So we're going to kneel with the knees right against the shoulder rests, right? And the forehead is down in rest position on the head rest.

The buttocks are sitting against the heels if you can, and if you need to, you can always add a pillow under here. All right, grab your straps and I'd like you to choke down on them so you're not holding the handles. You're holding choked up and you're going to pull your elbows high and tight. Wait a second, don't straighten yet. Pull your elbows high and tight up into your um, ribs and the thumbs are towards the armpit. Now we've got this upper arm where we want it.

We're going to keep it there and just pull back. These are called kickbacks. If you're in the gym and as you bend, really resist the bend, you're going to feel a lot of tricep action. The elbows are pressing up, up, up to the ceiling. I like you to bend more. Come on, back, back, back, back, back, back, back. There you go. And Go ahead and press up again, right? Exhale as you extend, keep your elbows up to the ceiling as you've been good. Let's recoil now and bend and listen carefully. I want you to keep yourself right as you are with your arms.

Just let them come to your side. You're going to roll up to kneeling, drop your shoulders, and you're right up to kneeling for chest expansion. So for chest expansion, we want to be sure there's a flat line here. The glutes are engaged, the abdominal zipped up. Take a breath and inhale back. Entering the head one way, the other way and center recoil the arms again. Reach down as you pull back so their shoulders stay down. Turn the head, turn the head and center. Inhale to pull back, rotate. Look, one way, the other way and release.

Make sure the shoulders aren't dancing around. And last time good. Okay, so now we're going to do a little sit, but I don't want you to sit all the way to the heels. You're going to pull back by your sides with the spring. I mean with the straps, pull back to your hip. Suzana pulled back to your hips. Now sit without changing your spine.

The vertical that learn of the spines chase the same. Come back up, squeeze and wrap the buttocks right up to the kneeling position. Again. Inhale to sit and exhale. Come right back. Let's add onto that. Inhale to sit. XCL posterior tilt. You're going to curl your tailbone under. Release to neutral, don't over arch. And exhale, come all the way up so it's inhale, sit, stay tall. Exhale, contract the buttocks. Inhale, release without overarching. Exhale, come up one more time. Inhale, sit. Exhale, contract under. Beautiful release and come up. All right, thigh stretch. Ready. You're pulling the straps by your hips and inhaling, lean back in a straight line. Exhale.

Come right back up over those kneecaps. Really vertical. Beautiful. Pull the straps back. Inhale, lean back. Beautiful and come up one more time. We're going to add the head now, so we inhale, lean back, let the head release, bring the head head back by contracting the ribs and come up. Good one last time. Inhale, lean back straight and let the head go. Pull the ribs and bring the head in line and come back. Beautiful ladies.

All right, thank you. Let's come off now and set our springs up for knee stretches. So I think we need to adjust the foot bar here. Yes. Um, we want to have a nice rounded back position for knee stretches. So sometimes depending on your proportions, arms, legs, we have to adjust. So we're going to go into three versions of knee stretch we want to get on.

We're going to place the hand nearest and the outside knee and toe ball, the foot heel against the shoulder rest and the other knee and hand. And we want to take a nice rounded shape. Good with the head drop down between the arms. Now the upper body is not going to move. The accident is out on an inhale. Go ahead and exhale, bring it in and two and three and make sure your knees are not splaying wider than your pelvis. Five, six straight arms if you can.

Seven really contract. Eight, sit the buttocks to the heels and 10 whole, the last one in, in, in, in, or now listen carefully. We're going to release to neutral spine, so the tailbone releases and we've got a flat back diagonal from the crown of the head, right through the knee. Uh, the, the sit bones and again, ready, inhale and exhale. One beautiful ladies. Bring the carriages far home as you can for add without banging. Six seven. Very good. Eight, nine and 10 pause. Okay, so now really get your druthers together. You're going to contract and come into knees off.

If you need to adjust your feet a little bit against the shoulder rest, that's fine. And we're in a rounded back shape. Kick out on an inhale and exhale in. Drop the shoulders and round the upper back. Ladies Round the upper back. He is on a good. Push your heels back. Push your heels back. You're pushing your toes back and you push it. Yes, there you've got more power from the glutes. Good.

