Creative Combinations

Hi, I'm Sarah and I'm super grateful to be back here teaching at Florida at any time. Again, today I'm going to play with a fast paced intense reformer workout in which we're going to use the step barrel or spine corrector. If you don't happen to have one of these, you can still take the class, you may choose to put a ball behind your back or perhaps do the abdominal work without the assist of the barrel. Uh, but I really do love working with the spine corrector or step barrel. And that's what I want to use today for a little bit. Uh, I want to remind you that, um, I'll probably do slightly less queuing as far as form goes and try to stay with the choreography and the pace. So I'm certainly just come back to the class and, and check out some of the details if you happen to miss any of them. And let's have some fun. Katie's gonna take my class today and Katie, I'd like you to start sitting right here on this step. And certainly you could have your step barrel on the floor.

If you don't want it on your reformer. It just is easier for me to teach with her higher up, so that's what I'm going to do today. Feed her resting on the bar, wherever it's comfortable, and let's start with the arms out in front of you. Sit Nice and tall. Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Find your calm, fill your arms, energized, your breath full. Try to lift your shy, not your shoulders, but your ribs rather a little bit away from your pelvis. Creating more length through your spine and the very first movement is a rounding of the low back. That's your exhale. Beautiful.

Inhale here. Exhale to round up and sit tall. Lifting the sternum lengthening. Exhale to round back drawing those abdominals. Quite active. Inhale, exhale to round up and sit. Tall. Chest is open. Exhale to round, back. Beautiful. Adding some arms we round up and then take the arms high.

Lifting in. Use the exhale to roll back. Perhaps going a little further this time maybe to a straight diagonal line with the body. Articulate your spine back up and then take the arms high. Breathe. Exhale to round, back. Inhale, exhale to round up and the arms can start to go over the edge if it feels like a good idea. So the arms float forward, we roll back, we take the arms by the ears, we round and roll all the way up and sit tall. Inhale, exhale to roll back. Perhaps we go over the barrel a little bit. Nod the Chin Ins and the arms forward and round and roll up. Lifting.

Go again. Exhale to peel back the beautiful. Go with what feels good on your back and round and roll up. Take your arms, just four arms on top of each other. Lifting the sternum we twist. Exhale, inhale, center. Exhale, double pulse and center.

A little double pulse and center. I think of going ever so slightly on the diagonal in the direction that you're twisting too, just to make sure you're not overdoing the low back. What I'm looking for is an abdominal focus and some upper back activity. One more time, right? Followed by one more time left. Send the arms out in front of you. Inhale, exhale to round back one vertebrae at a time.

Send the arms overhead and circle around. Nod Your Chin in and round and roll up. Lifting tall with the inhale. Exhale to roll back. Circle around with the arms, spreading the collarbones and rounding roll up, lifting tall, adding on and this time round and roll back to a straight diagonal line. Cradle your head and your hands go down as far as you feel comfortable and lift to a chest lift. Exhale here. Inhale to go down and over again. Exhale to lift.

Good. My clients know this as dancing with your legs. Lift one leg up. As you lift, put the foot down. We do a little jig. Lift the other leg up as you lift them. Lower down. Good. Again, we lift so we're not rotating yet, but we will and we live good. One more each side. Just feeling the ease of the leg. Lifting the power of the core here. One more time. Both feet are down, body stays lifted.

Round and roll up. Lift your body tall. Arms up by your ears. Beautiful. Let's rotate first to the right, let your arms go forward in space and then roll down the right side of your body round and roll back up. Lift your arms high. Good. Rotate first, send your arms forward and roll down your arms. Kind of react. Yeah, and round. End. Roll back up. Lift the arms high.

Good. We rotate. Let the arms go forward. As you roll down and back up and rotate and the arms go forward. I'm gonna add a little choreography here. Big stretch arm is going to happen. So same beginning, rotate or roll back. As you go down, you take the arm up by your ear and stretch. Send the arms forward round and roll up. Take the arms up, let the arms come down here. I think it's actually a better choice.

We rotate up and over here and round and roll up. So check it out. I'm making a change. We inhale, exhale, arms down and rotate. And then that way you have the reach. This way. Beautiful and arms come this way. Good. Arms Up. I just like that. Inhale, rotate. Now you can reach. That's what I'm talking about.

Well, one more so that we have the choreography. Good. Arms down to rotate. I changed it on Qaeda, so challenges. That's okay. Reach this way around and roll up. This will be our last one. Arms down first. Good. Up and over here, right? Beautiful. Reach the arms forward. Take a breath here and roll back one vertebra at a time.

