Stimulating Reformer Flow

Hi, I'm Carrie sir. And, um, we're gonna do a reformer class and, um, again, much like the pole class I taught, um, we're gonna we're, what I'm teaching is a protocol that has more variations on extension side, bending and, and hips, less of the traditional flection based, um, [inaudible] protocol. And I'm just playing with this across the board to work with people who I feel like this position of port function doesn't serve as much. And that could be a lot of people in my population that could be people with osteoporosis, that could be just people with bad posture who I want to open more in the front. So just something I've been playing with a little bit. It's something that I got inspired from. Of course we took with Irene Dowd, Amy and I took it my studio. So I've just sort of, you know, we organized a class for you today that I'm gonna keep short 30 minutes back, body and hips. So here we go. Um, we're going to start with traditional foot work. Okay.

So you're going to lie on your backs and actually we'll start just getting the yeah, go ahead. Lie On your backs. We'll start with just getting that back body turned on right away. So let's just straighten your legs for a second. Okay. So we're going to stew a little straight leg bridging. So go ahead and show your eyes for a second and center yourselves.

And because we're not going up very high on this bridge, well actually go ahead and take your headrest down. Take your headrest down just just in case. Um, so go ahead and start breathing very wide into your rib cage. Taking your ball, breathing, your Kathy grant, abdominal ball. Breathing in. Yeah. And Go ahead and inhale and exhale. Inhale. One, two, three, four. Hold that breath in. Four minutes. Then exhale, three, two, four, one. Then we're going to lift the hips this time. Inhale. One, two, three, four. Hold the breath for a moment. Scoop the belly in.

Exhale down. Yeah. So pressing down with your calf muscles. So you actually lift up. Inhale, hold the breath in. Exhale down. Beautiful. Inhale, hold the breath in. Lift the right leg and down. Exhale, roll down.

Inhale up, hold the breath in. Scoop the abdominal cavity, lift the other leg. Notice what your hips want to do here and roll down. Great. So now I want you to float your shins, your calves off the bar. Don't let your pelvis get lost. Like don't let it drop into the basement. Basically. Now Bend your knees and come to foot. Work position.

First position of footwork turned out. Inhale, press out. And in. Now you're just going to go at this pace out and in. And I want you to put your fingers on your Cisco phones. Sitz bones. Yeah. Back body today. And turn that on as you move. That's right.

So give yourself push and pull from the backs of your legs. Nice. Great. And you'll notice the top of your pelvis stays more still good. Come in and pause. Pick up both legs, abdominal Straw and knees together. Arches and go out and in. That's right. And giving yourself that little feedback, finding that little bit of cinching in at the buttocks. Yeah. Cause we're extending the front of the hip right now. Right. So we need to use the posterial hip. Posterior hip. Yeah. Great.

Two more. Keep that breath. We're gonna move at a fast pace and then pause. Now you use your fingers to help find that. Pick up your feet and float them. Flex them. Point them, flex them, pulling them, flex them. Keep that alive. Yes. And then heels down. Inhale. Exhale. Good.

Keeping that awareness. Uh Huh. So also the awareness of the back of the neck. Meredith said don't Tuck Your Chin down, rather push the back of your skull back. Yes. So the back of your whole back body is charged. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Whoops. Yeah, let's get in sync in him. So good. Yeah.

Peripheral awareness. That's also fun to be tuning, right? Our sense of where we are in space and rest. Take your heels off and hold it. Find that synching of your buttocks and toes down to the bar. Push out and lower and lift. There you go.

Keep going. You have five more. That's five. That's for watch that you don't let your knees internally rotate as you drop your heels, meaning your femurs. Yeah, exactly. And then you're up. Even Unis, you glide in. Good. So come on up to seated. We're going to do a variation. I learned from a friend of mine in New York. You're going to take your bar down one spring lie on your side facing out. Yup. And you're going to take the strap and put it on your foot. Yeah, you're lying on the headrest up.

