Feet in Straps

Hi. This is Ilya from Pilares Anytime. And today, we do this reformer where we focus on the foot position. Mostly in the stripes, but of course, we're gonna warm up utilizing the bar, to understand how the feet work and how they fact, the work that actually happens all the way up in the body, let's say, mostly at the pelvis and the legs. I wanted to work on this because we often pay attention to the feet on the bar, but, a little less we pay attention to how we position the feet inside the straps is way harder. We find this position in many different places in Pilates and the leg springs on the Cadillac on the reformer. So we're gonna really work on it. We're gonna fill it in our body, and we're gonna have fun.

One little thing, I'm gonna go with easier progressions to more advanced progressions. So please, I'll repeat it when we do it. But if you don't feel like doing the advanced stuff, just stay on the progression prior to it, which is safe for you, and you're gonna be able to build up to the advanced one as you go word. So we can go to the beginning of the front part of the math. I'm using a grass, reformer. So I'm gonna start for myself on 3 full springs.

You could start on 4 full springs, but make sure you're gonna have the setting for the foot tour that is right for you, and then we're gonna change it as we go forward. So over here, beginning of the mat, we're gonna sit down And we're gonna pick the put the feet up on the reformer just to find your alignment first. And then as we get started, I want you to place the ball of the foot on the reformer, and then I want you to wave down from the little toe all the way to the big toe and kind of squeeze the bar with your toes for a second. And then release. Let's do it one more time.

Place the ball of the foot, wave down from the little toe, Oh, one at a time. Big toys last. Do you squeeze, maintain, keep the heels together. And with this, scrape long arms. You're gonna stretch out and in stretch out and in. Lengthen and control.

I want you to focus on those toes really hugging the bar because that gives a different lift in the arches. The arch of the foot, which is in connection with the pelv floor and inner thigh is really more stimulated and works a lot better. Let's do 3 more. You reach out long and in stretch long and in, out, out, out, and in. Now let's go to the arches. And I want you to curl the toes and have the heels go underneath the bar.

Now keep those heels underneath the bar, and in. Out and in. I'm going with the feet in parallel in this position, but, of course, if you need for your leg shape, for the work you're doing to keep a little v, that's absolutely fine. And you go reach reach, reach. What I want what I want you to focus on is those are those heels going underneath the bar and keeping that connection when you're out and when you're in and when you're out and in and lengthen and in 1 more reach, reach, reach, and in. Now to the heels, flex all the toes back, all the feet, the the whole foot back, and you go.

Now focus on the little toes. The little toes come back. A lot of times this is happening. I want to active the outer thigh and the outer leg to work on the whole foot in the proper way. So you pull in in. We'll also play on the tendon stretch later, not just here on the footwork, the tendon stretch exercise on the reformer, And I will recall this position later on.

So make sure you find awareness of this position over here because it will be a lot easier to apply it to the tendon stretch later on. And out. Now from here, go on the toes on one side, on the toes on the other side, reach to the back of the reformer as much as you can. You get taller and you go down. You lift and you lower. Now think about your feet almost as if they had a spiral happening.

I want you to push focusing on the big toe lower focusing on the little toe. Push big toe lower little toe. Try not to have the medium mallely touch, try to keep them a little bit open a little separate, but the heels are touching and keep rolling from the big toe to the little toe. From the big toe to the little toe, one more, big toe, and little toe. Lift up, bend your knees and come in.

Now for the hundred, we're not gonna drop the bar. You just reach for your handles. Come forward a little bit. And from here, you reach and you stretch. You can have your legs lower or higher, and here you pump. You go in a and x a, x a, x a, x a, x a, x a, And, again, in and reach long exhale.

You keep your usual V. You keep reaching forward with the inside of the foot, and you lengthen lengthen lengthen lengthen as we warm up the body with a 100 exercise. You in with air, and you go like, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, out, One more in, and you go exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale, exhale. Now reach. Bend your knees. And release.

Let's come up because now I want to drop 1 spring. We go to coordination. So I have a total of 2 full springs, And we roll back down and we separate the handles. Now why did I have the bar up? Because from here, I want you to reach out. Let's light on the bar, open and close.

Bend your knees and bend the arms. Out now, make sure you're not gonna drop your legs. You keep that v close, bend, and bend. And, again, reach. Open close, pull in, and pull in, lengthen out, open close, pull pull pull and in beautiful. Now we put the handles back on the hooks for a second.

