Non-Stop Reformer

Hi everyone. I'm here to do reformer workout with us and balanced body reformer. I've got this bar on the highest setting. It's the kind of foot bar that has three options. So I'm up on the top. And the reason why I did that for foot and leg work is to, you'll see, get a really nice deep flection in the hip joint. And to challenge my pelvic stability a little bit more than usual.

So let's roll on down on the back. Go in, I have three red springs on. Choose your weapon if you want. And now let's go ahead and do a pilot. Is Vi to begin knees within the shoulder with, so just this position, the starting with that foot bar, this much higher. I can come, obviously very tell, but it's, it's challenging me to not kind of roll under, but in a nice way. It actually allows me to sit more into my neutral pelvis or level pelvis. And as I've deepened my hip flexor here, the or the hip flection, I'm gonna try right now as I just take a few preparatory breaths to not have a grip in the exterior hip flexor or the superficial here. I'm not saying I'm loose and floppy, but I want to get more connected on the internal edge in my hip joint.

And of course my, so as Elio, so as in here, so outer, a little bit, non gripped inner. It's not gripped, it's connected. It's right in hugging my spine, hugging my sacrum. I'm getting me ready to really just reach into my legs. All right, so the, here we go, we're going to take an inhale, extend, exhale, come in. So if you hear me bumped the bumper, my apologies. If I do that, um, I want to make sure that I get all the way in and deeply flex. So that little bump there, I'll try not to be too loud, but I'd rather get myself in than shy away from getting into that nice deep flection. And a lot of us know these deep hip flection exercises.

So important for teaser stomach massage series. Oh my gosh. So many things in here where we've got to get that really good, deep internal work. Last one. And let's wrap three Hensel and flex the hips. Pull in from the stomach pool and [inaudible] since your chest bone kind of weighted into your rib cage and it kind of drawing down the front line of the body so that you're not holding a lot of unnecessary tension in your mid to upper back nine and 10. We're going to go right into heels parallel Lex and hold those ad doctors close together.

Really work midline and having the foot bar a little higher might give you more of that deeper connection up there, which is nice. Don't forget to use the rear endo upper back leg, five four, three two [inaudible] and one we're going to go out wide for one set of wide or second position Wa really deepening that squat and press in. So with this position, maybe visualize that you're trying also to um, add duct the bar that your heels are trying to slide toward one another so that you're not just recruiting your quad so much, but it's those inner line muscles. Pull the bar narrower if you can. Four, three, two, and one. All right, we're going to go back into the center of the bar. Hi. Relevate 10 from here. One. Really read yourself out. Stand up on those legs.

Three and for initiating from the back of the upper leg, the spine is long. Seven promoting length and strength. Nine we're going to stay out there. Last one here. Let's do two counts to drop. Lower the heels. Two counts to Relevate. Down and down, up and up, down and down. Wrap your shoulders back. So start to connect the back of your shoulders. Muscularly toward your spine. Kind of thinking of a wrapping.

My heels are squeezed, trying to hold my back. Inner thighs close together. Last two up and up. Then the knees to come in. Let's go right back out for a little walk in place. Here we go. And down, up, down. Generate a little bit of flow in your breathing.

[inaudible] filling your sacrum nice and level. You're not too high on the left, too high on the right. If you are, start to level that down. You may have to do more abdominal work on one side to feel that leveling. You may have to undo some back tension to feel it. [inaudible] there we go. And in, okay, I'm going to come up and change down to a two red spring. That was three and I'm going to do a little single leg. I want it lighter, right heel on left leg tabletop.

I'm going to do eight extensions here and then do some pulses. So now I do want to concentrate inner thigh [inaudible] continuing the focus of pelvic stabilization. Of course, no lifting off the back of one side if you can help it. One more. Okay. And pulses, your rhythm so the breath can be that rhythm for you. [inaudible] and four, three, two, one. Go ahead and stretch all the way out. Extend your left leg up. Hands behind the thigh. Press your thigh to your hands.

How are you standing on your foot? Bar Foot, hopefully not rolling out on the outside of the ankle. You're right in the center of the heel. Flex and point for four, two and three. Press your thigh against your hands there and then come all the way down. Okay, left heel on. Make sure you're in line with your sit bone. Extend and fold so when you're coming back into the fold again, try to a little bit. Let go of the superficial hip flexor quad up here.

