Supportive Barrel

Hi everyone. Let's do some spine corrector work together. So what I have planned is pretty much mat work or mat exercises put on the corrector, one of the members and I have been writing back and forth about uh, me doing that. So that's what I have planned, but also just taken some movement for yourself today or tonight or whenever you're watching this. And let's get going. So I want you to sit on your corrector and just sit right in the crevice or in the indent and establish first just getting right on your sitting bone. Sit as tall as you can without a whole lot of effort. And let's just set our hands right at the bottom of the knee cap the top of this shin. Feel your feet on the mat. I've got my feet, a little bit of part and just feel a little opening across your chest and shoulders. Take a few deep breaths and heck sales.

So establishing that nice long vertical extension from your tailbone all the way through the top of your head and try to sense the sides of your back, the front of your chest, the back of your chest. Good. Let's just do one more breath in together. And on the exhale, let's just softly start to work in the the contraction of the lower abdominal muscles and then inhale as we come back up to sitting tall. So this is really small to begin with. A little bit of mobilization if we can through the sacrum and the lumbar spine and ideally trying to maintain shoulders over hips as we do the mobility. But depending on where you are in your body, you may need to move more or less to do about five of those.

So there's four and exhale, just reaching the sacrum and the lumbar spine back. Let's add some arms. Just reaching forward four more times. So I'm gonna connect to some opposition. Now as I move my pelvis and lumbar spine back, I want to reach more forward creating a little more dynamic in my contraction. Also continuing to think of energy up the top of my spine, but deep contraction and inhaling up, it's okay to even maybe visualize that the back of the the back is opening around kind of making a circle like shape to aid in the flection or the c curve.

One more time. Xcel as we correct. So let's add a little more movement. I'm going as we go back now to the base of my rib cage on an exhale. So it starts with that same movement and just right to the very base of your, the low ribs. Now take a breath, exhale and use that contraction. Press in against the barrel and establish vertical.

Exhale as we roll back. [inaudible] pause, take a breath, use the exhale, contract and press the spine back and lift hall. And two more just in this a forward back movement. Inhale, pause, exhale, press and roll through. One more. Inhale hold and exhale as we press. So we're going to add a little bit of a just basic rotation of the body.

So I'm going to just aim right over my right thigh and then aiming down the right side of my spine. Again, basically just to the base of the rib cage there. Inhale, pause, press this against the barrel to manipulate the movement up. Let's do three more. So four in a row on the same side. Inhale, pause. So of course, so bleak muscles waking those up, warming those up. So the knees are nice and parallel. I haven't let them drift in or out.

It's hard though because they're not touching. So I have to establish a little bit of work in the inner thighs to establish that line. So four over to the left. Inhale here, exhale, and on the left side of the lumbar spine, inhale, pause, exhale, press and lift. So this is just your warm up, just trying to kind of feel in where you're moving, where you're maybe wanting a little more emotion. Exhale. Inhale, pause, exhale, press lift, generating some circulation. Inhale and exhale. Now let's go right to left. So I'm going to go over on the inhale. Exhale, come down. Inhale, come up. This time to the other side. Exhale down the left. Inhale up and all the way across to the right.

So add a little more movement. Now mobilizing through your lumbar to that last rib four more times. [inaudible] two more. And last one, let's come back to this center and then I'm going right down the middle of my back. But this time to the base of the shoulder blade or the bottom of the shoulder blade arm, still straight ahead and shoulder distance. Breathe in tall. Starting with that same lumbar contraction in your lumbar movement.

Now I don't want to move my head, I want my head to stay right where it is, but I may long gating my thoracic spine over trying to get it up on top of the arch. That's where I can press the tips of my scapula down on the barrel. Pause to breathe in. Now it's this section of the spine, this upper thoracic. I want to mobilize deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, and come up to vertical again. So a lot of mobilization, reaching a vertebral over, press the scapula down. Breathe in here and deep exhale, peel off of that barrel and it told to more getting our body warm. Inhale, press down, seal one more, and walking those vertebra over the top. Press the Scapula on top of that barrel. Feel those blades and exhale. Here we go. All the way up. Okay.

