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Hi everyone. I'm here for a reformer workout and I have a new friend to me named Aaron, who's in town here in Santa Barbara from Denver, Colorado. Her mom's taking classes at the studio and Aaron came and met me last week and I invited her to come work out with me. So thank you for being here. Uh, all you'll need is your magic circle, uh, for this reformer workout. So let's go ahead and get started. Everyone just have a seat at the edge of your reformer and just organize your feet in line with your hip bones and let's just do a little breath work to start. Okay. So hold on to your magic circle, wrap your fingers lightly around the inside edge and just let your elbows be somewhat relaxed in the arm position. Somewhat relaxed.
Breathwork
We are going to use this as an image of how our rib cage, uh, can expand and contract or, yeah, the rib cage can't really expand and contract, but the muscles around the ribs can expand and contract. Okay. So as we pull out on the magic circle, let's Kinda utilize an inhale breath there on that expansion. And then as we exhale, we're going to flip the fingers and press into the magic circle and really thinking about that from the high upper arm area, kind of by the arm pit chest. So we'll take an inhale and widen right and an exhale. So using, again, this is an image of rib cage expansion, lung filling,
Toes
But let's go ahead and lie down for footwork. Guys have set it up for what you want, what you want for your footwork. I've got mine on three red and one blue. I'm not sure what your and how they think I know, but okay. And I would like us to start with the Palladio's v two heels together, toes apart, and then hold onto the magic circle. And um, in previous classes, I've done it starting way up here, but we're just gonna keep it right above the chest, a few inches above.
And you can lightly hold your fingers on your magic circle and what we're going to reproduce that pulling apart, pressing together. But maybe you don't have to minimize so much action in your hands and things really focus on the expansion of the ring and the narrowing and the ring and let that actually be occurring within your body, within your torso muscles. Okay, so we're, here we go. We're going to start kind of slowish and inhale. Here we go. Lengthening spring, pulling the magic circle. Exhale, closing the magic circle, close the spring and inhale expansion at height in the body. Exhale, press together and pull apart.
Arches
Inhale and exhale and we can probably start taking our tempo up because now we know what's going on.
Heels
Start working on hamstring recruitment if you're not already is if you're sliding your heels down the bar.
Heels Wide Second
Pulled away and pressed together. I'm gonna switch a little bit of the choreography of the legs though on the next one. So as we push out, stay externally rotated internally, rotate as we come in. External, push out, internal, come in.
Heels Wide Second w/ Rotation
We've got this going to keep this turned in as we push out now and turn out as we come in.Let's just pick up the feet. Put the balls of their feet in mind with the sit bones now and I don't think we need to pull and push anymore, but everybody just hook your thumbs inside the ring now and lengthen your arm skyward and let's go ahead and extend the care. Don't long. And I want you to just hold yourself there for a moment. Contract your calves. We're not going to lock our knees and you might need kind of almost think that your shinbone is levitating a little bit, especially. Here we go. We're going to go into calf stretch without locking the knees and then press up.
Lower Lift
Inhale and exhale is how I want us to do the breath on these. The today. Inhale, heels down. Exhale, heels up. Inhale and exhale, heels up. Think about the bones, lowering the bones, rising the bones going down and left.
Lower Lift Pulses
Eight more and lift. There can be little three and four and four, three, two, hold and come all the way in an rest. Okay. Just lift your feet and shake them. So we're going to come up and change some spring down feeling good. Okay. Single legs. I'm only dropping one spring down.
Heel - Single Leg Parallel
I'm going to leave three red. Do what you need to do. Okay, well let's start with a run. One heel in the bar and the other leg straight out over the bar. Let's flex that foot. We're going to bring it up and down. Now all I want us to do with the ring, hold your elbows on the mat.Lightly press in with the palms of the hands and start tapping into the side. Chest muscles. Of course, we think those are the lats, right? So push the carer to lift that straight leg up. Point the toes to come down. So why are we holding the circle? Well, just to continue deepening the connection in the neck, shoulder, upper body. Okay, that's important. And press and three more.