Go in deeper in your hip joint. That ILIAC is set. Nice Pelvic bowl muscle, your inner thigh up toward your nose. Kind of thinking, oh, that's weird. Seven mm, that worked out, and eight I'm going to go for pulses center of that heel, bone four and three and two and one and then lengthen out. Extend the right leg, hands behind, flex and articulate through the foot and three and four and coming all the way in. Okay, let's do some bridging now.

So my head rest is down for foot work. I seem to like that these days and keep it down for your bridging. I'm going to move myself away from my shoulder blocks a little bit. And again, this is starting me in a much more flexed hip position. So let's see if I have my curl. This might be a nice test for semi-circle that coming up in a little while.

So right away curling up. All right, so it's going to challenge me also to not thrust my ribs, but to get more power from the glutes to press up, opening a hip joint. Let's do four extensions of the carriage. If you can straighten the knees, great. I don't want you to drop your bum. No plopping down. Three strengthen in the lift. Last one for a lot of, you know this combination.

I'm going to do two breath cycles to roll down, roll down. Now roll back up and do three bridges or three moving bridges. So peel again, it's kind of like I'm dragging my foot down the bar. Okay. Press pull, lift and press and pool. Lift and press and pull. Three breaths. Psych, I'm sorry, two breath cycles to come down.

Stretch the sitz bones toward the heels, going back up again, moving the bridge twice, or use those hamstrings and glutes to lift two presses and press. There it is, and in roll down, curl that spine. Use those hamstrings, pull in to that bumper. Last one. If you don't have of reformer that has this highest foot bar, of course you'll just use your high bar. It's still a lot of work no matter how you look at it and down.

Pull toward you. Pull toward your feet, pull, pull, pull, sit toward your feet and release. Okay, I'm going to come on up and lower the bar completely so I don't cheat and use it for some abdominal work. So I'm going to drop myself down to red and blue. You can stay on to red if you want. Hands on the straps, knees in, not going to go to tabletop. I want to go deeper. I'm going to go in toward that folded leg position. I was just in, start my 100 from here. So as a press lift, extend opening those hips, pumping the arms, three, four, five to four, five. So if we're hyper extending our knees, let's bend them a little bit.

Just put some air underneath the back of the knees so that the hamstrings are supporting the knees. Look at your toes. I've got myself in that heel. Squeeze trying to wrap those deltoids back. [inaudible] hold. Let's pull in extent fold in. Extend. So as I bring my knees and I'm reaching my arms long in opposition for more deep, low belly and deep low belly.

And last one. Here we go. And in when to put my head down, fold my arms in and going into roll over. So arms are going to come up, legs will come up. Let's breathe here. Send the arms down, roll over, head open the legs, flex rolling down. Stretch the Armstrong against the loops and circle around. Feel free to take your legs a little lower on your roll down. Once you get your pelvis down, feel free to go a little lower. I'm going to be not that low. Last one here. Okay guys, I'm reversing it today. Three times. Oh, and as I come down, I'm going to just really try to keep that collarbone wide, arms legs open, so really have just stabilized wide pex, stabilize the wide chest, arms go down, legs will go open. Last one and let's just come into three of the coordination. So bend your knees, Bend your elbows, lift your head and press control. Control fold, full pressed control, control, fooled and last one, control in, in and out.

Alright, let's come up. I want you to add a red, not the prettiest transition and then come back down. Let's move into feet in straps here. Step in, starting a frog position just to get centered for a moment. Arms Long. So I'm going to just do five frogging, move into short spine. This will help you set and kind of get you centered with squeeze the heels. Again, kind of pressing the balls of my feet forward, but I'm also trying to keep my Bunyan joint or the big toe joint connected along with the heel so that I keep feeling that center line. And last one, short spine. Extend your ankles. Now.

As soon as you start to let the bring the legs towards you start to recruit your glutes and lift, control this, this flection up control touching the bumper. Inhale, choose your roll down. I'll probably a couple of each style did it. Just kind of feel [inaudible] what I need. It's always up to you to do what you need as well. Sometimes these workouts are framework for you [inaudible] so what I'm trying to effort right now is, okay, Amy, stretch your spine. Get one more half an inch of extension before you use the hamstrings to bend those knees when a decompress in, dare I say the word traction, but elongate my back. All right, so I'm going to do it again, so I'm thinking out toward the opposite wall.

