This class is indeed for Lely. Lely, even waiting a long time. I hope I live up to what you're hoping for. This is a reformer tower and so that you can set up with me. Everyone. We have one blue spring on. We have, I'm gonna, I'm going to use the springs with the carrot.
So that's where it gets a little exciting and a little nerve wracking from me. But we're going to have fun. I'm just back from vacation and I'm not ready to quit having fun. So that's Today's about, I have the two short what I call arm springs, yellow springs on with the roll at bar. I'll start with that. And then I have the long purple springs are what are basically the medium white springs yellow would be fine as a small chance. I won't use them at all, but they're there. And then you can see in front, I have the handles cause I will probably switch, I will switch out the bar for the handles on these shorts springs. That's it.
Um, I have my safety strap here because it's just living there. We're not going to use it. And with that in mind, let's take a standing position. I'll come in front. Just find a place where you can check in with yourself, where your feet are parallel and feel your body into the ground. You know you want to feel yourself as you are so that you can feel the difference as you explore further into for yourself or at least into the movements. Hopefully inhale, don't go anywhere ever. Maybe feel yourself almost pushing into the ground.
It's not a lot of effort just to lighten up above it. Exhale, somewhere in there. This time I'm going to turn the arms out from the shoulder. Raise them up. As you inhale, look up. Not much change to the spine unless you're really tight in your shoulders. You might have some XL. Turn the palms down as they get about the height of your shoulders round forward and take that standing roll down.
Let your head hang heavy. I just turned cause it feels more natural. Bend the knees a little. Inhale, exhale, straighten them, bend them again. It's as if you're pulling, not just the knees towards your forehead, but the spine and Xcel. Straighten and one more time. Inhale, bend. Exhale as you head towards straight and start to roll up again. The feet are firm into the ground so that though everything above that, the bones, the joints, the muscles, anything you want to focus, Amazon gets lighter. Take the arms out and up. Again, inhale and exhale. As you push the arms away, let your head start to come forward, but maybe you can imagine the sense of the backside of your body getting longer as it goes forward, so we're not just collapsing on ourselves.
You'll see as we play with the springs, my hands are at the ground. Bend the knees for three. Inhale, bend as we play with the springs straight Ben, it's a different feel right when you, it's the Cadillac or the tower. Normally you don't get to have a moving flora, so we're going to play with that nice and light. Keep the legs pretty straight. Pull the belly in as you roll back up. Arms still on your back. When you get to the top, do one more of those arms turning out, lifting up this time. Maybe look up.
You might add a little extension to the upper back and exhale just too standing. We're going to sit on the carriage facing the tower end and I'm going to put my, I'm gonna leave my foot, my head rest up. It doesn't really matter, but it does give me a place to put my feet. I want a little bit of room behind me and I'm taking hold of the straps just to kind of get a sense of moving this just cause it's gonna make noise and I can't have that just to get a sense of warming up the spine. That's what we're doing. So we're holding the straps sitting as tall as you comfortably can.
And then from here, just start to Tuck the pelvis or send the carriage away and then sit tall. If you did my other class, we did this before. I'm going to hold a little higher. Just, I don't feel like I'm playing with attention on the springs. I'm sending the pelvis forward, trying not necessarily to lean back it. There's some movement, but it's more or less his idea of what can I move in this case the carriage by moving my spine instead of my body using gravity, I'm actually creating an action to make the carriage move breathing and exhale just to warm up, right and we'll go a tiny bit further this time. Feel your feet into the shoulder. I mean the rest now too, so you're caught.
You got real solid contact so you know what you're moving away from and then come back up. As far as breathing is concerned, what I am doing naturally is just blowing out as I go down and inhaling as I come back up. You can do however you want. It shouldn't be so hard, right? It's one light spring
Preferably if they can't be, you can put them on the frame from there. We're tall and this is just feel good. Same thing, you just rolling the pelvis forward, the straps will loosen up and then when you come back underneath yourself, you have the feedback that this straps tighten up again, rolling under, not collapsing. See if you can feel that difference. Minimize the motion of the legs as you do it. Number three and back up. And number four. I'm just kind of trying to tap into all those places that some of us need warming up a little more than other places. In this case, the hips and pelvis and spine. Low back. One more time like that.
