Jump Board Reformer

Hi, everyone. I'm Ilaria from Pilates Anytime and today, we're doing a reformer with the jump board. We'll keep the jump board on from the beginning to the very end. It's not going to be a full reformer, but we'll do a lot of exercises and of course, we'll use the jump board for the feet. It's really amazing to have that as a reference when we do footwork, when we do other lower body exercises because it's gonna teach us a lot and explain us how to do better the exercises with the bar, but we'll also use it with the hands and for other purposes.

So be open-minded, just follow me and have fun. Most of the time, I will keep two full springs for this workout. Occasionally, I will ask you to drop one and then we'll put it back on, okay? Of course, you know your springs, you know their resistance, so if you need to modify that, go ahead. Also, I'm tiny and that's why sometimes I do drop one spring.

I will tell you when I do that for that reason, so in those cases, you might be able to take the two. Let's get to the front of the reformer and we lower ourself down and start with a little bit of a warmup actually, instead of a real foot torque. I want you to be in the center in between the blocks, arms relaxed, just melt down into the mat. This is the very first chest expansion and the very first place where we open up the chest. And just simple with the feet parallel aligned with the hips, just go into almost like a mini squat.

I don't want you to bring the carriage all the way back in. I want you to warm up the knees and just get moving and feel the springs, feel the resistance, feel the wheels rolling of the carriage and make sure that also your joints work smoothly. Exactly like the wheels go. Very smooth in and out. And now we stop out and we do a little rolling and roll with the ankles.

I know this is similar to the running we do at the end, but this is just to get the feedback of the resistance and start warming up. And now we go parallel with the feet, soften the knees and you go and you feel outside of the foot, inside of the foot. This is a great opportunity for footwork. When we do the bar, it's great, it's the ultimate goal, but everything becomes very challenging. Let's stop and let's do rolling and roll again.

But when we have the possibility to have a platform there, we really can work very, very deeply with all the feet, but not only the feet, the whole chain that connects up to the pelvis. Let's go out and in one more time, buckling a little bit and then we bring the carriage in and we prepare for our foot torque. So, toes slightly apart, heels together and we go, reach out and bring it in. So the heels in this case, never touch the jump board and I extend and find my midline, I reach and in and out, and in. Two more times.

We go long and long. Now, all the way in. For the arches, I want you to have a front of the foot fall over the board and wrap with the toes. And then from here, exactly like you do with the bar, you go out and in. But isn't it nice to really feel what the outer and the inside of the foot does, right?

So it's really more complete of a work getting all these information that we don't have with the bar. So you go and in, I think one more. Now for the heels, go a little higher and we do five regular, just going out, keeping the toes to us and in, and out, and in. Stretch. And again, lengthen.

Reach out. Now, reach out, stay. Point your feet, flex your feet, and come in. And again, reach, point, flex, and in. Lengthen, reach, reach, reach.

Back to you, and in. Lengthen out. Also, this is a good warmup for the ankles. And reach, and flex. And last one.

Point, pull the toes back and come all the way in. Toes on the platform again. And now from here, you go reach out and just go down with the heels and up, down and up. This is a little more limited, right? We don't have that nice stretch of reaching with the heels below the bar, but it's really good to work that top part of the movement, being a little more picky on the quality of the work.

Two more, up. And up, and bend knee. Now before we move on, we do other type of footwork kind of thing. I want you to stretch out as if you are standing on the jump board and we walk only on the front part of the foot. So you do a little march thing only on the ball of the foot and lifting up the knees lightly.

Then, we walk on the heel. And you pull the toes to you. I sometimes do the standing as a warmup and it's really, really good to find alignment and foot purpose. Then you go on the outside of the foot and you really stimulate this oversupination. And then we do the opposite and we go in with the inside of the foot for an overpronated walk.

And we'll repeat it one more time. Up on the toes. Grow tall, really feel your neck stretching as you push your shoulders into the blocks. Actually as blocks get down into your shoulders and now you go heels and small steps only with the heels. Then outer foot, and inside.

And then you come all the way in. Feet parallel. You go out again and you go up on the toes, so the heels come up and then the opposite, the toes come to you. You roll up and up with the toes. So heels go up, toes go up, heels, toes, heels, toes, heels, toes.

