Back Care Reformer

Hi everybody, we're back for another girl time. Meredith Rogers and Christine Cooper. And glad you could join us for this. This is what we do. We get together, we work out, and we're really happy that you're joining us today. Um, so we just get going. Yeah, yeah. Well actually I've asked Christie to do me a favor today and keep things pretty simple and mostly neutral and in extension because I've hurt my back, but I didn't want to give up our time together. So we're gonna work around my situation, which I think is a slipped sacrum and we're going to do our best and we're gonna still get out work at it. So thanks for joining us and I hope you enjoy, let's do it. Be safe, right? Yeah, that's the motto always, but more so than ever when we're tender, so we're lying down, we're just going to get right into foot and leg work. Um, I tend to like my head rest up, but I go back and forth. Yeah, I got partway up at least and settling in since we didn't do our roll downs.

And sometimes it's just nice to get going. Feet are parallel on your heels. Set all your sacrum, settle your bones. Maybe imagine the knees reaching towards the ceiling, but the bones being heavy also in the hip socket, arms down by your side. Collarbones wide. Can we just take any inhale [inaudible] and an exhale to really not let go but just sort of solidify the fact that we decided to be here for a while and for each other. On the next exhale we'll push out. Inhale XL is just find our legs under us and then draw ourselves back here and again [inaudible] and starting to get that sensation of almost contraction expansion and hopefully some fluidity.

E E five to go. We'll go on and pulling in. It doesn't have to be fast necessarily right to to keep connected. I think that's true. Couple more. One more here. All the way in. Stay connected so that you can move both feet together down to the balls of the feet or as some say, toes, heels ever so slightly lifted inner thigh connected.

Off we go. Exhale, press, owl reach and pull back. Subtle sense of staying relaxed on those balls of the feet and let that be your, I dunno, stepping stone so to speak. [inaudible] Oh, I'm tense. I can feel it out. I don't know why I'm going to just keep focusing on kind of letting the muscles do what they will and just moving the bones from here to there for now as we want. Love. Let's just do three more. Here's two more.

One more. Come in. Staying connected again, just swivel from the hip if you can to touch the heels. Off we go all the way. I need a second out. Sorry. And, and I just, cause when I do, I tuck here and I, I can't, I don't, you know, 25 years later I still catch myself doing it. So I'm going heavy in the tail and then bringing it back. Thank you. And how I didn't come back. [inaudible] I know I'm tense. It's the holiday season as we film this.

All right, I like that too. Thinking again, where my head goes is that contraction, expansion and mostly expansion. Right now I'm going to do one more out and back home and now heels wide. Today I'm going for a little wider than I normally do. I normally kind of aim for the corners where I'm going to just turn it out more.

See if that is something you feel like doing. Keep the Dorsey flection heavy tail. Off we go for us. [inaudible] I like doing it like this too, so yeah, I think especially if I'm tense a little bit. For me it's a little harder to keep the back of the ribs down and some version of just changing it up reminds me to pay attention. I'm almost there. I'm going to do three more. Whatever count that is.

If we reach out, we pull in, we reach with Paul one more and home. Let's do it again with the toes. Balls of the feet wide or regular. I'm going wide again from me and off we go. Just makes me have to think about keeping the heels still [inaudible] and finishing. Straightening both knees without snapping and relaxing them. [inaudible] ah, feeling better already. Good.

Let's do one more after this one. So back out and home and into our calves. Feet almost together. Parallel on the toes. We'll press that. I'll do the calf raise here. Lower reach up, bend the knees, come in. It's still just a six today. Here's two down and up.

Noticing the pelvis is still and all of your toes on the bar. Here's three [inaudible] thinking longer. Pull in number four and reach down and reached up. Can you give yourself traction, Mary on that forsake AECOM of yours. Oh, I lost count one more. I think you come on home. Is this five? Yeah. Fantastic down a boy reached long to listen. So LA, I haven't either. There's five and number six and final for this we reach and we lift keeping the attention for me on the innercise so that I can find the back of my legs and somebody counts. Shoot. Five, four, six. Here's six. Bend and come down. Great.

We good a prancing? Yup. Push back out and let's go down, up, down. I'm going to go a little quicker now because I'm starting to feel a little bit of a rhythm in my own body. Boom. Up, down, up, up, and my body's giving me a rhythm with all the cracking and popping going on in my feet and ankles and everything. Let's go. Four, four, three, three, two, two and one and one counting just for this. Take a stretch. Yes.

