Spirited Mixed Equipment

So, uh, this evening I'm going to do a re a balanced class exactly the way we do workout in a normal studio that has all the equipments that we'll be using a little bit of, um, each piece of equipment in the studio to create a balanced workout that will be with a lot of variety, but based on the classical method. So starting out with map work to warm out, I'm working with the moon backs for intermediate to advanced people to challenge the powerhouse at the next level. So when I'm lying down here, the further out I go out on a limb, the harder my powerhouse needs to work because when I lose it, I'm going to crash that. So lifting into my powerhouse, just a few warm ups, lifting and lowering the legs to warm up the powerhouse and then extending the legs out and starting with my hundreds. So I'm working with my legs parallel now I'm turning my legs out. [inaudible] stance that work at at a different angle. And now I'm adding little beats, which starts to be very challenging because the arms are going up and down and the legs are going sideways and I'm talking, which is even harder to do.

So I'll stop my hands for a minute. Then I make my arms work and my legs work and my arms work and I think I've had enough of the hundreds and I'm going to rest just for a minute, lift my chest back up and roll up to a sitting position, opening the legs out, spine stretch forward, scoping in and lifting up. And the beauty with the hips being real elevated this way is I can go a lot deeper for the stretch, which is definitely lovely for very tight people who have tight hamstrings and at the same time, very nice. Just to give a variety. I'm a more flexible person and I do on occasion, like to stretch my muscles fully out. So as I'm not doing roll up, I'm just doing a few mat exercises to get myself warmed and prepared.

Now back to the moon box for the series of five, bringing the legs up, connecting into the powerhouse and switch four and five bringing the legs in. I'm balancing the sacrum and the tail down, arms and legs, out and in and out and in and out. To add a challenge, lowering down towards the Mat and coming in and out. Lowing down and deepening into the powerhouse. One more time. Lowering down and in scissors likes the app.

Stretching both legs out and reaching the bottom like down to the mat. Double Paltz reaching out Dow to open up the hip flexor downtown damn down. Same thing with the fleek flex to stretch out a little bit further along the calf and then like zap lower lift. This is getting nice and challenging and I'm going to rest for a minute because I need a break before I go into a criss-cross. So curling back up into the powerhouse, twisting to the right, twisting to the left, twisting to the right, twisting to the left, twisting to the right, twisting to the left and curling up to an upright position. So that's a little warm up pen. Now moving on to the reformer for my nest.

Next piece of equipment. So reformer is next and I'm working on a garage reformer, which are, I am used to and always enjoy. So I'm setting myself up with four springs and ready for footwork. Starting to work out nice and law, making sure my my powerhouses long, keeping the heels lifted every time I'm engaging my inner thighs. [inaudible] burden, a perch or middle of the arches looking to balance out across the metatarsal, lengthening the toes away so the metatarsal is open and the arch is working strongly.

Calves are pressing together out or an innercise pressing together, moving onto the heels, spreading the toes, pulling the little toe. Way Back. Seeing I'm working as I'm working on this, I'm looking to keep the knees going straight to the ceiling. The toll is going straight to the ceiling if possible. The little toe to the big toe creates a flat surface as though that part of my foot was pressed against a wall. So usually the feet will do funny things and we're looking always when we do our PyLadies workout to bring more and more balance. And even as to the joints and the tissue in the muscles.

Tendons stretch slowly lowering down, lengthening through the inner thighs and the calves, releasing ankles, lifting up fast, lowering down, lifting a fast, lowering down, really opening up the joint of the ankle. Lengthenings with the backs of the legs and up [inaudible] and now I'll reverse it. I'm going down fast and then pressing through the whole ball to lift up, blowing down fast and working through the foot to get an even pressure across all the metatarsal is all the toes working and coming back in. Now as I've already done the hundreds, I definitely don't intend to do them again. Okay, so setting up four short spine massage. Next I'm releasing two springs. The headrest, the foot part comes down, shorten the straps and ideally you should not need to pull the the straps. Make sure the head rest is down and I'm ready for short spine lifting right up and then with control over, bend the knees right down towards the shoulders and then roll the hips away, making sure the knees do not turn out but they are apart.