We'll only do eight and take your leg as high as you'd like to go with the neutral pelvis last time here and down to quick change heel to the other side, leg out, flex foot and we left an hour. Yeah, Lauer and town and [inaudible] join that nice long set of muscles in the back of the leg and three more now. Here we go.
Heel - Single Leg External Rotation
So this does require a lot more focus of pelvic stability. Turned out with o single leg movement and we go up, we are going to keep the leg, the foot pointed the whole time.
Levelize that pelvis. Here we are and breeze
Last three
Bridge w/ Hip Abduction
Exhale and start to haul of that stomach area inward, upward and rolling through your back. Coming pretty high up on your upper spine, upper shoulder blade to spine. Inhale and roll it down with a light outward pressure on your legs to the circle rolling down. Let's just do three total of that. So mobilization. Exercise,
Last one.
Bridge w/ Hip Adduction
Three pelvic curls to stay up and we'll pull us in. So a nice breath to prepare. I'm on the arches of my feet on the bar. Curl your way out. Now we have to press the ring in. I want you to hold the ring narrow as narrow as you can. Get along line across the front of those hips to thighs.Inhale and start rolling down from the back of the chest. Oh, those ribs. All the spinal joints associated with the ribs. That alum bar, sacred area, neutral pelvis. Exhale, squeeze that ring because we're contracting our leg muscles contract in the stomach. It's okay to press the back of the arms down. We then exhale.
We're rolling down. Oh, all the way. Inhaled together at neutral pelvis and exhale as we cruel. Ruler, way up. Okay, so we're up there or at the bumper. Chin away from chest as pulse in.
Arms Reaching Forward
And come on up and change some spring down. We'd like to just have us do one red and the blue. Everything else can come away. I'm gonna just roll ourself back down. I like my head rest up. Yup. That's Bree up. Grabbed the straps are going to do her hands, instructs and knees just in a 90 90 space between our shoulders and the block.
Take a breath, pull the arms down. We'll do three arm pulls without the chest lift. So pretend that magic circle right. You're narrowing widening. Okay.
So lifting the head next shoulder and lower dow, initiating that arm pool from the armpit. Chest area. Stay up on this one. So we're going to do the pulse into
Chest Lift
Hands past the hips. Good.
Hundred
Yeah. Take the legs down.Keep the arms there in the legs there to take the chest down. Okay, come back up with the upper body. Now, just the arms going all the way up to the bumper and then exhaling down to more just the arms while you hold that torso. Design. Last one from the arm pit chest. We'll pull those arms down. Now I want you to put your head down and extend one leg and hold it there. Continue Region the hands past the hips. Now take the other leg out and just hold it there.
Chest Lift w/ Arms Reaching Forward
So there's a continuation of reaching the arms and we're gonna take a breath cycle. Exhale and yeah,
Arms Reaching Forward w/ Legs
Okay, so that's enough of a relaxing thing. Pull the straps and put your elbows in Nice and snug by the side of you on the Mat. And into your back side, back. Curl your head. Next you can chest up. We're gonna do a little position of the hundreds. So come on out now. Turn your legs out. Turn your hands deface in your thighs. We're going to do a little starfish.
Starfish
Open and close for more if need to bring your head down. Do this is really challenging. The endurance of the flexors of the front body. Last too strong. This is the magic circle, right? It's an open and it's a closed and come down.We're going to do the whole thing again. I need to kind of Shimmy getting stuck. Okay. Yeah, so that opened closes exactly what we were doing with that magic circle expansion contraction. Ready to call? Five more. We're ready folks. Come on up. So arms and legs long. This is our magic circle. We're one big one. Close, right? So we don't have to open wide. We want to open with intelligence and integrity of our alignment and connection.
