The First Time Client

About

What to Expect in this Workshop

Hello folks. So we're here today for our workshop. Um, and what we're going to be doing is taking two first timers, never done [inaudible], uh, through first time session. Um, these are the most important sessions you teach because this is someone's first exposure to polities and this potentially is your new clients. So there's a lot that has to be done. Uh, from a sales perspective, from a technique perspective, and from a maintenance perspective, how can you best serve this client? And none of your sessions should be accidental. And there's a lot of pressure on you with that first time lesson, but you have to be thinking ahead, not just what are the exercises that are appropriate to this client, but what is the best way I'm going to get through and really make an impact today, not next week. You just have right now, this is the critical moment. Be thinking ahead, make wise choices and put the focus on the communication and letting the client shine. I did it. That's the greatest thing your client ever says, right?

I did it. And you're like, that's the end of the session. That's where you end on that high note, send them away, wanting more, wanting that feeling and able to translate that feeling into their real life.

Chapter 1

Introducing the First Client

Hello folks. So we're here today for our workshop. Um, and what we're going to be doing is taking two first timers, never done [inaudible], uh, through first time session. Um, these are the most important sessions you teach because this is someone's first exposure to [inaudible] and this potentially is your new clients. So there's a lot that has to be done. Uh, from a sales perspective, from a technique perspective and from a maintenance perspective, how can you best serve this client? Um, so I'm going to deliver as honest a session as possible and sort of let you in my head as much as I can without sacrificing any of the attention to the client. It's very important to me that uh, their success comes first today.

So I want to give a completely pure straight session as I would at home, uh, and share with you things that come up as they do. At the end of the session. I may do a recap and ask you to come up and sort of look at some of the things that I saw in their body and hopefully explain to you why I made certain choices about either the delivery of an exercise, the omission of an exercise, or why I added something and where I chose to take the client next. I have looked at Lisa her, she's our first client. I've looked at her client card and she's very energetic and very excited and there were a few things on there. I'm sort of sad that Christie told me how old she was because I never look at a client's age.

I prefer to have the client's body tell the story of what they're capable of and not be influenced by their age in any way, unless it's someone under 18 because then there's emotional development. But for an adult, I really never look at at the age. So I'm, I'm suspending my information about that and I'm just going to be guided by her body. She checked off on her client questionnaire that, uh, lower back, just a little x and then a little x that knee, ankle. And I said to her aside, well, can you tell me a little bit about this? And she said, Oh, you know, I had some surgeries, I have nine pins, ankle. And she said, I just have to, you know, be aware of it. And so I said, what does that mean to you? Be aware of it. And she said, well, you know, just have to think about it. So she rides horses, she spins, she does a lot of active things, but I'm not sure how tapped into her, uh, situation she is. I'm not sure if it'll hurt on the footwork, but we're going to find out together. So we'll see what comes out of that.

She wrote in her goals that she wants to have fun and that is a huge, huge factor going in. If she's writing that at day one, I feel like the pressure's on. So this could be, you know, a huge disaster for her and might not be fun at all. She's on camera for God's sake. But I think that we can, you know, keep in mind that her goal today was to have fun. So it's important that some of this session at least address some of that. So I may, I may ask her [inaudible] you're having fun, you know, just to sort of keep in mind that that's what she wrote down. Um, she wrote one other thing on her. Uh, her questionnaire is that her occupation is interior design. Uh, and I always keep that in mind so that I have a reference for how to speak to her.

So if there's something in there I can pull out in her activities or her daily life, I'm going to use it so that I'm using language that is familiar to her. It puts us on common ground and it will be easier for her to understand what I'm asking for. So this is all the information I have about her. I want you to have it so that going in, you may have a little bit more information about what we're about to do. Does that make sense? Okay. So this is straight up first-timer I don't know anything about her other than what I've given you and we're just going to see what comes out.

So I'm going to bring Lisa in and just remind me, you did a few sessions a couple of years back, 13 years ago, 13 years ago. And did you use all of the equipment or just the floor exercises? I use the equipment. Okay. Did you like it? Yes. Be Honest. I didn't know when he said he did nothing on my back and I was just recovering.

So I just let them do whatever they needed to tell me to do. Okay. So I don't, I don't really know. Okay. So then we're gonna just introduce it from, from the beginning. Okay. Okay. So a few things you need to know. This is a reformer springs make noise. So these are the springs that move the carriage back and forth. Uh, this foot bar comes up and down so you can lean on it, but never pull on the bar because you can break a tooth.

I say that all the time because fear is the beginning of wisdom. And if I tell you that right now, you'll never pull up on the pocket. The carriage only does one thing. It goes in and out. The rest of it I'll guide you through. And the last thing is how to get on. So you're going to sit right at the very, very edge, your hip, right against the foot bar. And then I won't lie down because my pack is on.

You're going to lie down and put your head in the headrest and your feet on the bar. We start with a series called the foot work. So heels, her together, toes are apart just like that. And you can take your arms down by your side on the Mat. Perfect. You still with me? Yeah. Okay. Don't be afraid. I won't. I don't buy it. I mean sometimes I do, but that's okay. Lift your heels a little higher than that.

Open your knees and don't change anything when I put you somewhere, I just want you to keep that. Okay. Push all the way out til your legs are straight and let's see what happens. All the way, all the way. Good. So just a couple of springs, so no more weight than you would if you were standing up straight and tall. Lift up, keep the knees just where they are. Oh, we're going to do this 10 times. Push all the way out. Pull all the way in. That's it. And outbound and come in. You got it.

Keep your heels together and go again. Push all the way out. Straight legs bent, then come in. Got It. Keep this switch. Just like that. Stretch. Then bend, got it. Stretch. Then bend. Keep going and think about zipping up the legs when you go out. Zip and then pull it. I'll take that. Don't think too hard, just move. You'll hear the springs kind of making some noise down there.

It's sort of normal. Push away and come in. I'm going to let go. Your feet don't change anything. Okay. Keep going. Push and pull your job as we do all of our body's work is to really move from here. Okay, so legs and arms, they'll do different things, but you are always going to turn on your abdominals, so keep something happening in there. A little bit of activity. Okay, let's do three more. Come on in, heels together. Two more. Bring it in and last one out and in. Look, you're a master already. Come in and stop.

We're going to change to the arches and just walk right up to here. It's the same exercise out in, in right. The carriage only does one thing. Squeeze the arches and press all the way out. This time legs. We'll be together. Yeah. So I'll put you there and then I'll try to hold you there for a few reps and then you just take it over and it has the knees with that [inaudible] you feel it a little. Okay. Press and, and I'd like you to squeeze your thigh muscles. Good. That works for me.

Squeeze. Come on in. I'm going to let go. Can You keep going for us? Legs together. Nice and tight. Press and, and same thing I said before. Squeeze. And then a little slower. Squeeze and in. Good. Keep going. I like it so much. I want some more. Two more prs and and last one.

Press and and stop. Good. We're gonna walk up to the heels. Same thing just on your heel bones. This time, flex your feet. That'll be easier won't it? You're allowed to laugh. If you're having a good time or you having a good time, keep your heels on the bar. If you're not stable there, you might slip up and kick me and then we wouldn't be having a good time anymore. Squeeze really hard all the way out. Come on in, keep moving out and, and I got her to laugh. This is good press. And then I'm going to let go. Pull your toes all the way up. So not into me, but wave. There she is. Press knees. Okay, press relax your hands. Go all the way out. And then I'm letting go toes up and in. What about the belly muscles?

Remember that she's got it and somethings happening. Press and in couple more. All the way up and in all the way up and in this time. Stay out a second. Just stay all the way up. All the way. Oh, as far as you can go and feel how you stretched the springs all the way open and the carriage is moving. There's lots of muscle activity in the legs or your belly is scooped up and bend your knees and come in. I thought that was fantastic. [inaudible] stay there.

Moving down to the toes. Are you getting a workout? Oh, maybe a little bit. Toes apart. Heels together. Good. And you're back in the first position. Press out this time. Stay out. Don't come back in all the way, all the way, all the way out. And I just want you to drop your heels down and stretch your calves like you do on the bike and then come all the way back up to your tip toes. Do it again. Lower down. Lift up, lower down, little slower.

Lift up. Good. Now use your belly muscles. Pull the heels up. I'm letting go. Don't slip off. Pull up. Lower down. Lift up. Little smoother. Lift up. That's really nice. Lower, lower, lower lift, lift, lift. Beautiful. Down, down, down, up, up, up. One more. Two, three. Come all the way up. This time. Stop. At the top. Hold it there. Heels together and abdominals are way up by George. She's got it.

Bend your knees. Come all the way in. Bring your knees into your chest. Give him a hug. Good. Phase one, you're good to go. Uh, I'm going to take a spring off just cause I think she might do better with that. So move down like an inch. Give me a little space here and I'm going to give you these handles to hold onto. We might not be friends when this is over. That was a little too much.

Come back a little bit back where you were. You're good. Now hold onto these handles and keep your elbows down on the mat by your side and bring your knees into your chest. So many things to think about. I want you to give me an ab curl. So just curl up and let me see what that looks like. Is that okay for you? Good. Straighten your arms all the way down one time and stop.

Curl up even a little higher. So with me, I'm going to take your legs up. Don't move anything, don't move anything. Don't move. Anything a little more, little more, little more, little more, even straighter. Even straight, or stop right there. You Ready? Take a breath in. We're gonna pump the arms up and down. Inhale. Exhale, shh. Keep going. Inhale, exhale. I'm going to let go. You keep pumping in two, three, four, five and out. Two, three. Lift your body high. Inhale. Beautiful. Keep it going. And exhale. Two, three, four, five in. When you spin, you go really fast. Exhale, pump the straps really fast. Inhale and exhale.

I'm gonna lower these a little into three, four, five, out, two, three, four, five and into. Three, four, five, out, two, three, four, five. Still good. Inhale and exhale. I didn't say stop. Keep pumping. You've got two more sets. Inhale, reach for me. Exhale. Keep one more set. I like your smile. Inhale, and exhale. Two, three. Stay right there. Freeze, freeze. Open your eyes. Stop. Which for me, rich, for me. That's your belly. Bend your knees. Bend your arms. Put your head down. Relax. Thank you Liz.

So welcome. Stay. Are you warmed up? No, we just can start it. Give me those handles. Okay. You're good. Stay where you are. Don't move a muscle. That was your abdominals. You met them. That's a good idea. Neil. K Ankle. Okay. Bank back. Okay. Everything's still on the right place.

Do you remember any of this from 13 years ago? No. Okay. That's a good sign. All right. Here's what I want to have happen. Bring your feet up in the air and you're gonna bring them right into these straps. So back okay with that? Yeah, she's pretty limber. Yeah, you're pretty flexible. I want you to actually take a little plea or diamond or frog or whatever you want to call that by opening your knees. I've taken some springs off so it's going to be much lighter and you're gonna bring your heels down this way and we won't bring the soles of the feet together. You don't need your hands at all. You don't need them. Okay?

Stay right here. Stand right here. Wait for me to tell you what to do. I think she might tell other people things to do for a living. And so they listened to her and so she doesn't want to maybe be told what to do with her straps. Push your legs all the way up and out for me. Then journeys back in. Perfect. Push out back in. Now a little less force push out slowly and back in there. At least lower, just less, you know, so more control plot as they called controller due back in the day.

