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Hi everyone. I'm here for a tower workout today, full body, but a little more emphasis of upper body. So arms, shoulders, back, all that good stuff. So what we need for your setup is a theraband. I'll be adding that a little bit into some exercises, the yellow springs from your roll back bar and have that at the ready with the handle on it. I'm having this one on the floor because I'm using the other yellow one for the beginning of the workout. So I've just got my other little handle nearby. And then the only other thing I have is a blue spring.
So I'm going to start with the blue and a yellow for footwork underneath. If you want to read instead of the blue, feel free to do that. I'm just choosing to go a little bit lighter on the legwork. Um, just because, all right, so come on, lie down with me. I'm on a balanced body tower unit and safety strap is already attached nicely. Let's go ahead guys. Put your feet up on the bar.
We're going to go into our [inaudible] stance first and what your head right up near the top of your mat occiput bone can be right on the edge. If you need a little extender for extra length, you can put some long boxes up. Definitely try your best to be in neutral pelvis here to begin this class. I definitely don't want to starting with a thrusted pelvis. All right, so take a minute, get into yourself, get into your skeleton and let your bone just hang in there to your body. Get your shoulders open and just look up at your, your feet.
Pilates Stance
Press your heels together, energy through your feet and your toes. Take a deep breath in. I want us to exhale as we pull the bar down and inhale as we press, we'll do 10 exhale, pull the bar down and inhale and press. So the reason I'm going a lighter on my springs, I really just want to feel the movement patterning and a little more joint openness and stretch rather than um, strength. So much in my lower half. When you're conserve my energy for the strength work for the upper body in the arm. Work three more times. Exhaling down.Inhaling. Lengthen as if you're pulling those springs down from the top of the frame, pulling them down and pressing them up. Okay, pivot on the balls of the feet to a parallel alignment. Keep your ankles in extension. Take a breath in. Here we go. Exhale, pressing down so you may not get as deep in your plea, AA or your hip flection. Okay. Again, try to keep the pelvis in that neutral position and as if you're pulling the springs down. Exhale, start to pull a little more attention into your abdominal muscles as you exhale. That sense of stomach to spine, spine, a little more on your mat.
Toes Parallel
From time to time, lance up, put your, make sure your even no pronation. Supination at your ankles, your feet have some spread your toes, have some spread to them. Bound and office. Take two more exhale and inhale and exhale. Inhale, we'll stay up this time of two straight legs and just work some ankle flection extension. Now Flex, extend, flex and point flection extension. Give a thought here that you might might be able to get your spine just a eighth of an inch longer from the tailbone zone.
Tendon Stretch
Heels Parallel
I want really want you to try to keep your hips stationary. We'll move the pelvis. We'll start articulating it in a moment.
How long can you be here? Last two and exhale. Pull it down. Inhale, stretch and pull it down and stretch. Of course we'll do a little walking in place to step back on there with balls of feet and then just take yourself into about 20 little movements and four, five, six, seven, eight. Nice and buoyant and fluid and more. One
Running
Just take yourself down and uh, we're going to take off the yellow spring for right now. We're going to be using that yellow spring shortly, so keep it somewhat nearby. I like to just kind of do mine like lat. Okay. Now let's get ready for hip opener. I've got two styles of hip opener today. The more probably common one.Let's approach it from the sidelining near you are. I like to pick my hand, my elbow here. Make a pillow. You can do that. The other hand can hold the frame or just the back of your head. My hair is near the spring. My hand is covering my hair so I don't get caught in there.
Feel free to change the, put some padding on that if you'd like to. Okay. Also look up at your foot. Let's make sure that our foot isn't in a twist. You know what I'm saying? So that like a turning at the ankle. That foot is stationary. We want the rotation to occur way up from the top of the leg first, right?
That primary place at the pelvis. Okay, you're in a extended ankle. Let's slow this down. We're only going for five repetitions. The reason why you to go slower is that you can feel the stretch of the muscles around the hip. Hip opener go slow. Ideally knee is aiming for shoulder or this spring attachment behind your head and you press up and I'm going to exhale as I pull the bar down. Stomach is working even here and inhale bar goes up.