Last one. Whew. Good. And then we'll just go right into five supine arms. Circles out, down and up. Just Nice, easy pattern. But image, that magic circle connection again, right? And four and five the way for five. Yes. This is beautiful arms, strong shoulders, a long spine within our body for, and our last one. Great. And then just rest. Okay. Time for the magic circle again.
Arm Circles Supine
So it should be pretty close to you. Oh, this is such a fun, we love these. So feed in straps. The magic circle between ankles. Yeah. Everyone loves these and they're good for us. We know that. So I haven't, we haven't changed the spring. We're still kind of light or normal spring for that. So what I'd like us to, to offer right now, first we've got this circle in there. Let's go to like a frog position where there's a really big knee bend and maybe some some. But that's up, right? We can kind of call this a passive position.
Frog w/ Parallel Hip Adduction Pulses
There's not a lot going on actively, so let's change that. Oh, first I want you to flex your feet as we press against the magic circle. Think about it happening from the highest part of your inner leg and then bring your legs to tabletop with the knees open. The shins have to be elevated just a little bit. Now we're in a very active position so we can, I think, can really feel the difference between the last book place and here. Okay, so all we're going to focus down guys on extension of then hips, knees elongating, and then folding. So I've taken the tempo down on purpose so we could really keep the integrity of that contraction of our midline muscles and holding the ring as steady as we can. Let me do three more. It's plenty. All right.We're going to breathe however it makes sense for you. I like inhale out. I like that length. I think Aaron does do right. Inhale, this time. That's it. That's our five hold as we exhale. Okay. Just hold, hold the position. We don't have to do fancy things to make it make a lot of impact on our, our body, as I'm sure you're all feeling way up here. Warm increase.
They work in those leg muscles a little bit more impressed. That ring. Can you make the rings smaller? Can you let it go bigger and can you exhale? Press it smaller. Just like we warmed up. Inhale with our breath. Three more. X. So we narrow it. Good. Inhale, widen it.
Exhale, narrow it, widen it. It's going to be really fun. Now hold, hold, hold. We're going to do the faster breath and change the shape of the ring.
Take the legs back out again. I'm going to adjust my circle. Okay. And all of that was parallel. Now I'd like us to do a very tiny bit of external rotation. So almost imagine the side of the thigh going around the back of the thigh. Let's try some frogs from here four times. Yeah, so there's a little bit more external rotation now.
Frog w/ External Rotation Hip Adduction Pulses
Yes. Inhale, just a neutral. Good. Exhale. Do more. And then we'll do the squeezes because we're here and extend. And last one. Press out. Okay, we can do this. Everybody. It's not a knee lock. It's not about locking the needs, it's about muscles up here. Now let's get muscles ready. Go.
Internal and External Hip Rotation
We'll just some easy hip joint motion without any extra stuff. Okay. And one more time. I like us to stay open, flex the feet and we can go. I would love us to go wide with a of pelvis. Okay. Yeah. So those muscles that we just contracted right now are probably very relieved to get this extension in this stretch.
Open Close
Well we have to activate them again from the long place to pull the heels together. We'll do five total. So they deserve the stretch, but now they're on length. It's a different type of contraction. Make sure we're not locking the knees to pull the legs together. Right. Three more. And we're traveling on this horizontal line pulled together. And how about flex fee to open and close for these last two reps and the last one an n. Okay. Now point the feet go all the way to internal rotation of the femurs and can't believe making this do this little tiny leg circles Aaron, while internally rotated. So yes, again, adductors all up in here. Just five.
Leg Circles - Internal Rotation
So that's our third one.
Frog - Parallel Hip Width Apart
So everybody take your lengths out apart about the width of the shoulder rests in parallel. Okay, so it's a, it's a, it's a frog. Basically or bending me. I would love for you to keep the same distance between these beat, but you can deeply flex your knees and your hips and then as you push the carriage out the ropes out, try to keep everything as steady as you can. The same width and steady. It's as if there's imaginary foot bar out in space and your feet are on it.
