Day 3: Hips

All right. Day three. Let's play with the hips. Today we're gonna use this foam roller in a slightly outside of the box manner on the reformer. I've got my reformer set with one red and one blue spring and we're going to keep it like that for a little while. Let's get started. Uh, the idea here is that we're going to soften up a little bit. So I would like you to line your reef, uh, foam roll up on your reformer so that you can sit on it, but also move forward and back a little bit. Okay? Really loving this. Just start right away with settling in. Yum, right, soften those glutes minor, a little bit sore and then a roll back up and over and lean forward.

Now if you need to make adjustments, just make adjustments forward or back with your role so that you feel like you have enough space to move a little bit. Keeping the feet grounded in this manner, I feel like makes it just a little bit easier for some people to, to roll out their glutes here and it just feels different. And I like things that feel different some days. So I'm enjoying the sensation and I'm going all the way to the point where I feel the foam roll on my hamstrings and then kind of leaning forward feeling my two hips feels gorgeous. Let's just do that one more time, although I could stay here longer and certainly if you want to just pause the video and do it a little bit longer. Good idea. I think, uh, sit tall here and then just shift over to one side and let's iron out one of our glutes. So whichever glute you're on is just fine. And here I'm settling in.

I'm actually feeling stretched through my back from yesterday's workout. Um, I'm a little bit sore in my glutes. That's nice. Feel a little stretch, a little kneading, and you can use your reformer bar here to just kind of balance and maybe allow you to go just a little deeper. Again, if you need to keep working on this glute, pause the video and keep going. But I'm trying to keep this workout at a nice, um, 30 minutes, so I'm gonna move to the other side. That's enough. So other side here, I always feel so much more sensation on my left glute than my right glute, but again, it also, it feeds all the way up into my back. So I start to feel a nice little stretch through my back. As I roll, I just put my foot where it made sense. You can have your foot anywhere.

What I'm trying to do is get to the side of my, my body here a little bit and iron out the glute more on the side, all the way up to where it meets the pelvis. That feels really nice and no real right or wrong with what? For me with what you're doing with your arms and legs here. Just one more moment and again, if you need to sit with this a little longer, go for it. Take a pause and just iron out your glute to your heart's content. Yeah, let's sit equally with both sides of our pelvis on the foam roll and now let's warm up a little bit. So sitting really tall, grounding down through the feet.

Feel your abdominals. I've got my legs, hip width, and now we're gonna roll forward and feel a little warm up here in the abdominals for this balance challenge. And then sit tall. So let's just add this nice little reach with the arms as you roll forward, finding a little, a little challenge, and then sit tall. And just one more time like that. Rolling forward. Nice, easy arms and sit tall. Take your hands behind your head, lengthen through your low back. And let's twist with an exhale. Double pulse. And every time I twist it and get an opportunity to look out the windows, it just makes me want to smile. This is such a beautiful place. I feel so lucky to be here every day. One more time, each side, and exhale. And here we go. Now we're going to get a little bit jucier.

So roll forward and find a place where you're kind of challenged by balancing here and feel. I can use my abs to stabilize. My feet are, are grounded, but they're not holding me up. Lift one leg, flexing the hip. Ooh, I'm a little bit deeper than I usually am here. And I find this to be a fun challenge. Breathing, whatever it makes sense to you. Ups. I almost lost my balance. Okay. Don't lose your balance. And let's add some rotation after this one here. Okay, so we met. Stay in this position, rotate and push and rotate and push. So what am I pushing with?

I'm pushing my hand to my leg to hopefully fire up those obliques just a little bit more and rotate and push and rotate and push. And one more time. Let's stay over here and sit with that for a moment. Now move the body three, two. So just little movements and one that just felt necessary. Change sides. Here we go. And three and two.

I'm keeping the push and one both feet down. Roll up to sitting. And let's change a little. So here, move your foam roll back so that it's slightly on the headrest and you have your role just about at the front edge there, but not completely at the front edge. So you need maybe need a little bit of space depending on your size, body. And then I'm going to have a seat here. Now I recognize that this is not a favorite position for many people, but it's also a very necessary position.

