Wunda Chair Basics

Christy and I are going to play on the chair today. And we talked about how I think oftentimes when we think of the chair, we think of all, all the acrobatic stuff that you can do on the chair and all the really, really hard things that, that people are attempted to do on the chair. And I liked the idea of, of using the chair in its simplicity of using it in just in terms of like the exercises where you wouldn't really have to dig deep and to stabilize instead of, um, instead of the exercises that are more challenging. Choreographically so we're gonna do a fairly basic, um, workout on the chair today. I hope you have fun. We will. We will. Okay. So I want us to stand just in front of our chairs.

Okay. And let's just start just finding the alignment in the body. So feel the knees over the ankles, the pelvis over the knees, the shoulders over the pelvis, the head up above the shoulders, and then reach it down with the arms, palms face forward, and then start to bring the arms out to the sides and up. So you're just circling the arms out to the sides and up a gathering energy. Maybe you don't have a lot of energy right now, but we're gonna gather some or we're gonna press through the heels of the hands.

Push that walls away from you. So reach out. Feel the stretch across the front of the body. A stretch across the chest, the stretch to the the forums. One more time, Kristi reached the arms out and up. Lift the spine. Let's actually look up at the hands without bending the back too much. It might change a little bit and then push through the heels of the hands. Reach Away with the arms. And then from there, taking a breath in.

Exhale, get the heels of the hands ready to collect the pedal. We're going to roll to the chair. So roll to the chair, bring the the heels of the hands on the pedal. Tip the head end so the heads nice and clear of the chair in. Now inhale, press the pedal down towards the floor. I neglected to mention that we have just one spring onwards connected one on the top notch, one on four, and as we exhale we're going to draw in curling the spine. So bringing the pedal about halfway up and then inhale, pressing it back down again.

So the whole time we're trying to maintain our flection and as we're reaching up, feeling the pelvis tip forward, really maximizing the flection of the spine in here. The pedal goes down so the pedal lifts up. Let's do one more inhale. The pedal goes down. [inaudible] XL, the pedal lifts that bring the springs all the way to the top. This time, let the hands go. Roll up all the way to standing, letting your arms lift up near your ear. Can, did you come up onto your feet either way out to the side or just straight up?

Press the arms open. Reach for the pedal. Exhale to round down. So we're going to do that one more time. The exact same way. Hands. Find the pedal. Inhale, press the pedal to the floor and exhale. Corolla. Yeah, and he'll press the pedal to the floor. Lifting up in the abdominal even as we're in. And then exhale, curl one more like that in here, and exhale, curl, and then feel that there's no change in the pressure. As you leave the pedal roll up. I'm bringing my arms straight up to my ears.

As I stand up, we're going to bring the arms around to the signs. We're going to bring the arms forward. There's a, this is a little bit challenging. We're going down one more time, so finding the pedal. Be careful with it. This one we're gonna press down. So I said simple. I didn't necessarily mean totally easy. We're going to go all the way done with the pedal. Now as you exhale, instead of lifting in the spine, try to lift the heels, lifting up through the center of the body. Inhale, place the heels down and exhale. Pull halfway up with the spine.

Inhale, take the spine down. [inaudible]. Exhale, lift the heels. Stabilize. I am trying to, I feel like I'm trying to pull the chair towards me. That helps me in. Inhale heels down and exhale halfway up. We'll just do one more and he'll take the pedal down. XL, lift the heels. Woo.

Well, tippy down here and then take the hills down there. We're going to roll up all the way when the springs like go come up all the way to standing. You can just let the arms finish down by the sides of the body. Hmm. Okay. And then just coming in, sitting sideways on the chair. Do you want to say right at the very end? I happened to have a moon box here.

We're going to use that a little bit later. I'm going to stand on it, Chrissy. It doesn't matter where your Zizi. Um, if it's there, awesome. It is. Okay. So we're sitting up nice and tall and I just want you to reach your arms forward. Take a breath in. Exhale, start to roll down. There'll be a point in my, in my, um, what situation? The life body where your feet are going to have to lift up from the moon box.