And as a matter of fact that you needed a to support your head, that would be fine. You're going to put the loop on your foot, right? So this is a real serious side, lateral or lateral hip exercise. Your knees are way in Meredith. Weigh in. Yeah, like a little fetal pose. Yeah. Now, yeah, that's right. What she's doing with her arms here makes sense to me. I'm an a, she's a little tall for this machine. Yeah, there we go. So now ladies, pick up that top leg just a little bit. So it's in line with your greater trocanter here, and you're going to think of your heel and your sit bone and you're going to pull this leg right underneath that sit bone. And then you're going to bend it back and yeah, and duo, don't let that roll in and push out right onto your sip phone.

So way back here, Meredith is where your sit bone is. Yeah. And then bend it back in. So you have to sort of in your mind's eye, draw a line. Yeah. And, and keep going. You have to more push out now that your hips will fatigue quickly on this and then that's it. Don't let it roll in and push. Now keep it there and kick forward. Slowly. Inhale, that's it. And pull. Exhale right under. You better to move a little faster. Inhale, exhale.

Pull that hamstring. Inhale, leave it in front and pulse up. One, two, three, four, five. And pull it down. Pull it down again, all the way down, all the way, all the way. And then go five pulses. One, two, three, four, five and bend it in. Good. And take your strap off and turn around.

How's that feel? Yeah, super hard. So you got to keep your troll cantors relatively stacked and as your leg is going out in space, you're going to have to think about externally rotating it slightly at the top of the leg because it's just gonna want to internally rotate it as it comes forward because of that. TFL. Okay, so here we go. First we're drawing that line from Sitz bone to heal straight down. There you go, Meredith and bend it in. I like how you're holding yourself there, Amy. It's actually smart like holding your pelvis cause it'll help you know if you're changing your pelvis too much. Yeah, that's great.

And straight underneath the sit bone and back in. Good job and breathe. Inhale and exhale and take it down and hold and bring it forward now. Yes, and pull. Take it down. I know. Breathe. I know I do this. Inhale, don't lean and pull all help you. Yes.

Inhale and pull. Don't internally rotate that leg Meredith. And then take it forward and hold. Now keyhole, this like externally, both of you more more now. Pulse it, go two, three, four, five. Pull it down and go. One, two, three, four. Okay. Five and bend your knee and arrest. Wow. We right. Shocking. Shocking. How hard that is.

Good. Go ahead and put your bar up and put two springs on. Yeah, so we did our, our footwork on forest springs. I didn't say that. And then this lateral leg is on one spring. And if you're on a machine with light springs, I'd say one light is probably good. You guys really had to work hard on this growths. Machines. Okay.

Lie on your backs for me. Now. Two springs shoulder bridge. So you're going to have the parallel position slightly open. [inaudible] take your head respect down. So we're gonna shoulder bridge up. Good.

And take a couple deep breaths. Push your machine out. Two inches, hold, draw back in. Good. Push your machine out. Three inches. Hold. Good correction. Draw it back in. What she did is she pulled her chin off your chest, right? You don't want your chin down these positions. Four inches hole.

Pull it back in. Last one. You're doing great. Five inches. See you feel that. Yeah, and back in and all the way down. All right. I think that warrants some abs cause your back bodies are turned on. Reach your arms up to the ceiling. Okay. A little bit of different variation and ask you to flex your fists like that.

Your hands and I'm going to bring your legs together. Okay. You're going to float those legs off. Yeah. And you're going to flex your feet. Exactly. And now you're going to come up as if you're pushing the wall behind you away. So Chin to chest. You can bring your head forward, but you're going to push back in space, right?

You're out now, straight your legs up to the ceiling. You get to go to the ceiling and lower your right leg down and lift it back up and push Meredith, lower your left leg down and back up. Good. Keep reaching. Keep pushing. Keep good. And feel how that longer abdominal cavity exercise feels for you. Draw the ball back.

Use the back of your like now keep this leg down for a second. Push it down and reaches like up. Yeah. Hold, breathe, breathe and switch. So you push. Yeah, a little bit of booty lift and legs up, head down, arms down and rest. Good there. There's your variation on hundreds from me today. Right? So just a little bit different feeling than relying on, you know what we're used to. Okay. Take yourself up and we're going to go to rowing's.