So if you need a softer foam roll or need to omit this or need to put padding on, please do. I'm rounding a little bit through my low back, going back to my tailbone, feeling my flesh kind of separated and then rolling forward, checking out the connectors and my pelvis. So for me this foam roll is just fine, but if you feel like, hmm, it's a little too intense for me, put a little pad down or a towel and it'll feel better over time it gets better. So really maximize the pelvis movement, rounding through your low back here and then tipping forward all the way to the pubic bone. Now right here I'm using my hands on the bar because my bar locks in and I can pull forward a little bit. If you don't have a bar that locks in, please remember that and don't pull. And then here we go. We're going to sit nice and tall and sit with this for a moment and just kind of roll a little bit side to side. Yeah, bring the bottoms of your feet together, feel that position, roll a little bit side to side, see how that feels, and then let's bring the feet all the way together, the knees all the way together and try to balance here. Fun.

Challenge my friends. Lift your hands. Place your hands behind your head. Now if you feel unbalanced, feel free to separate your knees and feet. If not, squeeze those legs together and challenge yourself with a twist. Oh, and microscopic adjustments for me happening constantly. Duh, Duh and Duh, Duh.

Focus on sitting up nice and straight, using your upper back and enjoying the balance challenge here. Release that. Good. Now scoot forward on your foam roll a fair bit. I'm hoping that you kind of can gauge where you need to be to roll back. I've got my knees resting up against the shoulder or the bar here rather, and I'm just going to find my way back. Yeah. So for me, rolling through my low spine is quite difficult. Feel free to put your hands down or just use your feet, your, your shins, rather on the bar to support you and then find your way on your back.

So I need to move down just the slightest bit met here I am enjoying my position on the foam roll. Settle in for just a couple moments. Feel your pelvis heavy, feel your spine heavy, your upper spine, heavy, your head heavy, little openness through your chest, and then place your feet on the bar for your heels. Heel position on the bar. And we're going to do some footwork with this really light spring. I have my shoulders just up against the tips of those shoulder rest as I move. Yeah, if you feel yourself slipping and sliding, then um, try to ground down a little bit more. If you still can't manage the slipping and sliding, you can feel free to hold on perhaps to the pegs. Yeah.

Or you can also scooch down on your foam roll and hold your fingers over the edge of the reformer. I'm a little short for that. One, but for some people that works nicely. So gently come on in and put your toes now where your heels are. Good, and then continue on. What I like about doing the foot work here is I'm really focusing on the openness through my hips as I straighten my legs. So this really is a hit focused still. My hips are looser.

I can feel my inner thighs. Yeah. Also because I'm up higher, I'm getting, I'm really getting more range. I'm closer to an actual standing position, but you can't use a lot of springs, so it doesn't feel like a big challenging leg exercise. It's more of a balance. Proprioception exercise. One more time and gently come on in. Slide your heels together and we'll just continue on here. Squeeze those heels tightly together and we press it out and we gently pull in and we press out, zipping those inner thighs together and pull in again, feel the control from your abs and maybe entertain the idea of lifting your hands. If you feel balanced, great. Maybe take your arms up to the ceiling.

It's fun. Ooh, like the challenge. Maybe take your arms wide. Whoa [inaudible] I have to giggle when I lose my balance. So fun to try to talk, move, teach and balance. Huh? Just do one more here please. Feels great. Come all the way in. Put your hands down as you make the shift to the Open v position.

And here I'd like you to go on the arches, Kinda like we did in day one so your feet can stay nice and soft here. Feeling the feet differently and just press out. So keep your feet soft and see if you can feel the energy really in your hips, rotating your hips outward and for us and try to really feel that both legs are working equally. And in fact you can push a little more with one leg and then maybe push a little more with the other leg in order to feel that float your arms. If it suits you, reach them all the way up to the ceiling if it suits you and open wide if it suits you. And just sit with that for a moment. Nice shoulder, open her chest open or this feels good to me. And one more time and let's come all the way in and work a little bit with our single legs, which is a fun balance. Challenge.

Feet together is slightly easier. Feet a little wider than hip width, much more challenging. Find your abs, lift your right leg to tabletop, soft pointed toe today and out we go. Now you can keep your hands down or you can try to balance. We'll see how good today I am at talking and balancing here. If I find this to be very challenging and just for safety for myself, I'm keeping my arms low. Certainly you can lift your arms up, you can open them wide, you can do all of those things. Yeah. Okay. Just one more here. Feel that challenge. Nice challenge. Good.