It's going this way. Some of it's easy. In this very end, I have to deepen my para spinal muscles. I've got to go to contraction in there and reach my sacrum flat or two more reach Linkedin, linkedin, linkedin, rigid, rigid region last time. It's actually feeling really good to do that. But to have us go back up into the shoulder stand place for a sec. So get back up there. Now, if you haven't done high frog before, don't look at your TV screen or your laptop. Try to stay listening to the words.

So right now if I were to bend my knees and tried to do frog up down, I'm not going to really get a whole lot of resistance. That's fine, you could do that. But the the fun with this is to start by frog. Come down, you're on the way down there. Start to come down your spine like a vertebra or two. So if you're learning this for the first time, or at least with me, I'm going to put my hands behind my pelvis to support myself. I'm okay with that. I'm going to be safe rather than, sorry.

So what I want to try to do now is kind of lift my hips up off my hands and instead of pushing heels straight up to ceiling, that's makes me feel like I'm going to fall backward. That's not the idea. I want to think about going forward and that's actually kind of a thematic here. Go forward, reach into that space in front of you. But my God, that's really hard to, I'm the slight diagonal control your fold, so this takes them. But strength back, strength. Trust says a scary little number here, but we can do it. Three, let go. If you can dice to, I'm losing my eye diagonal a little bit. Three, I'm going to come back in and I need to roll down because my neck was starting to get too active. Okay, leg circles. Let's come to 90 for a minute.

Enjoy a stretch. [inaudible] let's go five circles down first open, go for a stretch. Open up those legs and bring them together. Hamstring strength down. [inaudible] add doctors to come in. Maybe really tempting to Tuck that pelvis right here and that would be fine in a stretch. But let's keep the pelvis down. Let's just let those legs, hip joints feel the articulated motion. Last one here.

Really strengthening in that zone. Let's go out now out upper hamstrings, especially those lateral ones. Laterals. The outside edge. No, it's like there's a relationship with the lateral edge of the leg to the pinky toe. That a long read. Sure. Four and five. Okay. That's really all I wanted to do with feet and straps.

So let's take our feet out and she was a lot and we're going to let police down and let's come look for some arm work. Kneeling arm work. So I'm putting on a blue, I'm gonna face you all. It's do little draw a sword. All right, so level, shoulders, as much as we can. I'm going to feel my adductors working that I'm not shifting a hip or to when I have my collarbone opened, but not forcefully concentrate on the muscular sense for a second behind your shoulder, this arm, so that you're not holding your arm up from, well you are, but it's not really from the front. See if you can hold up for the, from the back of your shoulder and once that's there you're ready to pull on the strap. I like my thumb up.

I like that because it helps me keep external rotation in my humerus at my shoulder. Helps me tap into my posterior deltoid, which is what we're working here. Okay, three to five. I'm going to go for five. It's important to keep the rib cage right above the pelvis rather than thrusted in front of the pelvis. Change hands, discern long. Press in this arm here. Now raise my arm thinking of my forearm.

If there were a wall right there that I'm climbing right up the wall, some of you might be able to go higher than I'm going. Go for it. I'm monitoring my neck. I don't want my upper traps to contract and that's my five triceps. So arm overhead, switch hands. Again, you can certainly move away from the shoulder blocks if you'd like to. I'm going to stay right where I am. I want to rotate my palm face up and for a moment enjoy lifting up in your spine and bending to the side where the risers are. Let your tricep stretch for a second. Melt your shoulder.

Let's go for five. I'm trying to take my fist to the sky or if you have an open hand, you can open hand to the sky, allowing your triceps to stretch when you're bending the arm right there, stretched those triceps and too losing my grip in a little bit. And last one. Okay, other side quietly put that down. Here we go. So drawing a sword for get centered fist in front of chest. Concentrate the back of the shoulder. Here we go for five and one. How about an exhale [inaudible] you really feel the support from the abdominals against the lumbar spine.

