First Dance on the Reformer

Hi, my name is Viktor Uygan, and welcome to the First Dance on the Reformer. If you haven't watched the tutorial, How to Approach the Dancer, please do that, because the things that we talked about, especially the evaluation, what we did to evaluate the dancers, today, we're gonna actually create some exercises that will address the problems that we find in that evaluation. So make sure you watch that one. After you watch, come back and join me and Kelly Uygan to do some exercises. We're gonna do a lot of talking in these exercises, just, I want you to to know, because I kinda wanna explain to you what I'm doing and how it relates, the tutorial, the evaluation in the tutorial that I did, all right?

So, we have a jump board in here. I'm gonna ask her to lay down on her back. It's up to you. You can keep your headrest up, middle, or low position. She has right now two reds and one blue.

She usually does her blue, I'm sorry, she usually does her double leg work in three reds. So she's doing a little bit lighter. Pretty much exercises we do, actually, I'm gonna ask you to make it a little bit lighter. A couple things. I'm gonna ask her to come forward and almost grab the carriage with her hands.

And when you ask that client, also tell them to keep the hands closer to their hips, not outside so they don't pinch themselves. Plus, for her, it's not gonna matter, so she made it a little bit lighter. But if you have a shorter, really shorter client or you have a little dancer that's very short, you're still gonna ask them to come in and grab the reformer so they have the total body engagement with their arms. But remember, the springs is gonna be very heavy, so you wanna make sure that springs are a lot lighter. So, now, we're gonna straight your legs.

We are basically doing double leg work in here. And once again, all the Pilates principles, all the knowledge you have, you're gonna maintain this. But to relate to the dancer a little bit, what I wanna do, I'm gonna ask her to bring her leg down lower so she's pretending that she's actually standing. What do I watch here? Of course, is she able to maintain a neutral spine?

Is she able to maintain her neutral pelvic position? If one of those is not good or jeopardizing the strength of the spine, I would ask her to move up. So those are the disclaimers. Please be careful on those. We're gonna start basically just bending the knee and extending.

We're doing a plie. Remember, this is a parallel plie in sixth position. And I'm just looking at basic alignment. Is she tracking it correctly? Does she even like to be in this position?

Most dancers is gonna start to track external rotation. So, I'm kind of enforcing the parallel alignment and watching her to be coming in and going out without rolling in or rolling out. Next, we're gonna do releve, which was our high heel, remember? So from here, I'm gonna ask her to go releve up, and come down. What I'm watching, is she able to move smoothly?

Is she able to move without creating any movement on her hips? Is she moving together with both feet in the same time? And is she putting the weight in the right place, between the first toe and second toe? Because you wanna see, sometimes one foot will sickle, and one foot will maintain the correct alignment, or they both will wing. Remember, this was the pronation or the supination for the feet, sickling or wiggling.

Fantastic. After we do this, next, what I wanna do, I wanna keep the knees bent and stay right there and just move with the heels. So, heels down, and you wanna make sure heel can come down all the way down. Now, there's no movement of the carriage, and just lift up and down. And up and down.

This is a very important movement as well. Once again, more than the strength, I'm also looking the quality movement, the quality. Is she keeping the rhythm going up and down? And also, is she keeping her alignment going up and down? Fantastic.

And straight your legs and come back in. Now we're gonna do first position. We are going to first position. Again, mostly I do actually bring the client in to change the position, but in here, she's already in the right position. We are working with a dancer, once again.

I trust her to change the position while the carriage is out. And she's doing plie, basic plie, once again. I'm looking at the forward alignment. Hips are square, ribs. The alignments, everything is great.

And now I'm gonna add a couple fun stuff in here as well. So, what are we gonna add in here? From here, she's in the first position. She's gonna go up on the releve. And then she's gonna bend her knees and drop the heels down and straight her legs.

And releve, and bend. And heels down, and straight. And up, and bend, heels down, and straight. One more. Let's reverse it.

