Linear Long Box

Hi, my name is Victoria Gan from connect politesse, Orange County, California. And really happy to be here once again in front of you guys. Today we will be doing a linear long box exercises and this idea came up with using the long box without a traditional way. And also, um, when we say traditional way, we usually use the long box sitting, uh, laying on it on our back or our, uh, prawn position. As you've seen in this class. We are not going to do none of those.

And Kelly learned charity. We began here with me joining the class and it's going to help me to demonstrate the exercises. So first thing, first, all we need is a long box. After that, there's a couple of things. Uh, we're going to need extra depends. The reformer you have now, right here, uh, this reformer has the traditional bar. It's not one of the infinity bars that you can actually move it away so it disappears. Uh, it always stays there. So I'm going to ask Kelly to sit down actually on the foot platform and to make it even to give her a little bit more space. Uh, I'm going to use a yoga block and if this makes it perfectly even, that's great. In this reformer, we needed a little bit more height, so we using extra two more pants.

So seeing that, uh, one more adjustments that you may have to do, which is we're gonna do it in here. Once you sit there, you're gonna place your hands on the box. If you feel the box is too far away from you, what you could do, you can actually move the box forward and you can have an other blocks, or maybe you can even put out a form roller right there and placed the box in front of it. So now the, as you guys see in the box is a little bit closer where the Kelly's going to sit. So she's going to have more range of motion on her, perhaps saying that the less started. So we are going to first just to warm up, they're going to stand in front of the reformer a parallels feet. And as you guys seen here, Kelly's like almost touching the bar. I don't want her to touch the bar, but that's a great reference point because she's going to place her hands on the box and she's gonna maintain her neutral spine position. So from here she's going to just push the box as far as she can.

And the reason I mentioned the bar as you guys seeing the gap between her legs and the bar did not change while she's pushing the bar forward and back, less trying to make a little different move away from the park. Yali. Do you guys see that right now? She's leaning back and now she's coming forward. So we will like this likes to be straight. Exactly the same spot while you're moving your spine. You could do this in a neutral spine position and I don't really cue how Danish they need to push.

I just tell them just reach and push the box as much as you can. And that tells me a lot about their hamstring flexibility. I look at their pelvis position so I can tell how is their back. Do Great and beautiful. Now a couple of more or less, uh, let's shape the spine. Kellen. Les, come up, inflection, beautiful and let's go down flection. Fantastic. And now let's show them coming up extension.

Make sure the cervical spine nice and long and it's matching the rest of the spine. And let's go forward. Extension. Beautiful. Now let's mix and match Combo. So if you're going to go flection up and round, round, round, round, run and extension forward. Beautiful. Let's do one more set before we change and come up and reach forward. Nice and long. Beautiful.

And come up extension Kelly. And let's go down flection. Sometimes we call this dolphin dive and come up an extension. Beautiful, nice and long. It's matching the rest of her spine and last one and come up and relax. Beautiful. So this is our warm up sequence. Once they are here, she is going to sit down. So there's a couple of ways you can do.

You can obviously help your clientele. Just push the carriage away from it. And by the way, all these exercises we're going to do, I'm using a yellow spring. It's not about the weight. The lighter is the better. And uh, if you don't have a yellow spring, you can do blue. And I'll suggest maybe if you have a gearbox, you can move the gear far away. So it will be a little lighter as well. And you can let the client basically step inside.

They're gonna want to straddle the table immediately. So trying to teach them actually step in first. Beautiful. Have a seat and then bring the legs out one at a time and then hold the box. Beautiful. So this is our starting position. She's feeling nice and tall. And from here, basic exercises we're going to do. Bend the elbows, bring the box in close to you and XL. Push straight out the ideas.

In here I'm looking isolation of the shoulder joint. Yeah. Without effecting the spine. Can you show us a little bit using your body to push Kelly. Here we go and come back in. So it's not about that beautiful.

She's staying nice and tall in the same spot and she's just moving the box forward and back using the shoulder joint. Fantastic. Going gonna it tomorrow and one you want to make sure. Also when the client sits down, usually the toes is going to be overturned out. You'll want to make sure that line from the hip to knee. Also, the total knee needs to be in the same alignment. Beautiful. Now one more time. Let's hold it there. Now from here, straight elbows and let's squeeze the Scapula together and let's open them away from each other. Beautiful. And come back in and open, open, open, beautiful. And three more in and out.