From there, take your feet back up on top, right into, into the center again. Put The strap furthest from me down and hold it in the opposite hand. So I've got the left strap in my right hand and I'm going to hold it up above just like before you can, by the way, you might want to back up. In fact, I'll just do that. Let's just back up and let the knees fall apart. You can keep them where they were, but it's a little easier. This way to focus on what I really want to focus on, use the hand for the Free Hand to keep you upright. For now.
Keep your body straight, pull the elbow out to the side and then return. See if you can initiate, not so much from the hand but behind the shoulder so you can feel that connection. It's almost like you're drawing a wide semi-circle with just that elbow tip. Just one more for three pull and then the same thing. Well, slightly different hand behind your head. Push your head into your hand, stay tall and now as you pull to the side, you rotate away from the moving elbow. The pulling elbow.
One, rotate, warming of his little differently. Maybe and back one more time. Just seeing what you see, feeling what you feel and center. Let's put that strap down and grab the other all still on that same spring tension. Hold it where you need to where it's not real resisted but it's also taught from there. Sit Tall. Use the Hanfield, the belly.
Everything is working but not excessively. Why would we do that if we don't need to elbow straight ahead. That's one thing. Backside of the shoulder. There's two. There's no rotation yet. One more just like that. Here's three. Feeling the top of the head on the ceiling. Keep going with this time.
Hand behind your head and rotate. No leaning back. I think I was about two or maybe even did elbow and rotate and why is this side not so satisfying? No idea. I'm just, I am trying just as hard. It just doesn't feel like I'm getting this far. There we go. So that'll be that. Now I'm putting the headdress down, letting the leg stretch out. Take a hold of both straps and we'll do some roll ups and this is, this is really quite lovely. Honestly leave the leg straight for now.
We just hold the arms straight, sit up tall, squeeze the glutes a bit and as you roll back again, you're not leaning the body back, but send the carriage forward without collapsing. Find that control. A lot of this is just doing the same stuff we always do, but feeling it differently right from there. Can you think to press the legs down? I'm thinking about it. You're not going to see it. Exhale, come forward. Stay curved and at the last minute set of tall, make sure you have room behind you of course, and we don't lean back.
We send the carriage forward. Of course the arms are going to have to move and adjust and so is the rest of the body. If you can help it. Don't grip this. The shoulder blocks. Exhale, sink to belly. Feel yourself resisting even that light carriage, that tall one more like that we, oops, I was about to lean. Send the pelvis forward. Arms are basically relaxed.
They're your little safety mechanism, right? Can you dip into the lumbar spine a little bit more without the knees buckling? I Dunno. Try. Exhale, come forward, resisting, resisting, resisting as if it were really heavy. Once again, bend the knees. You might ever so slightly move forward. Go down again. Same idea. Then. Now, once you're there and you feel secure, you're going to inhale.
Start the exhale and pull the right knee up so nothing else is happening. Put it down. Same side. Start the exhale, pull it up, way into inhale down. One more time for three, pulling it up, up, up and down. We'll change sides. Exhale. Think to as the left like floats up. There's the exhale. Inhale down. It's almost as if you're pushing the right leg down. Not to cuss tension, but to find the opposition, the ease on that left leg and down. Can we do both? Of course we can do both.
XL Anchor. You gotta know where you are or it's an unstable surface. I'm excited. Inhale down. I tend to do things unstable, so this feels very natural to me. Up and down. Carriage shouldn't be moving a lot. If you are, you're probably using your hands too much. Up and down. Did you think we were done? Cause we're not. We're going to pull them up. We're going to extend the legs just on that diag.