And now down with the toes, Pilate stands. My ankles are burning. So that's the type of work you want to feel. You want to feel the full range of motion in all these little movements. Now from here, you open the heels out, then you open your toes out and you wrap around the bar.

And then you come in with your toes and back to Pilate stands. And I want you to feel this movement coming from the hips, not from the ankles or knees only. So here, you go, open the heels, open the toes and wrap the jump board. Then come in and close. Again, turn in, turn out, turn in, turn out.

Again, turn in, turn out, turn in, out. One more. Turn in, turn out, turn in, and out. Come all the way in, lengthen your legs over the board and just shake it off a little bit. Do anything you need to do to release a little the tension.

Then we go back with the toes on the board and now we do the hundred. First by feeling that reaching of the legs forward. So you come up, you curl, you reach away, we find that midline and we pump. You lengthen, lengthen, lengthen and reach. We do only 50 like this, then we get the straps.

And when you use the straps, I want you to feel this type of work from the pelvic floor all the way down to the heels. And in. Now you grab the handles, knees into your chest, you reach out, stretch your legs above the bar and you pump. And lengthen, lengthen, lengthen, feel that connection, feel that reaching, with just before against the jump board. You lengthen, lengthen, lengthen, lengthen, lengthen, reach.

Last one, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale. And bend it in. Now, coordination. I want you to do the single, single, double. So from here, head comes up, you reach out, only the right goes out and together, left, together to both open and bring it in and bend.

And again, reach out. Only the left goes. The right, together, open, bend and bend the arms. Lengthen, go parallel to the line of the jump board. Open, bend in, bend the arms.

Last one, starting with the left. Reach, left, right, together. Bring the knees and down. Now we place the handles back on the hooks. We come up and we go and we get the box.

So I want you to bring the box back up there for the long box. We are starting with the swan, a modified swan. So for this exercise, it's not a matter of being taller or shorter. I want one spring, no more than one, okay? And we face the jump board as we lie down and we are pretty much with the forehead in line with the jump board.

So from here, grab the jump board and just feel the resistance. You extend and you bend in. You stretch out and you bend in. And again, lengthen and in. Now, we stretch out and we stay here.

Drop the shoulder blades, push it away. So you unshrug and you shrug the shoulders. Unshrug and shrug. Move the shoulder blades around your back up and down and up and down. Now drop the elbows down and keeping the elbows low towards the floor, we do exactly the same.

Extend, bend, extend, bend. Neck is long, the stomach is pulling up. We don't want to put too much tension in the lumbar spine, but we want to start working those muscles off the back of the posterior chain. And here, same, you drop and push. Shoulders down, shoulders up to the ears and again down and up and down and up and bend in.

Now relax for a second. You can open the legs a little bit and shake them out. Come forward just a little bit if you slid back and now we go for the swan. I want you to stretch the arms, keep your arms straight, pull the chest forward and come up as much as it feels good. Bring the carrier as far in as you can.

Then you drop the head, you push back and you bend the arms again. Let's repeat this. So extend, keep your arms long, lift, lift, lift, lift, scoop down, reach back and bend. Let's do one last time. Lengthen, out.

Scoop and lift. Open the chest and then down and in. Now you can also try to do three pushes with one arm only. So from here, you go out and in two more, push and in, and again push and in. Switch.

If this is too much, just go back to the movement with both arms or maybe if you have the option, put a lighter spring. Last one. And in. Now from here, place the hands in front of the board and we get to jump with the arms. Not too many times we have this option, but from here, we're going to go and you go reach and in and stretch, and in.

Lengthen, in. Push away, in. Push, and in. One more. Push and in.

Beautiful. Step off, release. If you need to compensate a little bit, you can round forward a little, but don't worry because now we're going to backstroke so we'll compensate with the work that comes next. We add that second spring, so two springs for backstroke. We grab the handles and then we go into position.

Hand, foot, hand, foot. You see that the very front edge of the box and then you scoot down and you prepare the hands in front of the forehead. So you lengthen, you open, and scoop, scoop, scoop, scoop. Bend in, and you go up. Open, reach.