So picking a heel to let go under the bar, meaning both theater's still on it. If you're doing this on your phone and can't see us, just taking that stretch and Mary will tell us when we're changing. Okay. Switch. And then just checking that your hips don't sway too much to one side and my case, I'm paying more attention to one ankle, not rolling out. Coming up, bend both knees come in, left heel on the bar, right? Like up. I'm not doing anything fancy. Off we go.

Press out one pull and I'm going to go a tiny bit faster though today. Is that okay? You and I might not keep up with you. Okay. Sorry. Five. I'm only going to do six. Here's the next one. Come on in. Switch legs. Just try and keep it going. Take all the time you need. Otherwise we're out on one and two.

Oh, I feel like I must be rotating with the planet that way. On a hard time staying level here. That's six. Okay. Good to the balls of the feet for six, press out one. If you want to do something fancy with the leg, do it. Yeah.

Hardest part for me is often just keeping the heel still and saying that to one more. Come right in and stay connected as you switch, pressing out and pulling and [inaudible] [inaudible] one time and you can take it away. Mary. Um, let's, I'm in a role to my side to get up. You can get up any old way you wish and then we're gonna just um, go down to, I'm going to use a red and a blue spring and I sometimes like to use this arm supine series too as an abdominal series. Um, cause it doesn't require flection and it does require some connection to the center of the body a lot. So from the down position, taking a hold of the straps, always just like to measure mind. They're almost never the same. Um, so bringing the arms just over the shoulders and using the center of the body to support as you pick the legs up.

So what I imagine here is first starting the breath and drawing the abdominals away from this uh, ceiling or away from my clothing. And then as I am at, as I start to push, I imagine that I'm going to lift up into the a hundred. That's the kind of abdominal energy I'm creating in my center. And then we keep a resisting the pull of the Springs as the arms lift up and then we go Naval to spines, chest softens, ribs soften and lift. So it's like in my imagination it's a way of using the breath to connect to the center of the body, even just in an arm moving series working for me, squeezing the knees together, it's helpful.

Activating a little bit towards hip flection is also helpful. What'd you say? I said, I'm like, what I said was activating towards hip flection. What I mean is like keep your tailbone down and imagine pulling your thighs towards your body. Ah, you're welcome. No, say it at the bottom. Turn the palms of your hands face in and then take the arms at it made a big difference. I'm glad it right. It helps me to like find my lower abdominal fibers. Yup.

So what I'm imagining here is like breathing as the arms are moving. So as I'm opening my arms, I'm sending my ribs in that direction and then I'm using the pull of the arms to commit to cut back into that contracted place. We'll do four more, three more all the time. I play the game. But don't touch your clothes with your skin game. What? Wait, I've never told you about that. If you have, I don't remember it. Tell me more. I need more. I'll get us going and then I'll tell you about my game.

I think that's going to be really hard for me. Like I told everyone up, keep the Karen still open and pull it down. I play a game with myself while I'm trying to breathe here where I try to pull my skin away from my clothing. Now, depending on how tight your clothing is, like that's, if you have tights on, it's kind of impossible. But the idea works. It does. Thank you. I like it. We'll just do two more here. Huh? And then like especially on the XL, try and do create space between the clothes and the skin and then out up.

I've done this in a long time. It's harder than that. It is hard or this excesses three. Again, going back to the idea that the simplest of movements, right? Right. Allow us to go deeper. They have, you don't always have to go into flection to feel our muscles working. Sometimes it's valuable to not in this case for me that is true. So he'll hold here and Ben, the elbows, keep the elbows close to the body and just off the reformer and straighten as you initiate the straightening of the arms, initiate from the belly, from the waist and from the mid back and keep pressing the legs together. Have you forgotten about the hip flection?

We'll do four more hair and, and then Ben arms arrests. If he'd done on the bar and I guess we can go into labor work now. Yeah, take it away. Yeah, sure. Let's just step right in. Same Springs are fine for us. I think a little heavier could work but good for me. And yeah, feeling good about just sticking to the basics that we tend to do, which is going to be a frog. So drawing the legs in and I'm, I'm actually thinking of the key you just gave about, I forget how you said it, but uh, activating towards affliction to engage the abs even though we're supported here, let's give that a shot. As we go, we reach out and here's that where the Cuban, so the Springs assist us in a way, but we're just kind of reminding ourselves we're in charge.

