Creative Cadillac Flow

Welcome to the gauntlet. When I do a Cadillac workout, I like to run it, right up and right back through. And so hopefully at the end I feel a little bit cleansed, circulated, moved, and ready for the rest of my day, so here we go. We're gonna start at this end. I should say that before we go, I have the push-through bar set up on one blue spring.

I've got two yellows for arm springs, purples for leg springs, balance body springs. I've got a roll down bar, and then I've got my trapeze, my swing hooked up with two blue springs for later, okay? So, we're gonna start at this end of the Cadillac, at the push through end, we're gonna take an externally rotated stance, first position for those dancers out there, and we're just gonna take a couple of deep breaths, let's reach the arms out and up, breathing in, and exhale. (breaths deeply) And again, (breathes deeply) just getting ready, you're gonna take your hands onto the uprights, lift through your center, shift your pelvis sideways to the left, and begin to take a side bend, and the nice thing about having the Cadillac is you can let yourself go off center. Then you're gonna pull yourself to center, draw everything right up and down that line, lift, and reach, and up, and center.

And lift, and reach, and up, just kind of checking in with those tight spots. One more time, lift, and reach, and up, and center. We're gonna rotate the legs together, lift through the chest, and roll down through the spine all the way, still holding down onto the poles, rise up on the toes, lower the heels down, roll up through the spine, all the way to the top. Rise up on the balls of the feet, lift your chest, press your hips forward just slightly to open the front body, and come back to center, lower the heels, rolling down. (breathes deeply) Rise up, and lower, rolling up.

(breathes deeply) And lift and open and come back to center. Lower the heels; we're gonna bend the knees. And take a little seat back, if you do have a little bar across your push-through, I'm doing this cause I have one at home, make sure you don't hit your head. We're gonna begin with some lap poles. So I'm seated with the bar coming down behind my head.

I wanna wrap the elbows forward and I'm gonna be doing a lot of upper body work today, so I really want to make sure, for me specifically and for you, that my shoulder blades are placed down on my back. So I'm gonna draw those blades down. It's a blue spring, so it's super light, but what this is nice for is really accentuating those smaller connections on the back body, so I can actually feel my shoulder blades drawing down. I can kind of squeeze a little once they're down there. It's more of just waking them up, just getting acquainted.

We're not really working into any heavy work, but we will, so always like to set the body on simmer before we like to turn up the heat. Pulling down just one more and lift up. And we're gonna take the right hand to the back and take a little rotation of the spine, nothing too end-range, and have your elbow aiming forward. And as you pull down, you're pulling from that scapula, almost like you could put your right scapula into your left hip pocket, and lift up. This angle for me is really clarifying and it helps me really find all of those little muscular attachments that surround my scapula.

It helps me come away from my upper traps, which tend to be a little tighter; I'm gonna do one more. Of course, we're working on the posture. And then we're gonna turn around and do it the other side. And on the back I'm just giving myself a little pressure into that rotation, but nothing end-range just yet. Pulling down, and I like to think of my elbow reaching out as I lift up.

I'm always looking for ways to clarify that scapular, I wanna say engagement rather than depression, so I try to stay away from positions and more towards activity as I'm going through any of these motions that hopefully are gonna wake some body parts up, clean them out, so they'll be fresh on the other side. Last one, and lift up; and then from here, we're gonna do a little fancy transition, rocking back through the pelvis, take the feet onto the bar, and then slide yourself back and reach forward into a nice spine stretch. You'll take a breath in here, and as you exhale, bend the elbows and just see if you can elongate your spine from the tailbone through the crown of the head forward. Inhale into the upper back and exhale; pull yourself through and we'll do two more like this. Inhale, just giving those shoulder blade muscles now a little bit of length.

We're gonna keep going back and forth between the contraction and the length; last one, pulling forward. And then from here, we roll up through the spine, circle the arms onto the bar. We're gonna go into some push-through. So we'll hinge forward from the hips. I like to think about lifting the tailbone up nice and high, ribs away from hips.