And two, nice and lifted and one more and out and bend your elbows and relax. Beautiful. Now you're going to place the hands actually in this position. So the top of your hands is on the box. They're going to stray the elbows, you're going to feel a nice stretch and bend journeys come back in and once again and out and in three more. Two. Beautiful.

Yes. And the last one we're going to extend. Let's do in this position, couple and squeeze and open and squeeze and open and three and four. Very good and five and stay there. Now from here, pretty much you feeling this is the rest, and from here I want you to basically lengthening your wrist and one more set. You're going to actually lengthening the first metatarsal [inaudible] of your fingers. Then bring it back in the knuckles and the rest. Beautiful and one and two and three and four.

Very small isolated movement. It's happening on your wrist. Did I say ankle when I was teaching? If I did, I'm sorry. I know that's a risk. It's not an ankle. What if I did? I'm okay. And one more or less the last time and out and in and it's beautiful. Now let's place the hands actually internal rotation and palm stretching.

Let's do the same thing and out and bent and two and three. As you see, it's a basic movement patterns, but I'm layering by changing the position of the hands. I'm involving different muscle groups and you will see some might be very flexible in this position and not this vice versa. So this is great way to also get to know the clients a, the strengths and weaknesses. All right, one last time. Now from here, let's to kind of this time is a long push to fingertips and come back and and stretch straight elbows. Yes and too. Yes and three. She's doing a great job and two more and one more and come back in and relaxed.

Bring the hands, regular position, parallel elbows down. This is the now first time we're going to involve the hips, spine, shoulders and arms from here in health, from your nose and exhale. Push the box all the way forward as much as you can and keep going straight, straight, straight, straight, straight, straight, straight, straight and come back up slowly. Good. Once again, I'm not really curing her to be in flexible position or extension. I just want to see her movement pattern. She's going forward. If you can cue the neutral as well.

I just want her to get the feeling what the box does, what her hips, what her spine and what her shoulders does. Two more and go forward. Fantastic. Reach, reach as much as you can. You want to make sure when the client does this going forward, they're not hanging on their shoulder griddle, right? So you want to feel the energy. Can we do that Kelly? Let's go forward and I'll sit down here.

Go between different setting or like really feeling lifted and lengthening lecture way. We did. Beautiful. Here we go. Nice and come up. Fantastic. Now I'm not going to help her to get out. She's going to show you have to get out or disposition. She is going to push once again, step insight first find your strength and then step out.

We're going to walk in front of the reformer. Now she's gonna face facing towards the box and she's going to do some legwork. So feel nice. Santyl she's gonna step. Let's go with the left up. First scaling. And you're going to use the creased of the box, the edge of the box as a foot bar. So from here, once again, the right leg needs to be one straight line. There is most people is going to want to lean forward towards the weight.

So the idea is trying to stay back on your standing leg and isolate the hip, knee and the ankle joint. So from here in how bencher knees bring the box in as much as you can. As you seen, she's kind of in a flexible position and when she pushes, she is going to do in the Plantar flection and come back endorsed reflection and pull back with your left hip. Feel nice and tall and XL for straight out on a planter. And once again, inhale, come back and fill nice and tall.

There's like a pressure on top of your head and extent and three more. Inhale, come back in. Xcel out two more and in and out. Very nice. One more. Come back in unless go out now we're going to hold it here.

We're gonna work the ankles and flex and point and Dorsiflexion and plantar. Once again, the body's not doing the movement. It happens just from the ankle. Nice and quiet in here. You can't even cue them to come back more, come back more, come back more as much as they can. That's going to be the most challenging part of the exercise while you're moving your ankle, trying to stay on your standing leg. Fantastic. Last one, and relax. Bend your knees in and other side, beautiful and go up your regale. Go feel nice and tall.

Feel you're standing thing and going six reps and inhale and exhale and inhale. And other point you want to make sure it's not in flex out point as you see she's doing it together and she's pushing it together. Can you isolate those now Kelly, it's not flex band point straight. Trying to connect those movement patterns so from flection to extension, it happens together and it happens together in beautiful stater and flex point and one and two. And you can do this where slow or you can do little bit rhythm with the tempo as well.

And three more and two more and one more. Fantastic. Bend your knees in and relax. So we did some race, we did shoulders, we did spine, we involved hip, we stand up and we involved the hip again with the standing position. Now if you're going to sit down once again facing towards the box and push the box, step inside, have a seat and straddle the reformer. Beautiful. So from here, hands on the corner. Feel Nice. Santyl and we're going to push forward this time I'm going to actually lead her to come up with deflection and Tuck your Chin in and round.