Okay? Yeah. This is kind of a tricky, you could stick a dowel underneath your feet sometimes. I've done that with the uh, in the straps, but no dow will today. Four.
Leg Circles
Come up the mid line and then let's open. We'll do five each way. Make your circles however big or small. You'd like plenty of muscle connection to be ready for these circles and our last all the way up and reversing it down. Hamstring. Get that stretch again and hamstrings.Yeah, she feels good. Hope y'all are feeling good out there to you. Okay. That was her five. Unfortunately. That's all I want to do with that. So go ahead and take these down and take her feet out. Not Unfortunately, maybe going personally, take that all the way out and come on up and leave yourself with one spring. I'm going to do the red. I think a red is good. No magic circle. I'm going to do some reverse abdominal work here.
Reverse Knee Stretch Flat Back
So climb on up on your reformer everybody, and have some space between you and the shoulder block. Maybe about one fist distance might be about right. Yeah. On each side. Put Your hands on your frame and I want us to lean forward now so that the thighs are gently touching the shoulder rests and let's get a neutral spine. Yeah, beautiful. And then just for a moment, feel the places of contact. So our thumb and the wrist pad, and we're pushing down where our thighs are. We're pulling into the block slightly the shins and maybe the skin on the top of the foot pressing down. So pressing all those places, right?And then on an exhale, contract the abdominals. Now you can flex your hips to pull the carriage towards your hands and then let the carriage go back. There'll be that little bit of hip extension and again, exhale, press the shins down. So yes, we could do this with Lumbar flection and we can also do this as we're doing here with extension of the spine. Both are good. Both offer good things. Yeah, I'm gonna have us do four more. Press Return, Press Return Knights, Aron hands pressing legs pulling last time. Okay. Now from here, just walk your hands back a little. Sit back for a moment and we'll do another style of that with adding a little bit of Lumbar flection. Okay, so same set up. The only thing that you're going to see that's different and you won't see a lot of see curve in my spine.
Reverse Knee Stretch Round Back
Most of you know that cause I have a pretty flat spine. But let's go start the whole thing with lumbar fluxion. Yeah, Aaron's got a really good one who may be able to see that better. Yeah. Okay. Same idea. Press press. Here we go. Exhale. Now as we pull the carriage, can we increase that lumbar flection, increase that Lumbar flection? So I have to really aim my sacrum downward and my two front hip bones up insideAlways will have something to work on in my pallet's practice. That's good. Okay. Last one. That's it. Okay. And then walk your hands back. Yeah. Okay. So I think we can stand our red. Yep. And then Neil, closer grab a hold of the straps. Let's do some bicep curls right here. Okay. So we're down.
Bicep Curl
Can we press the tops of the Shins? Uh, tops of the feet down on the mat again? Raise those arms. Yeah. And almost think to that, we're going to be lifting the, the ropes up as we bicep curl so we can exhale. Bicep curl, inhale extension. And it's okay if they're the ropes go that little moment of slack. But if you don't want that slack backup, I'm going to back up. I'd rather not have the slack and I'm going to work a little harder.
Good. Ready? Here we go. And axial.
Stomach area, inward, upward wide. And for from there, just flip your grip. We're going to just pull straight back and straight back. So this is kind of basic. I think what I want to do, just a couple more like this, everybody and then we'll add it, uh, add a little bit of thigh thigh. Work in it for some chariot. Okay, so that's the basic arm. Most of you know that come up higher. Come back up against the shoulder rest. Okay, you'll need to choke up on your strap. So chariot pole. Yeah, we've got our thigh against the block. Again, we've got our pelvis nice and neutral. And take just an extra second and use the hamstring contraction to press against the femur by bone as if you're almost going to bias your weight on the front of your knee. Okay, so informed movements, pull the straps back first pretty far. Hold them there.