And from here, roll your hips back; let's keep the arms long, see, long wrists. Feel your shoulders come down and try to keep those wrists long as we transition into our forward bend spine stretch. Roll back, drawing the belly back, pressing the waistline back, and lift up and press forward. So let's inhale here, exhale, roll back and press through. And again, roll back and lift up.

And one more roll back; from here we'll reach the left arm back, and then we're gonna take a small side bend. Left hip stays really heavy, left arm goes overhead. And this is just a big yawn bringing that side bun stretch up into the under arm. We're gonna reach around, take up your space, sweep through, thread the needle, and press the opposite arm up. Take a deep breath in and see if you can press your heart through your shoulders.

And we're gonna take some gentle pulses to deepen. (deep breathing) And we'll recover from here, rolling back. Reach back to your position; lift up through your spine. Find your shoulder blades and reverse, reaching all the way back, press down through your right hip to side bend. Ah, it's so good; and then reach through and we'll thread the needle to the other side.

A little bit of bend but a lot of length on the top. Take a breath in, wrap that heart through your shoulders, and we'll pulse. (deep breathing) And then from here, reach back, reach around. We'll come up, we'll do the one more press through to go forward; we're gonna go one more roll back and lift up. See if you can sit nice and tall, and then draw the belly back.

We're pressing forward to stay this time. And from here we're gonna maneuver the feet into our hamstring pull. So for those of you who are new to this work, this is a good one to try with the teacher for the first time. If you're experienced with it, you know what you need to do. Use your feet, say a prayer, light a candle, we'll be good to go.

So from here, we're long through the hips. And I'm trying to extend and almost disassociate my femur bones from my hip sockets. And from this point, I'm gonna go for a little parakeet, AKA foot cramper position. I'm gonna try to draw the legs in. Now, I'm on a blue spring, so it's rather light, which means two things.

I need a good deal of control and also faith. And pull through and lift up. We wanna be aware that as we press the bar through, we're not using our spine to arch and press, but rather our inner thighs and hamstrings and hips and core connections; we'll do one more and press through. And I'm just gonna give myself a little closer here. And from here we'll pull through and press up.

So we're ready to start to roll up. We're gonna curl the tailbone back, deep in the belly. And then lengthen all the way out. Let's see if we can do that twice more. Breathe in, breathe out, let the back open and widen.

And then reach all the way forward. One more breathe in and breathe out. And from here keep that wide lower back. Reach up through your hamstrings, grow through your spine and build this shape, build it nice and strong, lengthen. And can you push the bar up one more inch?

Let your heart lead you down; it's like your spine is reaching down as your legs are reaching up, peeling through each bone and hopefully keeping some nice scapular connection. Let's do a push through here; bend and reach. And bend and reach up again; here we go, curling back. And thinking of these side bolts pulling in to kind of flank my pelvis from either side, I'm gonna reach all the way up and lift a little bit higher. Can you stretch up out of your waist, finding your glutes?

From here, pour the weight into your right foot, push the bar up higher, and can you lift that leg off? Just a little test drive, and then reach it all the way back to the bar. And from here, pour the weight into your left foot. Lift it a little higher, same thing on the other side. And reach, pour the weight onto your right foot.

And lift your hips a little higher and reach. Ultimately this should look really easy. If you're doing it, you know how challenging it is. Last time, pour, triceps, leg, and reach. Lift everything higher. (exhales) And roll all the way down through the spine for a push through and reach.

And again, pull through and press up. From here, we're gonna bend the knees so that the bar is about at parallel. And this lets you have a good degree of pressure against it, so you can push against the pull. Doesn't mean the Cadillac's not gonna shake like a leaf, but it helps. (laughs) So from here, we're gonna roll through the spine, continue to push. Not too bad, not too bad.

Coming up, finding that sweet spot and really lengthening through that front line, trying to open the hips. And then from here, we're gonna extend the legs up to the ceiling. Find those hamstrings, pull it down. Find the sweet spot; take your time. Whoo! It's somewhere in there.