And press lift the hips. See if I can float the whole body nice and long with control. The springs are nice and strong so I'm having to really control the machine. Rolling the spine down to lengthen it out and down. Again, pressing up, working over, rolling down and now working in archival version that I've always enjoyed doing, which is bringing the soles of the feet together, little toe and heel, pressing in the beautiful stretch in the outside of the foot.

One more time. Nice stretch rolling down and pressing in. Now as I'm already warmed up in this is an advanced workout going to do frogs in the air. From here, spine is long pressing up and then bending the knees in and out. So lot of work into the glutes, into the hamstrings, through the powerhouse [inaudible] and then rolling the hips down, getting the feet out and I'm ready for coordination. So slightly pulling on the straps, curling into the powerhouse and extending and extending and lengthening through the arms every time and adding little bits.

Okay. And bending and bending. And from here I'm going to go right into the long stretch series as I'll be doing more of the arm work on another piece of equipment. So head rest is up and going right into long stretch. So nice and long with the heels lifted the shoulders over the hips, the hips are locked and making sure that the pelvis is anchored.

Powerhouse supports and lower back. Yeah. And then bending down for ups down stretch, hips or forward. Nice open chest [inaudible] and then lifting up, lengthening the spy, little back bend into my upper back, up stretch, deepening through the spine. Hips come right down. Staying with the hips in one level, controlling the machine in and going for as deep as stretches I can set my whole upper back is being challenged and my lower pelvis, and from here right into elephants are the heels are down, toes are up.

I'm bringing my body slightly forward and deepening the scoop. So as I press out in, in the toes and lifting up, I'm looking to get my little toes lifting as much as my big toe and stepping down off the machine. From here, I'm going to go right into stomach massage. So I've added two springs and I'm going to get a little mat. Oh, so this is just to keep myself from slipping, sitting down. One, my hips is close to the front as I possibly can, which means I'm going to want to fall back. So I have to use the powerhouse to get as close to the size as I can to press out, lifting the waist [inaudible] same lift, pulling back and up through the powerhouse.

The position of sitting. Just a hear back of the sip bones means that the whole lower spine is getting a lovely opening. Then adding, removing a spring mean hands come behind me. I'm taking the hands lower and lifting the chest, keeping the chest open. Same work with the legs. Okay.

Every time I come in I attempt to lift a little bit more out of the lower back. And now one more spring off and for change, taking my arms up, getting up, big lift out of the lower spine. The sit bones are still anchored slightly under and attempting not to lose height on the way in. So a lot of work to get that traction in the lower back. Traction all the way up the spine and lifting up and adding a twist. So as I come out, rotating to one side, lifting to come back, rotating and lifting, rotating and lifting.

I'm rotating and lifting, holding the foot bar, stretching out, lowering and coming back. And one more time. Nice stretch through the lower body and coming back in. Very good. Now short box, I'm going to do the latter barrel, which is so much fun and different and just a blast to do so. I'm going to go off the reform and onto the ladder barrel. Okay, so I am going to do the whole series of the short box on the ladder barrel, which is a really enjoyable place to work from.

Ideally the hips should be just about close to the pinnacle unless there's some spinal issues that you're dealing with. In which case you would bring the pelvis slightly forward. So starting out with round back, let me see with my hands wrapped around my waist, I'm going to roll back. So it's a nice place to really have the spine drape on the barrel, reaching back, hands to the waist, deepening into the bow house and rolling up. So the nice thing is, well here is that the knees get to bend and lengthen out. The important thing is that the feet stay really flexed because if they don't, you go flying off the ladder belt, which we don't want.