Switching hands for reaching up. The left hand will go right by your side. Again, it's the forearm. Really you want to think of going in a vertical line without taking the shoulder into elevation and two so the shoulder blade gets to do a little rotation down the back or a lot if you have it in your shoulder design. I think this is what I've got today and five. Alright. I used to do that on a yellow spring sun making strides. Okay, so I'm lifted up, side bent, looking toward the ropes and allow my left triceps to stretch first.

They're stretched. Now I can strengthen them. Press two rib cage over pelvis, not in front of it, not behind it for and five. All right, I'm going to turn to face the foot bar. Step one foot against that shoulder, block the other back. Pick up the other strap. And for a moment just balance up on knees, arms, staying behind the body and let the deltoids instead of being drawn forward because of a tight chest wall. Open that up, but as the shoulders but not the ribs. So the ribs, ribs have been thrusted. Now let's do some bicep curls from back here. So I want you to wrap your fist slightly. Keep your humerus behind you. Make a fist and pull the fist to the side of the chest and reach it back.

Let's do 10 of these. This is super light. We could probably take the time to add a sneak in there and out of red. I can't stand the glue on that. I want more weight. Now, the reason why I want more weight is that this moment for me, I have to allow a stretch and that's good. My pectoral muscles are kind of on the short side, especially Pec minor. So I want to allow the weight to bring my arm back with ease.

Okay. Key phrase with ease. Nine. Oh, it feels good. And 10. Okay, now I'm going to drop that read back down. Go back to my blue. I need a lighter for full arm circle. So palms by the sides and breathing in.

Let sweep the arms forward. Allow the Scapula to just have a nice dance around your rib cage. Don't even think of pulling them down. What if they just were allowed to move? They might even enjoy staying down and around. If they get told to be pulled down all the time, they might get fussy.

Let the sweet quality happen. Okay, one more time. New Reverse my circles five times. Ah, just feels really nice to have full range of movement. Oh, there you go. Hey. All right, so I'm gonna have a, I'm gonna do a a c curve shape here and slight bend in the elbow and why I want to do this, my pinky fingers right by the side of my, my lower thigh, some balance actually, but I want to pause in this position and see if I can get the connection between my hamstrings, gluteals abdominals and just hold.

Now I'm going to sweep my arms forward and come out of the c curve and arms will just be in front of my chest to go back. I really want to initiate with a contraction of my abdominal muscles. That contraction is withdrawing me back down rather than the spring doing it. So now I want to press my heels into the shoulder rests really concentrating on the back of my thigh, glutes and abdominals coming in. Three more here.

[inaudible] so I've slowed down the tempo just so that I feel safe with my balance. I don't want to jerk disposition at by any means, but I'll sort of feel the work. Concentrate deeply on heel connection to shoulder block. That's going to come handy in knee stretches in just a moment. Okay. Hope that felt good.

So there should be kind of a nice warm sensation in there. All right. I'm gonna move into a red and get box. We're going to go long box and I'm gonna sit facing the back right up against the blocks. Their head reskinned see down. Okay. So some, I did this in one other class, I don't remember which one it was.

Sometime this year. I like variety in is kind of fun, uh, to change things up sometimes. So what I wanted, what I did is I took my hands here, interlace behind the head, the what's Nice, what I like this, this strap here is kind of helping my humerus and Scapula wrap toward my rib cage so that my sternum can kind of drop in. I can get a better flection forward and not have it go into my neck as much. I almost have more support from the straps in a chest lift here. So let's get up into that and just hold yourself. Okay.

So you might even play with this, that the elbows are, if there was a little magic string on each one and the sky has the elbows and you're being pulled up, but then the straps around your humerus are helping hold your arms close to you. It's a lot of words. Sorry. And extend your legs. So let's just do legs up and down. Ah, try not to come off the tips of your scapula. So on the way down with the legs, you've got to deepen the thoracic curve.

One more time. Ah, scissor down, down, down and down for more and one and two and three and four. And bring your knees in. Now just to enjoy this, let this open up. The elbows, the shoulder blades. Now we're actually like my little wings on my back and they're squeezing against my spine. This feels okay.

Now let's counter this big extension and come back into the wrap. So let the straps come up and hug your humerus and single leg. One just 10 times and four. So try not to come off the tips of the Scapula. This isn't about coming very high.