And in. One more, then we reverse. Reach, reach, reach. And bring it in. Now, reach for your knees, hold.

Circle around and bend. Last one, reach, reach, reach, reach and circle, bend in. Handles in one hand. Come up into a little teaser. Drop the spring and then we go back lying down for teaser.

Watch out because we're not gonna do a regular one. From here, I want you to scoop. As soon as you can, place the feet on the board and then you go up with the arms, the legs follow and then you lower them down. Reach and down. Now reach, reach, reach.

Keep reaching forward, roll down only until the lumbar spine and then you scoop and come up again. Three and scoop it, two. and lengthen, four, with the fingertips, three. Scoop down again, control, control, control, control, control. And again, reach up, down to the hips, reach forward enough, down to the hips.

And last one. And you go scoop. Reach, reach, reach, reach. And release. Now handles in one hand.

Come all the way up and we put the handles down into the well, we're not gonna need them anymore. The head piece comes down. We turn the box around because we're doing short box. And for this one, I would recommend actually to put full springs on, not because we need the springs but because we don't want the carriage to move back and you'll see why. It's pretty challenging, this, so if you want to use a strap, go ahead.

But the goal is to do a short box as if we were at the wall. So full springs, we push into the jump board and again, since I'm petite, I'm staying very much forward. I'm in between my sit bones and my tailbone and I need to feel this contact all the time. So from here, you hug, you push the feet, you control, control, always push, otherwise, you fall back. And then you scoop and you come up.

And again. Back, back, back. Articulate. Maybe we open and then curl and roll back up. And now if we want, we can even open a little bit more.

We can reach back and then up, scoop and roll back up. Let's keep it simple, we don't use the pull or anything, we just cross the arms over here. We're going to lift and hinge back in one motion and in one piece. You lift, push, push, push and back up. Grotto, maintain that lift, lengthen, lengthen, lengthen, lengthen, and all the way back up.

Now you can choose, cross arms or arms behind your head and we go with a little side bend and lift, side to side and up. And when you go to the right, push a lot with your left foot, and center. Then you lift when you go to the left, push a lot with your right foot and center. Cross the arms again, you lift, twist, exhale. And then you go reach, reach, reach and come up.

And again, lift, twist, exhale, exhale, exhale. When you cannot go anymore, let's go with the body. And then up. One more set. You lift, twist, reach, feel those feet pushing into the board and center.

And again, twist lengthen, lengthen, lengthen, and up. Now the tree. So one foot only. I grab one leg and you go up, two and three. Climb, but let's do a little flex and point, it's good for pumping the blood back up to the hips.

Then you release, you curl over, and now you bring the leg vertical and perpendicular from here. Go down, and come up. Now this other time, I want you to stay here with your hands. Open the lumbar spine, pull, pull, pull. Come back up.

One more like this. Down with the lumbar spine, trying to touch on the box, and then all the way up and lift. Go forward full flex and reach all the way. Now we switch. Hold underneath and you go stretch, two and three.

We're going into a little bit of flex and point also on this side. And over. The first time, you climb down a little bit to make it a little easier and up. Now we keep the hands on the ankle and you push open in the lumbar spine and up and again, reach, reach, reach. All the way back up and grow, flex.

Flex your foot and lift your body tall, tall, tall, tall, tall and then release. So really nice this feedback that the platform gives you and the work with the stomach that has to be done. Now you can choose two springs or one spring. I personally go and I suggest you to try the single spring for the long stretch. We put the box away now, headpiece comes up.

If you need a pad, you can also use a pad. And when we come back, we're going to place hands on the jump board, feet in the middle, reach forth with your shoulders right away in position. Now in one piece, go back and pull it forward. This is very similar to that swan prep that we did. That's why I would suggest you to feel the one spring movement to really get into the core work and maintain the line as the carriage goes back and back.

Last one. All the way in. Forward, forward, forward, forward until the carriage is all the way in. Kneel down, separate your feet, open, lift the sternum up. Inhale, push back.

Exhale, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift. And again, back, inhale, and lift up, exhale a little further back each time. Last one. Back, inhale. Exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale and release.