But usually students love to do it here. It's a nice chain. It gives more support to the back than when you're doing it off of as a short box on the reformer because they really just falling into space and this gives some nice supporters a lot of value to the variety. Flat back, nice lifted spine lengthening, keeping the spine long and now with the stick holding on both at the same time and working the stretch, coming back up, bringing my hips forward again. Again, nice lift. A few variations. We're going to start with on a long diagonal reaching out of the hips, coming a little higher up so it's a little bit more towards the vertical plane and then going exactly on the vertical plane, which is more of a stretch into the side ribs. Again, giving myself a nice stretch and now going into the twist.

So nice lift rotation both hips and down, extending out, extending out to it feels so nice here. I haven't worked on a lot of barrel for awhile and even more of a twist. Okay. And a nice stretch forward and down now going for the three. So bringing one knee in, getting the spine nice and long, extending the lake.

So I really liked to encourage people to get the thigh in, even if their back is more rounded as now I'm looking to get a stretch here. Those that are more flexible and more advanced, they cue keep your thigh right up against the chest and you work the leg almost backwards. So instead of working the stretch here, you're working it. Even if the knee doesn't get fully straight. Walking the hands up, lifting the spine, extra stretch, working the flex of the foot and then deepening into the powerhouse, climbing down the leg, climbing back up, working towards the toes, getting a nice stretch through the whole lake, going down again and coming up. And a fun trick for those brave souls that are ready for it. Go all the way down. Now you stretch your arms out. Very, very important.

You need to get your hands on the float of you. Notice I'm releasing the foot up here slightly so I can get my hands fully on the floor. And then I talked to the heel down. Lose my Mike. But that was so much fun. It was worth it. And from here, go into a full split forward and back and coming back up. And if this was secured against a wall, I would cartwheel backup. But as it's not, my safety is important here.

So ideally you want this against the wall, it helps. And actually let's do this. Let's put it against the walls. I do my other leg from another angle and you get to see how that works. Okay, so from here doing the same thing on the other with the other leg, I'll do it from a different angle. So again, lifting the leg up. Okay. Working the stretch of the ankle and the hamstring and the calf. And now leaning down.

First of our climbing down easy can stretch the arms out, keeping the leg exactly the same place coming up two more times and lifting up. And the third time going into the car, Twilio. So I'm coming down making sure the heel of the hand is on the floor. That is the most important thing. And then the elbow stay straight. If the elbow stay straight and the leg stay straight, you can get all the way down. Go into your split. If you want to go that far, work forward, go into a back, Ben, come back up.

So then coming back up, placing the hands really close to the barrel. When I kick up, I make sure my back is in and then I reach to the back foot back, find the hole and climb back up and give myself a final stretch. So usually you do this a few times with the help of a teacher, but it's a really, really fun. And once you get to [inaudible] do what you always want to do it again cause it's just like another level. So from here I'm going to go back to the reformer just to finish the workout. So coming back onto the reformer, just to finish my workout. Aw.

I still have two springs. I'm going to do the knee stretch series. So coming back on making sure I have a big bend of the toes, big scoop through the whole powerhouse, opening up the Mower, back and back and forth. Quite a quick speed. Keeping the hips back, quite close to the heels and then a nice long spine. Same thing again. And then lowering the foot bar down for knees off. Big Scoop through the powerhouse one more time and back and forth again.

[inaudible] kneeling down and setting up for long spine massage. Let me get the strap extensions. So I take the leather and the handle. This is what the [inaudible] equipment and put the strap extension headrests will be down. Make sure the hooks are on the external side and lying down. Get my feet in the strap extensions and just to be sure that everything is balanced out. Just going to do a few frogs, making sure everything is even.

And then I'm going up into long spine massage. So lifting up and rolling down through the spine. Oh that feels so good. Rolling the hips up and rolling down. Looking to have this whole spine roll up and down in an even manner.