So it's about control the light or the springs. The harder the move press bring it in. I'm going to let go and see if you can do that without me. Press up, bend back in. So it's harder to control, right? It's not harder force wise, it's just harder to control. Bring it in. Do One more right to my hand. Pressed it up and out. Come back in and this time stay out all the way out. All the way out. All the way out. Good. We're gonna make some leg circles.

Keep your legs just like this with your legs straight. We make circles. Make sense? It feels okay on the knee. I noticed you bent this one. I'm just asking cress. Don't bend. Don't bend. Good. That's my arms. I want your legs to do it. Push. There she is. Press. If you keep the spring moving, it won't feel like very much work at all. How's that show? Much better.

You're good. I have to keep asking. Reverse dominoes in and up and up. If I let go. Do you have it? Maybe. I think it might press and press two more. Press one more and press. Go ahead and bend your knees and come back in.

That was your leg circles. Great. You've done your footwork. You did your hundred, you'd hit your leg circles. I'm gonna ask you to stand up to one side. I don't care which side that is. Phase one. You survived. Have a seat here.

Chapter 2

Stomach Massage, Short Box, Elephant, and Running

Face me and just put your feet on the water over here.

Good. Come pretty far forward. And I want you to grab onto this side, this underside of the carriage holding on. And I don't know if you're going to be able to, but let's try push back a little bit and walk your feet up to the bar. She's so mobile. I love that. Come down to the tip toes here, so you're in a little ball, right? Let these be open. If you're wildly uncomfortable, you're in the right position. Hold that. Don't change your feet open. Going to drop your head.

We're on sensor mode, right? Push out with your legs til they're straight and the carriage moves back. Stopped there, come back in. Stay forward. Go Out, lean down. Don't do anything other than what you're doing. Come in, open the knees a little. Go Out, come back in. Got It. Go out a little less round. Come in, come forward. Head over the knees. Go out. You're good. You're good. Yes. That's what I meant. Come in and out.

I'm letting go and, and it's not that heavy, right? The horses worse. Come back in. Take one more. Press it out. Come back in and last one, take it out. Come back in and stop here. You're going to change your hands. You're going to reach behind you and put them on top of the blocks.

You're perfect. Go Out, lift up straight, come back in. Do it a hundred times. Go out until I say not to. Take it out and, and look straight ahead. Out and in. Zip the legs up, out. How's that knee and and press and then two more press and it's going to get really fun. Now press come in and stay. Don't move a muscle. You with me?

Come in and stop. Should make him your hands. Oh, don't fall down. Reach, reach, reach, push out again. It's tally light. Push. Don't pull me with you. Don't pull me with you. I'll fall down. Then we'll lie down. It'll be on camera. Everybody will see me sit up tall. Don't hold on. I'm holding you. You don't hold me or push out with the legs just like you've been doing.

Come back in. Reach for me. Reach for me. Try to get me. I'm over here. Oh, look at you. Push. Come and get me. Oh, go and come and get me and push. It's so light. Lift and push and come in one more and you're done. Push come in and stay, be perfect for pod counts. Five, four, three, two. You're down. Step off to one side. I thought that was pretty great. Still alive. Come back. Don't run away. Woo. No. Or just getting started.

Okay. So we're going to put this box on and you're going to have a seat on it. Okay. This is actually really fun. I don't know about on the books face this way. Sit on the, on the box facing me. Okay. I'm to give you this strap for your feet. I don't know if we have a pole either. Put your feet underneath the strap, both feet. And this is your lifeline. So I want this.

Flex your feet and then stretch out so you got something to hold on to. And if you don't still, if it's not taught, moved back a little bit back an inch there. So that's good for you. Yes. Perfect. Thank you so much. Good arms go around the waist, drop the head and we're going to do like a reverse setup. Does that make sense to you? No. Okay. So I'll explain it. Drop your head forward. Round your low back. Pull.

She pushed the feet wide on the strap and that's curl back just a little bit. Yes. And then a little bit more, but we're not ever going to go too far. Curl back. A little more. Abdominals are in Chin is an stay there. Big exhale. And you come back forward. You got it. Take it back. One, two, three. Look mom, no hands. Abdominals in big exhale and come forward. Try again. Take it back. Two, three. Let me see your abdominals. Do some work.

Round yourself. Forward and up. Try again. Back to the three and squeeze all the air out and come up and forward. Try One more time and it will be done. One, two, three. Hang out here a second. Hold onto it. Deepen the abdominals. Oh, I like that. And then come up and stop. Beautiful. You did a rounded back. Sit Up.

We're going to do a flat back. Sit Up. So I want you to hold this. Don't fall off the box. And that's the whole lawsuit situation. Open Up. Come back to where you were. So shimmy your booty back. Don't go anywhere yet. We're not moving anywhere. Just Shimmy your booty back. So I back on the box. Feet very wide in the straps. Arms up to the ceiling. All the way.

That's the ceiling. Good. So now, no more rounding cause you just did around it. Exercise. We're going to do a flat one. Squeeze your seat muscles. Go back a couple of inches. Lifting, lifting with your back, lifting and then pull back home. Make sense? Try again. Squeeze your glutes, that's your seat. Go back one. Go back to go back three. Come back home all the way up. Try it without me. Lift and go back. One up. Lift higher. Two Up, three up, pull home. Where's home?

Good. Bring this a little bit more forward. Don't move them. Just let your spine up. Go back, go back. No rounding, lifting, go back. Ah, I'll take that one. Fill your belly a little or a lot in your mind. Come home, try one last one. Lift and go. Take it back. One even higher, two legs, working two, three and come home. You can touch your toes, take the bar right to your feet and just round over your legs. You still like me a little maybe.

[inaudible] come on up. It's too bad because you're in it now. Right back a little bit on the voc. Just a little more good. I just, I still want that strap to really be held on nice and tight. Okay. Take one leg out and hold behind. You're like, oh, behind the thigh. That okay for the knee? Yeah. Good.

So part of [inaudible] is about keeping your alignment. So I'm really looking at this box here that you're making from shoulders and hips. Everything nice and square. Don't move anything but this part of your leg. Stretch it up. One, bend it down. Stretch it up to bend it down again and bent. One more time. Stretch and hold. Walk your hands up to your ankle. This is your ankle. We'll put your nose on your knee. Take a stretch. Say Hello.

Hello. Excellent. Stay there and then sit up straight and tall. Really high, really high. Where is that street? Back Street leg. Everything working and then bend it. You're done. Switched for the other leg. Bring the other knee up and out. This is the fun part, or the not fun part lived up. Nothing changes. Just this part of your legs. Stretch it up one and bent. Stretch it up too.

You can even exhale and bend. One more time. Take it up and hold it up. Woke up, woke up, woke up. Hands here. Bring your nose to your knee. Stretch. Hold it one, hold it two and then three. Sit up straight and tall and down. Bend your good. Step off. Stand up to one side. Now we get to have a little bit more fun. Did I say that?

Alright? Okay. Except as I saw the elephant. Don't hold it against. Okay. You're going to step on the carriage. Hand, foot and foot. You're upside down. Okay. Your term, hand, foot, hand, foot. Put your heels against the blocks. Drop your head just like that. Heels are down flat. Good. Drop your head. Don't look at anything but your abdominals. Okay. Scoop those up like crazy.

What I'd like you to do is push the carriage out with your heels. It's just a little bit, one more inch, and then pull it back in by lifting your [inaudible]. Try again. Pull it in. Don't make a sound. Push it out. Pull it in. Don't make a sound. Push it out. Dig your heels in and pull in. Toes lifted in the air. Just toes. Push, pull. Let's get a little rhythm out in, out, in, out, in, out in two.

More out in, one more out and in. Stop on the end all the way in until your springs are closed and bend your knees and come down onto the knees. Put your hands back on the bar and you're going to do the same thing you just did. Pushing the carriage out and then with your feet. But this time you do it with your knees. Keep your hands on the bar. Come up off your heels and you have to position your feet, right. Okay, so flex.

These toes are forward. Heels are against the blocks. Go. Don't pull on the bar. I remember what I showed you earlier. I don't want to lose any. The knees are straight in front of the feet, so not knocked. Not Bowed. Put this one against the block too. Right in front. Make sense? Yes. Sit back towards your heels a little bit. Just a little bit. Drop your head.

You can watch your knees. Do this. Okay. Here's what's going to happen. You don't move anything but your knees, you kick, you bend, you kick without the noise. You Bend, you kick. Is that okay? And the knees bend. Let me just try to come a little high. The knee, good. Strong arms push, pull. It's very light. Push, pull. Use your feet. Push, drop your head. It really helps. Trust me. I did it the other way. It didn't work.

And Paul Push and Paul, show me how fast you can go. Now one in two in three in four in one more. Five. And I'm just going to change your spine position. Everything else is the same. So stay in, hold it, sit back on your heels a little more. Lift your head now you can look up. This is nice. And then sit back here. So this is down. Arched the other way.

Even more like stickier. We ran out a little bit more. She has the same exercise just like this. Okay, go ahead. Kick Bend, kick, bend, kick, pull, kick, open the chest even more. Three, open the chest. Two and one. So you went back all the way to the first shape, the rounded one. But this one was the one where you stick your tail out.

Can you stay like that with arms straight and tail out for five? One keep your rear-end out. Two eyes up. Three and four and five and finish. Step off. Did the knee survive? Yeah, I thought it would. It's quite light actually. So here's your cool-down.

You get to get back on the reformer the same way you did at the very beginning. Have a seat. Lie Down with your head in the headdress and feet. Come up on the bar and we're gonna run in place. So easy feed off on the par, on stand by your side. You ever natural? Yes. Push all the way out to straight legs and stop. Drop one heel down, bend the other knee up and switch and switch and switch.

Oh, nice. Crack up and up and up. Keep lifting. I'll go as high as you can with one foot and as low as you can with the other. It might, it might lift. Don't rule anything out. Let's go 10 and a nine a little quicker. This is eight good. Seven. Bounce the carriage up and down. Bounce, bounce, bounce. I'll take that. Not the whole machine. Just the carriage faster.

Doesn't help cause the carriage. Stop moving. See now go move it high and low. Oh, and it comes out all by itself when you do that. Right? Right. Cause when you go faster, super fast and small, you're not moving the springs anymore. And we want the springs spreading. So go ahead and your knees and come in. One more exercise here. It's called the pelvic lift up. Forgive me for the positioning.

I didn't make it up. I'm just the Messenger. Lift your hips like Yay. Hi. Hm. Good. A little bit lower. And what I really want feeder good is a little curl here. So like a tuck. Does that make sense? Yep. Push out to straight leg. Stay in the air with your hips all the way, all the way, all the way.

All the way, all the way until you can't go any straighter or any farther and bend all the way back in, back in, back in. Excellent. Do it again. All the way out to straight legs, all the way in. So you keep the tuck while you're going. Yeah. All the way out. You'll get a nice seat. Buddhi burn. Come all the way in. Curl under. All the way out. All the way in. Can you stay in?

