Athletic Wunda Chair

Hi everyone. Welcome. I'm here with the one and only p dog, Porsche Paige, my partner in crime. I'm Erica Quest III dog and I'm here to teach you an express chair workout. We're going to move fast, we're going to have fun, we're going to get it all covered. So what you need if you have them is a late pair of hand weights.

Totally optional. If you want to grab a couple of cans of food or a couple of water bottles, that's totally fine too. Uh, we are going to be moving in between having the pedals split and also not having the pedals splits. So I will coach you through all of that. And we are going to begin just to heat up the legs and begin with some like in foot work. We also have a small box here for some shrugs and some tricep press coming later on down. So if you have something to elevate, you have that handy as well. All right, you ready? Okay, here's your hand weights.

So I want you to sit up nice and tall on your chair. Make sure your sitting bones are quite far forward on the chair that you're using and bring your heels up onto that foot pedal. We want them about parallel hip distance apart, the pedal if you can as split. And we want to try and keep that sense of levelness with the pedal as we begin with some footwork. So arms are down, backs the hands, face forward, sit up nice and tall, feel like I'm holding onto your ribs and pulling you upwards in there. Just lightly sitting on top of your waistline. As you exhale, press that pedal down and reach forward strongly with your arms. Good.

And then inhale return. So as you're doing these, you want to Kate, keep a nice pace here and just really feel the legs begin to heat up here. We'll do about 10 in each position. Last three, slow these down a little bit so you can feel the full ride of the springs. Now hold forward isometrically with the arms so the arms go forward, the legs stay where they're at for a moment and then that right foot pushes the pedal down to the base of the chair. And back up. Then the left foot goes. So you're alternating from side to side. And if you don't have a split pedal chair, that's fine.

Just do some pulses with us here. It's no problem at all. So really working those arms here, really trying to stretch them forward and controlling each and every depression of that pedal from side to side. So keeping the tension in the springs here now good. We're going to do two more and one lower the arms and lift the legs while you switch onto your toes please. So you're gonna bring the toes onto that pedal and you might need to wiggle them back a little bit. There's a sweet spot for everybody.

So just find that and find what works for you and then present your arms forward and reach the palms of the hands up to the ceiling. Find a nice stability through your ankles here as you press down through the big toe and the toe right next to it. And give me a bicep curl. Yeah, I could. So hinges from the biceps and keeping a nice decent pace here to really feel the excursion of the springs. You want to get the full tension of the springs and the ride on the way down as well as on the way up. Good. And three more times and two.

Now again, you're gonna hold that nice strong isometric bicep curl and begin that pressure down of one pedal and the other pedal down and up. Good. So you're really feeling that individual unilateral work and that intensity coming from side to side here while always maintaining that tension in the springs. Good. Two more and last one. Good. And relax the arms down. Third and final position of those legs, because this is an express workout is as external rotation from the hip. I like to call this a little pizza slice with the feet, right? It's not a New York pizza slice. It's a nice small pizza slice.

Connect those heels and now we're going to challenge your arms differently by reaching one arm forward in the other arm back as you press the pedal down. Good. Putting pressure into those heels is gonna really help you gain access to the inner thighs here. So don't forget to do that. Two more and one now, reach your arms forward, hold them strong, unhook the heels just a tiny bit and do that split pedal. Piking if you have a split pedal, again, if you don't, you can just take these into some little pulses here.

Maintaining the control at all times is critical here. Five for help or about even two and one good. Lower the arms. Lift the pedal. I will take your hand weights from you, Portia. And we're going to go ahead and transition staying with a split pedal if you have it into some piking. So you'll turn around, face your chair and we're gonna stay on the weight that we are set for for footwork. So you want to have one on three and the other on three or the second one down from the top on this particular chair and the hands come to the wider parts of the the chair. Rise up onto your toes, elevate those heels, drop the headway, drop the tail weight and really round the spine to the ceiling.