Once she feels nice and tall, go back to extension and push the box forward and round. Come back in and inhale, extend and push forward. Fantastic straight elbows. Make sure you're not going to hyper extension. And one more time. Come up and to extension. Stay here. Now let's go dive flection. So it's like a dolphin going down.

Push the box as much as you can and extend to come up nice and long. That's beautiful. And XL round dolphin dive. Keep pushing forward as much as you can. And inhale come up. And one last time Kelly and let's dive in. Feel Nice and long. Beautiful. Stay here.

Now bend elbows in. Bring the box in and pull straight out. Fantastic. So from here, if your client is going down more and the box is basically right about to hit their head, don't let that happen. You know, just Q declined right before it comes back to push out or just keep them a little bit higher as well. Let's do one more time Kelly and push stay there. Now from the scalpel I push and back and two beautiful. As you guys seen, she's not changing her height, she's maintaining her height.

The only thing moves is the scapula. So there's a great way to work on the glide of the Scapula and last one and then come back and the TOEFL. Just rest your arms for a second. Now if you're going gonna integrate our core, so we're going to use the long box to jump with our arms. She's just placing her hands in the same position. What technically the body wants to do before pushing the box in wants to lean forward. Then involve the arm.

So the goal is in here trying to maintain the spinal position and neutral without going forward or back. She's going to push the box forward and catch the box. Here we go and catch the box. It's not about how far she pushes, it's about how far she maintains, how well she maintains her spinal connection. Specially when she catches the box. Couple things is going to happen. Can you catch the box, straight elbow Kelly and shift your body dawn to this place.

It's not about straight. This is like straight like lending and push or bending the elbows into much and touching the carriage to the stoppers and hit it and clink. Don't do that either please. So fantastic. So a couple more Kelly right here. She's doing great. She has full extension.

You can add some opening the arms or lifting the arms between. You want to make sure you come back on time. Don't be late. All right, it's about quick being quick in the middle or being up and down and one up and down. Kelly, here we go. And okay too. That's enough. Fantastic. This is great. And now we're going to stand up and we're going to do some side work. Beautiful. Here we go.

Now she's going to walk forward and she's going to sit sideways on the reformer and you want to make sure that you can sit as back as you can on the reformer. So your hands is actually in the middle of the box. If structurally it's not working and they're hands needs to be in front of the box, you just have to make sure, tell the client they push straight sideways, not forward because the box will actually will twist like this. So that's kind of like a safety issue. You want to make sure if they cannot put their hands in the middle of the box, they should not push it forward. They should literally push it sideways.

So from here, straight your arms, skilling, push, push, push. You can even think pushing both arms sideways. Fantastic scalpel is opening right from here. Less bend the elbows in and XL, pull straight out and in health feel nice. Santyl and XL out to and end and out.

Three, three more and four very nice. As you get seen, she's not again, using her body to able to push is not doing that and come back and she's maintaining her position. Shoulders not going up and hold it there. Fantastic. Now from scapular once again only and bring the box in and out and in and out. Hips are square. Feel nice and tall. Push with this one too. Yes.

So you could do both arms together if you like or you can make it more challenging. Only just one arm. That's going to be a lot difficult to isolate and stay there and relax your elbows and breathe. And the last thing, Kelly, why don't we just straight your arms one more time. Feel nice and tall and just listen to one side bend just to feel it sideways and you want to make sure you feeling really nice and lifted and you're always looking front. You don't want to actually do cervical rotation. This should be true. Spinal lateral flection. Starting from the cervical to the sacrum all the way.

Come back in and let's do it one more time. I also cue that. Imagine that they have a fence and they are bending up and over the fence, not crunching to the fence. Let's trying to crunch wants to defend Skelly. So do you guys see the difference of she's actually crunching towards my arm. It's not about how much squeeze that you do in this side.

It's about how much lift you give on the opposite arm nice and long and come back in and relax. Now you're going to do other sides. So let's stand up this come this way. This is going to give you guys great opportunity. Also what happens in the scapular, right hand in the center full night central. Beautiful. From here, let's spend the right elbow in and out and I'm going to walk in here here ago.

She's doing a great job isolating her moving arm and two more Kelly in and out and one more. Stay there. Fill. Nice Santyl and now straight elbows and from the scalpel I come back in and out and in and out. Once again, this is a lot harder than doing together. You can also cute them doing together in and out. This way we can start doing this way, but later on you want to make sure that they can also isolate single scapula instead of always moving together. Last one, stay there unless to sideband Kelly and XL, push the box. Fill. Nice. Santyl. Once again, it's nice and long in here and stretching the left side and come back in and two more and he how it goes. Sideways, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach and left and out. And last one, she's doing a great job, a lengthening ear to the shoulder. Relax.