Let's add that second spring, so two full springs ready for the up stretch. Relax the head down and you go, push, lower the hips. Come forward, roll it up and you go push, down, forward, forward, forward. Articulate up the spine. Two more.

Back, down, in and up, you roll and back down. In, articulate, back up and lower the heels down for the elephant. You go push, pull, relax the head, relax the top of the shoulders. Externally rotate the arms and always focus on that in movement. Now ,we go back in arabesque for three.

Out, one, two, three. Now stay in. Move the leg out to the side and you go one, two, three. Go back again. Three, two, one and change.

Other side, leg goes back, you go three, two, one. Open the leg, let's get ready. Four, the tendon stretch. We're not gonna do the leg to the side today, but that's the work that prepares you, but like back again. You go three, two, and one.

Let's step all the way down and now we turn around for the long back stretch. So hand, foot and foot. Try to have as much as possible the hand flat on the jump board. You go down, sit, forward, lift up and back. Sit, front, up and back.

One more in this direction. Lift, reverse. Open, down, all the way back and lift. Curl forward, down, open the chest, back and lift. When you're out there, you really push back into the board, down, in and lift up.

Step all the way down and we sit for stomach massage. Let's keep the two springs. We all do only the first one. So from here, we grab the front, knees outside our shoulder, our ears and we go out, lower down, lift up and in. Stretch down and in.

Lengthen. Let's go three, two, one. Now single leg. Lift the right leg up and you go out, lower, lift and in. Stretch, down and in.

We'll do a lot of stuff soon with the single leg now and also at the end, so let's get the alignment and the muscles ready for it. All the way in, we change. You go out, lower and in, scoop, stretch, down and in. Lengthen, lower and in. Two.

Down. Last one, reach, reach, reach, down and in. Now stay tiny, stay round. Scoop, scoop, scoop, scoop, scoop. Lower yourself down and release.

Left foot on the jump board, the right leg is up. So from here, let's extend the knees and bend. Extend both knees, bend in. Stretch and in. Now, extend the knees, point your foot, flex and bend.

Extend, point, flex, bend. Extend, point, lower the left heel and you go for circles. Circle one, hold it. Circle around two, hold. Three, and four.

Last one, five. Reverse. Open around, up. This is the important part of the work. This leg reaching, finding stability and balance if we were standing.

Last one. Around. Give yourself a little stretch and then we bring everything in and we repeat with the other side. So from here, extend the knees and in. Stretch, in, lengthen.

Now also the ankles. Knees, ankles, ankles, knees, stretch, point, lower, come in, stretch, point, lower only the right heel and we go. Across one, circle, two around up, three. Two more. Four and five.

Over to the other side, and up. Circle around two. Three, this little pose is important, it's stabilizing, resets before you go for the next rep. Last one. And then you go reach, reach, reach.

Bend a little bit. Try to roll back up and let's massage for other five times. Lower and in, stretch, down and in. Lengthen, lower. In, two more.

And last one. Down and in. Beautiful. We come up and for this stand on stretch, we're going to lower one other spring, so one spring only. But again, this is one of the situations where you might want to keep the two springs.

We're going to sit and here the challenge is really trying not to fall or not to compensate with the upper body. So from here, we put the toes close to the edge of the carriage. We try to hold our body nice and open. And then from here, you stretch, you stay there, you go lower and lift. This is that tendon stretch that we did not do in the very beginning, right?

We couldn't because we had the board. Now we can challenge our powerhouse here and get that tendon stretch with the ankles. Down, up, down, up. Practice your chest expansion as well. Lift, down and lift.

Bring it on. From here, we move the feet a little more forward because when we extend this time, we want to have that part of the arch that help us in the tendon stretch, right? The heels are below. Now press back into the bar, scoop and you go up, up, up and forward. Scoop, lift and forward.

Reach, reach, reach. Push into the jump board and forward. Lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, and out. One more time. Scoop up, up, up.

And sit back. We can step off. If you dropped one spring, add it back on. And now we get into semicircle. Semicircle is always a little awkward to get in, but what's the other awkward thing is that we never know where to put the feet, right?