And we're gonna go back to more footwork with a single leg. So we're gonna start with a toes on the bar like we had before, curling the toes over. One leg is resting. And now here we do 3 footwork. You go out. And in.

Reach out and in. Reach out and in. Now we go to the heel. With the heel on the bar, same thing. The little toy is pulling back.

You go out and in reach when you reach out. Really think about balancing and using all the muscle in the leg to hold that balance and in. Now on the arch, heel below, you go out and in, out and in. Stay out. Stretch this leg. Now When the straight when the three leg goes across, I want you to push on the medial arch on the bar.

When the straight leg goes out, I want you to push on the outside. The leg goes across, push on the inside of the foot, and out one more time. Leg goes across, push medial, leg out, push lateral. Now try to apply this when we do the leg circles. You go across out and hold.

Across out and hold. So medial foot out and hold. Reverse. Outside of the foot, medial foot, and hold. Outside inside and hold. Last one. Open and good. Give yourself a stretch.

Pull the leg in. Bend and release. Now we repeat everything on the other side. So toes curled knee bent and you go reach out and and nice and long reaching back. And in out, out, out, and home.

Now let's go to the heel, and you go reach little toe. In. All this cue that I'm giving is because they help us keeping the correct alignment on the leg and the whole body above as we work. Now archers, arch of the foot, and you go out and in to and in Stay out, lengthen the free leg. And you go across with a straight leg, medial foot on the bar. Open the leg to the window outside of the foot, and you go medial on the bar, outside on the bar, medial on the bar, outside on the bar. Now same thing when we do circle.

You go in around and up. In around and up in around and reverse. You go open across and left. Open across and lift last one, see how the pelvis stays stable with this work. Now you grab the leg, you pull it to you, stretch, bend, and release. Perfect.

Huggen is in for a second, just the rock side to side, because now it's time to come up and set up for what comes next, which is a lot of fit in the straps. So the bar goes down. I keep the springs I lower the headpiece. I could do it a little later, but I prefer to do it now because, it's, safer for when we roll back. If you want to wait a little longer, you can do that though.

We put the handles away, And I prepare my straps back here for when I'm lying down. So from this position, I'm gonna sit lie down. And one thing that I want you to do right away is understand how to put the feet into the straps. So from here, I don't want to pull the straps, I want you to lift the lower the tailbone up with the lower apps and down. Lift the tailbone and down.

Now lift the tailbone hold send your feedback, put them in the strap, and then you pull and you roll down. Now I know I'm asking you something a little weird, but try to do 4 frogs, bad frogs, like don't worry about holding the heels together, Just go. Just power with the legs, uneven with the heels. Okay? Anything that a lot of things that we see sometimes when our clients get the first time with the feet in the traps. Now we stay We go into a little v position, and I want you to really push the inside of the foot in the strap.

A lot of times, this happens. We fall out. We lose the control of the inner thighs. I really want you to keep that control in the little v and push inside the strap, or immediately in the straps. So here you go reach out, out, out, and pull in, in, in. Another one's low motion.

You reach. You push. Pretend, you have four springs instead of 4 and you lengthen. And now slowly pretend you have 0 springs as you bring it home, and you have to control. So four springs out and 0 spring thing. Work it. Work it. Work it. Work it. Good.

2 regular pays. You go. And in, and go, and in, and now you stay out, and you maintain. Now keep this position open the legs without turning out the legs and close the legs pushing in the inside of the strap again. Open, open, open, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, pull, and, again, reach, and pull one more time out and in. Now, bend in, we alternate these two movements. You stretch out, you open, you sit together, and you bend.

And again, out, open, reach, reach, reach, lengthen your legs out and bent in. And you go reach, open, close, resist, last one out, open, close, end in. Now Let's put the feet completely parallel when you're out. So out in the frog and, feet touching. Front of the foot and heel touching. So you go open, keeping the feet parallel, and then you close. How much is up to you? Of course, if you go a lot, it's harder.

So you can start with a small range, and then you make it bigger as you get stronger. Now think about your side splits. Basically. You go, go, go. Now you need to close that carriage, lengthen the the legs are out and close close, close, close, keeping parallel. Beautiful. And you go out and pull. And again, out, out, out, out, out, and lengthen length and lengthen lengthen and bend it in.

