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Right. Hi everybody. We're here for a reformer workout. I have my wonderful friend Qaeda working with me and we're, we're here to move together. We're here to move with you. So come on along. We're on balanced body reformers. Just get yourself set up and I would like to start with some ab work to warm up. We have got springs ready for foot work, but just do 'em what you'll know you want for footwork, we have three red, but you get to decide what you're going to need.
So let's place our feet right up on the foot bar in parallel. I'm going to set my arches there, but let's just decide along the way what you, what you need everyone. Let's take our head rest down and we'll get cozy on the mat and just feel your palms first. All five fingers of each hand, the pads of the fingers, just being really aware of our surface, the arms quite close to the body so that as we breathe in and our lateral way, we can feel our ribs expanding into our arms. All right, so making your way across the back of your pelvis. Checking that even weight distribution, the back of the lowest ribs are snug down on the mat. Your scapula are nice and wide and your eyes are open and wide.
So let's take a nice deep breath through the nose. And as we exhale, let's focus today a little bit during our exhales about our intercostal muscles and our ribs and the relationship into external obliques right through the side. And we'll utilize that several times today. So inhaling wide through those lateral muscles and the exhale, bring in those ribs in, away from the arms. Sorry. Really want us to focus on those side body areas today.
And that power of the diaphragm is it comes right back up underneath those ribs. So a lot of movement in the thorax, lung, and heart. And our next exhale, we're going to go ahead and start moving. So go ahead and join us now. We will exhale and take that pelvis into a little posterior tilt and then keep going all the way up your back until you're right up at the highest spot between your scapula.
Bridge
Nice deep breath and same exhale as we're rolling down. Let's get those diaphragm muscles really working. So pull those up, pull your diaphragm up, find a level pelvis to take a breath and exhale. Here we go. That's really a motion in the spine. Motion in the ribs. Deep breath and exhale. So muscles of inspiration, diaphragm and the intercostals.Rolling up again. Oregon's of inspiration of course heart and lungs. Press our arms down a little more firmly. Everybody just stay right here and take one of your legs to a tabletop position and then set it down. Alternate sides. Exhale is one comes up. Inhale, it comes down so the arms are a little bit of a frame for us to raise our leg so we can balance on the arms slightly to help us leverage the weight.
Bridge w/Single Leg Marches
Four more times and lower and the second leg and lower. This might show up again in foot work. Just a little preview, keeping your hip bones high as last time. Both feet on the mat, breathe in or on the foot bar and enrolling down again using the diaphragm strength. Really pull that up into the house where it lives right up underneath the rib cage. So there we are. We're flat. Now take a breath again. Let's re work the upper curl. So head, neck, shoulders. We'll just keep our hands on the mat.
Chest Lift
We're reaching our fingers in the direction of the end of the mat and then take it back down. And as we're doing these exhale again, tap back into your intercostals right there on the side of your rib cage, into the external obliques. Notice how of those engaged to help us get a little bit more into forward flection and take it down. We don't have a prop between the knees, but let's think about one being near maybe a small ball. So as the body is curling up and we're getting into that old bleak connection, keep thinking of how it goes toward the opposite inner thigh. Okay, we'll take it again and last little check. Point your feet. Exhale, the feet are on the bar. There's a little bit of downward press of the feet. We're going to stay here and just raise her arms. Now, just the height of knees and exhale in press two more times and exhale and we press. And our last one inhale and we exhale and we take it back down.And then from this position, just bring one knee at a time up to a tabletop hands either on the shoulder blocks, the posts, or if you have enough shoulder flexibility and range of motion. You can have your hands on the side of the frame. I'm going to try that today as I'm gaining more openness in my shoulder girdle and we'll take some side to side. So either direction, we're going to go to our right, leaning the knees over to that right hip, that right side, the opposite shoulder stay stationary and our XL brings us center. This frame of the arms is quite nice to open up the chest and exhale so as our knees go right, let's think about the back of our left rib cage wall. Expand the left ribs back that stretches those intercostals, the exhale.