Go all the way over the barrel. Enjoy that stretch. What's really nice about having the barrel on the reformer here is you have a little bit of extra space for your hands. You can go a little further if it suits you cautiously. Nod Your Chin in and articulate up or assist if needed. Beautiful. And let's step off of the barrel.

So a footwork springs, we have three reds and a blue over here. The bar needs to be up in the position that's suitable for you. Head rest is flat. That's my choice. Certainly if it's more comfortable for you to have it up, you may do so. Put the heels on the bar. Ankles are flexed, pelvis is neutral, and when we're ready and settled, exhale to go in hell to come in and exhale out.

Now, if moving this quickly makes you want to breathe a little less, go for it. Breathe however it makes sense to you. Just breathe and move. Please feel the backs of your legs working the inner thigh. Feel an energy up and out through the crown of the head every time with your chest open. Two more beautiful one more and then go ahead and come all the way in and shift to your toe position. Again, put lots of weight in the metatarsal.

The toes may or may not be totally weighted. Press out. Really try to feel equality through all five of those metatarsal goals. Those are the balls of your feet. Keep your heels lifted. When you press out. Oftentimes we get a little lazy in the feet. Feel abs active, heavy body.

Drop your tailbone down. Heavy body's not totally what I wanted to say, but a heavy pelvis. When you come down one more time. Come on in. Put your heels together. We make our small v focus on the ups, squeezing together the pulling in as we draw down. Exhale and breathe when it makes sense. Find those inner thighs nice and active. Gorgeous. Feel arms are long rib cages heavy but long through the back of the body.

So pay attention to that. I'm not asking for a compression of the ribs, but a lengthening of the spine. That length is anchored by your pelvis position. Last one heals wide on the bar. Ankles are flexed, the feet stay still in space. And out we go. Exhale. Inhale and feel the chest open. Feel the arms heavy. [inaudible] feel all three pieces of the pelvis weighted. And what that means for me is both sides of the pelvis equally weighted and also the base of the sacrum, just above the tailbone. Beautiful.

Feel those inner thighs last too. And one more. Please come on in and put the toes. Now where the heels are, it's the balls of the feet, not the toes that are mostly weighted. So the metatarsal exhaling to press out. Let's really lengthen up a little more. So as I asked you to lengthen up a little more, make sure you're not rolling to the outside of your foot, but that you still have adequate weight through that first metatarsal or that big toe. Squeeze those inner thighs active. As you press out, find your breath, find the flow. We'll do two more here.

Beautiful. So the heat is starting to build, we hope. And come on in. Bring your feet narrow, not totally together, but closer calf raises. They're coming. Exhale to press out, lower down and up through the feet, pressing up through all five toes and lower down. So again, when I say toes, it's my habit. I'm not looking for you to press so much through your toes as you are through your Meta tarsals pressing up the toes may be soft, they may be lifted. Both are a good choice as long as there is in fact a bend across those five minute tarsals. From here we'll move into the prances. Press up and go down.

Press up to go down and let's go just a little faster feeling both the high and the low movement. Juicy. Find a breath that suits you. Perhaps it's a long inhale, followed by a long exhale. Beautiful. One more time each side and then hold your stretch. Three breaths.

I often like to adjust my foot so that my foot's a little higher on the bar and then that gives me the opportunity to relax through the Meta tarsals and let them spread out. Enjoying the stretch here and then go ahead and switch sides again. Adjust your foot so it's comfortable for you and enjoy breathing in and breathing out. Pressing up. We've been the needs to come in. I like to keep the same spring for single legs when possible, so that's what we're going to do here. We're still on three red and a blue.

Put both heels on the bar. Certainly you could adjust the spring tension to suit your needs. We're going to play with a little choreography. Let's keep that left foot on the bar and send the other leg straight with a flexed ankle. Good. Each repetition has a new foot position. Exhale out in in pause, point the ankle, but pull the toes back.

It's like yoga toes or feet out in in good point. The whole foot. Lengthening the toes out in, in externally. Rotate the hip out in. Flex the ankle. Keep the rotation. Good. Start position. Ankle flex. We do it again. Point through the top of the foot. Pull the toes back, point through the whole foot. Feel the inner thighs. Good. Rotate external. Flex the ankle powerfully.

And we're right back where we came from to switch legs. So here we'll stay the first round. Go a little slow just like we did on the other side. Ankle flexed. Go out in, in. It's funny how both feet are different. Good. Press out Nan. Now reach through the toes out and then rotate the hip outward. And then we flex the ankle. But keep the rotation.