Inhale lower just to where the pedal hovers and exhale to really lift and drive up with the deep layer of abs here, pulling up. Good. Really focus on control here and the quality of the movement cause we definitely are doing a hundred of these. Just kidding. Last one, stay up here and begin your running. Bend right knee and switch and switch. Really keeping that intensity here. Drive the knee in towards the chest. Good. This should be heating you up now. Six, five, four, good. Three, two and lower.

Give your wrists arrest. Shake them out. Good. Now hands stay in the same position. Feet are going to swivel. This can be a bit challenging if you have a split pedal chair, so please be careful as you're swiveling your feet, make sure that you get your one foot on the forward. Pedal, one foot on the backwards pedal. So now we've created a nice torso twist here. Same exercise, totally different experience. Drop the head weight, drop the tail weight, an exhale coming up.

Feel that nice strong shoulder girdle here and just notice where you're starting to tap into those oblique slings differently. Last two. Now hold. Now just this leg is going to bend and straightened, staying lifted and straightened. Good. Four and three. Good Portia. Two and one. Lower down. Beautiful. What happens on one side as I like to say, lather, rinse, repeat has to happen on the other side, so let's change those feet. Changing the angle of pull through the torso here again, one side's gonna feel totally different. Don't judge yourself and exhale.

You lift super. This is four. Let's take it to eight and then we'll start that front. Knee bend again. Three nice to channel your inner athlete right now and knee bend six times and five wonderful four, three and two and one you made it. Congratulations. Shake out those risks safely. Come off of your chair pedals and if you have a split pedal chair, please add in your dowel.

Now we've gone away from the split pedal. We're moving into some lunges and we're going to need the uprights here. So press the pedal down with one foot all the way to the base of the chair. Then safely bring the other foot on top of the chair. Exactly.

You want to set yourself up here so that when you drive up through that heel, the knees not going too far over the toes. So give yourself a test here and set that back foot. Great. Then lower back down and bring your hands onto the front of your uprights. This is just so that you have some safety here. I like to start people here. The more progressed you get, you can let go of those arms going into a full lunge pattern now, so all the way up and all the way down with control and again, you're doing 483 just kidding.

Two more and last one. Now tighten your range as you lower down. Give me eight pulses, eight good. Seven you can see Porsche's taking the progression here. You don't have to do that if you're not ready for that today. Last two and one all the way down. Before we switch sides, let's turn and move the foot.

So the pedal foot is going to swivel and point and the chair foot stays up here. So the toe is going to point towards the edge of the back of the chair. But do what feels good for you as far as your body position is concerned. One hand comes onto the handle, the other arm comes out. Use this as much as you'd like, but as little as possible.

Inhale to lower. Exhale to lift. Really driving through that heel, feeling the connection through the inner thighs. Now three good. You got pulses coming and one halfway down. Eight pulses, eight, seven. Your inner athlete is in the House today for three. We do not need to call him or her on her cell phone and lower. You made it one side done. Now we get to do the other side.

Great. So again, set yourself up for success. Slide those hands forward just so you kind of feel what you're working with on this other side and then drive up through that heel. Really feeling the posterior side, the posterior chain of that leg working, and if you need to make some micro adjustments with your feet at any time, that's fine. Good. Let's go for three more full and then we'll take those eight pulses and halfway down and go for eight. Keep the control. Seven. Don't judge this leg. If it's your smart leg, meaning your lazy leg, two and one, and oh all the way down. And again, transitioning as you pivot this foot externally, rotating from the hip, and then you make that foot go flush against your pedal.

Arm goes out and this opposite hand holds onto the upright or the handle. Here we go. Full up, different side entirely. Exhale, keep the chest nice and lifted. I want you to feel like I'm pulling you up through the top of the crown of your head. Three good and two strong mind, strong body right now. Here we go. Eight pulses go. Eight, seven, and six and five. You're smiling for three, two and one. You made it. Congratulations, but you're not quite done. Now we have a fun bit of choreography.

