Class #3200

Advanced Mixed Equipment

50 min - Class
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Description

Work on refining your technique with this advanced Mixed Equipment workout with Meredith Rogers. She is joined by her friend Elisa from Italy, to work on precision and alignment while practicing advanced movements. Meredith uses the Ladder Barrel and Wunda Chair to challenge your stability and mobility throughout the class.
What You'll Need: Wunda Chair, Ladder Barrel, Mixed Equipment

About This Video

Sep 23, 2017
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Transcript

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I am very excited to have my friend Alisa here from Italy to do class with me and you today. So what we'll do first is thank her for coming and you'll turn this way and we'll do some roll downs. So just keeping the feet facing forward and lifting the spine and just pausing. Take a breath in and a breath out and just let anything unnecessary, any unnecessary tension, let that go. And now, one more inhale.

And as you exhale, bring your chin down into your chest and round down towards the floor And at this stage you can soften your knees if you wanted to or you could keep them straight, it's up to you. So I'm just watching. And inhale. And as you exhale, draw the abdominals in, allow the pelvis to rotate. Nice, good.

Coming up to standing and lifting the head. And inhale. And exhale as you round down lifting the ribs up to really try to maximize this section of your spine. And inhale. And rotating the pelvis underneath stacking the spine up, growing longer.

Just don't go backwards, lift your head, that's right. Inhale. Last time. And exhale and you round down, beautifully done. Keeping the palms of the hands facing inwards.

Beautiful, inhale. Maximizing the flexion of the spine from around, in the back of the ribs. Beautiful, that was better than the first one. Good and stand all the way tall. Good, so now what you're going to do is you're going to sit right up here.

Your feet can come about there. I want you to scoot down so that your lower back is pretty supported but also that you can give some energy into your feet. Yeah. And then just reaching forward, we're going to go over the back. So inhale.

As you exhale, we're gonna round back. Letting the head come back, letting the arms come back. Allow the barrel to support you as you reach back. Palms of the hands face up as you reach around to your sides. Bring your head up and roll up to sitting.

We'll just do that three times. And inhale. I'm a big fan of extension to neutral abdominal work. Big fan of extension to neutral abdominal work. I love it.

And reach. We spend a lot of time in flexion. So I like to go through extension too. Come a little forward, just forward with your whole body. Good, one more.

Beautiful. It's very exciting for me to get to work with a beautiful mover, that's fun. And then rolling up all the way, nicely done. Bring your hands behind your head. I want you to think about with your shoulder blades is don't pull them together quite so much.

Almost like the underneath of the scapula is lifting up a little bit and then you can bring your elbows back, just don't squeeze the scapula together. Perfect. And then start there to round down. And go fully into extension. Inhale.

And exhale as you reach up, keeping the head with the hands, finding neutral. Stay right there. Right there. And inhale. And exhale to go back.

And inhale. And exhale, drawing the lower abdominals in. Head stays with the hands, that's perfect. Hold to inhale. And exhale to go back.

We'll just do a few more like that. Inhaling. And exhaling. Drawing the ribs together. Pulling the two sides of the pelvis inwards.

Just in your imagination. And back. Good and two more. Inhale. And exhale.

Beautiful. Tightening, deepening, lovely, and go back. Good, so just warming the spine up. Last time. Okay, so what I want you to do there is just hold.

Come up just slightly higher than you are and inhale. And then we're going to do a long rotation. So we're gonna rotate. And then come back. Reach for me.

Rotate. And come back. And reach for me. Rotate. Good, she's doing a beautiful job keeping the lower part of her body very still.

Very stable. And center, even though I didn't ask her to she knew. She knew that I wanted her to and that's super. And, yes beautiful. Nicely done.

We're gonna go one more time to both directions. Exhale as you rotate, reaching for me, lengthening. And center, and rotate. Nice. And center, take your arms out in front of you and you can rest, go all the way over the back again.

Take the arms wide and around. Reach forward and roll up all the way, Beautiful, slide on to the top. And take your feet up on to that bar and separate them. We're just going to do spine stretch forward here. So your legs can be straight.

