Using the Konnector

Hi. My name is Victor Ugan, inventor of connector and founder of connect method. In this tutorial, we're gonna go about what connector is and couple troubleshooting tips. So when you're using, you will feel comfortable. Connector has 4 straps and regular reformer has 2 straps. The regular reformer two straps are fixed. With connector is not. So as you see, if I move 1, the other one one will go forward.

So the regular reformer, we said, has 2 straps. And if you think about those straps, color, original straps are black, And as you see in here, connector has 2 black straps as well. And the reason we created this if you use the 2 black straps evenly and you pull them in the same time, like going back and forth, As long as the strap length is equal to original reformer, the carriage will travel same distance and you will feel the exactly same weight with original reformer. So if you end up being in the connector reformer one day and you feel like I don't know what to do with this reformer, all you have to do is bilateral movement exercises. As long as you do that, it is gonna act and feel like exactly regular reformer, except one thing. I'm sorry. You're not gonna able to cheat.

While you're doing this movement, if you use your left arm more than the right, you're gonna see it, or the teacher is gonna see it, and it's gonna cue you to move equally with both sides. So that's the only thing you will not able to have it here that the compensation plan that we can actually, use one side more than others because the ropes are fixed in the original reformer. In here. Once again, it is not fixed. So you will not able to lean to one side more than the other one. While you're doing bilateral work.

Saying that, there's a couple nice things about this. You know, that feeling that you set everybody, you're ready to go, you wanna do the exercise, you queue everything, and the client goes, this strap is a little longer than this one. You're like, oh, I'm so sorry. You put them together. You make the adjustments.

You give it to them, and you said, how does it feel? And they are like, little bit more Right. He's drove me crazy, and sometimes they were laying down on their back. I will just make noise. I wouldn't even fix it. And I will say, how is it? Is it better now? And they'll be like, oh, it's so much better. Thank you. And I'm like, I knew it.

I knew it. It wasn't the truth. But, anyways, now they could be like this, and they could say, oh, it's not even. All you have to say It is not the straps. It's you. Make sure create symmetry with your body, whatever position you are in, and the ropes will adjust to you. Another thing that I like to show is we could have a shorter leg or longer lead client. Right? So the easiest way to demonstrate that, I will actually add a little bit more weight, one red, one blue, I'm gonna lay down on my back.

And from here, I'm gonna use the long strap on my left foot and I'm gonna use the short loop with my right. So normally in the regular reformer strap, this will create asymmetry and it will not work. One leg will get more weight the other one. But in here, as you see, It is equal. Actually, it's not changing. My right leg is getting 50% of the weight, and my leg leg left leg is getting 50% of the weight because the straps automatically adjusting the asymmetry of my legs.

So it doesn't matter. You have a shorter leg or longer leg, shorter arm, longer arm, scholars, any of those asymmetrical bodies that you work with, they're gonna get 5050 feedback between the two limbs. And if you're using the 4 straps, all four limbs is gonna get equal amount of pressure. Now we talked about that. Another thing.

It's a big value for me is the try look. I got inspired from the Y loop as you guys seen it maybe probably. Y loop usually looks like this. There's like 2 straps next to each other. And in here, it looks like a regular strap with the short loop and a long loop, but there's the hitting wrap in here that you can open it. And if you give it a one twist, it holds his space right here.

And if you wanna get rid of it as easy as you pull the sides and it snaps in and then you can pull it back in again. Why would you do this? Have you ever been doing the leg work you laying on your back once again? I'm gonna take you in here. And did you ever wonder why we value the hip work a lot?

We do bent and push straight legs up and down, and we do value knee work at all. But with the straps, most of the time, we always say point your feet, press down, and up. We do not move the ankle. The reason is that, especially with you going back, if you do flex foot, we're gonna do something funny flex like this. It's kinda like, your toes are doing door deflection, but your ankle's still pointing forward. The reason is that if you do full flexion, you will lose the straps.

Right? And that was the design of the straps. And It was really important for me to find a solution. So now with this try loop, you can easily take it out and place it behind the ankle. Now you can involve the ankle joined with the hip, knee, and the ankle. It is really important for everyone from young to athletes, to seniors, to able to create a full door deflection, and strengthening the door deflexers of the foot.

And this try loop is not useful just for the foot. During the teaching my clients, I also found they could do hand exercises like this, And if they complain, the straps are too thick, I can actually pull the try loop, and I can have them hold the try loop especially if they have smaller hands. This fits better between the palm and the thumb right here. And if they have a wrist problem, I can turn it this way, and most pressure will be on the forearm and it will actually skip the wrist joint. And another thing, do you remember the clients when they press down? They will break their wrist joint up, and we're trying to cue them to keep him straight. Right here having 2 straps, it gives them a feedback.