Nice long line and come back in. Bend your elbows and relax. Fantastic. Now we're going to stand up and we're going to do a side work. Now if you're going to face towards the audience, we stink sideways and we're going to place the left foot numb. Couple things you need to really make sure in here, most people is going to want to actually turn totally sideways.

They're going to set their standing leg external, rotate it, and they're going to do overdo it. And then they're going to trying to bring this tall to the box and to able to put it in the middle. They're going to rotate their hips to the left. Okay, so able to avoid that, Ms. Spring, the legs down please. So if you're going to work with the left leg, in this case, you make sure left leg is straight in the middle of the box. Once you've got that, you bring the right like next to it and do external rotation with the right. Whatever you comfortable, that's the position you need to be in.

Now you bring the left one and place up to the box. Beautiful. Now maintain your squareness. So in this position, she doesn't really have to face towards you, Gus. She is basically diagonally facing this way, but her leg is going to be working laterally. So same thing, extent and bend. Beautiful and extend and bend.

Very nice. And three. Nice for [inaudible]. She's doing a great job keeping your hips even isolating from the hip joint, maintaining the quality of the movement, flexing the ankle with the knee joint and the hip joint working last time. Let's stay here. Same thing and let's go to Dorsiflexion and plantar and two.

Beautiful. This is very difficult and isolated too. It's so much easier to do it with the hip motion like this. So she's doing a great job. Another thing, can you sit on your right hip, Kelly, here we go. That's very comfortable too. So you want to make sure that you're not sitting on your standing leg. Yeah, good. If it's too boring, you can add some arms.

You can bring them up. You can do different positions as well. And relax. Let's turn around and do the same thing other side. So she's going to bring the right leg parallel. She's going to turn out with the left, find her position, she's going to place her right foot on the box. Awesome score, hips, she's diagonal. Once again, she's not totally turning an extent and come back and flex and to hip down.

Feel nice and tall. And three and three more and four and five. One more or less opened their arms. Kelly and six Lauer, less to flex and point and flex. And point. Should we flex with the hands to a point and for [inaudible] two more and five and six and come back center and relax.

Beautiful. Now, uh, she's going to sit sideways once again facing towards you. Let's have a seat. Now we're going to add more movement, the ruffle. So we're going to place the left hand on the middle of the box. Once again, pull straight out, make sure that you pushing two boxes so you are centered and you're gonna inhale and push the box and do the side bend really nice and long. Once again, beautiful. The you are looking straight forward this way and from this position you're going to bend your left elbow and bring the box in and extent us and bend and extend. You want to make sure that elbows goes down directly and extent and two more.

Don't snap quality, feel nice and lifted and one more. And linkedin, Linkedin, linkedin halt can be due from scalpel. And now push the box in and out and in and out. Beautiful. Very nice. Bend as much as you can. The left ear goes down and two more.

Don't bend your elbows year ago from the scalpel out the year TOEFL. And two more and one more. And let's come up and relax your arms. Take a breathing. Now we're going to do jumping once again. So fill nice and tall. Remember, this is not about how far you can push.

The box is about how far you can push the box without moving your spine, right? So it has to be a core stabilization exercise while you pushing the box from here. One thing you need to do a, when we were jumping facing towards the box, obviously you could see the box right now. Don, look forward. Just turned towards the box and maintain position here and from your Xcel. Push and grabbed the box and n and two and three. Beautiful. Trying to stay a steady as you can. Yes.

And five and six. Let's do two more. Seven and eight and come back in and relax. Beautiful. Now list the other side. Turn around. Uh, find your position right in the center. Beautiful parallel feed.

Place your hand on the box once again and push straight out both arms feel nice and tall and we're going to push the box sideways and push it all the way. Beautiful. Fill, nice and long here and the ear side. And you're going to bend your elbows. Bring the box in and Xcel. Push straight out. One and in. And two. Beautiful. Feel Nice. Long in here. Good.

Nothing's moving. Scalpel is stabilize. Fantastic. And two more and one and last one. And Push. Feel nice and long, long, long, long, long. And bring the scalpel in straight elbows and push straight up. Maintain your curve of your spine, all the way to the cervical and three beautiful and four nice five and one more. Six. And come back in. Open your arms, bend your elbows and relax. Now from here, take a breath. You're going to do jumping just like we did in the first side.