Place both feet on your pedals. Rise up onto your toes. Come with us. You're going to give me a tricep. Press up for one. You release one leg back. You give me a single leg, tricep press for to plant the foot. Reach the arms one lunge down and up.

Grab your handles. We go to the other side. Here we go to the pedal. TRICEP press for one. Drive up through those hands. Plant or release that other leg back for two. Good. Plant that foot. Reach strong with those arms and lower one lunge and back up.

Yes, grab those handles. We take this two more times around. Good tricep press for one single leg. TRICEP press for to plant the foot. Boom. Reach the arms strong and lower. Drive up through that heel and then grab and last one comeback.

TRICEP press pressing through single arm. Yes, really driving through the heels of the hand. Plant the foot. Reach the arms up lower and lift. Excellent and safely. Take a ride down on that pedal. Now we only did four of those. You can do as many of those as you want and enjoy it, but we are on an express workout, so we got to move on. Incomes, our moon box. Yes, we're going to move down into a lighter weight and we're going to split our pedal. Again, we're going on the low setting here and we're taking out that dowel, so this is where you want to elevate yourself a little bit, bringing the heat down a little bit from doing all of that work that we just did with the lunges and the piking. Go ahead and straighten the elbows. Good.

Sit Up nice and tall. Again, I'm pulling you up from the top of the crown of the head so you're really lifting. Keep the elbow straight and allow the shoulders to actually move up into the ears, believe it or not, and then press them down away using your lats. Good. Pull the shoulders up and then press them down. Really enjoy this. I want you to feel like when you're pressing those shoulders down the lots that you're almost like feeling water drip off of your shoulders, right? This is a great way to get it.

Get the idea of where your shoulder girdle is in space with elevating and depressing here. Last two and one. Now keep that pedal depressed down. Watch how much you depress your pedal down. Okay? Just watch it. You don't want to be too far and then you're going to take some tricep presses. So Ben, the elbows back towards the spring and press equal weight through the heels of the hands and ultimately if you're on a split pedal, you shouldn't be seeing any shimmying or shifting, right?

This is a great way to get some unilateral work going on from side to side. Last three as I mentioned, your smart side is your cheating side, not your strong side. Last one. Good. Excellent. Bring that pedal back up. That's all we're doing with the small box. We want to move that out of the way and we're going to have you turn and face your pedal so you're going to be prone heals the hands come to the wider parts of the pedal for planking. Yeah, so you're going to press that pedal all the way down to the base of the chair or the split pedal if that's what you're working with. Set your proper planking first so don't go all the way out yet, Porsche. So we want to make sure that the shoulder girdle is nice and stable, that you're pushing that pedal away from you so that you really have that nice sense of strength through the body.

Then extend one leg out and then the other leg can come out to meet it. And you're in a nice strong plank position. This is not a lower back exercise, so slightly tipped the pubic bone in towards the navel so that you have access to those lower abs. Now don't move the body, just bend the right arm and notice what happens and press and then the left arm. Now I'm going to give you some opportunities to progress this. If you would like to narrow the base of support of your feet. You don't have to. That is a challenge, but you don't have to, but the same integrity of the exercise must apply here. Good.

And just like all of our other exercises, we do 483 good. Let's do three more. One good Portia and two yes and last one. Lower the knees down, lift the pedal, shake out the wrists. You did great, but you're not quite done.

We're going to add in a bit of rotation and an arm bend to this. So set up is the same as the other one. Pedal comes down. Set the tonality of the body strong for plank, right? This is a compound movement from here. Rotating one hip down and then lifting that front arm up and pressing back down.

Now swiveling back to plank. Hit it, then take it to the other side. Bend and straighten. Good. Really strong body position here. This is not a beginner level exercise and adding in that rotation makes it even more complicated. So make sure that you're being safe about this as you're going through these four more repetitions for me please. And lift and lower. Good.

