Strengthening Your Lower Body

Hi everybody. I'm Kara Reeser and uh, I'm just doing the short introduction for three classes that I have up on. Quality is any time, um, that are focusing on lower extremity, uh, coordination, um, meaning motor control and strength. So, um, I just want to give you a little view. So when you take those classes, you can sort of be thinking about this and I don't want to spend time during the class talking. So there's a couple things that we want to make sure we're doing in these classes. And one is always like any class thinking about how to organize your big bony masses and good alignment, right? So you've got your legs, you've got your pelvis on your legs, your rib cage, your neck and your head. So we're doing that, that alignment practice, um, through, through our trunk, but we're also adding an alignment practice from the center of our hip through the center of our knee to the center of our foot.

And the center of the foot for me is this place between the second and third toe, which, um, I rained out, refers to as the fundamental arch. So when we're working with, um, any situation, um, which we do in life all the time, where we're having to manage external forces, right? Gravity or spring or something pulling on us, or an unstable ground, right? We have to be trying to manage, uh, that relationship between the center of the, the hip, the center of the knee in the center of the foot. And all of us have tendencies to go away from that.

So you'll see me using some props that's going to help to balance the hip and balance the, the, the foot. Um, but you want to think also, um, you know, and you'll see me use things like balls like this to create space holds so that when you're doing these knee bends, you're able to control, uh, any sway in the ankle. You want to be noticing something about yourself before you take these classes. And you can do it really easily. You could just basically take a big step forward and a lunge and come back. You could take a big step forward and a lunge and come back and you're gonna look, you're gonna look, if I take this big step forward and I go a lunge and come back, I'm going to look to see what tendency my knee has. Does it collapse inward?

Does it collapse outward? And I'm gonna try to start recognizing those tendencies and bringing my awareness to when I'm taking these classes. It's a mat class, a tower class, and a chair class. I want you to really be watching for, um, what your tendency is when forces applied and how you can work with your mind, um, to and with props and with a queuing to self queuing to manage that. Because at the end of the day, those forces are what, when we're not managing what causes kind of unnecessary wear and tear in the knee and injury. So, um, I just wanted to give you a little pep talk before you take these classes. And thanks for watching.