Movement and Flow

Hi everyone. I'm here to teach a what I'm thinking of it as a tower class. This also can be done on the Cadillac. Uh, I chose to do it though on the half Combo reformer in that we now have here at plenty's anytime and I have it just in the mat setting. So tower absolutely. The thing with if you do it on a tower, uh, what I have choreographed or planned for us is, um, that I use the middle I bolt. So you'd have to kind of fashion a way to hook your springs too in the middle I bolt but not nearly as high up as the regular wall unit. So I've seen some safety chains.

You can kind of make it in the middle and pull it down or Cadillac might just be the way or if you get inventive with your wall unit, let me know. But on the half Cadillac here, the wall unit, what we'll be doing mostly you'll need your long yellow springs for abdominals and arms. And I'm using this with the one of those large karabiners and that's being hooked in the middle. I bolt. Okay. Need that. And then we'll also need long purple springs for our legs. And I'm just going to hang those on the side for now.

A red spring for some pronouns, one and lastly, a moon box to stand on for standing leg work on here. This isn't necessary. I just like to have a little height so that my, I can get a little different work in my leg and sweeping to the side. Uh, and it's an additional balance work. Okay, so let's have some fun. I'm going to set this here for now and here we go. This class has quite a bit of a movement to it and flow. I hope a lot of good arm and leg and butt work.

I've been reading some of your requests. So let's see what you think about this. It feels good to me. All right, so I'm going to start about halfway back my sitting wounds on the backside of the middle of the mat. We'll play with that if we need to forward or back. But just take a nice inventory for a moment and sit up as tall as you can on your sitting bones. Legs are parallel together. Arms for me are just facing in, so a risk facing and slightly pull down on the springs and sit tall. So the pulling down on the springs enables me to get that opposition and lift up. You feel your shoulders come back slightly. Just take a nice deep inhale.

And here we go. Into just an easy roll back feeling some articulation going over each vertebra. Now when the shoulderblades hit the mat, open up through the chest, return coming forward. Inhale head and chest and exhale and continue the curve forward over the legs. Pull down on the arm springs as you sit tall, deep breath in and exhale.

Move the pelvis back away from the legs rolling over the sacrum through the lumbar shoulder and head coming forward. Let's feel this easy flow deep and an intercity abdominals. With each exhale, pulling yourself away from the springs, but yet still keep some energy toward the springs with your intention. Inhaling coming forward. Feel that nice fluid articulation of your back and sitting tall. Going down. One more time.

We'll be adding a little bit of arm work, which repeat several times here so you can kind of get used to the flow of the arms. So now I'm going to bend my elbows, palms face down and bend my elbows out wide. Trying to get the upper arms flush against the mat and straighten with control five times. Exhale, pull. Inhale, stretch. Exhale, elbows wide. Feeling the work in the back of the shoulders, biceps last upper body. There's your five now straight arms. Press down, lift, controlling the springs.

Also controlling the ribs they may want to pop. So do what you can to keep your back anchored and lift. And last one five so that those aren't pieces of repeat several times here. Rolling up. So moving right into that thought. Sitting tall, five times pull.

So I've got a little sense that my elbows are going down on a slight angle and back so tall up on your sit bones. It's okay to even to kind of pinch your glutes slightly. Exhale and pull. Get into your back muscles guys and pull. Let's go. Five presses a tricep lap. Exhale, so again, with this, with the springs hooked in the middle gives you a little different feedback of, of the line of pull.

It's quite nice I think for rather than on the side of the frame and five. Okay, now let's roll back again. Contract, bend your knees, come into a place where you're ready for some pelvic curl. I've got my fists right on my thighs. Shoulders are back. Take your breath. Now my feet are also wider than sitting bone with. I want to do that for a reason. So pressing up, inhale and exhale and rolling down.

