Hip Connections

Chapter 1

I started developing this workshop last year. It's something that I'm expanding into a two day course, which will be first presented in Germany in March. So I've been working on it as kind of a started out as a two hour workshop and then four hours and I've been expanding it out. So this is in development still, but I feel that this information is really important to us as teachers, because this is an action in the hip, the motion of the hip that we don't pay attention to too much. We focus a lot in our work and the pilates in the pelvis up, this area, okay.

But the stability of what the hip joints do and how the hip moves is really important to the effect of what happens to the spine, it can affect stability of the spine. And then people have a lot of hip issues. And you try to do something when they flex their leg. And people say, "Oh, it pinches right here. "Really hurts here." That type of response you might get from one of your clients.

So that inspired me to really look more deeply into the hip. And our hip, the hip joint's very interesting because in gait, as we're walking, when you take a stance on one leg, this is your stability. That hip has to be very stable. And then it also, the other one has to be swinging freeform. It's gotta move in the socket.

So as you're walking, you got one hip that's stable and the other one that is free swinging and release, so that there's a glide, there's a motion that has to happen in the hip. And then you transfer the weight. Then the hip has the power here to propel you forward. That's what's pushing you forward onto this now stable leg. So the hip goes from mobility to power, push to stability.

I mean, it's this constant. And the right and left side is always changing. So we get kind of hung up a lot of times in our hip, meaning that it either doesn't have the strength to stabilize when we're standing on it. A lot of people balance, balance issues with people, not only come from the feet, but the strength of the hip, but also if the hip doesn't have that free swing, you certainly can't, that's what people will fall when they're walking. It's not just about, can I stand on one leg in my walk, but if I don't have this motion to swing my leg through, as I'm walking, there's a possibility that that could cause me to fall down.

So it's really a balance of both elements of that. So the reason I called it advanced concepts is because it's understanding how the mechanics and the motion, which is advanced learning, really the concept of how the hip moves, beyond just as your glute firing or is it not. But what is actually happening within the joint, within the connective tissue, within the muscles themselves. And then what happens to the relationship to the spine on top of that. So that that's really the idea.

And then looking at our Pilates repertory, I focus mostly on the reformer right now and how we can really see when the hip is not stable or not moving the way that we want it to and what we can do within our repertory to facilitate better movement. So the actual movements and the reformer exercises that we're gonna do, you're familiar with. But it's gonna be how you're gonna look at it and how you maybe cue somebody one or maybe how you pal paid or encourage them to move. So at the hip joint itself. So here's an X-ray of the hip joint, and you can see the relationship of what we're gonna be talking about, the relationship of the acetabulum.

The acetabulum is the hip joint itself and the head of the femur. And there's motion in that femur in the socket itself, it's called an accessory motion. So accessory motion is what it sounds like. It's a small movement. There's some movement, they call it glide, hip gliding.

So we're already talking about the actual ball and socket. So the head of the femur is a rounded ball that fits into a concave shape. And within there, there should be some accessories small motion within that hip joint. Now scientists have been looking at this. So there have been some studies done because some people don't, some people meaning maybe doctors or scientists who do the anatomy and movement don't believe that the accessory motions exist.

It's kind of like the sacroiliac joint. For a long time. And there's still people out there who don't believe that there's motion in that joint, but there is accessory motion. Accessory motion is very small movement. But they've done studies to see, yes, there is sacroiliac joint movement now.

But it wasn't too long ago that they believed there was absolutely no, that the bones were fused there. So the hip joints, another place where they're kind of a little bit in disagreement, whether or not these ones glides at the hip socket, because they haven't had a probe to actually look at it actually exists. So they did some studies, I found some online actually. And one study was with the journal of orthopedic and sports physical therapy. And in that study, they did cadavers.

So they took the cadavers and they did some movement in the cadaver. So from doing it with the cadaver, they said, "Yes, there's a possibility that there is this." But further study is needed. And then there was another study that I came across with live subjects that they did, actually there were three other studies that they did with live subjects. And they did agree that there was at least a glide in the anterior posterior motion. They hadn't really quite agreed on the motion from side to side, but it's there.

You're gonna see it, you're gonna feel it. So I'm a believer that there is accessory motion in all three planes that happen and that are critical that should happen in the hip. And this is where we get hung up, that we don't have that motion in the hip. And then when that bone is moving and gliding in the hip, then the muscles don't get the right stimulation to actually contract and do the work that they need to do. Which is functional, 'cause you don't think about what you're doing when you're moving.

You want that muscle to turn on. You want it to be strong. You want it to do its job. And then you need to have a turn off when it's not supposed to do its job. So hip muscles should not be in contracture and tight all the time. So they need to turn on, do their work and turn off when they're not supposed to be.

So the reformer, which is fantastic because it's a sliding bed, versus some of the other Pilates equipment is fabulous to help facilitate these glides, which is why I picked the reformer to focus on with that. So, all right. So to maximize the strength and the mobility of the hip, we have to kind of look at the layers of the hip. So the first layer that we just looked at was the bony layer. So that ball and socket, the concave and convex joint that fit together here.

So it's the joint surface. So what I want you to look at in this picture, which you can see pretty clearly because it's white, so that's great. So can you see, this is a picture above on the top where they took the pelvis looking down kind of like this and sliced it. So you can see where the bone has been cut. So the whole top of it's been cut and then they cut the femoral heads.

So can you see the relationship and the limited space actually, can you all see that. The limited space right through here, with acetabulum is. Now look how close the femoral head is to the right pelvic floor, the pelvic floor area. So the positioning of the femoral head in the socket has a relative relationship with your pelvic floor. So you could start to think that when you're trying to work with stuff ability with the pelvic floor and transfers, there has to be this femoral head position to help facilitate.

I'm gonna talk a little bit more about the muscles, this actual contraction. So that's why when we were doing the mat class, how I was really emphasizing kind of sliding your legs in, that was bringing your femoral heads a little bit in, so medial, inward contracture, which actually helps you contract, it's a little bit easier to lift that pelvic floor. So there's a very close relationship, even in a bony landmark, how the femoral heads sit in that socket. The next layer that we're gonna talk about, because it is a continuous fascial connection through the body where signals are sent through the fascia from the body. So when you contract a muscle and your little toe, there's a signal that actually is transferred.

I kind of described it as like electrical wiring. You go over to a light switch, you turn the light switch on. Now your lights come on instantly, but what's happening between the light switch and that light bulb. There's a circuitry that goes on and the light comes on. Or another image I use a lot of times with people, especially with the psoas.

And we'll, we'll look at that. It's like a, I always think of a puppeteer. So you have the man, the puppeteer or a woman who's up at the top and you have the string coming from their little cross thing, that comes down and attaches on their hand. The puppet, the little hands or their feet and their legs. And that's how puppets are.

But what does the person do up here? He pulls the string, the tension goes down the string, comes to the hand and then the hand moves. So think of that relay of what happens. And that's how our body really works. So when you start to think, I'm going to lift my leg, the message is already being recruited through the body, which I believe is not only through the nervous system, but the nerves are also in the fascia that it's being sent through the body.

And then all of a sudden, there's that moment where my foot raises. And of course it's a split second, but being aware of that transfer and what happens along the way is a series of muscles, a patterns come up into play. So it's a different way of thinking then thinking I've gotta contract my glute, and then you do a conscious isometric contractions, really not functional when you do an engagement, like if you do that with a client like, Ooh, contract here, and then they just grip. It's not coming from an actual bone motion to get that muscle to fire up. And that's what we really wanna try to do with the training.

And so to get the hip, to engage, think about the femoral heads, actually doing the movement. So that movement occurs, the muscles come up. So it's kind of like stop thinking about muscles so much and think about where the motion should be happening. And the relay that happens because it's a sequence of movement that happens throughout the body, I believe comes through the fascia. These pictures are from a book by Louis Schultz, who's a renown rolfer who unfortunately passed away.

But he wrote a book called "The Endless Web". It's a really sweet little book. So I highly recommend that you get that book. But these pictures I scanned out of his book. And in this picture of the man, what he's showing here is this is the pelvis here.

The inside of the pelvis. And that there's the fascia from inside. And even the... This is the man that your general area that comes up through the inside of the trunk. In the cavity, inside the cavity of the abdominals, there's layers of fascia there.

And that there's this chain, this connection of the fascia that goes all the way up to these are like the SCMs. The sternocleidomastoid muscles. So from the pelvic floor, there's this connection through the pelvis, into the trunk that comes up all the way up into your neck here. So when you contract your pelvic floor, there's gonna be a translation of like knitting together that happens all the way up into your neck this way. So that's kind of the relationship.

So here's a fascinating picture on this side. And we're gonna look at this in terms of the fascia, and we're gonna look at it in terms of the muscles. So I'm gonna go back one picture. So take a look at this picture at the bottom. This is the same picture that I'm gonna show you on the next slide of the fascia.

So here's the bone, this is the pelvis that's been cut in half. So if I take the skeleton here, all right, move it over here a little bit. All right, so this is a view that's this way, and what they've done is removed this ilium. You understand, it's gone. This whole leg is gone and you're looking at the pubic bone in the inside here.

Can you follow that on that picture? So sometimes these pictures get a little confusing. So here's the pubic bone, but half of it right here to see the pupils synthesis, see that. And then it comes around this way. And this is one of the iliums, here's your tibial tuberosity.

And here's the sacrum, which has been cut in half because the other half is on the other ilium that's removed. You following me. Okay, so now, this picture is the same view. You see, here's that pubic bone, here's the ilium. Now what they're showing here is this is fascia starting from here.

See how it's all spread like a cobweb on the inside of the bone. This fascia, and I'm gonna show you the muscle that it's coming from, it's coming from the Obturator internus. So the Obturator internus is one of the six rotators. We're gonna talk about lateral rotators, all right. So it's one of the lateral rotators in the hip and it's attached on the femur.

And goes into the pelvic floor, we're gonna see it in a second and connects with the Levator ani tendon. So you've got a direct connection of one of your rotators into your pelvic floor, major attachment, not only on the muscle to a tendon, but fascially, you can see where it's continuous with the whole inside of that bolt. So that's the connection of the femoral head into that pelvic floor. This is a fascial discussion. But I'm gonna come back to the hip muscle just so we can keep the slides in order.

And the other idea, just so you can see from this photograph here, yeah. There's deep fascia that wraps all around. The musculature, all the muscular are connected in that way. And that's what I was saying earlier about that connection. When you contract a muscle, it's pulling on the fascia and the fascia starts to move and slide or shorten or lengthen, it starts to change and gets pulled by the muscle.

Or you could say the fascia could be pulling the muscle, kind of depends on your school or way of thinking. But there's this close relationship of this happening here. So this is just a pretty drawing of fascia, as opposed to the real thing. So, I was gonna go superficial to deep, but I'm gonna stick with the order. So I'm gonna come back to the deep rotators, but the idea of kind of understanding how that connection comes from the hip socket into that pelvic floor, that also comes into the ilium up through to the psoas as well, all right.

But let's start with just looking at the outer hip muscles, the anatomy of the outer hip muscles, because it's something we're a little more familiar with than the deep stuff. So on the outside, this is a lateral view because we're gonna be looking at definitely the glute muscles. So here the glute maximus is a very important muscle that needs to be strong. It's a very large, strong muscle, notice how the fibers have different angles here, as it wraps around the hip. And its connection is into this very tight.

This is fascia all along the ilium. I wonder why people get tight here, and through here, and this is your iliotibial band. You see, it's continuous with the glute. Your glute is attached to this band here. So you could think of the iliotibial band as being almost like a long tendon of your glute.

So how many have tightness out here on the latter part of the legs? It's not just quadricep tightness, but it's coming from up into the hip. And the glute plays a role of kind of supporting the band. So from the back side, it's a very strong muscle kind of pulling the band that way, that the angle here. But look at the muscle that's on the other side of the band, it's counterbalancing the glute.

And that's your tensor. The tensor, TFL muscle. So you have those two muscles, and that's a very small muscle compared to the glute. But what all its job is to do is to kind of stabilize the band. 'Cause imagine if that muscle wasn't there, what would happen to the band, would roll back.

Fall into the glue. The glue would pull it out of alignment. So that little muscle there is just working like crazy to stabilize the band from the glute. All right, so, and that's that connection all the way down through the fascia onto the knee. So a lot of knee issues, you have to start looking above the knee and below the knee.

A lot of hip problems, lack of hip movement, imbalanced in the hip, I mean, can cause a lot of knee problems. So rolfers when they have a client come in with a knee issue, they really focus on the hip, not on the knee itself because of that pull that's happening through there, okay. And here you can see the band overlapping here, the quadratus. All right. So from the front, we're gonna be looking at here's your quad.

It's connected now there's the hip joint itself, correct. The hip joint is the ball and socket joint. These muscles on the superficial side that we're talking about are really attached on the ilium, bypassing the hip joint, yes. And going down the leg, that's the idea of what I'm trying to show you. From the front, the musculature here, we're talking about the, the quadriceps here, yes.

It's attached on, even though it's the inferior on the inferior bone here. As opposed to the superior bone here, ASIS, this is the inferior. So it's attached here, you have your TFL here. So this is why it's going around the hip. It's not actually directly attached on the hip joint itself.

