Day 2: Legs

Welcome back to Palladio's play. Day Two is about legs. Now remember that your feet are connected to your legs, so don't forget about them, but we're going to definitely get juicy in our legs today. I've got my reformers set for my footwork, three reds and a blue, the bars down for an arm movement. And I've also got my box over here because I do intend to use that in the latter half of the session. But let's get started. So ground down through both sides of your pelvis and just sit tall and spend a couple moments here. Feeling your legs helping you ground. Yeah, I'm going to close my eyes for two breaths. Breathing in and breathing out. Lifting your heart, opening your heart, and let's move in.

How lifting your arms high, stretching your shoulder are stretching. Really your rib cage away from your a pelvis. Take your arms down. Yeah, roll down one vertebra at a time, all the way down to your feet with your hands and rural yourself. Back Up. Okay. This time, taking your arms wide, open your heart. Look up and roll down as you roll down, feel free to check in with that pressure point we worked on yesterday or when you did day one challenge and see what it feels like. Yeah.

Narrow yourself back up, sitting tall, lift the arms, open the hearts, spread the fingertips. And just one more time like that. Yeah. Yeah. So this is kind of like doing a pelvic curl or a roll down. Just really letting the body release here, but still grounding with the legs, checking in, seeing where we are. So tall. Open the heart. Oh, that feels nice today.

And then arms down here. So feel yourself grounded through both sides of your pelvis and we are going to twist a lot of times when I see people twisting, I see them going down as they twist. So lift your Chin just a tiny bit and look up on the diagonal. And breathing. Also add in this feeling of opening your heart a little bit.

And just one more time. Let's work just a little bit more here. So reach your arms forward and as you do round through your low back, keep your feet grounded and open your heart and lift and again round through your low back. So for now I'm going to keep my feet grounded in my legs together as much as I can and just kind of feel what that feels like. What do you feel? What do you sense?

And then there's a point for me where I want to go a little further back. So I, in order to do that, have to let my heels lift because my low back is tight and, and we round back up, waking up those ads and again, letting the heels lift so I can a little bit further back, but hopefully not to the point where I'm going to fall all the way back, but it might happen and again, and we're going to lift those feet up, rural back, setting ourself for double leg stretch. Nice high abdominal curl. Send the legs out, reach over the reformer, calm around and lift back up. Inhale, reach. Use those abs and lift back up. Pay attention to what your legs are doing here. Feel your legs quite energized. And I'm looking for really just going for a little deeper range of motion freedom. I'm certainly using my abs, but I'm not overthinking about them.

Hopefully they're just showing up to the party here. Hold single leg stretch and we change and change and change. Find breaths. Keep the flection of your spine so your low back stays grounded. Feel that your legs are engaged. What does that mean? My hamstrings are working as I reach out. So are my quads, my inner thighs.

Oh no moss, both legs and lift. Now lower back to what feels like if you were lying flat on a table, but keep your abs engaged. Place your hands behind your head. Whoa, that's challenging. Crisscross here, rotate and rotate and Arroyo Tate [inaudible] last one. [inaudible] back through center. Hands to the backs of your legs. I'm going to rock myself up and we're going to go right to footwork. All right, so we're gonna put our foot bar up. Now for our foot work, as I mentioned, I'm on three reds in a blue and we are going to heat up the legs lie down. You're welcome to use three reds or some other variation if that's what you would like. Find your heels on the bar, feel your feet, feel your chest, open your pelvis down. Exhale, let's press out and inhale in.

Yeah, so as we pick up the pace, which we're going to do a little bit, make sure you're checking in with your breathing. I'm going to not over cue the breath here, but I want you to make sure you're breathing. So here, close in at the stop or find some little pulses pat to to focus on the in. Now I often tell people I'm looking for the pulsing to be a challenge of your pelvic stability, so not about your legs, although it is. It's really about what's going on on the backs of your hips or the backs of your legs. So really think about that. We grow a little bigger. I bounced the Stopper, oh all the way out and come all the way in.