We find our starting position. Beautiful point through the ankle. But pull the toes back, spreading them. Good point through the toes. Nice. Rotate the hip, external. Beautiful. And then flex the ankle powerfully. Gorgeous. Back to neutral. We shift to toes here so the heels are lifted but only as high as you can keep on the way out. Right? So the left leg is, are moving like the right leg comes up. Same Choreography. Flex the ankle, we go out, point the ankle, not the toes.

Reach out through the toes. A little more power here. Beautiful. Rotate external knee. Flex the ankle. Cha Back to neutral ankle. Still flexed. Point the ankle, spread the toes. Reach through the toes, rotate outward. Beautiful and flex the ankle. And we switch legs. Making sure you've got the balls of the feet where they should be and is flexed.

Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Point through the top of the foot. Pull the toes back. Good. Reach through the toes. Nice. Externally rotate. Beautiful. Flex the ankle back. Perfect. Back to neutral. We begin again. Perfect point the ankle. Pull the toes back, reach through the toes, rotate external. I'm a little ahead of myself. Sorry. Good.

Flex the ankle. Good. And then back to neutral. Hug your knees into your chest. We're gonna want to change the springs here. I'm using one red spring for the Ab work. Um, certainly you could use a little more, a little less if you wanted to find your straps, you're scooting away from your shoulder rest so you can lift. You're gonna set your arms first and then bring your legs to tabletop. Lift your head and chest.

Give me a couple of abdominal curls here and lower down. Nice high curl here. Exhale to lift. Now for this exercise, this might feel a little light, but I'm hoping you'll, you'll find the heat momentarily. We'll do one more here. Exhale to lift, and now we hold good holding onto your right leg. With both hands, you'll sort of arrange the straps accordingly. Stretch the other leg out to straight.

Absorb the most of the spring with the cross arm right now that's the left arm switch. So we're going to switch the legs and switch the focus of the arms. The idea is that the carriage stays still finding a nice quick exhale, lifting a little higher. Your elbows can stay bent. See if you can push a little bit with your opposite arm into your bent knee. As you breathe, reach and reach and reach and reach a little higher.

Keto reach. Hand reach. Good. One more. Each side. Huh? She was trying to read my mind. How your knees into your chest. Put your head down. Good. We're going to do the criss cross with a rainbow arm is what I like to call it. Rainbows are fun, right? Okay, so with your feet on the bar, just for a comfortable set up here, send your arms up to the ceiling first we're going to feel the rainbow.

Take your legs to tabletop and take one arm. Open the other arm across. Switch, open and across. Okay. Lift of the shoulder as you reach across. Switch. Add the lift of the shoulder. Beautiful. One more time. Each side just so you can feel that engagement.

Beautiful. And we go into our Chris Cross both arms. Start up, lift the head and chest, send your arms down, find a nice high curl and then lift your arms straight up to the ceiling. And away we go. One leg goes out and you rainbow reaching into the top arm switch. Exhale. So h my friends, you can press down in your bottom arm a little bit to help you create more height, but try to absorb the spring a little bit more with the top arm.

Reaching up. Good and reaching across on the diagonal. So on this one, I am excited to see a little spring tad here. Yeah, I'm excited to see some movement. Beautiful. One more time. Each side come to me. Good. Go the other way. Yeah, come back to center. Bring the knees in and we'll take a pause for hip work. I'm a fan of a red and a blue spring. That's where we're going. Feet and strats.

My dear friend, we start with frogs. Frogs are my, my calm when it comes to hip work. Bend your knees. Inhale, exhale, press out. Pay attention to the resetting. Neutral spine support through the ABS. Open through the chest. Nice. Neutral pelvis. Actively flexed feet here. Just two more.

Beautiful. One more this time. Keep the legs straight. Open your legs wide. Good without moving the carriage. Bend the knees and bring your heels together and press out. Find the breath that suits you. Hear big, wide open. Then the knees pulling together, keeping that pelvis still and we reach out.

So we're looking for a stretch, but we're also looking for stability of the pelvis. Beautiful. One more like that please. Nice big stretch. Tailbone down. As those legs come together, we'll also do the reverse. Press out. Bend the knees, pulling in, reaching those legs wide. Find those inner thighs as you draw those heels together. Beautiful.