Inhale, breathe out, exhale; whoo, two more. This is what I mean, a little awareness, a lot of faith. Last one, and then reach up and roll all the way down. Nice work with the hamstrings. Reaching out, we're gonna bend the knees, push the bar through, reach to the ceiling, and sigh all the way up to the top.

And get over to your bar; if you need to bend your knees, you can. We're going into reverse monkey to stretch those hamstrings out, so we pull through. We lift up, be lifted by the bar and hope that the hamstrings are there to press us through, yes! And reach all the way forward; we'll breathe into the back. Exhale, lift up, breath into the back, exhale, press down. If you've done this one before, you know that when you find that sweet spot, it feels really good to get this one right.

And when you don't find the sweet spot, it feels like you're running against a brick wall. So play around with your positioning as you go through and just look for that place that allows you to lengthen in both directions. Staying down on this one, we'll gently remove one leg and the other; roll up. I'm gonna let the foot bar, or the push through bar, rest here as I go into the next few exercises. If your legs are long and this is bothersome to you and you continually bop it, then you can take it away.

We're gonna roll down all the way just to an upper contraction, drawing the right knee in for single leg stretch, hand on the ankle and the knee. Hover that left leg off and shoot it right off the Cadillac. Curl up a little deeper and here we go, full breath. (deep breathing) Four and three and one; both knees come in, deep in and hug yourself up and here we go, inhale double. And circle around. (deep breathing) Last one, we're gonna reach up.

Now, my legs are just a little long, so I'm gonna flex and point, point flex, point point flex, point point flex, point point flex for four. (deep breathing) Last one, bring it in, bend your knees. And I'm gonna take my hands down behind my head, whoops, before we go into criss-cross. Lift the chest, curl forward; let's reach right elbow to left knee, pulling in that left waistline. Twist to the other side; pull in the right side of the waist Inhale and exhale. (deep breathing) Just trying to feel like you're rolling around a center line of your body for two and one.

We've got one more to do; extend the legs up, lower with flex feet, lift with point, ah, maybe just brushing the toenails. Inhale and lift, two or more, and lift. Last one all the way up; good job self, good job you. And let's roll all the way down. We'll bring the feet to flat; I'm gonna reach back and grab onto my arm springs.

So for me I like minimal transitions in a Cadillac or tower workout. I might have to adjust my position a bit here and there, but it's nice to have things set up so we can keep moving, cause time is of the essence. So drawing those shoulders down, take a deep breath in. Feel the back of your ribs widen and wait on the exhale. And then we'll follow with the arms all the way down.

So we'll breathe in up and exhale. So incidentally, I have the crossbar, the speed bar, set up so that my arm springs can be on it. And I have my leg springs on the side eye bolts and the uprights. Let's do four more, breathing in and exhale. And three. (deep breathing) Last one, still resting the legs for a moment.

We're gonna bend your elbows; inhale and press. And feel two sides getting heavier, more engaged as you press through the fingertips, past your hips, for four. Taking the time to reconnect to those muscles that we warmed up just a few moments ago. Last one, and press and hold. So continue to reach your arms long in the Cadillac.

Sink your belly, sink your ribcage. Deep breath in, exhale, sink and lift your legs to tabletop. From here, you have two halves of the body that are acting like one and we're gonna go into robot arms, so only the right arm lifts, nothing shifts. And we press all the way down. Only the left arm lifts, and we press.

So it's difficult to keep your body from rotating or even side bending. And we're trying to just, again, feel like the back body is wide, that we've got equal pressure on both sides of the ribs and hips, a nice strong relationship. Last one and we're breathing and good. Let's bring both arms up to the ceiling. We're gonna maintain the legs and tabletop and we're gonna do a little brain teaser.

So these are first arm circles and then alternating arm circles. Let's press the arms downward towards the hips. And we'll circle them around to come up. It's kind of like more of a teardrop shape. And around, opening the chest, widening the back.

