Imagery and Flow Reformer

I'm Deborah Cole and I'm here at Peloton. Any time with Shelby and Alana. And we're going to do a reformer class, a high intermediate reformer class so that we have time to get through some of the variations on the series, but not necessarily get through all the more advanced material. And uh, we'll hope that you can have fun and do the class with us. Okay. So ladies, have a seat. Lie down on your reformer. Pull your hips through so you don't hit your head. And we'll start with our footwork, our PyLadies v. So the knees are about the width of the shoulders.

Take a moment to stretch your arms down by your sides and gently press to wake up the palm through the arm into the upper back, opening the chest. If you do that a little too much, you'll probably, uh, strain your spine a little. So just relax into that. Lift your heels as high as you can maintain so that as you press back now inhale, you don't feel that you have to drop through the heels. Exhale as you come back in. So really work to lift the arches, project your foot out onto the ball, the foot. All 10 toes.

Use the pressure of your heel to wake up the backside of the leg. Very nice. And we can pick up the pace I hair. So inhaling and exhaling, not to feel rushed, but to have that sense of continuity. You expand your body, the breath draws in, you come back in, the air squeezes out. Let's do two or three more. Opening the hips, lengthening the spine, getting the breath to fill you up last time. Expand the chest, exhale and come all the way in to switch to the bird on a perch.

Bring the knees and the feet together, wrap the foot around the bar. Go ahead out and come back in. So it's a combination of things here, right? You're bending your toes over the bar, but then you want to take that band and carpet back into the sole of the foot. So try not to drop your heel on the way out and lift it on the way in, but maintain the depth of the flex of the ankle throughout. It's harder to feel the outside of the hips. Now in these parallel positions, isn't it? But we did. We already did the V so you're aware of the connection of the femurs coming up through the center of your hip last time. Big inhale to open the chest. Exhale, come in, try to come all the way, all the way, all the way, and then come onto the heels.

Flex even more deeply through the ankle as you lift your toes. Inhaling and exhaling. See if you can flex the angle from the start. Almost like you're flexing it more and more and more. As you go back, it's actually easier as you go out to Gail and more flex and then try to leave that and deepen the flection in your hip and with the breath. Exhale. Imagine you had a strap on the sole of your foot so that you can feel the tog of the outer border of the foot. Can you feel that little toe side kind of coming up and acting like a pair of suspenders to pull the outer hip? There you go. Relax the face.

Relax the jaw. One more time. Coming all the way, all the way, all the way, and then come onto the balls of your feet. Lift the heels high, press back, stay back, stay out for a second and see if you can push out a little further to get the springs open a little bit more. You feel the lengthening of your sacrum up into your low back. And then exhaling without falling lower. One, two, three and then rise to three an axial, two three and feel the push of the leg driving you up and the release of the heel, lengthening the whole backside of you and then lifting the front side of you so you can imagine your legs like little tongs coming in through the center of the sockets. You have two legs, two hip sockets, only one spine, only one pelvis. So see how they can meet as you rise, push off and feel the connection through your hips all the way, all the way, all the way, all the way, and then hold some of that height as you lower those heels. Beautiful. Last time to get ready for the a hundred right? How high can you pick your heels up?

And even as you bend your knees and come in, lift them even higher, curl the tail, pull yourself a little bit away from the shoulder blocks. Reach back for your handles, lower your foot bar, and bend your knees in towards your chest. Elbows down by your sides. So feel this connection now as you press forward, lean forward, rolls forward, exhaling and begin to pump. Inhale two, three, four, five. Exhale to feel the relationship of your head and neck with the rest of your body. Draw back slightly. Soften your mouth, the jaw back into the back of the ears, and then feel that you're actually lifting your upper back.

All right off the mat so that you're leaning forward to connect you up the front line of your body to suck those legs. Yes, you feel that soft on the back of the knee. Just a tad. One more big breath in. And then exhale, curl everything in. We're gonna transition to short spine. So take your handles in your one hand. Pivot yourself up to sitting. Go down to two springs, lower your headrest, and then see if you can keep your knees into your chest. As you switch your straps.

Bring your feet up as you roll up onto your rib cage, putting the stops on your feet, trying not to open up the springs. As soon as your straps are on heels together, point the toes and pull your feet down towards your bottom so you can get the strap. Not to just rest in that little notch in front of your heel, but put it in such a way that it makes you have to really hold that strap with foot strength. Okay, so Armstrong and long inhale, big breath. Extend out. Go right up and over. Exhale, push the hips up and then breathe into the chest. As you bend your knees down toward the shoulder blocks. Keep the feet roll through the pelvis. Exhale, exhale. Exhale. If you get stuck, you start to pull with your feet. Keep your size on your chest and finish it up.

Okay, inhale, extend ax Hale. Go right up and over. Stand in those feet. Pull the strap down with you as you come. Nice, long arms rolling down. Exhale, exhale. Exhale. If you get stuck, instead of hanging in your knees, just pull with the feet again. Inhale, extend out. Go straight up and over. Lift the hips. The lighter you are, the easier the carriage comes in. Bend the knees, lifting the chest to meet that release through the hips. Exhaling, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll. And then bring the feet down. But stay and region.

Grab the handles. Take the straps off with your finger. Try to catch the weight of your legs so you don't get thrown. We'll transition into the coordination, shake it out, and then bring the elbows in. Lift the head up on an x on an inhale. Extend. Lean into it. Open and close the legs, and then lift the tail to curl. Exhale, closing the springs. Lean into it. Come on. Inhale.