Keep a good hold on those springs. Try not to let them shorten when you roll out of your pelvic curl, which we're going to do five of them and unroll, so keep the springs open, open, open, inhale level pelvis. Feel that tailbone roll under. Feel your spine moving. Fluids, breathe in. Exhale it. Unreal. Maybe even the outer shoulders are working to pull out slightly to hold the springs. Here's number five. Okay. The same arm movement. Float your arms a little bit, pull and release and pull.

Keep those hips up. Three and four and feeling your shoulders five should be getting kind of warm in there now and five press springs on the outside of the knees. Press. You don't have to go all the way to the mat guys, you'll feel it and four and five and then hands back to the thighs. Unroll your spine and roll the spine. Okay, now let's do some chest lift. Take an inhale through the nose level, pelvis. Exhale, head, neck, chest.

This is kind of Nice because the springs kind of pull us up. We can resist with those abdominals. Use them to come all the way back five times. Now my hands are why? They're just kind of being dragged up or drug up. The dragged up the length of my legs, they're wide, my collarbone is wide.

It's kind of Nice holding this springs from the outer shoulders core, the springs maybe allowing you to curl a little bit higher than your normal chest lift. Stretching those back muscles a little bit more than usual and now adding some rotation. So I'm going to come into the chest lift. I'm going to go your way. Now let this opposite arm kind of be pulled. What? By the spring. But then I'm resisting with my right oblique wall in a rotate. Really get that set pulse for eight one too. I'm really trying to avoid bending down on the right side of my waist.

Rather rotate and four. How's it feeling? Three, hopefully feeling two and one come all the way down through the middle and pause. Breathing. Chest lift begins. Let the opposite arm be kind of whisked away. Resist with your leftover leaks. Now where the opposite side, make sure you're not bending down on the side, but rather rotate. So the shoulder blade may go to a skim behind you there. Look out in the distance and eight little pulses and two some holding inward with my left. Oh bleaks as my right obliques are stretching. And six, seven, and eight.

Let's go all the way down in the middle and now we're going to alternate. Inhale, exhale up to the right and to the left. I'm almost letting this spring do it, but I'm resisting holding back with the inside side. Okay, we'll spice it up and go around the world. So I'm gonna Start on this side.

Now let both arms get picked up around and lower down. Same side lift. Hold your waistline back down. Two more lift. It's like a little free floating moment for a second there. And we'll go left side for four repetitions.

Rotate both arms across the center and down and left both arm. Make sure to keep the arm bones pulled back into their sockets. That may kind of be a challenge here. Getting those abdominals all the way around and center and then roll all the way up, all the way up, all the way up. And I want you to bring your legs together. Bring your hands closer together. In fact, you can interlace them so that there's one union here, one joined position. Okay knee, lean your knees to the right to get over onto your right hip.

Left butt is not touching the mat and then go to the center. Do that on the other side, but what I want you to pay attention to is that you shift. You don't go off the side of your frame, that's not it. You want to just rotate, try to stay within your frame of your equipment, so it's going to deepen your oblique movement or contraction and deepen your twist of your spine. Okay, let's do that four more times. I need to move back, so as I lean, I'm also picking up the opposite foot and center to the left. Pick up that right hip. Think Mat work, hip circles and lift and center. We're going to spice it up right now, so go back to the right side.

Now I'm going to go back on that right hip a little more up for eight little pulses, seven. My elbows are slightly bent so I can hook into my lefts and pull those lats around my obliques and seven and eight and stay back. Let's twist the other side actually come up because we did that twist now and go back to it. Ready and on and too little pulse and four and five and we're doing this right now with feet on the mat and let's come all the way up to the center. Try to add one more layer of challenge. Roll back, knees lift. Okay. Toe taps.

In the mats we have eight and seven and six. Try not to move forward and back. Just simply lower the toes. Five and four and three and two and upper body, little pulse and two. It's pretty tiny but deep kind of five and six. I'm barely moving and eight feet down heads. Okay.