I'm gonna make it lighter cause I want you to feel how hard it is when the springs are light. Stay where you are. Don't move anything. Gently push out easy. Don't go crazy cause you'll fly away. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, stretch. Now here's the hard part. Pull in, curling under. Pull in. Make your hamstrings. Do some work. That's the muscles behind the seat, behind the thighs. Pull all the way in. Hold the kerogen. Hold it there. Show me you can. Good. One more. Push out. Easy neck and shoulders. You don't need all that attention.

Come all the way in and stay for three. Hold it to pull Morin one. Roll yourself all the way down. Bring your knees all the way in. Give them a hug. Where'd you feel it? Everywhere. Everywhere. The perfect dancer. Excellent. So we're here on the Cadillac for part two.

Chapter 3

Mat Work, Cadillac, and High Chair

How are you feeling after the reformer? Oh, I feel just great chats. Amazing. So we're going to learn some of the traditional mat work and hopefully it will reinforce some of the work you did on the reformer and a, and we'll see what happens. Okay. So you're gonna lie on your back. Keep your head to this end and just lie flat. And the first exercise I'm gonna ask you to do is the same one you did on the reformer where you felt all spastic and you were flapping your arms up and down, but you don't have any straps to worry about. So that should be a good thing. And we'll want to a hundred we'll do 50 of those.

So bend your knees all the way. And I'll tell you when I get knees all the way into your chest, give him a little hug. Good. Okay. And then I'm going to ask you to take a little abdominal curl right here. So just curl up. See your stomach muscles working. Reach your arms nice, long and straight. And let's take the legs back out to where they were when you were on the reformer. Stay up. You're good where I put you, I want you.

Hold it just like that. Squeeze your legs nice and tight. And remember what we did with the arms, pumping them. Here you go. Inhale for five pumps. Exhale for five pumps. Keep reaching. Inhale for five pumps. Exhale, I want your legs a little bit lower so your stomach has to work just a little bit. Keep pumping, inhale, that's okay. And exhale. Take them as low as you can comfortably in with the air. Well, I'll take that out with the air. Keep it going. Two more sets.

Inhale and exhale. Final one, big pump, two, three, four, five, two, three. Freeze right here. Eyes are open. Reach for me. So get a deeper curl, a deeper curl. Nice. Don't off the one side there. Bend your knees in. Give him a hug and put your head down. Excellent. At least there's a strap down here at the edge of the Cadillac.

I want you to slide your legs all the way down and slip your feet right underneath them and you can start seated actually. So legs will be straight and feet will be flexed. Good. I'm going to give you a bar to hold onto. Okay. There's these little eye hooks here, so don't grab those. Maybe a little. Maybe hold the outside. That'll be perfect. Drop your head straight in your arms and round over your legs. Ah, good. Using your abdominals, roll back, roll back and I'm going to ask you to pull me a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit. Don't overpower me. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

When you get to the bottom, I'm going to come behind you and give you a little pull. If you let go of the Bar, I'm going to land on my touch, so don't let, don't let go. Okay, good. We're going to reverse that. She likes that part. I can tell. I may do it again, but you have to give me one good roll up before. This is your roll up. Take the bar forward. I want you to go slowly and carefully go through every part of your spine.

Your upper, your middle of the strap is there on the feet to help you your lower. Keep deepening the abdominals. Drop your head down below the bar, reach the arms and go right past your toes. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. And now pull back. Abdominals working. So pull me a little bit, just a little bit. Let me see the big scoop in the waist. Waist, working, waist, working, keep pulling, keep pulling, keep pulling. You get to win this one all the way back. I'll give you a nice structure. Like I said, it's all a big negotiation reach.

Let's do it again. Inhale and take the bar up. Exhale and round over the legs. Not Bad. Keep the bar high. Take a stretch back. Good. Inhale and come on back. Remember the pole, take your low back to the mat. Take your mid back to the mat. Something popped. Take your upper back all the way back. I'll reach for the bar.

Give you one more stretch out to your last one and last one. Inhale up. Exhale over abdominals. Go even deeper than you think they can go. Reach all the way forward. Come on back. Take your time slowly, evenly. Right down the center. I'm going to take the bar away when you're lying down.

Good luck. Excellent. No, not for you. I'm sorry. You gotta work really hard for that. Take your arms down by your side. Pick a leg, any leg. Take it out of the strap and up to the ceiling. Nice. Look at the limberness. We love that abdominal skin. You're going to make a circle with this leg. I want you to start up here.

Make a circle around. Come back to center, cross up around, back to center. Now nothing gets to wag around. Okay. Hold strong. Cross around, end up, cross around. End Up. Show me the stop at the top. Cross around and up. Good. It got really slow motion. Give me a little energy around. End Up, cross around and cross around and up. One more crust around and up.

That's enough vendor neon switch legs. One goes in, one comes up, take it up. You can let this slip along. That way your hamstring doesn't have to work so hard. Right? Okay. Cross the body. Circle around and stop at the top, but I'm still frosting. No, you don't have to flex. You can actually make the flippy nice and long crus around and up.

I'm going to let go. Cross around it up. Let me see the up. Cross around and stop at the top. Cross around and stop at the top. Rough around it up. One more. Cross around and up is enough dens [inaudible] all the way in.

How do you feel about rolling? Oh, I feel just fabulous. That's good news for me. Sit Up. Yes ma'am. I'll take it. You take this peat out of this trap. Bend your knees in and grab your ankles really tight and make yourself into a tiny, tiny little ball and I want you to balance there. That means your feet are going to come up in the air. What? Oh, but these that put your head down, rock back just enough that your feet come off the mat and find your balance.

Don't fall down. Okay. Promise. Yes. I'm letting go. You're gonna roll upside down and right side up right now. Roll upside down. Come right side up. Good. Don't put your feet on the mat next to, okay. Okay. Stop making head down. You said you wanted to have fun. Okay. Roll back upside down. Come right side up. Keep your head down.

Make your stomach, do some work. Go upside down. Right. Set up. Oh, you're there. You're there. You're there again. Go back. Go back up. My writing. Teachers are going to love you. This is so good for you. Go back. Good. Try a little breathing. It might really help. Go. Inhale back. Big exhale. Try again. Big exhale on the way up on the way up. I'm not gonna help you on that one. You're on your own. Last one back.

Come up and stop. Oh, that wasn't me. That wasn't me at all. I won't repeat down. We're done. I won't ask for any more [inaudible] exercises. Done. Snow back. You get to lie down. He's still good. Just like a couple more things. Indulge me.

Bring the right knee all the way into the chest. Just the right and put two hands right here. Lift your head up. We're going to take a walk down memory lane to the gym of the past. Stay up nice and high. This what's going to come like, oh Yay. Hi. Got It. Yup. Change legs. Hold it all the way in.

Change legs, hold, hold. Don't go faster. Go better in all the way in all the way in all the way it needs. Okay with that and keep going. Elbows lift and and yes, I love that. Breathing. Inhale. Then exhale. Inhale. Then exhale. Take four more. Four, three, two and one. Bang both knees and put your head down. So what you did with one leg, I kind of want you to do with two legs.

I'm gonna ask you to slide your hands down here. Once you lift your body up and your Ab Curl, you stay up no matter what. Okay? Okay. Come up here in an app. Hold it just like that. I want your arms to go back, but you stay up and your legs to go out. But you stay up like this. Just like that. Come back and grab your ankles. See, not so bad. Grab him, grab them mean it. Good. Reach all the way out. Me, not come back in. Stay up. Reach out. Good.

Don't lie down with your upper body. Stay lifted. Reach back. Bring it in. You got it. Reach back. Bring it in. Reach back. Bring it in. Use your legs like one, one leg out and bring it in. Excellent. Two more. Reach and stretch. Bring it in. Last one. Region stretch. Bring it in and put your head down. You're a monster. That was great. Come to sitting.

Spin around and face this way. Put your feet against the Poles. Your legs will be straight. You'll be seated and your feet will be right against those polls. So scoot forward. I would never just straight up. You must not. It will be bad news for everyone. Reach your arms nice and straight.

Both arms just like this. God, show me your best posture, your super best posture. Good. This is fine. Stretch forward. Drop your head through your arms. Reach forward like you want to reach through the Poles. Drop your head, keep going, keep going, keep going. Scoop your abdominals back like you're pushing my hand away. More, more good. And then sit up tall. Perfect posture again. Now you get to do it again. Reach forward one. Reach forward to drop your head.

Push me away the re Ah, come all the way up. Straight and tall. Best posture. So lovely. One more time. Reach forward to three. Now pull your abdominals away from me. Don't pull on me. Pull into your abdominals. Chin to chest. Keep scooping in the belly and then sit up tall and straight. Tall and straight.

Perfect. Take your hands onto this bar. Drop your head. This is dessert. They should feel nice. Sort of wind up your hurt. Roll yourself down low or back. Take your time. Make sure you get your low back on the mat as it on the mat. Oh, then your middle back. Then your upper back lie all the way down. The springs are pretty light for this.

I want the springs to peel you up so don't work so hard in this one. What the springs do some work good. Lift your head up your eyes. Go right here. Look into your waist and just drop it down. Really scoop it in. Don't make your waist harder. Make it like it folds in on itself. That is amazing. When you're really using your abdominals, they don't really tense up and out.

They draw in and then sit up straight and tall and try again. Roll down, melts down, charge up your legs. They're still working into the Poles. Make sure your lower back gets first. I don't want to see your upper back hit before the rest of it does last really nicely, so big change from the beginning. Lift your head up, abdominals go in. Then they go in again. Then they go in a lot more and when there's nothing left, you can sit up straight and tall. It looks pretty good. Got One more.

Oh yeah, come on. Keep the show up. Lift up straight, straight, straight, and roll yourself down. I get to watch now. That's the fun part. You're like my little project all the way down. Drop the shoulders, head comes up, the ribs go in, stomach goes in the goes, and then you're all the way up. Straight and tall. Excellent. We're coming to the end. So I want you to spin around and put your head here. You get to lie down on your back. Once you're down there, see if you can reach for that pole. Take hold of it.

The one that you were just holding on to. And I want you to take your feet up into this black strap. So one comes up and then the other good. And just so you're safe here, just hook your feet to the outside. Okay, so I need a little bit of muscle from you. You with me? Okay. Here's what's going to happen. You're going to keep your arms super straight, okay? With straight arms, take a breath and push your arms down straight. Keep your head down on the mat. Hold it for one, hold it for two. Don't get crazy. Hold it for three.

And then release. Release, release. Okay, inhale again. Press down. Easy. Killer. So I get easy. Hold it. Stretch the arms one. Hold it to hold it. Three release, release, release. That's your exhale. Try One more time. Inhale and push. Hold it. One knuckles forward. That'll help. Yes, there she is to hold it there. Three and release two and three.

Everything's going to stay exactly where it is. This is the breathing. I want you to lift your hips up. Just your hips. Nothing else. Hold that for one. Hold that for two. Hold it for three, and then you're going to roll down from this part of your back, through this part, through the next part. Every single piece till you're at the bottom and do it again. Hips up, wha hold it for one. Then to stay there. Three roll down through the spine, through the next part.

All the way behind the waist, behind the ribs, behind the tail. Oh, all the way to the seat. You've got one more. Go lift. Then we're going to put it all together. Ooh, she's ahead of me. See, she's thinking the body knows. Hold it, hold it, and then meltdown and two and three, and just like you intuitively wanted to do. We're actually going to do that. We're going to lift the hips at the same time as we press this bar down. Ready? One count, pull and lift. Hold it for one. Push your knuckles forward to keep going. Three, stay slowly. Melt the spine slowly. Release the bar.