Okay. So you're just tipping backwards. When the feet need to leave the moon box, they will and just bring your knees into your body. Yeah. Okay. Okay, so I'm organized, so my shoulders, I'm going to scoot a little forward. Basically, I want us to be where our shoulder blades are right at the edge of the chair, and then just let the knees go straight up from the pelvis and bring your hands behind your head. Low legs, or just the lower legs are relaxed.

We're going to inhale, take the body over the top of the chair and exhale to Curl Baca. Let's get a teeny bit more forward in. He'll the body over the back of the chair and exos a curl up. We're just going to do five. It's getting nice and warm in here. Sometimes you don't need to do a lot of repetitions to warm the body up really well. You just have to work deep and think deep. Two more. Inhale and Lis. Yeah, one more in here and lift.

Okay, so this my single leg stretch variation here. Take a hold of the backs of the legs and just hang. Find a nice high lift. I'm not going to take the legs out straight and we're not going to bring them to tabletop. He owns back behind the head. I just want you to let one of your legs drift away from you. Yeah, it's going straight down towards the floor and then pull back. The other leg goes away and pull back.

So as you're picking the leg back up from where? At when it's lowered, you want to think about it being sticky on the floor. You're pulling it up from a sticky place. Inhale down, exhale up. One more time through. Inhale down x so it doesn't look like much, but it's not easy. I feel it a lot. That's why right now we're going to both of us take our hands behind our legs and give ourselves a small break and do the double leg stretch now. So it's the same thing. The legs don't the, the angle from the need of the Femur doesn't change or the from the lower leg to the upper leg doesn't change.

We just let the legs drift away and now you just go to where you can and I'm trusting that you'll organize around your own ability, your own stabilization. We're going to do five inhale down and I'm not just talking you Christie, your stabilization. I want everyone to think about where the spine is stable and still and keep it that way. As the legs move through, space lasts too. And back one more and back. Hands behind this size. Curling Chris Cross is the same thing as the single leg.

The leg will just drift towards the floor. We'll be rotating towards the up leg. So when you're ready, hands behind the head. Take the left leg, just let it drift towards the floor as you twist to your right. And then center, we're going to stop center in between. We're going to do three of these. Reach across and to, so that's one. Reach over. Elbows wide had heavy in the hands and back and over and back too.

Sometimes the most simple is the very most challenging. I'm finding this very hard. Last one, Krissy, we're done. We come back to the center, take the legs, just lift a little higher, do a little rock. Careful that you don't rock yourself off your chair. We are gonna rock herself. Cool. Yeah, that and you want to take over for footwork? Yeah. So let's put some spring on.

I'll keep the one that's there and add one to that. What the third are you calling it too or I'm calling if a wish. We have four choices. I'm calling the top one four and the third one in the next one. Three, two, one. Okay, so one from the top is what I'm adding or what Mary's referring to as three and we, so we have two springs on now, four and three. All right.

Have a seat right on top and narrowed to the front. But also, you know, not so far forward that you're going to fall but that you feel tall. I'm in heels parallel about sitz bones. Distance apart, sitting really tall and just sort of pushed down a little. And if you feel like you're getting ejected back, it's probably means you're not far enough forward. All right. Arms out to the side. We'll rotate the arms open and just keep them there. Nothing fancy. Let's press down, but as you do grow taller in the spine one, I'm going to go a tiny bit quicker than I normally to and pull up as well.

Here's three. I'm aiming for 10 little help would be nice. There's four and up. Here's five. Working both directions. Five more, even slightly quicker. One and two pull. Three. Find the connection to your upper back. Four and one more time. Sorry, go down and stay down my fault. Try to pin it to the ground as you make your switch for fun and I mine wobbled next time it won't. At least that's my goal.

Lifting up heels are high now they're going to stay high. Press down one. Pull up to stillness in the body and up. Objecting me today. My pants must be liberated, is heavy. Here's four. I think you're right and five and the next five only slightly quicker, but it's just to push you a little one. Pull up to pull up.