Does that make sense? So we're talking ilium to thighbone overlapping the hip joint, not actually within the ball and socket joint itself. So, I'm trying to distinguish the difference of how these muscles work. So ilium to thighbone or ilium to knee. So that's kind of what we're looking at.

The sartorius is attached again from the ASIS and is like making an S across the leg to the inside of the knee. So again, we've got ilium to knee. Not quite onto the hip joint itself. They're important for part of the superficial stability. So when you're standing on your leg, there's some activity in these muscles, but really the muscles that we need to focus on are deeper into the socket, which really are your "rotators." We'll be talking about those.

So deep to the spine now is we're gonna be talking about the psoas. And again, there's a fascial line. This is a photograph from Tom Myers book, which, all these are drawings of the body. When you actually see the body in the cadaver form, there's so many variations, it's remarkable. So, even Netters, which is one of my favorite anatomy books, which has been drawn by Frank Netter, did all these beautiful drawings of, I mean, he had cadavers there and he was drawing and painting.

I mean, they're wonderful pictures, but it's not like seeing the real cadaver. And there are variations. It's remarkable to see the relationship of these muscles within one another and where they are and where they're placed. Pec minor is a muscle that's disappearing. Many people don't have it.

There's a lot of theories why it's disappearing, but there are many people don't have it. But there's still a fascial connection from this more medial part of the spine from the lumbar spine down into the pelvic bowl. And what I wanna try to show you is how that even the medial part, which is gonna be very important for us when we start talking about a posterior glide of the hip. But that medial part of that psoas minor, or just the fascia of the psoas fibers come down that medial line onto the actual rim of your pelvis. So the bone here, there's a little bit like, here's what they're showing us psoas right here in your skeleton here.

This is a major though, the minor would be more along this way. And actually, there's an attachment here on the bone, which then the fascia connects with the pectineus here, which is on this side of the bone. So there's a continuous contractor here with the pectineus onto the femur. So that's gonna have a little leverage of the femur bone in movement. So even though it's not directly attached to the ball and socket, it's close enough in that it's participating in that action when we're doing that hip flection.

Many times, what people are feeling uncomfortable with when they go into hip flection and they tell you that that area is pinching or grabbing, those are kinds of things the clients would say when they go into hip flection, it's very uncomfortable for them. And they have to kind of turn their leg out to get it to bend. what's happening is the ball and socket joints stopped moving. It's not gliding back, it's actually stuck. And we're gonna look at this more carefully, but it's actually stuck forward.

And since the ball is not getting that accessory motion in the hip, the muscle, pectineus. Everybody thinks it's their psoas. Everyone, "Oh, my psoas." I'm always like, okay. It's really a fascia. Yes, it's connected to the psoas fascia, but the actual grabbing of the muscle is really your pectineus muscle here, okay, that area.

So you can see where that connection is. So it's a more, I consider it as more of a central medial line. And so when we're doing movement and we start to move the knee, we're gonna be talking about trying to line up the femur towards that medial line so that we can access that pull from here to lift the leg up. So that relationship is important to me that you try to remember that picture, okay. All right.

And then, okay. Now, here we go. This is where I wanted to get into the deep rotators here of the picture. All right, so you're all familiar with the deep six. Now, lateral rotators is not really true name for those muscles.

I don't know if you realize that. The muscles act differently depending on where the femur is in space. So lateral rotators don't necessarily only do lateral rotation. So they should have another name, basically. I haven't thought of one, but should have a different name.

All right, so the most famous lateral rotator is which muscle. What's the most famous one? Piriformis, everyone talks about their piriformis all the time. Well, I don't know why it's the soloist of the group, but it doesn't act like that. But the piriformis is a great example of a muscle that does lateral rotation when the leg is either extend like behind or straight.

So when I stand like this would be zero hip degrees. So I'm neither inflection or extension. And if I move, if I start to move and go into flection, this would be maybe what, five degrees flection. And this is 90 degrees. So this is zero, I just wanted to get my language.

And then I'm going back. It could be 10 degrees or 15 degrees extension, but this is a zero. So when the hips in zero, it would work as a lateral rotator. But the minute I start to go into hip flection, now the piriformis is a abductor, it's not a lateral rotator. So when you're in hip flection and you do abduction, you're contracting the piriformis.

It's not turning that out. Now down here at zero, when I do turn out, piriformis is involved. But when I leg is here and you think about more sideline in that mat class, and we were opening, closing, we were doing abduction, we were strengthening that. The other example is the lowest lateral rotator, your Quadratusfemoris. That's right here.

It's actually quite a broad muscle. And you see that right here, this one here. So you have piriformis, you have the gemellus, then you have the Obturator internus and the externus. Externus is on top here. And then the Quadratusfemoris.

The Quadratus femorisis so low on the back of the femur, into the hip joint, that what it does is extension. So when we're lying on our backs, lifting our legs up, and you're doing that hip extension, and you have the alignment. So this morning I was really emphasizing that alignment of the leg. So when you have that alignment of the leg meeting into more neutral, and you're working that leg lift to the back, you have to get that position of the femur into a more neutral position so it can glide anteriorly And that Quadratus femoristurns on. A lot of times, when you do a turnout leg lift, which is still a good exercise to do, but we tend to overuse the glute here.

And I don't get the Quadratusfemoris. 'Cause it's a, not a turnout muscle at that point, it's a hip extender. So if you really wanna train in a balanced way, the lateral rotators. You have to do those different ranges of the hip and understand that when you're doing abduction with your leg inflection, you are getting piriformis. And how important is your leg alignment when you're doing a leg lift on the mat or even on the reformer.

So you've gotta be able to use both. Don't be doing everything in this external rotation all the time, all right. Try to vary it some. But that position I was having to do, which is more a neutral position. It feels like you're spinning your legs in, really, sit bones wide.

So you get the sit bones wide and you anchor them down. And when you lift your leg to the back, you're really getting these lower, deep rotators of the hip. And that's where I feel people are very weak. So when they have to stand on one leg here, it's not just about glute medius here, it's about the inner part of the femur. You've gotta get the outer and the inner part engaged together for stability.

Does that make sense? So I've gotta have this working and that working for this stability. And guess who's working when I push off here, not only my glute, but Quadratus femoris. I'm extending my hip. It's helping that femur, it kind of pushes the femur forward.

So just in terms of thinking about the musculature there. So all that was a lot information in that period of time. So do you have any questions or you need time to think more? I know it's kind of like you have to go The brain has to kind of... Okay, just keep thinking she has one.

Yeah, the position, yeah. Let's take a quick little look at it. How's that? I think it'll be easier than me standing here and trying to do it. So would you mind just lying down on the mat just quickly have your head at that end.

Can you see, can you guys see? On your stomach. And you could just stack your hands. Is this good or should I move her? It's okay.

So what I'm saying is that to balance the... Just relax for a second, okay. To balance the idea of the internal part of the hip supporting the leg. So we have the gross motor movers, So when you lift your leg to the back, glute, hamstring, yes. That's the superficial part.

But what needs to happen internally is that femoral head needs to go, it's gonna glide. So what it needs to do, it's gotta actually come, it's gotta come down a little bit and the socket, it's gotta come down a little bit out a little bit the socket, and then it has to glide anterior towards the mat 'cause she's on her stomach. You understand. That glide, it's an accessory motion, remember. It's a small motion.

So that's why a cue. So here's her sit bone and here's her heel. So this is that alignment with the toe, big toe and little toe on the mat. And that heel straight up to the ceiling. Now relax for a second, don't do anything yet.

And the front of the hip bone here, the femur has to be weighted. So I want you to put more weight on this part of your hip. Yes, so there you go. So now she's got her ASISs and her groin, if you wanna call it the groin area into the mat. So this is that alignment.

Yeah, and just stay right there, okay. Here are her sit bones, they're nice and wide, the pelvis. It's in a more neutral position, all right. She's gonna stay here in this position here. And then if she thinks of here's the glide, she's gonna reach out of her leg.

There's a nice reach out without the pelvis changing. So we can't get on unlevel the hips. So she did a very nice reach out. And then as the foot goes up, it's like a seesaw. This has to go down into the mat forward, the little spiral in, there you go, without unleveling your hips.

And flip, no you're unleveling your hips little bit. So you're reaching too much. You see how her spine is moving. And now what's happening is this is going into the mat, which sends the leg up. There you go.

So then I get a balance between, okay, stop for a second. Stay there though if you wouldn't mind. Keep your hip bones a little wider. You kind of pinched a little bit. There you go.

I gotta get Quadratus femoris working, over here. So see her on her leg went out that way. So she's overworking the piriformis actually in going sideways. Push into my finger a little bit. A little more.

Okay, widen your sit bones, press the front of your groin down, but foot goes up. There you go. Keep pushing here a little more. There, stay there. So the tightness, if you don't mind me touching it's there. Now she's engaged.

Can you feel the difference here? Yeah, big time. Big time. That's a more balanced hip and look at the nice tone of the glute. (laughter) So I always share this story 'cause there's a lot of people have heard this before.

But I have a client who, when I finally got her to engage like this, what happens when you get all those muscles underneath, it fills up the glutes. So it's like a pumpkin shell, the glute is. And underneath is when all those muscles come up and fully inflates and engages the quad. It's like sitting on a whole bunch of muscles that are, yeah. And so a client of mine said, one day she goes, "Oh, it's like a peach but not prune." So if you squeeze those sit bones together and clench your butt, it's all gonna wrinkle in and prune up.

Not attractive, yeah. But it's not functional, really. So this is where in the hip joint, where we get that glide, which I'm gonna talk about it in the pictures, just so you can really see what the glide is. When she gets that little reach out and that femur head, the femoral head has to go into the mat. So that's why I cue groin into the mat.

There you go. So the leg, obviously, it's not gonna go very high. We're not doing Arabesque, six o'clock. This is perfect. You see the feel how you're working.

So she's got it. It only takes one time. That's a good question. So that's where I'm saying is that the Quadratus femoris, especially as one of the rotators, needs to get engaged to help with the hip extension, to be more functional. When we're walking, all we do to keep the pelvis stable and not get into our back is supporting, thank you so much.

The back is supporting, but when we get to this point. Okay, this is where people start getting all kinds of when they're walking, things get a little out of control with their back. So the back is moving forward, but I need this balance between here and here, and I need 10 to 15 degrees. That's all we have max. Now, if I wanted to lift my leg up higher, it has to come from the back.

And that's what Arabesque is, the pelvis goes forward, the back extends. And the more you extend, the higher your leg goes up. But truly in the hip joint, if we wanna isolate the hip joint, not move into the spine in extension, then it's only 10 or 15 degrees. So when we're doing leg lifts or swimming on the mat, it's really should only be, it shouldn't be this big movement, unless you're really wanting to work kind of a spine for that, okay. So that help with that.

That's the idea of the lateral rotators aren't necessarily just lateral rotators. When you talk about the groin, are you talking about the pectineus muscle? The pectineus would be, said, if I'm talking about groin, it might talk about the pectineus muscle. That muscle would have to lengthen, yes. For the glide to happen, it should be lengthening.

I use the word groin, just 'cause clients know kind of what that is, unless they have English as a second language. I have a client who's a German woman and has been in the state. I mean, she has perfect English. When I say groin, but that was one word that to her, she was like, what. She never heard that word before.

So that's the only reason. But it's basically this area 'cause... Okay, your hip socket and let's talk about that. When you're looking on the outside of the body, where is it? Where is that femoral head?

Is it here, is it here, is it here, is it here? Yeah, where is it sitting. But the general rule is here's the pubic bone, here's your panty line, the inguinal ligament here, okay. It's somewhere halfway in between. I like to also think of here's the ASIS, I go in and inch and go down.

But basically halfway. This is where you're, if you touch yourself, this is where your ball would be. Your ball, yeah. So when you're on your mat lying down, that's the point which is exactly where your pectineus is. "And mine's tight." She says. That's why some people can't extend.

This has to actually open up. And if you don't have a good posterior glide in the hip, your pectineus get short and bunches up. Well, it's another. But yeah, it has to 'cause you're trying to bypass 'cause that muscles tight to glide, okay. But let's keep going and then we'll see, we'll look up a little bit more closely at the glide.

So here are your lateral rotators and just in terms of their line of pull with this picture, all right. So interestingly enough, in Louis Schultz's book, he considers the glute minimus as one of the rotators. So he says there are seven lateral rotators, not six. And in his opinion, he's included the glute minimus as part of it. And if you look at the relationship of where that muscle is, the attachment is very close to where the piriformis is.

They are right next one another. So he believes that there is an action of the leg with some of the external rotation. Now it would happen, maybe perhaps a little bit more when your legs up here and you go out to the side. It's higher, versus if my leg was down here and I go out. So this is not so much shortening.

But if you think of the arrow points, greater trochanter, it's right here. Greater trochanter that you can stick out when you go like this up into where my little box is. Here to here, yeah. So if I'm gonna turn out, it makes sense that this would be working. That way.

So in his opinion, and as you know, anatomy is people look at the body and then people make their opinions about what it is. That's why books vary from book to book. So it was just interesting concept to think about that. Then we have our piriformis here and the Obturator internus, which to me is the most interesting one because look how it wraps around. You see the dotted line here.