Bend in opening nice and wide and draw those heels together. Two more please. Ben, open wide and draw together one last time please. So playing here in rotation we lift the legs up as high as it feels like a good idea for neutral pelvis. And then we pressed down two more, just like that. Lift up and we pressed down one more time and then we play with some single legs here. So lift the leg up, both legs up my bed, stay here. We'll keep the right leg up where it is and send the other leg down three times.

Anyone noticed that? Keeping the leg up is just as hard as pushing the leg down. Can you go yet a little further down? Beautiful. If you keep outward rotation and your foot pointed and toward midline, the rope will end up just inside of your knee and across your thigh in a way that offers a little support. Stay there. Legs, circles outward first, three times one woo and two beautiful and three reverse little leg circles. One Oh, I better get out of the way of that foot. Two and three pause. Lift your leg up, neutralize, and we go to the other side. So if you keep your outward rotation as you press your leg down and you keep your foot pointed and you don't open from the middle, you'll find that perfect path.

And what I mean by that is the rope will find a place just inside of your knee, on your side that actually offers a little support. What's beautiful about this movement is you can go a little lower than the reformer. Get a nice bit of hip extension work. Beautiful. And I think we have one more. The four circles sound about right. Good. Stay here. Keep this leg strong and straight. We go outward. First One oh and two and three.

Go the other way on. Nice and two and three. Lift your legs up, bend your knees for just a short stretch here. Two breaths. Your knees can be open, your feet can be together. We're going to move into the short spine, so if your head rest is currently up, please make sure you put it down. We're still on a red and a blue spring.

Press the legs out to straight. Point through the feet. Fold at your hips all the way til you touch the stopper and then feel the opposition as you roll up the opposition of what's rounding. Beautiful. Bend your knees big and then we roll down through the back, engaging the abdominals, enjoying that wonderful stretch, pulling those legs through and reaching out to straight to more like that. And then we change folding at the hips, feeling the engagement of the abdominals. We'll roll up using the APPS, bend the knees, big hand roll down, getting ready to add on, fulfilled, Rola, and we stay. Okay, so one leg stays here, the other leg lowers down a bit, feel bad opposition, and then lift back up. Don't go switch. Don't go so low that you're going to lose your straps.

So you have to check that out. Should you lose your strap, you'll have to recover. Hopefully we won't have that happen here. Last one. Beautiful. Bend your knees to complete that short spine. Wonderful. So from here we're going to go ahead and move into the uh, control balance. So we're going to take feed out of straps, but the straps by your pet on the pegs by your ears on these reformers, your reformer might have a different place.

Scoot down a little so you have plenty of space and then reach your arms back to straight. Um, so as close to straight as possible, the shoulder rest you get in the way a little bit. Try not to take your arms too low, but really just up by the frame here. Now should you be working with a different reformer? You might have to be a little creative, but with the balanced body reformers, this will work. So stretch your legs out to straight for me. Oh my bad. Your arms are gonna first be down please.

Nice shoulder stretch. I hope you enjoyed it. That's where we're headed. Folks at home. Here we go. I got ahead of myself. Roll over for me first. We're in a rollover position here. Flex your ankles quite powerfully, and now here's where you want to reach your arms overhead and see if you can find that connection. It's actually much easier to reach now that you're overhead and I want you to think about really holding powerfully together here. Yeah, so now one leg lowers a bit in space, the other leg lifts up and we point and we switched with a double pulse in the split. One to the leg that's pulsing is the up leg.

This one is creating a bit of an anchor, but whatever the anchor be, it's not touching anything unless you're completely gumby. I don't know that that would be a good idea to try to touch the ground back there, but this is a really nice assist actually to get a high leg in this exercise. It is absolutely gorgeous. I bet all of you at home look beautiful as well. One more time please. Both legs go down, point the toes and find your way down. I like keeping my arms back there to roll out of it. It feels beautiful.

Good. Hug your knees into your chest. Give yourself a moment to rest here. After having the shoulders in that extreme stretch, you may take a moment. You may find you need a moment to get up, which is good, right? All right, from here we shall come up. Okay, so we're going to start with no spring for a reverse knee stretch, but be careful when you unload your reformer and then get on. So we're on the knees with the knees up against the shoulder rest and the hands on the wood track somewhere and then pull yourself forward a little so you're not at the stopper and be in this quadrant head position. Beautiful. We're looking for a to iron out the spine a little bit to iron out the curve.

So I'm looking to actually give a little bit of upper back extension and just to lengthen the low backs to the abdominals. Are really working beautiful. And then here, try pulling a just forward with your arms a couple times and move back. Good. And then try, uh, come to, uh, shoulders, shoulders over wrists. Pull your knees in a couple of times. Beautiful. Okay, so not so bad. Find neutral or with your knees underneath your hips and your hands underneath your shoulders. Find your right leg and extend it straight behind you.