And then we'll change sides. Put your hands down a little wider is more challenging for balance. And this is my much more challenging side. So fun. Okay, so dig deep in those of dogs that are in that abdominal wall and I'm going to lift my hands up cause I did on the other side. But what it's doing is it's making me wobble around to find my balance.

And I don't mind showing you that cause we need to be open to trying things that are difficult and maybe we don't look so good doing a, I don't know. I don't think that I look so bad doing it. I just maybe look like I'm struggling a little and that's a good thing to show, I think. Yeah, just a couple more here. Again, lift your hands up if you'd like. Take them wide if you'd like or keep them down. Yeah, and then we come in and let's put the feet now on the platform again and we're going to work the roll up. But use your shins up against the bar here. Stretch your arms over head and you have plenty of room to do that because of your height. And then lift your head and chest. Look in the direction of your legs and roll yourself up.

Now I'm using my legs on the bar and the carriage will move as I sit high up on my sitz bones. That feels wonderful. And then we'll roll back again. The carriage moves rolling down and using my legs, challenging myself here. Normally I would have to put my arms down in order to do this, but because I've got my legs, they're helping me and I'm actually just keeping the connection up against the uh, foot bar the whole time. So you'll notice as I roll down this time, my feet float off so I can keep the connection. That's something I just did right now and I really like it. So my left feet never rest. Keeping the connection. Oh, I think I have one more in me and we're going to roll up am now we're going to make a quick little change.

So the feet are now connected to the foot platform as well. Roll back just a bit. Let's bring the legs all the way together. I should have asked you to do that first, but there you go. Hold back just a bit here. Now we're going to find a little rotation challenge. Huh?

Here we go. Huh? Balancing. Enjoying that. Good. There we go. Has I do a few more? I feel like I've got it. There we go. One more. Eh, gently come on up to sitting. So let's just slip off and take the foam roll down on the floor and lie down on your back for a moment.

Enjoy that light and heavy feeling. I just love this. Again, if you want to sit here for a little bit, pause your video and stay here. Take a couple of Nice ways side to side, just release through your back release through your hips, just in case you are gripping. I sometimes am and I sometimes do, I feel myself gripping a little bit. And then let's grab the straps and go ahead and go right into some hip work here. So a feeder and straps. We're just going to do some basic positions. Just work on a little more range of motion so you can flex your ankles here, bend in and press out. We're doing frogs in hell in and exhale out.

Now I challenge you to to go a little deeper, so see if you can pull your legs in a little more. Try to keep your pelvis down, feel the challenge, and then push back out. And let's just do a couple more like that. So you're gonna go in a little deeper. Challenge your range. Yes, my pelvis is shifting slightly. I'm letting that happen a little in order to feel more range in my hips, but I don't want to completely let go circles. So let's come up first with long pointed feet and push down through center and around just one clean circle.

And the next time around let's add a little more range. So we come all the way to the top position. Feel this now go a little deeper. Let your pelvis shift. Feel the stretch, pull yourself out of the stretch and around to where you know you can land with like cleanly and then go into a bigger stretch and pull yourself down and around. That feels so good and a nice bigger stretch here for my hamstrings. And let's just do one more. That's the last one is what I meant to say change.

And so now let's reverse in play with range here as well. So take the legs wide and around and together to where you know you can land. And then hands on your pelvis and press down and lift back up through center. Come all the way down and around. Squeeze those feet together and press down and lift back up.

And let's just do one more there for time today cause I have some other things in store for your hip that just feel so great and lift up. Bend your knees, take just a moment of pause. Gently remove one foot from the strap, find the foot bar, remove the other. All right, so now put your feet on the bar. The bats are the backs of the heels in a way that you feel like you can go up and down.

But then make sure that you have enough space for your feet on the outside when you open and also can bring your knees together. That's where we're playing here. So keeping the carriage still, we do a pelvic curl up, fine and nice bridge position that feels yummy to you. And then lower down. Let's do one more before we add on a couple of fun pieces here for the hips. So exhale to peel all the way up. Enjoy that position.

And now open your legs outward. Feel that. Pull your knees together. Feel that open your legs outward. So we're swiveling at the hips while maintaining the height of the pelvis. This is such a yummy hip exploration, creating more range and power here. Knees together. Now rural down, articulating through your back.