Melt the spine more spine. Yeah, all the way down. Try without man. Push the bar. Lift the hips. You got one count, hold it and press hold it and press hold it now slowly release. Go from the top of the back behind the ribs, behind the waist, all the way. Get all those sections of the spine right down to the bottom and one last time. Inhale and push. Hold the breath. Hold the breath.

Hold the breath. Here's your exhale. Melt away. Melts away. Melts away all the way. Excellent. You can let go of the bar. Take your feet out of the strapping your knees into your chest. Give yourself a hug. Many feet. We are going to step away from here and just use one more apparatus for the knees and for some other fun stuff for you.

So let's go ahead and grab the high chair. So we finished our Cadillac, which you did some of them at work on. I'm going to introduce you to the high chair. These are very, very heavy springs, so I'm going to show you what we're going to do and then you're going to do it. Okay. We're going to actually step on this. I will assist you with the pedal and you're going to bring one foot right up onto this platform. Okay. And then I'll talk you through the rest. When you're getting off, I do want you to go very slow again.

I'll help you to dismount because the springs are quite heavy. So come on over, hold on to the handles. Take one foot onto the pedal and then the other foot, once you're up there, that's fine. I can deal with that. Take one foot up. Bring your toe right to the woods. Don't go anywhere until I tell you to promise. Yes. Bring in need of the wood. Is that okay? Yes. Bring it all the way. Yeah. And your back heel wants to be up. So lifted up like your and your best.

Manolo Blahnik. Put your hands here. Yeah, new. It's your hands on this barn. Take your head off it. It will be a better for you if your head's not on the bar. So we stand straight up. Perfect. You're going to keep everything as it is. Okay. The only thing I want you to do is take that pedal up slowly.

So you're gonna use this leg to come to standing. Lift up, rise up. It's not that heavy. Look up all the way. You can come all the way till it goes all the way and this leg is almost straight now. And now come down slow while you pain. Wow. What's the wild part? You tell me. Lift your back heel. Lift your back heel. They're good. When you're at the top, I'm going to ask you to adjust your foot. So I got the paddle.

Just adjust your foot. Stay on the ball of the foot. I'm holding it up. Stay there. You're standing on this leg will lift your back heel really high. Super High. Where's that high heel? There she is. Now go slowly down, slowly down, slowly down. That looks so much better. Try again. Rise up like you're being pulled up by your hair all the way, all the way, all the way, and go down slow like you'd rather not two and three. Take one more and then we're going to switch at the top all the way up.

And when you're here, take this foot up to meet the other guy and we'll switch legs so you can find the pedal from the back. Easy. Good, no weight on it yet. Bring this knee into the wood. Very important that stays there. You with me? Go very slowly down. Give me nice, good posture here. Slowly, slowly, slowly. Good. Eyes up, chest up and bring it all the way up. Just like doing some work now maybe a little, don't lie to me all the way again, bringing it up to hips forward just a little bit lower.

Two, three, final one. All the way up to stop at the top. Hands aren't working hard, right? Yeah. Stop at the bottom. Take one. Take both feet down to the paddle. Take your hands to the handles like one foot to the floor. Slowly, slowly, slowly. And you're good. Yes. I'm gonna ask you to do one more thing here and then we'll be done. Okay? Okay. What's your hands back on here? Step on the pedal. One more time. We're ready for a little upper body. Okay.

It's important cause we neglect that as women and we need it. Step on. We're going to control your horse. You need a little upper body stress. Okay? I still want you to stand on the ball of the feet, so still in those tip toes. Heel. Super tight. Legs squeezing together. You're going to come forward with your arms. So lean a little forward and I just pulled the pedal up. Lean more forward. Lean more forward. Push down with your arms.

I'll help you come up. It's going to be fine. Left all the way. Wow. Good. Come down gently. Two, three. Don't fall. Stay forward. Come up. Lift good. Eyes Up. Eyes Up. A little challenge. Come down slow. Slow, slow. You got this. You're on your own. Come on. Ha.

Pool. Excellent. Calm down. Slow. Eyes up slow. Don't lean back, lean forward. It's easier if you lean forward, would I lie to you? Excellent. Take one foot off. Let the pedal up slow. Very, very good work. Today I would like to chat about what we did with the teachers and allow you guys to

Chapter 4

Recap of the First Client

ask some questions. So first question was why did I choose to put her on four springs initially?

Um, and my approach always with someone who's strong and capable, um, is to just start with, you know, the regular full expression of the exercise or the full form and then work my way backwards. So rather than build up, I would want to see what's the most that she can do and then cut back only if needed. So if she had done a bit of the footwork on four springs and winced or made any kind of expression or even just self reduced her range, I would have immediately taken her springs down. But to my way of thinking, working with four springs is lighter than bearing the full weight of your upright posture. So there shouldn't be any real restriction around working with the four springs that we have on the reformer. Um, if you're asking that because she wrote down that she had a knee injury, once again, I had a look at her when she laid down and saw her muscle development is pretty equal on both sides. So I wasn't, I knew I wasn't dealing with any kind of atrophy or obvious weakness. So I said, let's see how she does with the four springs. A lot of the, the attention people build up around the springs is just psychological. Like, oh, it's going to be really heavy and you're like, just act like it's nothing. And you'd be surprised how they just sort of fly, fly through that, uh, that content in a first time session. Uh, I think it's important to convey that we work from our center. So I wanted to introduce her to the concept that, uh, your abdominals will be involved in each and every move we do.

And I think that that's key to, you know, a safe practice. Absolutely. And also, and also reveals a lot to me. So if she can, she recruit her abdominals. What if she can't recruit her abdominals? What, what does it mean to her when I say, and for the most part I learned as we all did. Cause the first time session is really for us to learn about the client. Right. So she, I on, I learned about Lisa that her abdominals to her using her abdominals meant to tighten them outward. And at some point I was able to say they go in more, right? They don't get harder, they get softer. And she executed that beautifully by the time we got to spine stretch and the roll back with the bar. Um, and so I felt like we were making good headway in the, the finer points, but this was a very mechanical session.

And for someone like a strong healthy woman who's doing, um, activities that are very largely based in rhythm, she rides, she spins, she does things that require a continuous sort of rhythm and plays that it's in its early stages, is not rhythmical, not at all. And so I saw her immediately looking for the beat, you know, she went out for footwork and I said, okay, so I have to help her right away. Find a place she can connect to in this session and that will make sense for her. So I knew immediately I have to keep my tempo steady, I have to keep it even, I have to keep her flowing through it and my queuing has to be so payer down and out, right, left bend, stretch, take all the other stuff away and then she'll find it. And one I got her going. She was successfully able to bring in those finer elements, but not until, you know, four, six, seven Reps. So this is a person I want to give more reps to let her kind of find her groove and then start layering in a little bit more information because she has the strength to do more reps. That was fine with me.

So I want to tap into that client's natural ability and what their, they have an affinity for and then build on that in your sessions. So this is why it's important at the get go to come in with what do you do, what else are you doing exercise wise? How can I use that information to inform my delivery and set them up for success? Yes. So though one of the things we didn't see, this was a strong healthy body with no real obvious issues. I'm sure we could have dug in and seen and I thought to gather you round for a moment and say, you know, she's got a little bit of a hip tweak or she doesn't really fully extend the right leg as much as the left. And yet all of that stuff was able to be worked out with very simple queuing.

So I think the learning style of your client is probably the most important to tap into for the first time client. It's not you, it's not the list of exercises, it's how does this person learn best? Because if you can get them there, you have the opportunity to work with them forever. And how great is that? Because that's where the change really happens is how do you tap into what they need? And then deliver it quickly. You may not get another chance. That can be it. Sometimes that 55 minutes is over and you know, you may or may not have convinced them that this is something great for them. I knew she wanted to have fun. I know what she does. Actively, very active.

That's hard to compete with. Those kinds of client questionnaires scare me. Oh my God, she's a writer, she's a spinner. How do I get in there and, and really impress upon her that this is fun too and this is exciting movement and this is, you know, has all of the elements that she is already enjoying in her other workouts. The question is how did I choose the exercises beyond the reformer? And for the most part, my session was pretty classical in delivery. So a very basic reformer with a basic mat up through the spine stretch.

And uh, we added on the rolling back and the breathing. And then I wanted to layer in the going up on the chair and the press ups and I'll tell you why in a minute. The choices I made around the mat were based in her learning style. If you noticed, I did not do the reverse of anything at a certain point, no reverse like circles, it's too much. Just do a whole bunch. One way. She was, again starting to get into that rhythm. I saw her working much harder than she had at the beginning.

She was very focused. I don't know if it was clear that at the very beginning of the session I had to fight hard to get her, you know, in the session with me listening to my cues and not anticipating, you know, she's a fast mover and she wanted to know it right away and be at that exercise. And so it took some navigating for me, holding her very tightly and using very few words and low and letting the words linger in the air. So push out and waiting for that to get there so that she would arrive, not push out. Okay. Yeah. More could you? No, no. Don't come in. Just go. That would've just confused her more. So when we got to the mat, I said, I'm not going to mess with single leg stretch hands.

I could just have seen that being a complete disaster and said it was two hands on the knee and let's just change legs, change legs. Everybody knows what that means. So very pedestrian queuing, very, very pared down. And I, I lean toward that and strongly suggest you all do for the first time session because you don't need all of that other stuff. This is general movement, you know, make someone happy to be moving. And if you're talking about their [inaudible] in there, so as they're not happy to be moving cause they're in their head and not in their body and don't we want them in their body. So a basic mat up through, you know, taking out the reverse, taking out the complicated elements of the exercises. Um, by the time we got to spine stretch, I thought she really had a good idea about, you know, using her abdominals to support herself. She was lifts, she had learned to listen to me and, and wasn't anticipating the movement, which was fantastic. I felt like we had arrived at that moment. Um, and then I was able to bring in something like breathing and do a little spinal articulation without using the word articulate or making it cerebral. Just letting the body, you know, discover what happens with the use of the spring. So I wanted a little bit of spring tension because I think that's important in a first time session that they discovered the springs.

I also wanted her to be able to articulate through her spine. I wanted her to use a little bit of upper body strength. And once I had done that, I felt like I laid the foundation for, okay, now let's take the base of support narrower, do a little up and down motion and always end upright. I chose to not do pumping on this chair because the springs are quite heavy. And I, she did comment about the stomach massage that her knee was, she could feel it. She said, I feel it. So you know what, no pumping for this client. She's definitely gonna feel it here.

But I think the going up, we'll give her the strength and the range of motion in a safe alignment on the chair where I can monitor her very well. And she felt it quite a lot as you saw from her reaction. Um, and at the end, a little bit of upper body strength because I think women just don't do enough of it. This is a woman who does a lot of aggressive activity and spinning of course leaves out the entire upper body, but horseback riding doesn't, and she, you know, she can use some of that. So I think that's just daily life. You know, we need to keep up our strength. We lose our muscle mass at a percentage each year to just by virtue of being a woman. So, um, those were my choices. Is that clear? Why I, you know, and I think a fairly well rounded session.