Gently changed to the balls of the feet, settled for just a moment in your position and when you ready to go out we go. So feel yourself pulling up through the kneecaps and closing the gap between your upper inner thighs. All I mean by that is try to use those upper inner thighs since your feet. They are part of your legs. Everything's connected. Yeah. Feel your pelvis. Feel your heart open.

Fill your arms heavy and find some little pulses here. Nice and soft. I like to take a long inhale followed by a long exhale. Make sure you're using both legs equally, a little bigger to control control and all the way out to straight. And we come in, slide your heels together for your small v position. Zip those in our thighs together. As you press out and in again, we want to really feel the feet and then let that energy from the feet travel up through the legs.

Feel the inner thighs sense the rotation from your hip joints. Use your legs and then some little pulses. Soft and gentle at the stopper. Feel the calm in your body and your breath as your legs weren't vigorously here. Growing this movement, it gets a little bigger.

We're endeavoring to keep those feet stable in space. So it's the legs propelling the movement. The feet stable means the ankles are mobile all the way out to straight and come in. Heels are wide on the bar. Ankles are flexed in our sort of classic Bassi flexed position or heel position. We go the top always here.

I like to think about drawing my upper inner thighs toward one another or sliding the legs toward one another. Try to feel that the weight from the feet stays equal throughout the movement so I'm not rocking around on my heels. Breath and one more time here. And then we find those little pulses. Just gently pulsing here. Fill the hips, rotating at the hip joints, meaning I'm rotating outward at the hip joints, a little bigger. I'm definitely feeling my legs more to come all the way out. Come on in for two toes where your heels are spreading out through those toes.

At Waco, I always like to take the first few first couple and really set myself. I might move a little slower. I met, make little microscopic adjustments. And then when I feel I'm in the right position, that's when I pick up the pace a little, especially when my intention is power, which today's intention has some power behind it. For sure. One more time here. Little pulses, nice and gentle, strong, powerful legs. How all the way out, all the weight, and bring the feet close together with a little bit of separation.

Fill your legs, lower your heels down and up. Use those feet. But more importantly here, use your legs. I think so often when we do our calf raises, we forget that we're using our legs to stabilize. So feel the inner thighs, feel the hamstrings, feel the quadriceps prances happen now, pressing up to go down. Both feet are working equally. Try Not to shift the weight side to side, but to feel both feet working, pressing up and down, up and down.

Okay, and one more time each side, and we'll hold the stretch for a couple of moments. Find the spot that suits you on your foot and settle in. Return to that idea of really letting the foot bar into your foot. What do you need here? So I'm adjusting my foot as needed. I'm hoping you're doing the same. Change sides.

Just get a nice little stretch. I feel the need to do a different stretch on my two feet, so I'm just letting myself do that. And you can do the same. Breathing in and breathing out. Bend your knees and come on in. So I'm going to keep the spring the same, which is hard. If you want to sit up and change your spring, go for it.

But I'm all about power in the legs today. So left leg is going to stay on right leg is going to go up to the ceiling with a flexed ankle. And here we go out again. Feel the back of the leg, keep the energy, find your breath, try to stabilize your pelvis, pay attention, check in there, make sure you're pulling up through the knee cap at the top. [inaudible] and breathing is the most important part. Last one, please come all the way in. We'll change the legs. So the heel is on, the other leg is up flexed ankle. And here we go.

Checking in with your body, making sure your pelvis is neutral, your other leg stays energized, right? The back of the leg is working. Okay. Breath, yes about power. All kinds of fun words coming out. Just one more here please. Whoops, I bounced the stopper.

Oh well come all the way in toes now. That's fun stuff, right? So the right leg is going to go up to the ceiling with a long foot. We're going to press out and then come on in. So that's essentially our starting position. And let's just stick with five here today.

Okay? Just for time, I've got lots of things on my agenda. Here we go. We're going to come on in and change sides like it's up. We're going to press out and then the leg comes down and in. And here we go. Five [inaudible] the leg up, bend in, and then we'll come right up to a sitting position and move into some abdominal work. One blue spring for abdominal work, a variation on the knee stretch. So I'd like, whoops.

