Class #1073

Unilateral Reformer

45 min - Class
101 likes

Description

Leah Stewart teaches a Reformer workout that focuses on unilateral movement and stabilization work. She brings challenging exercises to work your body one side at a time to make sure your body is working evenly. Leah also plays with rotation and coordination in exercises like the Elephant and variations on the Up Stretch.
What You'll Need: Reformer w/Box

About This Video

Jun 17, 2013
(Log In to track)

Transcript

Read Full Transcript

So you got Leah and Leah today doing a reformer class with the double Lias and two Blonde Lias. So we're on a good, good chat here. So I have a wonderful session planned for Leah. Um, we're going to be doing a lot of kind of unilateral work, a lot of stabilization works. I'm hoping that she just feels really wonderful after our class and I hope that you do as well. So we're going to begin on top of the carriage and I want you to take your football all the way down and I want you to load your carriage up with one full spring. If you're on balanced body, you can do one red spring and go ahead and take the headrest down from wonderful. It's so good. Line down. We'll see according to your height. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna try it with you. Pull it back one yet. So I just moved to Leah's, um, the carriage back, just to give her a little bit more spacious is a little bit taller.

So the secret here is I really would like you to take kind of like the balls of your feet and place them on that platform there so that your heels are essentially hanging off. Cause we're going to be doing a lot of kind of dropping of the heels here. Your legs are drawn together tightly in a beautiful neutral pelvis to begin arms are just kind of reeling, thinned, and reached down the carriage that you can really feel the length through your shoulders and your neck. Very simple. We're going to start with our pelvic tilts just to kind of warm up, draw that energy into the pelvis and into the center body. So breath and prepare and with your exhale, draw into your posterior tilt. Beautiful and inhale, release.

I don't want you to move the carriage at all, which is going to be tough because of the nature of putting your feet on that platform. You're going to feel the temptation to push with your hamstrings. So once you actually think the opposite, if you will, a little bit of like a gentle pull in. Does that make sense? Yes. Good. Last one here. So I want you to hold in the posterior tilt. Inhale, I want you to lift your heels up and Exxon wants you to drop them down to get a little tendon stretch. Yes. Inhale, lift the hills and the cares can move here slightly. That's fine. As you drop your heels down, the carriage might push out a little bit, which is fine. Just make sure it's very subtle and inhale slowly. Bring it in.

Yes, and exhale. Now we'll keep doing that three more times, but add the Tuck of the pelvis. So we leased the pelvis as your heels come up that to neutral and as you exhale, utilize the abdominals to draw them back into the posterior tilt. Does that make sense? Good. Inhale. Then I want you to draw your hip bones up towards your rib cage, so you're getting accessing those obliques as well as the rectus as well as the pelvic floor and the transverse abdominis. Inhale last one and draw those hills down.

Good. Now leave the hills down for me and roll your pelvis back into neutral. Great. Now take your arms up just above your shoulders. Make sure you have any, no, you're not scrunched into your shoulder rest here. We're going to go into kind of a hundred prep chest lift exercise, but what I want you to do is as you push through the thing, as you lift up into the flection of the spine, I'm going to push the carriage out where your knees are going to go back halfway out so they're not going to fully extend. So breadth and for me with an exhale, press the carriage away and let's go a little bit more Leah there. Perfect. Then inhale, take it back.

I'm going to say her name a lot and exhale. So keeping the neutral pelvis, we don't want to roll into a posterior tilt here. Good. And inhale all the way in. Feel the hinge. Feel that stopper. Yes. Exhale, so you can see this gorgeous fold coming from her upper body. She's maintaining a glorious neutral pelvis here, but because she's squeezing her legs, you're going to be feeling the abductor and the pelvic floor connection rise all the way up through her body and inhale and last one.

Hold it there. Reaching your arms, extending them forward. Now we're going to do a little bit of balance work, single leg work, so hopefully your toes don't get locked into the, there we go. Now I want you to lift your right leg up to tabletop XL. One beautiful careful transfers. You take it down left leg good, so we are having to do is not only change and transfer the weight on your feet, but having to keep the carriage steady and hold the same amount of weight with your hip extensors, pushing that carriage away.

Good arms are going to be glued to your waist nicely. Then one more set. She's feeling this beautiful hip flexor draw, bringing her leg up, but she's maintaining that pelvic floor connection. Loving. Good. Take it there, hold it. Come up just a little bit more. Find a little bit more flection. Then inhale, take it back. Excellent. All the way to the stopper.