Left other side. It's a rollback, slightly knees to the left. Exhale and hook into those abdominal stay there. Lower body tap and tap. So you kind of have to say how much do you give some of your body weight to the springs and how much do you have to pull on to stay in the position? It's an interesting sense.

Seven and eight legs say their upper body one and two, three. Boy, this rings feel good. Middle, middle, attached and seven and eight and let's find ourselves all the way up. Okay. Up on our knees. Turn around and he may have to replace your hands so that your, I don't want your springs crossed. So take a look now some biceps. I think we can probably handle coming pretty far out guys. So come out to knees maybe on the edge and have your arms lifted up behind you.

Shakes inventory real quick on your rib cage and your pelvis and your leg alignment. So bending your elbows. I want you to pull your knuckles just right to the sides of your hips and lift your arms and reach back. Let's do 10 of them. I think we're fine to do that. Exhale, pull, lift and release and try to Bicep curl without shrugging your shoulders up. I got myself five more exhale in and lift and in and lift. Last three abdominals, back, hip, hip flexors, long last two, biceps and biceps.

Okay, I want to move myself back a couple inches. I know it's coming that same. Uh, no, it's not arms. I'll be straight and flex the spine. So I'm thinking of bringing my tail to my head, my head to my tail, a little swoop in the arms and definitely control your return. Let's breathe in, slowing it down for five repetitions, trying to round out spine into c curve, deep abdominals and inhale, release.

Let your eyes follow your movement where the spine goes. Your eyes can also look deep, see curve. And last too. Last one. And we'll repeat this flection with one forward. So you go ahead and choose which leg you're going to step forward because we'll alternate anyway, but feel yourself stabilized with your back foot. Either Tuck on your toe if you need to or you can challenge it down here.

Take an inhale and exhale and round. So with one leg forward it probably will play with your sense of upright balance or at least side to side balance. All right, and exhale, three more. Four. This is for x here. Getting a probably a good quad stretch on your base leg and last time and some nice upper body changed sides. Okay. Knee, right above toe in the front side. Inhale tall. Here we go. Lumbar flection, spinal flection, arms dragging forward and release with control.

Using those hole bleaks to help flex the spine a little bit deeper and exhale for three. Yeah, trying to keep those hips as square as you can for. And last one, everybody. Five Paul and release. Okay, let's go to the first leg. Whichever one you had forward, bigger step forward. And I want you to come up into a larger lunch. Okay, so get established for a minute.

The back foot is a parallel front leg parallel and this glute should be contracted. I want you to have tone outside, but make jazz hands. Put your hands right by your shoulders. Okay. And get into the lunge here. And I want your back leg really straight. A few can deep lunge on the front. In fact, I need to walk it out because use the front leg to push yourself back up and lunge forward. I've got my arms in slight external rotation and Ben stretching the springs.

Control how you push back and press. Really dig into the mat with both feet and last one, press and return. Now I want you to change sides. Oh, I almost did it. Okay, so stepping forward, get into your lunge. We'll add on to that in a moment. Back leg. Nice and straight. Hips are square. Ready. Press back. Exhale one. Inhale two and lift up through your spine.

Three. Open the chest, four and five and then push back. Ooh, even better. I'm almost losing it, but I'm not. Hey, good. Okay. Now you may have to step back a step or so depending on where your, how you're feeling. Fatigue wise now and working with the spring. So same thing, arms and external rotation. But instead of being upright, let's pitch herself forward. Okay. Not Thrusting the ribs. Feel your pelvis. Nice and level. Chest is open. So start with an alternating arm movement.

I'm going to take the opposite arm forward to whatever leg is forward. Control it back. Other arm and back. First arm and yeah, three. Okay, so we're doing three sets each side. Here's the third one and three. Now both arms for three, one and two. Oh, this is fun. Three. Now take the opposite arm to leg. Reach out, forward and add spinal rotation. Okay.