Pressing down, circling, one more in this direction. Holding tabeltop is a challenge in and of itself. Let's reverse; open wide and press down and open. So usually on these repetitions it's like, a challenge is to maintain everything that we're doing but also to maintain our thought process. So let's take a minute to remember that we're in our body.

Stop thinking about the grocery list. (laughs) And come back up, or the next exercise. Alright, from here, right arm presses down next to the side of your body as the left arm slices out. It's kind of like a little cheerleading moment. So we're gonna press down and hold. Then, switch places and then meet back up above the chest.

Other side, left arm down, right arm out. Exhale, switch places, and then meet back up at the top. Right arm down, left arm out, exhale around. Left arm down, right arm out, exhale around. Right arm down, left arm out, exhale around.

I'm making it look really easy, but I get how difficult this is for your brain to figure out. Good, slowing it down can help. Right arm down, left arm out, switch and meet in the middle. Left arm down, right arm out, switch and meet. One more time each side. (deep breathing) Last one and around and lower the feet.

And we're good to go ahead and let those guys go. Whoo, nice triceps, let's roll over onto the side. And we're gonna back ourselves up just slightly, so that ideally we'll be using the back purple spring on our side for side kicks in a moment, but I'm gonna go ahead and make sure that I can aim my elbow right up against the upright and place my head on my arm. And one of the hardest things about sideline work, is actually getting your neck in the right position. We usually wanna bring it forward to look, but we're gonna trust that our legs are not gonna fall off as we go through this exercise.

From here, we're going to lift the feet up. Normally, we might do something like a side kick or a crab with the hips stacked, little space underneath the bottom hip, bottom leg, or waist. We're gonna begin to lift the top leg up. So lift it up, aiming for the back of the hip, and hold. Now place the bottom leg down, and then you're just gonna touch knees.

Down and up and down; for any of you who have any amount of challenge with internal rotation, this might be a little elusive. I find that it's usually around the sixth or seventh repetition where it's like, oh yeah, that's where that is. And lift; we'll do two. And I like to just feel where that action is coming from with my thumb, that I use it. All the way up and hold, pulse, little squeeze, and squeeze, and squeeze.

Try to avoid that knee opening up. Six, seven, and eight; good. Now from here, we'll take the purple foot strap, and we're gonna go ahead and place it on our top leg. Carefully reach forward, little bit of an angle. And I'm gonna use my top hand to help brace my body here.

I could also do this if you need the extra support. Finding connection with the ribs, I'm gonna lift the top leg up to hover over my bottom leg. Kicking forward with the flex as far as I can without collapsing the spine, so I've got a nice reached long tail, and then pressing back as far as I can to open that hip, again, without dropping into my lumbar curve. So we'll breathe and lift and press; and breathe in. So I like to see, you know, what I'm made of in this one and see like, okay, if I swing that leg a little bit, how much do I have to call on from my center, from my spine, to actually control the trajectory. (laughs) You know, am I in control when things are out of control?

That is the question; last two. And last one, we're gonna land back and stay back. So feeling that open hip, let's lower the leg down as low as you can go, almost like you could tap it off the back edge of the Cadillac, and then lift it back up. We're gonna inhale lower, exhale lift. Inhale lower, and this is a place where many of us will drop into our lower backs; I'm being really mindful to stay lifted through the center, also to find a little bit of reach through my tail, realign the neck.

Here's three and two; we can always push into this top hand for a little more support. One, lift it up; let's kick it forward with the flex foot and we're gonna do the same thing, inner thigh and hip fluxion. Eight, and up; it's almost increasing the stretch but also getting into that deep fold. And four more, three, last two, and last one. And lift it up, press it back on top.

And from here, we're gonna go into a little bit of bicycle. So we're gonna kick forward from the front and then flex at the knee, bring the heel to your sit bone. Press the knee back, carefully letting the strap float around the foot, and this is an awesome stretch. And then you get to use your quads, your knee extensors, your top hand to press and elongate. So we're kicking forward; we're gonna fold.