It's about staying stable in this plane without your neck freaking out and nine and 10 and let's come in because, so I find those for reflection things. Then you know, we get the tension in the neck. Maybe this can be that hammock that supports you in that, in that position. So let me know how that goes. I think wrap your hands in. Hold on to the tape and curl back. What do you think we're going to do now? A little teaser and again, I've got the support from being this way. If I let the rope helped me, I'm going to start here now.

Let the reformer guide you into your teaser position. Roll back, get into that inflection through your low spine to tips of Scapula teaser one. Here we go. Ah, fix the legs in the designed position. Bring the spine forward. Now I know in regular teaser, one mat, our arms would be up. That's okay. They're here, they're doing something.

I'm not really using the straps all that much. We're creating a relationship with my apparatus to help me get there. One more. Allow it. Bend your knees if you need to. It's all right. Get to the tip of the Scapula and deepen. Ugh. Time for me to bend my knees and place my feet down.

Everybody just come up at a rest for one moment and you can actually just pause sitting nice and tall upon your sit bones. Bend your right elbow or the one that's closest to me here. And turn toward it. Use your back shoulder and your lat and your obliques. Of course. Yeah.

Kind of gazing back over that elbow. So you want to coordinate head, neck, eyes for more. But again, the ribs stay above the a pelvis, no rib thrusting. If you can help it, you can try to keep your naval facing forward, but your torso turns last one. All right and come down. All right guys, let's come over and to our front panel. Just bring this bar to the high bar setting. Climb on, tell me down.

Breast line right at the edge of the box. Sorry about that. Hands on the edges of the bar. Now, not a full swan. Alright, let's just hold off on that for now. We need some upper back through up a upper back extension. So if we hold ourself here, stomach is lifted up off of the box a little bit. I'm going to think of my eyes, my occiput moving, my cervical, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven and my first couple of thoracics. That's it.

And then back down [inaudible] couple more. Avoid a big back bend and I just don't want to do it today. That's all. If you want to go ahead, but focus on this upper strength is very hard to feel for me. So that's why I'm partly why I'm doing this, but also playing with it. You don't always have to do a full big swan to get swan. You know what I mean? Okay.

Now stay alone with your arms and let's do some scapula movement. Now I have my hand sideways on purpose just from my shoulders today I'm going to let my scapula glide together. I want to move them apart, glide together, move them apart. You're trying to feel the move in harmony. You know what I mean by that? That it doesn't do right, left, right, left. Can they glide simultaneously if they can't, if you feel one moving quicker than the other, slow it down.

Ask the other side to start my left one doesn't want to go with the same tempo as my right, so I'm slowing it down. I'm gonna do like three more and I'm almost going to just ask my left to do most of it. My right will come along for the ride. I know. Scapula scapular last one. All right Benji, elbows come all the way in. All right, so hands on the box. Slide yourself on. Let's reach back. Grab the straps.

So let's go ahead and take our legs out. Flexed ankles, flexed elbows, palms face up. And as you bring your legs in toward the box, maybe think it did look slightly different instead of just the inner thighs. Cause sometimes that is painful there and I don't have pads to to protect. Wrap the back of the inner thigh, wrap the hamstrings to the inner thigh without doing excessive turnout with your legs. So let's see if that's going to be successful here. I'm on red still and I want to use the back of my legs, hamstrings, wrap. As I extend my toes, come up off of the seat and extend my arms, but keep my stomach back and sit back down. Let's do that twice more.

Ah, and down. Woo or not. I'm going to try that one more time. Didn't like that at all. [inaudible] so, but on the back of my inner thighs, I'm going to do some circles. Three add two and one other way.

One to my horse is why hold, I've got a wild horse and come on down. That's it. Today obviously I wasn't quite in quite in connection. Hello to got it. Let's put this back time for weight-bearing. Alright, so had rest up. Two reds, high bar, addressed hand, foot and foot. Instead of sagging we lifting, let's do five.

Long stretch, two, three, four, five and down. Stretch, upper back. So here we can start also connecting heels, pushing into the blocks. Four and five. And then right, I lost my form there a little bit guys. I realize now let's come on up on tippy toes up, stretch, press lower. The pelvis come into posterior tilt all the way into bumper.