So here, it's really nice because we can get the feet nice and flat up against the board. There is always this horrible crawling action to get into position. Feet parallel for today and get to the point where the feet are flat and parallel. Then you drop the hips down, push back. Keep pushing with your feet, curl the pelvis, roll up, and just come in as much as you can.

Roll down, heels on the board, drop the heels lower. Go back a little more, drop the hips a little more, curl the pelvis. Roll back up and come all the way in. Reverse, back. Melt down one vertebrae at a time.

Drop the hips and the heels are on the platform. Go forward, curl and roll it up. And again, back. This is so much nicer than rolling the toes over that bar. Here, they're stable.

We just think about the spinal articulation and everything else that is happening in this exercise. Now reach forward if you can grab the board, you can give yourself a nice stretch and then you release, and we will need to walk it all the way back until the carriage comes in. Now, knee stretches. One spring only because we're going to feel multiple things in this. We're gonna work on multiple things.

First, I want you to place the knees just in front of the blocks. The hands are on the frame and here, you can drop the head down and I want you to focus on the stomach and why not hip flexors work. So you're gonna scoop and release. And you go pull in and release back. And again, pull, pull, pull.

Release back. Let's do two more. In and back. Last one, deep and in and release. Now we move back until we have the shoulders pretty much in line with the blocks.

The feet are here hooked and we start with the left foot up on the board. The toes, the ball of the foot are there. So let's try not to move and compensate swinging with the shoulders front and back. We try to really keep the shoulder right here. From here, you're going to extend your leg, lower the heel, up with the heel and come in.

And again, you stretch, you lower, you lift and you come in. Three more, stretch. Down, up and in. Lengthen, lower, up. Last one, stretch out, lower, lower, lift and in.

And now we jump. You reach and in. Lengthen and in. Three. Four.

Five, beautiful. Change. So this is the first small jump that we did today and we work the ankles and the feet a lot in the beginning. Try to find that articulation and coordination. So here, no jump at first.

You go out, lower the heel, up with a heel and come in, reach out. Lower, lift and in. Stretch, down, up. Two more, reach. Big challenge is to keep the pelvis and the hips even right, they want to turn out and twist.

Now ready for the jump. Work everything in the foot, everything in the chain. Two, three, four, five. And release. Sit back in child pose for a second.

Release the hips, release the low back. And before we go back lying down, we're doing a little mermaid over here. So you're going to lift, we stretch the side, you reach, reach, reach and then come up, try to balance over here a little. And then you push it out and reach long, and lift. Again, reach, try to sit up, go over towards the legs, towards the well.

And then you open. This time, we go with both arms. You go turning, looking at the springs and you go bend and extend, bend and extend. Exhale, exhale, exhale, big twist and stretch. Side bend again and slowly come up.

Let's turn to the other side. So you change, you start towards the legs. You lift, you reach, lengthen up. Challenge your balance. Let's see if we can stay here, then we go.

Reach and lift. Lengthen, lengthen. Over again. Big side bend, lift up, hold. And now both hands are going, look down towards the springs and you stretch long, long, long.

Turn back to the side and all the way up. And finally, we can lie down. We'll do a little bit of the running and pelvic lift and then we lower springs again for the jumps. So parallel, back to the feet on the board, back to the feet back. You lift and you go.

Easy, easy, easy, little run. And come all the way in. Now, pelvic lift. Do one with a little angle, just 45 degrees. You lift your hips and you go reach.

The feet are in line with the corners. Oh, sorry. In and pull, and pull. One more. All the way in.

Roll down, now big turnout as much as you can. Lift and you go reach and lengthen and stretch. Two more. Reach and reach. And now we place the toes ready here and we do single one with the lowering of the heel.

So you lift, you go out, touch and in, out, touch and in. Lengthen, down and change. Switch. Leg up, lift the hips, you go out, lower, lift. Come in.

Out, lower, lift. Come in. Last one, and all the way down. Let's experience some of the jumping with two springs and then we'll lower down to do some other stuff. So from here, I want you to scoop.

You just use all the joints, hips, knees and ankles and force also the toes. So you go and in. Reach and in. Lengthen and in. Out, in.