Slowly come out of it, hand by the chest. Five Times. Exhale, spiral, spiral, spiral. How long can you get return? Three more. Exhale, spiral. If you have at any to look all the way back round to the back heel. That's kind of fun to check into the balance. Here's four last one. Five. We're staying out there.

Now I want you to raise the arm a little bit. Bend the elbow for tricep extensions. Five for [inaudible], three, two and one. Slowly hand in by the chest. Unwind and change sides. Here we go. Find that lunge hands by your chest instead of being upright.

Pitcher forward. Lift the sacrum up a little bit behind so it's not dragging down and the chest is lifted. Okay, as squares, you can be in your pelvis alternating arms. One. One we did three, two side pattern two. Where's that coming from? Well, my body, everything three and three. Now both arms for three different Hook into those obliques. Three. Now the inside hand, I held it right by my shoulder. Now add rotation, reach and spiral. Stretch the back leg from your hip. Control your return.

Here we go. Feel the longer nation head to tail. Three more feel the old leagues. Help twist you. This inside last working for me to hold me but also to help spiral. Last two and then last one. Now hold it. Raise your arm a little higher, not the shoulder, the arm and triceps one. I almost lost my balance.

That's why I had to pause to spot something. Three, squeeze the glutes for by Bend your elbow. It's safer. Come in and back. Holy Mackerel. I'm sweating. Okay, good. Now let's step back even further. You know I'm going to go almost to the back end. Let's go for some squats. We did lunges. Let's go for some squats.

Hold your shoulders for a second forward just to feel the contrast, how easy that is because the springs are doing them, but if we work our shoulders correctly, bringing the shoulder heads back, Munis, Stan, my feet slightly apart and I'm bending into that squat. Pelvis down the line with my size and straighten five times. Ben Trying to keep my back vertical. Shoulders over pelvis, dig the heels down. Four [inaudible] and five. I'm going to have a stay here and row the arms. Five, four you need your abdominals here. Go lower. Three, four and five. Stand all the way up, but stay back.

I don't want you to get pulled forward with the springs now. Feet together. Arms a little bit apart. Let's try one leg guy, so bend the knees. If you can go pretty low, please try. You can also just stay up here. I'm an extend one leg forward. Knees together a little bit higher. No, not my knees aren't together. My leg is hovered. Let's go one and two.

I'm going to try with a little round in my spine. Three I'm looking at my toe now. Four that's better. Five replaced the foot. Knees aren't together. That's too, that's not enough. Then your knees lift that other leg go up a little higher.

Now go down and up five times. Add a little forward flection. It may allow you to use those abdominals for better balance too. [inaudible] push the heel into the mat. Three, four, five. Got it down and left. Okay. I think we're done with these springs. The set.

So take off the yellow. Okay. All right guys, we're back. I'm back and I have switched out. We've taken away the arms springs, we've got the yellow or the, excuse me, the purple ones on. Now again, it's all the way up high on the purple. So you know it's Kinda heavy, but let's go on your back. I'm a pretty big fan of the arms being really straight here and pushing the heel of the hand into the steel and Aimee mantra heel to steel. I'm sure I've said it before, but heel to steel and it just helps, especially with what's gonna happen up here. All right, so stick your feet in. Try it with both at the same time. It's kind of fun. Yeah, relatively. Okay. Now that would be even more advanced if the springs were crossed. Maybe that's part two of this at a later date. All right, so I would love for us to start like this.

Hands pushing frog. Now pull down. It's going to feel hard because the springs are way up there and they're in the middle of the unit. Add duction add duction abduction. And those nice high hamstrings and right up until pelvic floor. Okay, so take a breath, push your arms, roll up your spine. As you extend that, you're beautiful, strong, long body into extension. Now I'm sticking. Come out of it. Pull in and articulate down. Okay, I think we can handle five of those and roll. Try to time it.

You're at the height of your bridge. By the time your legs are straight, you may as well look up to where the springs are attached and pull it in. Roll three more. Last two. And Wash. And in last one were staying up for awhile. Exhale. Okay, so the hips are up in the air. That usually means glutes, right?