Table Top Hip Rotation
Use those to come back. Same story as we go left. It's the back of the right rib cage here, right there. Ring that open, breathe it open and then use that exhale to bring it center. Okay. Four more, little more flow. Amy inhaled with and XL, center to the left twist. Enjoy that shoulder opening. Exhale, center one more each way. And Center.I think our lower abdomen is important but it gets a little too much focus I think in bodies. So let's, let's work on today. Really staying a little higher in our focus. Okay, so that was our a bring your hands off the frame. Yeah. Keep your, your, your focus more today in upper abs, right. And then diaphragm. Okay, so now guys, go ahead and put your feet on the bar and then prop your head rest up. We'll get going into some leg presses and adjust myself here. And let's do [inaudible] stamps. So the pads of the feet are spread or heels are pulled together.
Pilates Stance
We've got a good sense of awakening, opening breath in. Exhale, return. Inhale, exhale, return. So again, your arms quite close to your body so that on the inhale you can spread them toward your arms, your ribs, toward your arms. We'll just do eight today of each one of these. So here's five and six, do more. Seven last one eight and we'll come in for that. Prehensile strong foot hole on the bar right away. Breath
Arches
Four more,
Heels Parallel
Everybody get your feet and spread the spaces between your toes, like a cat sticking out its claws and then look up the seam of your legs and really get that close together. Okay? From there, let's just lower both heels and rye and as we lower the heels we are thinking about growing taller through their tire spine. So heels down ahead, uh, long. Okay. Or the neck long and live four more times. Maximize the range in both places. Just check the back of your upper arm and it's nicely secure on your mat. All right, last one. And then hold right here for witches for a moment. Just a little bit higher lift. And then I want us to do bend the knees and press back out.
Tendon Stretch
We'll do eight and then exhaling and inhale stretch. Can the pinky toe spread a little bit more? [inaudible] just check in. Sometimes that little digit likes to curl up off of the bar, but really work your muscles to keep that Pinky, uh, on the bar. Last one, everybody. We're going to push it back out and go now into walk in place just to one and two, the three and four, up and down, up and down. And of course there's both. There's pressure through both a balls of feet during these walking in places, not just one. Both feet are still pressing in for more. Here we go, one, two, three, and four.
Toes Parallel
And then just hold that Relevate again and then exhale. Fold yourself all the way. Okay, I'm going to keep it on this same spring tension. So let's just put the heels back up on the bar. Now, a little bit of a space, you're right in front of your pelvis. Joints do have joints, and I do want us to take our head rest back down. All right, so a single legs and spinal flection first take a breath from the tail. That's Caroll our way up or back up in that bridge. So the first round, let's just go for five presses, maybe six with both heels, right? So you're gonna push go all the way to straight knees.
Running
There'll be a little bit abduct [inaudible] of the pelvis going down. That's okay. Just endeavor to keep it up all and extend and in. So how about the arms? Can you use that? Ask them to help you so that you can really keep those hips up.
Pelvic Lift Heels Parallel
You are going to feel your back muscles. Yes. Part of the idea. Your booty and your hamstrings. Okay, last one. And press and in, and now let's unroll ourselves. Massage all the way. Take a breath and let's go back up again with both heels on the bar.Pick a leg though, and to come up into tabletop. Now try to go that that far on that single leg. Yeah. Explore. We'll only do four though cause this is a little more intense too. Yup. Just working inside this unworking side here, the tabletop leg. This hip should not be hiking prs. Now instead of rolling down, we won't just set the heel there. Raise the other one. Unhide the hip.
Single Leg Pelvic Lift Parallel
Four presses. Here we go. Strong Push, right? You push far away, but no, the thrusting rib cages, right? Use your bum. Use Your Butt more than your back already. Okay, we're going to put the foot down. Take a breath now. Float the arms up. Lift them. I should say unroll the spine. Ah, it feels good.And then put the arms back down and we'll do another single leg pattern. But let's go pull out these v balls of feet. Be ready to feel more inner thigh and hamstrings and let's make sure our knees aren't too wide so they're really right in the side of your shoulder frame. Curl it up. Here we go. Okay, let's go for four only in this position, but full extension. Squeeze your butt. Pull it in. Press it out. Squeeze your butt and your inner thigh and two and last one.