So you're gonna back up just a little bit. Arms reach forward. Inhale and then what I want you to think about here is not pulling your scapula back so much. So actually, reach your arms forward. It's gonna feel strange.

Okay, good. Inhale there. And exhale as you bring your chin into your chest and here's where we're focusing on finding flexion, right in that section of your spine. And then reaching out, you can go further. And inhale.

And then exhale, stacking the spine. Working through here. And then lift the spine but don't pull the shoulder blades back. Again, inhale. And rounding, reaching.

Lifting, feeling that stretch in this section of your spine and then reaching over. And inhale. And exhale as you stack the spine. Stack the spine. Nice, beautiful.

And two more. So we work the spine in both directions and in both the directions we work the abdominals. The coming back over the barrel to neutral is a little bit more challenging abdominally but this we can find just as much focus there as well. And then lifting, come towards me just a bit. Yeah, one more.

And rounding. So I'm looking at the tightness here and I know that she can create more range there. She just thinks about it. Slow down here and pull back more through there, nice. Good.

Okay, awesome. No shoulder blades. Reach your shoulder blades forward, there. There, so it's like that, not that. So just soft, they don't have to hold.

So you can step down. And we're going to grab the Wunda chair. And Alisa is going to show you some advanced work on the Wunda chair so I don't have to. So we're working on a split pedal chair. I've taken the...

Pedal connector away. Not so that I can use it as a stick but just so that the pedal now moves independently, which is just interesting. It's not super, super hard, it's just interesting to see if one foot pushes harder. So what i want you to do Alisa is just bring your hands back, good. And then bring your upper body back and now, instead of mobilizing the spine, we're stabilizing the spine.

Inhale. As you exhale press the legs down, grow the spine tall. Beautiful and inhale to lift. And exhale to press down, lifting up at the same time. Don't lean back.

And inhale, lift. And the navel pulls back to the spine so the back extensors and the abdominal muscles are working co-contracting. Their co-contracting, they're working together to keep the spine nice and still and we're lifting the knees from the center of the body. Nice, two more. And those pedals are moving really evenly.

You'd think they're stuck together but they're not. And one more. Beautiful. Okay, stay there and put your toes on the pedal. Oh yeah, you can come up, that's fine.

I forget, okay. So the shoulder blades are on the outside of the body, out near the arms, and then lift the knees. And press down. A little anterior rotation happening at the bottom. It's hard to see but it's there.

So pull back there. So it's super still, right like that. Perfect. And then lift. The front of the ribs draw back to the back of the ribs but they don't cause the body to go backwards.

It's just like you're bringing the front side of your body to the back side of your body so they make a long sandwich. I don't think I've ever used that cue before. A long sandwich, what do you think? No, it's silly. You're leaning back, lean forward a little, good.

And two more. Nice. And one more. Okay, cool. So bring your heels together, bring your hands behind your head.

Front ribs to back ribs. Weight over the sitting bones and inhale, lift. And exhale to press. Good and inhale to lift. And exhale to press.

Inhale, keeping that spine stable. She's doing great. Pedals working well. Good. And up.

Pull this rib back just slightly. She's got a little rotation so just the right ribs come towards me, that's it. Beautiful, one more time. So precision. Good.

And then lift the feet. Come to the outside of the pedal and you can just keep your hands as they are to the outside of the heels on the outside of the pedal. Perfect. A little less rotation from the foot. Perfect.

Okay, so here we go. So there's a little bit of, imagine that you're having squeezing together with your legs and push down. The wide feet positions are a little harder to stay real level. So what we see with Alisa is that the left leg pushes a little harder. So what I would say is just with your brain, stand on your right leg a little.

Yeah. So that's quite a different story when the feet are far away from each other. Come back just a little bit. So keeping the pelvis still. Let's do three more.

A little wider with the elbows but without, no, open more. Good. You have to give a little credit to someone who is doing such a beautiful job. And last one, go ahead. Okay so now what I want you to do, hands are gonna stay.

