Small Barrel Reach

Hi there. Thank you so much for joining me today. I have one of my favorite goto workouts today on the small barrel. And if you've not done a full workout or as many exercises that you can do on the small barrel you're in for a treat, the barrels are lovely and they kind of fix a lot of things in our bodies just by doing them. And you'll be amazed afterwards. You'll feel so good. So I'm going to get started. I have one pound weights and a pole and we're going to start with the series of the upper body.

So just sit right in front of your barrel and we're going to get a lot of lift to go back over the barrel. So if you were in the middle of the roll up, you would kind of stand on your feet and reach up and forward and then keep that feeling of reaching up and forward as you go all the way back, we're going to start with circles, right when you get there. Start your circles. And if you can, we're going to do five Klenke the weights together when they're out of your frame of vision. That was five. Now we're gonna go the other way and you'll clank overhead and don't be too careful. It's giving you a little symmetry check so you know that you're not, you know, a body with two arms that are very different. Yeah. And then we're going to reach up to the ceiling to do one arm up, one arm down.

Take a big breath in. As you reach up, take a big exhale forever as you reach when you need to inhale again, you will. Okay. And then you'll exhale again. We're gonna do three more sets for a total of five [inaudible] and keep feeling like you're standing on your feet. You can have your legs long on the mat like I have, or you can also, if it feels more secure and you can kind of keep your back attached to the barrel, you can have them pressing on the mat as well. I think this is our last set.

And then from here, take your palms to face each other. I'm going to stretch out my legs again like I'm standing. Pull everything into the barrel. Take a big breath in as your arms reach side to side. Exhale in this position forever. Keep your back attached to the mat.

When you need to. Inhale, you will, and now you're going to exhale and press on yourself. Two breasts into the barrel. Take a big breath in. Take a big exhale. Reach East and West like your fingertips are trying to pull your body apart. Take a big breath in. Again, exhale.

One more time. You can really let the rhythm of the breath actually set the rhythm of the exercise for this one and also the previous one. Yeah, and then I'm going to place my weights down. Stand in your lower body, squeeze your bottom, pull your stomach in and sit all the way up. Once you sit up, you should feel perfectly fine, even if it is a little bit uncomfortable. As you're over the barrel. I'm going to place the weights beside and I'm going to take the poll. This is the exercise that's called breathing. We'll start in the same manner, so stand on your feet, lift your center up and over or up and forward, and then go all the way back. The bar will rest on the legs at first.

Take a big breath in as you reach overhead, exhale and think about your double leg stretch or your double leg pull. This is really a very straight forward exercise that can be, can feel just like that one. Take a big breath in. Again. Exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale until you can't any longer. Inhale again. Exhale as the bar comes down. Let's do two more. Breathe in [inaudible] last time. Breathe breath in. Big exhale. Big Breath in. Big exhale to finish. Put the pole down wherever. It'll probably roll away. Pick up your head, lift your center up and so now we're going to visit the other end.

I have my handles on the small barrel. I'm going to lie back over the barrel and I'm going to start in the position of the frog. Just for these first few exercises, we're going to start in the frog and now your upper body reach is reaching to grab on. Use all of your fingers. Make a nice grip and believe that you're reaching up and forward with the upper body. Pull your stomach in. You press your heels together to find your bottom, and you're going to stretch out to the frog. And then we're going to do five circles, okay.

In each direction. One more time and reverse. And just use your stomach so that where your legs go is determined by how much your back can stay attached to the barrel. One more mixed. Five returned to your frog. Pull your stomach in, send your legs out, little walks, six steps down, and six steps up. Two more steps up. Two more sets. Reach way out and longer to come back up so that you're lengthening out each side. One at a time, not really too much. Up and down.

And then bend yourself back into the frog. Pull your stomach in. Press your heels together, reach out. We're gonna do one set of beats and keep believing that as you open and close, you're really creating length in the body just despite this choreography. And if you can pull the stomach in, stretch your legs out a little further and do 10 more and then return to your frog. This ends the frog portion of our workout. Now we're going to straighten our legs.

So the ceiling for the scissors and the bicycle. So leave one leg reaching up to the ceiling and reach the other one away and keep reaching that other one to the ceiling. When you go as far as you can, you'll pulse a little bit more and then you'll bring it back. And then now that one stays up and so they're reaching. And if you can remember that mat exercise, pretend for a moment it's the scissors. Sometimes that makes you use your stomach a little bit more just to pretend that you're doing the other exercise. And then come back.

Let's do two more sets like this one long reaching legs. Okay. And then if this all feels pretty manageable, then we can really make it like the scissors. So now we'll do three sets. We're going to move both legs at the same time. Oh my gosh. And then scoop and reach.

Okay scoop and reach. Try to pull your stomach in before you move your legs. Oh, I need that correction too. And now keep all your center working and we're going to take it into the bicycle so that nothing changes. Just the choreography changes, but on the inside you're still doing all that good stuff. Yeah. And just do a few sets front and a few sets in reverse.

Okay. And then bring the legs back into the frog. Now let's do the shoulder bridge. And on the way to the shoulder bridge, there's a lovely thigh stretch. So for the lovely thighs stretch, you can just stretch one leg up in the air and stand on that foot on the mat and just scoop your stomach in and reach your legs where they're going. And you might feel a little bit in the stretch in the thigh here.