Extend the hips down just to the base of your shoulder blades. Open from the hip, close from the hip. Now lift the weight of the back of the leg by curling your tail. Exhale, exhale, exhale. Go all the way. Bend the elbows, the carriage comes in. So try not to throw it. Let your breath expand you. Yes, open close. And then lift the tail ax. Hale, keep lifting up.

Bend the knees one more time. We're getting ready for stomach massage here. So inhale, suspend, get the upper back to lift up and bend you forward. Yes, absolutely. Exhale root. Go ahead and replace your handles. Put your head rest up and come to standing. And we'll switch to stomach massage. So add your strap, a, your springs, and your pads so that, that extra curling, that extra ability to lift the upper spine up and forward and curl the tail as you bend your knees is very helpful here. Do you want to pads?

Yeah, make your life a little easier. But if you're gonna use two pads, stand up so they can see it still as if you had one pad. Okay. So you don't want to put the second pad under because that'll actually throw you backwards. And the pads are there to help you stay forward. So the one pad is the pad and the second pad is not much. I know, but it's just a little bit of a ledge as if someone was going to help hold your sacred book. Okay? So have a seat. Center yourself on the equipment, and then hear those arms again.

You just did it in coordination, right? So use the strength of the arms to help lift the girdle up. Bend forward, curl the tail to bring the feet out. You Go. Inhale, big breath, lower lift x, hail to come home. So if you can really press with the palms versus pulling up with the fingers on a lifter, a gaze, just a little so that you really know that the bend is not coming by your head, falling off the neck, okay? But that you feel again, that sense of this, the skull coming back to give you a little bit more lift. Good. So stay out. Lower the heels. Now notice this, as you lift the heels, pull the back of the hips, feel it coming. Go ahead, lift the heels. Come up the back line of your body like you were on a swing. Let it keep coming over so that it's not your head pulling down.

You're actually pulling your arms to bend your spine, to bend your knees. One more time. Inhale out. You go lowering and lifting and feel how it comes up and up and up. And then the hole is not your head. It gets your robes, your reps. Okay, there we go. There we go. Take a spring off and take your hands to the back. Okay, so the more you can expand the chest, the easier it is to open the hips out.

You go in lower lift and now as you come in, I think you probably would want to sit a little bit closer. See if you can sneak yourself back in from where you started out. Lower lift, exhale, come home. So the strength of your arms, not hyperextending the elbows, not falling down into those risks, but feeling your arms behind you and slightly up the power of the arm coming into the back of the shoulder girdle to lift the front of the chest, to make room for that air to help you curl your tail more. One more time, big breath, and then come on in and go down to two springs. Reach forward. There you go out and come right back in. So now we really can't go very slowly because we lose our pants out.

That's hasn't let it bring you home. That's it. So it's as if you had a belt or something around your middle and I've got it and I'm pulling you. That's it. I'm pulling you laugh time. And now let's open the chest and twist all the way to the side. Exhale, come back. Feel the relationship of opening your arm to actually opening the chest as you go to the right. Feel that right shoulder blade. Continue to come in towards your spine and to the left, the left shoulder blade.

Continuing to come into the spine. Beautiful. One more. There you go. Good and breathe. And that's it. And then step to the side. There you go. Okay, so we'll, shall we grab our long box and do a swan? All right, so put the long box on.

The headrests can stay up to springs pad, the edge of your box for your thighs. And I'll leave it up to you if you want a pad for your toes, do your okay. All right, so facing the box, step up, take hold of the sides of the box. Start with a little bit of bend in the knee, and then push the box out. Layer mid thigh down, and catapult your torso. You're going to want to come a little bit farther forward if you can. That's it. It's very nice. Kind of like, feels good at first that you just sort of sit in the crease of the hip on the edge of the box, but it doesn't, it doesn't work well. Reaching your arms forward, palms up, breathe in, lift the hands, lift the shoulder girdle. Exhale, circling the arms out to the side. Inhale, come back up and out. Exhale back again. Bend the knees, lift second back, bend. Inhale, come forward. Extend.

Curl the hips back and curl over the box. Keeping the arms in the well. Inhale, reach out like you're throwing a ball over your head. Exhale out to the side. So here's that neck again, right as you come forward, feel the stretch of the belly all the way through and now come back and don't substitute. Throwing your head back for actual thoracic extension. And now that's enough and release over. Okay, very good.

Close the equipment and we'll come off and we'll do our pull strap and tee. So go ahead and go down to one spring, one spring for post Jap and t. Go ahead and have your head rest up lying on the box with your shoulders at the front corners. So it's a little bit like the beginning of Swan, right? Your, your spine is flexed way over the neck and head is released. And then if you think of lifting your feet a little bit, it's kind of like our Arabic desk, right the head down, the feet up, and now breathe in. Start to pull, look forward, keep moving your hands back, stretch the front of your belly, long as you exhale and roll yourself back over the front of the Mat. Inhale, I'm going to turn you in a little bit to release your lower back, pull those arms up and then exhale as you come back down. The tricky thing, go ahead and do it again as you go is to keep your wrists from turning.

So I'm going to support you here. Does that feel nice? Keeps stretching your chest forward with the help that I'm giving you. Look up a little. There you go. And now stretch forward as you exhale. Slide your hands down the loop again to the end of it. For the t, there we go. And reach your arms out to the sides.

We'll start with your hands a little higher than shoulder height, neck in line with the spine. So breathing in, pull the hands back towards your pelvis, opening and widing chest. Lift the hands a little higher as you circle around and come back to the beginning again. Stretching, open the chest. Inhale, breathe, big op. And then exhale as you come back. One more time trying to keep the wrist straight and above shoulder height in with the breath. Make a little circle as you come around. This time. Really get into those upper traps. They're going to help you as you get into backstroke.