Now we do something completely different. You stretch out in the v. And here, I'm asking you to turn out as much as you can. I don't have a big turnout, but just go as maximum. Okay? So from here, you open with the turnout, keep the turnout, and you go close. So, basically, you have the legs in external rotation. You go open, open, open, and pull together length and length and lengthen. And, again, out and pull. So, basically, differentiating the parallel or the turnout We work on different muscles of the inner thighs, right?

We have so many that wrap around the thigh that we need to work with them all. And most importantly, we need to work with what we never work, right, to even up and balance out the pelvis. And last one, open, and close. Now let's do a combination. You open with a turnout, parallel, parallel close with the site. Split. Open side split.

Turn out and close it in. Open. Parallel. And close. Open.

Turn out. Close keeping open. Last one. Open. Turn out. Parallel and close, open parallel, turn out, and close in very nice release. If you need to stretch your legs a little bit, go ahead.

And now we start going into the short spine. After all this work on the inner thighs and pelvis, make sure you apply everything we talk about. Right? So for the shore spine, We keep the little v, and we keep pushing in the inside of the fade all the time. So you reach out. The first three are super easy.

We send the legs back and we let the hips come up. Then we bend the knees and we stay in this position as you roll down, like crawling like a ball, curl, curl, curl, and down. Beautiful. 2 more like that. Reach. The feet go back.

The hips come up. I roll on my shoulders. Bend the knees keeping the tension in the straps now all together. In one piece, I roll down one more. Reach out, lengthen up, all the way back, bend the knees, and together roll. Role, role, beautiful. Now you can repeat this version, or we go to the more advanced version.

From this reach, we try to lift the hips up first, and we go back keeping them up and keep it at control. Then you bend from here, keep the feet where they are, and roll the hips away, keep the V, keep the control, and then hamstrings to pull. Again, out, hips up, reach back, control into the straps, Bander your knees, articulate your spine, lengthen the hips away, lengthen the arms, lengthen everything, keep the feet together, and pull one more. Reach up. Lift. Go back.

Bend your knees. Roll away lengthen lengthen lengthen lengthen and pull in Beautiful. Now let's take the feet out of the stripes for a second. We're gonna place the straps back here. And I want you to offset this work with a little exercise that makes us give a little stretch to the back of the legs and reset.

So I want you to get the bar up. You keep the two springs, headpiece up, and we do the elephant. And we'll focus on lengthening the cows and the hamstrings. So in the elephant, I want you to focus on the feet, of course, getting the heels down and trying to lift all the toes up. Relax the head down.

And stay in a general position without really giving focus to anything. As you push out, you dig, and then you release in. Out, push, and in now. Shift your shoulders forward the law. Digging the heels down, and you go push and pull. And here, you should feel the focus more on the calf muscles. Now that could change because according to our limitations, we might fill it somewhere else, but usually when the shoulders are a lot forward, it's hard. To keep those heels down and get a full lengthening back there.

Now we shift back. We switch We send the hips back. The toes come up. The head is down, relax. You go push and pull. And now the focus of our elongation is more at the hamstrings. And again, push and pull and push and pull. And now for everyone, but mostly if you're petite, I want you to go down lower with the hands, lift the heat, the toes, and you dig the hills as you go and scoop up out and pull, and out, and pull, beautiful.

Walk your hands back up and safely step off. And now we are ready to go back lying down again for more versions of the shore spine. So the headpiece comes down. You'll say that at the very beginning, lie down, You grab the straps. Like before, you're going to lift your hips to send your feedback.

No pulling of the straps, and then you pull on the feet to get to the, frog position. Now in this frog, we're going to put the souls of the feet together. So they are kind of touching Okay? Now don't flap your knees out. You want to keep, the tension in for the knees. Okay? This allows a different work from the pelvis and from the inner thighs and a nice opening at the sacrum. So from here, just frogs first.

You go reach and in. Keep pressing the soles of the feet together and in. This is hard. Out and in and reach and in 1 more. Reach, reach, reach, press and in. Now we do the whole short spine like this. You go out, you lift, you go back, Bander your knees and now all together, roll down.

And again, you go out, you lift. Back, back, back, band, and down together, together, together, together control. Keep the knees pushing in. Now one more. You go reach, lift all the way back, and then you bend. You can roll the hips down and then pull with the heels.

Beautiful. Now go back to the usual v. Because now we work on some, on the control of the movement of the pelvis. So I think everyone can follow me on the first, the progression. And then again, your call if you stop there and you can repeat the that progression, or you progress with me.