So we're just going to do one of the front variations, which is this one into extension and around. Okay. So we'll do that again. So you're going to be sitting, you're going to go forward, up into extension. You can even look up and around, forward, stretch out all the way up in a hikes into now. Push up a look back a little bit there. Yeah, send around. Beautiful. Nice variation. And again, push.

Yeah. Up. Yes. And rest. Gorgeous. Good. We're going to do stomach massage. Go ahead and step off. And let's have three springs would be my preference on these heavy machines who are not fighting this spring. And we'll do arms back and we'll do twists. Well, we'll take the, the forward one out for right now for the purposes of this. Yes. Sticky pads.

Perfect. I wouldn't do it without one. I'd slide if I did. All right. So sit down, put your feet up. So yeah, and you know I sometimes I'm going to do this little variation. Sometimes I'll put a big ball here for this back one variation, but I'm just going to have you guys do some back-bending without it cause you're strong enough. But if you want support, having a fit ball behind you is helpful on the third variation. But let's start with hands back, feet up.

So we're extending the spine to wrap the shoulder blades, not wrapping the shoulder blades to extend the spine. Push out lower end lift. Is that too heavy? Take one off. If it's too heavy, you should always pick the springs that work for you. I don't know. This machine. Yeah. Out Lower end lift and float in. Good.

Inhale, lower end. Lift you up. That's good. And pick up all the way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause that's where you end up falling backwards a little too often. Yeah. And again, out lower end lift. That's okay. And that lower end lift and then take the arms forward.

Okay. So you're just going to take a very small upper back, back bend, stretch out with straight legs. Reach your arms back, take a little bit of a backbend gorgeous and in and out. Pick up that neck and then, and one more time breathing. Yeah. Does that feel okay? Good. And then you're going to twist. Now you get a twist to the right and, and the left. Good. And then good. So keep your lateral hip work that you did earlier to help place your pelvis properly so you can rotate against it. Right? So that's why we warmed up the, the posterior lateral hip first. One more. Last one, I mean, and rest. Good step off. Let's get our long boxes on.

So in our long box series, we're going to do a swan into grasshopper and then we'll do pull straps and t. So I'm taking some of the second long box stuff into the first long bucks today. Okay. So the bars down, we have one spring having a light spring at home, it would be fine. Oh No, we're going to have the bar up. I'm sorry, just slide. We're going to do swan facing front. Okay.

So get onto your machine and get your forehead over this bar. So yeah, exactly. And I'm going to ask you guys to work with your elbows narrow, which is going to allow you to work a little bit more in that under armpit and triceps. Exactly. Okay, so now you're gonna push out, right? Elbows are straight. You're going to come into your extension, right? You're going to pick your thorax up, right? Take a deep breath in, stay there, bend your knees, exhale, straighten your legs. Inhale, push back out all the way into a straight spine. Bend your elbows, narrow as you come back in. Let's do that whole sequence again. Push out straight out. Come on up.

Good. Bend your knees, right? So you can tell if you're falling right. Super hard and reach it out. Good. One more time. Now you're gonna see I add this knee bending too. A lot of extension. Push out. Go ahead through the exercise because it puts the quad on the stretch, right?

So it allows this whole back corridor to really get the party started and stretch out. And, and now I want to do a little rotation. So I'd like you to bend your elbows and bring your hands to the center together. Yup. You're going to push out and as you extend you're going to look over your right shoulder, pull the machine in, right, gorgeous. And press out extension rotation and come back and bend your elbows.

Push out. That's it. Other elbow. How's that feel? Look, really use your cervical spine to rotate. Beautiful. I love it. And back out and center. Good and rest. We'll leave it at that cause that's a lot. But how's that feel? Yeah, it's Nice, right? So just a little bit of a different feeling.