So plie, keep the heels down, then releve. Straight your legs, now resist going down, right? It's very easy, especially for dancers, from pointe shoes, they don't really have that strength to roll down from their pointe shoe, so this is a great exercise, the feeling for them to roll down slowly and not just collapse down to the stage. Awesome. Now, the last one, let's do from plie to releve, plie to releve.

This is a great exercise again. This stimulates, actually, the progression of this, I should say, it's jumping, right? She's landing, jumping, landing, jumping, and they need to be nice quality of movement again. It's not choppy, so it's not down and then straight, up, straight down, right? It should be a quality movement coming in and out.

Awesome, beautiful. Now, let's do this. So, from here, we did this. We're gonna go to one more thing that I wanna show you. This is the first time that actually we're gonna kind of, in the evaluation you remember the external rotators.

I'm gonna ask her to come to plie. Beautiful. From here, let's close the left leg in without moving the right, and then open. Open, open, open, open, beautiful. Let's do it three more times.

And in, and open. And in, and open. And one more, and stop. Beautiful, now right one. And in, and external rotate.

Again, external rotate, beautiful. Two more. And one more. This is a great exercise to maintain the hip stability and also work the external rotators of the leg. Now let's go to the second position, mmhmm.

Now from here, let's try this same thing again. From here, you're gonna bend your knees in, and we're gonna close all the way, and open. Let's repeat three more times. And three, beautiful. And two.

Awesome. Now, the right one. And two. And yes, and open. Beautiful.

So the focus, not moving the hip, but moving the leg, and working the external rotation. Awesome. We could try this also with internal rotation. The dancers is gonna hate you, and they might not able to do too much internal rotation, but it's very good for them, because they overwork external rotations all the time. Again, you can open your feet a little bit wider if they have a lot of internal rotation, so they can actually move their knee inside.

Once you've got that, you're gonna open again. External, and come back in. And open, and in. Two more, beautiful. Keep the opposite hip down.

Now to the right, and left hip down, good. And press when you open, beautiful. Opposition, and last one, and go out. Now, we're gonna add a little bit of coordination and movement to this as well. So she's gonna come in same way.

She's gonna externally open one leg so the rest doesn't move. Now, extend the leg straight out. Keep the hips and then come back, internal rotation from the hip, and bend. Other side. And right.

Extend, internal rotation. Bend, external, extend, internal rotation, beautiful. And internal, stay there. How are you doing? Let's do reverse.

So now what you're gonna, external rotation first. Bend, come in, and bring it to internal, and extend. Beautiful, right one. And come in, and internal, and extend. One more set.

Bend, and come back in. Very good. And the right one, and bend. Awesome, and straight your legs and relax. So, this exercises is great to work actually with the hip, the stabilization, the movement of the hip, doing the internal, external, and working with the parallel as well.

One more thing I wanna also show you. You could actually do this in the first position especially. Add a couple grand plies, which is demi plie, bend your knees, and it's gonna be heels staying and bending the legs as much as you can, and then if she keeps coming, because there's the angle, the angle of the ankle joint gets greater, the heel has to come up. So that's the only reason her heel comes up. It's passive, it's not active.

Perfect. So she's gonna press the heel down once again, come back to demi, and then straight leg. So once again, she bends and tries to keep her heel down. Now, she continues to bend, and she still tries to keep the heel down, but it comes up because of the greater angle. Then she first pushes the heel down.

The minute heel touches, and puts her legs together. Fantastic. So this is the demi plie and grand plie. Now, awesome. Now, should we do some single leg?

Beautiful. So, while doing stretching, we're gonna do maybe arms on your knees before we do that. So let's stand up, mmhmm. And what I'm going to do, I have two red and one blue. She's taking out basically two red out.

She has one blue right now. She does her arm work usually with one red, but as I said, just make it a little bit lighter, everything we do here. Now, we're gonna get into kneeling position in here, but one thing, we're gonna trying to be externally rotate. So the front leg is external rotation, and if you notice the back leg of Kelly, it's still external rotation as well. So this is kind of like a fourth position, when we get in the fourth position.