Lift the whole center up the variant. Open up those duck feathers, press back, pelvic tilt, pelvic Tilden, abdominals, and lift. Press down against the bar as you lift and then reopen the feathers. Press. So I want to connect some opposition as I start to lift my pelvis up, I want to push down onto the bar with my arms and lift.

Two more pelvis, tilted stomach dragging in last one. And then we're gonna move into elephant. And I want to do elephant with my feet flat, not a flat back. I like a round, curved elephant. I want my arms strong, my arms over or shoulders over, wrists, small movement, two, three, four, five and trying to lift my ribs up to the sky. Seven, eight hit my tailbone down on my heels. Nine 10 okay, come on down. Add a little spring if you need to. I'm on to red.

I might just add a little extra support and I want to just do an Arab Bascom feeling a little nice and hip extension. Climb up. Hold on for a minute. Now do get more opening in your tail feathers, meaning extension balance on one leg. Take your leg up. Why don't we allow ourselves to open our hip a little bit? Raise your leg, pinky toe into the clouds. Five pulses. Squeeze your glute. You're a glute. Not just one of them.

All sets and five and keep that carriage at the bumper. Here goes the other leg in stretch. Ready? One strong and long legs. Sorry for five. And in bend your knees step down. Oh, can you stretch series back on to red. Round ten nine trying to get the tail to curl under spore and three lifts at belly up and n arched spine, mainly the upper back so you can get that upper back to arch a little more.

And ten one, two, three. I'm gonna sit back onto my ankles a little bit more. Seven, eight, nine. Let's go knees off round. Get your weight on your arms. Hover. I'm going to shift myself back and I want to round under to encourage your knees to get lower to the mat.

Six, eight, nine and 10. Okay. Hello. That felt nice. Okay, I'm going to do a little side bending now, one red and try to bring my heart rate down Justice Scotia and go into a mermaid position. Hand on the bar, arm out to the side. Instead of a bend in Deflection, I want to actually just kind of tip into the diagonal here. Breathe and then rotate around. Let your right arm bone, the one that's holding the bar, bring it, bring it back into the back. Separate the hands for a second. Be even on your hands. Let's do three pushups.

Keep your arms straight. Three swans or extension. She feel really nice on this inside hip to rib lift and stretch. [inaudible] pushed back out to unwind. [inaudible] and counter the stretch. Long reach to the side. Settle back on your pelvis. Let's do the other side.

[inaudible] all right, hand on the bar and tipping over to the side. So what I meant there is I'd start to rotate. I want to bring, draw this humerus into its socket to allow that rotation and then stand the hand side by side. Cross that bar and three pushups, bend, stretch, bend, and stretch extension. Ideally even weight on the hands. Yeah, that has something under was fine shape. Scapular glide bears my left. One being a little bossy again. Okay. And coming out and counter.

All right, I'm feeling one more exercise here. So I'm going to unwind and to take my bar down. Not really a stretch at all today for legs or anything. I'm going to do two reds just to give a little stability on the reformer head rest down, holding the shoulder rest. I'm going to do a rollover, a little Jackknife, and then got a prep for that controller. Beske so you can think of this as controlled balance.

Of course it is and we go over pressing those legs up. Dominant. Change my hands to not hold onto the shoulder blocks. Yes, I am holding there. I'm going to take the window leg. I'm going to try to feel for the side of the reformer while I keep the other leg up. Bringing the down leg up, change the legs. Tell the scope away from one another. I am going to change my hands.

Hello Anna. Take some stability. The top leg asked to stay up there. No hip flection. So the hip extension, glutes and hamstrings back muscles. Let's go one more each side. Bend your knees, unroll.

I guess we should do one stretch. Take your figure for knee over knee actually guys, and go ahead and just do an easy supine rotation. So maybe in my next reformer class I'll have a student with me and we'll, we'll walk through that control balance into arabesque over the edge. It's really fun to do and I'll get a client or a student in here that has great extension so you can see how beautiful it can look. I have it, I just didn't want to do it today and twist. Have to be a little thoughtful sometimes then. Am I ready for it?

Thanks for taking class with me and I will see you the next time. Thanks everybody.