The other part of it is she should meet some of the apparatus. So she's met the reformer now and the mat and the roll back bar and the chair, that's Romper Room, you know, that's a, that's fun. That's a playground she wrote on her form. I want to have fun. I think she had a little fun, serious fun. It's difficult and maybe even unusual to see a first time session delivered with such paired down vocabulary.

But that is the best way to set up your new client for success. Less words, more movement and let them, you know, the whole thing is about them discovering their bodies and that you're giving them this magical gift. And so you have to not be the star of the show and you don't want really even the method to be the star of the show. The client is the star of the show. And their success is, is the story that you create together. So using less words and letting them discover what the feeling of each movement is, is key to telling that story well and having them be, you know, they write the story. You're just the Messenger and we're just the Messenger. Anytime you lay a hands on a client, it should be firm and directive. Um, so I tell her what to do with my hands. Uh, I have a personal pet peeve.

I know that phrase kids bandied around a lot, but about using your fingertips, which is very intimate and sort of very irritating, at least to me. So I always say don't use your fingertips. You use the flat palm or the flat surface of your hands in some way to cue clients. So I did from the front and from the back, give her two way assist. This is in and up and this is up and over. So giving her the feeling with my hands of what I wanted her to do, um, it was from, it was inward and it was upward.

You don't want to touch a client tentatively because it can be, especially a new client, it's invasive. Uh, it can easily be misconstrued as inappropriate. Um, you, you only touch when you need to and firmly with directive. So I always make sure I use a very firm and flat part of my hand to, to cue the client into action. How far should the client be away from the shoulder blocks in the setup for the a hundred I asked her, I had I s I noticed in her footwork that she was really hunching up, so I asked her to move down just a hair and she overshot and at that point in the session I thought I can fuss with her for probably three or four minutes and sacrifice the knoll next exercise, or I pretty sure that once she grabs the straps and pulls them, she's gonna slide back on her own. I'm gonna make a choice to let that go and she'll probably end up okay, if I need to fix it later I will. And some of that is just about how hard is it going to be to reposition the client? Is that time worth it or would it be better spent somewhere else?

Stomach massage too. I made a very specific choice, which is sit on the edge, put your feet on the wood. That's not a transition I ever learned, but I knew that she would sit there and then I could have her feet come up without this whole cumbersome transition of getting into an exercise that is already, I think, impossible to teach to an experienced client. Nevermind a first timer. She did beautifully though. And I really felt like she, she transitioned within the space of an hour session from a real novice to somebody who has a good basic understanding of what the system is and what it might do for her, which was the best testimonials to hear her say, I see you see how this could really help me. So that was fun. I will say one thing else that Christine mentioned is that, uh, two Sundays that I matched my energy to hers. And, and that is really the psychology of the first time session is you really have to go in with what I call the chameleon effect is you're not anything, you wipe your slate clean, you arrive to the scene as you know, to serve the client. And if they need high energy, you deliver high energy. And if they need a therapist or a a drill sergeant, you become what is the best delivery vehicle for that client at that moment. And even that is not consistent because we're all human.

And from one day to the next you, your needs changed dramatically. So given this situation, she was really hopped up, there were cameras on, you know, she was pretty tense. I, I, I sympathize. I was feeling into, and then, you know, we came into a good sort of calm place and uh, and I think teaching a client to learn from you is the hardest part of the, that beginning of the relationship. So pay attention to their energy and how you can mirror it in a, in a positive way or maybe you don't mirror it. Exactly. You, you match it on the flip side. So they're high, you come low, you know, if they're low, you come high so that you can find that balance point and make the magic happen. Once we arrived on the Cadillac and we were into the mat, we had done the a hundred then and we grabbed the bar and she was happy because we did stretching piece and she asked for more of that. Um, but that was a place where she really sort of found her abdominals and found some control. And that was, uh, a pivotal time in the session where everything kind of clicked for her. And for me, my job got insanely easy at that point. And, uh, and she owned the session and that's, you know, that's the gift is to not, you don't want to own their practice. They, you, they own their practice.

So you're just the, just the delivery vehicle. So we're back again with,

Chapter 5

Introducing the Second Client

with sandy and another first time session. A couple of things to share, if that's all right with you about your health questionnaire. Just so you guys know what we're about to do today. Um, uh, sandy has a pre osteoporosis, so she has osteopenia for which she takes up prescription medication and she also has some hypoglycemia. Uh, and so just things to sort of consider for the workout. I'm thinking already, well what does it mean to be osteoporotic? Are There Contra indications? We know that when you're full osteoporosis, there's some uh, extension and flection indications that you want to be aware of. But she's not quite there yet. I did ask her interestingly if she has been given any exercise recommendations and she said No.

So typically when you have a pre osteo process you want to begin some kind of weight bearing or resistance training regimen to uh, continue to lay down new bone and improve your, your scan results. So this is actually really helpful for that because this is resistance training. So we'll work a little bit on that today and we'll see what comes out. Okay. Can I ask what I'm questions you may general, what's the goal? Plot is? To me when I describe it mechanically is simply resistance training. Uh, the goal of glottis is to make you better at everything else you do and to have fun. It's pretty simple and to have fun, have a good time.

So this is the reformer. You are here for the first session. So I won't bring you through the whole rigmarole, but you didn't see it up close. So there's a few things you need to know. Things move on here. This is the carriage. It moves in and out. That's all it does. You make the magic, the machine is inert, it does nothing. It's not plugged in. The bar comes up and down. So as a reminder, we don't lift up on it. You can lean on it, you can jump up and down on it, but don't pull up on the bar. Okay? Okay. Sometimes springs make noise.

Don't be alarmed. You're actually going to sit on one edge as close as you can to this bar. So shimmy on down and then I'm going to ask you to go ahead and lie down on your back this way, that way. Okay. And when you're there, walk your feet up to this bar here. Yep. Okay. So this is the football and we're going to start with footwork. So toes apart and heels together. And in case the question comes up right now, I am going to try to start her on four springs because she needs to work with resistance. And if I make it too light for her, she's never going to get any weightbearing done. And for pre osteoporosis, you absolutely need to have some resistance. Does that make sense?

So let's just see what happens. It's really not very heavy, so don't think of it as, oh, I have to move this carriage that's heavy. It's not heels up nice and high and you can start to just move all the way out til your legs are straight. So push away from the bar by straightening your legs. Just the way you would get up out of a chair. Keep going, keep going, keep going. And you'll see that your legs get completely straight. That's as far as it goes. Bend your knees and come back in. What do you think?

Not Afraid Anymore, right? Let's go for 10 heels together. Push all the way out, pull all the way in and keep going all the way out and all the way in. Good. Keep your hips down. So instead of letting them rise up, you stretch out, stretch out, right up on your tip toes. And again, all the way out, glide out and in, maybe the heels come even higher than that. So you really up up, up, up, up, yes and in, and let's get a little rhythm. Let's go five super fast and press and in Nice and easy. Out and in. You're fine. Out and in.

Last one out and, and let's pause. Beautiful. Let's go to the arches. So curling the feet around the bar, a little bit of pressure, squeezing the legs together, the exercises, the same. Push away and come back in all the way out and then try to go for a straight leg. See if you can get there and beautiful it will. And sometimes it's about the sequence and not just one exercise, but what came before and what comes after that makes the whole thing work together. That makes sense. Press and, and I'm going to let go. You keep doing this same quality and in good.

And anytime you want to fire up your abdominals and draw them inward and upward. I'll be good with that breaths. And then one more out and, and let's stop. Good. Walking up to the heels. Next exercise. So all part of the foot work, your feet are very flexed. You're bringing the toes right up to the knees and let's go again, straightening and bending out and in and out.

Let's take that little bang out at the end. So instead of really bringing the carriage into that little spot, you just delay a little bit out, no noise and how you in charge of the springs. So you stretch them, stretch and then go a little longer like you really want to go far and that looks great, Sandy. How out? And then get further away out and in. I'm letting go. Keep the legs working and out and in.

Last one out and, and, and stay. Let's go back down to the toes. So this knee likes to kind of drift out and not do a whole lot. I don't know yet if that's coming from her hips or just from a motor pattern. But let's see what happens.

Heels together nice and tight and so the knees are equally open. The feet are equally open. If you take a look at them and you see one doing that, reposition it. Okay? Push it all the way out and stay out all the way, all the way, all the way. Lower your heels for a stretch of the cabs. Drop, drop, drop, lift back up all the way up. Up, up, and keep doing that.

Lower lower heels together. Lift up heels together. Good. Now extra slow. Lower, lower, lower lift. Lift, lift. Now I'm coming in for your ABS. Ready. Lower, lower, lower and lift. Lift, lift. This is going to lift your heels. Lower. Two, three, lift in an up. Better down, down, down abdominals. Pull the heels up. I saw that lower, lower, lower squeeze all the way up to more down to three and squeeze. Not that heavy, right? Just a little lower. Lower, lower and lift.

Lift. Stay up. Stay up, stay up. Heels together, heels together. Can you go even further out? One more inch. Excellent. Bend your knees and bring it all the way. And I saw that bend your knees and be done really, really good. Bring the knees into the chest. Give him a little hug.

So she has to do some kind of a hundred, because we don't do a lot of flection in, um, somebody who's full blown osteoporosis. I just want to be aware of it and see what she can do. So what are you doing right now for exercise? Walking. Walking is awesome. The best form of exercise. So I asked you to do an abdominal curl. What does that mean to you? Right here?

You might do a little like a half babysit up. Yeah. Is that doable? [inaudible] it's any pain? No. Can I see it? Okay. It's just that go ahead and hold onto these. Bring your knees in. Bring your elbows to the Mat, right by your sides. And I'm going to ask you to do that little curl again. So curl up.

But this time stay up even a little higher. One more inch. Goodness. Straighten your arms down and hold them out. Don't move anything. Just stay there. Once you're there, you're there still with me. Hold it. I'm letting go. Hold it. Good. Take your legs up. Maybe here, don't move anything. Start to pump your arms up and down. Lift a little higher. Straighten your arms out so they won't bend again. Just up and down, up and down. There she is. Keep going. Lift a little higher.

Lift a little higher. Lift off the blocks even more so your body comes up. Yes. Beautiful. Two more inches. Lift, lift. Excellent. Go. Breathe in. Two, three, four, five and out. Two, three, four, five. Inhale, curl up and exhale. We're going to do two more breaths. I'm letting it go. Inhale, and exhale. Lift. Two, three.

One more. Inhale and exhale. Two, three, four. Stay right there. Stay right there. Freeze. Don't do anything more. Just lift up. Reach your arms even longer. Pull on the strap. That is perfect. Now bend everything in and relax. Ah, what's so bad, right? No. See all those worries about stamina. You stay there.

I'm going to put some straps on and then you're going to put your feet into the loops. Okay. I've made the carriage a little bit lighter. That's because I'm supposed to for this exercise, not because you need it lighter, just so you know. That's what's done. That's the protocol. Okay. Oops. Oops. You're good. I had to lower the bar. I didn't mourn. You bring me your feet. They're going to go in these loops, so yup. Bring both legs up. Perfect.

That gives me room to take the other one up. Now Bend your knees and come into a little frog. Go diamond. Something that makes sense to you. A plea, AA. So heels all the way down here and I want your knees to open up. The straps go in between them and you don't have to worry about them anymore.