Open your legs wide. Inhale, not super wide, but neutral. Exhale to appeal up. Feel that position again. Open the legs wide. Pull the knees together open wide. Now pull together and stay. Squeeze the knees together.

We're going to move just the pelvis arch down a little bit and lift up. So I'm going anterior with my pelvis, staying engaged in my abs and then post airier to more equal weight on both legs and one more place and that feels wonderful. Now let's lower down through the back one vertebrae at a time and bring the bottoms of the feet together. Sit here for a moment. Enjoy the release. Enjoy the openness. Gently push into the feet to feel work in the backs of the legs are the backs of the hips. And to help open a little more.

I want the movement to be a little less big here or not having a need for a big movement. Exhale to tilt the pelvis using the ABS or flats in the back. And then saliva to lift up and hold for a moment and then lower back down. So let's try that again. Really think about abs and then what are you pulling from? Deepen the hip joints to stabilize the legs here, to feel that work in the hips, in the glutes, and then lower down.

Now if your range allows you start lifting a little higher, not this is, this is enough, but you can lift way up here if that suits you, that feels good. And then lower down, boy, I can feel the work and I like it. So lifting up this time we add a little change. So we hold this wonderful lifted position and here I want you to press your legs open and down and lift your pelvis up in your mind. So it's a very small movement and intensification. Good. I put my hands on my size and that just made me release. Maybe check it out.

Put your hands on your thighs and see if you can release your quads a little and get more out of this. Hold. Lower all the way down. Ah, gently close your knees. Sway your legs side to side. Just one time release. Feel the hips and gently come on up to a sitting position. So now let's change our springs to just one blue spring and then come to a standing position just at the back or the front of your reformer really.

And take a big breath up. Good. And then arms down and roll down and find your way to the edge of the reformer. Reached forward into a nice open position here. I say open, it's, it's really an open through the backs of the legs and long through the body. And settle in for a moment. Bend your knees and find a place where you can have a pretty good knee bend and your knees just gently touching or your shins gently touching the edge of the reformer.

And now round yourself in keeping the leg arrangement the same and then reaching forward, tipping the tailbone back in up. So I really want you to think about what your hips are doing. Round yourself in here. Good. Let your head relax and reach forward. And now remove your right leg and just extend it. Actually don't even extend it, just keep it there, right behind you and round yourself in really moving around only that left leg.

So try to feel what's happening at your hip joint as you do this, curling your pelvis underneath you and reaching your tailbone back just one more time and curling your pelvis underneath you and reaching your tailbone back. Some that you can add a nice leg extension to that. But for now, let's just focus on, on what we're doing. So just remove your other leg now, changing sides and curl your pelvis underneath. You. Feel your hip, your standing leg hip without moving your leg. And again, round good and keeping my knee bent. I should be keeping my shin up against the reformer and I lost my way there, but I just found it again. So hopefully you found your way to. And then one last time here, stretching out again, put both feet down, straighten your legs, tip your tailbone back in, up, look forward, enjoy the stretch, the openness through your chest and then round yourself, Ian, all the way to the stopper. And let's play a little more. So now let's change the spring to a red spring and we'll keep it there for the next few exercises. You could use a green too if you prefer.

And I'd like you to put one foot, the one foot up on the bar and half the other foot right about in the middle of the reformer, both toes facing forward. This is kind of interesting. I want you to lean into your, your leg that's on the foot bar and feel stretch maybe in your inner thigh, maybe in your hips. Just notice what you feel here. And then I want you to stand again. Yeah, so we'll do that two more times. Just feel that lean into it. This is meant to be a stretch for your hips here a little bit also for your inner thigh.

And I find that a lot of times the more advanced exercises we're missing flexibility in areas that maybe we don't realize. So that will make a little more sense. Now to add on, we're going to put one hand on the shoulder rest and the other hand on the reformer and lean into the arms. Now you want to keep a lot of weight in your mind on this right foot and feel the stretch. I feel stretched in my back. I feel stretched in my leg. I feel something in my hip. Now use that standing leg, the right leg, the one that's up and push out. So I didn't move with my arms. I pushed with my leg. If you need to adjust your foot for more stability, go for it. We'll do that just three times. Pressing out, feel stretch, like lean into your hip that's on the ground. And since what you feel, as I lean into my standing leg on the ground, I feel a little bit of a stretch through my it band. Just one last time, pushing out, come in and then we'll try the second side. Yeah.