I want us to put our hands right on the top of the curve here. Heels of hands, and press the elbows behind your back to try to stretch the chest and the front of the deltoids in shoulders and maintain some evenness in the rib cage. It might be tempting to thrust, so that's just inhale, open the elbows and exhale open. I should say. Inhale, pull them behind us and exhale, open. Inhale, open. Press behind. Inhale, open. One more. Press behind and keep them there.

Now I want you to lift up to straighten your arms rebend and just sit right back down. Exhale, press the arms strong and inhale and sit back down. So you know it's, it's just working. Some movement in elbows, shoulders, bearing a little weight and waking up some arm muscles. Let's just do it one more time. We're going to stay up this time. Now. Uh, shoulders are open. I'm going to have this do some pelvic curl from this position. So breathe in here first. Exhale and swing your tailbone underneath you.

I'm trying to kind of aim my pelvis toward my knees, but deep of Dob, abdominal contraction, and inhale, reach the body and the sacrum back. Just three more of these. So the tail curls under, keep pressing down through those arms, opening up the collarbone and inhale. Try to establish that stability up top as you swing underneath. Last two curl. Sometimes this isn't the most comfortable on the hands, so just be ready. You only doing four. Here's the last one. Curl, curl key. So I want us to feel that contraction in the abdominals, mainly hamstrings.

And then keep that sense and place your bum right close to the front edge. Extend your legs. I'm trying to hold a contraction in my abdominals. Hold onto the edges and bring yourself down. Let's do our 100 so lift your legs up. You may have to wiggle. Reach your arms a little. Pilati Zvi and here we go into four, five, exhale, three, four or five. So again, the nice thing about this spine corrector for doing some of the mat work and abdominal work is you have all this support. Uh, you don't have to strain your neck and pull it up so much off the floor obviously cause we're in reclined.

But you can spend quite a bit of energy pulling yourself into the corrector. So the attempt to get a little bit more open, lumbar spine while the upper body is free, ideally legs are still in mind with the lip. Imagine your tailbone is underneath so long you might even be holding it with your heels. Two more breath cycles and last breath cycle. Now lower your legs down. Keep this contraction is best you can. And at the very bottom, let's parallel the legs. So if we come into more upper body, like a plank, basically press those scapula again down on the top of the barrel. They were there earlier.

Open and close the arms four times just to catch the t position. Let's take a deep breath here and as we exhale, just arms up. Inhale, open. So imagine yourself standing in normal living. This is what I'm trying to reproduce. The body shape so my head wouldn't be dropped back and mentioned, wouldn't be to Tuck. Ideally, if you took me and stood me up, right, I'd want to look like I'm standing up right? It's hard to tell. And arm center.

Now let's just do a little crow forward. I'm going to do some arrhythmic pulses of my upper abdominals and [inaudible] just four, three, two, and one. I'm going to come back over and do four more chest openers. [inaudible] [inaudible] really allow those lungs to fill and you're getting some nice movement in the upper spine as far as width with with, with with an exhaling the center. Okay, curl yourself up. Put your hands on the barrel edge, single leg circle.

So I want you to first bring your leg up, assess where you are, a little soft point of your foot externally. Rotate a little bit through your femur. Curl forward. Here we go. Five circles. Okay. [inaudible]. The bottom leg stays energized and anchored.

This is five. Reverse it. These are tiny and to try to pull that lay closer to your head. The three leg closer to you. Four lay closer to you. Five and down. That's it. Other side. So establish little turnout. Pull in, curl forward. Here we go. Cross and lift this. This is really a nice way to do leg circles. It's hard. The hip is working. Lot of hip flexor activity, but you can really feel if you're unlevel and minimize your circle.