Press the knee back and extend. And if you're careful through that transition, you should be able to hold onto the strap. Just like the push through bar, this is about how you are managing your body. One more in this direction, not letting the equipment take over, but working together. Let's kick it forward and we're gonna reverse back.

So we're pressing back, heel towards the glute. Fold in the hip almost like a passe and reach forward. Press it back and heel and toe and forward; two more. Press it back, heel to sit bone, toe to knee, and forward. Last one, press it back and through and forward.

Let's press it back over the top and just so we get a little bit of flight here, we're gonna lift the leg up and press it down; good. Seven and press, six and I'm beginning to feel like I'm collapsing into my waist, so I'm gonna stretch it out for four. Stretch the waist out, reach the leg longer. I'm not so concerned with how high it is, more how far out it goes. Last one and lower and bend the knee in.

I'll take the strap off; I'm gonna roll over onto the chest for a moment, making some cushions with your hands. Turn out your legs, lengthen your hips, lift the legs up, little beats. We'll go one, two. (rhythmic breathing) Four, three, two, one and exhale. Lower down, we're gonna go to the other side, rolling back. Okay, my view is most likely better than yours, but that's okay. (laughs) So from here we're gonna flex the feet, pick the feet up, lift the top leg, and then go ahead and lower the leg back down.

Keep the knees aimed together; you can use your thumb on this little divet, hopefully around where your greater turcantor is, your glute medius is. Touch knees, press up; and touch. You find out very quickly how active this hip was on the other side. (deep breathing) Here's three and lift, two and lift, and one and find that end range of the lift and we pulse up. Up, two, and four, three, two, and one.

And lower everything down; let me go ahead and take this strap onto the foot, extend legs out. Nice and long, trying to find that space underneath your right side, the bottom side. Lift the leg up; we're gonna kick it forward. And press it way back, and kick it forward. Trying to keep things all on the same plane.

It's so easy to let the leg fly up when it goes back. Using your inner thighs can be a great challenge here to keep everything in control. Thinking, watching seagulls flying overhead, thinking of my leg like a wing. Last one, and press it back to stay. And hopefully it's far back there.

Use your inner thigh, reach out through that hip, try to touch behind the Cadillac; this side is hard for me. And lift and squeeze and lift; breathe in. (deep breathing) Four more, last two, and one; kick it forward. Flex the foot, same thing here. You're gonna squeeze it down and lift.

Squeeze and up; it's like pulling that top hip back as you reach the leg out of the socket. You'll get a little outer hip stretch, lots of inner thigh hip flexer work. And three, and two, and last one, losing a little stability. Always gotta get it back, let's bring the leg back on top. So, going into a little bicycle, we're gonna kick forward, heel to sit bone, being careful.

Toe comes back, get the hip stretch; press through. Kick it forward again, draw the heel to the sit bone, open the hip as you press your thigh back. And then reach, so it's hip flexion, and then knee flexion, hip extension, and then knee extension. One more in this direction, hip flexion and knee flexion. Hip extension and knee extension.

Let's bring it forward; this side's a little different for me. Let's go to the other direction. So press back the knee flexion carefully, then hip flexion, then knee extension. Hip extension, bend the knee, and fold the hip and reach the leg; two more times. (deep breathing) Last one and bending in and extend, bringing it back on top, turning it out just for a lift and lower.

And seven and reach, and six and down, five, here's four, and three, and two, and one, and good. We're gonna bend the knee up; we'll take this off. We'll roll onto our knees, hands and knees, one more time. And just for a moment, a couple of just rounding our backs, stretching out through the shoulders, bringing the spine back together, so we've got two sides here. And again around and extend.

And then sit back to your heels; actually, I'm gonna walk forward and we're just gonna do a little to of the thigh stretch before we go into a little thigh stretch and hinge work. So I really like doing this before cause it lets me get a bird's eye peek as to how far I might go back in my thigh stretch with the roll back bar. So I'm gonna bring my arms back just slightly. And from here I'm gonna lift my sits bones up, with the help of my arms and my glutes. And as much as is possible, a little posterior to a little tuck, a little press of the pubic bone forward.