Oh, how exciting. Not really. I know, but we'll burn back down. We'll do it again and it might get more exciting as we go. Exhale, lift, extend on that high diagonal. You can go higher if you want, but think about each piece. One more only sort of bend, extend, rebound and push down against an imaginary surface and down from there. Stretch out your legs. Come forward and round all the way forward for a quick, easy stretch and then right back up. Rebound the knees going down again. Before we do anything else, make sure the inner thighs are together.
Now we're going to slide those hands back, maybe even into the straps, definitely into the straps. And then so I went all the way to the wrist and then grabbed. Okay, you could hold it where we were, but I'm just trying to avoid any wrist breaking. Palms face out. We're going to push back and this time palms face in and push back or pullback. Turn them out. So thumbs down, push short, nice open shoulders, open chest. But still rounded in the body. You can keep the hands the same way each time.
It's up to you only one more set. Push back return getting the back side of the body involved even as you anchor through the abdominals from there, slide the legs forward, round forward and just hug the frame and yourself. Come back up. Bend your knees if you had a favorite hand position or if you can stand one of the hand positions. Pick one, whichever one and we'll go with knees bent. We're rolling down again.
Rebend the knees as the arms go forward. Slide the legs down and sit up. Tall bending and rounding back, I should say. As you bend, the knees plates are up. Extend the legs. As you pull the harms returned the straight arms as you bend the knees to the Mat and sit up. Let's get one more for fun. Rolling the spine back. Drag the legs along with, as you extend the legs and squeeze inner thighs, you pull the arms apart. Rebend feet, touch arms are straight in front of you and you sit up tall.
Stay here from there, just stay tall. Initiating from around that spine is the arms. Go out to the side. Let them come back and again out from the side and come back. Finding the backside of your body. Tall, tall, tall. And one more time reaching and return. Okay, it's time we are going to do it.
So let's take the leg springs and this is kinda tricky getting on like this. So bear with yourself. Take all the time you need. The, where I have them by the way is ah, this is balanced body reformer tower. So if you have the three islets, everyone puts them in different places. So it's hard for me to say exactly, but it's, it's, where is it on? This one is literally the fifth one, or sorry, the fourth one from the bottom. So if that tells you anything, it's not right in the middle. It's just below middle. It could even go lower.
It would just give it a little less tension. I'm going to try it just here. We're doing some leg work, so I'm taking him in both hands. You're also gonna want to add a spring. Um, I have, I was on one blue that whole time. Now we're on one red. Just one red and then let down with or without the head rest is up to you. I just can't take it into my fingers. I do the best I can.
Spine is relaxed, arms are down. We're just going to press the legs out. Go slow cause it's probably not going to be too heavy, but if you overdo it, you're going to bounce. So for now, let's make the goal that we don't bounce Ben to frog, keeping the sh the heels basically parallel meaning to the floor so that you're not raising them up and down as you go. Really let the legs fold at the hip joint. Ooh, bounced a little on that one. Got a little cocky. It's like I'm trying to sense how the coils match my body or how I can match my body to the coil of the spring without it having to catch up either one of them.
That's the fun of this. If you, when you're feeling like you want to
When you finished down right there, pause for the record. I'm just inhaling as I go up, I open and I exhale. Oh, that's the one. Easy to bounce on. So check yourself. Let it feel good though too. We can kind of be free with it too. Ooh, if you do too hard, you're gonna hit that back in. So monitor yourself only to the match as you, as much as you have to. I think that was it. So next time you come around, if you're not already here, stay here. And now separate the feet wide.
Try to keep your legs on the same level. And then bring them back. In other words, the feet so they're not traveling up and then back down like I was just demonstrating, and you're just across an imaginary table. Top opening, closing, breathing. With it,
I'm inhaling theoretically the whole time here and I'm exhaling all the air feeling like I'm one unit with all that's going on. Few hyperextend don't. How do you not do that? You Act like you're about to bend the knee by actively contracting those muscles last time you think it and come about halfway up and then you're gonna bend your right. Inhale, stretch the left, or it's getting exciting. Now it's like you're almost underwater trying to keep that carriage pretty still pretty. Still go a little faster. It might move a little bit, probably less reach and reach and reach and reach. Reach lots and east turn out. Just a little tiny spit.