That's how I'm looking at it. [inaudible] and almost immediately, once you've come all the way in, it's for me that upper thigh or maybe it's the same contraction to extend the legs away. I'm not really sure. Do two more and just let it feel good. But let yourself be in charge one more here. Keep them straight. When they get there, just raise the legs up and we'll go down first.

I have a small turnout taking it down, opening out, come around all the way together before you, well, that was weird. And my straps are level to me, that's not, so what I'm trying to do is just make sure I get my heels back together before I pull down and hopefully they collect and touch at the same time. And I'm wanting to be fluid. I've been making a little bit of a square, so I'm going to do about four more, little less, um, box like, but more fluid still getting those seals together. Two more after this one, I'll, I'll call it finished here at the bottom and now we're reverse it. What you were going to say? Something? I can feel it. Okay. Quietly. Oh, okay, fair.

I'm really concentrating on what's happening. Yeah, I'm having to think pretty hard. Okay. We can slow it down too. Okay. Okay. That'd be nice for me. Okay. And so for all of us, we were wanting to keep the pelvis really still and you know, let the legs, only the range of the motion be dictated by what you can control and what feels. All right. I'm going to do two more after that. He'll touch, here's one all the way around and one more [inaudible] when we get to the bottom, just stay there, maybe raise the legs a bit and we'll send them out to the side for openings and then the fun part bringing in the back end without raising them or lowering them. Well, it's always been in brained Wester for me. Even as simple as it looks, I so desperately want to pull down on my legs rather than just reaching forward to close though. [inaudible] breathing fluid, Liam in healing as an open, excelling as a close, but sure it's not critical to reverse it.

Let's just do one more and then if you're open to it, this do a bit of a stretch. If not, I'll get out soon. I'm just going to do a quick one so I let the legs go part. I did raise them a bit and you can either set your hands on the ropes under or over over is going to be a little more pressure under it. You can kind of save yourself if you need to, but it's a sense of reaching through the heels, not just by straining the feet but by really lengthening those legs. And then I am going to pick my straps up with my hands going underneath them to bring it home. Bend your knees, let's take ourselves out and um, can I move this into just a little bit of a straight back bridge? Yeah. Okay. Let's try it with this spring if we need to get up a cam, but let's flatten the head cause we just want to get some more action in the hips. So heels parallel.

You could do it on your toes if you want to really push it. But I'm going to leave it here and do my best to keep the carriage still. So if you want you can articulate, Mary and I are going to go up straight today. So it's like your JAG, the heels down and we just lift up looking for that nice long bridge and right back down. You can't do it on that spring but I'll give myself a little more spring. Okay.

And lifting up back down. She's been told I'm not staying on that stuff, but I am trying and it's activating my hamstrings without challenging my sacrum at all. Lifting up and back down. The challenge on these flat back ones or neutral back ones is in my opinion, remembering to take the ribs down with you. It's so practice the other way. Up and down and up. Stay up if you're not on the stuff or try to get there for shadow a little bit. If that works and bring it back. It's just sort of like a hello and back and out and back in while I'm doing a couple inches, maybe three or four and back.

Paying attention to the feet, keeping them as straight as possible. One more time, come back in, hinge back down and once you're back in safely on the stuff for maybe hugging Easter chest or just roll to the side to get up. How are you doing? I'm hanging in there. Good. Yeah. Okay. Let's take it to one spring. Okay.

Four. We're just going to do a stretch. Let's step outside of the reformer, bringing the one foot up against the shoulder, block the hands on the foot bar, and then think of just a little bit of an idea towards pelvic rotation, posterior rotation, and then allow the hands to rest on the foot bar as we take the leg back and it's going to keep it real simple and just hold this today is great. Maybe five breaths. Bring into the front leg to activating the back of the leg that's on the carriage. You could do any of any sort of side bending if you wanted to side bend. I'm gonna keep it pretty steady for me. I'm happy [inaudible] and then we're getting to bring the carriage in and stand up and change sides.

Oh, thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Bending, stepping into the front foot as the back leg pushes back, dropping down into the front of the pelvis, stretch in the front of the pelvis, pulling in an after the way, supporting that spinal orientation. With each breath you could maybe think about going deeper or maybe not. I'm thinking about just trying to drop into it rather than push into it other than stepping into the front foot, bringing the carriage in and let's come into the downstream so it will go on both knees. So you want more spring with us. I usually use a red, now it's my preferred spring of choice.

