Hi everyone. I'm here for reformer workout and instead of a long box, I have the spine corrector and in replace of that, so you feel free to use the spine corrector if you have one. You can use the foam arc if you have that perfectly fine or if you have neither, then you can use your long box head rest up. Let's get started with some footwork. I have three red springs, but as you get settled in and you start moving with your footwork, really put it on the spring tension that you like the most. You know I like three red some days I'll go up a little bit, but that's where I'm at. Why don't you choose what's best for you.
So today's class is, I'm eclectic as I often am in the mood for that and I let's just have some fun and move. All right, and let's get going. So inhale as we extend the carriage long in a way, and exhale, pulling in, not too speedy but not too slow. I'm a few focal points right now in my heels. Strongly pressed together, arms long by my sides. Just the sense of breath and movement. Inhale away and exhale, return.
Letting the sacrum be very heavy. Let the back of the ribs be heavy and the back of the chest really heavy. Almost those three anchor points. Helping to guide the carriage out and in one more time, pressing out and pulling in. So let's wrap our feet. Bird on a perch or a prehensile.
Press onto the balls of the feet for a minute. Do Guide your heels down. We don't want gripped stressful toe joints, but you do want to top of the foot that's over the bar. 10 repetitions here, getting that nice full expansion. Inhale long exhale return. I have my feet slightly pressed down on the bar and not just um, wrapping them, but a little bit of from the top of the foot is pressing down like that. Getting a nice feeling in the arches.
All the way to inner thighs up through the hip joints, not strain. Inhale, press. Exhale Ian Chin away from the chest so that your cervical spine has a good amount of alignment and balance to it. Sometimes the down on the chest gets a little bit compressive in the front of the cervical spine, so we want that long healthy neck and one more time and then we'll come back down to the balls of the feet. High. Relevate are high heel position, ankles still pulled together.
Let's stretch it out and then slowly lower those heels and then slowly lift the heels. Inhale as you go down and exhale as you rise or you could do the other breathing. Exhale down. Inhale, rise. Either way, find the breath, connect your body to the breathing and once again just to explore how your, the foot is rolling under and rolling on top of that round bar. It's a little massage on this. Pressure points in your feet. Lower lift, lower. Really rounding under rounding on top.
A couple more with both feet moving at the same time. Last one and I want you to bend your knees just halfway in. Hold right there. Make sure your heels pretty high. And we're gonna work our thigh muscles right now. Just some easy pulses or halfway out, halfway in.
Take this moment to work on spreading the toes. I'm doing it with my hands. If you need to see you just spreading the toes. Legs are parallel. You'll feel a fair amount of heat probably in your quadriceps. So what I'm looking for, think about those abdominals now.
Can they go in and almost sliding up underneath your ribs? A tiny bit. Let's take 10 more. It keeps reading those feet. Five and six. Seven, eight, nine. Let's go all the way up. Everybody's stretch and now walk in place from here.
So there's a lot of blood flow, lots of circulation in the feet here in the ankles pumping that lymphatic fluid from the feet and flushing and up the body. We want to kind of pump that fluid up and up and up. 10 more. One, two, three, four, five pelvis. Nice and stable. Eight, nine, 10. Rise with both feet. Bend your knees, come all the way in. Now I want us to step out wide on the heels. Take a peek and make sure that you've got your, your turnout equal with both legs.
You don't want one leg turned out more than the other and before you push the carriage away, turn your femurs in. Some of you will actually
We'll add that with our regular leg presses here. Okay, so hold the legs in your slight turnout. Five regular ones just out and in. Nice focus of level pelvis
This is a great preparation for leg circles. Yes, we'll do leg circles for at least stay turned in. Let's reverse the sequencing. Press out with your legs turned in externally. Rotate while you're away. You come in, turned out as continued. Turn in, push away, turn out and come back in. Turn in and press. By doing this, a internal and external rotation sequencing, you may feel those high adductor muscles working more than they typically do. Pretty good to do if you are working with any kind of hip joint dysfunction or uh, of osteoporosis of any kind, uh, the turn-in is not as recommended. Okay, one more time. The extreme internal rotation. All right, so pausing there. That's all I want to do with that, just put your feet right in the middle of the bar again and that arches once against.
Press yourself out and just roll your feet a little bit over the top of the bar. Massage into the arches so it's not a full leg press on a full calf stretch. Just kind of get your arches, a little massage. Okay. That should feel pretty good. Come on down and let's come on up to change our springs. I'm going to take mine.