Also like where you are in space, you know, using your eyes to direct you go ahead and step off and we'll do pulling straps in. T Oh, I lied. I want to do grasshopper. Put the bar down. Yup. Get back on that box. All right, now you're going to come down to your pelvis, right to the top of your Asi s good. You know this exercise, you know this exercise. You want me to demo or you figure it out? All right. Yeah, you can figure it out. So put your legs together.

You're gonna keep your chest high. Your eyes out to both, both of these. Start with your hands like that. Straight eyes out. Yeah. So as you bend your elbows, lift your legs and lower your nipples to the wood. Stop. Pause. Bend your knees, straighten your knees and clap, clap, clap your legs until you come up. Don't move your machine. Yeah. And do it again. Go down, take it, dive.

Lift your legs bent. Perfect. And straightened. Clap, clap, clap and up. Eyes Up. And one more time. There you go. So she's doing an a turnout like big wide. She's not, it doesn't matter to me. Whatever you like. That's great. And rest now step off and go to the front. Let's do pulling straps and ti. So again, that exercise gets left out a lot, right? Cause it's in that one series, that somewhere at the bottom of the list.

So I like to make sure we grab it and paste it in. All right, here we go. Pull straps. So hands close to the wood. So this is an extension exercise. Extensors. Extensors. Okay, so we're going to extend the front of the hip. So I'm gonna ask you to lift your legs and you're going to pull, keep your legs up and exhale and inhale. Take it up. Good. Stay there. Bend your knees. Oh God, she's mean and straight. And then come back out.

T's straps. Slide your hands out. Yes, I'm going to make you bend your knees on this one for the second one too. Pull. Rotate your arms, Amy. Externally you're extending. Look up. Look up, look up, look up and come back out. Yeah. So you're extending everything. Pull. No, don't be sorry. And now bend your knees. See if you've got it. Reaching your arms out, pulling. Woo, gorgeous and back in. And so maybe rest for sure.

So maybe rocking horse won't be so hard. Or maybe you'll just pop up in your Highbridge. You know, because you've warmed up this part of your body, right? Step on off. Good. And let's go to long stretch please. So take your box away. Put your head rest up. Take your sticky mat, put it on your head. Rest, take your bar up. Alright, so planks, planks, her Pratt, leg, back, leg, side, body, front, body, back, body, everything.

So get on and get your whole Party started. Okay. For a successful long stretch, I have this image I've been using lately of thinking of my quads pushing into my hamstrings and my hamstrings, pushing into my quads, front of my belly, pushing in booty, pushing in the front of my belly. Right? So everything's activated. You're flexing your spine too much for me. Yeah. Good. And push out. Inhale, two, three. Exhale home. Good. Good. Now pause, pause out there. Take a deep breath into your rib cage.

Let it stretch. Exhale, come back in. Good. Inhale out. Good. Pause for a second. Exhale. Inhale in, good and rest. Bend your knees at a spring if you want to for down, stretch to spring sits. Okay. You're welcome to be on too. So I like to come into this exercise reminding my Tush it's job.

So I use sort of a blossom cat to start back here. Curl your tail through to get into the position. So you've got your bat. Yes. Inhale, press it out. Pause at the top. You're flexing. You should be extending. Aha. Exhale. Yes, we don't. We forget.

Inhale to keep working. Keep working. That vapes. Yeah, use the muscles and back in. Sorry. Inhaling those super hard and made use the growths. Machines. I'm sorry. You're doing great. And up address. Pop right into elephant arabesque for me. Said, go on up. Good. Let's just play with a little variation here.

So you're going to have your right leg up, turn your hip out and bend your leg and squeeze your heel towards your butt. Yeah, so just have that variation. Now Square it off and straighten the leg back out and go out and with your leg three times. So you know the difference between internal and external in the hips and then other side. So you take the leg up first in parallel, and then you open the hip, so you'll be able to lift it. And then you use your hamstring to bend the knee and you just take a few breaths. They're turning that part on. Samaritas squeeze the heel. Dear glute.

Seriously, come on, come on. She's grabbing, don't go that hard. Then there you go. Come back out and stretch it out. Right. So that's going to access his hamstrings like crazy. Good job. Sorry. Cramp. There you go. And arrest. Good.