So just arrange yourself so that the leg that's on the floor is about in the middle of the reformer bed about you can change that and then you can lean into your leg, feel something and then come out of it. So I'm leaning into my bench leg, my left leg, and then I'm coming out of it and I'm standing tall, feeling some opening and some stretching. Just one more time and some opening and some stretching. And then we're going to change. So we put one hand on the shoulder rest one hand, right in line with it. Use now your left leg or your bent leg to push the carriage out as you lean into the it band stretch. And some of you who are quite open may not feel a stretch in that straight leg, but I do, I feel myself moving into a stretch on the outside of my standing leg and I feel the challenge of keeping weight in this leg that's moving here. The one that's up on the bar.

All right, let's move into some mermaids here, but a slightly different mermaid. So, um, the focus here is hips. I've got my heel all the way up against the shoulder rest and I've got my foot flat and I just want to sit here for a moment and again, enjoy what I feel and this sensation of stretch, try really hard to ground down through this leg that's out in front. Yeah. And feel yourself working to push that down a little. Place your hand outside of your shoulder and then rest your arm down as we reach out the legs close. Yeah, we rotate around.

Grounding down through that, uh, support that, that down, like really pushing into that leg. Unwind. And then we'll sit tall and find this shape again. Let's do that again. Inhale to reach away. Exhale, find the bar, look down, stretch, unwind, and come in. And we're going to do one more with a little add on. Yeah. So here we go. Inhale and then reach around. Now I want you to feel that and it's my right leg that's grounded and you want to use the leg to push back and pull in.

But I want to feel the sensation along my hip. It's like doing a little foam roll work here. Good. And see how far you can go going back. And then really coming in, flexing the spine and reaching back and pulling in. That feels so wonderful to me. Last one, and find center, whatever that may mean to you, unwind and come out of it. Just sit in this position for a moment. Enjoy.

And now go to the other side. So again, take a few moments and feel your down legs. So it's my left leg. The other foot is flat and use whatever you need to on the reformer to try to sit up. Right? Right. And I have my foot up against the shoulder rest and I'm looking for my leg to be kind of straight out. It's such a different side for me. It's so hard for me to sit up. Right? And really what I realized is it's a little bit my hips, but it's also something in my back that's tight and we'll work on that.

So here, placed your hand outside of your shoulder, arm by your side. We're going to inhale to reach out the legs. Close. Exhale to rotate around, ground down through that bottom leg. Feel the stretch, inhale, unwind. And as you open sit, you can hug your leg, do what feels good, explore play. That's the theme here. Inhale to reach away. Exhale, reach around, look down, feel it, unwind and sit tall. And we'll do just one more and have a little add on now, right in how to reach away. Exhale, rotate around. And now stay here for a bit of time and push back.

I got to adjust a little bit and pull in. Good. So I'm starting with the back action first, right? So I'm really working on my, the feeling of stretch through my hip as I go back. What was so interesting as I come forward into that sort of flex spine position, I feel a different sensation in my hip, but also some really beautiful sensation in my low back. So let's do a couple more here. Explore. It feels so wonderful to me. The key here is to really ground down through that leg. Yeah.

And then here, pause, find center, unwind and sit tall. Just sit here for a moment like we did on the other side and just kind of feel, and moving on to some back extension, the down stretch. So we're gonna tuck those toes under really well. Push them all the way up against the shoulder rest. Really feel that. Spend a few moments really getting into that nice foot position.

And then undulate forward. Feel your inner thighs feel open through your chest. Ah, we're going to go down. I like to use an inhale down and an exhale up. Although you can toy with using different breath, just breathe please and feel that lifting, opening, going a little bigger perhaps here. And inhale, keeping the upper back and extension and exit. One more. Oh, that feels nice. Feel the openness through your hips here too. So pay attention to that.

And then let's just untuck the toes. Sit back on the feet, let your arms rest. That's your forehead rest. And take three breaths. Breathing in. Oh, I'm breathing out. You can put your arms wherever it makes sense. Whatever works for you. Any option is there. [inaudible] gently bring yourself up to a sitting position.

Thanks for playing [inaudible].