Reach. Let's do two more. Up. And up. Perfect.

Now swing yourself up, drop one spring. Now we'll do the most of the jump. I really want you to picture being on the moon, very light. So let's go back to that two-legs jump, so you go reach and in, lengthen and in. Reach.

Beautiful. Let everything float and really think about the whole kinetic chain of this action. Up and down. Up and down. Now single leg.

So you go and you land, now switch. Switch. Very light. You have time to think, you have time to coordinate everything. Reach, switch.

Reach, switch. Reach, switch. Now single leg again, but it goes to the side. So you go and bend. Go and bend.

Reach and reach. Lift, lift, lift and last, switch. Now from here, we go back to that exercise and that little drill that we did before. So we start in this position. Remember we were going extend, point, right?

What's the end point of this point? A jump. So from here we go, reach and flex, reach and flex. Three, on the fourth, we switch. And you go lengthen and in.

Lengthen and in. Third. Ready to switch. Again, point, flex. Point, flex.

Three and switch. And again, point, flex. Point, flex. Number three. And four, change.

Beautiful, relax, shake off your legs a little bit. You breathe. And now we go back to jumping for the abdominal series. From here, one in. Switch and bend.

Switch, bend. Two, we do four sets each. Last one. And switch. Now from here, two legs, try to come up as much as you can and then you go reach and scoop.

Lengthen and reach. Up and in. Do the work with your feet as well. Up and in. Single straight and switch.

And switch. And three. Last one. Perfect, we'll try to double straight. That's tough.

From here, it's just a little lift. So you go up and land. Up, land. Scoop. Scoop.

Scoop. And now twist. Let's put the hands over here and you go two, two, three. Good, use everything. And in.

And release. Let's end with two springs, so we add that not extra spring, we just are in two and we go for the exercise that when I talk, balance and work of the lower body and alignment never misses in my workout. The two by four. We don't have the two by four, but here, we have the opportunity to execute this exercise easy also with a single leg. So from here, nice and aligned with the hips.

You go bend. Lift the heels. Stretch and lower down the heels. Bend, extend. Sorry, lift the heels, extend and down.

One more time. Knees bend, heels up, stretch and reverse. Up high with the heels. Bend your knees. Find the jump board with the heels all the way there.

Then you extend. You go lift, bend, heels down and stretch. Last one up. Bend, heels and stretch. Now, one leg.

Usually it's very challenging standing up, but here we can experience the load without having trouble with balance, right? So you go bend, lift. Now reach, lower. In, up, lengthen, down with the heel. One more, bend, heel up, stretch and down.

Now reverse. Up high with the heel. Bend your knee. Find the platform and extend. You go lift, bend, heel down, stretch.

And again up, bend, heel and stretch. Now here, other side. Actually think about your foot position, your ankle position. Find the connection in between all those joints when you do the movement. And then reverse, you go up.

It's not just about the ankle, it's about the hip and the knee as well. Then bend. Same thing here when I lower down. Extend. And again, up.

Bend, heel, extend. Last one. Bend, down and extend. Come all the way in. Hug, rock side to side, breathe.

And let's just come up kneeling for one last nice stretch that we deserve. So we go kneeling and we do the only the last part of the front split, so let's place, I'm putting the left foot over here. And as soon as I go back, as soon as I can, I place the whole foot over here into a deeper stretch. And then come all the way in. And again, reach, push through the heel.

Lengthen the knee back, and come in. One more time. You go reach, reach, reach all the way in and now you lift the right arm if you have the left foot and you side bend away a little bit. With all this jumping, we need to open up the hip and stretch the hip flexors really well. Come all the way up.

Switch. Now the right foot goes forward. Lean into it with your hips and you go reach. Place that heel there as soon as you can. And home.

And again, reach, reach, reach, and in. And again, reach. Let's go a little more on this last one. And all the way in. Lift up the left arm and side bend.

Reach, reach, reach. The navel is pulling in, and then slowly open and release. So, it's a fun workout moving from one thing to the other, experiencing different things, but a lot of little learnings that we need and we should then be able to apply to the regular reformer with the bar and see if we get better there or if we find some more information when we go back to the bar.