I'd like you to bring your feet, your knees rather all the way together and ground down through the tops of your feet with your hands on the frame. About a hundred eighth your shoulders lean into your arms a little bit round through your low back and really squeeze the legs together and pull in. Now focus here on squeezing the legs together and pressing down through the tops of the feet. Now move. So the legs are moving certainly, but it's about the abdominal stabilizing. That's where the challenge lies.

Yeah. Just one more time, please come all the way in to arrest. Straighten out your back for me. Slide your right leg straight and try to lift it above the bar. Okay, nice. Neutral spine.

We're going to pull forward with the arms first and then pull in with the legs second. So the spine stays pretty neutral here. The leg moving, breathing and moving. One more time please. Good. So let the carriage come to rest. We'll change sides slightly. Other leg back just above the foot bars. See if you can find that position. Abdominals are engaged.

Pull forward with your arms first and then in with your leg ami gently respite. Let's come up to a standing position and do something outside of the box. Work our hips standing. Yeah, this is called Pele's place, so we're going to play a little bit. Bend your knees, stand up nice and tall so I'm not leaning forward. Take your arms out to the side because it looks pretty. Shift your weight to your left foot and lift your other foot up so you can do that. Or Put your toe down and balance is challenging. Three or five.

Let's do five one and two and three and four and five. Go the other way. I am swirling my pelvis around the ball of my hip. That's what I'm thinking about to more please and I'm working on balance while I do it. Yeah, change sides. So stay low, shifted the other foot, lift the foot up or don't. We're going to do five of them. Here we go. One too hard to talk and do it. Three and four and five and and purposely not talking a lot because I just want you to feel what you feel, okay? I know it's a little playful.

This is supposed to be a little playful. Last one, both feet down, lift up can now straight legs. Much harder to do. We're going to shift back to the left foot. Say Upright here, lift the other foot up, work on balance. Take your arms out to the side. Okay. Now I want you to press me to put my toe down so I can talk. Press into the front of the hip and out to the side and then lift this side of the pelvis up. Press in forward into the side and lift up and press in.

Try not to bend your knee and lift up. One more time. Press in and let's do those same circles with balance. Three, two, and one. Don't bend your knee. Three, two, and one. Change sides. So standing on the other leg, I'm going to press into my hip. I'm looking for this feeling of stretch forward and out to the side, and then I'm lifting this side up. Yeah. Pressing into the hip. Feel that stretch and lifting this side up. Now as you practice this again, I definitely recommend doing it and balancing. I do find it difficult to talk and balance.

Hold circles three. No, don't pinch your knee. Two and one. I want to bend my knee to one and two. I don't know. Maybe a class 10 we're going to dance. Add One. Go ahead and rest that. All right, let's go ahead and move on to some nice, powerful full body work.

So I'm on a red spring. Okay. And I'm going to step up and my heels lifted. Hands on the bar, settle for just a moment. Engage your abdominals and then come down to a nice plank along a stretch position here. Forward and back a few times here. We know this exercise, nothing fancy yet. Breathing and moving. Check in with your own body, holds your more back position in stay. The knees are going to come in and reach back.

Use your abs to support and reach back. And two more like that. Reach back one more. Please. Reach back. Come forward. Bend your elbows for five pushups, whole one. Use your abs to support two. I'm going out to the side with my elbows. You can go back if you want. Hold it here. Lift your hips high, lower your feet flat, walk to a forward fold.

And I am definitely feeling ready to continue on. So I'm going to come down here. So let's come around onto our knees and we'll do a high kneeling position so your knees are right up against the shoulder rest and you want to hold your ropes above the buckles. So we come up right on the knees and spend a couple moments grounding down through the tops of your feet and bringing your pelvis forward in space, but squeezing your inner thighs as well. Chest expansion first guys, lovely. I don't think a day goes by in a workout of mind that I don't do some version of chest expansion.

It's so necessary to me and at the moment I'm just enjoying looking around. I suggest you do that as well. No rhyme or reason to my looking except that the view is amazing. So here, hold your arms back. Now you're going to keep your arms back and you're going to bend your knees and keep the carriage still and sit on your feet. Pause for a moment. Feel your abs.