So from here, you stretch out, push in the inside of the feet. Let's go to the position of the legs perpendicular to the floor. Here without moving the carriage. Let's see if I can do it. You're gonna go lift up a little bit and down.

So you keep pushing the feet into the straps you roll, you activate your lower abs, you control with the back of the legs. And now on the third one, you let the feet go back, and you fin you band and you finish on your with your favorite sheer spine. You can lengthen down on your or you can roll down together. Whatever you prefer. Here again, you go legs perpendicular. Now let's see if we can go a little higher. So you go go go and down with control.

And, again, you go go go and down with control. Remember they side of the fetal. We push into there. You go go go go. Now here, send your feedback, roll. Bend the knees to the blocks, lengthen away, control, control, reach along with the arms, and pull in.

Now the last one, you go reach perpendicular, and we go up, up, up, and roll down. So you see I'm going up more. Right? So if you can go to this lift, Then you can try the frogs up in the air. Otherwise, you just finish with the shore spine. Here, and we do three. Bend and up, 2, and up, 3, retreat, retreat, back with control, bend, slowly roll down, lengthen, lengthen, lengthen, and pull in very good. Now time to come up and, again, offset this with something different, right, for something that elongates the back of the leg after all this work that we did with the inner thighs and with the hamstrings.

So This time to offset, I picked the tendon stretch, and that's what I was talking about in the footwork. So here I put the bar up, headpiece up, we stay with 2 springs. So let's sit on the bar, and we put our feet in a little v, like, as usual. Now the big in the beginning, I don't even want you to use the bar. I want you to move forward on the mat or on the blocks.

And over here, I want you to go up on your toes. And then we lower the heels before below the carriage, and we lift up all the toes. And again, up on the toes and lower, lower, lower. You can go closer to the feet with the hands. If you go if you want, you go up on the toes and down.

And, again, up on the toes, lift the lift, and lower the heels, lift all the toes off the carriage. Then we can sit. We can go back, and we do the same thing holding on to the bar. So you go forward, arms are straight, and you go up on the toes, lower the heels, lift the toes, 2 more. Up, lower, lift the toes. And, again, up, up, up, push with the big toe, lower on the outside with a little toe, and stay. Now keep this position.

Keep the toes off the carriage. You push the carriage away. Keep your heels slow as you come in. And now we lift and lower down. And, again, push away. Keep the toes off the carriage, off the carriage off the carriage until we are in, then we roll on the toes. And we lower. Let's do 2 more push out.

Come in. And then you lift and down. And last one out, come in, and you go up, up, up, and lower down. Beautiful. So this is really the purpose of the tendon stretch here. Right? To keep that elongation at the back of the leg. Now that we gave our body this nice elongation that we really needed, we can get the bar down, and we can set up for the long stretch. So we get the headpiece down, You can set up one at a time.

We're gonna loop the long strap around the short one. And we prepare it here. We do the same thing with the other one. Now what happens when we use the long stretch? The long stretch are easier But less resistance doesn't really mean being, making the execution easier. Right? When we start lifting up the hips or doing some movement with the longer steps and less resistance, means that we need to have more control. We need to apply the control that the springs are giving us. Right? So let's see what happens. You have the strep set up 2 full springs like we had before. You lie down.

We lift the straps up. And we put the feet in the straps. Now from here, you come in, even if I have less resistance as still focus on that placement of the feet and really a nice push and awareness on the medial part of the foot on the medial arch. And let's just start with frogs. You go and you bend.

You reach and you bend. So now you see how my legs want to move independently from one another. Right? I need to keep that control. I need to create that resistance. Now always with that little v, we go open and close and open and close exactly what we did before. But really getting that control and that support and that stability that the springs were providing. The short straps were providing before and band in. Now let's play.

We we play with the sites plates before, right, with the legs parallel. We also did the turnout, but with this long strap, let's play with the gondola. So I want you to turn out You move the carriage. Now keep the carriage still as you bend your knees. Keep the carriage still as you close your heels.

And then extend your legs. Again, open, bend, heels, touch, and extend. Open, bend, heel, touch, and extend. Last one. Open. Bend, heels, touch, and lengthen. Now reverse. Bend your knees, lengthen open, and zip together, close, bend, lengthen, open, and close.

Bend Openreach and close in. We have one more. Bend. Openreach. And close. Bend your knees in for a second, hug your knees in. So now I want you to reach out and do tiny little circle really small. And I want you to feel those circles inside the hip, and then you reverse very small.