I want you to hold your body still and just push the left leg down. So one leg presses. And lifts. And the right leg presses. And lifts.

So there's got to be a lot of control right in the pelvis. And the left leg presses. And lifts. And the right leg presses. And lifts.

Maybe just a slightly smaller range and you're doing that right rib rotation again. Left leg presses, perfect. And lifts. Right leg, right there. So see how when you go down so far, you go forward with your pelvis.

Just make it a little bit smaller and keep it nice and still, perfect, right there, stop. Okay, we're gonna do three more. Two more on the right, one more on the left. Stop. Yeah, exactly.

So the range is less important than the stability is the lesson here. Good, great job, one more. Okay, cool. And then you can step off. All the way off, just stand up.

All right so for the single leg work, we're gonna do the full lunge. Okay, so I put the hold the pedal together dowel back in. Alisa step down with one foot. Push the pedal down. You can do this on the same spring or you can give yourself a little bit more spring if you wish, it's a challenging exercise.

Step one leg up on the top of the chair and stand up bringing your arms out to your sides. Yeah, I'm gonna be nicer than that too. Okay, so what we want to try to do here is we want to use this back leg a lot. So push like you're trying to push the pedal away from you. That will help you, it won't take all the work out of here but it will help some.

And then feel the back of the right leg start to engage. Push down into the chair and start rising up. Good, that's fine, just there for now. And we'll go down, we'll do three like that. And then we'll do three, uh-huh, exactly.

So what I just loved that she did, that you may not have been able to see but when she started to go back down and she has to put a lot of attention into that back, like she's almost is, she is going backwards. And I'm just giving her a little and I'm not helping her much. I'm just making sure that she's fine. Okay, so this is the third one and so now we're gonna start to, we're gonna start to come all the way off. Now, what I want you to do with this leg, stay lifted, take this leg around to the side.

Reach for me like you're going to kick me. Take it in front of you, lift it up as high as you can. Beautiful. Take it back down. Bring it out to the side, I'm right here.

Bend your supporting leg and step back down. It's a hard one on this chair, it's so far away. And then come back, a little bit of front ribs to back ribs. We decided that long sandwich isn't really the best cue because it's more of like a wrap like a burrito. (laughs) So maybe a long burrito is a better way to think about the squeezing of the lungs or maybe you could just think about using your breath and your abdominal muscles.

That might help too. And then around, she's doing that excellent job. And then reach behind you, that's where the pedal is. There it is, good. Yeah, yeah, I got you.

Okay, last time. Really nice tracking here. Really nice, use these obliques to help keep that hip lifted. Around to the side. Beautiful, up, around, and so as you go back you want to find that hamstring.

Find that hamstring, find the pedal. Nice, beautiful, come halfway down. More. Stop. Bring your arms out in front of you and bend and straighten the back leg.

Yeah, you can lean forward a little. Press. Eight, quick. Seven. Keeping this leg still.

Six, a little faster. Five. Oh, four. This is not easy, she's doing a great job. Thank you for doing this for me.

Last two. Awesome, one more. And when that leg goes straight, you can come all the way down now. Your hands can come back to the chair and you can change sides. Okay, you ready?

Okay. All right, so using the back leg. Using the abdominal muscles. Working through the back of that supporting leg. Push out on me a little bit.

Push with your knee out onto my hand. So yeah we just did three to start and so you get to go down and stand on that back leg. I think we might have found her more challenging side on this side. Good and down. So as you go up you want to drop this sitting bone and lift this pelvis.

Okay, so here we go. You ready? Oh yeah, nice. Around. Up, belly in, pull the leg up.

That's it, down. Around. Bend behind you. Standing on the back leg. Workout, this way.

Just push on my hand a little bit with your knee, your left knee. So a little bit more gluteus medius focus. Push on me, push on me, push on me. Good. Around.

Belly pulls the leg up. There you go, down. Nice, awesome. Push out this way. Yeah, nice, good.