Reversing it, rolling up and rolling down, rolling up and rolling down. And one more time. Rolling up and rolling down and now taking the legs out for nice stretch. So the first angle is the heels right in line with the sit bones and then gradually working the legs further and further up towards my head. Obviously as the legs cricket closer they hit the lower back will be lifting up more and then making sure I'm a little bit down here low, taking the legs as low to the floor as possible and then slowly lowering the legs back to the mat, lowering them down and setting up for running. So headrest is up again pressing up. This is just a cool down making sure that my spine is long again, the legs or even the calves are open just to kind of get back into place of simplicity and integrity in the body. All the energy's coming back, calming the breath down and then coming back in. Pelvic lift, feet and knees on the same angle.

Measuring that my sacrum is one hands with from the floor and pressing out and pressing in again just to stabilize the lower back. Stabilize the pelvis and then rolling the hips back down. And from here I'm going to move on to the Cadillac or the tower. Either piece of equipment is to do a little work over there. So Cadillac is next and I will start doing some work on my upper body.

So chest expansion to begin with from a kneeling position, nice lifted chest and broad shoulders, bringing the arms if possible, right down to the size just to get a sense of the tension in this Cadillac. Every piece of equipment can be so different. I personally always like to have a feeling for the piece of equipment before I actually worked the exercise full out to holding the arms down, rotating my head, one side the other as it's called chest extension, chest expansion and making sure to really open and broad and across the collar bones and again pressing out head, head and this is nice. Work into the triceps and head had and now side stretch again, making sure the toes are going straight back and opening up, flailing the feet, the toes, lightly scoping, closing the chest and lunging back and coming up. I'm going to move back a little bit to get a bit more tension through the size lifting and the sit bones. Oh, that feels great. And one more time. Now I'm locking my hips and my waist, opening my shoulders, opening my chest, closing my chest and head and coming up in one piece.

And one more time. Same thing. Opening, opening, closing and coming up. Going into rolling and rolling out, pressing down, bringing the bar into the size, ironing out the front of the body. And then from here going into a back bend and coming up, deepening into the powerhouse bar doesn't go out and pulling it slightly in towards the knees to keep that contraction through the upper body to here. And then hips lifting, head goes back, putting it up and then reversing, lifting the chest and opening up and back and then lowering down, bringing the bar in. And then I earning out the body and one more time back [inaudible] and deepening through the thighs and the arms and coming back up. Oh, that felt great. Turning sideways for us.

Just pressing down, working through the lats, other side, chest lifted, pressing down and now working into a mermaid, which is a really interesting way to work this. So I'm pushing down, bringing this arm up and opening up the ribs as I pushed down and coming up and are looking to integrate it all at the same time. Lifting the spine, pressing down and opening up [inaudible] and one more time lifting the spine, lifting up the left side of my body as I can track to the right side, coming up by the side first time pressing down just to get a sense of the position, the tension and what I'll need to work on to allow this to happen. And then all at the same time. So the left side, this side contracts a lot. This site opens and I have to keep the hip stables. I have a platform to open up my side body from one more time platform, open up my side body and come back up.

Now a little bit of work with arms springs [inaudible] Oh, I'm to the side. I'm leaning slightly into the spring. So the hips, US steady and doing hug a tree. So the spine is long, the chest is lifted, the elbows are very slightly bent and the whole upper body's being challenged. And then arms to the chess and boxing [inaudible]. So I'm looking to keep my hips, my waist and my chest steady and the slight pressure into the springs means that both arms are working the whole time. Very whooo. That feels great.

Now roll back, so pressing the heels and the big toe into the pole so the backs of my legs are nice and even leaning back a little bit, I start from the tail rolling down, looking to get linked into the heels as much as possible and then rolling through the spine to come back up. So an easier variation is with the knees slightly bent and as you go out you reach with the feet. It just gives a little bit more room for variety. This gets more challenging because there's no give. It's a very pure roll back where the body, you really see where they're still short constrictions on because the heels want to move away. Now what some down I brought in the shoulder, pulled in towards a sternum hold and release, slow pulling and hold and release.

