Day 14: Spine Corrector

Welcome to class number 14 of your 30 day challenge. Today we're going to work with the spine corrector. I haven't done that yet in the challenge series and I really believe in using all of the equipment that Joseph [inaudible] designed because it really teaches you different things about your body on, even though it's the same exercise, the same rollover, or the same rowing exercises, it just feels different and you get to tap into it, get a little more juice out of it, and the spine corrector definitely gives you that. So today we're going to do a good hard workout, but also take a little bit of time of learning a little more about each exercise for when we do it on the reformer or on the mat. So where we will do rowing here, you want your two pound weights.

So I have mine right here. You want a mat and you want your spine corrector and let's go ahead and get started with the hundred. So I'm going to sit down because that's always our warmup, right? So I'm going to have my tailbone off the front edge and I'm going to really focus on rolling through my spine. So I feel nice and connected to this very small space.

So, and to take my tender tailbone off the front edge and I'm going to take a big breath and Xcel squeeze the air out so I can draw my lower belly in and up. Bring the knees then balancing for moms and lets pump and exhale. Now I'm going to extend my legs on the next exhale. So we're going to find a lot of balance on the spine corrector [inaudible] and then I pull my legs in and on this next one I'm going to go lower. That feels good. We're at challenging the back of my legs, feeling my powerhouse and three more from pumping arms. Two more. Pulling my belly in and up.

Last one? Yeah. Hug in those knees. Okay. We're going to sit up and go right into the rollback. So we're going to sit down right here. You could do the series of five on top of there if you want, but I'm just gonna I'm going to bring my weight so I'm ready to go into rowing cause I want to keep moving this when we want to.

We're going to put our feet right underneath our knees and I want you to press down on your feet and pretend like you're sliding. You're going to use the back of the thighs and seat to pull the mat towards your spine. Correct your hands here round. Yeah. Back Nice and round, right. And we're gonna [inaudible] these inner thighs. Draw that pelvic floor and pull your lower back into the mat and then squeeze the air out. So we're gonna start off with two really articulating and warming up your lower back and exhale because we're gonna get really challenging exercises here. Go down further. Don't miss a vertebra.

Notice I'm trying to keep my upper body still when I start the roll back and now I'm going to keep my lower body anchored as I curl back into my c curve. Again, keeping the upper body relatively still as your lower back moves that your powerhouse initiates. Right? Big Breath. Squeeze the air out. And now we can go all the way back to our head. Still Rolling your lower back first. Exhaling all the way to the head. Always pulling your belly into the barrel.

And again, warm it up your spine. In theory, if you're like me, you're dying to put your arms back. So now we will two times full range of motion. Enjoy that. Try to take any tension out of your shoulders or neck as you come forward.

Stretch your legs and reach for your ankles. Still pretending like your lower back is attached to this barrel. Sly the feet to you. One more lower back first. Exhaling completely in with air pulling into the barrel. Slide those legs straight. All right, we're ready for our rowing. So we're gonna grab onto her handles.

Sit up tall, squeeze your legs together and we're going to pull into our chest and we're going to roll back our waist and just like we did in with the air. So I'm here, I'm gonna open. I'm going to press back now. I'm going to come forward and I'm going to slide my leg straight. Big Scoop, pulling into that imaginary barrel behind me. So not imaginary, but imagining that my lower back is there. Bend your arms. I'm sorry.

Bend your legs and pull him back. There's a couple of variations to this, but we're the way you pull back. But this is what I'd like to work on today. Shoulders opening. Separate those shoulder blades. Reach for the walls, reach for your ankles. Let's do one more. Lifting the shoulders, nice open collar bones. And here we go.

Pulling back into your chest, reach your arms wide, press back scoop, and then as you go forward, okay, big lift, big circle and rich, right angle with those arms. 90 degrees. Here we go. [inaudible] pull that mat towards use, pulling in and up in your powerhouse and tall in with the air. And exhale, reach. All right, stretch Paul with the back of the arms. Lift and open the chest. Round on stretch. Two more. Here we gap. Bend those arms, skipping in and up.