So go ahead and close this. Close your hands. Take the handles in one hand, step off to the side, and then add another spring for backstroke. So we're at two springs and you're going to sit way, way, way, way off the edge of your box. Come all the way down. You can use your foot to help you pull forward. Curl the tail as you roll down, bending your knees into your chest and come up with the elbows bent and the wrists straight. So ride straight up to the ceiling. Breathe in, breathe out. Inhale, pull forward, suspend, and exhale, curl the tail coming back in. So you lift your body right up off the mat. Axial to the side. Inhale, pull forward. Keep that up or back up. Exhale, curl the tail and come back in. Very nice. One more time. Inhale up, exhale out, circle the shoulder, circle the hip, and then exhale as you bend. And let's do a couple in the opposite direction. So release forward.

Reach the knuckles for the knees. Circle around to the side, had the strength catching the upper back in the back of the shoulder. Don't crane on your neck. Exhale, bend in last time. Inhale, drive it through. You got it on a circle around. Catch the weight of the strength of your arm in your shoulder. Lift up and now come into your curl. See if you can stay suspended here.

Now to transition into your teaser. That's beautiful. Take the handles in the one hand. Get rid of a spring. You got it. Go back a little bit more than you were before, not too much, not too much, and then release your arms down by your sides. So head comes up first feet to eye level. Inhale, arrive everything up at the same height and then just lower your hands back down to your hips. Beautiful. Inhale, try to get to eye level. I'm going to let go. Exhale. Inhale. One more time up. Exhale down.

Now pull those hips back as you reach your arms from the back and stay up as you roll down and release everything. Let's come right back up into it again. So the head comes up, the toes come to eye-level. Inhale, feel the strength of the arms coming from the back. As you circle around and down, inhaling, allow the arms to literally pick the weight of your chest up. And last time, soften the knees. Just a tad. That's it. Now reach for me. Keep your head up and roll your spine down. Can we do one more?

Going into the opposite direction. It's totally fine to bend your knees a little bit. Roll ahead. Bring the feet to eye level. Soften the knees. Point your toes. That's it. Reverse the circle. There you go. And what if you put your feet on my thighs?

Your feet on my chest. That's it. Now give me your hands and just relax your shoulders and then push me with your feet and sit up taller. Alright, that, that's Nice, Huh? Okay. And then we're going to lift your hands up. You're done, right, Shelby. Good roll down. There you go. There you go. Release. Release, release. Okay. I'm going to not say throw your handles in the weld cause I wanna make a big noise. So step off, replace your handles and let's turn to our short box.

Um, yeah, sorry. I guess if you want to put them down, put them down. Try not to, we're gonna lower the head rest. It makes it a little bit easier. Okay. And you know what, for today, let's take one of these black pads and sit on it. Have two springs just so that your carriage stay stable and then you're going to come up and put your feet in the strap. You have a little pole also that we want to have ready. Okay, very good. So try to be that hand width of, of distance between the back of your pelvis in the back of the, of the box, essentially the length of your sacrum. And then can you, can you reach these little handles on the box of your long enough? No. Okay.

If you can't do that, just make a fist. Push down with your fist. You feel how that gives you a little bit more lift of your torso up out of your pelvis. So we would like to be able to feel more like that and less like this, you know, so push down and almost be like your whole pelvis could come up. You feel that you can pull it back energetically and that'll help set your legs. Okay. You're tall, but you're not wide. You know, so you don't want your legs too far away from you. Okay? And then when you let go, wrap your arms around your waist, press the back of your legs down into that pad and pull your legs apart.

Like you're gonna break the strap. Here we go. Breathing in as you roll back, exhaling as you come forward, press down through the back of the legs. Inhale, let the jaw soften. And then axial deep in the belly. So let's say we do five of these. You could play with each one getting a little bigger, but not because you're joking to prove anything. Just because you're actually exploring the openness in your hips.

Now can you actually hold and wrap that hand around the ribs? You can use that to pick yourself up. Do you feel that? And as you start to come up, flex your feet more strongly. Beautiful. Now let's do a little variation on a theme. Inhaling, roll back about three quarters of as far as you know, you can go. Hold that position. Lift your elbows up by your ears, bring them back down, and then exhale, curl forward. Can you feel how it shifts the work?

A little higher. Good. Inhale, roll back blades down, elbows up, elbows down. Exhale, come forward. And let's do one more little variation. Slight different. That feels very, very nice. So you're going to roll back. Okay. And then take the heels of your hands and place them on the back of the box. Keep a bit of a bend in the elbow. Push yourself out.

Yes, not you can go into that. You can go into that back bend if you like, but you're really using the strength of your arms to help you open the hips. And then as you back bend the entire thorax. Okay. Now bring your head forward. Push with your arms until you get the weight in the belly. Exhale, let go and come forward. Did that feel good? Great. Take your pole. Now you're really ready to do the flat back, right. Okay, so all that length that you just got, breathe in.

Take it back and exhale as you come forward. Good. And so you want to feel that when you lift those arms up, it's like somebody came and picked you right up. So your, your back isn't separate from your pelvis. Your legs are flexed, you're driving the femurs up into the pelvis. And when you lean back, like if I could get the back of my arm and your whole body from your sacrum, from your tail, all the way so that you would feel that support, that support is your back muscles. There you go. And now let that pick you up. Curl forward, Hook the pole over your toes, and then pull back on your feet and press your feet into the pulse so you're not hanging, but you're creating this whole beautiful line, this whole curve through the body. You feel how your hips are lifted now, can you feel that Shelby? But so now when you come up, you're super tall. If you go, we'll go to the side B, then an exhale, come back up and you feel that support, right? So inhale over you go. Very nice. Exhale. Good.

