Day 10: Range and Power

Congratulations, we made it [inaudible] play day 10 today is about the balance of range and power. We're going to play work and rest. Are you ready? Thinking outside of the box today. All right, so I've got my reformer set a little bit different than usual. I've actually got my bar up kind of high, the highest position it can be in. Ooh, I don't have it up high, but I'm going to make that change real quick because I want to play with my range of motion a little bit. So if you have that option, please set your reformer bar that way. Now, if not, just work at whatever place works for you. So totally outside of the box today, we are going to start standing and do one roll down. Well that's not outside of the box. Let your head relax.

Shake your arms a little bit. Let your knees soften. Just kind of surveyed the scene. Feel how your body feels in this moment, and then gently roll yourself back up. No energy. I'm not even really shaping this. I'm just checking things out. Well now here's where we play. Shake a hand. If you want to dance to some music, I suggest putting some earbuds in or throw some music on.

Cause if I could play music for you right now, I would shake your other hand, shake your shoulders and see what happens when you shake your shoulders and then let that energy move up to your head. Shake your head, shake your shoulders, see if you can move the energy down your spine and into your hips a little bit. A little release, joy, pleasure, relief. Feel the two hips moving together and then separately and settle on one and go back to those circles. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we could have fun here. Can't we go the other way? I've got the music in my head. People go to the other side three times.

I just want you to feel your hip joints feel your body. Yeah, let's kind of think outside of the box. Go the other way. You can look around and I decided again, shake, shake, shake and undulating. Up and down, moving the energy to my feet. That's, I've got my heels kind of softly pounding and then I want to make a little statistic that's a Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah. Right? So I'm like doing a little rumble. It feels nice. Articulate heel ball, toe, heel, ball, toe, heel, ball, toe, toe, ball, heel. Just kind of feel your foot. Toe Ball, he'll change sides. He'll ball toe.

Let your body react. No rigidity. Release Toe Ball, heel to toe, big breath Retaj and now feel your roll down. Feel your arms light. Feel free to shake out on the way down. Soften your knees if you need to. I s I have to tell you I feel lighter. I feel more warm. I feel ready to go. Roll yourself back up to a standing position.

One last shake up. Keep dancing if you want. Let's ahead and get into the footwork though. So I'm going to lie down. I've got my bar up nice and high because I want to push my range of motion. Lie down on your back, settle in for a couple of moments and feel how, how close that is. If it's too close to you, make an adjustment.

This is your opportunity to explore. Take a couple breaths. My feet are about hip width distance and I've actually got my arches on the bar. I just want to feel my pelvic curl here. So starting with a little pelvic rock, engaging the abdominals and then releasing the pelvis all the way down a little more and exhale Anglais engaging the abdominals in glazing and then lower down and go a little anterior with your pelvis. Arching your low back just a bit and in this time perhaps curl all the way up or halfway up. Just explore the pelvic curl. How does that feel today with that bar? A little bit higher up, which basically means you're a little closer in. Your knees are bent more, your hips are flexed, more pelvic curl, two more times. Exhale.

It's my intention today to ask you to try things maybe a little beyond what you would do on your own in your own practice and at any point if it doesn't make sense, step back, try something that works for you, but playing with different, different ideas, different feelings is how we move forward and me kind of stimulate the mind a little bit. The brain hold the pegs by your ears just sway your legs. Easy side to side. That feels nice and easy to me. Just one more time does feel a little bit less like I've less range because of where the bar is, but that's okay. I like that it feels different. Settle your heels on the bar, your arms by your side. Engage your abdominals and at we go for our footwork, I do have three reds and a blue on currently.

If that feels like too much because the stopper is basically you're stretching more spring this way. Okay. Because of the position of the bar. So if that feels like too much for you, just lighten your spring. So we're pressing out with an exhale or an inhale and gently coming all the way and do one more like that. Pause in the out position for me. Lift your right leg to table top. Can you travel all the way in and press all the way out and all the way in and all the way out. That's too much spring. If it doesn't feel good, keep both feet on the bar. Let's change sides, so feel tabletop from the other leg and come all the way in or maybe only partway in. If it doesn't suit you to touch the stopper.