So it's going around and in, it's a very interesting muscle. All right, and then here's your Quadratus femoris through here. So you notice he doesn't spend too much time on the Gemellis and the Obturator externus too much in terms of, not that they're not there, they're there, but not as more as the powerful motion of the hip. Okay. So here's that same side view that we saw in the bone and we looked at it in the fascia.

That same picture. But here's the muscle. So here's that pubic bone. And then there's more stuff in the way now. So can you see the bone right here, is that half pubic bone.

Here's the Ischial, here. Sits bone, right, got it. Sacrum. All right, so now... So now you can see the relationship of all these muscles.

Here's the glute coming into the sacrum on the right side there, all right. Now, here, here we go. Here are our rotators coming through here. Our Obturator internus coming on to that Levator ani. This is that fascial picture here, coming through here. And look at the relationship of, here's the iliacus here, which of course at this point is called iliopsoas.

Because they really merged as one muscle. The pictures will make it look all nice and clean, it's really not. So the psoas comes down, emerges with iliacus and then comes down together. So it really technically should call it iliopsoas 'cause it's really one muscle there. And then what I want you also see is the adductor magnus, as hence its name Magnus.

It's a very broad adductor muscle that only crosses from the pubic ramus onto the femur onto the back. And its relationship to the femurs, where does it land on the femur? It's the most posterior near your hamstring. It kind of lives right next to the two medial hamstrings. And in fact fascially, depending on how you stand and what the alignment of your legs are.

So like a bow legged person versus a knock knee person, the changes the position of where that muscle lives on the bone. So if I was really internally rotated bow legged person, that muscle, all of a sudden is more on the back part of the leg and it starts to behave like a hamstring instead of an adductor. In fact, you know when you do bridge and you get a cramp, yeah, guess what? It's 'cause the adductor Magnus is too tight. It's really more of that cramping.

So if you try working, if you're working more one on one, or even in a class maybe, try seeing if you can somehow facilitate a release in that adductor Magnus. So that means what, you could stretch it. You can do contract release, which is what we did a little bit. A little squeezing release, but you'd have to engage the adductor and release. Somehow try to get that muscle to let go and then try doing the bridge.

And you'll find that the hamstring cramp will go away. All right, I've got you. I know we've all had the experience, I have. You go up in that bridge and go, ah, that hamstring goes, 'cause you're not really quite ready for it. So that's a really interesting little tip that you wanna try to look at that muscle and see how there's another workshop.

So I'm not gonna show you that, but we could do that, but 'cause I want to get into the hip glides, anyway. So this is a very strong relationship through the whole pelvis in the hips. Okay, so now in your stance. I want everyone to actually take a second. Well, before we do this standing up, is there any questions about kind of this little summary of anatomy that I did?

I know it was kind of quick, but thinking about it, it makes sense, yeah. (woman speaking in the background) Yeah. The concept of keeping the sits bones wide, keeping the feet up, the heels aligned. It is an advanced concept. It's not an easy one to teach.

Once they get it, are we gonna see an exercise on the reformer where we can teach it on the mat and then immediately take it to the reformer. Because that would be great. Yes, yep, can't wait. Absolutely. Yeah, totally.

Okay, so the femoral heads, this gliding, all right. So there's what's called medial lateral glide, all right. So. when you stand up, so comes, stand up. 'Cause you guys are movers, so you can feel. So put your hands on your greater trochanters here.

And those are the little bones. Some people have like little indents here. So put your hands so, so good. That's where your hip joint is. So if you wanna be really kind of trick your class, say to your people, you wanna say put your hands on your hips, what does everybody do, yeah.

When really it should be this, okay. So these are your hip joints. So they are actually down here. All right, so now push your hip sway to one side. I call this a hip sway, yeah.

So if everybody went this way to the left, you're right greater trochanter's doing a medial glide and the left is a lateral glide. And they'll come back so that they're balanced. So you're standing on two legs. Now shift to the right. So now you're doing a left medial glide and a right lateral glide, yes, okay.

Now come back. So do that again and now I want you to do a little self assessment, which direction if you have one, do you feel that you can go further, like it's easier to glide. Yes, can you feel there is a difference. Most people couldn't go to, I find the can go to the left better, okay. I don't know why, but that's just than the right.

Though, there are people can go to the right. There's no correlation between right hand and left hand, no. Actually there's a book out. I don't know if it's that new, but I forget the title of it, but it's right hand left hand. And this guy does this, he did some studies and there's no correlation between right handed and left handed and right sided and your brain.

And it's very interesting. I haven't gotten the book yet. I just recently heard about it. So it's one of it's on my list. Anyway, so yeah, everybody always asks that question, but they're saying no, there's not. And they haven't figured it out. There's no answer.

So what studies do they just say no, no answer. Or needs further study. Okay, so. You're just swinging. Yeah, sometimes you can go too far out.

It could be too loose. Your legs are straight by the way, okay. So that is a medial lateral glide, okay. And that's Ab and abduction of the hip and we need to have that pattern, okay. So you can sit down again.

So that's more balanced and standing. So when a person has a balanced hips, so they're not stuck in one glide or the other. They're balanced over their legs, their spine has a better chance of just being not stuck in a side bent position, like a scoliosis, all right. A person with scoliosis has definitely sway to one side more than the other, okay. When we stand like this, a lot of people stand like this, don't they? Yes, that's not a good position, okay.

So in this picture, we're showing that the person, let's say this is where you have to get orientated, all right. Or if it's front, okay. Then it would be shifted to the left. So that's what it is, it's a front view. It's a front view.

The last time I looked at it, I thought it was a back view. 'Cause other pictures from companions show little patellas and there's no little patellas there, but the feet are forward, so sorry about that. So the arrow is shifting, so I'm gonna mimic this way. Oh no front, 'cause you're looking at it from the front. You're looking in front, here's on front.

So we got that clear. Okay, so we're shifting the pelvis, the person standing, which is how most of us stand over to the left. You see that? So the restriction in the glide, you see, I can glide to the left well. But because I'm stuck in a left lateral glide and a right medial glide, you see, I'm stuck that way.

When you asked me to sway this way, the restriction is there. I can't shift over here. You see. Does that make sense, so the picture. So if I'm living over here, I'm stuck in a lateral glide and medial glide.

So then when I'd go to do an action, let's say you ask me to do a side leg lift with my left leg. Even if I'm lying down on the mat, I'm still, even if I lie down, I'll be stuck in this position. I can't glide. So when you do a leg lift to the side, that medial glide should happen. But if I can't glide in my hip, if I don't have that accessory motion, I have to compensate.

I have to move around it. So what do you think my option's gonna be? I'm gonna move my hip. And then what am I doing to my back? And then people wonder why when they work their hips here, why their back hurts.

So that's kind of the idea of what I'm trying to get you to look at. And we're gonna look at, of course, on the exercise on the reformer about that. But I want you to see that if I am stuck over here, there's gonna be restriction going in that direction. All alright. So, the movement of the hips. So the first picture here is we're looking at the flection and extension of the hip.

So this picture here. So if there's a rod that runs through the greater trochanters this way, no. Then my leg is swinging around that axis. Does that make sense? That's what I was trying to show.

What should happen when you go into hip flection, is that the femoral head goes posterior, rolls to the back of the hip socket and goes down inferior. Posterior, inferior, okay. That's what should happen when that glide does not happen, that's when the ball stops to move, it stops it's glide, but the person continues to bring their knee up and they contract the tensor, pectineus grip, no space in the joint and then everything pinches in there. And then plus the fact, then they start to get into the tensor muscle and over tensing here. Then you wonder why there's always this tightness through here.

Does that make sense? So we really gotta work on that glide, which we will, okay. And then we already talked about extension. So the extension, what the femoral head needs to do is to go inferior and anterior. So that way it's gotta move.

And that's the idea that people who do a knee flection in the back or the hip extension, if you don't have that femoral head moving forward, which is into the groin. And it stops there in a little bit of flection and then you ask them to lift their leg this way, they go into their back. They can't stabilize their back if that glide's not happening, okay. All right, and then we already talked about the ab and abduction here. So that's, if I have a rod going this way and I'm swinging in and out ab and induction, yeah.

And then of course you have the transfers, which is the rotation, all right. So they call it three degrees of freedom, those motions that we need to have, which really impacts your back. So, if someone really has got a very tight back, work their hips. Get the hip glide and their back will free up, as opposed to just focusing on their back. Does that make sense?

And sometimes I'll take the approach if their hips are really tight and might have to work the back a little bit so that the hip can then be able to glide a little bit. So it's a little bit back and forth between the two ends. So generally I kind of think back tight, let's work on the hips. Hip's really locked up, let's work on the back a little bit so I could get at the hips 'cause it, you know, okay. So we still have to look at both.

So there's picture. I just wanted to show the different angles of the glide, right, forward and back this way. And they think Glip glide, okay. So hip stability, right. So the picture on the right, the person is taking that step, had that stability here.

And if they're in the push off phase, which means the toe is still on the floor, haven't quite pushed off yet, but I'm about to push off. That's where we have the stability of not only your adductor supporting here, which hopefully is Magnus and longus, hopefully. But if your leg is like this and you're in this lateral glide and your femurs rolled this way, your adductor magnus is acting like a hamstring now, it's not supporting that leg in this position. And of course, glute medial is of course here, all right. And here, since I still have contact with my toe on the floor, I definitely have my Quadratus femorishere.

And my glutes working here to help me into hip extension just before I push off and swing. When I swing, guess what, posterior glide. Glide, transfer my weight. And now this side has to do the same. When I don't have it, that's when the person's body can't stay when the...

So watch what it will look like. That's an exaggerated picture. That person has a serious problem. And what they do is they're swinging their leg around. They call it a Trendelenburg.

They're having to swing. You might see someone where they're, all right. That's a very serious hip problem. But you might see something just a little subtler, like watch the top of my head. See I'm going like that.

I mean, that's what you see. So the top of the head is shifting from side to side, as opposed to being more in the center and that I'm moving through the center. I'm having to do that medial line. So not a lot of shift from side to side. And that old book on the head thing.

So that's the lecture on that part. Is there any questions I know we'll be clear. I think when we start seeing it in movement and practicing with it. Rotation transverse axis, yeah. So the three plane, normal movement of freedom, she was just asking, right.

It's anterior, posterior that's fluxion extension, your ab and adduction, which is your hip glide. And then you've got the transverse rotation. Yeah, the can can. Sometimes, they do, yes. Yeah, if say, if you find yourself standing, which a lot of people do like this, 'cause they're tired or you got the mommy hip.

So they're tired, so they stand like this. So I say, all right, so I'm gonna watch so for a while stand like this. So if you're always used to standing on your left hip, I say, go ahead and hang. If you wanna hang, just do it on the right side for awhile. Better yet they catch themselves and then just right themselves.

But I say, if you need to, do it on the other side, at least.

Chapter 2

And then we're gonna look at how, when the hips move up and down this way, which creates side bending. So when you lift a hip up, so if you all lift your right heel upward, you feel that right ilium comes up higher than the left. Can you feel what your hip joints doing? It's doing a little glide there. Yes, you feel that.

Also the lumbar spine is side bending towards that hip. So when I say towards, it means it's bending that way. It's almost like the ilium comes up and shoves the spine out of the way. So the way I know what I mean. Okay, technically this side bending is a convexity left, but we think of it as my spine is bending over to the right.

You understand, in terms of movement, technically you'd be saying convex left, but see, to me, it's like, but I'm moving right, why would I say left? You understand. So when we hike that right hip up, if I lift my right heel, then the lumbar spine has a convexity left, but it's moving over side bending to the right. So it's like the ilium is pushing the bones over to the left. And if I do, if I lift my left heel, the same thing should happen.

Understand that, when you can feel that also the hip is gliding on one side or another. So that's the effect of having an unbalanced hip glide. What happens, you see that in people, correct? Will you have one hip higher than the other. Now, if you have a structural scoliosis, your spine is pretty much, and depending on what your age is within that scoliosis.

If you're a young person versus someone who's 80 years old, I mean, it's a very big difference on how stiff that curve is, okay. You could get some accessory motion out of that spine at a much younger person or an older person if the older person had been moving their whole life. But if they're a person who hasn't been moving, there'll be more calcification of the bone. They'll be pretty rigid and you won't get accessory motion in the spine. So the hips are kind of stuck in a glide.

But the hip joint, usually you can get a little bit more glide out of the hip actually helps them with their spine, okay. But it may not change that one hip's higher than the other. And a person who's just has a tightness, a structural, I mean, occupational is what I call it, functional scoliosis. That's just the soft tissues really tight. This kind of thing works brilliantly for that to balance that out, okay.

But this is what I want you to watch. So if you need to come a little closer, that's fine. So what you'll do is you'll kneel down so your eye is at the level of the person. And you place both hands on the greater trochanters. And what I want you to do is watch the spine as the person is doing this.

So I say to the person, just let me move you around. So they're not helping you. I'm gonna feel, so I'm gonna push over to the right. And I wanna feel that her greater trochanter's going deep into the socket and that right one is coming into my hand. And then I compare it to the other side.