So these might be exercises that generally you won't do here or you don't practice often. So I'm trying to get them back in your repertoire. Circling around one more nice and tall. Think about when you're on the reformer, you're pulling on those handles, on those straps. You're reaching forward lifting in your sternum pool. So I really want you to use your imagination today, picturing your on the reformer, stretching those straps. Good for you.

Let's keep our legs long now and we're going to do from the chest. Okay, so now we're facing forward on our reformer or squeezing up or lifting. We reach up and we're going to press down with those arms and we're going to lift up and we're going to open to the side lifting taller. Good. Two more. Reaching up, press down, lift up, try to keep inhaling. Exhaling, inhaling, and exhale here. One more time. Pull that belly as if you can pull into that big hump on the barrel. Press down scooping and try to find your inner thighs and your pelvic floor and your lower belly ad.

Now we're gonna do it from the hips or from the top of this sharp edge here. Here we go. We're going to flex our feet and stretch forward. Just like you're on the reformer. Roll up your spine, right, okay. To a tall back. Keep that tall back open. Collarbones reach your arms even longer. Press up even higher.

Keep inhaling as you lift, lift, lift, ant, relax. Two more. Head down. Scoop your belly. And as you reach to your heels, shoulders better be enjoyed Monica. And we'll roll it up. [inaudible] there we go. And lifting up and reaching out. So make sure you're using these little two pound weights to get your shoulders really comfortable in, in the right placement, scooping in and roll up your spine, shoulder check, ad powerhouse, lifting all the way to my fingertips, reaching as I inhale. Inhale. Inhale. Still flex feet and exhale, a lot of work there.

We're gonna now Chris, Cross your legs and we're going to have the arms go up for shaving. Bend the elbows behind your head. All right, here we go. Scoop in your belly in and bend those elbows behind your head. So I'm really trying to stretch my lower back, not our chin, not round it, but really pull, always initiating with your powerhouse. Even feel your serratus muscles.

Those are right around here. Okay? You want to try to engage those to help push up. Point your elbows behind. Let's do one more ending up. Think about those serratus muscles. Hold the arms long. Open them to the side. As you switched legs, elbows are a little higher than your wrists and scooping in.

Now here I want you to imagine that you're going to separate your collarbones more. Push something away with the back of your arms and squeeze. Exhale, opening, pushing, pushing open. And one more. This breath and exhaling. Take a breath, reversing it in with the air and exhale and in with the air and exhale and in with your, and we're done with our rowing series and we're going to go into mermaid.

We're going to put our arm weights down so we don't need them until the very end. We'll use them for breathing. So I'm going to face you. I'm going to get on my left hip, hook my left foot, stack up my knees, stack up my feet. Good, grab top ankle and I want to try to I as if I can sit on both hips. I don't need my hands at all. That's what you're going to try to just really get comfortable sitting there so that when you do it on the mat you feel the same way. I'm going to try to get this arm nice and long up here, scooping my belly in and up all the way to my fingertip.

I'll start off by exhaling all the air out of my lungs and stretching over and I'm going to reach through my fingertips and I'm going to switch arms as I slide out, extending the top leg and then use the right hip to press down as they come up. Always powerhouse lifting into the ceiling to more lift over. Exhaling. Try to get this arm as close to your head as possible and now sliding out feels lovely and up. Always trying to press that hip down. One more time. Stretching.

This way you can even wrap that arm around your head this time. Dropping my shoulders in though. I shrug a lot. Tension. So I'm going to work on that here and I'm going to stretch out for the last time, really keeping my hips stacked, stretch and up, bending at the same time. All right, now I'm going to go into Swan, grasshopper and then I'll meet you on the other side for um, for the other side of Mermaid. Okay. So we're going to lie on our belly for Swan. And I want, I'm gonna see if you need to find exactly where it feels good to you. And we've worked legs a lot lately, so I'm gonna use my legs right now to push into the barrel and find out how to go down with that so I can lift up, up, up, trying to use my belly to lift up my sternum. I'm not a very flexible, so I'm just working with this and now I'm going to have to, so that's not quite the position for me. Here we go.