If you feel wobbly. Three deep abs and four and five and lower the leg. Okay. Want us to bring both knees in, hug the shins, bring the chest closer to the thighs. What if we were doing rolling like a ball? Kind of. Imagine it. We won't extend your left leg. Let's do our single leg stretch. So we have our inhale and inhale, exhale, and exhale. Inhale.

I'm really think every time I'm pulling my leg in against me, I'm also sending my lumbar back, my lumbar, back to the barrel, which I greatly need. And four and three and two and one. Both. Neesan double leg stretch, but before we do the full expression of it, I want you to just take your chest over. Okay? So this is where I'd like us to get to for the the double leg with the arms overhead. So let's just test it once reaching yourself back the arm.

Stay framing the head. Okay, I don't want your head to go any further back. Their arms will circle of course, and you'll catch those legs. Now. Legs out to the 100 angle low. Inhale, stretch. Pull into that corrector. Exhale close just three times. Inhale, stretch. Exhale, close.

Inhale, lengthen. And exhale closes. Go first, scissors. Pick a leg. Now, today, let's take the lung, other leg here, right out in line with the lip rather than down on the ground. Want you to just reach it on that horizontal direction? Take this leg and bring it towards you more. Okay, and we pulled twice. One to swap, one to swap and one to swap and one, two, and so on. And pull. Can you get it closer to your head?

[inaudible] it also says are the other leg way across the room. Let's go for more. One and two and three and four. Okay. Both legs up for just a moment. Hold behind your calves, pull yourself forward, pull on the legs, pull your chest even more forward and then try to hold your legs right where they are and put your hands behind your head. Straight leg, lower left. So let's go down to three. Up. Hole, down to three. Up. Hold one more down. Easy. Neck and shoulders.

Three and up. Bend your right knee, twist toward it. Tried to twist and look back toward that back elbow. Change sides for Chris. Cross stretch hole two, three and one, two, three. Try not to lay back in this exercise. One more. Not laying that twist more from the base of the ribs but not laying back.

There we go. Tuck your knees, hand roll up. Okay. Put your feet down, arms reaching for it. I want you to sit right on your sit bones. It's fine to have your knees a little bit bent for spine. Stretch forward. Take a breath and as we exhale, like the hands are just sliding across, staying in line with the horizontal line there, whole that stomach wall way back in. He'll slide back up.

An exhale. Connect to oppositions. You're reaching your arms forward, stomach back, slight up. The shoulders go down. As the spine goes up again, arms go one way stem, it goes. The opposite spine comes up. Shoulders go down. Two more empty. All the air last one and NPL the year. So it's not you. It's completely easy to sit up on your sit bones there.

But we did a great job. Let's open our arms. Want you to have your palms face up so you get some external rotation. Swing in that scapula underneath. Shoulders are rolled back and you're sitting nice and tall. Let's do a spine twist. Take a breath here. We'll go to our left.

Her three pulses. Stay evenly sitting on the sitz bones. Two and three. Return to your right. Exhale and twist from the little a rib cage. It's even go a little further and twist and twist and west really use those obliques. They go all the way round for more that wringing out the wet rag. Two and three, one more each side and whist two and three, center and West two and three and center.

And just relax your arms and pause. Wonderful. Let's go over the top now. So put your feet together. I like to just slide back down into this crevasse. Hands on the arch here, and you're going to just take your body over. Now make sure you don't toss your head back. Keep that Chin tucked. You can step your feet up. I'm sweaty. So little sticky to go over.

Now pause when you get your head on the mat. Shoulders on the Mat. And I want you to take this part of your uh, thoracic spine right now. I'm gonna show you something wrong. I'm, I'm arching right there. Okay. So you might even see how much space I have behind me. I want to diminish this by contracting all that upper belly work and even that oblique set here. Okay, so try to get more of you on the barrel. Here we go. Bring a leg up, bring the other leg up. And both legs to the ceiling. Alrighty, so we're over the, the barrel legs are vertical for a moment.