And put your foot down and then step off. Yeah, right. I know you did great. But I think that what happens is that I want you guys to keep, keep moving. Don't freeze. So even if that means backing out, right. Okay. So what I want to do now, which is sort of in tune with long back stretches, I wanna do, um, leg pull back.

Okay. So whatever variations of that you're interested in, um, your hands are here and your feet are here and you have one spring. Only Yasser remember that you don't have to, um, move very much to be successful. You just have to really activate back here. Okay. So let's come on up. Yeah. Up you go. Curl the tail. Yeah. And then press the arms back and lift the hips up a little higher.

There you go. Get on up. There you go. So now you can leave that machine slightly open and just pick up one leg and uh, and the other leg. So we've already done this. We did this as our warmup and you could move the machine away if you want it or not. It's super hard. Just, yeah, just yeah, you could kick and move it away. Yeah. Or You could just do whatever you want. Free format ladies please. And have a seat and rest. Good. Come on off.

And we'll start to simmer down now a little bit. So that was a lot. So let's, um, let's go ahead and do knee stretches. Yeah. Knees off and get that east center quad going and they'll, we'll get that back down on our back. So take your machine, take your machine on to two springs. Good. I think this will feel less stressful because you've turned the back to your legs on, so you'll have to let me know. Go ahead and take the shape. She's like, yeah, really. All right. Curl your tail and clothed those knees up.

You got to drop your heads, ladies. They're heavy. You should let them to go down. Good and then move that machine out. And then, yeah. So now you turned your back legs on for half an hour. Perfect. Inhale and exhale big breasts guys. Meredith, drop your head if you can just for me. Well, brains relax and arrest. Good step off. Oh, okay. Do you feel that sister? It feels good, right?

Pick the party up. Alright, let's go to three springs. Let's do running and then I want to do one split and we'll finish. So go ahead and lie down. Take a moment now to recalibrate. So running is an opportunity. It's usually in parallel. Um, is to allow yourself to, whew. Just say God, I just got super hyper turned on that.

I can hardly think the right. That's my central nervous system getting really stimulated. It's great back body I think really turns that on. Push out one knee at a time. Yeah. Now smooth it down guys. Smooth down the breath.

You don't have to go in slow motion but you can smooth it out there like, and I'm walking out of the studio now. I visualize myself leaving. Good and come all the way in and step off. All right. We killed those hamstrings. So let's give them a little stretch. Front splits. Super simple. I'm not going to make it hard.

Two Springs stand up on your machine. Put your left leg on the bar, put your right leg back at the foot rest. Oh yeah. Where your one position then that front knee, let your chest rest over. Good. And take this as a calming exercise. So inhale, press the front leg straight. Stretch what you worked, and exhale, come home. Yeah. And inhale. Press it out. Now. Push both legs out.

It's really hard on these tough machines. Yeah. Yeah. And back in. And one more time. Inhale. Take that big stretch. Stretch what you used. That's it. There's that lateral hip again. You got it. And back in. Aha. Switch legs. Super.

How's that feel to stretch that out now? Good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's that lateral hip that we worked on at the beginning, right? So you've got to kind of, yeah, got to get it, get it, get it doing something. Push out. Inhale. You know, I always think of, well it's hard to, I'll keep it to myself and come back and keep your chest longer than that for us out. Come on. [inaudible] now. No, no. Everybody out there knows how, how I think and back in. And one more time. Don't go freeze.

Just move. Just move now. You worked hard and bend your knee. Good. And step off the machine and just stand facing wherever. So you can lift your arms up and then you can bring them down and step away a little bit. Amy's, you can roll down. Yeah. And just hang for a minute. Yeah, just hang.

So one of the things I love is when I work really, really hard, I can also rest really, really solid. So let go. You know, it's that hard exertion that allows you to feel what rest is and then roll up. So as you come to standing on what you to stand with, a real sense of relaxation, a real sense of this, letting yourself go sweating that hard work, wash out. Good job.