Hip Opener
My bottom lake has some energy in it. I'm actually kind of thinking about pushing that leg down on the mat. Can I get a little tiny bit more rotation at my hip, not my ankle, and lengthen last time and then we'll do five flex and extended the ankle. While the leg is straight and just work. Flex, extend, flex, extend. You're going to love the next part and down and up.One more and flex extends so healthy. Okay. Ready? Hold the bar with your hand as well. Turn over onto your back. Everybody don't adjust the foot. Let's see if we can hang out here. Okay. Yes, I've got my leg on a crossed angle. I'm over my midline.
Take a moment to check in on squaring your pelvis back up if you need a little relief. Quizzes, intense stretch on the it band and their lateral hamstrings over here. Okay. Hold that position if you like or do some bending stretch, but if you do bend and stretch, I'm actually now going to ask us to do more rotation from a hip, knee and the foot bending the knee. I'm aiming my knee for the right side of my mat or this spring attachment way up here. Wow. Big Stretch in the hip and press back up. We'll do five of them again. Take your time. You're lowering the bar, trying to keep the pelvises squares. You can.
Single Leg Press
For those of us that have some tight hip structure. This is really intense but very needed length. And let's go to more bend seating and bring the bar down lower. Pull it down, pull it down, pull it down, pull it down. That's because this is starting to get more supple and these two and our last ones, all that suppleness allows her to increase range in the joint. Ah. Now if I had a red spring, that kinda would've done it for me.That's also why I chose the blue is I have to do more movement on my own. I don't have as much support from the spring. Okay, ready for the other side. So Flubaroo back yourself up, get your and help you put your foot up. Okay. Pillow get things organized. Ideally hips are relatively one on top of the other. We're working for it. Look up to that foot again. You're trying not to twist the ankle. It's there.
The rotation starts at the hip. Remember we took it slow. This round bend, you're trying to pull the bar down. Press up. I'd like you to think about and ask yourself if you have weighed on that big toe joint. Yes, should be your answer. If you don't put some weight on that big toe joint, you may have to look.
Hip Opener
Oftentimes it Kinda likes to settle on the Pinky toe side, not a balanced foot. You need to wait on the big toe as even as you can across to the baby toe or that metatarsal. And here's your fifth one. Pull it down and see. You can get more range, more range, more rain and press. Okay. Time for transition. Use your hands on your bar. Turn yourself onto your back. Do your best not to adjust your foot until you absolutely have to. If you do, check your pelvis. Holy Cow. Different leg. Alright, hug.Bend slowly. You're trying to rotate that leg at the hip. Whoops, my big toe got a little naughty and wanted to go off the bar. Here's where the power comes from. Right through here. Push and bend that can, I'm trying to think of my left knee, getting right into that spring attachment there and press three more times. Check the foot positioning last to see if you can get a little bit lower, more range in the joint of your hip, more supplements in these muscles.
Single Leg Press
And last one. Hope that felt good for everybody like it did for me. Okay, now come on down and go into normal parallels again with both feet on the bar. It's time for monkey stretch. We deserve it. Hold your hands up on your frame. Pull yourself back until your shoulder blades are near the back end. There they are. Then hands on your bar. Okay.Before you just shoved the bar up everybody, take your time. Try to get more flection in your upper spine by thinking chest toward pelvis and now chest toward pelvis, chest, word thighs also as well. Yeah, the desire to look up today and just feel a little bit of that. Can I elevate my body? Boy, wouldn't it be cool to have my hands body so tall? I can't hang up on that top bar, but it's not going to happen.
Monkey
Flex knees toward the cheekbones. Stomach towards the spine is a little slow motion rolling like a ball. Breathe in. Let's go again. Three of these total prs yourself through. Okay? You could also hang this way, everybody, you know that without looking up, but there is really something nice about following the line. I see following your legs, looking at how well you're aligned.All your hard work's paying off could go a little bit more and try to sit those sitz bones toward the under other end of your mat. Plug your shoulders down and then contract to pull down that slow rolling like a ball should feel pretty good. One more round. Inhale, and here we go. All in the line of your legs. Recognize your feet are well-balanced. Take a deep inhale and then before you rush out of this exercise, let's just look right towards your legs. Ben, one knee, knee toward cheekbone and back up and the other knee toward the other cheekbone, pulling the stomach back and little more tempo. Now I want us to start thinking more flection in the spine, lumbar, thoracic, and cervical. One more each leg and then come all the way down and pause.