Think just leave two red, add a blue one on. So we have three springs, two red, one blue single leg work, right heel, right leg reaches out. Left leg is extended. Let's start with a nice pretty basic movement sequence. Parallel with your pushing leg, a straight right leg going up and down. So if you are flexible in your hamstrings, feel free to bring your leg closer to your chest, but endeavor to keep the pelvis level. Okay.
Here we go. Five more times. Inhale and exhale.
Here's a slight change. The right leg will stretch out long, but it's turned out so you've got a parallel pushing leg in and turned out lifting leg. Little more challenging on keeping square in the hip. So here we go. Lift and lower. And I think about taking my inner thigh and trying to bring it toward my face or in the direction of my face like that. So you're really working the hip joint rotation. We warmed up with leg presses
Certainly the leg coming toward my, my body, my tailbone out toward the foot bar, very dimensional work. Five more length and in length then and
Using that to rotate and move up into a bridging position. Take an inhale at the top. Let's roll down upper back. Take your time. You just want us to do three or four. Inhale level pelvis.
Exhale that pelvis curling around an image of it. Rolling back. I talk a lot about the ball imagery for rolling and flection to connect to that, especially if you know yourself to be a little stiffer in your back and your spine. Visualize a ball and it's rolling backward. You can see how that imagery may facilitate that connection for you. Breathing in at the top and rolling down your spine, but keep a little bit of the back rolling ball in your pelvis. Okay, one more time, everybody.
Coming to a level position. Bring your knees to your chest. Up we go. Changing some springs. I'm all going down. One more spring leaving just to read and I want you to take your lobe or your foot bar all the way down and bring yourself back onto your back. This is a head off time for me. Find those straps. Pick your hands up into them.
Let's just do a little bit of supine arm circles. Pull your arms just enough so you feel that resistance. I like an inhale as I move my arms down externally. Rotate those arms per take a time here. Take your time. Feel the the effort of stretching but yet staying in control of the springs down there. No rushing.
Your whole body should be enjoying this movement.
It's a great image for me to keep my shoulders wide that a lot of extra tugging. Two more last circle this direction.
This is why for me, if I push out and I step in with one foot and I start to pull on that rope, my pelvis and yours probably would be to, is a little bit uh, asymmetrical and there's load on this side, but not on this site. You may not be a person that that would bother, but let's experiment with something. Okay? Why not stay level in the hips and it may not look as it graceful, but that is okay. Move your straps, see how far out I am. Pull your knees to your chest. Can you step both feet in your hands will help.
It's like you kinda have to last. So your feet. Then as you apply pressure your sacrum and your sacral Iliac joints aren't compromised, one's not on level. I hope that all made sense. Arms by your side. That feels so much better for my pelvis. Here we go. Frogs, just five basic frogs. Inhale as you lengthen the legs away. Exhale, coming in.
Okay, here's our fifth one now open-close five times. I'm in the mood to stretch my legs fairly wide. That feels good to me. This today I have to monitor that I don't pull too much from the back of my knee as a closed my legs, so it actually does make me use my upper legs more with better integrity. Now that's what I'm after, but I do want this feeling of the stretch pelvis should be very flat. Last two and then we will work on our extended frog today.
All right, so everyone come on in. Choose one of your legs that will still go out to the side fairly wide and it's straight. The other knee bend, not as small frog I think have kind of a wide frog, so both legs are still pulling away from the midline. One just happens to be bent. The other happens to be straight. This is my language for myself. I have to push with my bent leg, pull with the straight leg and they meet right in the center line of the body. Okay, slowly check that out on the other side. So one leg bends, the opposite leg is straight you.
What your may be finding is how do you keep the ropes with even tension? Well, that's practice, but you have to work on the rotation of the bent leg hip and keeping your foot pressed into that strap. Okay? Pushing without one, pulling with the other, they meet in the center. Let's flow a little bit. Inhale as you go out to one side, exhale, return, inhale, open. The pelvis should be widening here,
We want those muscles and joints to be in balance. Okay. Probably what more of US recognizes. One side feels tight, so that probably is the the pelvis side that has a bit of restriction to it. So if that's you, if you're sensing that you can pause on that side, take a few breaths, visualize that side of your pelvis actually widening to create the freedom. Okay. Once again, each side, so a little bit of bone rhythm thinking in that Eric Franklin. Good for that. Thomas Myers. Okay. Parallel legs reached back.