Reach up combat. So it's a real reach. In other words, when you take your arms up, it's as if somebody picked your whole body. There you go. That's it. Now we're going to bend. So as you go to the left, the left hip gently pushes into the right. Exhale as you come forward. One more. As you go to the right, there's a slight shift of feel supportive, doesn't it? Yeah. And last time, over to the left, as you bend to the left, there's a slight shift of the left into the right, which gives you a lot of power. Rest your arms down for a sec. If you're tired, we'll do a kind of a moderate twist. Okay, so take the arms up, rotate to the right, feel it move from the very bottom to the top. Lean out. Keep the left side twisting, twisting, twisting.

Feel the right hip, the right waistline. Exhale as you come back. And then to the left. Inhale. So as you go to the left, you don't want to fall to the left, so keep lengthening that left hip down into the foot, into the ankle. You feel that line? Beautiful. Exhale. Come right back up. Soften just a tad so that you feel a little bit more flex or support through your thoracic spine. Beautiful. Exhale. Come right back up. And then twist. Feel that softness.

Feel how your right side wants to roll you into your left side. Awesome. That feels good, Huh? Exhale. Come back up. Are you even? Yes. Great. Let's go ahead and put the pole down and take our right leg out. So you might scoot back a tad. If the pad is bothering you, you know, pull it back. Okay, so how'd that knee hug that sigh right into your chest. Hold your right wrist with your left hand. And it's almost like a rolling pin, you know, with your arm you can scoop the back of that leg, pull it up.

Get it really close to you and then start to extend the leg up. And as you come down, let it really flop. Let the fluids bathe your knee, let it flop. And take a moment. Don't stop moving. But think about your left leg for a bit. Okay? What if we gave you a little bit of support under your ankle so that your quad didn't keep jumping up? And if I put that there, you can flex your foot a little bit more and maybe have some more power to pull your quad up into your hip. Do you feel that? Yeah.

And then you're not so tight. Okay. And that gives you a little bit more support on your standing side. Stay up this time, flex in, point the ankle, and really find the back of the leg in the front of the leg. Right? So as you reach your heel, yes, of course you're flexing your ankle and yes, of course your calf is stretching, but you're also impacting yourself all the way down into your hip. Yes. So as you reach your heel, stay and stay and lift your sit bone up with it. There we go.

And pull it back to you more. Good. Good, good. Now, as you point the foot, push something away with the ball of foot and feel that space in the front of the hip and now walk your hands up to your ankle. When you take that leg, don't let it fall on you. Pick it up, tilt back till it's perpendicular to the box. Press down into the back of your left leg to open your hip as you go. Inhale, walking back. You could do a small one first if you like an exhale. Curl walking up and lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting. Build it.

Build it through your entire torso. Yes. Inhale, go back a little further. The further back you go, the more you need to extend the left hip so that it supports the opening of the spine. Exhale. As you come back up last time, do you want to go into the full good. Go back, stay back. Can you release your hands and hold onto the equipment? Hold inside. Bend your knee a little bit and reach this like Absolut doesn't pull on you. Now release your arms. Grab your leg, bring your head up.

There we go. And walk up and up and up and up. And now take your right hand into the in step of your foot. Take the left hand to the handle. Good. So pull your leg into the socket. You feel that power at the same time your leg is reaching out into your hands.

You have a push and a pull going on and that strengthens you so that as you lean back and go out, you're not just kind of yanking on your leg, but you're feeling the support of the rotary muscles, right? And as they do that, they actually come from underneath and pick the weight of your pelvis up, which then gives you the possibility to open up through here more so it feels good, right? Start to bend your knee into your shoulder as you operate yourself. Switch hands. So now your left hand goes to the outside, the little toe side of your foot, and hold your s your handle. They're careful here that you don't twist your foot squared off. It doesn't matter if your knee can't straighten, okay?

But what you're looking for is that same hip complex connection. You want to lengthen the right hip as good, good pants with the stripes here, all the way through, through to the knee, through to the ankle. You feel that? And then use the other one to help sit you up and twist. That's good. Really, really, really good. Okay. Let's do the whole thing on the other side. Put the foot. So you like this pad. It kind of, it has two jobs. Did you switch legs? Yeah. Okay. It um, it pads you literally so that it's softer but also takes the weight off your knee. You see, because it's picking your leg up and helping tilt you back a little.

You can feel that, right? Yeah. Okay, so hug your thigh into your chest, use that scoop action and then breathe in up and exhale. Release it down and breathe in up and exhale. And because you know what you're doing and we're repeating something over and over, you can take a little scan of your body. How am I in my head, neck and shoulders? Is My jaw tight? You know, are my shoulders pulled forward? Can I soften my jaw and reach the back of my skull and strengthen my upper back a little bit and pull myself through and sit on my pelvis? Of course you can. Here we go.

Reach it off and then start to flex and point and flex and point and imagine that you're just walking sort of like walking up a wall like an inchworm. Each time you flex and point, you're climbing that leg out of the tightness of the hip, freeing the other side to be a better support for you. And then you walk your hands up and you have to get higher because your leg is farther away from you than it used to be. Pick it up, tilt back, press down to the other leg and walk yourself down. Inhaling, suspend. Feel very light. Don't fall. Exhale deep in the belly as you come back up. There you go. Inhale, reach back into my hand.

Feel it growing through you and let your head be part of that. And then exhale as you come back up, pressing down through the leg. One more time. If you'd like to go into the full back bend. Inhale, square the hips, pressing down more and more through the back of your right leg, softening the left knee as needed so that it doesn't pull you away. Stretch your belly. Now open the chest to make more room in your hip. As you bring your arms forward, grab the leg, lift the head, take a breath, and climb up and up and up and up and up so high that it's easy to reach your hand into your instep and then no fall away from it.