Three pull up. Four pull up. Hold it down. Swivel. So the heels touch each other. If you're getting ejected, you got to move forward and we lift and we press hoo and tuned. Sometimes I have to think of the legs initiating higher up. It's imagination depending on how you look at the body actually. Okay, here's five I believe. Yeah, and a little quicker and press one pull up to pull up three. Here's four and five. You feel the burn yet. Keep it down. Go back to parallel lifted so that your knees are in line with your hip so it's floating in no man's land and do whatever you want with the arms.

We're going to keep them out for now. Flex your feet, but don't move the side bone from where it started. Point the feet, but don't move the sigh. If you're not sure you put your hands here. Sometimes it's hard to figure it out. Flex point, flex point, whose I did with this crazy, I think I said I was sore and that was earlier, but it is some good work and I'm trying not to roll my heels to each other when I go into flex or a point from that meadows do you five more quicker. One flex to three feel your quad. That's okay. That's sorry to feel that. But that is enough of that. Let it up for a moment. Okay, go heels wide. I said I want to do one more and then on this one with the arms either let's say hip palms face four I want to rotate jasmine, jasmine, I wouldn't know.

I didn't get any. Do that one. So you're going to press down and rotate to the right. Bring it back to the left center. I am telling that like you Jaffe now you want to do jasmine? Well you can sing and like lean back a tiny bit on your yup. And let's go a little quicker for five oh one and center and two.

And of course there are, maybe not of course, but you're trying to keep the weight in the heels. Even even as you rotate as a four for four, we had to do six will have to do six. Here it comes and release. Let's grab some maths. So we bought our maths. Now in Wa we lightened our spring.

So now we have one spring of on three on a balanced body. Um, it's a light spring. One spring of any description is going to be good light to medium spring, fairly light. So then we're just going to come down onto the floor, sit down securely through the chair, and then take your hands and bring your hands up onto the pedal. So we're going to bend the elbows wide and as you elbows bend wide, show that your body is lifting. You're pressing the bar down and pulling your body up simultaneously. As you straighten your arms, begin to round the spine and then roll back articulating through the spine.

You're going to reach the arms back. Inhale, bring the head, chest and arms up. Arms reach right to the size. XO Curl. Stay round as you come to the chair and then bend the elbows wide. Feel that you're trying to pull the elbows apart as you stack your body back up. Inhale and let this a bar go. Exhale, round and roll back. Arms reach up and back.

Inhale, bring the head and chest up. Exhale, curl. I really like this movement because it feel like when you get that nice piece of back extension in the middle of your flection in the middle of your abdominal work, inhale, bring the arms up around the spy. Exhale, roll that, keeping the knees aligned, keeping the legs together. Reach the arms. Inhale, lift the head chest, and our exhale. Curl hands. Come to the pedal, bend, elbows wide and lift the back. We're just going to do one more round the spine. Let the pedal go.

Let the arms lift, roll reach back. Inhale, bring the head Chesten arms up. Exhale, roll up, hands on the pedal, bend the elbows and lift the spine. Pressing down. Just hold here, feeling that Nice upright position and then take the pedal. So scoot a little forward so that the feet can come right onto the edge of the chair for the seated pike. And when your arch is new, you have to move the pedal out of the way. So the pedals already being depressed here.

So keeping the shoulders over the pelvis around the spine, get into a nice deep curve and then draw deeply and feel the abdominals tuck back against the spine. And then as you press the pedal down, feel that their abdominals just deepen so there's not a lot of movement. Exhale to press the pedal down and inhale to lift back up. But just holding the body in this held position here is challenging and using, pressing down with the arms without letting the abdominals pooch is the biggest challenge of them all. As their arms pressed down, feel the spine reaching up and over. We'll just do two more. Feel this reaching up and over drawing deeply last time, press down and then lift the pedal up. Lean back a little bit, lifts the legs. You can rest your legs on your pedal.

They'll just come off the chair and then roll the spine down. Reach the arms back or we'll do one full teaser. Lift the head and chest back up. Can You keep this feet? The, the, the lower legs just still on that pedal. It's right up. Reach for your toes off to round a little to get there and then roll all the way back down onto the mat and bring your head down and then we can bring the feet down. And I think Chris is gonna take over from here. Okay. So then I'm, I'm just, I had you can adjustment for my shoulder cause that was a smart thing for me to do. So I'm back on the three that we both were a moment ago.