Pelvic Lift Pilates Stance
Does this feel good? Qaeda? Yes. It feels good to me too. A neural. So then the single leg pattern won't be tabletop. It's going to be a straight leg gesture. So we'll come back up. Oh Louie, choose a leg to stand on. I love saying that. And then take the other one straight out. It's going to come up as you push it. Lifts. Yes. Is three springs. This rather heavy. We have it.
Single Leg Pelvic Lift Variation
Three more stretch. Take your gesture leg as far up as you want and you've seen two different models here. Two different examples and push and then that foot comes on. We don't drop re lift left leg out. Here we go. And push lift. Oh, stretching your hamstrings and push. Yeah, use your arms to help so you can really maximize one more stretch.Good. You guys and Kayla and I take a day and then roll down. Very intense. Once you get yourself down, hug yourself. Good job. Legs picked your head and your chest up. Well, let's come up and change our tension, okay. And the bar, so we don't need that. We could have done that on two red springs. Yeah. Okay, so we just did drop off one spring. So we're on to red now.
We're going to do some hands and straps work head rest up. Let's go back down and pause just your for a second with your arms by your sides. Okay. All right. So before we begin our hands and straps, that's again, focus a lot. Again, one more rep round of refreshing these intercostals here, the rib sites and the external obliques. Okay. So that really, really helps us with flection. So using that pickup, the straps and I am going to have this and if you want to join us for this, take your leg straight over the bar. Okay. Now that's not for everyone. If, if you know right away, that's not your place today. Just bring your knees from tabletop or from your chest, but we're, we're ready. Okay. Press your energy to straps, long legs, hips to feet. Take an inhale at those ribs. Expand coming up for the hundred position.
Hundred
Hands are a little higher than the legs and less. Go into three, four, five. Exhale, three, four, five and two, three, four, five. Trying to hold the carriages steady as it can. We've both been working out a little bit lately on grots equipment, which is different. Of course, strap length and tension. Strength,
Double Leg Stretch
Heck sale. Flex the spine. Good. And again intercostals external obliques. One more. Go ahead. Qaeda, hold them there when your head down. Vendor elbows, coordination. So we're kind of ready for it. Just three rounds up. We go. Open close in knees. Let's keep our head up and press open in. Nice. So when the knees come in, our arms are reaching in opposition.
Coordination
We reach. Now our head can come down. Arms Up. Let's go into overhead. Let's do it. So we're going to take her hand a head rest down. Okay. The overhead or rollover. Same thing. I'm going to have a start with her legs down on the mat or on the bar.
Rollover
Take your breath. We go all the way. Hands down. Roll up and over. Flex the ankles. Open the legs of the width of the shoulder rests and roll yourself down. Keeping those shoulders wide. Why? Yep. Legs come down. Arms come up. One more.This direction and Ho over. Flex the ankles. Open the heels and rolling down. Give stretching the hands into the cotton loops. Peeling the shoulders back. Lower the legs quite low. Lift the arms up. Now let's reverse it. So open the legs from the bottom. Ready, go over it feels a little odd.
Pull the legs tightly together. Flex the ankles. Breathe. Exhaling. We come down, we'll use that intercostal contraction. Use those oblique lakes, them down the midline. Arms come up, last one, late to come open and oh, flex the ankles, legs are together, rolling down. Once our pelvis comes down for all of us, take your legs, just vertical arms vertical. Hold your arms vertical, flex the ankles. And we're just going to do four point and flex of the feet. So really articulate your toes.
Peel the toes back and flex and extend and flex. So you're looking right at your feet. You can really see your process paying attention to how your feet are working underneath you there. Press okay. And now reef point, bend the knees. Let's do some arm circles out to a tee in. It's up to you. If you want to keep your head down, you can.
Arm Circles
I'm going to actually pull up to a chest lift here, right there and put it down. And again, I'm going to lift it up as I curl because I want to use those intercostals obliques.And then open head comes down three more in this direction. Yeah. Do more really exercising or breathing apparatus. Diaphragm. Yeah. Okay. And then let's just go ahead and put the straps down. Yeah, perfect. Let's come all the way. Yeah. Sorry. Did you hear that squeak? Our parents are making noise, dear ghost flower.