That's what we're stimulating. She's grabbing the same strap of the front leg, and from here, she's gonna get into port de bras, ballet position, and from here, she's gonna pull the right, and she's gonna reach forward with the left for the arabesque, and then come back in, and continue, same thing. What I'm watching here, squareness of the hips once again, right, the position, external rotation, and I'm seeing if she's able to rotate her spine and her shoulders without actually affecting the lower part of the body, fantastic, which dancers do many times. Now, do you guys remember the box we talked about it, right? So right now, Kelly's audience is actually in front, so I'm gonna ask her to turn towards the corner on her right corner, so this is her box, but she's not affecting the hips.

The hips still to the audience, but her shoulders now, her port de bras towards the corner. And comes back in second. And once again, turn. Beautiful, two more. Nice.

And one more. The next set that I'm gonna ask her, she's gonna stimulate pirouette, which is the turn. Now, she rotated and bring the second arm to give herself a little bit speed and rotate, and come back in, once again. She prepared, and she pulls in, turns, and comes back, two more. And open, in.

Yes, that should be a little bit with the accent. She's doing great. In, and come back in. Awesome. Let's do other side.

So it's a really fun exercise. It's relatable to the dancers, the position of the leg from the beginning, because it's turned out in both legs, so they feel like they're in the fourth position like this, and they're able to move their spine without affecting their hips. Awesome, so same thing. Let's start with the one arm forward, one arm back. And one.

And two. Beautiful. And really reaching. This is also gonna relate to her arabesque opposition, and four. Now she's gonna do the second.

She's going to her left corner of the box right now, and come back in. And nice and long. Do you guys remember, we talk about the stabilization? She's not squeezing her scapula. She's actually opening.

She's lengthening her back. She's reaching out, awesome. Now, the variation of the turns. And, in. (Viktor snaps) And open.

Keep it open. She stays there, and only thing closes is arm. Nothing comes with it. It's beautiful. Stabilization of the scapula, and come on in, and one more time.

In, and relax. Beautiful. All right, let's push this straps in here. So, because we're gonna do some jumping, and now, she usually jumps single-leg, two reds, and actually, no, the double leg, you do two reds, and single leg, one red, one blue. So we're gonna start with one red, one blue, and we're gonna do some double leg jump.

Mmhmm. All right. So, first position. Mmhmm. Now, let's actually start with the parallel.

Once again, I do wanna do immediately first position, because it's a dancer, but remember, keep going back. They already do so much first position. I wanna make sure I add in the parallel alignment as well. And again, this is your first stance, so you wanna make sure they are actually gonna do the jumping correctly. This is what I do.

Bend your knees, and straight your legs. And bend, and straight. Beautiful. And then I remind them, do you remember the releves? Bend to releve.

And bend to releve. And just to introduce the jump, before just I ask them to jump, this is a trick what I do. Bend your knee. I place my foot actually on the carriage right here, and from here, I tell them, basically, you're gonna come to your releve, but you're gonna point your foot, and you're gonna leave the boards. That way, so I'm holding it.

She's not super. She is super, but she's not doing that. I'm doing it. And again. So, from releve to point, I'm kind of supporting her leg too, and come back in.

So, once I tell them this is the feeling you're gonna get, and it's gonna be a lot faster, I ask them to jump. And let's go. Jump, and land, and jump, and land. Beautiful. That's it.

Once again, watch the alignment. Some of them is not gonna straight their knees. Cue them to lengthen their knees, point their feet, and cue them to jump and land in exactly same spot. The second thing that I see a lot of mistake, I really wanna tell you the importance, keep the heels down before the jump. So don't let 'em jump with the heels up, because that's already a really bad habit.