So I press her this way, I should feel that greater trochanter get deeper into the socket and the left one, which she does really nice. In fact, I can put my hand on that ledge. I call it a ledge. That's that part of the greater trochanter that sticks out. So when I go over here, I can actually feel that top of, the actual top of her greater trochanter there.

But when I go this way, she has a little bit of movement, but not as much. I can't quite get my hand on the top of that ledge. Does that make sense? So she's like our picture kind of stuck in a left sway, left sway is good, right sway a little tight, okay. That's gonna affect the height of her hips and it's gonna affect her spinal movement.

It's gonna affect her feet are doing. So if she exaggerates this glide to the left, now stay right there with the leg straight. See what happens to the feet. She gets a little more pronation on the right foot and a little more supernation on the left foot. So, sometimes you might notice in someone's feet that they actually have one printed foot and one supinated foot.

Hip glide, go up to the hip, you'll see. That will change, okay. So now the next, so your test, so you do the hip sway, take a moment to feel that. That's one. Two, I want you to place your finger at T12, okay. And it's kind of a prominent bone, or you can go to the lowest rib here and just walk your way around and find the spinus process of T12 and put one finger on it right here. And take your other finger and put it in the center of the sacrum.

So if you feel where the PSIS is, you'll feel there's like little bumps. We have little spine as processes, some more prominent than the other. So think about like S two or three and we'd line them up. You see that one on one on top of the other. So when she has her right heels gonna lift with the leg straight, these two dots should stay the same.

Does it? No, she shifts off. Do you see that? And come back. Let's do that one more time.

She lifts the right heel and my top finger moves to the left. Yes, can you see that and come back. You're right. Right, now she's gonna do the other side. Stay right over. Do you see that? Okay, that's more functional, all right.

What she's doing, so now my hands gonna do. Here's her spine as processes of the lumbar spine. When she lifts the left heel, this is happening. That's why this point and this point are staying over one another. Do you see that?

Okay, and then come back. I have to do, I can't bend my hand the other way. But here she's lifting the right heel, this is getting shoved over here. She's staying straight. Do you see that, the spine is not doing that, and rest.

So I just call that a heel lift test, yeah. So what is that telling me? It's confirming that when she is stuck in this glide over to the left, what it's doing is elevating this left hip a little bit. So she's able to, so go ahead and lift this leg up. So this lift, see, notice when she's got the left hip up, there's a medial glide here and a lateral glide here.

That's functional with the side bending of the spine this way. That's functional. When she does the other side, she doesn't have that medial glide here. Can you see that? No medial glide, no lateral glide.

The spine can't bend, so she shifts in her rib cage that way and rest, okay. And if she were to have a little cranky sacroiliac joint, a little cranky, like, "Oh, my Quadratusis tied" or I'm tight back here. There can be any kind of referred symptom from it. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do get.

Yeah, so, I mean like you get, like you're back here. So it comes from that lag. Now, if we can get her to get that medial glide back, it will change and what we're gonna work on. And maybe I'll keep working with them and we can see the change. We should be able to see that that point should change with the glide.

Do you see how that works, okay. So I said three tests, so yeah. So the three tests are the hips sway. You can take a look at after the sway, after you see the sway, do the heel lift like I just did, put your two fingers there. And then I just want you to confirm in her case, it would be her left hip is higher.

So he would come down here and put your hands right on top of the ilium. Do you see what I'm doing like that. So her left is higher and that matches that hip glide. See those three, okay. So just take a couple minutes and get a partner, all right.

And take a quick look. Yeah, that was great. You were a good model. Okay. So make sure that you kneel down so your eyes are at the level of the pelvis.

There you go. Everything you're talking about is like my body. Your body, good. Tight like that. Okay.

(murmurs) Don't push your person over, just feel the glide. Yeah. (woman speaking in the background) It doesn't matter, I don't think it matters. But yeah, I usually do it barefoot. Now your hands are on the greater trochanter.

Your hands are on the ilium. So now you feel the bone and now you feel that going in here, that's that ledge. The ledge right there, you feel it, there. And then, okay. So now, you do the movement.

Now you push her, don't let her do the movement. So you should feel the bones, that's the idea. So no helping. You even have a flatter hands, so really can feel. Yeah, you really wanna feel.

That's it, right. Let's make sure the hands are good. Feeling with the Palm of your hand, are you feeling it there, okay. So there you go. I try to get more, there you go.

I think you're a little more forward, there you go. Now don't sway, let her move you 'cause you wanna feel that accessory motion. There you go, can you feel that motion? Don't help her, don't go so far. Don't go so far.

No, it's a small movement. You push her a little bit. So what are you feeling there? It feels equal. It's like-- Okay. Some people have really good hip glides.

Okay, let's see. It's always nice having a confirmation. So first of all, not standing very equal. So bring your heel back a little bit, there she goes. So she was already standing a little bit of asymmetry, okay. So, and just looking, let's just look, having arms hang down.

So her ilium, but she looks, see them high on the left. Right, put your hands there so you can feel that. So, see, you're on the top of the ilium and here, you see it's a little bit higher there. So I'm gonna suspect that she's got our common left glide, but we'll just see. Some people have a high ilium and they have great glide.

So there's a structural thing that's there in each of their body that perhaps, you know. So I never assume anything until I feel the movement, all right. So I'm gonna push her this way. She's not, it's not really gliding so much. Relax a little bit, let me move you.

There you go. Actually, she really... Do you see how her whole body's like leaning this way. She's not gliding, here. Feel that.

Right here. Yeah. Yeah, why don't you? Can you, okay, all right. So relax your hands a little bit.

There you go. You see, she's just, looking at her whole body. Look at the body. She's just leaning like the leaning tower of PISA here. And see, there's not much of an indent there.

And then when she goes this way, I still don't feel a whole lot, but he's going in a little bit there. So your hands deepening. But here, I don't feel anything deepening there. She's just leaning. Can you feel that.

And maybe that's why I thought. Yeah, yeah. It actually felt pretty equal, but not moving so much. Here, feel mine, I've got really good hip glide. Here, step by the way for a second.

What do I have to do? We gotta shake your booty, girl, okay. All right, so let's move on. Yeah, so for you. So two things, so you didn't match the left sway.

Do you know what I'm saying? So you have, you like to side bend your spine to the right because when you lift the right hip up, it likes to go that way. Though, you do go a little anterior. I have to say she's cheating a little bit. Okay, so another compensation, everyone, right.

That you might find is that, and maybe that's why you couldn't keep your hand on her spinus process is because if I can't, if you're asking me to side bend, let's say I'm a spine. You want me to side bend and I can't side bend that way, then I'm gonna either shear out of the way, or I'll go forward. I mean, people have different strategies on how they compensate, all right. So in her case a little bit here, now she might have tricked us. In her case, she's going anterior to do the movement.

So we need to reassess her. Okay, who's your partner. Yeah, let's... Back up, so she doesn't have to kneel on the wood floor. Okay, so let's try her again.

One more time, that'd be a good review, okay. And then let's talk about what we find is her restriction. So finger on the T12 and finger on the sacrum. Make sure you're on the spinus process, yeah. And just find that, you wouldn't bother move the rib.

Yeah, you can go to the floating rib and go to the center and find the bump, you know the bone. The 12th one is pretty prominent, the bone, the spinus process if you look at the skeleton. Yeah, good. Okay, good. And then let's.

So you're a little high. Let's be, say here's our PSIS would you be about S two So go like, yeah. You're right on the bone, perfect. So now there that's a little bit more here. There you go, feel it.

Yeah, so it'd be right on the top of it, not on the side. All right. Now, if you notice, even with her standing here, this side of her rib cage is a little more posterior than this side. So she's already standing in a right facing rotation to start with. So she already has that going on.

So I wanna make sure you don't go anterior. So keep your leg straight and lift your right heel. She went off, is she off or straight. She's off. Yeah, she went off.

Come back. So you she was tricking us by going into extension anterior, you understand. So we're looking at her again, we're reassessing her 'cause she was very tricky. Now do the left. She actually is staying better on the left.

So when we were looking at her before. There you go, that's more difficult, isn't it? Yeah. And she's wanting to go anterior. Yeah, so I'm putting my hand here so she doesn't go anterior.

But see, if she went anterior, it appeared as if it didn't shift off. But actually it did. So some people are very tricky, right. So remember there's those three planes. Inflection, extension ab and adduction, rotation.

And if you're doing a motion that is the coronal plane, and a person doesn't have that movement in their bones, in the spine, they are gonna choose to do the other two planes. They might rotate, they might go anterior, they may deflect. I mean, and people do a different strategy. That's what makes this work, I think kind of fun and always interesting, I never get bored 'cause you're always like the detective. I'm always like, okay, how did you do that?

And I have to say, people are like us, dancers, Pilates people, whatever, we're really good chameleons. We're really good at like, okay, I'm gonna be straight. We really do. So it's tricky. It's a little easier on your clients because they're not quite so trained to appear straight.

That's why dancers are really difficult to assess. That's why I call them chameleons because they know how to appear straight, okay. So you were tricky. (speakers talking over each other) Some restrictions on those sides. Okay.

Yeah, you have a little restriction on both. I mean, I would like to see a little bit more, so let's talk about her restriction now, okay. So in her lumbar spine, she is able to side bend to the left, which is what I said functional, but she cannot side bend to the right. So she's stuck in a left side bent, okay. So that her restriction will be side bending her spine to the right.

That's a restriction, do you understand. Is she more restricted on lumbar. At lumbar. And stuck in a left side bend would mean... It's like she's walking around with that hip hiked up.

So wait more into her left. Correct, the typical shift over here. So that would mean that her hip sway, which is what we're really trying to do. She likes to hang out in a left lateral hip and a right medial hip. Which when her right heel lifted, that's when you're (indistinct) Yeah, when she did the heel lift test, we were looking at the lumbar spine.

But there's also a hip glide that should go along with that. So when she lifts her left hip, which is what she likes to do, she loves that. That's that right medial glide, you see, and her left. But when she lifts up her right hip, not only she can not side bend her spine to the right. And it's happening too because she can't glide in the hip.

This left hip can't go medial, so we gotta work on that, gotta work on this medial glide and this lateral glide. And we can do that on the reformer. So, these lateral flection issues of the lumbar are fixed with hip glide. Can be. Can be.

Can be, yes. Good. Not always, but can be, okay. Easiest place to start. Yeah, yeah it is actually.

Okay, any more questions? Are we good? I think you understand those three little tests, yeah. Okay, great. All right, now we're gonna come to the mat.

Okay. So let's actually, I want you to... We're just gonna play with the glides a little bit. So can you spread your mats out a little bit and I want you to get into a cap position again. So we're gonna play a little bit and actually come up a little closer here.

We're not gonna move arms and legs out to the side, so you should be okay. Okay, so in the cat, so here's a concept now with hip gliding, you have two choices. So when we're standing and you're doing the hips sway, your legs are fixed, 'cause your feet are on the floor, Correct. Does that make sense? So the sway is happening with the acetabulum and femur.

So you're moving the pelvis from right left side. The femurs are fixed 'cause you're standing on the floor. You're not moving your feet. So what's happening at that joint, your hip is moving over the femoral head. I mean, your legs are moving a little bit with it that way, but you're basically this versus when you do leg circle or the pendulum we were doing today.

That's with the acetabulum fix 'cause I'm lying on my back. My hips not moving, I'm stabilizing my pelvis, correct. And I'm moving the leg, the femur in the socket. So there's two ways of looking at it, fix the femur, move the acetabulum around the femur, fix the acetabulum, move the femur in the socket. And we wanna really access both of those motions when we're training people, 'cause they're both important 'cause when we are standing, which they don't, they're pretty functional when we're standing and walking.

There's a lot of action of the hip acetabulum on the femoral head. Except for right here. When I take a step, this is acetabulum over femoral head. This swing through is the femoral head in the acetabulum. So there's two concepts there.

So we're gonna look at the glides in both directions. So in the cat when you're kneeling. Okay, so go ahead and get into a quadruped position. You are now gonna move your pelvis around the femoral heads, correct. So go ahead and do the curl of the cat, all right.

So now think about your femoral heads here. What glide are you doing in your femoral heads when you curl and do spinal flection and you're doing a posterior tilt with your pelvis. What's this glide called? What's your femoral head doing and come back to neutral. Think about the femoral head.

No, anterior, yeah. Think about it again, go ahead. Curl your pelvis. Your femoral head should actually be moving into your hips going into extension, yes, 'cause you're starting. When you're a neutral come back to neutral.

I know you're on all fours, you're upside down. You're kind of not used to it. You keep looking at it. So right now you're in hip flection, yes. So in this position, if you're in a neutral spine, you're in a 90 degree hip flection, correct?

So you're actually in a posterior glide right now. Now, as you do a pelvic tilt and you curl your cat, think of your femurs rotating around that axis. Remember the axis from one of the three axisses and rotate around that axis and try to lift ASIS up. Your femoral head is actually moving, correct. Anterior, you're going into hip extension even though your back is flexing, correct.

Okay, now go posterior glide, which would be bringing you back into neutral. You can go deeper into your posterior glide if you go into an arch, you feel that. Yeah, so that's... So your femoral heads have moved more to the posterior. All right, neutral.