Why is it okay good. Let's take our springs to one red everybody. And I'm going to choose the middle one because I just like that for my attention. My Ed. Order an intention. Okay, so find your straps. Let's do a little bit of facing the back of the reformer. You've got about a hand length and for manual, I want us to just start with seeding as tall as you can as we can.
Biceps
The loops might be a little bit slack for your reformer. That's completely fine. Lift your spine tall and let's just check into what it feels like to talk the ropes. Okay. And you're going to feel how your biceps already come into the picture and we'll keep flexing the elbows to bicep curl. No more. Only on one red. That's plenty. And so you won't see us go to a full arm extension because the ropes on this reformer or slack, but that's fine curl. What I do, one is all to think about is that every pull of the the strap, whether it's a cord, a leather rope, whatever, it's us going tall, up, out of our pelvis, up out of her, low, back out through the tip top of our head. Okay, two more times taller, quintessential up. Now stay tall.
We'll just take the arms long by the side of the reformer for seated chest expansion. Inhale it back. Exhale forward. Same thing. Every pull on this strap is us going taller. We have long arms. We've had no long neck.
Tricep Press
Roll the arms forward again and give one arm the bicep curl and the other arm. The tricep. You get to choose which one is the little coordination. Okay, so here we go. One bicep, one a hub, and then they meet in the middle. Try to coordinate the timing and one bicep. One tricep.
Bicep and Tricep Combo
So do what you need to do to keep the ropes taught. We'll do a form war and sweat.Now let's take our knuckles together and we'll come into what looks like the beginning of the rowing. Really wheel the pelvis underneath. Yes. Pause when a right at the base of the sacrum and we'll take our arms out, palms face back. Now hold that position everybody lower your shoulders and let's just do like three inches of arm. Pull one, two, three and bring them forward. This is not easy. One, two, three. Sometimes we leave this out his can you see in your posterior tilt and get this arm pull. Okay, three more.
Rowing Back
Lower your shoulders. If this is getting gnarly to this last one, take it to the Ro Paul Body over the thighs. Now what I'd like is all to do is lower the hands so that your fingernails are close to the edge of the map. Shift your body weight back to your more weighted on your pelvis and reach your arms longer. Lift your arms from there, lower than from there. Let's inhale liftFull rowing the rest of the choreography. So we go around all the way. Give yourself the hamstring stretch. Okay, enjoy that. So let's just maybe go through three of the real rowing patterns. We've done all the parts. Three full rounds. Here we go. Curl. Inhale, arms out. Pull the arms behind. I like the fingernails low.
That's just my personal preference. Arms lift. Big Circle. Leave that stomach way back. Roll it up. Yeah. Taller than you started. Exhaling back. Press. Keep it fluid. Keep it fluid. Yeah, stomach way back. Heavy tail. We have one more full row. Inhale and,
Lift the arms as high as you can. This time circle. Let's linger in her hamstring stretch because we both can. Good. Okay. And then bicep of position again or that writing goal position. It's going to adjust this. Okay.
Flat Back
And all I want us to do with this one is to hinge back and forth. So it's just a hand. I'm looking at the ropes
Yeah, kind of nicer. Okay. Up on our knees now.
We have the skill to do that. We've got long Achilles tendons and we know what we're, we bought that connection. But if you're one of those people that you're looking at like, wait a minute, what? Try that. Try to really reach for the heel back and you might notice you get some workout here. Really good for us. We also want to have a thought of the femur pressing against that.
Kneeling Arm Circles
Um, w you know the, the back of the leg to the forward. So that really keeps this disjoint open. Okay, all that said, let's go ahead and reach up. I'm going to go pretty high with my arms today. I feel like you can, we're on a red if it's too heavy, drop it down and we'll exhale. Use those obliques. So I've changed the breath. You probably knew how often I exhale the other time. And I like to inhale when the spring is opening and choosing it because I want the oblique connection. And how exhale.Okay, one more time. Are Your heels still back? And we're going to reverse the direction of the arms. That was six reps and I think we're in the blissful state. Not counting really well out and up. Remember that spinal column is up, right? No compression down. Three more.