Can you show me heels up jump, Kelly? Beautiful, right here. This is a really bad habit of dancers. They need to really work to keep the heels down, so actually they could stretch the antagonist muscles of the leg. Awesome.

Now, first position. You're gonna do the same thing, please. So from here, I'm watching the alignment. Beautiful. She's doing great.

I can also ask her to squeeze in and squeeze in and squeeze in and squeeze in, beautiful. Very, very good. It's fantastic. So, from here, now we did the jumps. She's gonna do jumping, but just using the ankle joint.

All right. So, this is hard, because they get it to do releve and down, and I cue them, you know, just going up and down, up and down, and slowly trying to apply a little bit more pressure and start to jump. This is really important for pointe work as well and the strength of the calves and the strength of the feet. Right now, she's feeling underneath her feet, even more calf probably, correct? And control.

Again, landing is the most important thing. It should not land with the heel. There shouldn't be too much pressure with the heel. Let's try the same thing with the second position. And let's do bend and jump.

Let's do with a straight leg. And, go, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And relax. Awesome, good. So, one more thing I wanna tell you.

As you notice, everything that I do, I change positions, and I give you a different exercise. Now, you could do what I did on the second position of the feet on the first one too, right? You can mix and match. I try to give you a lot of information. That's why I'm doing different things.

But the things that I did parallel, you could do it on the first position as well, or the second, you could do it in the first position as well. I just wanted to remind you that. Saying that, can we do open second, and let's jump. Show the first position in the air, and land on the second. So this is really good as well to teach the the rhythm and connection of the legs.

Immediately, and hold as much as you can, and open the last minute. So, come in and hold last minute. Immediately, last minute. Immediately, last minute. Two more, and one more, and relax, beautiful.

How was it? Yes, fantastic. Now let's do single leg jump, all right? So, from here, you're gonna bend your knees, mmhmm, and you're gonna come up. And passe, beautiful.

And come back in, and one more time. And a third one, and fourth one. Change legs, beautiful. And one, and two, and three, and four. Come back in.

One more time. Let's do the same thing. So this time, let's go to releve, all right? So plie to releve. Plie to releve.

I'm watching her alignment. I'm making sure the timing is correct. By the time she goes to releve in here, this toe should be on the knee, and let's do other side. And up, and up. Beautiful.

Let's add some excitement. Let's go get into position same way, and now, from here, extend the top leg, bend leg, and drop the other one heel, and then come back in and in. And one, and two, and three, and four. Beautiful. Up, two, and in.

Nice. And change legs. And up, extend. Beautiful. Depends your dancer's flexibility.

You can choose to do flex, or you can choose to do point, or you can choose to do 90 degree, or you can choose to actually tell them to bring the extension as much as they can, but make sure, again, all the principles there, the hip has to be down as much as they can. Fantastic. So, now we have the first position version of this. This is gonna be from here, the first position, and you're gonna go alignment once again. You're gonna go up on high heels, releve, passe, and come back in.

Keep the hips square, and other one. Beautiful. And three, and four. Let's stay in here, Kelly. So from here, flat foot, you're gonna go fondu to the side.

And one. As you notice right now, I'm letting the working leg, they both work, but the free leg, I should say, the one that I'm not on the board, outside, laterally, away from her, so that's going to actually pull her, and it's gonna make her twist this way. So you wanna make sure actually the hip's staying down and the movement quality stays same. And let's do one more, beautiful. Now, let's do developpe front, high heels.

Now, heel goes down, and you open the leg. Maintain the hip down once again, and come up. And in, beautiful. Up and down and in. Two more.

And in. And up, open. And in. Other side, beautiful. First one we start, releve and passe.

And releve. And down. And two. Hips square. Fantastic.

The timing, it arrives same time and lands same time. Up, and land. Beautiful, stay there. Let's do fondu. Boom, once again, extending the right leg, and extending the left leg.

It should match, and it should be kind of elastic. It's not sharp, right? And up, and open. Yes. And up, control.