She's doing this, this is hard. As you know, if you're doing it too. It's not easy. So if you're teaching this to your students, make sure to offer them plenty of support if they need you. Maybe just be there for support even if they don't need you.

Okay, so here we go. We go down. Yep, good. Lean forward. Arms in front.

And we go bend and press. Bend and press. Bend and press. Pull the right rib back. So right ribs towards me.

Yeah. Three more. One. And two. And three.

Push all the way to the ground. Put your hands down onto the chair. You can keep your hands on the chair. We're gonna go straight into the pike. Yep.

You okay? Okay, do you want a sticky for your hands? Yeah, yeah, okay so just stay as you are. I'll get it for you. I'm getting a sticky.

So just okay, so we've got a sticky. 'Cause I don't want our hands to slide around and neither does she. So your hands are right up at the front and so what I want you to do is don't go anywhere yet. And get into a very, very, very rounded spine. So I'm going to give you the full pike and I'm gonna give you a little variation on the pike, which I really enjoy.

So you're gonna go forward right to there. And then you're gonna lift dropping your head. Got in her way a little. And then when you go down, I want you push down with your legs but lift up with your abs. So you're trying to round more on the way down.

That was the difference. Yeah, good. And then exhale to lift. And right in here, you round more as you come down. Exactly, you'll see the change.

And exhale. Nice, beautifully done. And inhale. Okay, so here's where it's gonna get a little different. You can come up to the top.

Good. Stay lifted up there. Bend your knees, try not to lower the pedal. Now lift off the pedal as you straighten. Excellent, the pedal stays still.

Inhale, bend, nice. Lift off the pedal, yes. Inhale, bend. Exhale, round the spine lift off the pedal. Two more times.

Bend. Lift off the pedal, nice. One more bend. Lift off the pedal and then round your way down. Nice, exactly.

Take your hands just to the front of the chair and then you can just bring your heels down towards the floor and lean back, just stretch back. Also just hang. You can just, yeah, hang, hang. Just make sure that chair stays nice and still. Okay, so we're gonna do a couple of hip exercises, Now firstly, do you want another sticky for your feet?

Or you happy? We're gonna do frog front. Mm-hmm. So into the frog position. Bring your feet a little closer together so that your heels are connected.

Little less turnout with your feet, little uh-huh and then we're gonna make the turnout come from the hips. Let's bring the sticky to you. Okay. So what you're gonna do, she's gonna get right in close to that chair. Right in close.

And what's hard here is to keep the heels together but the knees real wide. So what I want you to do here is bring your front, put the pedal back down for just a second. And then come yeah back with the ribs and in with the body. Now, hold yourself there. Now, you can lift the pedal.

Good. Keep the heels. Keep the heels together. (laughs) All the way and then press, wrap the hips back. And lift.

So as she's pressing down, she's thinking about trying to turn her knees, not her feet so much but her knees towards me and she's working those deep rotators of her pelvis which I know that she is because I can feel it and see it. A little faster now. Let's do five. And four. And wrap, three.

And wrap, two heels together. And one, good. Put the pedal all the way down. Stand up. Step down.

Okay. So the next thing you're gonna do is you're gonna sit on the chair. You're gonna bring your arms backwards and feet on the chair like that. Just to the sides, uh-huh. So put your weight into your arms.

Tuck your tail, lift yourself off the chair. Good, stick it up nice and high. A little bit more pelvic rotation so tuck. Good. And now wrap from the back of the legs and press the pedal down.

And down. How's the weight, it's okay? And down. She's working hard, that's good, it's heavy. Down.

Nice, lifting the pelvis. Down. And two more. Down. Supporting the lower back.

Down. And now sit all the way back down. Awesome. Okay while you're there, we'll do the frog back. So the hands come just to the sides of you.

Yeah. So what I want you to do is I want you to push the pedal all the way to the ground. Lift yourself off the chair, bend your arms, and sit your pelvis down towards your feet. Yeah, so she's ready, she's all supported in her shoulders. Just a little bit less ribs and then pick the pedal up.