Putting your feet on the bar and I'm, I'm basically midfoot again. I think that's maybe where you cute it earlier too. From here. Just doing a pelvic curl. Well do it this way first. Draw the bar down without doing the pelvic curls. So more hamstring first try to get it all the way to the floor.

And if it's really crowded, that's sort of your indicator to back up, but just barely don't get crazy. And then with control, let the bar back up almost to freeing the tension on the spring. But before you do bring it down again. Exhaling. And so an act of stability here, trying to work the legs equally, back up, inhaling up, exhaling down is what I am doing, but trying to kind of feel that connection to the hamstring to the rest of the body and how you don't need to muscle it. And if you, if you rely on just the hamstrings, that's great. It'll be challenging. But the stability of the rest of the body is key. So on the next one, take it to the floor, hold it to the floor, make sure your fetus secure on it. And then inhale whenever you can. Exhale, roll the pelvis up, keep the pedal down, pelvis up, pedal down.

Imagine reaching the knees over to the chair without splaying at the feet. Inhale, exhale, bring it all down. I'm going to do a couple of these, but let's let the bar go up in between, so control at the pedal, come off the ground, inhale, exhale, bring it all the way down and keep back sailing as you roll up bar on the ground. Pelvises rising up, still working those hamstrings. Inhale, exhale, bringing it down, making sure the shoulders don't get pitched forward. If you can start letting the bar up while you're exhaling and then when it's time to inhale, do take it down. Exhale, pin it down, rolling up, step onto your feet, step onto your bar. Inhale, exhale.

Bring it down as if you're pulling your hips to that pedal and let the pedal all the way up. This time, this time we're not going to move the bar. We're going to try our best just to keep it there. We're also not going to push the chair away from us, but we are doing that pelvic curl. Exhale. When it's time to roll your pelvis up, up, up, up, use the arms like the kickstand. They are. Find the long line. Inhale, exhale, bring it down. Bar should still be up there at the top and release the pelvis.

You could challenge us by bringing it halfway and not letting it move. I'm not going to, but that's a fun thing to do some days. Excellent. Well I'm not in that kind of mood, but you could be and it works just as well. Yeah, so Mary's given it a go I think. And the idea is that it doesn't move even as you go.

Come down or up and everybody take it down. Yeah. How about do one more if you want to that way, but then we're going to take the bar off and leave it up. Here we go. Last one, like whichever you've chosen, peel up fine. I'll tell you what. If you're at the halfway point, just bring the bar up from there. Great. Take your right knee off from there. Just extended long. That leg is straight. Try to pull the bar down. Oh, just try, but don't move your hips. And again, hamstring, right.

Pull it down and lift. Keep that right hip in line three and hold it there. Kick that right leg to the chair down. Flex and bringing up three one down, two up. And here's three. Returned the light to the bar and right away let's just roll halfway down so we can readjust if we need to. You can feel the low curve in the back. Take it right back up until the long line in the front of the body.

Left knee off first. Make sure the hip stay lift. Can you push into the right leg more? Extend the left leg. And now the three hamstring curls. Go on. I swear I'm doing it. Not going to see it, but I swear you could feel it. You'd know. And here's three already. And now kick the leg down. One flex up.

Here's two up three for, turn the leg and roll down. Down, down. That was a really mean kind of good. No, let's do the hip over. Now let's bring the feet to the top of the chair. Then you're going to press the pedal all the way down to start. So organizing the feet so that the bottoms of the feet are together. Yeah, and then finding a neutral alignment in the pelvis as you anyhow.

Let this pedal go about halfway up and then don't press the pedal down with the feet. Instead, engage the external rotators of the hip and feel that you're trying to push the knees down. Push the knees wider so we get a little stretch. It's not a hamstring stretch, but at least it's something in, he'll still lift up and exhale the knees open so you're not leading with your feet, you're leading with your knees. Then the feet follow what you should feel actually is quite a lot of glute work in a stretch through the front of the, of the inside of the leg. Rather. We'll just do three more pressing. Yeah. What does it mean when it's just shaking uncontrollably? Fees.