This is a little wider than you probably have it on the Cadillac. I'm not sure it feels like it. Okay. Find an end point cause you had to go the other way. So my right knee is bent, I'm going to reverse it down to kick the left up down to kick right up and out a little quicker. When you get the hang of it, reach, reach, reach, reach reading, keeping stability in the hips. Having a little fun with the fact that you know you could be swinging them all around, but you won't do that.
Both legs up from there. Just bend the knees to take the straps out. Come on down and let's get up for the moment so you might as well just keep them with you to set them down. Grace gracefully. And then let's change the bar, the shorter arm springs. We'll take the bar off and put the handles on. Just since we're up here and we can make it ready.
Oh the tower.
Just for safety reasons and of course take care of yourself. But let's try to get those hips right up over the knees and hopefully the shoulders too. I have a tendency of reaching back to check yourself for that too. So you're connected already. My hamstrings are fired pretty significantly from here with the arms just pointed straight back. I'm reaching down to pull the arms back, do it kind of slow cause you don't want to bounce and down to go forward.
Not a two or four release but close. As I reached down, I'm thinking as the coil opens up on the spring, my spine is opening up to go toward the ceiling. That will help me prevent from buckling forward or flexing. Pull. Keep those arms absolutely straight. Sorry to feel it. Paul Paul, Paul
Wouldn't you could go back where you hook the ankles but I don't really want to hook anything. I want to just work with things so almost they're high to be completely vertical, so do what you have to do to stay safe, but you do want to feel that sense of straight line. Need a shoulder. Even if it's on a slight lean, now we're going to a bigger lean. Nothing really happens with the arms. You're just going to hinge back for the thigh and just kind of stretching them out and then come back up right up on top and challenge that
If you're going to extend the spine, do it from above the sternum
And then some of you are going to be wanting to hyperextend like I am in the moment. Don't see that either. So, oh, you want to get ready, be ready and actually involve the muscle prior to starting the exercise. It's just like this. Elbows are pretty high. One, careful on the return. You're up, up, up, squeeze the glutes. It's like your feet are pushing into the shoulder blocks. Not to arch your back, but to anchor you.
You may need to sit down onto the heels to get the handles into one hand and then carefully step off the side. Know that the carriage is probably not all the way back yet and set those down. Okay. Put your foot bars up. I'm going into an upstretched series, so if you know where you normally would be, I put mine on the middle stance of all three options. That's not as high as it could be. And for me, one red, one medium, one normal spring, depending on how many you have, it would be good if you're on an aero Flonase machine, you're going to want probably two of the cords grots probably too.
Okay, so here we are. I'm going to step into the shoulder block rather than the headrest. So I put my hand, my arm straight. Oh, I didn't actually change my spring. I just told you to you didn't I? So I have one red and then the other foot. For now, let's just glide backwards, keeping that long line and forward.
Take it back and forward to the back and forward. One more time. And for coming all the way into the stop riff. You can pike your hips up, head down long spine. So you, I'm doing this differently. Where the back, well maybe it's not different for you, but back is straighter. Hips are reaching space between your ears and shoulders. And now just a couple where you push the carriage back and return back evenly weighted on the feet and return just one more and we'll make it a little bigger.
As you push back, pivot around the shoulders and come back into that plank. You were just in
You pull up so deeply on the belly, but it almost feels like your legs are going to lift up off the carriage
Continue pushing into the shoulder blocks. Even as I go forward and up and exhale, the shape stays the same the whole time. For now, just three more one
I'm going to actively pull it back and there I feel exactly what I should be except for maybe I shouldn't feel it that much at all. Work on that nice long back and neck
It's sort of a catch between two challenge points, but try it this way and see what you think. Remember where we had the, I had moved the yellow ones down a little bit lower than where I had started them, but leave them where they were last used. Take hold of them. Climb aboard as if you're doing pulling straps because you are. Maybe the difference for this though is that you don't take yourself over the boxes much. It's a more of a range of motion thing because the springs open up so much. So basically I'm thinking from myself. I do have long arms, so may not be the same for you, but I'm right at the edge.