Let's talk about one thing here to the back. If you're over on your, if you've gotten over and you have this large arch in your mid back, let's that away. So use that abdominal work, all that stuff you did at the beginning and contract here so that more of you is against the barrel. Okay? And if you're at home or in your studio watching, don't turn your head right now. Do the best you can just to look straight up to the ceiling and listen to what I'm queuing. Um, it's tempting to look at the Monitor and, but then your neck is turned while you're inverted and let's, let's be healthy. So look straight up to the ceiling, okay? You want to train yourself like you would be in real life. So look up. Don't look at the ground or turn your head and, and risk and injury. Okay?

Enough said. Lower your legs to a point where if you glanced at your legs and your toes, just for a second, just glance. I want you to get your legs to a place where you're challenging your spinal, uh, imprint on your barrel. Taut abdominals, no strain in your back minor almost where my toes are out of my eyesight. I know my position. If you need to go a little higher or lower, feel free externally. Rotate your legs and roll your shoulders back. We're going to come in for frog eight times. Squeeze your heels together first.

Everybody inhale, pull your heels in and exhale. Push away. Inhale, pull them in and exhale. Push away trying to get the legs on that same diagonal line each time. Go a little further with your leg reach. Imagine you had your feet in the legs, springs on the Cadillac at stretch from your abdominals to your feet. Here's the remora one, two, and let stay out there on three points your toes a little bit.

I don't want that. Flex your feet heel beats into three, four. Exhale, three, four. Inhale. Exhale. Three, four in, two or three. Four. Inhale, keep going for more sets. Roll your shoulders back. You're tapping your heels quickly. This should be really working. Your inner thighs. Squeeze your butt. Four, three, two, and one. I want you to point your toes. Bring your legs parallel and legs to the ceiling.

Okay. Scissors, a slight turnout. Reach leg, one leg across the room. The other leg towards your face a little bit. It's the, it's the down leg that has more importance. Pull it down twice. One, two, switch. Pull it down. Down. Switch. Pull down, down. Switch. So again, imagine you had a leg spring. You're pulling it down from the frame. The back of the leg is your accent. Down. Down, pull, pull, taught, abdominals. Three, two, one more.

Each side skews me and down and bring your legs together. Circles of the legs, legs are vertical. In parallel. Move the legs down to that challenge. Point again from the bottom turnout. Circle your legs wide. Bring them up five times. Reach, turn out from the bottom. Go for a big leg gesture. Come up parallel. Three more. Really just imagine that you're doing this with legs. Springs.

Try it. In fact, be safe about it. Get up on your Cadillac. I've done that before. It feels Kinda Nice. All right, now reverse for five. Go Open. It's the hamstrings. It's the inner thigh. See abdominals and the glutes. Your back should stay in printing that barrel. So know your ranges.

Learn those ranges one more time. [inaudible] okay. I want you to bend both knees and put your feet on this step. Ideally feed all the way together if you can. If your knees feel tight or if they're being pulled on, that might be two greatest stretch of your quadricep, possibly your it band at this point. So adjust your feet a little bit apart. If you need to check your spine.

Have you gone into that arch again? Chances are you have it's fine. Imprint. Get the abdominals to hold that spine steady. Let's do some bridge or single leg kick. Excuse me. Shoulder bridge with kick, right leg extends. Bring it up to the sky. Flex your foot.

Now flex at your hip joint to bring your leg further over your face. Okay, and then that hip, that set bone is reaching to the other foot. So we do five times. Point the foot. Inhale, lower. Exhale, bring it over your face. Lower the other foot. Slightly presses on the barrel, just slightly. [inaudible] last two. We know this from the mat program.