Okay. Heels together, touching each other. Bring your legs to me all the way. Ben Back in. Yes, abdominals are going to go in and that is going to press your legs out and then come back in. So it's lighter, right? Much lighter than when you were pushing with them on the bar. I'd like you like to come a little higher up there. A little low for me, so yes, that would be perfect. And keep this little tripod with your feet. I'm letting go. Push out and you'll see how without me, you start to go all over the place. So your job is to control this, lengthen out, come back in, and you get most control by using your abdominals. So core in and then bend again.

Press out and bend in. Go try to hit the same spot in space each time. One spot, bring it in again, the same spot. Press away and bring it in. And let's do one more and then we're going to go onto light circles. So come on out and stay out. Perfect. And here we go. We go up, open, down together, up, open, down, together, up, open, down. Together.

I'm going to ask you to put your hands on your abdominals. Pull them in hard. Good. What happens when you get to about here is they want to push out. So you do the circle and just pay some attention to your abdominal muscles. What's happening? Are they trying to press out into your hands? When they do, that's where you do the most work to pull them in. Does that make sense? I'm going to let go. I'm doing some work here with my arms, but you're going to have to do it now. Oh, so that didn't look like that, but I knew to warn her and so she has to use some of her own muscles.

She's got to do that though, right? Good. Draw the heels together to come in. Draw the heels together inside legs. Keep going and you look so see your legs. Are they even to you? Are they even, are they making two halves of the same circle? This guy likes, has his own opinion. It's just like it's over there. So maybe pay a little more attention to that leg. Yeah, circle around.

Circle around three more without me. One [inaudible] watch righty and to around. One more. Three around and that's plenty. Bend your knees. I'm going to take these straps off your feet and you can stand up.

Chapter 6

Reformer Exercises

Put your feet on the bar and clutch onto the end of that for dear life so you don't roll backwards perfectly. Toes are apart. Heels are together.

I'm a big fan of this sparkle, by the way. That's very much working for me. Abdominals are in open your elbows to the side so you feel like your arms are going to do some work. I want you to work your arms in every exercise so that you really get full body for each move. Okay. Push your legs all the way out. Just like you did in foot work. It's lighter than it was before, but you already know the tension and come back in again. Push out and come back in and instead of leaning back, come forward into your legs.

Come all the way forward and go again out and come back in. So you're gonna stay here. Even when you push back. Don't straighten your arms, straighten your legs only anytime. Sure. What you're saying. He'll take either push, push the carriage out, don't lean back, don't lean back off your arms instead, pull forward, pull forward. Yeah, so even when you're going backwards, you stay with your upper body where it is, then journeys and come back. Do it again. Push away with the legs. Perfect. Come in, don't change the thing. Press and press and in abdominals are in prs.

And then one more press and stop. So it's a little round. We're going to take you out of the round now and do it with a flat back. So take your hands behind you reaching for the shoulder blocks. You can be here and let me see what that looks like for you. I might ask you to move back with your bottom on the pad a little bit.

So maybe lift up there she goes. Perfect. And then see if that is workable. Try this on top of the blocks. Just try. Can you lift your back up so straight, so high, so strong. They'll know. Is that okay? Feel right. These are good. They're perfect. Just push back. Come in and sit up. Tolerance straight or hold it there. I'm going to change this spring when you come in this time. Don't move anything.

No, no, no, no, no. Come in. You're good. Don't move anything. You're perfect. Lift your belt. I'm losing my pants. I should've warned you because that happens all the time. Turn to one side. Take your feet off where we positioned this head. So I like to put the pad on lengthwise to avoid that.

But even in that situation it can happen anyway. So let's try again. Come back on it and don't sit at the very back edge of it. Sit toward the front of it. Yeah, just so you're there. It's nice and light. Now Walk your feet up, hold onto the box and walk your feet up. There you go. Toes apart. Heels together. I want to try to keep you decent. Okay? Okay.

Lift your back all the way up. So this is the straightest back that you can get even more forward with your chest, even more fuller. And now try push your legs out straight. And what happens if you try to straighten your arms even more? Oh God. Push. Come in and lift. Even. I didn't expect that. Push. Keep the chest up. Go ahead.

Easy shoulders and do two more and in and one more and then I'm going to get what I want. Good. This last one, you're going to stay in. Okay. Give me your hands. Don't fall down. Come in, stop. Give me your hands. Good. Can you sit up straight here on your own even more, even more? Good if I let go. Can you stay here? Thanks. So good. Can you push back with your legs but keep your body just like it is only straightening your legs and coming back in and reach for my shoulders. That's one. This is beautiful posture. That's what I wanted for the first two.

So when we do this again, that's one to work on, right? So want to build a program that makes sense for her press and come in. Excellent. One more press and come in. Let's stay up and work on that posture. Up to all up, straight. Reach from it. Try to get me, try it and let me try to get me stuff off.

I got to tease you a little bit. Step ups are one side. They're very good. I know I'm not going to do any rotation or anything like that because of the booms situation. Scoot back just a little wee bit on the box and wrap your arms around your waist and you like to get a little round. You actually take direction very well. So when I say round you really go into it, but because you do, I'm going to say less of that. I actually want you to think up and you're scoping in, but you're not going to get shorter or shrunken in any way.

So it's just a slight rounding in the back. Just a slight good Theodore apart still like they were before hip width. And you're going to go backwards in this rounded position. So keep your eyes forward, abdominals, pull into the low back. Don't overly round but do pull in yes.

And then exhale and come forward. Good. So the roundness is coming from down here, not from up here and this. Yeah, exactly. So pull from this place like I grabbed your waistband and pulled you back underneath with the hips from the hips. More hips, more hips. So right now I'm just getting you pushing back from the top. I want you to push back from the bottom. Good. So even here with have to move to three and then exhale and come forward again.

Move. Yes. And come forward. You know your glutes, you see muscles, squeeze those. There she is. And come up. I'm gonna let go. You do two more. Squeeze two, three and come up one more. Squeeze. Two, three and done. So find your, I have to find your language, right? That makes sense for you. Hold onto the bar and lifted all the way up. And this is again because we did rounded and then flat back before when we were doing stomach massage. We do it again around it. Exercise and none of flat exercise. So we've already done the round.

Now we stay lifted. No more round. Sit Up straight. Look straight up there. We're going to go backwards like this. Lift up even tall. Go back a little bit and lift again. Lift up. You're good. Go back.

Lift to come up. Excellent. Lift off the box. Go back, lift up. Good. Stay there for a second. I'm going to take your bar. Keep your hands where they are. I'm going to take the bar. Good. Go. Get the bar. Come up and get it. Come up and get it. Nice. Now stay that high and go back. Go back. Go back. Who yourself home. Can you try that without me? Lift two, three, pool yourself home. One more time, left two, three and come home. You can touch your toes and take a little baby stretch.

Is that a yes? Hm. Good. Come on up. I do want to do side to side, so move back just a little bit on the box because I want your legs still very, very taught in the strap. This is really keeping you alive. Arms up and we're going to bend side to side with the bar is still a nice, tall, flat back. Go over to one side. Reach, reach, reach and come back up. And if I could just reposition you a little bit more forward. Yes. And then go sideways to me to three and come back.

I'm letting go over to three. Come back up over this way. Stay forward. Two, three, come back up and go. Overstay forward. No leaning back and come up. One more. Lift up. What happened in my big posture. Go reach up to three and come up. Stay there.

Just keep lifting. No more band. Hold it. Lift, lift again. Lift one more inch. I'll take it. Relaxing. Swing off off the box. You Go. How's the back with that? Is it hard to come up out? Yeah, just a little bit. Right. So I'm going to make her do the long stretch because she can and because she needs it. Um, and I might not really move the carriage very much, but we'll see what happens. So it looks like a pushup.

You're actually going to hold onto the bar and put your feet on the pad. That's all that happens. And then I might make you move it back and forth. Let's see. Okay, come all the way up. Yup. You're gonna lift your heels up so you're on your tip toes and then come forward. So you're in a flat. Come forward to, you're in a flat pushup line. Don't bend your arms. Just keep them strong and straight. Lower this down, even flatter. [inaudible] hold it there. Now this part is very rounded.

Can you make that flat? Good? So that looks much more like a pushup to me. Not Bad, right? Push the carriage back. Pull the carriage forward. That's all you have to do. Push it back hard. Pull it forward. She's speechless. Bring it in. Straight arm. Saundie straight arms, very strong. One more, even straight back. Now lift your hips and stand up.

You can walk your feet forward. Perfect. Keep your hands where they are and put your feet back here for elephant. So heels in front of the blocks right here where my fingers and flat one and then the other one too. Good. Drop your head. You didn't do the same thing you just did. Moving the carriage in and out. And I do want a flatter back for this cause I don't want her so rounded with whatever's going on with her bone density. So straight, strong arms.

Dig Your heels down into the pad and give me a little push and then a pull with the heels. Pull in. Good push and pull. Now, no banging. Push than pull. Push. Show me, you can stop. Push, pull in and hold it. Hold it. Hold it. I'm not convinced yet. That's in. Okay, go five out in, one, out into heels, down, out in three abdominals lifted out. Drop your head and in. That's for last one and down.

Very good, very good. Come down onto your knees, put your feet back against the blocks, just like they are bent forward like that with the toes flexed. Good. And I do want her to do the round a little bit and then the arch, so not, I'm not going to have her sit all the way back cause it's too rounded for me. But drop the head drop. You can actually watch your knees and see what they're doing with strong locked arms. Kick the carriage out. It's just two springs and bring it back in. Just your knees going and feet kicking out. Yes. Spend it in even bigger.

Helped in, out in, excellent out. Don't change a thing in and out. Drop your head a little deeper and out and go. Five and four and three and two. I'll take it one more and stop. Lift your head up, arch your back the other way, the hair, strong arms.

You got this look straight out. Don't change anything except for your knees. They're going to shoot out and in kick, bent, kick. Then don't wear your back kick and then send your tail out kick. And then three more. Three open the chest too and just the knees one and stop.

Step off the carriage was good to feel good. Yes. A second. Calgary ready? Don't use any of them. Yeah, come on to back for the running. So just like you did at the very beginning, sit at the edge with your hip here and lie on your back. This is going to feel great. Walk your feet up to the far tip toes and we're just going to go for a run. Arms are down by your side. Nice and long. Donald's are in and up.

Push the carriage all the way out until it stops. It feels light, right? Dropped one heel and bend the other knee. So you go into like a prince pose or whatever that sounds like to you and then switch other foot up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. So I'm looking at your body and its alignment. So I see that the shoulders make a line and the hips make a line and I'm looking to make sure you're not doing any of the, Mambo solves a getting in the groove thing. So just up and down with the carriage. Good range of motion in the ankles.

This is important because how do we enjoy ourselves, right? Stepping off the curb, keep going. Go for eight more. Eight, seven, nice and high with the heels. Good. Very important to use your feet properly because once you step off that curb, now you've got a broken hip. Now what? Right? That's, nobody wants that. Not on the short list up. And that's enough. Bend your knees and come on and let's do pelvic lift.

His heels go onto the corner. Hips come up in the air. Hold it there. Good. And I'm going to ask you to come down. Most of your rib cages on the mat actually put all the back of the rib cage on the Mat. Yes. Now you've got an ice scoop in the belly. Press the legs all the way out to a straight push. Bring it all the way in and push. Bring it all the way. Good. Use your breath, take it all the way out and bring it in. And now you do move actually quite a lot from your bones, meaning like you snap out.