Good and now as she straightens her arms, she's gonna come straight up. So as she's imagining, that's beautiful. She's thinking about going forward. Exhale, lift, time to think about going forward. And bend.

Nice. And lift up, go forward. And bend. And lift up, go forward. And two more.

That's awesome. Really nicely done. Yeah, great, sit down. That's plenty. Good and you can take your feet all the way down.

Okay, so now. We're gonna do some spinal articulation. So for that we need a mat. And what we'll do is we can use the mat, can just put it over the top of the wood so that there's a little padding between her head and the frame of the chair. Only going to lay on the wood, don't lay on the wood but just put your head up against it.

It's just nice to have just something in between. Sometimes I use my hair. (laughs) So lie down. So she's forward of the frame. Forward of the frame and then just reach up and put your hands up on to the pedal.

Lift one leg up at a time. This is still on a heavy spring. And just, we want the pedal to stay fairly still. Okay, so what I want you to do is take a breath in. As you exhale, you're gonna stretch your legs out but only to the point where your back is supported.

And then bring your legs up to a vertical position and exhale to roll over to tip the top of the chair. Then reach up. Reach up, reach up. And I going to give her a little bit of a manual assist here. Inhale.

And now very slowly keep your feet right there. Imagine that you're trying to kick me in the nose. Mm-hmm. So that helps a little. That pushing away of the legs.

Nice. She's doing that on her own, I'm just guiding her where I want her to be. You okay? So just make your head go this way, actually this way a little bit. Yeah okay, comfy.

Relatively. Lift. Exhale, reach over the top and you're gonna tip the chair. You're gonna push away with your legs. Push towards me, lift the spine.

That's awesome. And now roll down and keep pushing towards me. Towards me so the hip extensors are working quite hard here. Yeah, beautifully done. Do one more.

So we're gonna go down. And up. And over. Touch. Reach up.

Press up, press up, press up, press up, press up, press up, press up. Good. Inhale. And exhale as you come down. Good, pull this hip towards me just a little bit.

That's awesome. I seem to say that word a lot, I just noticed but it's a nice word so that's okay. Control balance. So you come up and over. And tip the chair.

Now, lengthen up one leg. One leg presses into the chair and this leg reaches out. Push, push, switch. And lift up as you push away. And change.

Up as you push away, beautiful. And change. And change. Good, one more time to each side. Excellent work.

And last time. And this time as you roll down I'll just give you a little a nice little stretch. Good. And then just bend your knees and rest. Nicely done.

You can take your legs down onto the ground. Yeah and then just straighten them out along the mat. And bring your arms up over your shoulders. Lift your head and chest up and roll all the way up. Okay, cool.

So come up here with me again. We're gonna take a spring away so I'm gonna leave her on one spring on the top. So if that's three to you or four to you or whatever one spring on the top is or two near the bottom is fine too. We're gonna do the cat stretch. So come up onto your knee.

So come around the back. All right. So go a little more towards the front. I'll help you. Okay so getting to the pedal on the cat stretch is sometimes the most challenging part.

So I'm gonna just be a nice teacher and I'm gonna put my legs right up here and you actually get to stand on them a little bit. So use me. Okay, so inhale. And now exhale as you round down and we talked a lot about don't let the pelvis move back, not even a little bit but the reality is it has to. It has to.

Good and then once the hands are on the pedal, you're nice and safe. Bring your pelvis over your knees. Yeah, good, I'm right here. So now stay there. I want you to press the spine down and in.

So your body's coming in, look down. Look down, look into the chair. Good. Now, that's beautiful. As you round back up, don't shift too far forward either, you're gonna round back up.

You're going to push down with your arms as you're lifting up into your abdominals. It's great, so inhale, reach away. Nice. And exhale, curl. Okay Alisa, I'm going to take my body away from your feet.

Okay so inhale, reach away. So it's nice to get someone going. Now she's nice and supported. She's got this. Good, come up a little higher for me.

Really round through this section. Good. And reach down. Straighten here more. Take this spine a little out that way.