When our hands are underneath our back, that was five. Bend your knees, switch other leg, so bring it vertical first. Flex your foot. Take your leg over your face by deepening flection of your hip. It's a great hamstring stretch. Check your spine. Here we go. Inhale, reach it over the leg. Exhale over your face. Inhale across the room, over your face. Slight press with the bottom foot.

Last one, and lift. Now I want you to bring both legs vertical again. Let's do some helicopter. We've done scissors circles. We're ready. One leg away, one leg towards you and switch them. Now take both legs wide out and two legs circle. Keep them going around and join at the top. Whatever one. Switch it.

So scissor and scissor. Helicopter around. Bring them vertical. Reverse it. Scissor, scissor, helicopter around and vertical. One more scissor, scissor, helicopter, all the way around and vertical. Okay. Bend your knees, your chest. I want you to take your knees towards your nose, so that's going to mean for me. If I deepen that again, I'm evaluating the rolling like a ball exercise that I want to actually heal my bum up, extend my legs for a second and touch my toes on the mat.

I'm just going to hold this position. I don't want to feel so much pressure on my neck, nor do I want you to feel that, so I want you to imagine that you can try to get your butt up on the ceiling so you have to just really engage your back muscles to lift your hips up. Open the legs for doing the rollover. Place your pelvis down on the barrel. Extend your legs wide. They're going to scoop down to that low level again, up to vertical. Astute again. Now this time we go over with straight legs. Peel away, your lumbar comes off, your mid back comes off, your toes touched down on the floor. Overhead.

Open the legs go pretty wide. Challenge it. Place your spine on your barrel, back of ribs, back of waist circle. One more time. This direction. Peel off open and circle. Okay, let's do three. The reverse, a wide from the bottom. This is kind of funny. You've got to pick up the hips and we'll lift them up.

Close the legs overhead, stretch those hamstrings. Articulate your spine, place your pelvis, place your sacred mull over the legs. Last too. Circle. Articulate down. Last one, big circle overhead and articulate down. Okay, how I want us to get off of the barrel. Bring your knees to your chest if you're on a carpeted surface or a hardwood floor surface. Push your barrel away from you.

If you're on a sticky mat like I am, uh, don't turn your head and look, it might not be pretty anyway, but I'm going to Shimmy myself back because my barrels on a sticky mat, it won't slide. Okay, there is another dismount, but for today we'll go like that. Oh dear. Okay. And I'm going into a side position, so I'm crawling up. I'm going to sit facing you guys and let's go into some oh bleak contraction. So take your body over your barrel for a moment. Extend your top arm long. You've got your pelvis stacked, you're in parallel.

I want you to take your bottom arm long and just for a moment, what if someone had a hold of this hand for you and this hand for you and they're stretching you in opposite directions? This should feel pretty nice imagining that. Take a breath now. Use Your obliques and pull yourself up when you use this arm to reach this one, to lift up and lift five times so length and go over and exhale. You can use those external forces are those imaginative helpers to help you come up. So I'm reaching through my arms to help me lift my body. And over last you reach out to come up and over and last one, reach out to come up and over. Okay, you can put your hand behind your head if you need the support here or to get stronger in your neck. Just put your hands on the floor.

This arm is going to stay out and I want you to just five times lift and lower the thigh. We're in parallel so you're really getting this lateral hip work and obliques again, last one for five. Now take the foot in the whole leg and do five circles. They're like ovals and four and five, reverse one and two and three trying to make a good as oval there, Amy. Five and down. Now I want to take the leg up, turn your leg inward just a little bit and tap the foot forward. Lift it, turning outward, just a little bit tat behind. So in essence you're making an arch with your leg. We can inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, tap and back and in and out.

And inhale and exhale and in. Now we're going to reverse the leg angle, bring it forward in turnout. So I'm going to put my heel down as I lift. Turn it in and put the toes down and heel and toe. He's trying to keep the shoulders square, heels and toes. Last two and heel should be working. Your glutes, everybody.