You're coming towards the anterior and even all the way anterior when you flex. Now, moving through posterior, right into the neutral. So putting your attention on your femoral heads while you're doing cat, can you feel the change in your back? You get more access into your back. Okay, now come back into the cat.

Let's see if you can go back to the old cat. Okay, so don't think about your femoral head, start from your naval curl, using your abdominals, curl your tail under. That's how people do their cat, yeah. Yeah, not much in the... (woman speaking in the background) Now come back to neutral is excellent, yeah.

Okay, now start from your anterior glide. Roll that access through the center of your hip. Lift the ASI up. No, don't shift your weight forward though. You see, go ahead and curl around the hip joint.

Yes, so you have that access, you know that rod going through and you're rolling around. Yes, isn't that great on your lower back? There you go. And not only that, how are your abdominals are fully engaged all the way from the pelvic floor, exactly. Great, huh?

Okay, now, wait, wait. Come back to your old cat. We're getting new cats today. All right, so now go into neutral spine. Just be a neutral spine.

Okay, now do the arching part of the cat the way you would normally do it without thinking about your hips. It's kind of like lower back, right. All right, come back to your neutral. Okay, now start from your femoral heads. Deepen them posterior, roll them to the back of your femur.

Yes, so you're folding in the hip. You feel that? It's a little nicer motion on your spine, correct? You're getting the arch, but without a lot of compression. Do you feel the difference between the compression?

All right, now come back to the neutral again. So neutral, do your old cat through the spine. It's kind of compressive. Can you feel it? Yeah, now come back.

All right, neutral or more neutral some of you, there you go. And now start at your hip joint. Think of that access running through your femoral heads and get that you're getting a deep posterior glide of the femur as you go into the cat. Do you feel how your back is still working? You still have the same range of your extension, you're just not compressing.

So you're really starting from the roots. You get a more even curl, less compression. Yeah, not nice. Okay, so that's the cat with the anterior posterior glide. (woman speaking in the background) Yeah, that I was doing when I was pushing the shins down, was actually inhibiting the glutes from working so that you can actually...

And then the rolling up came from your abdominals more, the shin pushing down was more to engage the abdominals more fully. But you could even cue through rolling through your hips. And it's a nice image to just say, take a rod, put it through here and roll your hips to here. That, that picture of the three axes. Okay, let's do the ab adduction.

So come back into your cat neutral spot, okay. All right, and just be in a nice neutral spine to connecting your lower ribs. Don't let your ribs hang to the floor. Don't pull them up too much, but just don't let them be hanging. Good, great.

And you actually could be more over your knee, there. You're right in front of me, so there you go. All right, so now shift your weight from side to side ab and add, like the hip sway. That's right, just a little bit. Now try to do it from the femoral heads.

Just like the swag, exactly. So you're not wagging your tail per se, like a dog. It's not a tail wag as much as it's just going onto the right knee and then over side to side. Yeah, so you feel the glide. Keep some weight on don't let your...

Let's see this one's a little trickier. When you shift, don't unweight your legs. Some of you were just really unweighting the leg. Do you want to keep the knees on there, but just move the hip joint to the side. To the side, like that sideways, like an old fashioned, just say typewriter, I don't know what are the images that we're gonna be able to come up with that does that kind of shift from side to side like that.

(woman speaking in the background) Oh, yeah, you have to be a boat person. But they understand it's a shift from side to side and you can feel it. Does this match your standing glide? Can you think about that? So for those of you who did it, was anybody a right person, like they swayed to the right or was everybody left?

Did anybody... You were right? Yeah. Okay, okay, okay. So I know for myself, I can sway to the left easier than I can to the right.

And I definitely can feel that here, like I'll tend to arch my back more. But that side to side cat. Okay, great. So that's just a way to feel that glide. All right, so now what we're gonna do is look at some very common exercises, like kind of like pre Pilates type exercises in terms of the hip glide, all right.

So actually, if I could keep working with you, that'd be great. So come lie down on the mat here and you guys can come a little closer if you want, and then I'm gonna give you some time to try this yourself, but, okay. So just lie down neutral position, okay. Feet down, bend your knees. It's kind of a home position, right. Supine home position.

So we start many exercises in this position, correct. And when we're working with the stability of the spine and we try to teach people to bring their legs up, with a stable spine, it's called knee folds. Everybody familiar with that exercise. Some people are. Okay, so what I wanna see happen is that the femoral head is going to drop down into the socket.

So this is that puppet string idea through here. So when I have someone do this exercise, I don't tell them to lift their knee or bring your knee to your chest or lift your foot. Because what that does is go ahead and lift your foot and your knee, just bring your knee up, okay. So notice, now stay there. Okay, stay there. So this is what most people do, correct.

So what's happening here? She's in contracture of that quadricep, okay. The quadricep, remember the attachments on the ilium. It's really not helping the femoral glide. That's what quads do, they do have flection, yes.

But we want that hip flection to happen in coordination with that posterior glide in the socket. So the muscle that actually pulls that head of the femur, posterior inferior, anybody guess. Psoas. Psoas. That's the psoas' main job now, you guys.

New studies are coming out of Australia. They're saying it's not really hip flexor. What it's doing is the posterior glide. That's what it's doing. It's pulling the head of the femur into the acetabulum.

So when you anchor the ribs, they're stable, they're not moving around. Yeah, you stabilize the spine. What you do with your co contraction, correct. Then when the femur is going to drop, when you think of it dropping into the socket first, that activates the psoas, which pulls it in and you'll feel the tone actually pick up in the trunk. So the psoas is really, to me a core muscle stabilizer.

But to activate it, it's kind of like a multi-fit, meaning that it's a muscle that has to kind of fill up the space of the spine. So think about where the attachments are on the skeleton. So what it's gonna do in order to engage what muscles do, they plump up. That's fill up with blood, they pump up. And so it's like an air bag to a car.

But we have four airbags around our spine that should protect the spine on all four sides. And that airbag is what creates that stability, to get the psoas to activate. And that's through the nervous system. Through the brain connection, through the fascia. That femur bone has to drop down in order to set up that whole airbag deployment in the body.

Does that make sense? So how do we do that? Some people, like she's sitting here in a very good position with her femoral heads here. What you'll find that a lot of people will start when they're here. Can you just do a posterior tilt for me? They sit like this and they're relaxed.

But they're sitting like this 'cause their back is tight, all right. The back muscles are tight. And it's kind of bringing the psoas insertion point closer to the origin. So, psoas is probably tight as well. And so that's why people sit like that.

So I know there are a lot of different tricks in order to get the person in a more neutral position. But one of each Eve Gentry's a really brilliant little Niesters, that's what the Niesters are about, is to set the head of the femur in the socket. So if the person is starting out like this and not having a good position to start with with that posterior glide, either you have them do it themselves, or you do it to them. And looking at her here. Yeah, it's all right.

The left one is not quite sitting, which is actually her high hip. I don't feel that that's really sitting in the socket and I could see that from the twist in her pelvis. So I'm just gonna take the leg and she can do this herself. Now relax. And I can feel what she does when she brings a leg up.

That pectineus is really tiny. And can you feel that when you do that, lift your leg. Yeah, see right away. Can you guys see from there? That's that firing right here.

So if you want to see yeah. Lift up again, see right in here, all right, And she's got a little of that tensor working too. So let's see this light, just lift that one up. A little bit, but less. You see now what was different in this leg, okay.

She has some pectineus happening, but you're doing less of the tensor. Can you feel the difference? Yeah, so do that one more time. That was even better. Did you see what I'm looking at?

Okay. So on this leg though, when she tries to lift, so when she lifts don't change there, that's it keep going there. So just getting that and the tensors grabbing. And when that tends to grabs, what it's gonna do is it's gonna shorten and pull the hip up, that's her high hip, okay. So the head of her femur is not quite sitting in the socket as best as they can.

So one of the things that Gentry did. Okay, so relax your leg. And I do it more of the hands on myself. 'Cause what feels good is just relax is so when I press down like this, all I'm doing is putting a little body weight into her. So you feel the head of the femur in the socket.

So where she should feel, it is deep underneath here. So all I'm doing is now you don't have to do it. I'm want her to be a passive 'cause I don't want her muscles to fire in her old habit. So let me lift. No, let me lift your leg, there we go, good.

And feel the weight in the socket. In a class situation, I have the person. Can you reach her just on top. Thing, you just have to have super long arms. 'Cause you really can't be too much past 90 degrees, okay.

Okay, good. So put your own weight down, yeah. So just a little pressure down and without any effort, do a little circle around. See it's hard when your arm's not long enough. You could use a belt.

I'll do it for you, I'll do that. Okay, relax your leg. So this bone has to relax. If that tibia is up, if you're holding the tibia up, which is our tabletop position, you're not really gonna get the initial psoas. You can do the tabletop would that psoas connection. You absolutely have to.

But unfortunately people are doing the tabletop position without getting that glide, which means they're not getting the psoas activated and you're not optimizing your stability there. So of trying to let me do it. There you go. Does that make sense? So in a beginner class and when I'm teaching class, I insist that people not lift their shins to practice lifting their knees.

We call it knee folds. And then you do marching. That time double taps do it without the shin up. So that all the work is coming through here. And then once they understand and can feel where the psoas is coming in with that glide, then I let them lift their shins up.

'Cause once you feel it, it's one of those things that once you turn it on, it's like on and you can bring it back quite quickly. To me, it's more of a turning on type of phenomenon. So that was, can you feel that idea of the glide. Now here's another cue. So if I'm gonna try to cue her to get that glide in her movement.

So I just did a little joint movement in the socket. The psoas, don't do anything yet. She's already thinking about moving. I can tell her body's going, okay. The psoas is to attach on the lesser trochanter.

And you can palpate that on yourself, okay. And that's more on the inside of your leg, correct. Do you need to see where that is on the skeleton? Are you? Okay, so you're just in it for a second.

Let's do that. Just real quick, okay. Depending on the orientation of your femur bone, here's the lesser trochanter right here. So you can either reach behind you and feel it this way, this kind of easy to feel it back here on the inside, back of your leg or you can come forward and feel it through here. But it's a little further back than you think on the bone.

But it see how medial is to the body versus the greater trochanter's more lateral. Remember, we're talking about the medial fascia area coming down into the leg, yes. So if I wanna get that working. Yeah, thank you. You got it.

I'm gonna cue her to feel the head of the femur, heavy into the socket. It's actually gonna drop first into the socket. Before you even think about lifting your leg, drop the head of the femur into the socket, allow your knee to fall towards the midline. Why do you think I'm doing that? No, leave this one here, just let it fall.

(woman speaking in the background) So why, do you know why I'm letting her fall, just letting it fall in? What I'm doing, yeah, the adductors will relax. But I'm bringing that lesser trochanter closer to this medial line so that she can actually access the psoas. If she's in a more neutral position or even out here, there's no way there's that connection gonna happen. So I don't say pull your knee in 'cause I don't want the adductors, it's just a fall.

Let your knee fall in, whatever amount it can do. Yeah, can you feel that. Now she has to get that pelvic floor engaged. So you're just gonna lightly engage the pelvic floor. You did a little bit up here.

That's not pelvic floor, pelvic floor is down here. And feel the weight of your femur into the socket. Keep it kind of falling into the midline. It's gonna feel really turned in and allow the drop happen. And you should breath, exhale and let the knee float up.

But it's happening 'cause you're going down. Just think of the down and let that bring your knee up and keep it in towards the midline and move. Don't go too slow. You have to just let it drop. So if you go too slow, then everything grips.

It is a movement. I know you're concentrating. Everybody starts to move really slow when they're concentrating, but there's a certain amount of natural rhythm that the bone has to just move. So let it fall. Okay, good.

And now think of the posterior glide. So it should really drop into the back of the hip. So feel the back of your hip as the knee floats up. That's better. Does it feel different to you?

You still wanting to lift that chin, such a habit. You don't have a lower leg. There you go. Sometimes when you really get truly, if you really practice this and get that psoas to do the work, I find that my leg does this a little bit. Because. I'm not using that quadricep hip flexor to get the glide, that's working on the glide.

Like I said, in terms of bigger movement, we should be able to have the glide, that connection into the psoas and the hip flexors working when you're doing your bigger movement. So I'm not saying no hip flexors, hip flexors are important. The thing is they become dominant and then they start restricting the glide of the hip. And that's what we're trying to do, do one more time. So remember the falling towards the midline, the dropping back into the posterior and inferior.

Yes, posterior and inferior. That that was the best, it was really great. Could you see how much less, could you feel how, where you're working is like through here. It's totally psoas working there, try it on the right. So this can just stabilize.

So again, now I didn't do the glide for her here, but she can maybe learn from the other side. So she wants to feel the weight, it's all in intention. Let your knee fall towards the midline, excellent. And then feel the drop first. Let your legs be really heavy.

Your lower leg's gonna hang. Exhale, drop the femur into the back of the socket and let the knee float up. And come back down. All right, now let's stay here for a second, relax. Okay, put your hand here.

You're starting to rotate to the left a little bit. There you go, so she was turning her pelvis. Hey, relax your leg, okay. So she's a little dominant on the outside here. There you go.

Do you feel how it just dropped in the socket? I do. Yeah. You can feel it when it just goes down there. That's in the socket.