And then round. Okay, we're gonna do one more. You're gonna do one more. (laughs) And then go down again. I'm gonna give her my legs back as she comes up. Come up, come up.

Let go. roll through the spine. Lift the arms up. And come around to the sides of the arms. Beautiful, very nicely done.

Step down, I think we'll just keep that same spring and we'll just do some tricep work. So I'm gonna have you come on to the top of the chair. We're gonna do triceps prone so just lying down. Other way. Yeah.

Come around like this. No, she's doing really great. Remember, that English is her second language or maybe third or fourth or something like that. Okay, so this way like. No, no, you're good.

You're fine. I'm just impressed with people who can speak more than one language. I only speak the one so. A little tiny a little bit of Spanish. I can say hola, I can say ciao.

(laughs) Okay so you're gonna come up a little higher, a little more towards neutral. And bring the head up slightly. Okay so this is specifically for that scapula stabilization that we were speaking about earlier. So what I want you to really focus on is lifting through your serratus. So now hold that.

Bend your arms, don't squeeze the shoulders together. Keep them right as they are. That's perfect. And now press down but lift here. It might feel a little bit round in your body.

Uh-huh. And bend. Elbows coming into the body. She's doing gorgeously. And press down.

And bend. Oh, we're losing it a little bit. Don't lift up higher in your extension, lift up more just through the rib area. Uh-huh. And bend.

Widening. And press. Nice, one more. Bend. Reach, a little more serratus.

Flatten this out for me, come up from the front of the body. That's perfect, hold that right there. And then take the body all the way down to the ground and I'll help you with there. And you can just slide off the back. Yep, I got it.

Okay, let's do the standing pike reverse next. So stand right here, mm-hmm. So just to open up the back a little bit. Inhale, to stand tall. Exhale, rounding down reaching your hands towards the pedal.

Good. She's right up against the edge of the chair. And we're gonna let the pelvis lift up. So you're gonna lift your tailbone towards my nose. Gonna reach down, finding that nice long back.

Think of creating space in this section of your body. Nice, yeah that changed a lot actually. And then round and same thing that we did when we did the pike, you just push the pedal away. Push the pedal away. Excellent.

And then inhale as you reach out. Awesome. Exhale, press the pedal away. Let your head go. Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice.

Let's do two more. Reach lengthen tipping here. Uh-huh, beautiful. And round opening, we're really trying to maximize this, yeah that's great. One more.

Sometimes you can feel the things that you can't see as much which is why I use my hands quite a lot so I can feel when she gets a little bit more round in there. I don't know if you can see it and then we're gonna roll all the way up and just like on the cat stretch, I'm gonna have you finished with your arms up near your ears so just bring them around in front of you. And then out to the side, beautiful. Good, nice posture there. All right, so torso press sits.

And then we'll put the chair away. So I'm gonna go real light on this next exercise. I'm one spring on the lowest choice. One-on-one. And you want to sit right up towards the front of the chair.

Okay and then reach back putting the hands down on the pedal. Okay, so bringing one leg up. And then the other. So do you want to test that out and see how you feel there. Go down just with the knees bent.

So does that spring feel okay? Okay. So the tricky part about this exercise is not the body, it's the legs. So we're gonna take those legs and we're gonna lower them down so that you're just there. And now go down, reaching down.

So there's your inhale breath. And then as you exhale, lift the sternum. Lift the sternum. And do a little bit of posterior rotation as you go down, nice. Oh, but don't lift the legs.

Don't lift the legs. And then lift the sternum. Keep the legs down. It's not easy on the legs, it's real hard. Keep them down, into my hand, down.

That's it. Okay, you okay? Okay keep your left hand on the chair, take your right arm off. So you're gonna go down. You're gonna go back.

This arm is gonna come around behind you and then lift up on the diagonal, keep the arm. Yeah, good. I'll help you here. And then reach down. Ad lift up.

This is beautifully done, it's a very hard exercise. Good, keep the right side of the pelvis heavy. And then lift up. Good, come center. Right arm goes down.