If you need to tap it down on the reformer friend, you can. Good. Try taking your opposite arm and reach it straight forward. Okay. Now you're gonna pull with your arm forward and back. Beautiful. Try not to move your leg yet. Good.

Stay there. That was three. Now you're going to pull your knee in without rounding your back, trying to keep your pelvis totally square. Beautiful, beautiful hand and knee down other side. So iron out your spine again, lengthening your upper back, engaging your abdominals. Go ahead and send the other leg straight back. You could always rest it on the reformer if you needed to. Otherwise we lift the other arm is straight out by your ear.

Move your arm three times first, trying to keep your supporting leg still beautiful. So the goal here is to not rotate and that is so much more challenging than you think it's going to be. And then pull only the knee in and out three times. Nice. And then the hand and the knee go down. And now we're going to play with a similar feeling but with some spring.

So I'm going to add a blue spring. Now if you find you want to keep working with light spring, if you have a yellow option, that's good too. But here we're going to work with some hip work. So first pull forward using your arms with a straight spine. Good. And then I want you to sustain this position for a bit.

Pulling your knees in a little further so we're, we're keeping the back still. Now take your right leg straight behind you. Flex the ankle, take that leg out to the side as far as you can go. [inaudible] keep going, keep going. Good. Stay there. And now you're going to round your back to pull your knee in three times. Good. Try to straighten out those elbows if you can. Good too. And you can gently rest that [inaudible] that's a little harder than it looks, right. Okay. So we'll try the second side.

[inaudible] pull forward first. Good. Send your other leg straight back. Flex your ankle, take your leg wide to the side. Nice. Nice. Now my ultimate goal here would be to have a pretty square pelvis. So I'm going to just help you there cause I can. All right, here we go. Pull with your right knee. Right hand. So as you continue to practice this, it will get cleaner, right? We'll have straight arms.

We'll have a nice rounded back. Beautiful. Katie, you're doing a gorgeous job. You really are. But it's important that we have exercises that we don't feel we can perform perfectly right from the beginning. Right? Okay. That wasn't the first time we've done that together, isn't it? Okay. So from here we're going to go ahead and move into some rowing. Okay.

I'm going to put you on a red spring. Some of you may choose a lighter spring. That would be okay. And you might choose a heavier spring. I am playing with the rowing a little bit. So, um, choose wisely. The bar should go down just for safety and I would say scoot forward a little bit so you'll have plenty of space to roll back. I think you want to look more space so you can go further back. So here we are.

Arms are straight out in front of us. We inhaled to bend, hands to sternum. Exhale to roll back. Fine those abdominals. Squeeze the thighs together. Inhale, take your arms wide. Exhale, fold your body forward. Reach your hands to touch behind you. Enjoy that stretch. Send the arms up to the ceiling all the way forward toward your feet and enjoy that stretch. Good. Now we change. Stack your spine. Inhale, bend your elbows and hold.

Lift your right leg up and take it an external rotation. How high can you lift it? It now stays there. We roll back one vertebrae at a time. Send your arms out to the side and stay. Press back with your arms more. Beautiful. Fold forward nose toward me. How far can you go?

Then lower the leg down on top of the other leg. Take the arms up and around. Here's the fun part. My friends. Here we go. Stack your spine in how? Bend your elbows around and roll back. Stay there. Squeeze the legs together and lift both legs. Stay with me round a little more.

Beautiful. Take the arms wide. Press back a little more. Fold your nose toward your knees and lower your legs with control as your hands come together behind your back. Take your arms up to the ceiling. Shall we try one more? Yes, we shall. Inhale to bend. Exhale, round back. Squeeze the thighs together, my friends. That's where you get the focus to do it. You've got it right there. Take those arms out. Good nose toward knees. Arms come together.

The legs gracefully. Find their way home. That was not bad. Arms up to the ceiling. It was not bad. UNCROSS the legs. We'll try the second side. Now we inhale, we exhale to round back. Oh, I forgot. Come back up. Take two on that. We're first going to lift the leg up as high as we can. Yeah. Now it stays there and we roll back. This is your tester.

Take your arms out to the sides. Certainly my friends, you could continue with this one. Fold forward, hands together at your back. Then the leg lowers down, arms come up and around. Beautiful. And then stack your spine will do too with the boomerang legs is what I'd like to call it in hell. Bend your elbows. Squeeze the legs tightly together. Roll back in the, hover the legs up. Oh boy. Good. Take those arms out.