So she's got some tightness in the front. And that hip is a little bit. This hip is more anterior. She's a little closer here. So actually working on your anterior glide would help this actually too.

So a hip can be stuck in an anterior glide also. So that means it won't drop posteriorly. They actually call it a syndrome. It's an anterior hip syndrome. All right, so now let's bring your foot here.

So just stabilize with this. I bring that out a little bit, okay. So this legs good. You feel how different that feels sitting in the socket. That's fantastic.

Now don't change anything. All right, keep your weight here. So there's a little weakness this way for her. So inhale, exhale. Feel the knee, just fall to the midline.

Don't pull it, don't adduct it, just let it fall. And then think of the sink. Let your leg be heavy co contract and let it drop. So that's the idea, okay. Does that make sense what I'm working for on doing that.

All right, so we're gonna do, so that was the stirring hands on. Anterior would be the posterior tilt, which we already felt in the cat, but you can do the same thing on your back. 'Cause this is where we usually do post your tilts. 12 O'clock gonna the North, whatever you call it. So show us now in terms of doing your posterior tilt, just like we did in the cat.

Don't grip in here, think of the axis running through, the picture of the hip joint. Here's the hip, a greater trochanter. Start here, start to think of the glide of the femoral head coming anterior as the pelvis moves back. And then come back to the neutral. Does that make sense?

So start from the femoral head, start to roll. Yeah, just see how that was so much better. The ASI has really starts to move away from the femur first. You see that? Do you feel the difference?

Yeah. Yeah. And come back down, that's very asymmetrical in her. Okay, but I think once we do the lateral glide with her, that will change. Can you see how she's rotating. Her pelvis is facing to the right right now a little bit. Yeah, so she's more dominant on this diagonal than she is on this diagonal.

And part of that is coming from this lumbar spine. And so we have to do that lateral glide for her, all right. But she's gotten better at the posterior glide and the anterior glide. So it's different than when you do a posterior tilt in pilates, even before you do bridge. That's that action of rolling the pelvis.

You wanna start from the hip joint and then go into the lower back versus starting from the... That's why the navel to spine cue is not really the best. Okay, is there any questions about that? I'm just gonna show you these, and then we're gonna take a few minutes for you to try. All right, so the next one is I'm looking at prone, which you actually already did, look at the prone.

But let's look at your prone and then can I have a magic circle? Is there a magic circle around? Okay, so lie on your stomach. So we already earlier demonstrated yes. That's prone leg alignment.

Yep, great, thank you. All right, okay. All right, so what I'm looking for is that again, the ASIS it's in the mat and that the front of the groin area, which is where the femoral head is, is also into the mat. The alignment is the sit bones are really aligned with the heel. I have to say wide, 'cause either you have to say wide or narrow, depending on what the person's doing.

Most clients will lie down and do what, do this. Okay, now that's a little too wide. But I don't cue them from the sit bones. Because if I tell them to bring their sit bones in or narrow their sit bones or squeeze their sit bones, or that kind of thing, then what's gonna happen is it's gonna take the sacrum and is gonna pull it back this way, which is what you do when you do a posterior tilt. And the minute the sacrum has pulled this way, then I have created a position of the sacrum, which is not the direction.

It actually has to move into the mat this way in order the leg to lift or your back to extend. So I don't want to be pulling the tailbone down and squeezing the back part of my pelvic floor. When you squeeze your sit bones together, that's basically what you're doing, yes. And then the front of your pelvic floor near your pubic bone, is gonna actually get more stretched. So that's more of a pelvic floor thing.

But so I want us to really make sure that that groin is into the mat. Now might be that somebody is very tight in their hip flexors can't lie down in this position with their groin's on the mat, correct? I mean, they're just so buckled under here. I mean, you can't, right. So that's where you have to stretch first.

You've gotta get him to open up a little bit there before you can do this. Do you have to do that first? All right, so we're looking at the relationship of the sit bones in the center of the leg in the middle of the heels, that's very good. Let's have a little bit apart for you. She has a little bit of a knock knee here, a little bit here.

So the anterior glide, just to stay stable here and she's going to lengthen her leg outward, so we get a little bit of space. It's like don't lift yet, it's just sliding your foot along the mat, keeping the front here into the mat. So that's a spiral. The sit bone, now come back, relax. You do the same thing as the other gal.

When you reached, your sit bone started to turn in towards the midline. Keep it right here, don't turn it. So I'm gonna put my finger on it. So you can see. All right, so just lengthen out.

There you go. That's different, isn't it now. Yeah. Good. Now feel the front of your hip bone. So what should happen is I should see as she's stabilizing, as she's lifting her right leg, this left side engages a multi-fridals of the airbags.

And then the right side engages, the glute engages, which she's doing nice, then the hamstring. You're a little hamstring dominant, I can tell because she starts to bend her knee. And come back down. Does that make sense, all right. So pelvic floor contraction, she's lengthening the leg out long, keeping the sit bone in line, which automatically gets the stabilizers going.

Multifedi, this is the order. As she starts to lift, glute is helping that femoral head to going interior. And then the hamstring, perfect. And come back down. Now that's her strong side, actually.

This is the one that is weak because of the glide to the left. So let's see what she can do on this side, all right. So contract find that length first. So set up your back. Keep your ASIS into the mat.

You already left the mat. Do you know that your glute won't function well, if the ASIS isn't into the mat, it needs to be in that little bit of an anterior position up here for it to work. That's how the glute works, okay. So she started to reach, but when offer ASIs. So stay on the ASIS, cool contract.

Good, now lengthen up. There, do you feel the difference, and then you're back engaged. Perfect, she got her stabilized. Her airbags came on. That was really great, she hasn't been lifted yet, really. Okay, now lift and feel the ASIS go into the mat.

There, feel the glute and the hamstring, much better. It's not as tone though as this one was. Her glutes, good. But underneath, I think that's those deep rotators are a little weak on this side. Do you see that that's how the tone is different between the right and left glute.

Does that make sense? It's the underneath muscles. Okay and relax. Now we can add a little bit more. Now the other thing is her alignment's been good.

I hadn't focused on, but see her Quadratusfemoris was also working. I didn't say anything, but, right. So if I want to get that a little bit more, we can do the classic pilates. Let's bend your knees. Hold on.

Oops. Right, she knows this one. You okay? Yeah. Okay, now relax your thighs, okay.

But hold the ring. Don't squeeze it, but keep your feet there. Okay, now notice this leg, all right. See how much external rotation there is in that. So that's a lot of that lateral tightness.

So relax for a second. This is great. Great example. So when she's standing, we already know that she's got this weakness and the deep rotators here, this is her stance. This very tight, the glute medius, the rotator tear and abduction, which would include the piriformis on the right is tight.

So this tightness then translates through the fascia, through the biceps femorus. Which also attaches on the fibula head. So this tightness here then turns, you see, I'm turning my lower leg out, the tightness here. She's got a little bit of that knock knee that goes in like this and that's that tightness. So when she bends, she's more dominant out in here, which is taking the tibia and turning it like that.

So she's gotta turn this way, which is gonna... She's gonna have to work a little bit more. Yeah, no, your grinds up a little bit. So there's a little bit of tightness, all right. Try not to grab your glutes to do that, but just feel the femurs down into the mat more.

So this is where we'd have to work to open up the front of her hip a little more with the knee bend. So it's a more extreme and she's overworking a bit of the hamstring. There you go. So stay here for a second. Can you push on my finger in here? Just stay right here, right, yeah the whole foot here.

There you go. Not too much, gentle. Now you have to keep she's really up in the groin. All right. Don't push so much on your ASIS. You have more on your ASIS than you do at the pubic bone.

So see, you can get a little more pubic bone down, say that's hard. So that's a big stretch for her. So what I was gonna try to do, which I'm not gonna do, it would be to put the ring and have her try to lift, but she's not ready for that yet. It being that we've been sitting around and you understand. Yeah.

Right. So I would want to work opening her anterior hips a little bit more. So that's, she can do that. But the minute you bend the knees, this puts more of a stretch, see more stretch. and she goes into that hike.

She no longer has her anterior glide. So it would not do any of the magic circle things here in this position until I address that. 'Cause otherwise it's all gonna go into her back and I'm not gonna get that glide 'cause she can't glide there. She's too tight. So that's a good lesson on that.

Okay, now on the side, I definitely want to encourage her medial glide, correct. Especially on the left. So we're gonna do really quick. Yes. Can I ask a question?

Yes. I noticed you didn't cue like lifting your navel away from the mat. Do you find that sometimes people do that, if you want them to go a little more, you were saying interior to facilitate that. (indistinct) Correct, yes. So I want the tissue.

So when you're lying on your stomach and you relax, your belly is hanging out on the mat. So what I tell people to do is have the bones on the mat, ASIS and the pubic bone. Yes, she was at that moment too arched in the back, she was too anterior in her pelvis. She had more weight on her ASIS than she did in her pubic bone, which was putting her in a bad position for her back to do a leg lift, correct. Now I don't want her to go into a posterior tilt because that kind of locks up her glutes, which I want them to work to turn on when she lifts her leg, not be in a position of contractual already.

'Cause they actually should not be on. So the abdominals definitely play a role in that. So as she's lying down, so without putting a stretch on the front of her hip, so keeping her legs straight. What it should feel like to get those airbags on that I was talking about is she has to do the pelvic floor lift. And when the transfers engages, it lifts the belly tissue away from the mat.

The whole belly tissue, not just depends on, I mean, I could say navel to spine. Do you understand? But it depends on if somebody does navel to spine, is someone doing a postage. Can you do a posterior tilt for me now? That, that's what you see. And what she's doing again, as I said is pulling that sacrum, which is called counter nutation, it's posterior backward.

And that is not optimal for when you lift your leg. 'Cause when you lift your leg, the sacrum actually is forward. So there could be a lot of strain. (woman speaking in the background) Yeah, like the tripod, the little triangle down. Yeah, correct.

But I want the abdominals engaged. They're gonna be lifted off. I tell you that people just lift. I do say the word tissue instead of your stomach or your abdominals. I'll say, "Hey, just lift all your tissue up off the mat, "but keep the bones on the mat." That's my languaging, okay.

All right, great. So side just real quick we have, I wanna do a side. So can you lie with your head here? And actually, what I'd like to do is slide. Can we slide the mat against the wall?

Is that okay, you guys so do that, okay. So up against it 'cause you're gonna lie against the wall. So have your occiput against the wall, your shoulders against the wall, your hips against the wall and your heels against the wall. Straight legs. Flex your feet there, good.

Heels. Get the bottom ilium back against the wall. There you go. Because I want them stacked. They can put your hand here is fine, lower ribs against the wall.

Best you can and the occiput against the wall. And if you're comfortable with the arm straight, I actually kinda liked to hold like that. Yeah, there you go. Now here is a great tool. Get your heels against the wall.

Yeah, good, to work on that glide. So for the client, yeah. So put your hand here and hold your ilium. Is that okay? So I want it more like, so you can feel whether or not you're gonna hike that hip up, all right.

So start to slide. Reach your leg out and start to slightly, put your heel on the wall and slide it up the wall. Slide your heel up the wall. There you go, slowly. Can you feel the glide right here?

So I should see an indentation right here. And don't you left the wall, your ribs against the wall. She went anterior. Cheating. She was cheating, okay.

This is why I like the wall, okay. So against the wall right here. Stay on my hand. There you go, all right. Co contract, now slide again.

Slowly go slowly, feel it in your hip joint. Yes, let it go in. That's hard, isn't it? Yeah. Right, there's the glide and go down.

Okay, keep your ribs against the wall. And again, slide. There much better. Now what has to happen? Not only does the bone have to move medially, but she's working that glute medius, piriformis here.

And she's having to lengthen the inner thigh. So the tightness that she has is her left adductor and her right abductor. Remember she was lying on her stomach and that leg went out to the side and her knee was turning out, the foot. So when she's standing, you keep going. When she stands like this, glute medius, this is very tight.

This is tight. This is weak, this is weak. And we're gonna do a fabulous glide on the reformer with the magic circle. You just gonna love to get that action. Can you feel it now in the hip joint?

Great, do two more times real quick. Keep that hip from hiking. I'm gonna be like Jane Fonda. Hike those hips. There you go, reach, reach, right.

That's fine right here. Great, one more time. Slide, slide, slide. Oops, oops, you went anterior. That's hard, huh.

I think the reformer glide that we're gonna do after a little break will be really beneficial for her. This is free, this is moving the femur on when we're on the reformer, our femurs are a little more fixed. So come stand up again and let's just see just by doing that. And maybe that little posterior glides save something to happen. So face that way, okay.

So first of all, what do you notice. More balanced in my hips. Yeah, you mean you can feel your weight equal and more feet, yeah. Okay, she looks a little less high. Still a little high though.

So let's look at this test. I mean, I can do the sway, right. And it is a little better, could use a little more. Okay, so it's not totally after one exercise. There's no magic bullet.

Or maybe there is, I haven't found it, okay. So ribs, T12, middle of the sacrum. It was her right hip that didn't go up well. So right hip lift. Okay, that's better.

It moved a little bit over. Can you feel, see, she's got a glide here. Can you feel that? Yeah. So that to me, come back down.