Take a moment if you need to get yourself organized. Change sides so going over the back. And reaching. Stay in rotation, reach out. That's it, over.

And reaching. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Nice, one more time. Oh, so hard. And lift up.

This is what I didn't want to do and she's doing such a nice job for you. Good. Good, so you can just sit yourself up again. Nice, nice. Well I would love to do it.

Just not today. All right that was such a nice job. Really, really good. Okay, so now we have the ladder barrel back and we're gonna finish here. So come up on to the barrel, Alisa.

Sit right on the top or sit. So we're gonna do the climate tree so organize so that you have some, you can sit a little forward if you want so you have a little bit more support. And then I want you to take one of your legs and hold behind the leg. And do it a little bit differently. Okay and then from there, we're gonna take the leg out straight.

So straight. We're straighten and bend. So just hold here for a second. So just hold the back of the leg. I'm just gonna change the choreography on you just to make it confusing.

And straighten and just bend over the barrel just there, just yeah. No, just straightening and bend three times, that's all we're doing, that's okay. We're just throwing some choreography that's not familiar to her at her and now she's got it. So now, take the leg in the hands or the ankle and begin to roll back. So this foot hooks.

The leg can stop here, you can come down. Back. Around to the side into flexion. Walk up. Two, excellent.

And lift. And then hold back here again. You okay? Okay. And reach out.

I just realized I was hiding behind her. And two. And three. Good and go back. Just here.

And back. And around. And find the leg and walk. Two, three, and lift. Let's do three.

Good. One, lift the sternum. Lift the sternum. And one more. Walk up.

Come back, this time walk down your leg. Walk. Two. Three. Reach.

Take it around. And walk. One. Two. Three.

And lift. Nice and bend. Great job. I'm having some deep breaths for you, I just realized. You doing okay?

Okay, so here we go. Stretch this leg. Straight, one. It's doing a little rotation, keep it parallel. Two, better.

And three, come up. Roll back. Just here. That's okay, we'll do two like that. And three with a walk.

And one. Two. Three. Beautiful. Hold the back of the leg.

Kick one. And two. Nice, awesome. And three. Come to the top of the leg, bring your leg with you, keep the pelvis square, go down.

Around. Out. Good. She's doing great. I'm just giving her a little help.

And bend. And go one. And two. And three. And go down.

And stop the leg just a little sooner. Yeah, stop the leg a little bit here. There, okay, go. Down. Reach.

Around. And lift. Is that like the evilest smile in the world? Good. Oh yes, bend that knee.

And rest. Okay, so let's step down on to the floor. So we're gonna go into the side over. The advanced side over. So you can put your bottom leg, your left leg, step up on to that first rung.

And then put your pelvis on the top. And then take this leg up and put it up here. Okay, so yeah go a little bit more. Actually, what feels better? A little more in front, okay.

So what I want you to do is I just want you to come down onto this elbow. Okay and then we're gonna lift this part of the body and we're gonna bring this hand behind the head. And then bring your eyes forward slightly. And then bring the other hand behind your head. This is great so we go down now.

Inhale, stretching over the top. Exhale, lifting, reaching out. And inhale stretch over the top. You're leaning back a little bit so go forward with this part of your body. There.

And reach out to take the head out into the ocean. Yes, beautiful. And one more. And reach out. Okay now you're gonna hold yourself there.

Let's bring the head like this, lift this foot up. Take it off. And okay. Over the top. And then turn out.

And lift it up. Oh, and rest. Tuck it back under. Yeah, yeah, just stretch. Just stretch, this leg can go back.

I know you're good, you're good. That was kind of, I threw you under the bus a little bit there. You okay? Okay. That was mean.

But I can be like that. The other side, that's right. So just think like reach out, like reach that way more than lifting. You're just doing a little bit of lateral flexion of your neck. Okay.

Okay, so we're gonna go over. Just a little bit flexion here. And reach out wave to the people on the train, good. And over, we did three. And reach out.