I'm sure you feel it. Heel and toes. Okay, that's enough. Let's go to the other side. It's off face away from you. Get yourself in a long line here so you've got a nice parallel leg. Bottom arm is long top arm as long and for that moment, stretch over. Imagine your helpers. Someone's pulling this hand, someone's pulling this one you breathe in. Prepare, reach out, lift.

Inhale, reach over. Exhale, reach out and lift and over the bottom arm for me. This underneath one is doing a good amount of work to help kind of lift me. This one of course is two but it's exhale as I lift myself up. Inhale over and last one. Exhale, lift up and inhale over the leg. Lift five times. Exhale. Top leg is just parallel.

Two and three up top. Arm is reaching four and stay up. Five five ovals of the leg. One try to stay parallel to and energy through your head. Four and five, reverse it for five and one, two, three, four. Really using those hips and five. Now put the toe down in front.

Turned in slightly. Lift the thigh and the toe or heel goes down in the back. Turned out toes down in the front, heel down in the back. Inhale. Exhale, so you're working internal and external rotation of the Femur to work those glutes. One more. This pattern. Now reverse it, so bring it forward with the heel. You're turned out. Return it, turned in, bring it forward, turned out, return it turned Dan. You get it. Three more. Aim your leg a little further behind you. You'll feel your glutes more last one and center. Okay, let's move on to some swan work. So everyone just turn, pick your body up. Put your belly down.

Now the kind of Swan I want to start with is I'm a small one to mainly focus upper back extension, not so much lumbar at this point. So I'm going to move myself back. Lay my chest right over the front arch here. Hands can be used to be on the floor, on the mat. Legs extended behind on the balls of the feet.

But I want you to engage your legs. So right now, if you just went passive, your thighs might be resting on the edge, not feeling great. Engage your quadriceps, your hamstrings, your glutes and strong legs. Now as we take the upper body, look through your eyes, your nose, your chin, raise your chest, but keep your rib cage on that barrel. I'm going to actually think more about the top of my head. Going to the sky, kind of on a forward diagonal to the sky technically, and then coming down Mesa. So they're kind of tiny. Just five times. Eyes, nose, Chin, upper back.

Roll the collarbone back, roll the upper ribs back. Think posture and all the way over. Three more and again, yeah, left. Tried to feel long and supported in your lower back. Lots of abdominal scooping or at least pulled in. Bus. Two eyes, nose, chin, chest, shoulders and collar. Bone back. Legs are strong and down.

Last time [inaudible] getting that upper back. Ready for some balancing. So hands on the edge. Put your belly more. Ooh, that was a good one. Right over on top. And I want you for a second, just arms by your sides. Raise your legs a little, raise your chest. You're probably going to start feeling like you're tipping.

I want you to now flutter your, if you feel like you're going to dive down on your face, lift your legs a little higher, lift your chest a little higher. Start to take your arms to the t physician. Pause. I'm going to put my hands on the barrel. I know myself here. I'm going to scoot back a little bit because I want to be able to also do swimming with my arms in front, so you may have to adjust your body back. Find your sweet spot and then re paddle.

Try to look up a little bit across the pond. Four, three, two, one. Now rebend your knees. Let's see what we can do with our rocking guys. Bend your knees. Put your hands on the top of your feet. Now you will feel like you're all right on your, on your gut. That's okay. It's going to take a second to calibrate. I think.

Now I want to press my shins back. I want to press my feet in against my hands. Can track those hamstrings and glutes. Add duck the legs. I need to adjust my position because it's that formula. It's physics. You'll find your sweet spot. So play with it.

Ah, upper back weight, hamstrings, upper back. I got to get it there. There, there we go. Okay. Alright guys, let's finish it up by having a nice little child's pose. Just take your arms up over the corrector, take a few deep breaths. So that's a great little short workout. You can do your mat work on your corrector, can add that to regular math class home program, or do that before.

Reformer might feel kind of Nice. See you next time.