So let's frog while we're up here for five. Now I find this a little harder to control my legs with the springs attached in the center versus on the outside. I like the challenge. Let me know what you think. Three. Push with the hands. Four, trying to drag the heels on the same line. Last one for five. Okay. Open, closed for five.

Don't go too crazy on the width the guys pull in. You'll see open and then I'm going to flex the feet and then it helped me feel my seat. [inaudible] I'm doing some Ryman games now. Let's Cross for eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight together. Pause again. One, two, four, five, six, seven, eight. Together. Pause. Two more sets. One, two, inner thigh, six, seven, eight. M, pause. Last set. One, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. M. Pause. Little circles, little, little. I'm going five, four, and five.

We've got the other way. Five, four, three, two, one. Let's roll down. Take a little spinal break. Little glute break. Round two with some diamond work. Okay, so breathe in. Push with the arms. Roll. Extend. Now diamond. Okay. With diamond, if you don't ha can't get your the balls of feet together, you're in luck. I want you to flex your feet. Today is going to tap you more into the seat. Okay, now tap the heels.

[inaudible] elongate the diamond a little bit. Okay. And just holding there. I did about 10 now lower one leg, lower the other leg, lower and lower. Let's do four more with bent legs. And we're in gonna go back up to straight legs like a scissor, none. We're going to come back to bent. Okay, here, straighten straight legs. Power with the glutes, power with the glutes. Three for you, pushing with the hands. Five, six, seven and eight.

I'm going to go back to the diamond legs and try to get that heel down. That would be the [inaudible] pull, pull, pull, pull and pull that through. That's plenty. That was eight. Let's roll out of it an arrest. Okay. Feel free to do more reps if you'd like to. I think that's plenty for us. Take your feet out. All right, so let's go onto the moon box now. You'll need that and placing it up on top of the mat and where to put it.

That question may arise. Well, I can't really tell you specifically because it will have a lot to do with your control and strength, possibly your height. So as you can see, I've got minus about maybe a foot and a half of my own feet away. Let's see what that provides. Okay. And I want to have it in this configuration rather than turn the other way for two reasons. The first one is you take one in the springs and step your foot in. I'm facing you. This is going to be hip ab duction, so standing up on your box and I want to stand near the back of the box and more to this side of the box. All right, hand is forward of our shoulders. We can have a good line of scaption there and then the leg is to the side.

So this is what I mean. I didn't want my feet completely together because I like to go have a little bit of dipping the space underneath here if you will. So flexing the feet, really lift tall, be very easy to sink down into that standing leg. We know better and we're doing brushed to the side. Okay, let's do Tim's. So we can do to really zip up and stand three. You don't have to go too high. Remember not about hiking the hiphop, it's about lengthening down and moving out.

So we've got six feeling right in glute medius both hips. Really and eight and nine and 10. Okay. Now I am gonna stand in a little Pele's V and I want to soften my foot and reach it to the diagonal or that corner of the box and make a little quarter circle to flexing the foot might feel better. Three it does. It gets me in the seat. Five, six you're kind of on the diagonal.

Seven and eight. Let's go to 10, nine and 10 same leg, other way, one, control the circle. Three lift up and four and five and six and seven. Feel free to challenge your balance. [inaudible] [inaudible] nine and 10 and leg goes in. Okay. Now I'm going to face the tower and do more hip extensions.

You can have both hands up points your toe now or flex play with that and then move the leg back and forward and back. Please don't go too far. I don't want it to go so far that you get your low back isle gripped. Stay low and really concentrate on your glutes. All right, and five and six bellies up. Seven, eight, nine and 10 little circles.

10 they're outward. Three four and five. Stand tall on the leg that you're on. Seven, eight, nine and 10 other way. One and two. Three and four glutes and six seven, eight and nine last one 10. Okay. You get to do the other leg is like I do, so I'm facing away.