Good, are you okay? And over. And reach out. Okay, so head this way. Okay, now this leg comes off.

Put your hand down, it's fine. Yes, yes, lift up. Ooh! I'll help you. I help you and now bring your leg, turn it out. And hold it and hold it.

And she's doing it. And rest. Rest, rest, rest. Lay over the barrel. Take this leg and put it back underneath.

Yeah, good. Oh good. And that's the reward. Okay. Okay.

So we're gonna finish with the swan and I know Alisa has a sensitive back so she's gonna do the range of motion that feels good to her. Okay so I'm gonna have you come up onto the barrel and you're gonna bring your heels together on that second bar and your toes apart and you can push into it or you can go underneath it, whatever you prefer. Okay so you're gonna go all the way down and push into that bar. So there's a lot of legwork in this exercise actually, if you didn't know that. I'm gonna bring the hands behind the head and then we're gonna begin here with a little bit of reverse articulation.

So we're gonna just take the head up. Just the head. Just the head so you're gonna look at my knees and now you can start to bring your back up. Okay, just to there. From there we're going to take the arms out.

This is the point where we bend the knees. Now, go up to the ceiling first. Up to the ceiling, up to the ceiling, and then back as far as you can. Good and your legs are gonna straighten. You're gonna reach out over me.

Reach for my shoulders. Bend your arms. And articulate your spine down. So your back works harder on this side than it does on this side just for your information. I'm sure you already know.

You just think of, it's gonna feel leanly probably. Okay, so lift just your head first. Look at my knee. And now the rest of your body work here. Yeah, good.

Stay there. We'll exhale to take the arms forward, palms down. We'll bend the knees, reach up, lift the body up. To go back, press with your legs into the barrel to go backwards, beautiful. Take it back towards me.

There's your inhale breath, left side works, uh-huh. Inhale, hands behind your head. And exhale down. I like it, I like it a lot. It's very nicely done.

So inhale, reach out through your spine. Beautiful work here. You're skipping that middle section just a little bit. Exhale, arms. Inhale, bend.

Lean left. Lift the right side, the shortened the left side. Good, beautiful. Reach back out, heels up against the ladder. Arms behind your head.

Go all the way back down again, Beautifully done, take your feet down. Just stay as you are. You can just hang forward and stretch. Okay, that's enough. You can step down.

And then just step to the outside of that barrel and we'll finish the way we started. Well do three roll downs. I want you to think about this again, this section of your spine and not coming backward with the shoulders. So just stopping the shoulders just over the hips. So inhale.

And then exhale, bringing the head down. Lifting, lifting, lifting. Did your back just crack? Her back just cracked. And did it feel good or did we break it?

Good. Coming up. And standing tall. And exhale. And inhale.

And exhale. Yeah, really nice, that's changing a little bit right there. Okay, one more time. Stand tall, inhale. And exhale.

And inhale. And exhale. And then this time as you're arriving up bring your arms up towards me. Lift lengthen soften. And open.

Just watch the barrel, come a little forward. There you go. Thank you.

Comments

1 person likes this.
Love, love, love!! Really fab work - it felt great just to watch, cant wait to try!!
4 people like this.
I loved watching Meredith teach, observe the body, correct, cue, all of it. For me, in addition to being a fabulous workout, it was very valuable from a teaching perspective.
1 person likes this.
Gorgeous class! Agree with Jennifer - love, love, love! Great cues and flow.
Thank you all!
Jen
1 person likes this.
Wonderful! Challenging to do and I loved watching your touch cues for alignment.
Michele M
2 people like this.
Thank you for such an amazing practice!! I loved going from the ladder barrel to the chair and ending on the barrel, fantastic sequence and cueing!:)
2 people like this.
Great class Meredith, you are such a good and caring instructor.
2 people like this.
I love this Meredith! So good to see some classes on other equipment t
Thanks everyone! I so appreciate you taking time to share your feedback.
1 person likes this.
Beautiful session! Thank you Meredith! I agree with Amber, so great to see classes on the other equipment!
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