And I would like to see you kind of grab onto your muscles. So push out like all your muscles are doing more work than your bones. Ooh, that was better. And then the carriage is much smoother that way. So squeeze all the muscles and pull back in. Yeah. So the bones just do what the muscles tell them to do. Right? So you want, don't want to jam your bones around, especially if you're, if you're dealing with a little bit of the Osteopenia, one more come all the way in and stop. Hold the care. Jen, that's me. I want you to do it. Ah, the all your tendons go roll all the way down one bone at a time.

Okay, I'll take that. And these come in. Excellent. We're going to move away from the reformer and we'll bring the Cadillac back out and do some other exercises there. Okay. Okay. Excellent. We had a great first lesson on the reformer.

Chapter 7

Cadillac and Wall Exercises

I want to do some of the mat work with you and then I think we're going to move to the wall when we're done. So why don't you lie down flat. Um, and remember that crazy hundred we did on the reformer where your arms were pumping up and down. We're gonna revisit that a little bit differently. So let's bend the knees.

And I wasn't crazy about what I got out of that the first time. So I'm going to have her do this with her legs down and show me that Ab curl that you did on the apparatus earlier. So curling up and just stay right there. Come down one interim that are not so high and pump your arms right here, up and down. Inhale for five, exhale for five. Beautiful. Feel it. Inhale for five and a good way. Exhale for five. Good. And inhale for five. Exhale. Don't get no chicken scratches.

Really pumped. This is a circulatory exercise. Exhale, two, three, four, five, two more sense. Inhale and exhale. Big, big, big. One more. Inhale deeply. Let me hear it. Exhale. Okay. I heard it. Stop right there. You can lower yourself back down and because she's who she is, I want her to do a bridge right now. So lift your hips up and this is a very good homework exercise for you to do and practice. Okay. Stay there. Stand only on your heels so that your toes can even come up and you'll start to feel something happening in the back of the body. Glutes, hamstrings.

Yeah, so you had arrived just like that and maybe you'll stay here for another 10 seconds or so. We can, you know, heckle you or do other things like that. This is an excellent exercise for you to practice at home. If in one you're lying down in places where you're like, oh, I could use some back strengthening and great to keep your bones active and engaged. I actually do this in the mornings. So magic. See then you've been doing plotters all this time. Bring yourself all the way down. Bring these into just, we're going to take some leg circles here. I'm skipping the roll up.

Does that make sense? Why I would skip the roll up. We can talk about that later. I'd take one like all the way down. Keep on leg up and let's take this guy up to the ceiling. Arms down by your side. You don't need them and you saw this earlier. Stretch the arms nice and long and let's take a circle around and back up to center. Circle around. So limber, circle around and up to center. Hold strong on this leg.

So this leg is doing something. The arms are doing something, they're pressing down into the mat so the whole body is active and for her that kind of cuing is going to be effective because she needs to keep her muscles really strong. Yes, reverse and up rivers and up. Good arms and bottom leg are working and the abdominals also, they like to work too and up. One more circle and up. Bend the knee. You're done with that one. Switch lights. Go ahead and keep the foot nice and long. Dominoes are in arms strong. Give me a cross and up to center. Oh, cross and up to center, across and up.

Stretch this leg out even longer and keep going across and one more across and reverse direction. Go out across enough and out. Across and up. Keep it smooth. It's a circle and out, across and up. One more out across and hold than the Nian. Good. Okay. Bring both knees into the chest. Single leg stretch here and I might have our lever head down.

Let's see what happens. Putting both hands to this knee. Let's take this leg all the way up and out and change legs. That's good. And Change. Do a couple more. In and in and in. And Anne, one more set in and Anne, good. Hold it here. See if you can lift your head up right here. I'm a little upset.

Abdominals are in on a little bit. Perfect. Keep going. Change other like, and, and, and, and look at your legs. Make one foot go where the other foot goes and stretch and stretch. Same spot every time. And, and goods. That wayward leg comes back into the space or it's supposed to be, bring both knees in and rest your head. Good. I'm going to skip double leg, but I am going to make her do the scissors. [inaudible] stretch one leg.

Grab this guy two hands. Yeah. Just grab it. You got it. Give me two good poles. One to change legs, one to keep going. Now rapid fire in, in change in, in change in, in [inaudible]. Now lift your head and put your abdominals on and let's see what happens. Look into the belly. Yes, in, in, in, in a, stretch the legs in, in, and in. In one more. Set in and, and bring both knees in and put your head down.

Still. Still good. Okay, good. Turn to one side and bring yourself up to sitting. So turn to one side and you should learn this. Put your hand there and I push yourself up to setting because sometimes rolling up puts you at risk for fractures later. If you don't get the central control based this way, please grab the roll back bar. Put your feet against the pulse.

Here's what I want you to do. Hold on to this. It's not that light. Sit up straight and tall. You're not going to go anywhere except I want you to bring your shoulders right over your hips. So the best posture you can manage, even if that means bending your knees a little bit. Yes. So this is going to be more important than this. Okay. Give me a little strength under your armpits and I want you to just press the bar down to maybe shoulder height. Hold it there. Lift up straighter, lift up taller. Oh, there she is. Hold it there. Five. Keep lifting.

Hold it there for keep pressing. Hold it there. Three. Get tolerant higher. Hold it there to push that bar down and then you can let it float back up. Or second time. Here we go. Lift. Stretch your arms even straight. Or push that bar away from you. Yes, Madame. A little higher. A little straighter. Hold it. Three.

Hold it to keep lifting. Hold it. One. Let the bar float up. One more. Try without me. Okay. Press it down longer. Arms, fists forward. Good. Lean into the bar a little bit. Lean into it. Beautiful. Three, hold it. Get a little higher too. One more count and one. Ah, now you get to have some fun. Drop your chin to your chest and roll yourself down. One Vertebrae at a time. Don't let go the bar Sunday. Take the bar. Oh, lower yourself down. One you can roll down to the table, chins or chest.

Tell you very last. Second, your head will be the last thing to arrive after the rest of this. Mine has gone. They're good. And I want you to do this. Lift your head and go ahead and look at the bar. Is it straight? Oh, can you make it straight? Yeah. So using your vision is really, really helpful here. I would even bring this hand in just a little bit so that you're right. Even dead center now start to roll up slow. Shannon. Channon that's not that round though. Roll yourself up. That's even the other way.

Drop your chin to your chest. Just drop your head. There you go. Now round your low back. There she is, and then you can sit up straight. Try again. Keep the bar straight and come back down. Take your time. Your head's going to go forward all the way. Nice. And then you're down all the way. When you're down, you're down.

That part's over. Now start the second part from the top of the head forward. Eyes into the abdominals. Look where you're going. Round yourself up. Not Bad all the way. Tell me when you're done. I'm done. Good. Sit all the way up straight. I'm going to ask you to come up onto your knees. Not Hands and knees, but just knees and face this way.

And you can be a full arms distance away from the Poles. Okay. Just one arm or you're never gonna move that bar. Come a little more forward. Yeah, so the bars like right there. Okay. And just as you were sitting before and I asked you to press the springs down, I want you to do it here. It's actually going to be a little bit easier. Don't lean on it. Stay up straight and tall. Push and hold. Just hold it.

Their abdominals may start to quake. That's fine with me. And then let it come back up. Feels okay. Try again. Press down. How far can you get it pressed down? These are your lats, the muscles in the back of the body that you need. Keep pressing, keep pressing, squeeze, press. Push my fingers away even more. Push me away. I'm going to keep coming up unless you push me and then release the Var. Do it again. Right in here. Push down that way. Yes. Open the chest.

Beautiful. Hold it. Three good shaking. Hold it to one more count on and let it come all the way up. So that will become a good chest expansion for her, but gives us another base of support to work from. And a nice straight spine. I've got no fluxion or extension, so she's utterly, utterly safe. I'd like to move to the wall, um, and do some exercises you can do at home with some hand weights.

Do you have some dumbbells or something? You can use your perfect though. So these will be great for you to do at home. So let's relocate. Okay, so we're here at the wall and there's a few exercises I'd like for you to store in your memory so you can do at home because these are great exercises to do anywhere. You don't have to lie on the floor, they're not so cumbersome. You will use a set of weights. These are two pounds you can use no more than three. One or two is really plenty. And the first one is simply for you to stand at the wall.

So I want you to do just that. Try to put the base of your skull to the wall and try to open the chest. And this part is, you know for all of us is quite stiff in that upper back zone. We're doing this all day or typing all day. So we get very rounded here. The challenge is to open all of this up but then not come so far off the wall down in this low back. So you want to kind of work your abdominals in, keep the chest open and then just hang out there for a few minutes and see if your spine adjusts to that or resist. Where do you feel it?

You want the back of the neck? Yes. To lengthen. Just like that and see if you can just let the arms hang, hold onto that position. And we're going to take that into the next exercise, which we'll be rolling down, but just hold for a couple more seconds. Sure. Your spine starts to protest. You're like, it doesn't wanna stay open. It wants to relax and your job is to fight that. Beautiful. Okay. Take a step forward with one foot and then the other.

So you're just a little bit a ways from the wall heals together and now you'll find it might be maybe a little bit easier to do like that. Yup. That's just like that. A little bit narrower. We don't really use a dancer position. Just a little slight rotation. And we're going to actually peel off the wall so I can help drop your head first and let your arms just dangle and then just start to round down. And I want you to keep your low back on the lawns long as you can.

And I'm only gonna ask you to come about to here. So maybe the mid back is still on the wall and your arms are just going to hang. Okay. Pull your abdominals in and roll yourself back up the wall. Low back, mid, back, up, back. The chest will open. Nice. Without too much strain there. You open, but you don't force it, right? Yeah, and this is a good thing for you to sort of learn about and how does it feel when it's forced or when it's just open and restful so that you can use this. It should be functional. Drop your head, drop your arms and let's roll down.

Again, abdominals. We're in and up and you don't want to collapse, but you deliberately rolled down just about halfway and then roll right back up, back up, back up. And when you get all the way up, we're going to take some arm circles right here. So I want you to take your arms forward, keep your posture just the way we set it up. Come just the top of the head. Circle around and down, and do it again. Lift up at the peak height of the arms. Try The abdominals inward. Beautiful and open around and keep going.

Lift all the way up. Pull in and circle around again. Lift all the way up and circle around and you can use your breath. Let's reverse the circle. Take it out and up. Stop at the peak. This is the length you want. And then lower down, open around. Keep the chest open. Don't worry. The wall is not going anywhere. Everybody.

Get it down and take two more. Open around and bring it down. And your final one open around and it down. Good. Let the arms hang down by your side and take one more step away with your feet forward even more. Um, that's, that might be good. Let's see what happens. We're going to slide down the wall and do a wall. Sit. Is that familiar to you?

Hold on. Don't go yet. Is that sore? Does that sound like something you might've done once? Maybe. Maybe not. Okay. Open your feet. Take a step apart from each other so they're in parallel. Exactly. And I want you to bend your knees far enough that it looks like you're sitting in a chair. Stop right there. That's plenty. Hold it.