Press through the tops of the feet and come back up. Let's do that three times. Try to keep the carriage still. Take some control, some thought. Feel how your legs are involved here and up again. Okay, and just one more time before we add on breathing and moving, take your arms forward. The carriage comes to red. It doesn't come to rest, but your arms are forward. Here, I want you to actually flex your spine, so we're going into a thigh stretch. Flex your spine, tucking your pelvis, look at your belly button. Keep that shape exactly the same as you try to hinge back here. How far do you feel confident? Press Baca.

I say press backup because pressing through the tops of the feet, it's going to help you tremendously through the shins. Look at your belly per us Baca. Now we're going to take it a little further. Feel the flection of the spine. We go back. We're going to keep going. Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. Keep going. Sit. Bend at your hips. Recognize this position. Stand up.

Take your arms forward. Tuck. Now go further than you thought you could. Keep going. Keep going. Go, go, go. Use those legs. Sit. Bend at your hips and press back up. Just one more time. All the way back, Ben Ditcher hips and we'll go ahead and rest that.

Okay, now we're gonna move into a fun stretch. Give your knees a little bit of a rest here. So I'd like you to step up on the foot bar with one foot. Guess what? I don't need you to stand up on it. So don't be afraid. But I do want you to lean into the foot bar here and feel the foot kind of wrapping around the foot bar.

Maybe use your hands and let your body rest on your thigh and maybe let your head relax. And we're gonna use this as a bit of a stretch today to just explore this idea of a bigger position. When comes to the legs. I think a lot of the more advanced exercises we're inhibited by our mobility. And this is just a fun way to sort of explore a single leg kind of, um, deep squat position. And that's that. So let's do the second side. I'm gonna stay facing you just because I can, you can go to the other side if you prefer.

But what I find interesting here is that the, my second side feels very different when I put my left foot up here. It's very difficult for me to ground down and to feel comfortable here. So you know, maybe you feel the same type of situation. Maybe you don't. Again, I'm not lifting my back foot up, but I am exploring this idea of leaning into my front leg with my toes down and then like pulling myself back a little bit. I feel a nice stretch through the back of my hip. I also feel a nice release through the back of my spine really.

And we'll just take one more fantastic moment there. Alrighty. So now this is quite fun. We're going to really work those legs. I'm going to take the bar down to the bottom position. Now what I've discovered is not all reformers, this doesn't work for all reformers, but many of them it works in some way, shape or form. So what I'm looking for is that the bar will act as a brace for my leg while I try to do my, I'm skating exercise, I'm still on a red spring and so I'm lining myself up. So my, my two big toes are hanging off and my, the standing leg is a little forward of the other leg. So my, this leg is a little bit back like by a big toe. That's about it.

So bend both knees and then lean into that foot bar and stay there ground down through your foot, through your supporting leg. Let's just put the hands on the hips and we're going to press out and reach in. Now the pressing out is not from my leg in my mind. The pressing out is really from my hip, from my glute, but my legs certainly are moving as well. Let's just do two more there and one more there.

And this is where I think it gets quite fun. So we're going to keep the carriage still Ben deeper through the leg, but fold at the hip as well. My back is endeavoring to be straight. I'm going to move at my pelvis and close the space between my thigh and my pelvis here to rotate a little bit. If you need balance, use the bar, otherwise don't. And now we continue pushing the leg out and pulling in, adding an arm movement which should look nice and feel nice to boy. I feel my glute and my leg and a whole lot of things here. Let's do three more. Here's one and use your belly to support and last one and then gently come on, rotate and come to standing and let's do the second side.

So feel free to use the bar also to assist you when you stand up here. It's kind of Nice little balancer or something to use for balance. Use the bar. Lean your leg up against the bar here. My right foot is a little bit behind my standing leg bend. Both knees and I body is upright.

Hands around the hip and I'm pressing out trying to feel the press out from the glute. Yes, the leg is moving but it's glute and two more here, holding in, softening down through the arches. Remember, your feet are involved here to fold forward. I'm rotating around really from my hip joint here. My back is still straight. Reach back and pull enough. You need to use your hands. Use Them. Otherwise add a little flair here. Keep your belly active. That Q is as much for me as for anyone else.