Take your head rest down, going for about four short spine. Inhale and exhale. Take the short spine that works best for you right now. I'm going to try to park that carriage with my leg state and then deep abdominal contraction. Spinal flection rolling up. I like to look up at my feet. It feels very nice. Take a moment to soften your sternum or soften your upper spine into flection.
Inhale as we come down on an and an exhale, I'm leaving my feet up today. Again, I'm trying to elongate the tissues of my spine. Get the sacrum a little bit more anchored and then the heels come down. Breathing in strong but graceful movement. Rolling and for you, any men that are watching you guys can still be graceful too. It's okay. Certainly strong controlled might be the your choice instead of graceful and down last too, and crawl deeply. Massage.
Inhale, it's frog and exhale, the arms are nice and stretched.
Okay. Yeah, kind of play with that if that's a new concept for you. It's pretty interesting. Okay. I will leave only one red spring. Everything else goes away. Let's get that spine corrector up here. Okay, so I'm going to have his place at first with the step edge toward the shoulder rests right against. Good place to sit down. Okay. What's you're going to do right on in the crevice? Okay.
Some abdominal work, no straps, no pulleys. Take a deep breath in. My feet are down on the headrests. Arms are stretched. Here we go. Exhaling, rolling back. So this, this workout right here. I'm feeling right this moment. I want to reach my arms back. Take a big circle, chin toward chest.
Use those abdominals and round forward. Let's go with four times. Take a nice long extension. Reach, control, and strong breathing in. It's your eyes. Follow the the ceiling and possibly looking at the back wall and then back up to the ceiling and to the wall in front of you.
One more to go. Eyes looking at the wall in front of you. The further you go back and they go up to the sky or ceiling,
This is probably more intense and very focused on the higher abdominals. Four times articulated, mobilize that upper spine. How about an exhale before you come up? Ah, so your body follows the breath. Inhale is we come back. There's still work happening in the ABS here. You haven't just let him go.
Last one basic and then we'll add some rotation.
Inhale back. Let's take two more each direction. Play with squeezing the knees together. A slight bit more on this series. Might even get so detailed. Do you think of, I'm going to my left right now. So left inner knee pressing toward right knee, you'll feel maybe a much more direct, a oblique contraction. Okay. Same thing. Exhale, right side and left side. Good.
Fairly simple. Hands by your sides and go ahead and roll yourself up. Okay. That wasn't super graceful, but I'm going to reach back and uh, put the foot bar back in on a middle setting. On this reformer, I had the ability to lock it down. Okay? Little creative shoulder press and hip extension. So placing yourself back into the place you just came from, but use your hands, pull your hips more towards your knees and I want you to extend the thoracic spine into your cervical spine and put your, the back of your [inaudible] goal on the barrel. Okay?
Just taking a moment here, this may be all you choose to do. I certainly don't want you to turn your head and look at the, your laptop or your computer. So all, all we're doing is having a supported upper back bend. Okay? You might feel fine here. I'm moving forward and I'm going to take both of my hands or reach back and place them on the foot bar. Okay? Yeah. So elbows are fairly narrow.
Some of you have very mobile shoulders and this will be simple for you. Please go ahead and start pressing your arms straight. Now you won't see me get my elbows completely straight initially because I have to really work for a tricep lengthening. Okay, so maybe you are going to be just fine. So you carry on and just doing five. There we go.
So as I am working on going further into elbow, my thoracic spine is responding. I'm actually getting a little bit more arch and can a feeling in my thoracic. Ah, it feels really good. Kay. Holding this one out now and to move my ponytail. Okay, so from there, my arms are nice and strong, pushing against the foot bar. You can lift your hips up.
That may ease the pressure in your shoulders and your back. But we're not done. Take a breath. So if you can keep your arms straight, what I want you to do is start to arch your lumbar spine and sit down in the crevice. It's not going to be a big movement cause you're pretty close to that crevice or the edge. Let's do that again. So curl your tail a little bit. Push with your arms and lift your hips, breathe in, and then as you're going further down, you're lengthening your sitz bone. Just toward the edge of that barrel five totals.
We've got three more curl, so feel those muscles. Pick your hips up, feel your shoulder extensors. Open those shoulders and chest arching your back. If Henna has a feeling right now for me, like semi-circle and tiny bit, we're not doing that today. This will be our semi-circle and reach. Last time here guys, pick up those hips.