You're doing it right. Oh good. It's like who's in there? Hmm. This is a really nice exercise, I think to really find the glutes in a deep way. You just have to look for him. Okay. And then let's bring the pedal all the way back up unless there's something else you want to do.

I think we're done being on our back. Yep. Let's do side and back. Yeah. Oh, the arms. Okay. So let's just stick the feet on the chair again to roll up. We'll roll up through the teaser just because I'm bringing the arms up over the shoulders. Lift the head and just roll up all the way. Lift the length and then swivel around and bring the feet to the floor. So we leave the maths. Yeah, just grab, there's, we have a moon box. We mentioned that earlier. Um, so I like to use a heavier spring for this exercise. Chris, he's got a shoulder injury so she might stay fairly light. I don't, it's fine either way. I think I'm going to go, I'm going to go to two.

So two springs on the second rung from the bottom. I'll do one at four, one of today. So you know, you can do, you can do this on a light spring. You can do this on a heavy sprang. It's, it's really up to you. So we're going to do is we're going to sit right on the box boxes, place just in front of the chair, sit right down. And then the one thing that you do need to be careful about if you have put that heavy spring on is that um, when you first initially pushed the pedal down that, that you don't hurt yourself. Okay? So the hands are on the, on the pedal were lifted through the spy. What I want us to do, we're just gonna do shrug. So we're going to allow the pedal, allow the weight of the springs to passively allow the shoulders up, and then from the back of the body we press the pedal back down and lift the spine. So the gray place a feel shoulder awareness, allowing the shoulders to passively lift, pressing the pedal down and lifting the spine. So when the shoulders are lifting, don't allow them to go forward or back.

Just allow them to gravitate straight up or it's, and then push down on the springs. We'll just do three more. Inhale lifting. So the muscles that you're using to push the springs down or the muscles that are right under your shoulder blades or your lats and press down. You're not squeezing your shoulder blades together. You're keeping them broad. On the back. Last one. So once you press down, hold, hold the shoulder blades down and bend your arms. So this is where the heavier spring is a little more challenging.

It takes us into a stretch and we press down. Let's do 10 Ben, slow shoulder stabilizers and press the Nice tricep exercise. Also a nice practice and keeping the shoulders in a good alignment. So here's number five that we're going to do our second five a little faster. Keep good shoulder mechanics and go press five. Feel that you're pumping the spine up like a bicycle pump, pumping up a tire.

Last one and then carefully bring this spring back. I'm leaning into it a little bit and push yourself up. Yeah, great. Yeah, sides. Okay. So we'll just get the moon box out of the way. I actually, if you're a shorter like me, you may, if you have one of these or if you have something you were using, you might want to put your foot on it just so you have an easier time of things. But if you don't that's okay. I'm just going to get this out of the way.

Cause I have a feeling I'm going to pull this away from you touch. So I still have the one spring and top from the artwork I did. We'll have to have Mary go down to one spring, either a three or a four. Either one. It's not really meant to, if anything, it's supporting us a little bit that spring. So if you want less support, lighten it up. All right, so we're sitting sideways and we're not fully upright like it can be done.

We're more on the side of our head and this is where I could maybe benefit from having an elevated foot, but I'm just going to leave well enough alone. Alright, you're directly to the side. Take your hand somewhere around the middle of the bar, other arm up to your ear, pressure, head back into it. I don't think there's anything wrong with holding this with the foot. In fact, it allows me to anchor a little bit better and that was sort of the theme. So we're going to just link thin out and down. So although I am going down, the intent in my spirit and spine is going that way long and up.

We don't have to get vertical. Inhale, press down. [inaudible] really reaching, being careful not to let the shoulders sort of do all the work or the arm and up and through [inaudible] allowing that breath relief. Flare the ribs toward the ceiling, not to the front so much and up two more here. Trying to stay as if you're in between two plates of glass. Maybe you'll get a little further chart. Try to keep your foot still wherever you left it.