Fold forward and find home arms up in a raft. Beautiful. Stacking your spine. We inhale, we exhale to roll back. Dig deep into those abdominals. Beautiful. Take the arms. Why fold nose toward knees and control. I like it. I liked it. And then stack the spine or I'm sorry, I finished with the arms and then stack the spine. Got Too excited there.

Uh, uncross your legs. Bend your elbows for a Bicep curl. Exhale to round. Back through your back. Bring your arms a little lower in space here. Good and open for a bicep. Curl and bend. Take a breath, extend up the arms. Go to straight and then the arms come down. Good.

You're going to bend your right arm, going into rotation and reached back. Bend your left arm going into rotation and reached back. Good. Exhale, rob. Bend your elbows. I'm sorry. Inhale. Exhale, round and roll back. Beautiful. Inhale, straighten your arms. Exhale. Bend your elbows. Good. Inhale, straighten your arms. Exhale, rotate right on it and reach and left arm around. Are you ready? Are you sure? Okay. You reach with the backs of your hands.

Both arms open. So just flip your hands. Yep. Stay rounded. Come forward. Both arms are going to go up. Stay rounded. Oh, good. Forward. Flip your hands. Give me a bicep. Curl. Hams. Hands around Enroller, and reach your arms forward. We go again. First we bend the elbow. Sit Tall. Breathe. Good. You use the next good. Bend your elbows around. N Roll back. Nice one.

Bicep curl. Good. Straight arms. Right arm pull. Find the breath. Find the flow left. Pull good. Find your way to flip and reach open. Bam. Stay rounded. Good. Reach up. Bam. Nice. Flip the hands. Bicep curl and finish it off.

Ah, put your straps down and you may step up. We're going to put the bar up into the starting position. So for this reformer, it's the middle position. Um, we're going to do some support work here and my recommendation is a green spring. A red spring is fine, but a green offers a little more support. So if you would step up for your pyramid position, your feet are up against the shoulder rests lifted not in a super high heel shoe, but it had high hill. And let's be here for a couple of breaths. This is almost going to be a rest right. Inhale to slide back. Exhale to pull in. So we're going to play a little bit.

We're going to borrow a little bit, yeah, from Yoga and do a little La Vinyasa here, if you will. Pilati style. Okay. Stay here for a moment. My foot is away. Inhale to plank position. Good. Pull forward so your shoulders are over, your wrists. Bend your elbows to like a chatter. Ranga, we go to an upward facing dog.

Open through your chest, lift the hips and find your pyramid or your downward dog. Type position. Hold there. We try again. We inhale to plank, keeping the arms still sliding forward. Good. Ben, the elbows thread your body through lifting tall. Chest is open and then hinge back up. Beautiful. We're going to try to find the carriage gracefully, but that's a hard one to do here. Okay. Here we go. In hell to plank position. We're adding on after this one. Forward a little bit. Bend the elbows.

Keep them tight by your side. Forward and up for that beautiful upward dog and we come up to a downward dog pulling that carriage in. Gorgeous. Stay here. Take your right leg high. Try to keep your pelvis square. Quite challenging to do. Beautiful. Hmm hmm hmm. Hmm. Come to plank position. Bring your knee toward your nose. Beautiful. Good. Bring the carriage in.

Send the leg high. Bring your knee to your outside arm. Beautiful. Send the leg high. Bring your knee across your body. Other arm. Send your leg high. Step through to a lunge position. Placing the balls of your feet on the bar. Sit a little deeper into your hips here. Pause there.

Once you have your balance, lift your arms away and reach tall. Okay. If you can take your arms straight up by sub spite years. Let me stay there from here. Open and rotate toward the same leg. Stretching. Beautiful. From here, place your hand down on the bar. Try to get your knee toward your underarms. So hand is close and reaching up powerfully with the opposing arm. Good.

And here, bring that hand down. Step your foot back. We bend the elbows to push up position. We come through into that upward dog. Good. Lift your hips carefully bringing the carriage into the stopper, using those abdominals. A wonderful control there. Beautiful. Send the left leg high. Good plank position. Bring your knee to your nose. Beautiful. We can round the back here.

Send the leg back, bring the carriage and good. Bring the knee to the outside tricep or the outside elbows where you're aiming. Beautiful and reaching up and then bring it to the other side. So we're aiming toward the tricep if we can, and back in up and step your leg through. We're in our lunch. Good. Pause for a moment.