So I tell them to push to the top strap and put less weight on the bottom, and that creates this motion and creates the length and alignment. So this is another way you can also use the try loops with your hands or behind the heels for your ankles. Alright. So we went over the never adjusting the ropes again. It's automatically You could be here.

It will fix it himself. You could be here. You could be anywhere on the reformer. It's gonna automatically adjust for you. We went over the movement patterns.

For example, if you're doing side kneeling work in here, if you grab one black strap, you can it's gonna feel a little lighter because the carriage is not traveling too far. You can fix that by putting more springs, right? So but the proprioception is not gonna feel the same. So you're gonna be like, this is not same. This is not like real reformer.

If you wanna feel real reformer, do you remember what I said in the beginning? Just use both straps in the same time. It will act exactly like regular reformer. So if I hold both straps and do the same exercise, which I have lots of weight here, so I'm gonna bring him down a little bit. If I do it once again, do you guys see it? The carriage travels a lot more when I hold both straps compared to when you do the single the card will not travel as much as it used to, but when you do double, it does travel or you can use the straps in a connector way, which place it one strap in each limb.

And while you're using the both arms during the exercise, the carriage is gonna travel as much as you want to, and it's gonna feel nice and connected. And you have many more movement options right now. Because you get to involve more than one limb. Alright. So Next, these are straps. There's pulleys, and sometimes you will see the ropes will actually get twisted.

To fix that, it's kind of like a old telephone analogy Do you guys remember there used to be phones with the courts and it used to be around and your friend will call and you wanna have privacy? And your parents sitting on the couch. So you wanna go to the other room. So you have to undo the ropes. So it will stretch that's pretty much it.

So you drop everything down, you grab the gray strap, just one gray strap, and you just pull all the strap out and stay close here while you're pulling. Make sure nothing gets stuck. Once you pulled all the way, do you see this gray straps at the end? You cannot pull it anymore. Once you do that, while you're holding the strap, place the gray strap on the shoulder rest, the same side black strap on top of the gray one, And finally, pull this black strap until the gray strap on the floor. Comes to your hand.

And the gray goes first, and the black one goes second. And this will fix the twist on the ropes. Other than that, this is the default position of the straps We had to decide how long the rope is gonna be. Usually, we put the long straps on the shoulder rest we tighten the ropes, and then we put them on the pegs. That's what we did in original reformer.

So In here, we don't use the pecs because it's much easier for clients when they lay down to find the correct strap to hold it in their hand. And put it back without having a confusion and grabbing the the lower strap by mistake. And if they do that, the top one will fall in the well and the class flow will get distracted. So the easiest way to keep that under control keeping the straps on top of each other on the shoulder rest. If anybody complains, oh, the straps hurting my shoulders. That's a perfect opportunity for you to say what are you doing putting a pressure on the shoulder rest, right, motorwayway.

It's not a shoulder exercise. So, this is where it needs to be. And if you want it little longer than this, you can drop the strap on the pegs. It will be longer. If you wanna make it shorter, you bring the short loops of the gray straps and it will be shorter.

And then go back to here. And This is the difference between the black strap and the gray straps. There is because this is a pulley system on the black ones. The black straps is gonna feel exactly same weight. But if you switch them, now I like to show the difference to you in here, while I'm holding it, this strap goes to the pulley and comes and connects to the weight.

And the weight is basically the carriage in here. And the gray strap, if you like, look at the gray strap, It goes to the pulley. It comes back and it connects to the weight, to the carriage with another pulley. And Dan goes back there. Because of this extra pulley, there is a 50% less weight on the gray straps.

It is just the physics, and you could learn and find out more about probably on the internet if you are more curious about it. Most of the times we seen one time or another construction sign, you see a one guy lifting giant of bricks by himself because there's a lot of pulleys attached to that mechanism. That's why it's able to lift that heavy load It's the same idea in here. This is connector. I explained, most of the troubleshoot the difference between the gray straps and the black straps. I explained to you how to untwist the ropes if it gets twisted. We talked about the try loops and the importance about it, and we also talked about why the single strap work will feel different because the carriage will not travel.

The proprioception feedback will not be there. If you craving that, you can hold both straps to fix the proprioception feedback. Other than that, it's a system that gives you freedom. It's a system that unleashes the power of your reformer. It doesn't take anything away from your reformer, but it gives you more options to do more.

I hope you enjoy the freedom of movement you have with connector. Stay connected. I'll see you in my next class.