As you see, Kelly's doing fantastic. She's kind of slowly bringing in and adding an accent to come in. And last one. Explosiveness, and in, and relax. Fantastic, tough job, right?

Bend your knees to your chest, and now, I'm gonna take the jump board out, and I'll be right back with you, Kelly. Now, we're gonna do some arms, and I'm changing the springs. Light. She's gonna do blue, and the straps on her hands, and I'm gonna ask her to scooch down a little bit once again, Kelly. Beautiful.

So, from here, the dancers, we did work with spine and with the arm, with the straps before, and that was pretty much rotational when she was standing up. The dancers needs also, especially partnering, pressing down, right? That's very important, especially for the female. While the guy's actually lifting it up, the ladies has to resist down with their arms partnering, or even the bar work. So from here, this is what we're gonna try to stimulate.

So, from here, both arms. Let's go, inhale, up, and exhale, down. This is basic. I'm just looking at how the shoulder's moving, if it's their engagement of the lats. Fantastic.

How does the hips doing? Awesome. And we're gonna do one more, and stay there. Hold. Now, just move the left arm up.

Awesome, and come back in. And the right. So if you're really thinking about it, right now, it's the partnering, and she does this, and she needs to maintain that without affecting or change hands. Awesome. Let's do last one.

Beautiful. And down. Let's do the exactly same thing with arms open to the second. So let's press down, and open, and down. Now let's hold it here, and now, one arm open, and come back in.

And the other side. You can also change. You could go front, and come back. Good. Let's do one more set of this.

Side. Here we go, she's doing great. There's no movement on the carriage. She's learning the transferring the weight from the right to left without affecting the whole body. And then let's go to tricep.

So, this is gonna be the hardest one in the group. Let's do a couple triceps, just extend. And bend. And extend, and bend. Here we go.

That's enough. Let's do now one. So now she's going to do one extend without affecting and coming back, weight distribution, and the left. Beautiful. And extend.

And come back in. And left. How are you doing, Kelly? All right, let's do one last time. And relax.

Beautiful. So, we did work with our legs. We did jump board. We did arms. Now, one of the most important things, again, as you guys know, the dancer thinks they do developpe sometimes without using their quads, but that's not the case.

The hip flexors is really involved, and extension of the bottom leg involves quads as well. So, we're gonna do some hip flexor strengthening. So we're gonna put the headrest down, and Kelly's gonna use one red on this one. And she's gonna actually lay down on her side. Her legs is gonna go between the shoulder rests, and she's putting the, basically the left one on her left foot, actually, on her knee.

So her foot went through the strap, so the strap is resting on her knee. She's gonna scooch down to the well as much as she can, and she's gonna be in the center. So she's one straight line, and she's holding her position. From here, we're gonna do passe and external rotation. And two, beautiful.

Once again, you wanna trying to be very nice and strong, lengthening here, but there is a little bit bend. The more she lifts, there's gonna be a little bit of bend. That's normal. When she does it on the floor, that will naturally happen as well. Fantastic.

Now she did that, I'm gonna do parallel. And in, and out. And in, fantastic. Lengthen your spine, three, and let's do one more, good. Now, we're gonna open the knee without moving the carriage, and close it, good.

And open, here we go, don't move the carriage. So what do you do? When you open, you have to almost squeeze in, and when you release it, you need to release. And squeeze up, up, up, up, up, fantastic. And she's using her external rotators.

Trust me, she is feeling it. This is a very effective exercise. It's not just for the external rotators; also for the hip flexors as well, and it's must for dancers. That's great. Let's do other side.

I'm gonna help you take it out. Beautiful. All right. Mmhmm. Good.

So, there's obviously versions that you can try here too. You can actually, she can go flat too. But obviously, because of her size, she's not going to be able to rest her head very well, so this is actually optimum position for Kelly. Awesome. Push your hips forward while you're doing that as much as you can.