Make sure you have your balance and then you're going to lift your body up, enjoying that lun, lengthening up through the crown of the head, lifting the ribs away from the hips. Beautiful. Open your body to face the front of the room or the other side, or the front leg is the best cue there. Good. We're gonna spread here a little more and then reach forward. Placing your hand down right next to your foot. If you can bring your needier armpit, if you can a little bit and reach up and then bring your hand down and step your foot back. Pause there, organize your plank. And we go down, we take the upward dog position, we go to our downward dog or pyramid type position. Finding that control there.

Okay, so from here we're going to play a little bit with your elephant position. So step your right foot forward so the toes are hanging just over the edge. And then, uh, try to flatten out your back and square your pelvis. You're to want to bend your front knee a little bit in this position just so you can really focus on the back leg, staying straight. Can you also straighten your arms for me?

So the carriage where the carriage is doesn't matter to me. Okay. And now you're going to push back, keeping your back leg straight, allowing the front knee to bend more beautiful. And then as you come in, you switch the back knee bends and the front one straightens. Good. So pushing back. So it's really about stretching, um, just in different ways here for me it feels really nice on my ankle, back leg, but then also a nice hamstring stretch on my front leg. Good. So on this last one for me, hold the forward position and then flex your front foot pretty powerfully and you'll get a nice little hamstring stretch there. Beautiful [inaudible].

And then step that foot back where it came from and we'll reorganize for the second side. So you'll step your foot forward so your toes are hanging off just a bit, Ben, that front knee a little bit. And then you can square your pelvis a little bit more readily. There we go. Let me help you a little more. Good. Now you're gonna slide the leg back and pull in. So Ah, there you go. So one leg is always bent in. One leg is always straight.

All right, beautiful. I'm really moving here with the bending of my knees, not totally thinking about my abdominals and thinking about my legs and enjoying that. So on this last one, keep your front leg forward and flex your ankle. Beautiful. And then step back to your elephant position. Lift your heels back up and let's flow a little more. We can come down to the plank position and hold beautiful shift forward.

We go through that Vinyasa. Bend your elbows forward and up for the upward dog. Good downward position if you will, or pyramid position. Wonderful. Take your right leg back and up. Good. Bring your knee to your nose. Let your back round. As you come to that plank position, it's not really a plank. Reach back and up. Take your elbow to your outside tricep. Beautiful.

Reach back and up. Take it across the body, aiming toward the tricep. Good. Reach back and up, and then step through ball of the foot on the bar. Pause there. Let's go a little deeper with the pelvis. Nice lengthening out through the crown of the head. Lift up, send your arms by your ears. Good. Spiral your body open so your collar bones are doing your best as possible to look completely to the side here. Stretching wide through the arms. Beautiful.

Reach forward and then place your left hand down on the bar, reaching up with your opposite arm. Stay here in this position. See if you can bring your knee in toward your underarm and then lengthen more through your collarbones out through the crown of your head. And then here, entertain the idea of straightening your front leg. It's going to go up in space. So we're in a big, big hamstring stretch. Drop your heel under the bar. If you want a little more beautiful, bend your front knee, bringing the carriage in a little bit. Put both hands down, step your leg back and we go through the flow. Bend your elbows up in forward. Find that upper back.

Beautiful downward dog position or pyramid position here. Left leg high. Bring the knee to the nose. This is a lot of abdominal work here, right? Reach the leg back. Bring the leg outside. I reached the leg back. Bring the leg the opposite side to the tricep. Reached the leg back. Find your breath. Step through. Once again, we're in that lunge. Try to go a little deeper.

See if you can drop your hips just a little more beautiful. Lengthening your back leg, feeling the power there, the inner thighs and the arms go up. And then from there we open. Collarbones are wide shoulder blades are wide. Finding that wonderful rotation. And then from here we reached down right hand to bar, right near the foot. If you can bring any underarm to the knee, the knee to the underarm, lengthening up through the crown of the head here. Breathe.

And then from here you're going to press your front leg to straight for me. Going up a little bit in space. So we're creating a nice stretch on the outside of the hamstring, the hamstring, all kinds of things, or stretching, right? Drop the heel. If you can lift the heels slightly, bend the knee and come all the way in. Both hands on the bar. One last time we stepped the leg back, we bend the elbows deeply connected to the core up. Good.