This could be your exercise. Yeah, I felt it. Right, oh no, no, not that left. Push a little here over there, away from me. There and put your heel down and do it again.

Push, that was her exercise. And try not to go anterior. And exercise lift, there you go. So here's an exercise. I do this on the plane, the airplane.

All right, good work. All right, if we can take a short break and then we're gonna get the reformers set up and everything, okay. Thank you. Good work.

Chapter 3

But walk around, you're gonna feel a little different. Okay, so now we're gonna look at some movement, some exercises on the reformer. Really emphasizing the hip glide. And these again are exercises you're familiar with, from our repertory. It's just maybe a little setup is different, a little intention like you experienced with the cat, okay.

So come on up. And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna prep her. I'm working on that posterior glide and anterior glide. So I want you to lie on the box with your hip joint. Just fold it over the edge and you can just stack your hands and support your head.

Yeah, so I want the groin, the crease of the hip at the crease of the box. And I'll just let your knees be heavy and put the tops of your feet on the floor. There you go. All right, so remember when she was lying on her stomach and we were trying to do just the hip extension, the leg lift, but because she had that tightness in the front of her hip. It was difficult for her to keep that pelvis really anchored into the mat the way we wanted it to because of the tightness in the front.

So this putting it a person on a box like this and folding their hips. I'm putting her in her release state, all right. The place where her tissue is not tight, a little bit of hip flection because she can't fully extend her hip. Does that make sense? So this is a good place to start because she's not starting with a restriction already.

So she's gonna still have to do her stabilization of her pelvic floor and transfers. And I just want you to take a quick observation of looking at her spine here, because there's a way to intention the elongation of the spine while you're doing this. So what I'm gonna cue her a little bit different. I want you to see if you can see a change in the length or the energy moving through her spine or not. So just relax for a moment.

Yeah, good. All right, so what I want you to do is take a breath in, and as you exhale, just lift the pelvic floor, feel your transverse abdominis and stabilize your ribs. That's pretty good. Can you see how our transfers came in? And she's pretty stable, but I really didn't feel any kind of response through her spine. Okay, so relax again.

She's never done this before, so, all right. So it's not like I have a model who knows how to make this happen. So what I'd like you to think about when you're doing your co contraction. Think of it as a movement so that you're actually, the pelvic floor is going to be lifting up towards your spine. The spine is gonna respond, there you go.

And laying, I don't know if you saw what she just did. So as opposed to a pelvic floor contraction and a transverse, which is bracing, right. Do you know what I mean by that? So it's kind of like this. So if you tried to push me, I would, right.

It's like a bracing, okay. Versus if I think of it with my breath and a movement so that the pelvic floor is like, I kind of one time use this image of almost like a trampoline, but not a quick, it's not like a quick jump. Though, you could do that with your breath if you wanted to. But the idea that it's like a rebound that you're lifting up and it continues up through the spine and continues like any elongation. Now you could still try to push me over and I'm pretty stable, but I'm not compressing.

So if you understand, so I'm trying to get her to do that Coke contraction with a nice elongation so that the energy doesn't get stagnant and stop in the pelvis, that it actually moves through her spine. So that was excellent, thank you for doing that. All right, so we're gonna have her do that every time now. All right. But now about the hip, okay.

So she has to have that stability and that elongation of the spine to help with the hip glide as well. No matter which hip glide we're going, all right. That's the idea of having the spine be supported and elongated. So if we can use the word support instead of stable, that would be nice. Support the spine.

So she's gonna have that nice elongation very nice and support of the spine. And she's gonna let her do your left knee 'cause it's facing them. So she's gonna let her femur her knee drop heavily into the floor. So there's a feeling of the, that's what I'm gonna get that pulling out of the socket and reach your knee down and... No, don't lift your foot.

You're gonna slide your foot along the floor. And as you do that, you're gonna feel the front of your hip bone into the mat into the box. Okay, very good. And let this like, just be heavy, it's just hanging there. And you keep your elongation through the spine.

Good. And then let the knee lead first. So length of the knee down, there, nice. And then rest your knee on the floor. So what I asked her to do on the return was to create length in the hip and the quadricep so that the femur could go back into that posterior position. Does that make sense?

So let me say it again. So I'm cuing her, so she's gonna stabilize with the elongation or support through elongation. The knee is gonna reach towards the floor first. So that gives me that little bit of distraction on the hip. Then she's gonna slide her foot along the floor.

The front of the ilium is gonna be anchored into the box. She's gonna stay by it. Now what's nice about the box is the person gets to feel both hip bones on the box if they tend to lift one or the other off, okay. Now from here, I'm gonna have her. She can lift, no, stay here.

We're not gonna come down yet. So keep lengthened now, float your whole leg up. And as you lift your foot, feel your ASIS move more into the box as you lift the leg. Feel that kind of counter lever here. There you go.

That's high enough. Good. Can you feel, this is very good. She's got that nice coordination of that weakness from the lateral hip, you feel the Quadratusfemoris working on the inside of her hip and a nice length in her leg. Now lower the foot, keep the length of your leg. Now what she's gonna do is reach her knee away from her as she bends her knee, she's gonna lengthen.

So bend the knee, but reach a little bit away as you're bending and then slide the knee in, okay. So I'd like to show you maybe a little bit. So that was very nice mechanics. So can you see the queuing and what I'm looking for in her movement of her hip? So I'm seeing the femoral head moving, but let's see it another way, it might be something a little more familiar with.

So I want you to do is don't think about your knee reaching, but still co contract and lengthen. Now just start your foot sliding to slide your foot. Okay, good. And then lift your leg and then come back down and then just bend your knee. Okay, so it's not as full body connected.

I don't know if you could see it. I know it's a subtle thing and you're sitting a little bit away. So I just was a gross motor movement that I was cuing her to do. Instead of getting, once you create the right amount of space in a joint, there's a certain, I don't know if you realize that, our joints have, it's kind of like the three bears. It's just right, can't be too big, can't be too small.

'Cause the joint, if it's too gapped, it's very hypermobile, it's too loose and it's not functional. It's too tight, it's really compressed. Also not functional. There's that space that's just right. So that's kind of what I'm looking for so that when she moves through her joints, I see that coordination of how the spine is moving the ilium in coordination with the femur and the foot and the ease of the movement and then the full engagement of all these muscles happening, like the puppet arm.

So I don't know if you could see the difference between the two actions. It looked like there was more glute involvement Yes, almost. And she actually had more tension in her back too. Very good observation. So I felt that she had lost her elongation of her spine, her airbags weren't really, they were getting a little crushed, her airbags.

Airbags in the front and the back. Yeah, so she had more tension in her back, which means she actually over contracted her erectors. The glute got a little more compressed. Overworking that way. So I don't know how it felt to you, but.

Yeah, it did feel different. So let's see it again, the way that we'd prefer to see it. And when we're gonna translate this onto the reformer, because using the resistance and on the reformer and we're gonna add a swan to it. So this is where I'm just trying to show you this capsule and then take that capsule that should be happening here into a movement that we know like swan. Okay. So that's how this is what should be happening in the interior.

So one more time, she's gonna do that coat contraction with a trampoline effect of the pelvic floor, which actually elongates the spine, which gets our airbags engaged. So she stabilizes what support. She's gonna reach the knee to the floor first. Now, obviously, the foot first. I need to get that knee to drop to the floor first.

That's a critical, that's the space, yes. Yeah, knee to the floor and then the reach back. There you go. Otherwise you're not gonna get a full anterior glide of the hip 'cause there won't be space in the hip. Very nice and then she's gonna float the leg up, at the same time. The ilium is gonna drop down into the mat to give us a nice glute balance with the hamstring inner leg, outer leg and nice contraction on the back of not over contracting in the back.

This is hard work actually, by the way. It doesn't look that right, now top of the foot down, and then she's gonna release the knee long away from her hip without lowering the hip as she relax down into the floor. And it's okay that we just do her left leg. She actually could use that. So let's see this on the reformer now.

So come on up, and we're gonna put the box. So she's still gonna do exactly the same thing. But she's gonna do it here. So what should you be do, and it's nice that this box is actually rounded and soft. Some of the reform of boxes have the square.

So you would have to put a pad, if you have a box, that's more like mind square. I put a pad here against the groin. So what are you gonna do to get into this. And I'll help you with the box. And I have it on one red spring, by the way, it doesn't have to be very heavy at first, you can add a little more weight after you've made sure that the flow of the movement is good.

But push the box away and stand up on the reformer, like this, you're gonna hold the box. It's not heavy and then just lower yourself down into this position and place your feet on the inside. So that's their swan position here. There you go, very good. And I always hold onto the box just to make sure they don't let go of it and it goes crashing.

Okay, now put your toes on the wood on the inside, but don't touch the metal. A little lower, so your balls of your feet, your little toe ball wants to be on the wood too. Okay, good. All right, now bend the knees and bring the box in. So you just released, great.

So here she is, same position. Now what's gonna be a little more challenging, you can have your head down, right. What's gonna be more challenging in this position is that our feet aren't on the top of her feet. So when she was on the floor, she really could focus on the hip. You see, because the foot was just sliding on the floor.

She really had to think about her foot so much. Now she's gonna have to think of her foot. So I'm gonna ask her to pretend that a board is here. So I don't want her using her plantor flexors of her feet, which would be her calves, right. To use the push.

I want her ankles and her feet to be stable as if she were standing on the floor, so that she still generates the move and all from the hips. All right, so now obviously we're doing both legs at the same time, but she hopefully learned, her right side learned from her left side. So here you can still do your elongation with your support. Great. Now the knees are heavy to the floor, excellent, all right.

Now start reaching your knees back. Your heels are gonna stay right. And you're gonna go forward. Yeah, the knees, that's it. So your heels are staying here and you're moving the box forward from your hips, you're extending through the hips, same feeling through the hips, but keep the heels here.

Stay on my hands. Extend fully from your hip, from the hip. Good, keep your elongation. Great, very good, nice. That looks fantastic.

How's that feel to you? Yeah, do you feel the same amount of work in your hips as you did on the floor? Okay, now to come out of it, you're gonna lengthen around the box. You fold around the hips as you reach your knees to the floor slowly resisting the boxes that comes in. Ankles are staying where they are, she's doing a great job. And you don't have to go too slow, just move, there you go. Knees towards the floor.

So she's still deaccelerating, okay. So, just to see how that action works. Now, bring your arms by your side. Straight arms to your side. Yeah, we can do like that.

Yeah, imagine you're being shot out of a cannon. So Alan Herman would call this the rocket, I think. Okay, so don't over adduct your scapula. Just kind of, there you go. Now I know, bring your head up.

Let's bring it. So you're gonna have to hold that a little bit. a little bit catch. Think of your forehead, good. So we have a nice plane.

Not too hard, 'cause I don't want your back extensors right here, too busy, So look, that's it. Yeah. Is that okay? Now get your location for me. So for her it does mean a little more posterior because she tends to push forward. So that pelvic floor that's great elongation, can you feel that?

That's different than doing a posterior tilt. She's not doing a posterior tilt, so she's moving in that direction 'cause she needs to, but to see her back that's excellent. Again, same action, start from your hips. That's it, lengthen through, keeping the heels steady. Excellent. And I am watching those sit bones to make sure they don't squeeze in.

Now float your chest up a little bit, upper back. Feel the length between your top of your head and your heels and then bend the knees, lower your body down, reaching the knees towards the floor. Okay, one more time. Any questions, you guys have any questions about that? It's very simple, but very clear and direct where I want her working.

So pushing out, she's tracking her hips really nicely. Now here's where right when you get to the end of that's really hard to get the extension. Wait, before you lift, come back down. Little more elongation through your spine. No, no, no, no, no, that's extension.

You're shortening your back. Yeah try to find a pelvic floor trampoline again, that idea of lifting up and lytic translate all the way through the top of... That's better, do you feel the difference? It's not about lifting higher off the box, really. Now you have to extend through your hips more.

So feel the groin on the box. Really feel it and reach back through your heels. Get that length, there. Do you see the difference? That's as high as you should come.

So we got the length, beautiful. And bend the knees to the floor around the box. Folding, you can lower your body down. Very nice, excellent. Okay, come on up.

So that's a version of, you could call it swan if you want. It felt rally good. Yeah, on your back. It doesn't feel compressed, it feels lengthened. Yeah, good.

So what we're doing is we're getting all those deep muscles working to support her body so that when you come up out of that, there's no strain. Your back is supported and your hips feel supported. And you actually are like, "Wow, I don't have any..." Do you have any tension in your back? No, that's what I said, 'cause I normally do. Yeah.

Any floor exercise (indistinct) Yes. But even look at the turn and face that way. She looks more upright. Doesn't she and her pelvis. I mean, I don't know if you remember how she would look standing, Her whole pelvis has rotated around the femur head. So as they're sitting in the socket a little bit better.

She tended to be stuck in that post area glide. So instead of thinking, lordosis, look at someone's hip socket, are they stuck back here? This is stuck here and then what are we trying to do with the people, right. So the idea... Great picture, thanks.

Okay, so here. But what if this person who is like this and you went ahead and worked with them to rotate around the socket, what happens to their back? Yeah, that's a really big piece. And that did change. I can see she's just standing like people come up out of that and they're like almost falling backwards. They're like, "Whoa, I'm taller." (woman speaking in the background) Yeah, without effort.