My chest is fully on the barrel, I mean on the box. All right. Raise those legs up. Right. Not Higher than the box necessarily, but just so they're active. The arms are down. You can, you could turn your hands. I'm keeping them palms down and making sure I keep my shoulders wide from there. Go kinda slow cause it's a different feel and you pull the arms back, back, back. I'm not really focused on the lift of the chest so much. I'm just maintaining the level I started with, which was active.
Exhale scooping down the pull back and hug those arms in close. Oh I pulled a little faster that time cause I bounced at the end. What can you do? Make it look like the normal way you do it and then return. Recognizing that the return is just as important as it would be if you did it the normal way with the straps. That's sort of what's fun about these. As you get to feel where you give up or where you pull harder than you do in other places. One more like that. Pull, pull those shoulders back and now we'll make a circle. You're gonna pull down, take it around. It's not really a circle to a t. It's kind of a circle I guess.
And down again for three. Pull right up to your hips. Turn the palms down, turn the whole arm out as you go around and
Who's idea was that and forward. Take a moment or give me one and I'll be right back with Ya. Triceps, straight legs, everything active. Pull them straight down in back like the first exercise. Hold it. Take out the bounce, reaching through those handles.
Bend the elbows and straighten. Oh yes, good. We love this kind of stuff for five. Here's number three coming up. Keep those upper arms in place.
Maybe you can even imagine that you had the springs, that your legs were the springs. Open them up, but don't just collapse back in
It doesn't just stop when the knees do get straight. Let it continue through the shoulder. Rest in back or further, however you see it or look for it. Give yourself three more here. Working equally one or as equal as possible to come back in swivel so the heels touch each other. The knees open a little, but more than that, let them drop into your hip socket, push out, squeeze, hold, adjust where needed heavy hips and pull in back to that sense of stretch in the court. Sometimes you just have to think it Preeth however you want. I have a habit of exhaling as I go out. I know most or many do it the opposite. You choose
We'll go right into back to parallel. Sorry. Back to parallel. Push out and go ahead and do the running now. Just the running now. So it's from a straight leg position. You lower one heel, they both rise up to straight and drop the other. I think you know that. So let's go a little quicker. Down, up, down, up, down, up. Not Moving the reformer on the ground because I'm lifting from higher up.
I'm not just driving energy through the feet. I'm pulling the energy up, pulling myself up. Can you go any faster? Don't you gotta finish it? Gotta finish it. So they call it running faster. Faster. Yes. We're still breathing. I'm going for four, three, two. And one both feet up. Let left heel go underneath. Try not to overly well. Don't try to hyper extend at all.
Try not to lock it out so you're just resting on the leg. Rather. If there's some action and you're reaching through the heel, but also lifting shoe that opposite hair at the same hip, it feels a little more full.
You don't really want to be in some us and to let them just be there. Kind of subtle bounce. Again, watch that you don't know. Hyper extend and I'm not. I'm trying not to bounced by flexing and pointing, although the to some degree is what's happening, but once you get a little bit of, you could just feel like a little bounce recoil action in the bottom of the feet. Then bring that to a stop. Push off the one and let the just unweight one side.
I'm not bending the knee of either side. The hips will change, then settle back into him, push off the other side, settle in and kind of drop into it. It'd be nice for yourself, but just so you can feel the Gif and then now more like a cap on a scratching post. Do whatever you want with your feet. Let it kind of feel good. If you have to move your feet around, give them a little massage. Oh, how's it? Good idea. All right, bring it down. I said one little pelvic gloves, so we're going to take our feet to the edges still about midway, so it's not quite the heel, but the arches. I'm not really widely turned out, but some lift the pelvis off just a little bit than most of the rib cages down, and we'll just stretch ourselves all the way out so the hips are just barely lifted and in do a few of those just to breathe maybe with where the contact is on the rib cage. That's where you can focus on breathing. Feel that pressure, that expansion into that area is more of the way I should say it.
Thank you very much. Have a good day.
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