So that I can squeeze up, still need to come a little forward. Because you have to find where is it that you can find go down and up. So here we go with the up lifting up Tama, and let's do one more [inaudible] using the mat a little to help me, but I'm really using those legs. Alright, let's try grasshopper. Put your hands almost just under your shoulders. You're going to touch your forehead gently to the mat while you lift your legs up. Getting the right position. Shoulders away from my ears. Squeeze those inner thighs, pelvic floor and lower belly.

We're gonna use the back of the thighs to lift the legs up, up, up. Heels to your seat. Extend at eight counts. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Let's do two more up in extend a four, six, seven, eight and one more up. Pull those toes to your head. Extend. I'm trying to go up to the ceiling down to three. Four inner thigh, seven.

Eight. All Right, nice job. Let's go ahead and slide back. Make sure you stretch your back this way first before we go to the other side of mermaid scooping it. And I'm going to go ahead and sit my right hip, right leg is on the front edge. Stack those knees. All right, and again, you want to feel like you can sit evenly without either side. You don't need any hands. Left hand is going to go on the top. Ankle, right arm up to the ceiling. Scooping in my belly and up. Exhaling all my air in with the air up. Reach into my fingertips, straighten the top leg.

Stretch over and up and reaching up. Make sure you're using your belly the whole time so that nothing else is grabbing. Okay? We're going to straighten that left leg as we reach out. Stacking those hips. Powerhouse in. Yeah, never letting it out in with the air. Emptying the lungs. [inaudible] you can wrap this arm around your head this time scooping it up nice and long.

Keep your belly in as you reach. Keep it in and use your left hip. Yeah, and pulling up. Nice work. All right, now we're going to go into our leg series, so I'm going to slide my barrel a little bit this way. All right. Length circles are my favorite, probably of all the exercises in Polato. We're going to sit on the front part of the Hump. It really helps me to, then we're sliding back, I'm assuming, but my viewers know how to get into this position because you guys are so well versed in [inaudible].

Let's keep our waistband glued k and no energy or tension in our neck or shoulders. And let's have our legs straight up to the ceiling. All right, so scooping in, I love this because it stretches out my hip flexors, doesn't allow me to use my cods and really gives me long, beautiful leg muscles. So we're going to open the legs and circle down for five. Go as low as you can. Stay in connected to the mat, to the barrel. Yeah, to one more feel so good. Rivers reach across that room, scoop and it firm and up the legs. Two more. Last one.

Mm. Bend the knees for a small break and let's go into walking. Extend the legs touching the ceiling. Both legs are from one leg reaches down and out and switch and switch and reach. Trying to go all the way down to that Matt. And it's super important that you're going down the middle of your body with the leg. We tend to go out wide.

One more set and it's important that goes right down the middle, right down the middle. Bend the knees. All right, now we are going as low as we can because we're going to transition that into um, bicycle. So legs are up scooping in and we're going to take the right leg down. Reach out though. Reach, reach down in the middle. Once you can't go any lower, Ben, that needs sliding the foot on the barrel again, down the middle. This needs really in this legs really out how two on the right leg. Let's do one more. One more left. [inaudible] and let's reverse.

Push away that left foot down the middle of your body with the right down the middle of your body with the left. Foof I'm really working how far I can go in with my knee and out with the right leg. One more on the left. One more with the right. Delicious. Okay. Now we're going to do beats, so we're going to scoop in and go a little bit low and 10 beats. One, two, three, four, five, six scooping in my belly, 10 down, a little, always down the middle. One, two, three, four. These are warming you up for leg circles onto head hold down a little lower and last one, stay connected with your waistband to the barrel. Eight, nine, 10 and bend in.

Hopefully you have really worked all of your outer thighs and inner thighs. Okay, we're onto leg circles onto head. I'm going to pull into my barrel just a little more slid out just a bit. You can adjust if he did too, and we're going to start with the legs opening as they go down and then rising up onto our head. Okay, so you might, if you haven't done these in a while, you might want to watch him first and then catch on. Definitely don't watch and do 'em if you're unsure. Okay, so scooping in, I'm going to open my legs when the legs are all the way down.