What I'm hoping for is that you're still keeping your pelvis nice and neutral, but exploring here a deeper hip IX or a hip flection rather because of the stopper position, puts your foot down. Gently come all the way in and let's change to our toe position. Breathing and moving. Exhale, we press out and in. So here you can change the feet if it suits you. Right now I'm keeping my feet stable and space.

I'm going to what I'm most familiar with because I've changed the bar position, which means I feels different, so I'm, I'm really keeping my feet stable to explore what I feel at my hips and in my legs and in my body. Now here let's do little pulses, so just changing it up a little bit rather than going to the single legs. Feel that pulsing. Keep the pelvis down. Find your breath, find the energy. Find the power all the way out to straight and gently. Come on in. We'll slide the heels together to make that Small v position or Polonius V. Squeeze those tightly together and press out. Those are your heels that you should be squeezing together.

Squeeze your upper inner thighs together. Find your rhythm, your breath, and your ease of movement. Nice, fun, Easy Movement, Fun, easy movement. I don't know. That was a lot to say. There could probably stop talking. Come Out, stay out for me. See if you can take your right foot off the bar. Do you feel comfortable with this? If you do, put your other foot, your right foot or right at your ankle of your left foot and come in three times, that's too much for you. That seems scary. Keep both feet on. One more time.

We're going to press out and stay there. Rearrange your feet, feel the heels grounded, lift your foot up. Do you feel safe? If not, put your foot back down. You can build up to it. Next time you do this class, maybe you'll be comfortable or maybe you'll choose a lighter spring or maybe you'll put your bar in a different position. All of those are okay. Stay here both feet down, squeeze and we come in Open v from the heels here. Here. I want you to work on maximizing your range, so open your legs out to the side and then just kind of wobble side to side just a couple times and then settle in a position just a little bit less than your maximum. Actively use your hands to help facilitate rotation in your hips. Feel those outer hips working the glutes, the rotators out should go.

Finding the control on the way in and work with really keeping those feet energized here in a lot of the other classes. Throughout this challenge, I've played with this idea of softening the feet. I recommend keeping them energized in this particular exercise. Go ahead. Breathing and moving at the top of the movement. Each time I think more about the rotation of the hips. Then the straightening of the knees, the rotation outward of the hip joints.

One more time, and then here we'll sit with those little pulses. Soft and gentle, both legs working equally, rotating your hips feel it's less about the legs here. It's more about those deep rotators. Maybe even explore where your pelvis is. Do you need to adjust it a little bit? Softening the tail perhaps, or engaging the abs all the way out to straight and we come in skipping toes today. Bring your feet close together, touching. Actually feel that you're centered.

Then separate a little out we go for our calf raises. Feel your abdominals. Feel your legs as you go under the bar each time. Try to keep both legs active, meaning you're lengthening your body to go under the bar with those feeds. Breathing and moving prance has happened now both feet working equally. Let's find a nice energy here.

I like to inhale for say three or four or five or six repetitions. And exhale I'm making about this, about elongating my breath versus organizing it to a specific rhythm. One more time and then hold. So arrange your foot. So it's in a position where you can receive the bar, let go and enjoy the stretch. Roll your head side to side. Breathing in and breathing out a moment of breath.

Change sides. So again, find a place where your foot can receive the bar. Feel the ease, feel the rest with both feet on the bar in a position that suits you. Gently travel into the stopper. And let's go ahead and bring ourselves all the way up to a sitting position, moving into some abdominal work involving the entire body. So I'm going to move the bar back down to where I usually like it to be, which is in the middle position on this reformer.

And I'm changing my spring to one blue spring. You can choose a different spring if you'd like, but I recommend not allowing it to be too heavy here. So here I'm in my reverse knee stretch position my hands underneath my shoulders. Press down through the tops of your feet, my friends, and have your knees just a little behind your shoulder rest round through your low back. Enjoy that position for a moment. And then let's extend the back, open the heart, look forward, and perhaps even look around a little bit in joy and then round through your low back. Press down through the tops of the feet. Feel easy neck and then extend looking forward and just shifting around a little bit of play, just a little exploration. How does that feel today? One more time. We move on, we round look at your legs and we're going to pull in and out [inaudible] so the focus is not really on the legs moving but on keeping the low spine inflection, keeping the abdominals pulling up to the fender of the low back to keep that back inflection. One more time, a short pause here.