And then I'm gonna bend to my elbows in order to deepen the fold in my knees. Okay, so I press up again; sits bones press forward, pubic bone presses forward, belly draws back, and I bend my elbows, see, where that stretch is happening. Not too bad; one more time. Now lift up and lengthening the lower back, reaching the tailbone to the knees, and coming all the way back. This is just it, and my right side is tighter than my left; I know this now, I know what to look out for.

And then we'll come all the way up and take our pull down bar. From here, legs can be together or apart, whatever you need for your body. I'm gonna keep mine a little closer today. And we're just gonna do some presses, so roll the shoulders down and back, chest up, try to find that same stretch that we just had a moment ago. Deep breath in, let's exhale to press and reach.

(deep breathing) Just one more, pressing to stay. Little pulses of the bar, press. Two. (rhythmic breathing) Last set, reach the arms forward, and now we're ready to go. So we're gonna lift up and transfer the weight from the knee just to the top of the shin. Let's see what that feels like there.

Can we maintain that nice long shape? Good to go; we'll come all the way back up. We're gonna go in increments; lift up again. Go back to the placement that you just had. Can you go back a little farther from there?

Lift, pressing down through the shins to come up. This is brutal, but there's a gift coming afterwards. Let's go three reps back, inhale and exhale. One fourth, halfway, folding at the knees. Three quarters down if you've got it.

And then lift; I'm pressing the springs back together with my thighs. Last one, inhale exhale, one quarter, halfway. Don't cramp, calf, three quarters, sit on your butt. Good, now I gotta get all the way back up and that's enough. (laughs) All the way, whoo, that's brutal! Okay, from here we're gonna give you a stretch, but go ahead and take your swing and we're gonna hook it up onto the crossbar.

So I do have two blue springs on this swing, which means again we're gonna be working light and also with more control. We're gonna go ahead and stand up, and that feels better. We're gonna take the hands onto the canopy for support. It's not a lot of arm weight here. Lift up, just like we did in our hinge a moment ago.

Bring the top of your foot into your black strap. Now, if I'm not in control of my weight, I'm gonna push this guy down. That's not really the point. What I wanna do here is take a lunge on my left leg. So I'm gonna keep lifting my belly up.

I'm gonna send the left knee down, as the left knee sends down-- Whoops, I'm gonna just change my foot position a little. As the left knee goes down, the right leg goes back and we get a little bit of a nice hip stretch. And then we pull all the way up. And again, you might have to find a little sweet spot for your foot, usually around the metatarsals is good. So we'll lift up and bend the standing leg first.

Keep your chest lifted, there it is, send the knee back. Pull yourself in like you're doing a pull up. Reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, and pull up. These can be done with the heavy springs for sure, but because we're gonna transition with some arm work on the swing, I thought we'd keep it nice and simple, give ourself a little extra challenge. Let's do one more time; I need to lengthen out of my lower back, so I'm lifting up as I come all the way in.

Let the swing go and we'll go to the other side. Yeah, right around that metatarsal gives you a good degree of traction. So again lifting up and pressing back. A lot of times my clients wanna shift back. It's not about shifting back, but it's about an equal reach between two legs using the arms to support.

Just like you were on, actually what this is, is Eve's lunge in the swing. So if you were on the reformer, you would not wanna be shifting way back into your leg, unless you were trying to go for the splits, but that's not what we're doing here. Two more, and pull up. Last one, I'm gonna get nice and long. Pull all the way up to the top.

Release, whoopsie, bring it together. And then from here, let's rise up and we're gonna take the elevator down to sit. So slowly bend with the heels lifted. Shoulder blades are on the back, trying to descend nice and evenly if you feel good about this, just crossing over and coming all the way down. Voila, boink.

So from here, we're going into two exercises. I'm not gonna lie, they are difficult. But so, so good for scapular situations, let's say, and also just strength in general. These are from the Fletcher syllabus. This first one, the code is C4 and we have a joke in the Fletcher company that says it's called C4 because basically your thighs are going to explode as we do this exercise.