Tricep Press
Flex at your hips and put your sitz bones right near your heels. Come right back up on the top of those knees and return your arms forward for more to go. So we pull, we sit, keeping them collarbone wide. We pull back up. Animal arms forward and breathe how you need to
Chariot Pull
Let's hold that for just an extra second and arms forward. Oh my gosh. Okay. Hook your straps. Let's move on. Okay, we're going to set up for short box, but let's, you can do whichever one you want. I'm going to do my bar first. Add a few more springs just to keep the carriage stable. Get that strap at the ready. Grabbing the box.
Round Back
Some reformers you can actually pull back and hover your feet up like that today. We'll just do it this way. Okay. All right, back to this reconnect. Let's just do a few of what we did at the beginning. Inhale, pull it apart and exhale. Press it together and we'll just keep going to hello train and exhale kilos. It's real. Inhale, pull it apart, sitting nice and tall and exhale close. Now we're going to keep that going, but as we pulled this time, exhale close, add a little bit of spinal flection. Inhale extension and exhale. Full action.
Good and extension. And we can make it a little bit bigger now and maybe a little bit bigger now, right? A little bit bigger.
Twist
Get kind of intense. Last one like this. Inhale. Good. Okay. Now hold here. Take a breath. Flex back to a place where you feel like you can control the position or the design of that seeker for awhile. Okay. Yeah. Now arms are going to go up, down over our head four times. So inhale, exhale. Try to keep the sacrum in that and the Lumbo. Sacral area inflection.
Round Back w/ Arms Up and Down
Twist w/ Arms Up and Down
Oh, got real quiet. I can't talk and do this. Go my bond to the sitting position and XL center. Do the other side. Inhale. Flex back. Okay. We are four at inhale.
Fantastic. Okay. If we can turn to face into each other side over time. Okay. So today's version, lean out first parallel. Make sure we're really parallel with that leg and pull up in this strap. So you have definitely had some leg, um, uh, ab duction action. Okay. Take that ring behind your head. You've seen me do this before. I do this a lot.
Side Over
I love this cause you want that head back into the channel of your neck and your shoulders. We don't want that head forward. Okay. So and then as we go over rather than bending so much, let's think about this underbelly side, getting long to that end of the reformer. So I'm thinking about reaching out long. I am going down, but I'm not collapsing down and then exhaling up and we'll hold, hold, hold. Inhale. Going over an exhale. Come up and hold [inaudible] three more.
Oh, over.
Long as we go over. Hail, huff, two and three. Good thing for our confidence, huh? Over our hooks are misplaced. Their little up last two. Length and strength. Palladia is exhale. Last one, keep that leg lifted and all the way up and rest.
Okay. Putting the ring down and rotation. Wow. Close hands. Trying to be right in the center. So head is even with that shoulder. Rest of the head rest. Nice. Expansive breath. Just like that magic circle helped us at the beginning.
Okay, cool. So let's bring the box. We don't away. You can take it away. That's enough there.
Shoulder Press
Had fairly low. And then again takes an inventory for a moment that even weighed on the knees and then the muscle right there by the neck, shoulder, the upper trapezius there is somewhat soft. So what's more from is down lower on the back. Let's go ahead and do shoulder press pressing out and pulling in. We want to sense that our back is nice and flat. Yep.So if you at home are doing this and you need to open your knees wider to be comfortable, please do that. That's okay. There's no rule here on that. Let's all study the feeling of even weight on the knees, the Shins, the feet, and the same in the amount of effort from your right arm and your left arm. Okay. Three more times with both arms on the bar. So we initiate that push from the armpit side. Chest. Okay. Take off the blue spring everybody, one arm, shoulder, press the other hand behind the back. Even more opportunity here.
Unilateral Shoulder Press
What we need is to stabilize our weight on our shins. We'll do five to six of these. That's right. So again, we're initiating it right in the side of that back. The side of the neck is soft where it meets the shoulder.