And can you get a deeper connection maybe on that side that you weren't connecting with? I don't know. Try it last to and lift that pedal and lower. I love it. And last one, drop that hip and lift the pedal and lower. Do yourself a favor. Dropped down onto your knees, lift the pedal and sit back in child's pose for a moment. We've got a couple more things to do and that's bridging and some back extensions. So when you're ready, go ahead and lie down onto your back and we're gonna stay on the same weight.

You're going to bring your balls of the feet up onto the pedal or the pedals, and you want to make sure that you're set in the proper here. Everybody has a sweet spot, so make sure that if you need to make micro adjustments that you do that. Now let's make sure that your chest is nice and open. So feel the backs of the shoulders pulling back into the mat. Find pressure through the palms of the hands. Right now.

If I had my camera in my hands, I'd wanna see your triceps fired up. Now gain a little bit of pressure into those pedals, maybe two to three inches, but try and leave them even. And you have a choice. This is choose your own adventure. You can either roll up through your spine into an articulated bridge or if that doesn't feel as good for you and you don't want any mobilization right now, keep it to a neutral bridge so you're gonna roll up and roll down or you're going to neutral bridge up and down, keeping about two to three inches of tension in the pedal. This is really firing up the hamstrings, the gluteals, the posterior chain of the body, critical critical area that we oftentimes forget about that we desperately need to stay upright. Good. And last one here. Great.

Now we're going to do a little bit of running. So a little fluttering up and down with those legs. Yes. Good. 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two. Pause. You're not done. Reach the arms to the ceiling. Give me 10 more sets. 10, nine, eight. Good. Seven, six, five. Member your inner athletes in the room. One good. And then lower the arms and lower those hips back down. Very well done. Time for a little bit of back extension.

One of my favorite back extension exercises that I learned years and years ago that helped me with my thoracic mobility was called Swan on the floor. And we're going to do that here today. I'm going to put the dowel back in and we're going to lower the weight. So we'll remove one spring and put your hands on the wider parts of the black pedal. The elbows should be straight, the arms should be reaching forward into the springs.

The legs are about shoulder distance apart for easier together harder, but watch low backs. If you choose that position slightly, press the pubic bone in towards the floor or your mat to gain access to your lower abs because this is not a low back exercise. On an inhale or an exhale, I want pressure through the palms of the hands, depressed the pedal down as you mobilize that mid Thoracic area and then pedal lifts as you lower all the way back down to the floor and we go again. So really accessing the lats here, looking at this beautiful back, working through this middle thoracic region. Such a wonderful exercise. If you struggle in this region of the spine as I do to gain some back extension. Good. Couple more here and exhale.

Really keep the low abs supporting your low back. That's really very, very important. And last one, great and lower all the way down. Wonderful. Take a child's pose for me please. And then we'll come all the way up to standing and finish with a roll down. We're set for a roll down, so please take your time. As you're bringing the blood back into parts of the body stand and face your pedal arms are down by your sides. Give your feet a check.

Think about your big toe, your little toe, and your heel. Think about those tripods of support and gather the energy up with the arms. Now is if you are the top of a candy cane, I want you to exhale, roll up and over towards your pedal and once you get down to the pedal, those heels of the hands can come to the wider parts. Take a drink of air in here and exhale. Press the pedal down deeper. Good. Feel that whole backline lengthen and inhale. Pick the pedal up, but don't lose full tension at the springs because you're going to do that four more times. Press down for, for filling the lungs up in totality and blowing all of the air out to really ring out the Oregon's last one here.

Pressing down. Now hold. Inhale here and exhale. Roll the body back up. Really using the abdominals when you let go of the pedal with the hands to rebuild that spine. Stacking bone by bone, by bone. Arms come up. Good. Flex those wrists and open the heart center towards the ceiling and there is your express chair for the day. Thank you for joining me. Woo. Good job.