We've got a flat back here. All rise. You're looking right at where the springs hook onto the reformer and if we can keep that same foot position. Exactly. And we're just going to easily stretch our arms and easily bend them. And the sides of our neck are long. We can inhale the length of this spring now and exhale two more with Choo arms doing the work, which is really easy.
Kneeling Arm Press
And then one more with two arms. Just keep moving and take one hand off and just put it down by your knee and just notice the change of effort. A single arm. Yup. Let's see if the heels can stay connected. Two more single arm. I love the simple things. Okay. Other side. Yeah.
Single Arm Press
Nice to kind of break that up. Even weight on her knees, her hovered right above that single spring. That's in the middle. Last two presses my feet. Feel pressOkay, so let's just take it on down. Grab those strap. I'm a fan of putting both in at the same time. It doesn't look the prettiest, but I just want to make sure my sacral ILIAC joint isn't pulling one leg and twisting my hips there. So that's my choice. Okay. Head rest is down. We're going to go right to short spine would take our legs forward in parallel and we'll go through the hamstring stretch version today.
Short Spine
So deep hip fold allow, cause we did so much hamstring at the beginning. This is going to be a nice a reward for us, right? Plus this way we can't really use their legs to roll up. We've got to use the curl. We have to use our obliques. We have to use those intercostals to come away up high. There we go.
Remember the arms that we had in footwork. Use them a little bit. Pests down on those arm flex and no haul. If the XL from the Diaphragm, oh,
Inhale frog. Roll it down. High abdominals. That diaphragm. Yeah.
Leg Adduction
Externally rotated. Flex the feet. So let's go into some nice again, a stretch of the ad. Hectors, hamstrings. Did you hear that? And pull the legs together and open. So our sit bones don't curl up on this one. We're going to keep them pointing toward the foot bar. Yup. I'm just working flex fee for some variety two more times.
Leg Circles - Parallel
We'll get our box up.
So if you, as we climb up and get yourself set lists, you'll give you two choices. Okay. So this front foot can, the front leg can be this ed design or if you want a little more challenge, you could also get more on the side of that hip for that challenge. Um, I'm not feeling that today myself, but you might, she's doing it. So this feels better for my hip today, right? This legs. Oh, parallel. Real parallel. And instead of thinking that we're pulling the hip up to our body, let's reach our hip away from her torso down. So that then this part of us we can pull up.
Side Sit Up
So there is some opposition that way. Right. Okay. Now let's just take arms out to a tee. All we're going to do is go down. You can bend as you go down. So we don't have the use of our arms. They're not going to help us. Exhale from right here.
I'm going to let myself bend a little more and excellent hip to heel and
The arms don't help us is all from that pretty central zone. Exhale, open that up. Take air into it. Exhale.
Let your head go. If that feels good. Gotcha. Hip To heal. Get your low back. Very luscious and long. And then we'll come up out of that and that's enough. We'll take our box away. That's all I really had for the box from that place. Yeah. Okay, perfect.
Okay, let's come up for some weight bearing. So we'll take our high bar up to read. Let's go into a long stretch set up. Big Believer in the hand, foot and foot mount balls of feet. Right in that little crevasse where the head pieces kind of boss. I love that. Okay. Is that a sagging down this lift herself. Here we go. Inhale.
Long Stretch
Just five times. Pull it feel so different. Inhale and exhale. Lift the weight out of the wrist a little bit. So you've got to use your arm pit, suction muscle. Pull them up. Last two, right? So here's the last time and in, and then everybody set the knees down. Okay. Round your back just for a second.
Down Stretch
You don't need to concentrate on not doing that. Okay. Heels back. Push. Good. Two more. Let's try to go a little further. So our thighs go all the way flat. There we go. And last time, now all the way forward. More forward. Climb upon fingertips. Lift that up or back lift arm, lift the other arm. Yep. And then trying to go back a little further up and back and that's it.