Maybe I'll add a little more spring. I play with it on any day that feels happy and extension. Um, okay. Uh, okay. In extension. Absolutely. Which is what this says. So we're going to push out, I like to push my feet backwards as I'm pulling in with my arms to create opposition. Also to activate the backs of the legs, ah, and up. And I think about back to and just do one more and then we can just sit back towards the feet.

And then I'm just anteriorly rotated my pelvis and letting my back stretch if it feel good to you to it. Of course. Yeah. Okay. And then let's step up and we'll just do a few up stretches today too. So stepping up against the shoulder blocks, finding your best flat spine and then just taking the carriage back, lifting through the waist to bring it back underneath us and pushing forward on the bar, bringing the head forward through the hands, his legs kind of in underneath us and [inaudible] well let's do two more for today and one more and then we can come down to the needs and I'll let you take over from there. How would a flat back knee stretch? Slow feel. Okay. Yeah, we feel like we're kind of there and if it feels okay you can still walk in. We're just sitting back in that stretch that Mary spoke about a moment ago with, it's not quite anterior may I guess it is.

And just extend out and then draw some back to your cue again, aren't I? Cause does it work here or that initiate with not hip flection I guess, but never losing sight of the backside. I'm going to go a little quicker Mary, you just stay there, stay, stay there. So for the rest of us, let's go five and out and four and three and just seeing if you can still control it too. That's good one and bring it in. Cool. And roll it up. Okay, Christie. Well, I'm thinking because my lateral body is so in limbo, then I get to be in charge of the rest. Love it. When Mary's in [inaudible], let's do it.

The mermaid. Great. So sitting down when spring is good when red coming into position. So one day when Q I've given you in the past that helps me as well is if like when the hip wants to sit up off the carriage. If you go down towards like a little post to your rotation, it helps it draw. Also, it cracks my back in a really good way. Excellent. Thank you.

So here we go. We have the hand on the bar, my foot is cramping. There we go. It's getting, move it out of the way. We're going to take it out and keep the back straight and now continue to keep the back straight as you lengthen and rotate, unwind. And then as you come up, think of drop, like going into that rotation ride away. So the pelvis sits down nice and steady and then inhale long. I'm thinking really long. I'm trying not to bend my spine at all right now.

Rotation feels pretty good. And just do one more. Ah, and when my sacrum's better, Ooh, we'll get back into flection and we'll get back into push. But for now, nice options out. And I hope we enjoy that. Remember, you can still move. Yeah. Yeah. I'm grateful to move. I haven't moved my body guys in four days. Nothing. And I don't know if you're like me, but that makes me feel very cranky. Hi Christie. We'll test it out.

I will not, not my crankiness. Oh, Oh yes. My imagine that if I couldn't move for four days, that would make me feel, no, I've been there myself. So here we go. Or three [inaudible] long on both sides of the body. We take it around and back and dropping the pelvis down into the carriage as we come up and inhale and uh, one word and all around and around. And, um, and then can lift that arm off where I'm doing a small side bend on this side. Then I was thinking that what we can do is just come onto your knees with your knees right up to the edge of the carriage. I'm going to stay on the same spring and still on the red hands on the foot bar.

And then what we'll do is we'll push out and lower the body. Not all the way down today, but just more like a kind of a flat back, diagonal shape. And then let's bend the arms, feel the scapular draw down, right? And push their knee arms in here and push. We'll do three more like that. So I'm thinking about spreading my hip joints, spreading my sacred, arching my lower back. When do you hear those cues? I was like, Oh God, I'm going to get written about what works for my body right now.

So like I firmly believe that there are rules and there are what works for your body in any given moment. And um, I know what I pay attention to. So now what we're going to do, Chrissy, is we're going to change a little bit. We're going to go down, I'm lengthening LinkedIn. You can go down as low as you want. I probably won't go any lower than this. And then we're going to lift the eyes, pull apart on the bar and bring the chest through the arm so it's small.

And then go back and then lift the eyes, pull apart on the bar, lift through the waist, extend the upper, mid back and back. And we'll do three more E long gating. And again, this can be as big or as little as you want it to be, but I find just keeping it fairly small as a great way to put the focus in the upper back and tumor. I feel like I, it feels really good too. And last one and then coming all the way back to the carriage and then you can just sit back on our, if you take the arms on, Whoa. Lee opening and softening. Huh?

Opening and softening. So what I'm telling to my body, stop open and soften. One more far less tense than when I started [inaudible] chat. Hmm. Will for organizing your workout around my situation. Thank you for always organizing, working out with me and be well thanks everybody.