Sorry y'all put your foot in. Okay, so we started in parallel back near the back edge of the box. Hand forward really lift halls so you're not compressing down on your low back or the sacrum. We press out to trying to keep your hips as level as you can. Three right in the side here for five. The leg you're standing on, you may want to bias your weight distribution to inside edge foot and nine 10 okay. Turning out leg forward on the diagonal flex foot, little circle and two and three. Lift up. Five six an eight, nine and 10 reverse in one.

Keep a tiny thing. Thigh circle, Lee conditioning into the hip joint that all those muscles up at the top of the leg. Nine and 10 okay. Facing the tower. Here we go. Little movement back one. When we're lift up. Before you move the leg lift to move for Lyft five you may even have to shift your weight forward a little bit on your standing leg and eight nine holding 10 little circles. Either way, do accent in. Pool the leg in five, six, seven, eight, nine last one. Now other way out and in, out and in three, four, five, six.

How are you feeling guys? Seven and eight. Nine and 10. Oh my, I have shaky legs. That's great. All right. I want to unclip the purple springs. We don't need them any more so we can take those down and we're going to move into some swan prone of course.

Alright, and also moon box away. Let me just take these off for a moment. We're kind of winding the nearest stretch, the winding down part guy. So put that red spring up. Now depending on how your low back feels, you may choose to keep the legs narrow or open a little bit. Either one is fine for me. I kind of like a little wider first ones here.

So check it out for where you are right now. Place your hands on the bar. Try to pull the bar out. Where's your weight distribution on your pelvis? And once you're really on your pubic bone and hips and lift that stomach. So straight arms. First I want you to look forward with your eyes, your nose, your chin, your chest, and pull your arm bones back. No higher with your ribs and down. Let's do three total like that.

Eyes, nose, Chin and chest. Really trying to accentuate your upper back, not the low back right now. Last one there. That's a fairly small movement. Kind of difficult sometimes to get into those upper back extensors. Okay, now we can go bigger and we're going to bend the elbows. Ha. Feel the work in the shoulders. Lift the body, extend your arms above you and let the bar pick you up. Look up to it.

Look, bring your body down, bend your elbows, feel your strong back. Two more times. I'm still imagining lingam pulling the bar apart. I like to feel my head touch the bar. I like to let the arms go and my spine follows like I've got a string from my head. To the push through bar, but I go beyond that beyond and look, stretching the abdominals and then coming down. One more time and Ben, find the flow.

Let's bend our legs and just tried to touch her head with their toes. Not there yet. I've got a ways to go and coming down. Okay, one more exercise. Everybody safely come up and sit on down. Gave you a little foreshadow right there. I want you to put yourself down.

Hold on strong with your arms, toes up against the frame. Your push shoulders or press back. Let's take a little take a breath, pelvic curl. Use The glutes. Now push your feet into the bar. Pull your hands on the bar and lift yourself up. Lift the sternum. You just did your swans. You're ready to do this one. From standing. Bend the knees.

I want to roll down my spine. Put my neck down, my upper back, my ribs, my low back, and my pelvis. I'm going to do it again, but instead of pelvic curl to start, I'm just going to go right to the leaning piece. Take a breath and pull yourself up. Heel, strong, feet and arms. Now lift. Feel the feet strong. Glutes are squeezing. Tried to tip the top of the head and now roll a nice sense of undulation. I'm going one more time through joining me. Pleased. Inhale and exhale.

Nice diagonal line and lift and left. Yeah, lift there. I got it. We're going to finish class with a forward push through cause that back bending. We may want to do the opposite. So Push, bend your elbows, pull the bar down. You'll a beautiful stretch. Take it.

Take advantage of being able to go through this space here. Be careful if you get what you need. Let's take three breaths together, so have fun with that workout. Spice it up on your own. Add a few more reps, delete a few if you'd like, you know, have some fun. Let me know. Thanks a lot guys. See you next time.