Slow pulling and hold and release. Slowly lift my head and roll back up. And as I've been doing a lot of strengths, a little bit of stretch rolling down, stretching the arm out, taking the leg that's the same as the arm that's over the head. So the whole side of the waist is stretched and open. Bring the foot back, bring the hand back and come back up.

Other side, the hand comes down. I'm rolling down evenly on both sides of my spine. Broadening the shoulders. As this arm goes up, I'm making sure that the right side of my waist, the side that holding onto the pole doesn't get lifted off the mat as that's the side that wants to buckle as the other side gets more stretched, that feels so nice. And to the waist and rolling back up. And to work a little bit into my back, I'm Flying Eagle. Just put this here.

Head is down. So this in itself becomes a deep stretch into the shoulders and right across the collarbones and area that gets very tight all the time. So well worth going into this position every so often lifting and pulling the shoulders down. So the neck is now long. My back is engaged and I feel my sacred being buried down and I crest big lift to the spine. I can feel my lats working. Then lengthening out and opening up across the collarbones.

Again, lifting the head and chest, pressing down again for nice lift, lifting the arms and lowering down. One more time, crossing the shoulders, lifting the arms and going down and from here just stretching into child's pose for a minute and as I haven't done a lot of work with flexibility with the legs, you're going to do a little bit of the math work on my side. The other leg is for to have this long diagonal and just psychics just to loosen up the legs a little bit. Going to do eight of them and eight devil a pace where you pass a, you slide the foot as high up as you can. Bring the knee towards the shoulder and try to keep it there as the leg goes up. Flex and then linkedin all the way out from the again slide up so most people can get to the knee quite easily. Try to get higher.

So you really unfold the joints of the legs as much as possible and down and then reversing it kicking up and how high can the toe get to the inner thigh and one more time and down. And then lifting both sides of the legs, rolling to the stomach for little beats and going to the other side again. So supporting the legs are slightly forward. The shoulders are down. Again, sidekicks loosening up the hips. So I'm doing eight of these every time extending through the heel on the way down, looking to keep my shoulders down the whole time.

And then the passe sliding the foot up towards the inner thigh, right by the shoulder, extending the leg up and flexing it down. Same thing again, keeping my top hip forward because it does want to slide back and then reversing it. Kicking the like up, bending it in and sliding down. So even if a person does not have a high range of movement, this is a lovely, lovely variation too. Work on rolling on my back now for a few teasers. So arms over the head. Again, lifting up, lowering down, lifting up, lowering down, lifting up, whoops and lowering down.

So from here I'm going to go onto the first two a few things with the wounded chair and then the high chair. So I'm, I'm working on a wounded chair, but the all of these exercises can be done on a high chair as well. In fact, I prefer to start off with a high chair as you can really stabilize the back against the back and secure the spine as you learn to work your legs in isolation. But more advances of course with the one to chair, no supports. So starting Pilati stance, the first sequence I'm doing, I'm doing pumps quite fast, looking to keep my body very quiet, moving on to no heads and then going into again bird on a perch, which can be done with the feet together with your feet, hip with the part. I'm going to take them hip with a partner starting out this time with the hands behind the back, behind the back of the chair to keep the chest nice and open. So pumping [inaudible] faster, but we need to keep the body nice and quiet and moving onto heels. No hands now.

Shoulders down, feet, nicely flexed. Okay. And it's a chair that's creaking, not my joints. Cool. I'm happy to say I know who bring on to single leg. So I've got the arches lifted.

The feet are just heals a parallel with my sit bones taking my right, like straight out in front of me. So sometimes people have the leg a bit lower, maybe even with slightly bent me working the one leg, 10 pumps, changing meds, nice. Lift up the spine again, if you are in a high chair, your back is completely grounded into the back of the chair. Okay. And then just for the fun of it, tendon stretch going down, my knees is steady and I'm going to flex them. Point the feet without the knees moving. So you have to really isolate the ankles. That's one variation.