Okay, undo your feet. Just pull the bar down. Come through and pause for just a moment. Just wiggle your pelvis. That's an awfully big stretch across your sacrum. So if you need a little bit of bring back to life, just kind of tap your pelvis down. Okay, time for that yellow spring against. So I'm working on this one, only no blue, but that's my choice for some long. Sit Up. If you want heavier than this, don't put the yellow one and keep your blue one on.
Or if you're on a red you can keep that one on. I personally don't like that much compressive force these days, so I'm going lighter and I feel just fine about that. Okay, so head again, right at the top of the of table. Now even though it's abdominal work in the focus, we can start getting some focus on what the heck is happening up in the shoulders because the second half is getting ready for arm work. Okay? But I just wanted to get the whole body in this, in this workout. Here it is. Hands on the bar.
What if this was a twig that you could snap in half? Certainly it's not. It's a steel bar, but I want you to effort that as if you're trying to break this thing in half and just notice hopefully that your shoulder muscles start to activate differently than simply just holding the bar. You really have to activate your rotators here in your shoulders, right? So he upper arm starts to outwardly rotate, but then the lower arm I want you to think of in really rotating, so outwardly inward, and then look at your wrist bones. Those should be right in line horizontal with this bar. Okay?
Just like your foot earlier, shouldn't have your hand too twisted, should be even okay on we go. Lift your head, start to roll your head forward. Hey, look at the wall right in front of you and stay looking at it. Use your stomach muscles is basically like doing a bench press with your abs of curl. You're not going all the way out. By the way, come right to the base of your sacrum and hold. Take a wrath. Check your arm position rolled down slowly, not just compressed, not just false. Stretch your back back and come all the way. We're only doing three or four. Inhale, here we go. Lift, check those arms, look straight forward. And then think about going, if you had a little pillow on your head lifting to the ceiling without dropping the pillow, look straight ahead, take a breath and pull your stomach back. Here we go.
Roll Up
Roll massage all the way down. Let's just take one more, maybe two. AndOh my gosh. Okay. Now take this one off. Um, or if you want, you can leave your blue one on. If you guys are on the blue, I do want to put the blue back on. I told you there'd be some switching. Okay. You've got to get out from underneath this. Go sideways. And I want us to do a little single arm press. Okay. So make yourself cozy with your leg position. I'm back with this Ben Elbow so my head can rest down.
Let's recreate that same sensation you did with the two arms with one arm, some rotating my upper arm outwardly, and then from my elbow to hand inward and I really feel a very secure shoulder. Now just start to do a little bend in straightening of the elbow. Little, it's like a a pushup movement. Uh, you know with your alignment and movement pattern. But sideline, if this bothers your elbow, don't do it. You would. Small movement or if you want empress, see if you want to experiment your open hand, that's fine to control how you lower the weight and press it up.
Single Arm Press
Control. What I don't want us to do is thrust the bar up and overextend the elbows. If you can keep it in the muscles of your shoulders and your upper arm and the back of your shoulder. Last one, that should do it. Okay. Other arm, flip yourself around. Make your legs cozy. Okay, so here it goes. You use a strong shoulder. Okay. From this angle, you'll probably be able to see as well if the shoulder starts to sneak up or hopefully not, we will always want to keep it down right low.
I'm going to externally rotate my upper arm internally, rotate the lower and start to bend. I can't go very low. It's not meant to be big. You can breathe in and keep checking how you lower your shoulder prior to bending that elbow down and extend three more to go muscles of the upper arm,
Although it looks like we're resting our legs here, we're not quite. Just extend your legs and just lightly hover over the foot, bar the teller bar and then open up your theraband. Put it right above your chest. We're going to keep moving. Make a hand soft fist and let's start going with the side of our shoulders. Focusing side. Shoulders. Take a breath to get ready. Ribs, don't flare.
Arm Press Out
Exhale and pull the band wide and inhale it narrow. Let's go. Eight repetitions, pull and close. If you want more intention, choke up and make those arms work. That's better. Just throwing in a little more arm work. They're thinking of the teaser exercise.I'm kinda setting us up for that here with our legs. One more, everybody. Okay. Now just take your arms overhead. Let's go overhead. Get a beautiful full body stretch and then down to the legs. Okay, and as you go overhead, go ahead and pull the band.