Take your legs together and I'm going to turn my knees to my left, which means my feet went to the right. My right leg is on the diagonal, and that's going to be my standing leg. I'm going to lean into my right arm and rotate my pelvis around a little bit, so I'm pulling my pelvis around away from away from the camera as I lean toward you right now. Take the other foot and put it on your other foot somewhere just so it's kind of out of the way and perhaps try lifting the knee up so you can really feel the glute right here. I feel a lot of work. I didn't even move. I'm using my left glute and I'm using my obliques to rotate my pelvis around even more. Now my friends move the carriage pulling in and reaching out.

Just three of them pulling in. Feel that deep oblique work, pulling in hold here, I'm a little off the stopper. Take your leg. That was back there up and how high can you take it up? Lots of glute work there. Keeping that rotation here. We got three more. One 10, two and three gently bring your leg down and we'll change sides. So I've tried, I've taken my knees to the other shoulder rest and my feet are out to the side a little bit, leaning to my left arm so I'm on my left leg and my left arm. Take the other foot and put it somewhere on your foot and lift the knee up. Try to feel the glute work while lifting the knee up.

Rotate the pelvis around so there's a really wonderful opposition pulling in here. Three times. Hold just a little off the stopper. Extend that leg up and back and behind you. How high can you lift the leg while keeping the rotation from the pelvis? Three more. One, two, and three. Gently puts your knees down.

Let your knees rest right up against your shoulder rest and take a moment of rest. Breathing in and breathing out. Breathing in hen breathing habits. Bring yourself up, right? Let's adjust the spring. I like a full spring. You can use a green or a red, but you want to make sure you feel supported, but that you can manage the spring as well. So here we come to our knees. Okay, so this builds a little bit on shoulder and arms here.

So you place your elbows down underneath your shoulders, holding onto the shoulder rest. Yeah, feel this position right here. I've moved my knees back so my feet are kind of hanging off the edge a little bit. Mostly I just want a little space. So you're going to lean into this and you have to just put your head between the two shoulder rest and see how far you can bend your elbows and press back. Now I know that's not the prettiest thing in the world, but here I'm looking for you to bend your elbows more to feel that same thing we worked on a couple of classes ago and pushed back on. It's going to give you a little more power in this exercise.

The range will give you the power. So press us back to about a 90 degree at the shoulder and the elbow. Look at your foot bar. Find One foot on the foot bar. Extend out. Now in this particular exercise, I like to have my feet very close together. Really squeezing. So here, use your belly muscles, squeeze your inner thighs.

We're going to see how far we can push those arms out. We're going to see how far we can pull them underneath us. Now if you happen to have less spring, it's harder, but easier. If you have more spring, it's harder, but easier. So we can have that discussion a little bit later.

How about we do two more like that. Pushing out with those arms and pulling in. And one more time pushing out and pulling in. One knee comes down, bring the carriage all the way in and we shift to our sides. So here you're going to want to put your head rest up please. And that's mostly for support, but also it'll offer you a little more range of motion. Okay, so you're gonna rest down.

Rest is maybe not exactly what's happening here, but a little bit going to use the would chunk and press myself out so that my leg is bracing once again up underneath up against the wood chunk. Yeah. Now my other foot is just going to rest on top of the bar. Now if you don't feel 100% comfortable here, just keep everything grounded, both feet grounded, but feel what we're going to begin with here is this idea of really working the arm with a little bit of support, a lot of support from the abs while stretching also the side body. So we're going to press up to straight. Feel that stretch through the side body and bend the elbow down. Yeah, so you could keep your elbow down.