Push that leg up into your hand at the same time that you plug it in. That's it. Roll back a little so you can square off your pelvis and then take, that's nice. It's good to roll back a little bit before you try to take your leg out to the side. Yeah, and then you go. It's not that you don't want to enjoy your flexibility, it's just that you don't want it to pull on things. Right. There you go. That feels good. Right?

And you feel the naturalness of that turnout plugs you right back into your center. Okay. Bend the knee up into your shoulder. Cross the whole leg over. Yes. So, so don't drop your foot. Let's do that again. Take the whole leg over, see how it comes out of the hip better that way. Yep. Good for you. And then make sure that you don't twist and turn your foot. There's still a little bit of sense of pushing the femur back into the joint.

Right. And then use your left arm to help sit you up so that you can twist. Take a nice deep breath and then relax and step off your box. And we'll do a little equipment change. So remove the the box in the pole. Keep one of your black pads, because we're going to go into the long stretch series and you want to be able to put that pad in the headrest. The spar. I always think like a game show.

We should be having music that goes like [inaudible]. Okay, so one spring if you like for the long stretch. And then we'll go to two for the rest. You're more than welcome to keep it at two if that's what you're used to. Okay, so standing to the left of the equipment, put your right hand directly on there. Yeah, right hand left foot.

There we go right away. Get on the ball of your foot and then lengthen yourself forwards here in a nice forward plank. Breathing in. Now as you press the carriage back, strong theat really lift the arches. Stand down into the ball of the foot to get the front of your body, not to collapse toward the equipment. Feel almost like magnets on the whole backside of your body coming up toward the ceiling. So as soon as you go out, you pick your weight up, send it back last time, pick it up again. Keep going, going, going until you can roll over your toes. Put the knees down. And now let's go ahead and show you this for your knees.

So if you don't like having the weight in your knees on this one, it's the same idea, right? It kind of is just the softness, but it's more interesting than that. What it does is it lifts literally the weight of your leg more up into your body. Can you feel that? So then you can get back over your foot better and the more you can get back over your foot, the more the hamstrings going to be able to extend the hip. And what the result of that is, is less weight on the knee, right? Another thing that's helpful is if you think of it a little bit of x internal rotation at your thigh, because I know you dance and you're used to turning out a lot, which makes it kind of fall.

So almost corkscrew those legs all the way up through the sides of your spine. Beautiful. Exhaling. Now pull the chest through and now curl into your obs stretch. Use that curl to lift the pubic bone to lift the knees. Adjust your feet. And here we go. Come into your okay, and then come forward and then exhale to finish it up.

Try to get a little bit more suspension in this position. Can you get higher off my hand? There we go. And now curl deeply into it. As you press the heels out, exhaling as you come all the way back to the beginning. One more time. Keep the head tucked in like a little chicken. Press out. Come all the way through. That's it. Strong arms.

Lift the hips higher and higher and higher to lower the heels for the elephant. Now you've got a great view of your feet so you can align them straight ahead. Watch for the hyperextension in the knee. Go Out, pull in. That's it. There you go. And I really think that the more you can get the upper spine to release forward over the shoulder girdle and put that weight into your hands and arms, it's going to free this movement. You're going to be able to make it bigger.

It's going to be more satisfying. There you go. Last time. Are you okay? Hold it in and come up onto the balls of your feet. Walk your feet back to the shoulder blocks. I think you're a little overdoing this over the arms. Okay. Just ever so slightly. Okay, Arabesque. So take your right leg straight up.

Stand on the inner line of your left leg and with the breath, use the strength of your arms to pick the weight of your upper back up to curl the head end and make room in the front of your left hip. Good. Hold the carriage still. See if you can make that change with the straight leg. Can you shall be? Yes, you can put the foot down. Shift to the other side. That's it. Feeling the back of your right leg. Trying to look into your left inner thigh. Let's do a set with the foot flat.

Good. Lift up so much inside that you can just bring that leg down straight. That's it. Stand fully onto the foot. Flat foot now and lift the other leg up. It could be right up against the shoulder block if you can. That's it. Big Toe, little toe. And then if you're feeling switch sides, try to keep the weight equal on both arms. So feel two legs, two arms. So what happens when you shift over to the right, you shift off your left hand. Do you feel that? Okay.

So you have to keep some of the weight over the left side, even when your left leg isn't there anymore. That's an interesting process, isn't it? Okay. So you'd never mind doing it anymore because this is enough work for you right now. Okay. So step across. We'll go into our long backstretch. Everyone's favorite. Ha Ha. Okay. Um, go ahead and step on. Have your fingertips pointing forward. If you can reach your heel all the way to the shoulder block, but watch out for the hyperextension so better to pull your legs back or maybe add something so that you don't have to go as far and that your leg can feel like it's being pushed back up into the sockets, right?

That it's not hanging off. You bend the elbows slightly. You know you can do this without bending the arms at all. You can just hold the arm straight and that might, you might like it better. So, so, so lower, just a tad, come forward because, and then keep going. Lift up. Because if you bend your elbows and it drops you, then it kind of screws it up. So if you can keep your arms straight and just get more room through the sides of your body. Let's just do one more. What do you think? Yeah, there you go. And lift the whole pelvis. Unless to step off, we won't bother going the other direction. Yeah, because sometimes I think what happens when we, we bend the elbows and then we lose it a little bit. Yeah, we were just not quite strong enough.