The more you pull your stomach and the more you may feel a stretch. Okay. And then let's do the other side. Okay. And then we'll take it into the shoulder bridge.

Okay. You can even scoot your foot away a little bit if you want a little bit more stretch in the thigh. Okay. Depending on who you are, this may be very stretchy or it might be no big deal at all. Okay.

I'm going to go back to the other side for the shoulder bridge. So the right foot is planted and in this position kind of reach into your points of contact. So stand on your feet a little bit more, suck your stomach in a little bit more and reach your arms and your spine where they are the mat, and then slide one leg out and reach the heel to come down as far as you can without leaving the barrel with your back. We're going to do three on each side, slide it back in, check to see that everything is reaching to the points of contact, and then we'll do the other side. Okay, one more. And then bring the legs back in. This next exercise, it doesn't really have a name and I learned it from Jay grime, so we call it Jay's exercise. Use your butt to open the knees wide.

Kind of like the position that you sit cross legged on the reformer for some of the rowing exercises or the crab exercise or how you sit on the arm chair. That's kind of the position we're looking for. And then you're going to pretend that you have resistance and you're going to kind of reach the toes toward each other three times the thigh will stay still during this exercise. Pretend you're pressing through something heavy or you have a spring, and now you're going to use your muscles to reach your heels. And then you're going to repeat that same first part with the heels, reaching one, two, three and then press outward, use your stomach, use your bottom stretched to the point, and then that was one. And we're gonna do two more [inaudible] and just keep looking for the muscles of your center that helped to change your foot position so that the heel reaching is not really about your foot being flexed, but about length in the all of the back of you ending in the heel.

Okay. [inaudible]. And then now we're going to start again with the toes reaching. And now we've done three. We'll finish with the legs coming straight and together. And then back in. The next exercise is the helicopter.

So you'll start in that straight like position. You'll remember your scissors and now scoop the stomach in and reach the toes in opposite directions and then bring it together. Okay? This one sometimes is harder mentally to remember which way you've gone, but just make sure that you helicopter one way and then back the other way. Three times.

[inaudible] one more set, scoop in, stretch out and take up a lot of space. [inaudible] and now we'll do the hip twist. So we're going to go to the right. You might know this is the Cancan to the left, to the right. And then stretch your lower body. Stretch your spine along the mat, and in now to the left. Left, right, left reach right, left, right up, down, left, right, left up, down. One more each way.

Okay. So now for a restorative ending, you're going to lift your bottom up, push the barrel away, lie down your bottom, will still kind of be resting against the barrel and you're just going to let your legs relax over the barrel. However, if you'd like to move on and do more exercises on the spall barrel, which we're going to do, I can offer a more, a less restorative ending and a more active transition. So I'm just going to reset to where I was and I'll show you the ending possibility to make it, um, to continue the workout. [inaudible] so let's pretend I was back where I was. [inaudible] so now you're gonna roll up to balance on the top of the barrel in a teaser.

I'll explain. Take your legs over and make sure that you don't skip your back. When you roll up, lift your stomach in and up, and then when you're ready, you'll let go. And now you're ready to get on with the rest of the workout. So you might take a little like, you know, seventh inning stretch, restorative moment, and then get back onto the teaser.

And now we're going to do three exercises, balancing on the top, the swan, swimming and rocking. Okay. And all the things that you learn in the swan and swimming here are wonderful to take to other pieces of apparatus because here you kind of have to save yourself, so you need to use length and you can't really like throw yourself around on the mat, which is always what I like to do. So balance on the top and let's actually start with everything kind of just like draped over the barrel and then find a straight line so that you're going to lengthen yourself to a tall position. Like you're standing on your feet. Reach your arms out to the side.

I'm just going to back up a little bit so that they're kind of like when you do the t on the reformer and then keep the lift of your chest because that's what's going to save you from face planting. And then when you're ready, you're going to take into the swimming. I might need to back up a little bit. Okay. And it's really just the reaching over and over again. Each side, keep lifting really tall and then keep your balance, reach back for your ankles, keep your knees together if that's available to you.

And you're just reaching the lower body. And then lifting the upper body. Something is getting very massage inside of me. Perhaps the grapes I just ate. Yeah. And then take a moment to round your back. And so now we're going to do just a few of our old familiar mat exercises in a new way.

So if you have someone that you only have a little bit of time for Mat and they're up for a challenge, this is a great thing to do. Or if someone is really wild and throws themselves about, this is a nice way to make them notice that they do that without you having to say anything. So find your balance kind of on the top of the barrel where your low back is on the top. And then this is single leg pole. Okay. And just note no sudden moves. We're gonna do five.

Okay, last one. So now don't be lulled into complacency when you bring both legs into your chest. It might be a little different experience than you're used to. You might not fold up as much as you do on the mat. So you wanna stretch everything out and you're gonna fold it back in. Yeah.

Oh, I'm going to move just a little bit. You'll kind of figure out where you need to be by trying to balance yourself. [inaudible] one more. I think that's five. And then if you're up for it, stretch your legs up and let's do a little scissors as well. [inaudible] yeah, I remember when we were doing the scissors line on the spine corrector, and I said to use your stomach before you move your legs. This is kind of where you need that.

I think we have one more set after this one. [inaudible] thank you so much for joining me and I will see you again soon. Bye.