You want to make sure it's not about how far you push the box, it's about controlling the box and maintaining your core. So one big difference in here. You're looking at the torch, the box, don't look straight. And once again, jump and then, and two and three and four. Very good. Five, six, two more and seven and eight and relax. Great. Sharp. Beautiful. We're going to stand up. So now we did facing uh, towards the box we did facing sideways to the box and now going to actually sit away from the box. She's gonna have her position right here, right in front of the box. Couple things now I'm gonna talk about it.

Uh, reaching back and holding the box from disposition requires a lot of shoulder flexibility. If your client's doesn't have that, and this is very difficult. I don't want you to do it this way obviously. So there's a one way to do the same thing and we're gonna do it right now. So just be patient with me if that's what you're going to wait, because I'm going to show both versions. And what we're going to do is we're going to basically diagonally set and we're going to reach back with one arm and we're going to do this with one arm. So that's option and come back in. And other option, actually what you can do is in here you can basically uh, find a doll. So we'll make the box a little bit longer, but you want to make sure that you remove the shoulder, you remove the blocks and you put the box on top of the shoulder rest.

So you have a space. So the Daleville will stay actually on the carriage. It will not slight. Okay, so let's start hands behind you on the box. Fill nice and tall in health from your nose. And from here, Xcel push the box as comfortable as you can and come back and beautiful once again, it's not about how far she goes, it's about half control. She goes back without putting too much pressure on the shoulder griddle, she's actually still using her abdominals to able to rollover herself down and come up. Now we can shape it. Once again, we can XL rangers fine and come back in and extent go up. And two more. Come back in, excel around and, and uh, last time and round and up. Feel nice and tall and relax. Beautiful.

Let's do this right now. For those who doesn't have this shoulder flexibility, they're going to turn, they're going to angle yourself more angled. You are obviously, it's going to be easier and you're going to place one hand on the box. She's sitting sideways from here and from here she's going to go back. Same movement pattern and come back and you can also tell your clients to hold the opposite knee to secure themselves while they're going sideways and back and come back up. Once again, you can do in the neutral spine position. You could do flex and extend as well. Less than one more reflection and extension. All right, other side, Kelly, turn to ARIDE. Beautiful.

Have a go right hand on the box. Left-Hand Cross. Feel nice and tall. You can even look at the box and come back in. Very nice and look at the box. Good. Let's show a couple with flection and extension. Very nice and come back in and the one more, um, come back in and relax. Awesome.

Next standing work. She's going to stand up once again facing away from the box. She's setting her standing leg. She's going to bend the right leg and put it on the box on here. I'm going to move the block and she's going to place her right foot on the box in here. There's a couple things you can do. Once again, there's this strap so you can make sure that they are actually right on top of the back. So if their foot slides down, the strap actually will catch them. But you want to make sure cue them, they don't really use the strap and they don't press their foot down.

That's just in case there. And as you guys seen here, the reason that I moved to box right now, she has more range of motion so she can bring her knees closer. And from here she's going to extend and keep the front knee bent and come back and beautiful and extent to point and bend beautiful and three all the way out and come back in a little bit. Lengthen your spine. Stomaching lean forward. Very good. And in last one, an outstay there. Now Flex and point. Good and flex and point and two more.

Yes. Last one. Um, in and out and come up from Nice and tall. We're going to do other side change legs. [inaudible] here we go. A little bit more back. Beautiful. Feel Nice. Told. Bend your right knee and go over your toes a little bit more with your right knee. Fantastic. And extend your left leg straight out and abandon.

And here, most people want, they want to do, once again, when they extend the back leg, they're gonna want a straight, they're standing like and then band and go forward and they're going to extend. So you want to make sure the angle of the bend, Nene Front in maintain same. If there's obviously knee pain, you guys know what to do with it. You can change the angle, you can shift the weight back to the hill. But as natural movement and functional movement, you want the knee to go able to go forward towards the toes. She's starting flex points. That's three. Can we do three more too? Here we go. Last one and out.

Come back in from no Santyl and relax. Beautiful. We did it. So I have you guys enjoy this class. We did get to use the long box, very unconventional way. This is great for clients once again, trying to maintain their core while they are articulating their shoulder joints, specially hip joint and the spine. So they are basically, they get to connect all those three parts and by doing this standing work as well, then you get to integrate everything we do.

Not only sitting but vertical standing as well. Thank you so much. Joining us once again, and this was the linear long box and I'll see you in spiral long box, which you know what's going to happen most likely. See you soon.