We are not doing these circles for the muscles. We are really just looking to lengthen out and to find the movement more proximally. And now you bend in. And similar to what we did before, I want you to stretch out again, bring the legs perpendicular, and give me a little lift and down a little lift and down. And, again, a little lift, and down and bend.

Now let's go into bigger circles. So from here, you go up and around. And we have all the element from this big circle to go into lifting and doing the long spinal massage. Okay? So here on the next one, legs together perpendicular lift up, up, up, open, roll your spine down. Close. Of course, you don't need to lift up that high. You just lift up as much as you can, and you push down articulate 1 more for a perpendicular, reach up with the same control we were using 4 and control down.

And now we reverse. Let's just go circles first. You go and 2. And 3. On the 4th, you go down, open.

The legs are open perpendicular to the floor. Roll up. Close the legs. Reach away. Length and lengthen. Length and lengthen.

Rolled in. And, again, perpendicular, roll up, close, lengthen away, and down, and, again, lift, close, reach, reach, reach, lower down, last one, up together, reach and down. And now just give me some easy nice circles. 22 to release the hips to find the connection reverse with the inside of the feet and be ready to drop the straps. And release.

Now from here, you can take the feet out of the straps. You lower them down in the well. And now we bring the headpiece up and the bar up. And we put the feet back on the bar for the cool downs. So parallel, we're gonna go with the same waving of the toes.

Our heels are lifted. You stretch out, and now you go down and switch. Down switch. And it's nice to find some sturdy, part of the referral, right, to put feed on. It's so much easier. How are you to work on the bar as opposed to the strap?

The strap, I think, is the harder, place. To get the feet working properly, but really, really important to associate the 2 things and start working on that as well. Now lengthen up. Bring all the way in with a carriage. Out to the side, little v, you lift up, and you go for 5.

Pelvic lift. 2 more. And now on to continue what we did with the leg circles doing a little bit of a pelvic, lift on one leg. So from here, toes are working. You lift up your hips. You go out, lower the heel, up with the heel, and in.

You reach lower and in, lengthen down and in. 2 more. Last one out and home. Of course, if that is too much. You can also do the same thing with the hips down. That's absolutely fine.

Lift your hips up. You go out. Lower and n, stretch down and n3, 4. Last one, 5. And home.

Good. Hag the knees into your chest. And we come up, and we go into front splits and side splits. For the front splits, I want to get onto onto the last part only. So we go kneeling both feet back into the blocks. And from this position, you're bringing only one foot up on the bar. Now I want you to place the hip forward as much as you can. And I want you to have control, onto that foot, right? The toes are on the former and the heel is on the block. Now, without moving the hip, push your foot back only and then come in.

Only push the foot and in, very small, just to go into this part of the hip, the front part of the hip. Now go the same way you push and then you follow with the other leg, and you come in. Push with the back leg, push the front leg. And you come in. One more. Push with the back, push with the front, as far as you like, You come all the way in, reach forward and up with the arms, little backbend, retreat, retreat, retreat, and now lower one arm and sideband away from the back leg.

And release. Now we change back with 1, forward, forward with a hip, and you go back and in, only back leg push and in, push and in now back leg, front leg, and all the way in. Back leg, front leg, and you come in it in. And again, back and front all the way in reach up with the arms, backbend, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, all the way up. And now sideband away from the back leg to get into the exhaust stretch, and then release.

Now a step off, the bar comes down, and, you can do this exercise with 2 springs or 1 springs. I go to 1, but and I don't want you to go all the way out to the block. I want you to stay closer with the legs, okay, because I want you to really focus on the placement of the feet, like we did pry priorly previously in the stretch. So you step You go out, same lines, same frontal plane. Now before you go, really think where your feet are, right? Outside inside, nice and even, stretch the arms out, and you go.

You open inertheised pulling. And again, out and pull, pull, pull, and out and pull. Now move the foot in. Stand with the legs underneath you, and you turn to the other side. We put the bar on the frame first.

We move out a little bit with the leg on the carriage, arms out, and you go open, press the feet, squeeze it in. You go open, press and pull 1 more. Open, press, all the way in. Now I'll move the foot underneath you, step, and you can go down. So hope you enjoy this class.

And, again, go step by step by practicing the many things that we experienced today. So that little by little, you can get to do those frogs up in the air or more advanced things. But again, don't rush there. There are like, interesting things for all levels of execution. Hope you enjoyed it.