Oh good. She didn't. That was fun to see what we choose. I did and for a six times. Yeah. So the neck where it meets the shoulder is soft. It's not gripped. What feels more more engaged is the below the shoulder blade, the side of the armpit, chest, three more to go. Your Tummy is lifted in
And come all the way. Let's put on our blue. I'm going to do, here is elephant for one of the weightbearing so we're not going to be too much on her wrist and cake and then come on up. Step our feet back. You know and I mean yes. So we have weighed on her wrist but it's not all on the wrist. We know. See if we can buy us a tiny bit more weight to the heel bones toes lifted as it is one version to do. You can also just keep your toes down, but look back and see that your ankles are nice and streets and your heels are nicely behind. Your ankle joint is lovely and we'll all pull our stomachs up a little bit.
Elephant
We're all going to widen our shoulder blades on our back and wear the neck and shoulders live together. We're going to be a softer, they're okay pulling the sit bones together, kind of. If you can do that and push the carriage back, pull the kerogen. So let's try our hardest today. Keep the gluteal muscles activated or contracted more than usual when you do this exercise. I could try to narrow your pelvis today or Mary or narrow your hips. I should really say. Okay, good.Let's take the tempo up a little faster for eight more. One pull in, push away, pull in away. And in four more. Three, two, good. One and lower than he is down. Tastic okay, we're winding up. I'm just going to have us do a nice easy hip stretch. So, uh, one spring only we can take away one. We've left our red one and we'll go into of course for our hip flexor stretch.
Eve's Lunge
So the way I want us to do this today is no hams. We don't need to hold on. Let's just emar find your pelvis right the top of your hip bones and then just lightly press the carriage open ever. So slightly like this much maybe. And pause there. And we're lightly waiting, waited on our knee. The outside heel is really driven down into the floor and let's all take a little extra commitment today for that Cox six curl, right. And get really committed, intelligent about that angle of the pelvis. So this, we're not just holding ourselves up from our low back. We're, we're not. We've got that pelvises dialed back a little bit.So that really gives a stretch where it needs to go, which is all the way through here. Okay. And bring that with the kerogen two more. So it's so, such a small movement, doesn't need to be big traveling carriage like that can be tiny. But what I would like you to make sure you're doing is contracting this glue to also, and that coccsyx curl and that sense of all this tissue in the front coming up in the skin of the back, hanging down. Right. And carriage. [inaudible] one more time. So we don't need our hands. You need your mind really. Right. So the skin of the fronts coming up, the skin of the backs dropping down nice yet.
So I could see that the coccsyx curls going on, our glutes are contracted and we're feeling that stretch. Okay. And that's all we do. Come on in and I'll let you walk around and I'll follow you.
So our knee that's down is lightly their front heels from on the ground. We can engage this spring and open just a wee bit, little bit. Right. And it is worthwhile to take that time to ang or like check in. Oh my gosh, my sacred ms back here. Why is it doing that? I haven't thought about where to put it. Sometimes we need more thought. Right.
And so there's an upness of the front that uplift the skin of the back hanging down the back. That's really beautiful. Aaron had come all the way in. We have two more on this side and we press. So now trying to maintain that good and a very clear contraction of the back leg, glute hamstring the heels back. We've got a sense of openness and our upper body. We bring that carriage in and we have one more everyone and then we'll be finished with our reformer workout today.
Pilates with Amy Havens: Intermediate Reformer Workouts
Mention
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Amy Havens (Teacher) |
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Mark Hamilton |
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Carla R |
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Christine T |
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Amy B |
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Julia R |
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Amy V |
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Ann W |
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Jessica H |
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Vanisha T |
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Kathy B |
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Michele M |
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LUCA P |
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Patti S |
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Sally P |
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Erin W |
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Cindy K |
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Julie M |
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Carli Taylor |
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Anne-Marie S |
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Connie M |
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Kristi B |
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Z A |
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Lori |
Comments
Thanks for the total mind-body movement session- I feel great!
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