Arms Press Out Overhead
Use the side of your shoulders. Your shoulder blade should go lower on your back ribs and to the legs
Reach your arms straight to the ceiling. Take your breath in, curl into a chest lift. Lower the foot there. Bend toward your size, and just hold for a moment. Now see if you can keep your upper body where it is and just take the arms toward your ears and then towards your thighs. Take three more of those arms overhead framing your ears.
Chest Lift w/ Arm Reach
You have to keep thinking ribs toward pelvis even though arms go back over. Head
Chest Lift w/ Rotation
Teaser
I think that might feel better if I can recreate that for a couple more teasers. I'll feel successful in my teasers today. Here we go. Inhale can pull on the band a little if you need it or put your hands behind your thighs. That's fine. It's completely fine and let's roll ourselves back.
Now let's try overhead three times arms. And Dan, I didn't quite get overhead. Did I? And arms and down do more arms and down. I'll try one more. Everybody do with me? Lift, lift. Oh, they say teasers get easier. I don't really know if they do or not. They don't get easier for me. We're done with the theraband.
Teaser Variation
Just toss it off. Alright, now let's get into the meat of this thing with these arms. All right, your bottom loaded spring needs to come off, so get that off of the frame. All right? And put it right at the eyeball where the pushed your bar attachment is. So there's this one and there's its handle safety strap comes down, loose, spring comes down and we are ready to go. Alright. I want everyone to do a kneeling position. Get in a quadriped head.
I want you to come up on a fist if you are able, if you're not regular, quadrille head is fine. I'm going there with my left arm first so that I can do a unilateral arm exercise with this here. Take your strap, get yourself centered with a good long spine, and then start to pull your arm back. Let's go with five or six of these.
Single Arm Press
I have my palm facing back for this first round. Hold your arm up this time. Let's do some kickbacks. Bend that elbow and extend five or six times.
Tricep Extension
Pull back and forward and pull. We'll just do five. We don't have to do the kickback part with this three. It's actually brings a nice of stability challenge as well. So hopefully you're feeling some abdominal muscle kicking in. Okay, other side. So first with palm face back kickbacks, flip the pump in external rotation and pulling one.
Single Arm Pull
Single Arm Press
Try to keep it steady on both knees. You're tell me up. Four and five straight arm comes forward. Just lift, rotate. So palm faces up. Come back down. Here we go. From the straight arm. I think more power from the back upper arm. It's really the kind of longer head of the tricep three.
Tricep Extension
Single Arm Pull
If you have a mirror there, settle your shoulders. Kind of a fan of bending my toes today, putting my heels together. Let's go for a little. Hug a tree. Get yourself lifted enough on an exhale today. Close the circle and inhale, press it open.
Hug A Tree
We'll do five or six.
You can keep your feet this way or if you want to go back to tops of feet down, that's fine as well. I'm going to move forward to Scotia and I want to create a c curve spine. I'm gonna Scoot my arms forward and just kind of hold the body design of a scoop or a curve. Okay? See if you can keep the design of your torso and then move your arms back. Not Out of your eyesight, but pull forward and pull your stomach back more. Okay, so yes, it's more abs and arms lift three more times and
Arms Reaching Forward w/Forward Flexion
Not the one in front of you, but the one behind you and it's going into the hand that's closest to the frame. I'd like you to go about halfway out. We'll know in a minute if that's too. Put your other hand on your hip and feel your stomach muscles activate right here. Just take your breath and as you exhale, see if you confirm up your abs here. Okay? Do it again and firm up your seat at the same time. So those two are needed to help you stabilize your trunk or the lower trunk because exhale and turn your torso and kind of give a gentle punch that arm.
I'm a little too far. Okay. This should stay stable pelvis, but you rotate your ribs in your shoulders, your head and neck and eyes. Here we go.
Single Arm Diagonal Press
Available hand is on your hip and your abdomen. You can feel your obliques there. Take a couple breaths as you exhale through your obliques and tidy up your hips and your hamstrings ready to go. Inhale. Let's add the arm work and punch, but rotate. Inhale, return. So hopefully your pelvis isn't coming for a ride.
You're keeping it facing the wall in front of you. Turning from your waist technical, your spine remembers the low shoulder blade. Last two, last one.