I'm going to use my back of my size and seats to lift up onto my head. Here we go, open up and then circle my arms and they're going to come forward. And legs go right up. And My ponytail always gets in the way here and up. So I'm really working here and here to support myself so that my arms can move freely, right? And it almost lifts up my head. One more time.

Start with the leg straight or up and open and up. And the leg, arms circling, and the legs are going to come right back up. All right. And now we're going to reverse it. The legs go down, you go up onto your head, that's it. Arms overhead. And they're going to circle back while the legs circle back and down.

Okay, so really nice support. Arms overhead for a big stretch. Lifting the head as you come back. One more up, arms. Oops, I did the arms incorrectly. Then we're going to go here and then they're going to circle and we're going to lift as we come back. Great job. Okay, go ahead and and bend your knees. And we're going to have the legs over here. I want you to enjoy this pushing. I want you to squeeze and use your powerhouse to lift up your bottom away from the barrel. Push it away. Okay? It shouldn't be awkward.

It should be very controlled. I'm going to get my ponytail out here and rest your spine. Super important always to rest your spine. And we're going to go into teasers next. So we're going to get on the other side coming up.

So we're going to come on this front edge and we're going to have our lower back to the hump for this series of the teasers. So we'll do teaser one, two, and three. So what I want you to really enjoy and not think of this extra as as torture is trying to really scoop in and feel the connection of your lower back with the, um, hump of the barrel. So let's read, visit the roll back Cam. Pressing my feet flat. I'm going to pull the back of the thighs towards me with my feet. I'm going to scoop in my belly.

I'm gonna pull my inner thighs and public floor towards me. Right? So this is what your teaser exhaling should feel like when you come up with the upper body exhaling. So you're really scooping into the barrel and using it to help you. So go ahead and lift up one leg and then lift up the other leg. Okay. Get him into where you think they feel.

Squeeze those inner thighs and let's roll away and coming forward. Okay. And too, I'm trying to feel my lower belly. It's hard sometimes. And let's do one more. I'd like to get a little more extended teaser too.

[inaudible] so I'm using my lower belly to pull into the barrel teaser three. This one's a little easier for me. Yeah, I really connect with the back of my size, but my lower back is leaving the barrel here, so I'm going to keep trying. Okay. One more.

That's a really good scoop and stretch on my belly. Exhaling all the year to come up. [inaudible] and hugging in. Okay. Two of my favorite exercises, snacks, all of these are really delicious. We're going to go into bridge and then rolling in and out. So we're going to slide up kind of like you did them leg circles.

Put a foot here and slide back. We're just going to leave both feet here. That's tight, nice and flat here. All right, I'm going to take a breath and I'm going to exhale all my air cause I don't want my rib cage holding me. I want it nice in there. Now I don't want my bottom to have a vacation right now. I don't want it to just rest on the barrel. I need to pretend my hands are holding up my hips.

So I'm going to squeeze my bottom and almost lifted off the barrel as I extend my right leg down the middle of my body. And I'm going to do three kicks with it. Kick and flex it down and kick and flex it down. One more kick and flex. So keep remembering that this is called the spine corrector cause it's trying to realign our spine that we tend to use it incorrectly during the day to hold us.

So my right hips really working as I kick up and I flex down, of course my left one is to kick and flex, but I'm not just relaxing my right hip on the barrel, it's lifting and that put my foot back in a slide back a little more and I'm going to bend my knees into my chest, even the little more there for rolling in and out. So I'm going to squeeze my inner thighs. I'm really warming up my back right now in this way so that I can do the rollover corkscrew and even a little balance control, which are a little more challenging on the reformer, right? So we're going to enjoy them here. So I'm going to squeeze those inner thighs, bring the heels to my seat, pull my FYS with my belly into my chest and try to touch my nose and pulling my waistband into the barrel. I'm going to go over to my right ear and then I'm going to go over to my left year and I'm going to go over to my right shoulder so my knees will pull away a little bit over towards my right short left shoulder, and then my right shoulder, I'm going opposite today.