Lift the hips high, bringing the carriage in, keeping those abdominals engaged. Lower the feet flat. Walk your hands toward your feet and enjoy three breaths there with your head dangling. Soften your knees. Good. When you soften your knees, see if you can get your chest a little closer to your thighs and then try straightening your legs. Let your head stay heavy, ease yourself back, hands on the bar so that you can step down from there. Beautiful.

So we're going to bring the step barrel back out so we can do a little more oblique work. Again, you can keep it on the floor if that suits your needs, but it's nice to use the reformer here because we have it available to us and we're going to go sideline on the barrel. Okay, let me just straighten this out a little. You know how I roll here? Okay, so you're going to side us. So right now, Keto is sitting on her on her left side. Her right side is up, but it doesn't matter which side you start with. Reach over and relax. Enjoy a side stretch here. Beautiful. Okay, so a couple of things are going to happen here, which I find really nice. Even with the bar totally down. If you bend your knee and you push your foot on the bar, you can press your leg out to straight. I'm on one spring here, so it offers a little bit of an anchor or a support system. So again, if you don't have access to the bar in this down position, you certainly can do this without having your foot anchored on anything. Again, we're on one re one green spring. Now here, lift your body up into a side plank type position. Go ahead and place this hand behind your head, your top hand behind your head, your bottom hand comes up.

Now stay there keeping the press through the supporting leg. Think of sending your leg behind you a little bit and now go over the barrel on the inhale and use the exhale to lift up. Beautiful in how to go over the barrel and exhale to lift up. Inhale to go over the barrel. Exhale to lift up and stay here. Now this leg gets out in front. Go ahead and straighten it.

Find external rotation and lift that leg up. So we've got power with both legs. Now you can press onto the ball of the foot here. Beautiful and stay. Okay, so now I would like you to bend the knee slightly and straighten it. So the that is pressing into the bar is bending and straightening and we're getting a nice little bit of glute work here. Good. One more time. We're going to keep those legs powerfully in that position. Send the arms by your ears and go down and up. Three more times.

Exhale to lift and reach this direction. Beautiful. And, and we're going to lift and we're going to reach out. Nice. And one more time please lift. See if you can bring the palms of their hands together to touch. But don't clasp anything. Hope four, four, four, three, four, two and for one gracefully come out of that good. Allow your body to mold over the barrel. [inaudible] oh beautiful. So just find a place for your leg to be that feels good.

And let your body relax over the barrel. And we'll go ahead and do the other side. Just be careful switching sides with a light spring load like this. We don't want the carriage wobbling around too. Terribly much. Okay. For, for your viewing pleasure. I'll stay on this side. He'll be able to see the backside over here. So first, um, you could just work with this leg straight out here.

It doesn't need to be on the bar, but it is a nice little add on. Okay. So you're going to go ahead and put the foot on the bar and press the leg out to straight after you've had a stretch. I guess I kinda sold you short a little bit on your stretch, didn't I? Here we go. Beautiful. And so then from here, prop yourself up and find your hands behind your head. Position your straight diagonal line. Beautiful. And stay here.

Nice. Rotate this way a little bit. Now go down and up for me. Beautiful on. Ah Huh. Too Beautiful. And three stay there. Nice and high. Nice. And Mom, we stretched that front light to straight. We find external rotation and then we press up onto the toe here. Beautiful.

And then we take the arms by the ears. That's what was next, wasn't it? Oh we bend the knee. Thank you for reminding me. We been the knee three times. Beautiful. New, I almost forgot that part. Two and three stay there. Now the arms go by your ears. We're back on track and we go down and up three times. We're working on this idea of really keeping those biceps near the ears.

And again, beautiful. Beautiful. And one more and we're going to bring the hands together without clasping and we're going to hold reaching longer. God really energizing that front leg and rest. Let your body mold and relax. Beautiful. [inaudible] and ease yourself off of the reformer.

And let's finish with a couple of roll downs from Steve. With your feet underneath your hips. Stand nice and tall. Fill your feet light grounded yet light. Allow your head to start first. Rolling back a rolling through the back of your neck through your upper back, your low back. Feel free to bend your knees if it's a better choice.

Let your arms Dango. You can go deep into the stretch if you want. Perhaps even bend your knees and let your spine be soft, relaxed. Okay. With bent knees or straight legs, roll up to standing, articulating through your back one vertebra at a time until you're standing tall. Chest is open. One more like that. Exhale to appeal forward at the head. Dangle the arms dangle.

Finding the calm. Engage your abs and round and roll up and standing tall. Sense your feet underneath your hips. Length through the crown of the head. The chest is open. Three breaths, and I thank you for playing.