Beautiful Qaeda. Yes and okay. Climb up into up stretch position. What I want us to feel here, we're not really going to do the full movement of the carriage with up stretch, but we're going to move our body. So I'm going to slowly round my upper spine, trying to keep the carriage home coming down into that front support position and the rewind. So it's the head, the thoracic, the lower thoracic, the Lumbar, and we're back into that curved position. I'll do it twice more. So you have to put some energy in holding your stomach in so much that the carriage doesn't move. You're pooling,
Up Stretch
I'm thinking hip bones up to my eyeballs. I really am. And then the reverse, suck it up. There we go. Okay, now flatten the feet for elephant. There is no elephant on this planet that has a flat back. I don't think that there is one. So we have to round our spine.
Got around that round back and then a little bump one for 10 times. There's small three, four. Make a real round elephant spine,
Elephant
Let's go for rhythm and out in in push shin pool three and in five more. It's easy.
Round Back
Whole step off. Good. Okay. Lovely. Sit back down. Take your foot far back down. I think we can keep our springs head rest back down. Let's do this little corkscrew because again, it's through here. I'm going to really work this little zone. Okay.
Arch
Legs Up. Hold your shoulder pads for just a second. I'm going to just have this whole, this for nice full breath cycle.
Knees Off
Ready? All right, we're going over so we know the back of the reformers there. We've got a right back corner. We have a left back corner. We have a right front corner. We have a front left corner. We're in a work, the corners. I'm going to point my toes to the back, right corner. Come down the right side of that spine. It's going to touch down toward the right lower left, lower left, back and center. Of course, the other way. Now toes.
Corkscrew
So that's a very external cue, but we know the drill, but now, so get inside your body and see if you can get your obliques to connect that way too. The adductors, you'll feel it.
Move One foot over to either the right or left and put it down on the side of the frame of the wood. You've got to navigate. You've got a feel for it. I'm feeling now the other leg, I'm going to gesture it up toward the ceiling, up towards the ceiling and up. Take it back down. Centering your legs over your body. Of course, the other side, so one moves off. So we're doing a preparation for that. Control balance. Step off. You're not going to do it today, but we're prepping good K to, so we've got a telescoping leg, but really it's our spine and our,
Control Balance
Rest one the other foot on the carriage. And we're in a parallel. Let's all start with our heads down and get your chest really snug against this front leg. Yeah. Okay. Take a minute. Look down your body to see that back heel lifted and your feet spread. Move the carriage a little or a lot.
Front Splits
I'm going to kind of go for it cause this stretch feels really like needed today. We're not completely square, but we're trying to be and we're coming in to two more times. Now the reason why I want us to keep our head down, keep the weight down. It's just different. You could look up, but I want you to stay looking down. You don't need to see, feel it. Stretch, stretch, stretchLet's see what happens if from here we can go a little lower to the ground. Little lower. Little lower. Little lower. Little lower. Little lower. Yep. Oh good. I have to let her push me a little bag. Okay, there's side. All right, so the hip flexor stretch first hand, low head low.
Look down your leg, making sure it's straight. And so the stomach is still lifted. Hamstrings on the front. Quads on the second leg
Ready for the front foot is solid. Pushing down, feeling good. Last one, like with arms out here playing. But then we're going to test our range on this next one. Oh, we're so excited to do it. Go on. Go on. Go. So internally we lift to allow us to go lower internally. Lift. Good Qaeda. Yup. Walla. Okay. Come down the ground. Oh my gosh. Thank you.
We're all done. You're all done. Thanks for joining us. I have shaky legs right now. We'll see you guys next time. Thanks a lot. Bye. Bye.
Pilates with Amy Havens: Advanced Reformer Workouts
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Amy Havens (Teacher) |
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Susan T |
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Carla R |
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Donna V |
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Lacey |
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Ember Hopkins |
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Amy Himes |
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Laurel S |
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Jamie A |
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Michael Mary S |
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Julie M |
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Annette A |
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Connie M |
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Marcelle M |
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Edith D |
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Denee D |
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Terry D |
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