Let's go into semicircle and find that strength again. So don't forget to block your track to outside springs. We'll just go ahead and put the foot bar down to two outside springs. Block the track back there. Sorry. Okay. I know you're probably sweaty, but we'll do our best.

So you're gonna lie down on the equipment. You'll be in your Pelase v on your foot bar. Hold the base of the shoulder blocks. So very low. That was awesome. Yes. Good for you. Now find your feet before you go. Be Very clear. The toes are slightly apart, the heels are together and you're quite high. Okay.

And now roll the spine down. The thing that got you in the first place, keeps working that whole back of the leg. Roll your spine down, breathe into the chest, press out. Exhaling, stay low, find your block and then curl the tail and come back in. So actually think you want to move a little quicker that you should bring your, oh, you can't. Okay. I think for you the track should be shorter so that you hit it sooner and for you to on a, yeah, but, um, it doesn't on these. So as you roll down, you want to feel like you're braced between your hands and your feet. You know, and if the block is too far away, you to get to expand it.

Let's just do one more in this direction. Roll down, push out. Use the strength of your arms to lift your chest, to free the hips to come in. And now feel this. We're going to go the other way. Just breathe that chest so high it pulls your pelvis up over your face and then roll down. Come in low tail first. One more just to one more. Okay. So breathe in. Lift the hips. Roll down through the spine. Stay, stay.

Stay with the arms. Now listen, as you come in, get your tail faster than your thighs that go down. Curl. Yes. Fabulous. Beautiful. Okay. All right. And then just pull yourself through and we'll step off and do chest expansion. So if we were to set these up another time, I'd try to figure out something to block it a little bit more. Okay.

So shall we just go a little bit lighter for the arms? Okay. One spring for this chest expansion. Okay. So kneeling on your equipment, we'll get rid of the PAG while we're about it. Okay. Yeah, that's okay. And then Hook your toes off the back edge of the, of the Mat. Yup. Take it easy. Make sure that your feet are in line with your hips, your heels are in line with your sit bones.

Try to get all 10 toes and then reach onto the leather and chest expansion just like we've been doing all day, right? So as you breathe in and the chest opens and fills it brings your hips forward. Exhaling, release the arms. Good. Keep them straight. And as close to your body as you can. Take that breath and then hold it here. Look to the right, look to the left look, center and release.

So can you feel leftover from semicircle? The power of your feet coming up into the back of the hip? Yep. One more time release. So it's almost as if you could start that carriage moving from opening your hips, right? And you're going to try to straighten the arm a little bit more and get all the way up into those upper traps, which are going to keep you from straining your neck so much. Right? Okay, good.

Now we have to add some springs for thigh stretch. So let's have three springs lean back, be careful. And then you're going to bring your knees right up into those shoulder blocks. Try and feel the entire top of your foot pressing down. Try not to roll the heels in, but keep them straight up to the ceiling. Okay? Hold farther down on your leather than you really want to.

So it makes you kind of bend forward and then you find your flexors. So as you start to go back, drive the shins into the knees, lean back, keep your hands in front of you, Shelby, and hold further down your leather strap. Hold all the way to where the hardware gets into the little grommets. Exhale as you come back up. That's it. So all the way, yeah, go there. It's going to feel awkward at first, but then it makes you not just fall backwards. It makes you pull the back of the, you feel me holding you here.

So I'm not going to let you go back like that. Okay, so little what we call hint of a hundred. Let's pick these hands up a little bit. There you go. So you have to find this. Do you feel that we're doing? Yes. And so then the power that gets you back is not leaning your upper back. It's driving. Okay. You'll be fine. As soon as the spring starts to open, you'll enjoy it. That's it. I don't want to feel the weight in my hand here.

I want you to drive your shins into your knee and keep opening the hips and keep opening the hips. And feel it as you pull on that stop. The spring is opening in near the spring and then exhale, let it float up. Do you want to try one more? Okay. On it. Did you want to do the back bend or are you fine? I'm going to put a pad for your hair. Okay.

So gaze down, lift up. Go ahead and start to lean. Reach your sit bones towards your heels. Keep going. Pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull. There you go. Exhale, release the head. That's beautiful. Then bring your head forward. Connect your ribs to your pelvis. And up we come. Okay, fabulous. We're going to turn around carefully. You're about to um, switch to one spring. So just be careful when you get on it. Sometimes feel a little bit lighter than what you're used to.

I can see where you would hesitate in that exercise. We could talk about it sometime. Okay. So have your toes bent in front of the shoulder blocks. Bring your hands slightly forward. Here we go. So now again, as you come up, you have to lean into it a little bit and challenge that whole front line of your body. Come on to the sides now. Beautiful. So we didn't get your plug out, Huh? In Hale, come forward. Have to take the plug out after semicircle or you end up getting a bit of a jolt in with the breath. Reach up, lift up, suspend the ribs. That's it. Stand down through those feet.

And now can we reverse it? So have the hands slightly in front of the hips. Lift. Lift the chest. Yes. So here's one of those things where you're doing a gesture and it's your arms obviously, but who cares? Your arms are picking you up like somebody else and it's easier when you do that. You can feel that, right? So just thinks my arms are actually lifting me up, which opens my hips and helps me stand on my feet better. Very, very good. Okay, we're going to go into long spine stretch. So keep the handles in your hand.

You can just step off. Go ahead and put your head rest down. I'll do your springs. We're going to go to two springs to outside springs and then you add those. So I think you have to take the leather loop and the handle. You don't really need to take the handles off, but that's okay. Okay.