Now when you finish 10 just straighten your legs and you're going to come right into an up stretch. Or we call in Yoga Down Dog, right? Adjust your feet. We want to try pod, big toe, little toe heel. The heel should be solid against the shoulder rest so that we can feel that working. We're going to press just in a v. Don't change anything, just a little out. Inhale. Exhale. Use the abdominals to pull in. Inhale, XL, abdominals in. Good and three and pull in. We're just doing five. Don't round the back, four deep and in the stomach and just one more. Five.

Good. Now Michelle is going to show full up stretch, but um, Susanna who has a bit of winging Scapula, you can come out of it for a second bit of winged Scapula is going to do a long stretch on her forearms when Scapula is when your shoulder blades pop out. And so do you want a double a double pass? Sure. Okay. It's right behind you. Go ahead, grab it. All right, so while she gets set up, we're going to show the full up stretch. So we just finished that v Pole and Michelle is going to inhale and push the carriage out. Drop her buttocks down, squeeze the base of the Tush and round the upper back forward and come up high.

So it should look like a buffalo. Inhale out and squeeze and exhale down. If these are winging you want to do it the way that Suzanne is doing it here, squeeze the base of your Tush and come forward. Now I would step together onto the headrest. I think that's going to be easier. A little farther back.

So the legs are squeezing together like one leg and Michelle don't do too many of those. Those are pretty tough. You can get set up for long spinals good, right? So here we've got a beautiful flat shoulder by can you show the collapsed thing, right? This is what we don't want, but in the elbow, forearm position, we can really get the integrity strong. All right, so we're setting up now for our last exercise, which is long spinals. So for long spinals we're going to use the long spinal extension straps. This way we don't have to worry about ropes and the length of everything, but we need longer straps because we're not going to bend the knees.

We didn't do short spinals in this workout. Make sure that you've got enough spring that you can roll up and down with control. You'll find if you've got too light of a spring, you're going to fall out of it. Especially since long spinals a little bit challenging and it's at the end of the workout when you're tired. Corolla tree era used to talk about the cables that supported an elevator going up and down and that these muscles are alongside of your back are your cables. So we are going to lie down.

We want our headrests down and we're going to put the foot straps on with the hardware to the outside. Gro-Low he's taught that we didn't want the hardware falling on our eyes and bruising anything. Get a nice black guy if you drop those in the wrong place. So we're going to put the feet in and this is really like rollover, so if you're familiar with rollover, it's very similar. We want to make a tripod of support, really pressed the back of the arms and shoulder girdle and head down so that as we go up, we're supporting ourselves with the arms. We're going to bring the legs to vertical and take a breath in before we start. Exhale, tilt the pubic bone in, roll up onto the shoulders.

Right now we're up there. We're going to open the feet and here's where the elevator cables come in. We're going to exhale to roll down and keep reaching up as you roll down, so you're imprinting one vertebrae at a time. When you hit bottom weight, we're going to hit bottom vertical and then we're going to widen the legs and leg circle, right? That's an inhale, so all the way around, and we glue those legs together and again, repeat. Exhale, articulate the spine to Rola. Stay Tall. Inhale, open hip with exhale. Keep reaching up as you imprint one vertebrae at a time. All the way down. Control the descent, widen the legs and circle around.

Let's do one more. Come to vertical. Inhale. Exhale, roll it up. Very nice. Open hip with inhale and exhale rolling down. Circle those legs around as you inhale. Now we're going to reverse it so we don't want to open too wide about hip width. Come to vertical with the ankles XL. Roll up with open legs.

Bring the legs together. Now for those of you who really want to challenge you can pike a little bit and roll down in a pike. It takes a lot of control, right, without falling out of it. Circle the legs around in here, hip width apart. Tuck the tailbone role vertical up and likes together. Reaching over the top if you want. And coming down. Nice control. Last time. Circle Open around and exhale.

Roll up all the way up. Open wide and, oh, I reversed it. I'm sorry. Legs together at the top. Yeah, you're beautiful, Michelle. Very nice. Okay, so let's, um, take the feed out and we'll show the recovery. They stand up. So we're going to take the opposite hand across the shoulder. Rest. Right.

And bring the knees over to the side and there we are to stand up. And that's our intermediate advanced. Thank you ladies. Very, very good. You're sweating. I guess he did something right.