You can add arms and port de bras to it. She can keep her arm in here, so it will translate, basically she's doing developpe in this position. She can bring in arm if she likes. You can choose different arm positions during this exercise as well. Not only challenge them with coordination, but also it will help them to balance better.

And open, and close. Beautiful. Two, and three. As you notice where the strap is for Kelly, so she's really opening the strap with her feet as well too, so it's a very nice way to do it. How's that?

The glutes, I think Kelly needs to stretch her glutes a little bit right now. And once she's done with that, we're gonna do some abdominals. Again, I try to relate the body parts and connect them and trying to create different exercise. So, as you notice, we did legs. We did some arms.

Now I wanna tie them together, and I wanna do some abdominal series that actually incorporate the legs and the arms in the same time. The goal on this one, light, light, light springs. Now, she has one red in there, and she's gonna do it with one red. And if you do it with blue, maybe it will be even more challenging. So it doesn't have to be, this is not about the leg work.

This is about abdominal work. So from here, toes is gonna be on the bar in releve. Arms up, as in port de bras position, and she's gonna extend her legs, not to push the bar. Gently extend and come up in port de bras, chest lift. And inhale, go back.

And exhale, come up. Watch the alignment once again. Nice and long, beautiful. And let's do two more. And one more.

Now, go back. Let's show the same thing with turnout. So I'm gonna do first position, and same idea. And come up, extend, feel nice and long, and come back in. Beautiful.

Let's do one more. And come back in. Now, let's add extension, right, the front extension. She comes up and goes back. And other side.

Extend, feel nice and long, long, long, gorgeous. All right. And right. Beautiful. And left.

Let's stay there. Can you give me four kicks with the left one? Point down and flex. Two, three, four, and change. And one, awesome.

By keeping the leg on the bar, she's creating that feeling of extension and reaching forward, and relax, fantastic. This is very good. Now the last thing we're gonna do, we're gonna do some oblique variation of this. She's crossing her fingers behind her head, and I really like it truly crossed, guys. I see many variations all the time, ear, head, chin, kind of like this.

If the client cannot do full cross back without opening their elbows, keep them forward, but at least they have precise position each time they do that exercise instead of whatever they feel that day, right? So, really cross. You're gonna extend and come up, lengthening. So from here, bring your right and turn towards it, and extend, gorgeous. And two.

Lengthen. Three. And good. Four more. Watch the alignment, awesome.

As much as she is actually coming up with one side, the other side is working, too. Because of the legs pushing, it's helping not for her to do in one direction, not just anterior side, but she's engaging her posterior side as well. Come back and relax. How does that feel? And come back in, relax.

Beautiful, fantastic. So, now, we did legs, we did arms, we did abdominals. Let's do some extensions. So I'm gonna bring a box for Kelly. All right, right in here, and once again, we're gonna do pulling straps, and we're gonna add some fun extension series on that.

I'm gonna bring this bar down as well, and if you're doing this with one red, you might wanna do a little lighter again. As I said, everything that I do, trying to do a little bit lighter side. She's using right now one blue spring. She's gonna get into regular pulling strap position, and we're gonna do the extension one. She's reaching forward.

She's grabbing the strap and she's gonna pull her arms back toward her hips and extend from the spine. Is this too heavy? Are you gonna go reach forward? Perfect, let's try one more time. And come up.

And down, beautiful. Once you watch the alignment, and second one, that's enough to warm up. Now we're gonna do our variation. When she comes up, she's gonna lift one leg up. It's kind of like arabesque, lifting, and go down.

Beautiful. And another one. Up. Awesome. You guys get the points.

It's very effective. Now do this. Let's hold it here. Beautiful. And reach with the left forward and lift the right.

And come back in. And relax. Let's do other side. And up. Opposite reaches, comes back, lengthen, and down, beautiful.

So do you guys see, once again, I'm layering. We already did that weight distribution, opposite transfer of the arms? Now I'm applying that to the extension as well. This is not easy. Kelly's doing a great job.