So you have options: you can simply sit on your heels, in this position, you can also kneel upright like so, or you can do what I'm going to attempt to do, which is hover above your heels during every position; it'll be good. Palms are facing in, spine is long. I'm gonna use the length of my shins to help me here. Take a deep breath in, exhale, draw the belly in, draw the sits bones in, and lift to hover. Here we are, spine is long, we take a breath in and out to press the swing down, everything is okay.

Inhale press a little lower, exhale at the little higher. Just four; this is a go to your happy place exercise and use your breath. One to press and stay and hold. Pulsing down, one. (rhythmic breathing) Four, three, two, and one, we're gonna lift up and lower the sits bones. Reach the arms up and lower them down.

Reach the arms up and move your focus, you're just shaking off the last variation cause we have three more. Love you too, last one, press it down. This time the palms come up and you face them away from each other. Plug those shoulders back, chest open, inhale, exhale. Lift up off of your sits bones; press down to stay.

And one and lift, so a little challenge to not lift your shoulders but also to manage your scapula from a different position of your arm. One more to press down and stay and hold. And pulse. (rhythmic breathing) And last set, we lift and lower, so far so good. And we're going to rotate our spine to the right and back to center. Rotate to the left, just make it about the spine, we don't have to worry about throwing the arms around.

It's like we're soothing ourselves for the next variation. Lifting up, palms face down; deep breath in and lift. Press down to stay, finding the connection. One time, and again. (deep breathing) We're getting there, press down to stay and hold. Pulse, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

Lower. (sighs) Almost there, lift it up; bring the arms behind you, criss cross them back. (rhythmic breathing) Four, three, two, one, lift up. Last position, palms facing up; we're almost there. Deep breath in, exhale, squeeze sits bones, lift up, press down. Finish strong, inhale and exhale.

(deep breathing) Press to stay, hold it there, pulse eight times. Four, three, two, and one, lift it up. And hallelujah, open that chest. We do not have to do that again. Lift it up and round your spine back.

Just bypass the swing, lift up, and let it flow. And lift up and I made it! It's been a while since I did that, guys. Last one, and around and roll up through the spine. We're gonna bring the legs around in a diamond. You can definitely shake them out for a second.

That is quad city, and I don't mean Iowa. Here we go. (laughs) Let's take the hands; now this, I should say, was a piece that was developed for the male person, not necessarily the female. But that has never stopped me before, so here we go. We're gonna wrap the hands around. We're definitely gonna feel our forearms here.

Reach and wrap the swing to face you. So your wrists are essentially long from this end, they're not broken back. And our arms are at a 90 degree angle, so we're gonna plug the shoulders back. Just gonna take a calm breath, lifting up. Press it almost to your forehead.

Take a breath in, exhale, pull from your back. And lift up, exhale, two more. Last one, legs are in a diamond. Lift up halfway, curl backwards, try to maintain that 90 degree angle as you reach to your sacrum. Round up and over and then roll up through the spine and unroll.

And let's just reach the palms away. We're gonna do it one more time, coming out. Just a little intro to this guy, it goes on and on and even into a one arm version, but today we are just doing two. Pulling down, reaching up, and down. (deep breathing) Last one, lifting up to halfway, contract backwards.

Pull that belly back, let's hold for two breaths here. This is the last time we're gonna do it. One more, free neck, rounding up and over. Release and open, flex those palms. We're gonna take the hands together, wrapping the fingers.

And just do a little figure eight. Let's just release that tension. So good, why not have strong forearms? Actually, if you're a mother with small children, it's almost imperative, as I know. And when you don't have them, they hurt.

So we get to strengthen them up, good. And then we'll release. We're gonna go ahead and take the spring down to move on. Okay, so we're back to the push through bar and we're gonna go through Ron's cat, which is one of my favorite cats on the Cadillac. We're gonna start with arms long, and again, this nice extended hip position, lengthening up through the sides.