So see if you can get on without opening your springs at all. All right, so even if so don't pull on the strap. Okay. So even if you know your hips probably won't touch, maybe if you're a very flexible and long in the hamstrings they will. But what I'd like you to do is keep the carriage closed and what we've done is started to wake up the back of the hip a lot in the last several exercises, right? So you can straighten your legs, but keep reaching the hips forward and that's what keeps the springs close. Can you feel that Shelby? Like there's power here and we need that for what's to come.

Strongly point your feet on that strap and without letting the carriage move ax hail and Jackknife yourself up. Keep the springs in, lift the chest. Okay, great. Now open the legs about the width of the equipment. Breathe in. Now, as you draw that arc with your feet, soften your legs and tiny bits. You make sure you're working from your hips and that pulling down with your back. Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. And then when the carrot, when the legs come down, you close them. Okay, exhale. Now, as soon as you can pick the hips up, the carriage might not make it all the way in. That's okay. Breathe high here. As you open your legs, soften the knees. Use your feet so you don't roll your spine down, but you take the hips and you extend them. Soften the legs that you really, yes, yes, yes. Keep breathing the chest up. Don't drop on my hand. Use your arms.

That's it. You got this. Wow. Beautiful. Okay. Do you feel the death? You don't want to roll down and then pull all that load with your legs. Okay. One more exhale, Jackknife it up. Closing the carriage. If it can, open the legs, bend your knees until you really know that you can feel that you're not dropping that long spine of yours, but that you're using. Yes, yes. There you go.

Lift the sacrum up. Lift the chest up. Yes you have it. Do you want to try one in the other direction? Okay. Open the legs. Circle them around to find the back of the hip to lift you up, Jack. Knife up. Okay. Circle and Jack Knife up. Close the legs at the top can. Now it's tricky. So you got to watch it.

Don't push it into the back of the knees or your back. Big strong arms. Big Open chest. Send those feet. Breathe in. Carriage opens and your chest is lengthening away as your belly is laying your spine down. That's fabulous. Okay, that's enough. And now we're gonna go up one more time just to get off. Careful with the strap. Drop One foot into the weld. I know I shouldn't have said that.

[inaudible] I forgot. Roll on up. Okay, now keep turning. This is fun. Keep turning. Put Your headrest up. Put your foot far up and we'll come right back on for knee stretches. How's that? So it's kind of a little circle. You just keep like a dog chasing his tail. You just keep getting on. Okay, so good, strong bent toes padding. Again, where's your pads for your knees for the same reason. Yes. So that your weight can shift.

It's like someone is driving your femur up into your hip instead of your femur falling down into your knee. Your knee cap is lifting up into your center. Okay, sit way back. And here we go in with the breath out. Pull in, out, pull in, out, pull in. That's it. So again, and again, the arms job is to hold the weight of your torso up to free through the upper back so the neck can naturally release forward and the hips pull back. There you go two more times. And now hold your carriage still and come into extension. Look forward blades, strong. Sit bones up here. We go in with the breath. And if you, if you very easily are the type that falls into your lumbar spine, you have to be a little smart about that and keep more length and get more out of the upper part. So arch your upper back more. Uh, that's it right here again and again.

The muscles that are going to make your neck feel better. There you go. Close the springs all the way if you can. Oh good. And then last time, hold it there. Transition like from down to up. Stretch. Shift your weight slightly more forward over your arms to lift your knees. And here we go. Press pull. That's it.

Really feel the tail driving through the strength of the arms. Suspending the ribs. You got it. Two more times and carefully, carefully lower the knees so that you don't crash. Step to the side. Add your springs for the running in place. You feel all fizzy, right? Yes. Okay, so don't waste that energy out you go and nice and light. Okay. Start to alternate. Inhaling for four, exhaling for four a little faster if you can and feel where's your, where's your sacred right now in your body? Is it, is it heavy down as it driving down or is the, is the work of the legs?

Yes. Helping to really tone and your whole body is being catapulted up. So if you really were out there on the beach running, you know your legs would be locomoting you up and forward. So go up and up. That's it. Up and up and fabulous. Really Nice is nice in your hair. Kind of flops a little.

There you go. Okay. And then Ben, both knees come back in. Now I've been fooling around with this. So just take an extra beat instead of moving the feet first. You know how we always have to say, turn out from the hip, not the knee down to the foot. So turn out from your hip, feel those muscles, pick your feet up and then move your feet from there. And there's your bottom lift. It's just like an extra second, you know, but it makes a big difference. And then we don't have to over-correct right?

So go down again, don't talk right. Just feel like I've got a spatula. I mean, you're like a fried egg and we don't want to break the yoke. So lift this straight up. There you go. And we say just a fist of space or a hand of space under the sacrum. So a couple things. You know, if your headrest is up, you know you're never going to be going up that high anyway because it's in the way, right? So this isn't a big shoulder bridge. It's basically lifting the pelvis and then trying to extend the hip.

So we're going to use the muscles, your external rotators and your extensors. And if it doesn't hurt you, can you tilt your pubic bone down and find your back muscles, the back of your body, and that's going to free your hip to turn out more deeply. Can you feel that? There you go. And if you ever don't know, like if you're falling, you look great, but if you ever don't know, you can always take that fist right? Put it under the sacrum and then hold it. And you can even feel this just so you know if you like it or not. You take your and you put it on your sacrum and then you take your other hand and you kind of pull everything up into you.

Isn't that nice? I have a lot of tricks. There you go. Yup. One last time. And then let go of the hands and float down. Don't pull that sacred back down. Let it lengthen and float. Beautiful. Bring the legs together. We'll step off and we'll do side splits and front splits and maybe call it a day. Okay, so how about one spring the foot, the foot bar will come down and then we'll use these pads.