And last one, Kelly. And reach, and come back, lift, and down. And relax. Awesome. This is where you can take care of the client.

Maybe they can go to the child's pose, and you can really stretch them, things like that, on the backs. And we're gonna come up, video must go on, and we're gonna do another extension series. In here, we're gonna actually stand in front of the bar. The bar should be middle or low position or high position. Once again, you can decide what your client's height is.

And the higher is, actually, it's easier. The lower the bar is, it's a little bit more challenging. And let's do, beautiful. Actually, what I wanna do, as you see, do you guys see where the bar is? She did it in the middle, but I do use this bar sometimes, bring him down.

Now the bar came to the edge. The reason I did this, I'm gonna ask her to come in, actually, stay on parallel. That's a little bit more forward. And I'm asking her to touch but not lean, okay. So, the next exercises we're gonna do, she's gonna hold with her hands.

She's gonna reach down and hold the carriage, and I'm gonna ask her to extend her spine and push the carriage out. Usually, what people do here, they lean back, and dancers do this a lot. So my idea is basically keeping it, literally gently touching. They're gonna have an idea where their body weight is. And come up, round, and reach forward, extend, and feel nice and tall.

Lengthen your spine. Beautiful. Lengthen, lengthen, and come back, one more time. And lengthen. And come up.

Now, more I'm looking at this right now, please come up, Kelly, and what I wanna do, again, you might have a smaller client, a young client, and they might not able to push the carriage in this direction. So I wanna show you also doing this with the box as well. So I'm gonna put the box. Not much things changes. It's just the height.

Now if she's, it's easier for her to touch with her hands, and now, I'm gonna put her in the first position, since she's a dancer, and I wanna, again, I wanna teach her, when she does a port de bras, not to lean back this way, right? So she stays on her legs. She's kind of feeling the bar, and she pushes forward as much as she can, and come back, round. If you don't have a yellow spring, and if this is very difficult for you, you can always move your hand on the box to make it a little bit easier. If you don't have this much extension of the shoulders also, you can place your elbows, and you could do it this way, too.

It's a very fun exercise. It's great movement patterns for the dancers. And now, what are we gonna do? We're gonna do some arabesques. So we're gonna extend.

When she brings the box up, she's gonna lift one leg up. Beautiful, to arabesque, and go down. And alternate. And back. Gorgeous work.

The cross, sling, and push. And up, up, up, up, feel nice and tall, square shoulders. She's doing a great job. One more time, Kelly. Nice.

And go down, down, down, down, and stay there. Now, round your spine and come up. Now, from here, rounding. I'm gonna ask her to go forward and lift her leg up to arabesque again. Now we're gonna do the penche.

And then come up. Round your spine to first position, and try other side. You wanna make sure the shoulders are squared as much as they can, and come back in, and two more, Kelly. Exhale, lengthen. The weight distribution shouldn't be too much in one side, the lateral side of the leg.

She should maintain, the client should maintain the medial position of the body. And come back in. Bend your knees. Let go of the box, and slowly round to stretch position. Awesome.

She worked very hard. I'm gonna do a couple stretches as a dessert for her. So, which one, first one starts, actually, she's gonna be in here, this side. This is, again, very light. If you do have yellow, use yellow.

It's not about the weight. You're gonna place your right foot on the box, rotated in the middle. So this is the right foot, okay. So if she was standing this way, the foot that is close to the reformer goes on the box. Then the left foot actually comes in very close to the reformer, and she's literally parallel to the reformer right now.

She's not this way. She's not turned in. She's same direction of the reformer with her left foot, okay? She's rounded and relaxed. She's standing on her left foot.

She is actually standing on there. And then she's gonna start to push and extend the right knee out. It's about extending the right leg. It's not about the pushing the box, how far she pushes. And she's getting a great lateral stretch here.

And come back in. And bend. Beautiful. You can place the ankle a little bit off the box so you can kind of get a nice angle as well. If they need to wing it, they can, maybe.