And then working that contraction backwards. If you're not sure who Ron is, by the way, it's for Ron Fletcher, who is a teacher of mine, a very good one. So I'm just letting my back hang out for a moment to open it up after all that other good stuff. And then from here we're gonna use our shoulder blades to press down. I'm rounding forward until I can't round anymore and then lifting the tail and reaching my chest forward, as if I could put it down, but I'm not ready to do that yet, so I'm rounding back.

We're gonna do that four times, rounding through. And really reach with your heart forward and out. And curl back and roll, and two more. Also keeping your eyes open and kind of following the direction of the movement can be really helpful to inform, especially your cervical spine. From here, let's stand up onto the knees.

We're gonna come forward and a little hinge forward this time, nice long plank line, and come all the way up. And then we finish, shoulders down, extend the spine, lift up to the ceiling, another hallelujah moment. Draw everything back to center and we start again. Rounding back, pressing through, reaching a little lower if possible, rolling back, standing up to press forward, and then lift and extend and grow and contract. Rolling back, pressing the hips, lengthen, strong shoulders, lift, strong back, up and contract.

Now this time we're gonna see if we can bring it all the way down to the mat. If not, simply release the bar and come down. But I'm contracted; I'm gonna deepen my contraction so much, I'm gonna reach my chest to the mat and then come up into my swan. Breathing in, nice strong connection to the bar. (deep breathing) Two more for me, and last one.

I'm gonna reach out, grabbing onto the bar, slowly take that bar back up overhead, slowly press myself back. There is a dismount and return. My back is not there today, so we're gonna do it the nice way. Alright, from here just two more, guys! (train horn blows) Thank you. We're going to take the hands onto the bar for a reverse push through.

Let's take a diamond here and you can have your thumbs on the same side or wrapped around wherever you're used to practicing this. And again, if you haven't done this, find a teacher you can do it with. We wanna draw those shoulders down and back. And I like to have a tiny bend, a little bicep action, because I can tend to hyper extend. So this is about opening my chest, not straining my elbows.

I'm gonna lift up, contract back, rolling again, just to that point where my waist is reaching back and I begin to feel the stretch in my pecs. And I'm just gonna pulse the pelvis back. Breathing in, in. (rhythmic breathing) Last set here, and then we're rounding forward, deepening the contraction, hopefully just lifting the arms up on the bar, and then lifting into an upper contraction, so it's like I'm taking my belly and pulling it up between my shoulder blades and pulsing up for the stretch. This is one where the position is there or it's not, but we never force it to be there. And last one, we're gonna deepen the contraction forward to roll up.

One more time, lift and contract back and pulse. (rhythmic breathing) Then we round to go over, lift up and underneath last time to kind of stretch out and pulse. Two, and four, three, two, and one, and then slowly release to come all the way up; close the legs, rolling down. Take the hands onto the uprights, separate the feet, and come up and today, we are going to do monkey sprung from above, which is just a little more more effort to push against and again, is depending more on your body's control than the control of the springs. I'm gonna take my hands here, I'm gonna rock back, take my feet onto the bar.

I'm still safe, okay? We're gonna press the heels up, revisiting that monkey position from earlier and actually, after all that kneeling it feels super good. Point the feet; our goal is to stay pointed in a releve as we deepen the contraction, pull into a tight little ball, and then we get to flex underneath. Let's take a full breath for each position, so we can really find it. And then we bend, and then we reach the heels farther than the toes, and I'm pulling that bar into me.

Up, point, bend, reaching under. Last time, up, lifting out so I'm not hanging from the bar but I'm lifting my body, my spine, to meet it. Bend and lower, good. And then I'm gonna take my hands and feet out. And now we're gonna attempt a super fancy dismount.

So I'm gonna bring myself forward just a tiny bit. Rolling back, hands on the uprights, with enough space to support my shoulders, going into a roll over, up-- There we go, up and over and rolling out and winning the medal. (exhales) And I hope you enjoyed that; clean as a whistle. (laughs)