And then the other variation is the ledge doesn't move. So now my knees are going up and down, but the step is staying nice and steady. So it's a bit of a brain twist. Sir, lots of fun to do. Very strengthening on the legs. Now coming into stepping up, I'm pre bringing the step down and stepping up.

I often like to ground the knee right against the wall but in this case because there's a slight berry, I'm looking at my knee parallel to the edge of the chair, square hips, very long back leg lifting up to the top of the spring and lowering down with control. So looking to do this without the knee moving in and out. That's really where the challenges and once this is working nicely, taking the hands away, there's lots of positions of the hands. It can be overhead, it can be reaching to the side. The whole point of this is that the knee is not moving, so from here changing legs, so again getting the knee right over the toes, the toes are going forward.

I'll go up and down a few times, making sure the back foot is set properly. On the back ledge, hips are square, spine is long. Ideally a straight line running from the heel through the crown of the head. So the whole body, the whole body is based over this front leg. Eventually you work this whole exercise to be done without springs, so extremely challenging the springs and literally there to learn to code, get the correct alignment.

Now from here I'm going to be stepping up the side so the foot is on a slight diagonal. They will, other hand is on the hip or it can be out to the side and lifting up and lowering down. Same feeling, these two hips and the shoulders are facing straight to the side. This knee is pressed out, this leg is long. Eventually you progressed to no hands. And from here before I change directions, I go right to the inner thigh pumps. So the inside foot is by the ledge.

My hips are square and pumping down. Amazing work for the outer part of the leg. My teacher used to say this, we'll shave off the sandbags from the side of the hips for women who need it and indeed it's a wonderful, wonderful work for the outside of the [inaudible] science. And then changing over to the other side. [inaudible] so again, checking that my hips and my shoulders are facing straight at the wall in front of me. The knee that's bent is pressing out to the side.

It will want to roll in, so the work is to keep it rotated out. The other leg is nice and long and often you need to slightly wrap the little tole around the edge of the step so that you stay in relationship with the step as you go up and down as it will rotate as you transitioned from a low position to an to a high position later you can work with a hand going out to the side or with the hands behind the head. And then from here again out of thought inner thigh pumps, placing, making sure I'm standing squarely on the foot that's on the floor, that my hips are square and that this knee is going straight forward. I worked the inner and outer thigh pumps. Really a fabulous exercise that is not used as often as it should be in my personal opinion.

[inaudible]. And then from here I'm going to step to the wall. So just to wrap up the workout, do a little bit of wall warts on my feet a slightly away. I wanted to make sure that the sacrum is long against the wall. The ribs are into the wall, the shoulders are wide, the head is up.

First of all, just little arm circles with the shoulders down without letting the shoulders come forward and keeping my shoulders back into the wall. And then bigger circles looking to do as big as circle as I can without letting my spine shift away from the wall because the higher the arms go, the back wants to arch and reversing it. Really reaching with the arms without letting the shoulders go up as the arms come up and then starting to do my role down. So dropping the head and slowly rolling through the spine, making sure the back is open, the stomach is supporting the back. Nice circles with the arms rolling back up. [inaudible] on unfolding the spine again, rolling down, lifting through the spine, circling, circling and rolling back up, unraveling the spine against the wall. And squats, taking my feet hip width apart and moving my feet a little bit further out, sliding down, holding the position and coming back up, sliding down and coming back up. And one more time, sliding down three circles.

I'm sliding back up. And then from here, standing on my legs and bringing my heels together, Simon [inaudible] stance and doing the final roll down away from the wall. So walk all the way down to the floor. Walk my hands all the way out til I'm in a full pushup position, plank position, and three pushups. Making sure that the collarbone stay wide and then walking the hands back, making sure I'm on my feet, rolling up, bringing my arms down of just taking a moment to stand and finding my center, knowing I've had a good workout. I'm kind of wet and I'm happy, which is the final result. Thank you.