Just going to do one more here. Stay there, stretch the top arm over reaching it long. I was hoping you would, you were hoping, I usually try to find the GC parts on I ah, and then go ahead and rotate. Come up a little bit. If you're way far down and rotate, align at hand just to go to the pedal but so that you have some sense of being able to push on the pedal, reach the foot, find the rotation in the spine and then come back to the side. Just open the arm up. You don't have to go down again and lift up. It's okay. Can we go this way? We can. We can up and over. I want to go like that.

I want to hold the sign again, trying to flare the ribs with the breath. Sometimes that's the easiest way to feel that kind of bony movement and other side it's just flip round. Oh look, that's nice. Again, it was a little bit on the side of your hip. Find the middle of your bar by side, bending directly over it. It's worth looking at what the hips do and what the foot wants to do as well. Hand behind your head, shoulder, just gently in place. We emailed to go down, let the ribs open. Almost like a fan. Exhale, bring it up and two [inaudible] and I'm trying to keep the the head in line so it will change a little bit but only because the spine does and two to go here.

Down this time we went down and we held it. Check that you haven't let the shoulder either one creep up and then that top arm reaches out. It can even reach somewhat down if that feels good to you. But find that undercurrent of the lower ribs pushing into the upper ribs. Breathe into that with that inhale and let it expand further if it, if it does and then maybe you'll have to raise up the pedal a little. As you rotate to put both hands on it or near it. It's again, you want to feel supported.

I like the sense of staying curved but almost reaching out long and extension, almost praising. Feel that sort of a rapping expansion of the ribs rather than just the top side. Reopen it when it feels at the right time to do that. And come on [inaudible] let's do some back. Yeah. All right. The opposite side ever got, how could I forget? Ah, no. [inaudible] let's just, um, come down. I think your chairs are going to be fine. Um, put your body, we're gonna keep the feet on the floor, so the trunk, the body, your body goes on top of the chair. Put Your hands on the pedal, stretching your arms and then I've got my toes tucked under and we can straighten the legs or you can just keep your knees bent.

I'm choosing the tucked under toe cause that's something that I'm working on. Okay, so feeling that we are starting in a neutral spine neutral alignment in the spine and then let the head lift feel that you're pressing back against the pedal as you start letting the upper spine rise and pausing when you're just like maybe right below the rims. I like this version a lot because I feel like when the legs are straight out, there's a tendency to just hinge from the lower back or let the springs and let the lower back hinge in here. You could feel almost as though you're trying to peel you the front of your body away from the chair without actually lifting up much higher than the ribs to sit. Nice, strong, simple, beautiful back exercise in my opinion. So allowing the in the head to lift that breastbone to be pulled forward in spaces. The arms press back.

Let's hold our upper extension and bend the elbows wide and stretch one. We'll do three Ben wide. Stretch the bar apart and press two. Then what? Stretch the bar and press and then allowing the spine to lower down and then reaching out through the head and the chest, sliding the spine out, Anna. Then press one bend, press two, Bend, press three and then allow the weight of the body to press the springs back down. So let your knees bend to the bend if they're not already bent and let the springs come up. Put your hands on the chair and just stand up.

We're going to finish this unless Kristi has, um, any objections with just some standing pike river. So standing tall right behind the chair. Exhale to bring the hands to the pedal. So we started with a regular standing pike and this is just different cause we get a little of back xn soylent. Want us to press the back out long draw the abdominals in and up towards the spine. Really flatten out the backs. We get that hamstrings finally get to stretch and then curl the spine back in.

Pressing down on the pedal as you dig deep upwards into the spine. And then allowing the tailbone to lift your reach out. Just just grazes the front of the chair and then try to tip the abdominals up even more. And then around as you round, you could push backwards towards your thighs against the pedal. And we'll do two more reaching out. Just letting the spine have a little bit of mobility work.

Also stability work of the shoulders. And then one more recheck round back in. Let the hands come away from the pedal and just start to roll yourself onto your feet. Bring your arms up with your body near your ears. We will reach Ah, taller than we were before, and then allow the arms to just softly come back to the body. Nice and simple. Not Easy, but simple. Take it. Thank you.