Correct, that's the feeling we want, exactly. You're not trying to hold any weight. Your body shouldn't have to work so hard. If you've got the tone and the muscles are active and working, it should be lovely to be standing around and moving without effort, really. That's what Joe was really trying to get us to do, not to compress everything.

Okay, perfect. All right, one more. Okay. She's like bring it on. All right, so now we're gonna do...

I'm gonna go into the side split because there's a little bit of a glide, which I think would be really helpful for that left tip of hers. So if you don't mind, I'm gonna show you back view. Okay, so I'm gonna make it a blue spring, cause I really don't want it to be too heavy. And yeah, stand there. I want, actually we'll do front view.

I want your left foot on there. It's okay, front view is fine. Good. Now, this is a very common way to start the side splits, is it not. But if you're already like this, I'm already kinda at the end of my glide here.

Wow am I gonna get a glide, I've locked up my hip. I'm sorry, I know that's kind of some people's way of doing it. No, I want your foot right here. Okay. Thank you. Okay, 'cause now find that elongation again.

Now she's gotten back into... So this is so getting into a little bit of mind stuff. We have like an impression of our bodies. it's like in our brains, there is an actually body schema in your brain that has this like picture that We think of our bodies. And especially as people we're very physical and you've been taught a certain kind of way of moving, which may not necessarily be the best for your structure.

So as a performer, I know this and this 'cause this what makes performing kind of, it's fun. But you can assume kind of this chameleon thing. So energetically, she had the standing here, she was grounded, had wonderful sense of her pelvis and that release in her back and the way she was standing was different. That was a whole new field for her body to feel. She got up on this reformer because she knew how to do side splits and her whole pelvis shifted back to what I just got her to feel something different.

Did you guys notice that? No, but that's what we do because we're used to having a particular image of ourselves, if you wanna think of it that way or a sensation. To me, I think it's more of a... It's like this field that we've developed in ourselves that our body. And I think our fascia kind of goes, "Ooh, I'm experiencing this emotion or this thought." So she had this thought, oh, side splits.

So then her body kinda did that change of her body back to her old pattern. So watch that with people because they'll do that, especially if it's something that they've been doing over and over again, all right. So let's go back to the, let's try it in your mind, go back to the way you felt when you got off the box. So that trampoline lift with that elongation. And then the femurs really feel your legs, feel your legs, yeah.

Now she's more grounded, she different. Did she look different to you than when she first popped up there? She was so excited the first time. Okay, now I'm starting with my femurs in a more balanced position to begin with because my object here is to get that glide. My objective, I meant, is to get that glide.

To get into that femur. So I'm gonna stand behind her. Actually, it would be better for me if you were closer to me. So come back more towards the middle. You don't even have to be back back, but just in the middle is fine.

That way I don't have to reach forward. And I'll do it to her on this side, 'cause she really needs the hip done. And then, we'll turn around and do the other way so you can kind of see what I'm doing a little bit better. All right, so you can have your arms up. That's fine, all right.

So I'm gonna place my hands on her femurs. And all I'm doing is listening, I'm not doing a manual therapy thing, okay. I'm actually just listening to her femurs, just like we did the sway. I'm feeling whether or not I feel that that is working. So as you're gonna put ahead and push the carriage out, and I want you to think of that femur going into the socket deeper as you push out and it goes deeper and deeper, that's it.

And now both hips are doing the same thing, actually. There you go. Yeah, stay right there. Can you feel that? Yeah. Now, the right one is lower than left.

Can you see that, you guys. So push this one down, there. Can you see that now? So all I did was tell her what to do. I didn't do anything to her, she did it herself. Okay, now find that trampoline again, find the long game action and bring the carriage in, but feel it move all the way up.

Oh, that's beautiful, I wish you could see her back. That's fantastic. And again, start with the glide here. Both hips are gliding in. You have to just pay attention to that left one.

It actually needs to slip in the socket a little more. There you go. She just did it herself and I'm just her guide. Excellent. Now find that elongation.

So that remember that idea of the adductors coming into the pelvic floor up through the spine. You remember that drawing of Louis Schultz with the fascia up through the neck, yes. From the inside all the way up. Beautiful. One more time and gliding.

So she doesn't even need my hands anymore 'cause I can put my attention on it and I can just simply say she's doing fine now. Excellent. And now find the internal length and elongation. Use the inner line of your legs to go through the center all the way up to the front of your neck. Oh, beautiful.

Okay, and rest, good. And come on down. Let's stand here before we do the other side. Yeah, stand over here so we can look. So her right hip was the one that wasn't so happy going up.

I was asking them to say yes, that's okay. All right, are we ready? All right, go ahead and lift your right hip. Perfect. How's that feel?

It feels much loser. Yeah, do the other one. This is the side you'd like to do. That's really good for you and down. And the other one and down.

Perfect, walk around. Her back looks different. Yes, less tension there. Yeah, just walk because the integrated through there. So what I was doing, here just walk around literally.

I mean, seriously walk. when you shift, now you have to think of the femoral heads. Where are they, I mean in the body. That's a really deep, dark place for people. What I mean by that is it's really our root.

It's actually the root chakra. So that energy field through here. So there's a lot of stuff stored in there. People's emotions and things are in this area. And as soon as you ship that, there is this kind of effect energetically through the whole body that actually changes their orientation with themselves in space around them.

So a lot of times when we work, when we've done a big shift, this is a big change to get someone to do, which really I didn't work that hard, did I? She really did it. But at walking around after is a good idea because it's grounding and it actually gives your body a chance to integrate this new information. So she can keep walking around. So what I was doing was putting my hands at the greater trochanter right here, you see?

And I can feel this ledge. That's what I call the ledge right here. That's not a real anatomical terms, just a ledge. 'Cause that's what it feels like when I have my hands there and both femurs go in. You actually see the ledge comes up.

You see that? So it comes up so you can even do it to yourself when you're doing side splits. If you have your hands here and you start to slide out, I mean, you can put your hands right on the ledge. It's right there, you can feel it. So that's all I was doing, I was listening for that.

And then I was intentioning that she needed to get the left one a little deeper. And I verbally expressed it to her, but at the same time through my hand, I wasn't pushing on her or anything. I was just kind of sending a little message, go deeper, through my hand. And it worked, she went there. All right, so that's pretty clear.

I don't think you need to see a thank you. That's very good. So that can really, really help people's spine, spinal tension, okay. Okay, all right, so you put the straps on. You know how to do it, right.

Yeah, put them on. So when you're doing flection and extension. When you're doing that part of the legs, you're doing what, posterior glide, anterior glide. That's what should be happening in the hips. So kind of push out and let's do it in a parallel.

All right, now get your tail drop down here. Really cannot be in a posterior tilt. When you're in a posterior tilt your femoral heads anterior, you already felt that. So it really not gonna help this action. It's not gonna be really true good hip movement.

It's gonna end up being into the spine and then there's gonna be compression in the back. So I really want you to see us. Hit the tail down. Are these traps good length for you or are they uneven. It looks a little long on that side.

On the left side. Yeah, why don't you pull it a little bit? Yeah, why don't you. Here, hold this rope, hold it steady and give this one slack. Yeah, great. Is that better?

Yeah. Okay. Let's stand over here. So let's open this up. So I'm gonna do this for her, all right.

Now, and I really want you to feel, there you go. Remember the lesser trochanter connection. Now drop your tail more, sit down ahead. So come up in deflection, you're gonna start to come up this way towards you. So straight legs, yeah, easy.

Now stay right here. Can you hold the ropes for a second for me? But stay right here. So what we need here is a little more length through here. Sink that femur into the socket.

So here's this shield tuberosity. It's gotta go down and you gotta find the length in the front. That's the, so as attachment here, can you feel that length? So see here's your sit bone. Can you reach that one a little bit for me into my finger?

There you go and then reach that one too. Now reach them both equally. There you go. Good. Can you feel the work?

Now, bring them in. Feel the inner line of your leg dropping into the socket. There. How's that feel? Good. Now let go of the rope, so try to maintain that.

Great. So what I was doing was just trying to set that femoral glide through her reaching the sit bones. Now she's got the ring great, like she's not squeezing it to death. It's not about squeezing the ring. We don't wanna shorten the adductors, correct.

So what I say to people is just hold the ring like it's an egg. You wanna hold it, but you don't wanna break it. So it's not about doing this. This is not one of those magic circle exercises where we're squeezing the ring. This is not one of those.

But this is a lining her up, all right. Can you feel, and she's working like crazy. Okay, now pull down. Good. All right.

And coming up again. Now find that dropping of the femur into the socket. Yeah, that left leg is really that's your problem. Okay, drop. Stop, don't come in any higher.

I don't care how you go drop in here. Get the head of the femur into the socket. There it is. Your so as it's not connecting into that. Okay, and come down.

Anterior glide, very nice. Now as your feet go up, feel the femur drop first. She just did, it was fantastic. Great. Do you feel a difference?

Your hip just went into the socket there. Okay, another one. She was having trouble and she's a dancer with her hip and it actually is a little out of the socket. So that's why I picked her to see if we can get her to go in the socket, sink it in the socket. Yes, it's like the cat, thinking about the femoral head drop first before your feet come up.

The puppet. Okay, now. All right, you're doing okay. She's turned all red. All right, now what I want you to do. You're gonna stay stable now.

We're gonna do the glide here, mediolateral glide. So you're gonna take the ring and you're gonna move it to the right. So she's working her left adductor, that's far enough. Right abductor, you see that. Hips are staying facing up, she's doing great.

Pull down on that diagonal. I want her pelvis to face the ceiling, go lower. Come on. Now she's gonna move the ring over to the left. Only in the hip, remember how we did that hip?

So now she has to work the right adductor, which is weaker. Sit down, left abductor, and then bring the leg up. On the left side. Yep, correct. And then over to the right. Easy don't come up so high.

'Cause you know what? You come up too high, you miss the glide. Over to the right. Do you see what we're doing? Not in the pelvis as too much. You did it in your back, you didn't do it in your hip.

Reach that left sit bone. Hold on, come back, reach the left sit bone more. Get that femur in the socket, get it down. There. I'm sorry, I'm being really. Is the New York Madeline coming out.

Okay, so now move it that way. But this is how I get. Okay, perfect. And down, you have to be that clear if you wanna get that hip working better in your socket. And go that way.

Ah, now she's moving through her hip joint. Come up and really sit into that socket. You can do it, that's great. Come center one more time. Left now, go left. Same thing, pull down.

Now you can go a little quicker. She's shaking. Okay, glide. Good, a little more. Yeah, come up, center.

Okay, glide. Use that right adductor more, come on, come on. That's your weak side, you see. This and this, yes. No, you hiked your hip.

Good and down, Poor thing. Okay, there you go, center over to that side. That's your easy way. Do you see how much easy to just for you that way. And then come up.

So you gotta really practice gonna the left and come center and rest. Okay and relax your legs. Alrighty, so come up and you can walk around and feel your hips too. But we're just gonna... I want to just show you this. We really are running out of time.

So that's a really great way to work on that lateral glide. Does that feel different? Yeah. Good. So I wanna show you a couple of things on the reformer without talking too much just in terms.

And then after we're done filming, then we can try. But all right. So we're gonna go into, let's just do the long spine. Two rides, so we're gonna do two reds. All right, so this is one of my favorite exercises to do.

And it really is, has a different intention. like bridging, you know, we do bridging with articulating spine. And then sometimes we do it in a neutral spine with the bridging. So this is a long spine. At the beginning is gonna be familiar too, it's the same action.

But the coming down, we're gonna use the straps and we're gonna start the descent of long spine through the hip glide. Okay, not rolling from the upper back through the spine and locking up the legs, okay. So it looks like this. So she's gonna come back into that 90 degrees or less, and then coming straight up, up onto the shoulders. Nice long line, yes.

Parallel legs. She's gonna open the legs. Now she's gonna start to let her spine roll down a little bit, but at the same time, she's pushing into her legs and watch the rotation of the pelvis. Tailbone, tailbone. She's doing that posterior glide.

Can you see that, slowly descending down. So it's an East centric contraction of the hamstrings. So let's watch it again and probably be a little clearer on that glide. So she opens. Now as she's pushing it and she has a little pressure into the straps and the carriage might move.

There you go. Now she's turning the pelvis. You see that, but she's not arching her back. She's rotating around the hip joint. Is that clear?

Okay, good, thank you, very nice. Actually, when you try it on your own, it's amazing how your back feels. It actually that stimulation of the hip joint and getting that East centric contraction, and then that connection into the femoral heads, your back, you come up and it's relaxed. Sometimes I find that rolling onto my spine, flattens it out a little too much. And then when I come up, I almost can't extend.

I mean, that's my personal body doing this. So when I do too many of these spinals, like the rollover and then I try to stand up after, it's like my extensors are like, oh, oh, oh, I have to try to stand up. So by having, this is a nice coordination of the core and the back. So the front body and the back body working together, bringing the body down, not over flexing the spine, shortening the front and actually inhibiting those deep spinal muscles. And that's why when you come up, it feels so good.

Okay, so thank you so much. That's the end of this part and we'll have time to practice later, okay. All right, thank you. (applause)