And then my left hip, still trying to keep my heels close. Pool those, the belly and the obliques over as they go to the other hip. And I'm going to start at my notes. All right, I'm going to go to the right first. This time to stay correct here. So squeeze those inner thighs. I'm going to go to my right ear, my right shoulder, my right hip. I'm going to pull into the barrel as I lengthen my thighs away from me.

Scoop, scoop, scoop over to my left hip, shoulder, ear, and freeze other direction pulling into me. So I'm really using my powerhouse to make this as big of a range of emotion as possible and I'm using my hamstrings or the back of my thighs to pull my heels to my seat the whole time. Innercise. Do One more set, stretching away. Exhaling all the way center the other way. Paul, the barrel belly into the barrel and center. Lovely. Now we're ready for the rollover.

So let's start with your legs right up to the ceiling just like you did for your legs series. And we're going to just enjoy this. We're going to learn how to use our hips and how to hold our hips like we did at the end of our last class during our rolling series. Okay, so instead of just feeling like it's a lot of effort, let's get our muscles back on this exercise. So scooping in, we're going to pull into the barrels and lift our hips over our shoulders to touch the toes and the mat behind us. Flex the feet open and with control. Exhale the air back. I'm going to circle low scoop in and over. Lovely. Open circling. Squeeze here out.

Reaching low. Stretching those legs. Again, one more in this direction. I'm just doing it smooth and controlled. Let's reverse it. You're going to reach low. Squeeze the legs together. Open. Reverse. When you're doing this on the mat, you don't get to enjoy it like it is right now. Down the middle, scooping it. Use the right muscles. Flex and over. Squeeze. One more time.

Open flex. [inaudible] control dam. Very nice. Same thing for corkscrew. We're going to swing the legs to the right circle down and then come center. Kinda like a in and out. Rolling in and out. Right.

Pull into the barrel and income center and we're going to go left. We're gonna make it bigger each time by coming up like we did for roll over. Alright, let's come a little off and rural. Back Down. Swing your legs to the right. Swooning over to the left and come over with control and reverse down the middle. Left. Right now, all the way up, coming down the middle to the right.

[inaudible] left all the way up. Left, right. Don't forget to squeeze your out and down the middle. Nice job. Let's do balance control now. So I'm going to pull into my barrel just a little bit more. Actually no, I'm going to stay right here maybe a teeny bit and I'm going to let use the handles today. You can reach back and grab your feet if you can, but I'm not quite there yet in this challenge. So if you are, go for it. But I'm going to do the roll over and hold my handles. Okay, so I'm going to squeeze my hips, squeeze my inner thighs, all of it's pulling in and with control. I'm going to go over, I'm going to push my feet down and I'm going to reach my right leg up and down. Am I left Aaron? Damn, am I right?

And one more left. All right and down and control it down. We're going to do that rest position again. So I'm going to take my legs back with control lift, slide it away and rest it down. Your back needs a little bit of that decompressing of that resting.

Super important. We're going to go over and do hip circles now, so when it come up, see if I need a, I don't need to give myself any room right now and we're going to do a lot on this side. So let's leave your barrel right here. All right, so we're going to sit down like we did for teaser and we're going to pull our waistband into our barrel. Then leave my feet here. Since we're not moving it, I'm going to engage my lower belly and let go of my neck tension pulling into the barrel, right? Grabbing onto your handles. Gonna grab onto him like this and I'm going to bring my legs up and then I'm going to do basically corkscrew, opening my collar bones, pretending someone's holding onto my shoulders. And here we go. Circle to the right around and pull up to the left and, and to the right, scooping in to the left. One more step. You just gotta do it sometimes. Last one.

Oh, right, great. Let's go ahead. Those are not my favorites, but I'm just going to go ahead and stretch. But it's important to do all these exercises. Keep them in our repertoires. Keep our muscles strong. Right now we're going to do some of my least favorite exercises, but it's always, like I said, really important to keep these exercises going because you don't want to start wimping out on doing certain exercises is then your body starts going and you don't have all the muscles that you need to feel and keep up your repertoire and then you can't teach them and it's just a big hot mess. So we're going to do star, so we're gonna, we've done it before on the mat in our series, but now we're going to get a little help from our barrel.