Good and I s juicy legwork here. Big, powerful stabilizing work, meaning my leg, that stabilizing is working really hard and the leg that's moving is working hard too. We have two more here and reach and one more place and unwind and we come up to standing. Actually we'll probably bend down and hold onto the bar to step off. So keep the bar in the same position. Add a few springs to stabilize for short box. This is going to be creative, short box work people, creative short box work means we are not going to use the strap for our side over. We're going to use our legs. Here we go.

So I've got my box in place for me. My foot is up against the wood chunk here. I know it feels a little scary, but you don't have to let go. Okay, so put your hand on your head rest here and push through that supporting like this right leg of mine is really energized. I am really pushing into that wood piece so that I'm quite stable. Also push down with your front leg to really stabilize from the outer leg here and then decide if you can balance here and guess what? If you're using your leg in your waist, you should be able to going over might be slightly challenging, but see if you can hold it and I'll need you to go over. Just hold it.

Do you want to go over? Give it a shot. Whoa. I'll tell you what. I can't go nearly as far over as I can when I have a strap, but I like this challenge of really having to use my leg. That's option one. Stay there if that's enough for you. Otherwise put your foot up on the bar slightly behind you. Feel those abdominals. Feel that leg.

Now I can't quite straighten out here because of the relationship of the bar, but I like the glute work. Stay with this. Feel your legs. Can you lift up? Can you lift up? Can you hold it? Feel your glute breast change sites. So put your foot up against the wood piece here. Use your hand on the headrest. I've put my head rest up if I didn't make that clear. Push in through the heel.

Feel this long diagonal line. Good. And decide can you hold this position and maybe you're just figuring it out. If you really ground down through your leg and use it, you will be able to. Okay, there we are. Now can you move down and up a little bit? Surprisingly, on one side, I have a ton of movement.

On the other side I have barely any, which leads me to believe that I will get more range of motion as I practice. Yeah, hold this. So remember you can hold it or you can move it, your choice and then we amplify. Take the leg up to the bar, ground down through the foot and the leg. Feel the glute. Use your belly, hold it, see if you can lift up, see if you can lift up, hold it, use your glute, use your legs. We can rest. So let's turn the box around. Finish up here for a little bit. Back extension. We have one spring for this. I want you to have one spring for this.

So I would go with the blue or even a yellow if you prefer. I think lighter spring is nice on this. I think a full spring is a little too much, but it's up to you. I purposefully left the bar up so that you have to use your legs more. We are going to focus on legs during our back extension, so it's also hip extension really.

So my hands are resting in a comfortable position for me without my head hanging. So I'm neutral. I want you to feel your pelvis, press your pelvis into the mat, all three points, both hip bones and pubic bone, and then bend your knees so you can bring your knees and your feet together. Now try to keep that arrangement of your knees and feet touching in neutral alignment. Keep your pelvis down. Can you straighten your legs, focus on your legs and pull to back extension. So when I say pull Tabak extension, I certainly am. My arms are involved, but it's really about my upper back, pulling my shoulders back, articulating up. My arms are sort of supporting here. My legs though is where I'm focusing our your inner thighs still working.

Okay. And let's do two more like that please. Oops, my left leg dipped down a little. I felt the bar. One more time please. Final one. Open the heart. Stay there for just a moment. Lift a little more. Use those legs and we can rest.

Gently step off of your box and let's close it up with a little cat stretch here. The standing on the edge of your reformer. Lift up, take a breath, exhale down. Find the edge of the box and push forward here. So I'm looking for like a flat body and I want to lunge too deep. I'm moving my feet back cause I'd like to bend my knees just a little bit and really tip my tailbone a backing up, feeling that wonderful stretch now round through the low back. I'm letting my shoulders go up on my ears cause right now that just feels good. I think sometimes we need to allow that to happen.

And then you're going to push forward again, opening your heart, flattening your back out. Bend your, you can really move your pelvis a little bit and round in just one more. Please. Reaching forward. Browning all the way in. At least the box will roll yourself up to standing. Stand tall. Open your heart. [inaudible] thanks for playing for you tomorrow.