Put your head against the wall. Hang out. How long you think you could stay here? Not, not, not, not that long. Right? This is a great exercise for you though. Push into your heels into the floor and slide right back up. Beautiful.

I do want your feet out a little bit further because when you bend down, you don't want the knees to go all the way over the toes. Keep parallel. We're looking for alignment, so toes right in front of heels and try again. Slide down the wall. Don't go plummeting. Nice and then hold it there. Keep your tail into the wall. Keep your heels into the floor. I like to sing the alphabet when I'm here because I know by the time I get to Z it's time to come up. I sing really fast though.

Slide back up one more and slide down. Hold it there. Good knees, right over toes, parallel. Dominal still working. Chest is open, the weights are adding just a little bit of extra something. Five, four. Dig those heels down. Three, two, good one and your up. Give me the weights and I want you to stand on your own two feet away from the wall and this one is homework as well. Okay. It takes maybe one, maybe step forward.

Put your heels together and I want you to reach behind you with flat palms until your palms are on the wall. Not High, but just wherever they reach. Now look straight ahead, lift your chest and push that wall away like it's a two ton wall for five seconds. Lifting four seconds. Chest up. Yes. Three keep pressing. Two excellent. And one, take your arms away and look up to the ceiling. Reach behind you. Five lifting. Four oh three does not feel good.

Two and one. Repeat the whole thing. Sweep the arms back. Find the wall. Press it away from you. And lift up. Hold, stretch the arms. Stretch the spine, strong legs, strong waist, shoulders, relaxed. And one more. Sweep the arms all the way up. Bend forward, back then up the wall, high up the wall. Beautiful. Three, two, and last. Last one.

Arms very long and very low there. Now lift the chest. That's a much better one. Chin straight down. So the spine is a lot. There she goes. That's your standing posture and what you want to have in every day. No, right.

You're not the, if you can get to it here, you can get to it in your everyday life. Last back, bend arms, come up and lift and open the chest. Lift and open the chest. Go get the wall. Put Your fingernails right on the wall. One, two, three and five. Fantastic. Sophie, you're done. That was great. Great work. You have a little bit of homework, right?

So I showed you the bridge on the Cadillac on the table that you should do. Um, I would do it when you're already lying down. So in bed is totally fine, but you do want to make sure that just the heels are on the ground. This series with the wall, just stamping is great. The arm weights are great, but most important is this combination. So arms behind, you're working on your posture, working on really bearing weight into the wall and then pairing that with a little bit about then whatever you can get yourself to do this way a couple of times just for blood flow, rejuvenation, posture, alignment, everything's in there. Okay, that's lovely working with you. Okay. Lots to say around that session. So we should just have a couple of minutes together to pow. Do you think this could help you in your real life? Absolutely. Yeah.

Chapter 8

Final Thoughts

I mean I can feel muscles that I know I don't use at all. Right. And I really would like to, um, I'd like to begin into using them. Ah, yeah, that feels any favorite exercises you you like today? Um, well I do like the one that I've actually been doing. It feels good on my back. Let me do it, the bridge. But I think it would be fun to kind of use some of the, the equipment too.

Yeah, it's fun. It's, it's very out. It's acrobatic. Yeah. And you kind of get inspired about using your body in a different way, but it does feel, I mean you do, you feel like a success even though I know I didn't begin to do it. You did. You have your, that was a foundation. You were complete success. I didn't, here's your reference. I didn't cut anything out. I didn't really modify anything. I added special things for you. I gave you an intermediate exercise today, which is the plank.

Like push up position, which is not given an a first time session typically. So beyond success, you know, that was way beyond basic beginners. So you should feel pretty star. Like you were definitely the star of the show. Thank you so much. Thank you.

I noticed that this client was a little bit nervous and kind of fearful and um, and I love how you made her the star and you also like built everything around her for success. Like she just kept building, like she was winning and then she lit up and she was glowing and she was just doing more and more and more and it was like a breakthrough. I just saw a change in her eyes. It's amazing, amazing. And I'm so inspired to go create that for somebody, you know, make them the star and make them successful and win. Excellent. That's your role. That is our role as a teacher is to raise up our, our clients and give them that experience so much for sharing that. Thank you. Um, I do want to talk a little bit about the choices that I made for her.

So she has pre osteoporosis. Um, as a general rule, too much flection or extension is a bad thing. Uh, so, and rotation of course would be something we also leap out. So I was already thinking I'm not going to turn her too much. I'm not gonna bend her too much, but in feeling her out and just feeling her body, uh, once we got to the short box, for instance, her stomach massage, her upper back at this point in her seventies, you know, already has quite a bit of, um, of a kyphotic posture. And so even when she was upright, you could still see, I'm not sure if you could, so I'm telling you that she was quite rounded in her upper back and she could access it, but it was rounded and rather stiff. So I wanted her to have exercises that could open that and I wanted her to access her abdominals. So a plank, which I wasn't sure I would be able to get her to do on a hard surface, seemed like I might be able to get her to do it on the, on the reformer.

And she actually came into it quite well. I heard that. I heard the group go, oh, hold their breath and then oh well, you know, which, you know, I was waiting myself to make that sound. So um, she executed everything quite well. There were some learning style issues here as well, which you know, again is on the teacher. It's on you to find that place, to communicate with them that you really make the most sense. Um, so we, uh, I took her on lighter springs. I did her stomach massage, you know, I didn't like that she got so rounded here. So I really wanted to get her out of that position and bring her into the flat back. I focused primarily on the third stomach massage where I could get her up and reaching and sort of experiencing that length, that and posture and alignment that I wanted her to have. Um, from there are short box, I did only three exercises and no tree. Right. Because I didn't want her going back and forth.

I didn't trust her balance so much. I wasn't sure if I was giving her the kind of cuing she really needed. I wasn't confident about that, uh, communication yet. So I was like, let's leave the tree out. But I do want her to go to side to side. And I found my biggest challenge with her was really conveying the lift, which we got to at the end, but she needed to be upright. And so I knew with her like when I get to the end she'll be there.

But it was very hard for her in a seated position. We finally went to the Cadillac and did some basic math. I chose for her abdominal series to do the single leg stretch and then the single straight leg stretch. Did you notice that? Less stress on the spine and the abdominals and then exactly. These are the reasons why I was like, she doesn't do double leg loaded exercises for osteoporosis or Osteopenia, but she was very coordinated and she had a lot of range of motion so she could do single leg stretch and then the scissors and she did quite well with those.

And it felt like a bit of the routine. Then we sat up to do her, her spine stretch forward. I didn't really want her to do more rounding at that point. So we loaded her with the bar, bringing resistance into it, teaching her again about that lift, which I wasn't really getting on the reformer. I wasn't that happy with how the reformer went and me getting that length through the spine for her. But we did achieve it a little bit on the Cadillac with the, with the rollback bar.

And then again the rolling up and down again wasn't my favorite exercise that she did. But we moved from that into kneeling with the bar and did a little piece of the chest expansion and that actually went very well. And then I could sort of access her the back of the body and the front of the body, all things I'm concerned about with osteoporosis. I said, what do you do for fitness? And in the beginning of our session, and she said she walks a lot, so she's comfortable in this, very comfortable in this. So lying down, uh, kneeling, better standing. This is the client you want to bring upright. Let's do as many things as we can here.

And she was the most in her own element at the wall. So she got homework out of the wall series. She got, you know, a sense of her own body awareness at the wall and by the time she came to chest expansion with a little back bend combination, she, she was executing the full expression of [inaudible]. So, um, that for me was the great sort of success and at least you want to end on that high note. If it had not gone well, I might have chosen to continue the lesson and done something else with her. And I thought for a moment I'm going to keep her with the weights. We're going to step away from the wall and do a whole arm series. But she ended so bright and shining at that moment and I said, that's, that's the end of the session. That's where you end on that high note, send them away wanting more, wanting that feeling and able to translate that feeling into their real life.

Her posture changed completely for free by the end and her demeanor, which is, you know, and that's the gift of glottis is that I did it. That's the greatest thing your client ever says. Right? I did it. And you're like, it's amazing cause none of your sessions should be accidental. And that it's, there's a lot of pressure on you with that first time lesson, but you have to be thinking ahead, not just what are the exercises that are appropriate to this client, but what is the best way I'm going to get through and really make an impact today? Not next week. They didn't, they didn't sign up for anything else. Right? You, you just have right now, this is, this is the critical moment. So be thinking ahead, make wise choices and put the focus on the communication and letting the, letting the client shine the best you can do for them. And for you. Well, there was a very stark difference in their personalities and their vocal tone.

Um, and I tried to be sensitive to the second student who had seen the first, which is unusual. So she wasn't coming in blind and hopeful anymore. Now she was sort of daunted about this task before her and, um, I didn't want to get pumped up and give her a frenetic energy. So I really tried to bring my tone down to just be, I'm under you, I'm supporting you, I'm helping you sort of float to the top. Where as in the first session I felt like I had to control her much more with my tone. Uh, she had a lot of energy. She wanted to, you know, perform. Um, and she was first. So, you know, you set the east, she sets the bar high.

So yeah. So much of the teaching is psychological. And how do you sympathize, uh, with the client in front of you and sort of think, well, what do they need? What would best serve them in, in this situation? So, uh, you know, just stepped back at my tone and brought everything sort of a little bit quieter and try to get her to kind of, you know, tune into me. I stayed low physically on the reformer, very low. I squatted down quite a lot to just be at her level because this is very powerful and almost imposing. You know, you, when we hover over clients and they're, you know, at our disposal, it can be, it can be not just overwhelming but threatening.

And that's the last thing you want. So I physically tried to bring not just my voice down bow, but me down. And I was like, down here I felt like, you know, are you good? I stayed low for, for the stomach massage. I stayed low for the, for the short box. Um, and then bring her up as the session went on. So she went up into plank up into the kneeling, up onto the wall. So she got bigger and then we, you know, I felt like we met psychologically in a good place where she could be, you know, I, that's heady stuff, but I think, you know, yeah.

But it happens in a session organically. Most of you are doing all of that. You don't realize it, but you have to, or you'd never survived the section. Right. They'd get up and walk out. So you're, you're doing some of this stuff organically, but if you tap into it, you can really use it as a tool and it's, it's very powerful. Even more than whatever list of exercises you have is that ability to really connect with another human being and help them. It was really a pleasure to teach both of them in very different ways.

And I mean, and that's what keeps it fresh for all of us is that discovery process. The first time session. If I didn't have any first-timers I probably wouldn't be teaching anymore because it's, you know, teaching the same old routine that people, you know, as an exciting, I like seeing that person come from, you know, doubt and you know, mistrust into full passion for the method. That's exciting. I would teach for sirens all day each. I mean, the lesson here is really watched the first time sessions. They are, they're the most exciting sessions you can observe and learn from a, and even if you don't have a lot of first timers watching other teachers teach first timers, you know, we'll teach you what to do, what not to do. When does it work? When does it not work?

The observation phase of training is over before you know it, and you never really get to go back and do that again. So in our teacher training, we, we have the, the trainees watch first time sessions all the time, so that you really get to see it, not the regular sessions. The new clients, how do they experience Claudia's? How is it delivered? So if you can, whenever you can schedule a permitting, take some time to absorb those first time clients in the hands of other instructors and see how they deal with it. Thank you ladies. [inaudible].