And beautiful, and come back in. And round, maintain, and let's do one more time, Kelly, and push the stretch. Go, go, go. In here, can you show me going parallel? Most people is gonna wanna go parallel, and they're gonna push the box as much as they can.

It's not about that. It's about maintaining the rotation of the right leg and bringing the leg from the attitude to extended position. Beautiful. And the last stretch, oh, let's do other side. You have two sides.

Let's walk the other way. So she's gonna do there, two more. Beautiful. Right here, now, you guys are clearly seeing her standing leg. It's close, and she's rounded.

And from here, exhale and reach forward. First, it comes, the extension of the leg movement starts, and she follows that through and comes back. And one more time. Reach forward, forward, forward. Beautiful, relax your neck, and come back into your standing.

Awesome. And last one. And come back in. All right. We have one more stretch, last exercise, and what I do in here, we are using Balance Body Reformer, and it has a bar that I can actually push the whole carriage with the springs out.

The reason that I mention this, I can, without worrying about client, I can actually step inside. So when the carriage comes in, it will not hit me. It will not damage me. I don't have to actually worry about it. But if you don't have this reformer, also, I have another way to do this that I would like to show you.

So what you could do is, I'm gonna leave this in here. You can put the straps on the shoulder rest, right, this way. You can pull, create a space, and then you can tighten actually this rope. And once you tighten this rope right here, when I let go, the reformer is not gonna go farther than this. This is your security.

Now you can ask your clients to step inside here without worrying or without dangering them. I'm gonna bring this bar up, and I'm gonna ask my client to step inside. Beautiful. Let's go in there. I think actually I'm gonna move this a little bit more back, Kelly, for you.

There's more space. How does that feel? Beautiful. So, from here, she's going to bring and place one foot on top of the box. Basically, we're gonna do quad stretch here.

It's gonna be a little bit more extreme, because the box is high. If the client doesn't have this much extension on the knee, if there's a pain, things like that, or they're not flexible enough, this is not good for them. But if they are a dancer, they don't feel much, this is a great way to do it, plus putting them inside, it gives them a great sense of security, security, and the squareness, compared to when we do this on the side of the reformer. They don't kind of get the being square, especially on clients. So, from here, we're gonna excel and push back.

Bend the front knee and get a nice stretch in the right one. How does that feel, Kelly? And then come up. And down. We can add port de bras in here, obviously.

As you guys know, you can get creative. You can reach with the front arm. You can hold there. You can do side port de bras, lateral stretch, and come back center, and then come up. And the last thing you can try actually, go to same stretch, Kelly, and if the client can, you can trying to ask them to extend their leg out as much as they can and then come back in.

This is gonna be a great stretch, and as you guys see, she's not affecting her lower back. She's maintaining her stability on her spine very well, and she gets a nice stretch. Let's do other side. There we go. Beautiful.

All right. So, from here, let's bend and push out. And come back in. You're going to make sure they're maintaining the center. Awesome.

Let's do some port de bras. Nice. Let's do one more, hold it there, and lateral, pressing the knee down while you're doing this. Beautiful. So there's a nice, stretch opposition here, and let's try some extending leg out.

Good, you could even do it with the straight leg, see how far they can go, right? But you wanna make sure they are protecting their lower back and they're not anterior tilting their pelvis to do this. And come up slowly. And that's it, all right. I got you.

Just let's step out. Beautiful. Well, this is it. This is the First Dance on the Reformer class. I hope you enjoyed it.

Once again, the things that I did here, I try to relate it, the evaluation that I did on the tutorial for the First Dance class. Please go watch that as well. And, as you guys notice, in this class, there was a lot of talking. Maybe the reps were inconsistent and we jumped from one exercise to the other one, but the good news is, we do actually have a Pas de Deux on the Reformer class, and that's gonna be a full flow class. Make sure to watch that, and so you can join us and do the exercises together.

Thank you.