I want you to put your right hand right in the top middle, and we're going to have our feet flexed, one on top of the other. Really using your right hip. Okay, so I'm going to put my, I'm going to actually point it away from me and I'm going to flex my right foot. I'm going to use my other hand to get in position. Here we go. And I'm gonna Squeeze. Really squeeze my bottom hip towards you. All right, here we go.

I'm going to kick a forward and I'm going to kick back. Hey, I'm going to kick forward and I'm going to kick back easy, right? Well now we're gonna add our all the way around, right? So we're gonna kick forward. I gonna make sure my right hip is going to keep squeezing towards you, even though my hands going behind me, I'm going to squeeze and I'm going to lift back into that position.

There we go. And come here. Turn towards your barrel, get your feet a little closer. Your hands here. We're going to do three pushups and I'm going to get my shoulders over. Again. Not Favorite exercises, but very important to keep building strength, right? So three too. Damn. One more. Okay. Come back first stretch. Lovely. Now we're going to add an Arab Basque and a deputy do.

So we just did this on the reformer at the last class basically right in our long stretch series. So squeeze those inner thighs, stomach in, right leg up, and three to [inaudible] one. Now Bend that knee, touch the toe to the head. Nice extend. Okay. And bring that foot down. Go ahead and bring your left foot into arabesque here. Let's get into our pushup position. Good. Three tips to one more hook on that.

We're going to now dip and bend toe to the head and extend it up and yeah, good job. Now we're going to do star on the other side. Left hands in the top, middle feeder flexed. I'm going to press my hips to the ocean. Square off my box. Kick forward and back. Full back with the leg. Both of them go forward. Leg, back, arm forward.

Now we're going to try to circle squeezing the bottom hip forward. There we go. And then coming back. Um, we're going to turn our back to let's be light on our hands, Monica, we're going to do like pull down. Okay, so both legs bottom up, open. Collarbones kick and flex down. Two more. Kick. Flex down. One, two left, one more set up and left. And now three tricep presses. Wanna skip forward a little bit. Try tricep. One, two, three, slide down your barrel.

Stretch forward. Whew. Great job on those. So those are not favorites, right? But we need to keep our upper body going. So now we get to end with lovely breathing. I'm gonna step over. I gotta give my legs plenty of room.

So let's slide this easily here. That's enough room for my little legs and I'm going to grab our weights. If you have a three pound bar, that's lovely. Use that. Otherwise weights are great. All right, we're going to have our tailbone off the front edge just like you do for um, backstroke on the reformer. This is your ending. Cooldown if you need support for your head cause you don't, you have it hangs a little too much. Grab a pillow for underneath your head, but you do want to work towards this.

I'm having your neck flat here. Okay, rolling back. I'm still gonna have my tailbone off a little bit more. So this is nice and straight and now I'm going to roll back my neck and shoulders in with the air. Exhale. Schoolies that air out of my lungs. So lovely. Two, three in with the exhale. So yes, I had to do all that. Star pushups, leg pulled down. Exhaling the re. But now we get to do breathing.

One more. See if you can right now. Squeeze the back of your thighs down in the seat. Squeeze the inner thighs, pelvic floor, lower belly. Let that belly come with you. As you reach all the way it reaches through your fingertips. Exhale, really opening your neck and shoulders in with the air. Ooh, I'm gonna with my eyes open. I'm doing that again cause I saw one way in front of the other. That's not good. Keep them even there when again, so maybe you don't need to do that. Ah Ha. Ah, caught it.

My right one was trying to dominate. And now to get out of this, I want you to lift your head as you inhale and exhale all the air up, pressing your weights down. So in with the, or just like the roll up. Exhale, keep reaching forward. I'm going to slide my bottom back and stretch all the way forward. Leaving my weights, stretching. Excited that that was a nice workout and fell a lot of different things that I don't on the reformer or the mat. I'll see you next class.