Your upper arms are externally rotated. You're pushing the foot bar. Now we have to get out of your bend knee. Elbow slowly. Put your hands down on the side of that spine corrector right by your hips. How do you get out? Chin toward chest. Pick up that head. You do have to use your neck. Hold your chin down for a moment.
You can use your hands here and just come on out. All right, intense the knife. Now let's move the barrel the other way and we can take the foot bar down probably first there. Turn it around. It'll be like this for quite a while. Wouldn't be a class without some back extension. Other than that, so let's come on down here for some pulling straps. Nice to do this on a curved surface.
Sometimes the long box is just kind of sharp and symmetrical there. Walk your hands out once you to put your chest right on top of the barrel and encourage yourself to relax. Yield, slump, whichever word works for you. They just don't want you to be here with a rigidity in your upper back and just holding that place. Find that place where you can come from and go to, if you know what I mean. Now my feet are resting on the foot bar. I will engage my hamstrings and my glutes just enough to unweight the feet and maybe the thighs three times is all everybody had dominoes in.
Look forward towards your ropes, chin, chest, arms, shoulder extensors. You warmed them up. You can probably pick up those arms fairly high now and then come on down. Keep your legs active all the way. How about an inhale as you lift and an exhale as you lower? Once more. Inhale, focusing on the upper back. Upper back, upper back, upper back, upper back.
Hold your arms out to a t. Organize yourself again. Now in a little bit of an extension, length it engaged. And I'm just going for three movements, arms toward my back, arms out wide. So maybe this exercise is easy for you. That's fine. You certainly could lift your chest higher. I'm only doing three.
I'm focusing on holding my abdominals in to support my back over this curve and lower all the way. Rest, rest, rest. Let your head go and then let's hook to straps. Okay, yeah, let's do a teaser. So we will face the other way. Kind of Nice to do teaser in the barrel, reach back, grab your straps, same as you would on the long box. Okay, so what I've done there is I've put my sits bones near the top edge of the lip, lie back, walk your leg slowly. Over the foot bar and then here we go. We're in that same upper back extension little theme. Okay, so I have my head supported, my shoulders are open, abdominals are in, legs are open. Breathing in, let's pick up her head and flex the spine. You'll know you have a certain place you can go to and then something else has to happen. The arms will come with you.
Let your back be supported by the barrel, but not resting on it. It's there for me. Resting would look like that support would look more like I'm trying to get off the barrel. Okay, and down and inhale. Head, neck, chest. Pull your legs into your stomach area. Pull your arms a little bit higher. Look straight ahead. Rolling yourself down.
Open, open, open once more. Let's inhale head, neck, shoulders, flex that upper spine and exhale. Now staying there lower. Lift your arms three times. Try not to rest on the barrel. It's there to support you.
If you need to table top your legs, you can do so. This is a great way to prepare for the real teaser or their traditional lists. Reverse it. The traditional teaser on the long box.
Hold those arms up. Now turn your poems. So now they're facing your feet. Bend your elbows, fingertips right to your forehead. Just three times everybody elbows back and salute one naval the spine too.
Just put these together and just draw a little loud. Come on up and then face me. Let's do some hip work. So I had reskin stay down. One spring is fine. I'm facing you. Take your top foot and your knee has been here and you can just step your foot on the wood of the frame. Your other leg is long, you're parallel. Let's enjoy side stretch. Okay. So I like to think about dividing this spine corrector front to back.
I'm right in the middle of it. I want you to be in the middle of it. Go ahead and stretch. Direct your leg straight out over the bar. Get Long, then place your bottom hand on the headrest and that'll allow you to lift up off of it slightly. Again, the barrel is here to support us and bill help us build some strength in these lateral positions. But I don't want us to rest. It's too easy. So use some of the support hand behind your head five times. Lifting up, up and down in your leg. That wasn't great. Up and down your leg. Lift your leg up and down and up and down and lift lower.
Let's take it up one more time. Hold it front and back. So flexing the foot. Can You keep your upper body nice and still while you work your hip? Slightly more intense than doing this just on regular mat work. Again, you have the barrel for support. Do your best not to lean down on it. Last two
You rotate your of downward and your leg further behind top arm can really stretch opposite of your back foot. So how much distance can you create from your hand and your foot? Okay, so what's about to happen is an arking movement. The leg will arc up, the arm will arc up and I end up laying back looking at the ceiling, reverse the arcs and reverse the arch. So don't worry about how high your leg goes. Feel free here.