Make sure that you eyeball the woods so that you know where it is. So how about um, both of you step up so that your left foot is going to be on the, on the frame? Is that okay? All right. And now walk to the front edge of your mat. There we go. Make sure that you really feel that foot. Like if you're a little shaky, you're tired.

And then holding the springs closed heel, toe, heel, toe. Can you make it all the way out to the shoulder block if you can. It's really nice if you can because then you can, do you want me to put our spring back on or just come back in a little? Okay, so you have a choice. You can either wait the thing more and go out farther or come back in a little bit. So we'll just leave it the way you've done it. Okay. Both feet are parallel.

Don't allow the foot to turn and feel as if you were wedged. You know you're wedged into a shoulder block if you could. Okay, so take a nice deep breath as you take the carriage out. Again, arms up encourages right a whip and a suspension and an opening. The power of this is from down below. You did just work all around your hips in the last several exercises. Feel the whole outer hip, outer knee, outer ankle.

You want to make sure that you're not falling into the inner knee or your arch. Okay, so go over, stay over, bend forward. At first just maybe take hold of the wood. Can you touch the wood of the frame of the equipment so that you know that if are you, are you safe and not nervous or anything? Okay, so lean forward a little bit and see if you can tell when you're greater. Trocanter is directly over your ankle. So your habit was to sit back a little bit. Right now, I'm not saying that you should do this, but in your mind, could you imagine holding your own ankles right and pulling on them?

You don't have to do it, but if you did, if you had some pressure there and you resisted against it, you'd feel, can you feel how what that does to that whole out? You kind of tell right as much better for the knee. Okay. Now go ahead and release your hands back down on a closed the springs if you can. That's it. And then lengthen out through your spine and come back up. Heel, toe, heel toe, that right foot and until it's very easy for your left foot to meet it and then turn around. Would you like to try the two springs on this side and see if you can get out farther? Yup. Okay, great. So have your right foot.

The reason that I encourage you off opening your range in that way eventually is just because you're going to strengthen that outer line of your leg more. The farther out you can get, but you have to be safe. Right? Okay. So watch out for the collapsing into the arches of your feet. Breathe in, expand as you take it out. And then if you can feel the little tall side of your foot, almost like it's cupping. And what that does is it brings the art shop through the inner thigh line a little better. There we go. And for you, maybe don't go out quite so far and keep the sacrum anchoring down slightly behind so that you don't lose your pelvis. That's plenty. Okay.

And you want to go over and stretch one more time. Good. So go ahead and lean forward. I'm sorry. Yes, you're right. Take the carriage out and then you feel how you immediately go backwards. So that be just something to play with is a different kind of strength that you don't have to sit back and then adjust it. Relax your head if you can feel the feet. Now that you're, you know, still and you're know that you're not going to fall on your head.

Soften the back of the knee, pull the kneecaps up into the belly. There you go. Find the outer foot, the not collapsing arch, the release of the head, neck and shoulders. And then you can either close the springs to come in close and partway there you go. Reach up, lift heel, toe, heel, heel, heel. Tell your left foot, bring the right to the left and then step to the floor and we'll finish up with the front split. Just a nice easy one. Okay, so we'll put our foot bar up. We go to two springs. Tidy, tidy up a little bit here. Yeah. Okay.

So there is a chance that you may end up wanting to go into second gear for this. So we'll see. Okay. Place your right foot to the center of the bar or slightly to the right of center. Lunge into that leg and place your hands on either side of your ankle and walk your back leg back so that it's turned out up against the shoulder block. So now you really can feel the value of that. Walk your foot more out to the side. That's it, so that you can feel the ankle touching.

And then you use that to brace this leg so you don't fall into your knee. Okey-Dokey. And the amount that you can lift your right heel up so that you're not hanging. Press through both feet. Breathe in, take the carriage back, feel like your two thighs, thigh bones are actually splitting apart from one another, and then stay as low as you can lunging forward as you come back in. Great job. So inhale, the further back you go, the more your right leg will straighten because the hip is being pulled back.

Relax the head down. Same like an arabesque called the curve of the spine. Forward results in a lift of that back hip so that you don't hang down into the knee or the ankle. But there's a power there of that leg driving out. And then as you come in, excuse me, bring that knee out to the side a little bit. And then I'm not saying do this, but could you almost imagine how easy it would be now to come up into letting your hands go because you're so strong from that back leg. See, that's beautiful. Okay. Carefully put your hands down. Walk the back leg and a few inches. Step the front foot. Okay, so you always gonna put the front foot first.

So we'll put the left foot on the bar. You good? Okay, so bend the knee. Place the hands next to the ankle. So look where you're going with that back leg. You really want to use the, the equipment to help wedge you into a power up this whole back, outer line of the leg. Breathing in, suspend curl and look back into yourself. Keep this hip lifted and then as you exhale, deepen the front hip, the front knee and come back in. Good job. Couple more times.

Make sure that you're not collapsing into the arch of the back foot. So lift this up. That's great. That will help support the inner knee. You can turn your toes out a little more if that helps you find a little more of the back of your leg. One more time, releasing into forward flection. Feeling a stretch up the whole belly, hip, back leg.

Don't hang solo in that back leg on a more. Get the deep, deep, deep, deep bend here. And then if you want to try to let go and come forward and reach up and take a nice breath and pick this hip up there you go to so you don't hang. Okay. And then beautiful. Put your hands down. Walk the back leg in a few inches so that you're a little bit closer than what you did last time. He'll tell, he'll tell and then step to the equipment. Stepped to the side and just feel all that energy rushing through your body right now. Feel your feet under you.

You're right on your pelvis is right over your feet. Huh? Beautiful job. I hope you feel good. Okay. Thank you.