We're going to come up to standing and take a look at similar exercises upstanding. Okay. From standing, we need to move the springs though a little higher to us. So where they are right now, I'm going up two notches higher. One, two on both sides. Okay. Similar exercise that you just did, but now since the back spring, put it in the hand that's closest to the frame, but let's get ourselves set in more of are a little lunge type of position. So my inside leg is relatively parallel that gluten hamstring are still active. They help keep my hip open. This [inaudible] has a little lunge in up. Okay.
Could make it more tricky. Um, interesting too to keep your pelvis level. So here we go. Take an inhale from low below your shoulder blade. Start to rotate. Now I'm an a really want, yeah, it feels good to can trap that glute more. This one, those glutes ready and use them to stabilize that leg. Okay. And again, let's go a little, find some tempo.
Single Arm Diagonal Press
Single Arm Variation
So I'm utilizing the glute on my straight leg as kind of a base of support for me to have that kind of power. Okay. Other arm setting up? Same Way. So your straight leg is your solid anchor leg. Pelvis is square to your wall, right? Other hand on hip. Here we go. So contract these glutes and hamstrings. Solid hip. Start to rotate and reach. Now we do to several, just slow.
Single Arm Diagonal Press
We started to build up the temp and then we added an arm raise. Okay. I think we can add the tempo. Here we go. See if you could get your straight leg power first, straight leg, and then reach. Reach twice more. Well, stay out in the next one. Remember, hold, raise your arms. Slow. Intentional control of your shoulder.
Single Arm Variation
Lower it on wind reach. You're going up for a arm, raise whatever, and three more. Pull it down. Pulling down is just as important as being able to lift it up with strength. Pulled down with control. Last one, one and raise. Lower and in. Okay, let's just drop that. I want you to turn around, face your back to your frame.I'm going to do a couple little pull up like movements and I think we're ready for a stretch. My arms are feeling pretty good. So here's the first one. You have to trust your grip strength. Guys, make a overhand grip. This way I'm on the inside of the brackets. I'm going a step forward. Hang for a moment. Get into a pelvic curl shape and your spine. A little flection. Okay. And then it's bicep time again in shoulder.
Your feet will help you. There's no way they won't. But see if you can do most of the pool from your shoulders in your arms and your lats. Exhale.
Bicep Curl
Hang for a second. Okay. And on the corners. Okay. This is a little different. Instead of being inflection, walk out, see if you can feel your knees can stay bent a plank line and hold that plane Klein for a moment or two solid shoulders right on your back. Collarbone is open. You could stay here. You could also do some polling, right? You can pull yourself, release yourself, pull, release. Let's try to eight of these. I'm trying not to thrust the ribs ahead of you.
Arm Pull
Is there really an arm and shoulder game right now? Rib should be quiet there in three more. Two, three. Let's hold it, get a little extra squeeze and your shoulder blades and then as you come back you can just hang for this last little minute. Come on out. Last stretch, I promise I have to wipe my hands off is holding the frame about shoulder level little lower than shoulders. Hey, we did a lot of contraction pulling down, pulling in. I want you to think of spreading your back wide.
Spread Eagle
Let your oxygen fill those lungs. Really big squat. Look straight ahead.You don't have to go fully back. Some of you are so flexible, you can go all the way almost head to the mat. Feel free and I'm not. That's fine, but I am going to do one more leaning back with two straight arms. You're in a curved type of spine. It's kind of a long c curve. Think about how the head Haynes and the tail curls under the flesh of your back is nice and broad. The skin is getting some stretch. Bend your knees.
You did a squat earlier with the foot bar. Now you're doing it just you. Okay, one more time. Good. I hope everybody feels really well. Worked out. A little more emphasis on their upper body and maybe some new for pulling up. It's really important to keep those upper bodies strong. Okay, everybody bend your elbows to finish. Thank you so much. See you next time. Bye Bye.
Pilates with Amy Havens: Cadillac and Tower Workouts
Mention
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Amy Havens (Teacher) |
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Lacey |
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Rachel |
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Kathrin Ress |
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Samantha S |
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Rebecca T |
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Cynthia LuHu |
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Alexandra B |
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Kathleen Fitzgerald Henry |
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Marta F |
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Lisa B |
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Elizabeth D |
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Patti S |
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Lolapilates |
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Lisa F |
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Anne P. |
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Erin Elizabeth |
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Connie M |
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Melissa M |
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Rachel P |
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Jackie H |
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Silke L |
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Dorit T |
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