A window is a beautiful example of the arch, the arch way up there, it's kind of what I'm doing. Flint arm and leg direction couple more times. And the spine corrector has a beautiful arc to it. Last time. Hold here, bend your knee, stretch your quad. So I've got my hand on my foot. I'm trying to pull my sigh back. Feel free to ease your neck and lower your head a bit. If you don't need that, you can certainly stay up. Okay. A little bit more on this side.
Take this foot down for a moment. Use Your hands and help yourself to turn or rotate. I don't want you to pull yourself, be easy here, but see again, here's your right and left side of the barrel. Can you get your sternum right in the middle of that? That's the goal. Okay. Bring your body down. I'm going to use my hands on these posts.
I'm going to let my head drop down, picking up the back leg, holding it there. Now this is okay just to lift it. I want you to guide this leg though a little bit further behind you. You'll feel your glutes contract, so let's lower lift five times
Now I'm going to reach this foot toward the back window there. I'm going to reach it back and reaching it back five times. Abdominals in four and five that's plenty lower. That leg, a great stretch for that hip is this. If you come, it's a little kind of the figure four. Okay. You can hold that top knee and try to sync this hip down.
Of course we have to do the other side, so I'm facing away from you. Just easy spiral around top leg stretched over your bar lightly. Other foot is your foot is resting on the wood. We went right into a lateral stretch and go for length here. Everybody, you might even choose this hand. Hold both hands. Can class reach and feel the leg reaching in opposition to your arms.
It feels lovely through kind of this whole area and the arm
Other hand behind your head. We did five legs up and down to hoping to get your leg hip height. That might take some practice. That's okay. Do what you can, but don't drop your bop bottom side. Okay. Just in hopes of getting your leg up more important to keep your, your body stable. So here's that position. Flex the foot. We're doing front and back. Breathe in. Let's flex on the exhale, sweep it back. Inhale, exhale. And again, I'm trying to keep my leg the height of my hip.
Two more run front, back, back. Last one here. And we held the leg to the back. Hold it there. Contract your glutes, rotate your torso face down. Reach your arm long, reach your leg back, your oppositionally reaching. Now we went with the arc, right? So I opened my torso up, my arm lifts, my leg comes forward. There wasn't much of an arc, but they're trying to get those arcs.
But as I said on the first side, it's not the height of the leg. I want you to feel the movement up and back. Uh, bend forward, up and back, up and forward. Once more, we'll finish with the chest. Face Up. You can linger there and breathe in. We did a quad stretch. Take your finger under your foot. Stretch your thigh.
Use those glutes to bring your leg back. And we did up and down five times.
I moved my foot toward the window before. So now moving. Moving a toward you. One my whole leg to the re four. Really good for opening those hip joints. Five. And we're finished there. That figure four stretch. So just take the leg. You worked that footsteps in front of the other knee. Hold onto your front knee. Try to sit up tall. It's this.
Have trying to get down a little lower here. Okay, let's do a little, uh, kind of a grasshopper swan dive a bit. We're on one red spring. Still kind of winding up class. I'm going to have us put our stomach down again on the barrel this way. Alright, now instead of being where we were for pulling straps, we need to be quite a bit more this way, so I'm actually going to almost aim my my pelvis. Good Catch Jamie, my pelvis right on top of the barrel. Okay. Hands Fairly far away and then engage your hamstrings. Engage your glutes for a moment.
Just feel like you can create or connect to a long horizontal line. Abdominal supporting your back. Okay, so rocking swan or swan dive. It's that idea. How high can you keep your back while you lift your legs? There is a moment things have to change. I'm still thinking of being bringing in a backbend, but I'm lowering myself down, trying to power myself up with my legs.
Now keep your legs up and start lifting your back. There's a moment things have to change. I'm pressing with my arms a little bit, okay? Same thing back stays up. Legs start to lift. Your elbows can mend. It's fine. Keep his legs up.
One more time and back stays up. Legs start to lift.
Let yourself droop over. Just breathe. I noticed I just got the most recent Palladia style magazine, and the very back page was a, I think it was Mari Winsor and a beautiful caption that just said, just move. And that really hit me today because I think it's really important just to move. Thank you.
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