You can use your handout in front of you to help or you can not. Yeah, I'm going to place this hand behind the head. Give it somewhere to be, and this time when I press up, I'm now going to hold. Yeah. Now we're going to lift that top leg up and we'll go forward. Keep the arm and the legs still the bottom arm and the bottom legs still forward and reaching back and forward. Boy, this is some gluten hip work for sure. One more time. We're going to reach back and hold. Take your top arm, put it down, reach your heart forward and lift a little more. I've got energy through both arms and I'm on the diagonal here.

Getting a wonderful stretch. Take your leg back a little more if you can. And we lift in lower five, four, three, two and one. Pull your body in to the stopper. It's a little closer there. Gonna be a little longer to get there. That was not the most graceful dismount. Have just a short seat. Fold forward.

Three breaths. Head is relaxed, swaying side to side. Stack your body and we can change sides. So once again, you're going to use your hand just on the head rest there and your elbow is attempting to be in alignment with your hand on the Diet or straight out. So your an external rotation. Use Your foot on that would chunk and arrange yourself so that that leg can stay straight. That will help to ground you. Play around a little bit and feel that stretch on your side body first and then this leg can rest down to begin with and it should make you feel quite grounded and supported here.

Now you're going to push into that hand and see if you can straighten your arms. We're stretching the side body more. Feel free to use your other hand should you need to or if you like you can put it behind your head and we'll do one more there before we add on. So staying here. Whew, my shoulders. A little tired. I hope yours is too, but let's keep going forward and back. So it's our sidekick here.

Really having to work on a lot of different stabilizing pieces. One thing I like here is I have to keep my foot above the bar as I go back one more time. Go back and hold. Place your hand down and feel that extension and rotation reaching forward and up. What a wonderful idea here. Getting to look out at the ocean. I forgot to lift my left leg up. Hope Yours is up. Take it back behind you. Here we go. Lift five, four, three, two and one and gently come on into rest.

Rest is going to be coming to standing and moving on. Okay, so one of my favorite exercises all time is the 10 inch stretch. So we revisit that. Have a seat on your bar, puts your feet, press your legs out to straight and feel that tendon stretch. So I'm really dropping my heels under the bar and enjoying a stretch. I'm on a green spring right now. You're welcome to move to a red, but a green offers just a little bit of support and I'm all about support. Keep the heels down and feel that stretch on the back side of your body.

Press into your arms and scoop yourself up to the stopper. Now, if this is not doable for you, revisit that exercise we did earlier in the, in the series here where I had you on the side of the reformer. You use those abs staying inflection the whole time. This is where your range and power meet. It's a beautiful, beautiful display because if you don't have the range, you will not have the power here. Shall we play? I think it's time to play. Yes. Yes. So here I'm in this up position.

I'm going to shift my weight into my toes a little bit more firmly. Put my hands down on the reformer and take one foot back onto the foot platform. You're going to lean back and see if I can hold onto the bar. Now all of my weight goes on my front left leg and I let go with the other one. You can hold a year or you can put both feet down or you can try to lower to the floor with your right foot. Just lower down. I'll tell you what, I don't know if I can get backed up. We'll see.

I'm playing who I need to use my foot, but I'll tell you what I lowered down. That's fun. Here we go. One more time. Oops. Dropped the heel. We're going to lower down and we are going to lift back up. All right, playing right. Let's change legs. Okay, so take one foot over and step onto the foot platform. Put your hands on the bar and hold on. Drop your heels, drop your head. These cues are for me as well. Press into your arms. Use your core, see if you can unweight your back leg. Worst case scenario, you stepped down.

We go down and we just come to standing right now. See if you can get back up. Maybe you can, maybe you can't. I can't cause I stepped all the way down. So here we go. That was not pretty. We'll try one more time right here on camera for you. Give it a shot. Try removing the leg, see what you can do and maybe you come back up and maybe you don't.

Yeah, gently come down to a nice foot stretch position sitting on your feet. Take a moment of rest playing with that stretch through the feet and breath and it's time to move on. So revisiting all of those stretches we did with the feet up on the bar, I'm first going to recommend that you take your bar down to the bottom position. Yeah. Just in case you're ready to do the twist today. Okay. We've been gearing up for it. The idea.

So place one hand around the reformer here, the other hand on the shoulder rest, and then place your foot up on the bar. Okay, so we did an exercise like this that I kind of called the spider stretch because I wanted you to play with this feeling of stretching your legs and where we might need a little more power in a deep range in order to perform an exercise. So here I'm just pushing out and pushing in my friends. You can stay with this, but what I would encourage you to do if you are inclined to want to move on, is to lean into that leg that's up on the bar and really put some weight on it in your mind. Yeah, feel that. Now for those of you that would like to move on, we're going to start with the foot on the frame rather than on the bar. Unless you happen to know this exercise and know you want to do it, I recommend going to the frame. So once again, you want to lean into that standing leg. Feel your standing arm, your left arm, your right leg, very powerful. The goal is to be able to up and thread the foot without moving the carriage and then stepped down.

Stand up and thread the foot without moving the carriage and step down. One more. Now you can stay here, you can stay in your spider stretch or you can slide the carriage out, rotating your pelvis around as you do and come in. And if you want to go into the full twist, we slide out, we take the hips down, we pull the hips up, two more, we slide out, we take the hips down and we pull the hips up one more time. Breathe, move and be willing to play. Step off keeping the carriage still and we try the other side.

So lots of options. Anyone can do this. We can start just with this idea of stretching. One foot is up on the bar, one hand is on the shoulder rest, the other hand is just in line with it and we push out. And then if you just stay here with this stretch today until you're ready to do something more, you're welcome to. I am using my left leg here, my up leg to make this movement happen. Yeah. Now because I've loosened this up a little bit more, hopefully I have a little more power when I take it down a notch.

You're welcome to stay up here if you'd like. So here I'm going to lean into my arms. I've got power in my right arm, power in my left leg. And without moving the carriage I step up a little harder on the side for me. We can try sliding out and pulling in. As you slide the carriage out, there's opposition from your pelvis.

We worked on that earlier today. See if you can feel that an opposition from your pelvis and adding the twist. Here we go. If you want the hips come down. Okay. And we lift up. Breathing and moving.

One more time with grace, precision and ease. We stepped down. [inaudible] alright, final working exercise for today. Let's bring the bar back up to the middle position. Gonna say easy shoulder push here. But I really want you to feel some work as well.

So my knees are close to the front edge or a little bit off. Perhaps press the carriage out. I'm still on a green spring that works for me here. You're welcome to make it more or less. See if you can feel strengthen your arms length and your neck and create a little bit of back extension here. So I'm looking for a straight back.

Bend the elbows in and reach the elbows out and bend the elbows in and are reaching out. And one more time here. Now we're gonna make a change here. So as you come in, instead of bending the elbows, change the spine, change your gaze, let the spring help you articulate through back extension. The shoulders are being pushed to your back body. Open your heart and then we push out. Just walk your hands in a tiny bit narrower for the next piece here, just a little narrower arms. So we're going to do the same thing. When we lift, we let the spring kind of assist. Yes, my abdominals are engaged.

Hold on with one arm. My right arm stays down. I reached the other arm open, and then the other arm reach change again. This time go up this time. Go up with the other arm, press out, let your head relax, articulate yourself in. And just for safety here, add one quick spring. We'll finish on our reformers with our deep [inaudible] a lot from day one here.

So here, hold onto your shoulder rest and sit deep into your squat position. Allow your head to relax. What's nice about the shoulder rest is if you're not able to get all the way down, you can, um, hold onto them and lift your heels up a little bit, or you can lean into it if you will, and allow the shoulder rest to Kinda hold you upright. So I added a spring just so I feel stable here to be able to play and explore. Yeah. Now I know I can be a little more over my feet.

So that's where I want to be. So I've been to my arms, relaxing the head, breathing in, breathing out. I'm doing little circles circling around. There's no real right or wrong here. Like where do you need to be? Be restful. Ease yourself to your knees, perhaps first. Then come to a standing position and let's just finish in the same way that we started. Hands, shoulder, pelvis, knees, hips, everything loose. I know I might look a little crazy.

Be Crazy with me. Be Playful. Ha. Big Breath up. My hands are tingling with energy. Arms down. [inaudible] boy, I thank you so much for playing. That was just a hoot.