Take your arms out to the tee position and stretch wide. I wanted to see the full extension of the elbows. Yes, and then these come up to the tabletop. Good. Okay, so spine too. A supine with a balance and up on the carriage. The goal is to not fall off. Okay, so we're going to kind of play with a little bit of dynamic here. So inhale, I want you to rotate your legs over to the left. Good.

Hold it there. Exhale, bring your left arm over to your right and you can turn your head slightly. Good. Then on an inhale, you're going to bring everything back to center and then let your breath out. Inhale over to the right, hold it. Exhale, sweep the arm up and over looking, so you're holding that stabilization through your center body. Inhale, everything comes back to center and then let the yard just seep out here. One more set like that. How's that feeling? She says, excellent, and go over XL. So again, just wrap the abdominal wall around you. Feel that strength through your upper, excuse me, through your lower body as well. Good and toward me.

Lovely to the right. Then the arm goes over to the left body and reach it back to center with an inhale. Good. Let's keep moving, but we're going to change it up a little bit. Exhale. Now this is a little bit harder. You need to go toward the same way. So right arm over to the left. Hold your balance and inhale back to center and exhale yes, so you can't go very far. It's a small conservative movement.

So legs then arm with the next sal. Yes, left arm comes over. Inhale, roll back to center and exhale one more. So normally when we're set, I should say when we do the spine twist, continue. We're feeling good. We're letting our spine and just really stretch. This is more contained. This is more about control and balance and strength.

Yes, and in hell over you. Got It. XLR. I'm sorry. Inhale, back and rest. Lovely. Good. Take both arms above your chest again. Let's take our feet down to the platform here. So a little lower. There they are and good. Okay.

Right leg is going to come up to the tabletop position. The right arm is actually going to go back down to the carriage. Go ahead and we're going to play with rotation, but also it's going to be about coordination. So just bear with me as we get into this exercise. So you're going to be pushing the carriage out with the left leg, just like we did with the hundred prep just a minute ago.

But this time as you press out, you're going to XL, rotate toward the right leg and bend the left elbow down to the right thigh. So XL come across and just take that leg about halfway out the knee. That's extending perfect. Now this is where it gets a little bit tricky. As you bring the carriage back in. With your inhale, I want you to just extend the leg and the arm up vertical toward the ceiling. Then Xcel Ben, both the elbow and the knee as you come into that rotation.

Lovely. Yes, and in him. Now don't be afraid to really push your right hand down into your carriage. You can't see Leah's here, but just so you can really feel that shoulder connection. Two more. So just four on each side, keeping those hips square, keeping that left hip really dropped down that pool. So the pelvis is wide so that you're balanced in the hip points.

Beautiful. Hold it there and let's go ahead and change sides. Nice. So left leg up, a tabletop, right arm, extended right elbow is going to come down to the left thigh as you extend that right leg out. Beautiful. So you feel this gorgeous contraction here. You can see the spiral in the torso. Nice. Then in how they both reach up, almost like you're going to touch the ceiling.

Then exhale, feel that diagonal pool come across the body and notice how she's pushing down with her left arm here. Then inhale out. That looks great. Go ahead and exhale. Love it. I just like the shape of it. It's very like insect ask [inaudible]. Yes, I'm back. That was number four, correct. Good. Let's go ahead and rest. Wonderful.

So really good abdominal work in conjunction with that coordination and that hamstring work. We're going to finish this one little warm up with some pelvic curls. You're going to go to three full springs so you have a little bit more support and I want you to keep your legs together. You may feel like you cannot get all the way up into the full bridge just to get as high as you can with keeping the integrity of the movement. So like adductors engage, melting this dice together, good XL, rolling up pubic bone, constantly leading up.

It's like a continual wave coming up and over her body. She activates her upper back, her hip extensors, taking the breath in and exhale. So everything's very narrow in the body. Reaching into the center body, the thighs reach, then this energy continues out through the crown or the tip of her knees. Then exhale there. Yes, beautiful articulation. Just feel your spine trickling up out of your mat. Good. And exhale. We're only going to do three here.

We'll be doing a lot more articulation of the spine later in our class. Good. And just for fun, I just want to end this by rotating the pelvis. So dip the left side of the pelvis can actually hold a pie and just rotate. Yes, and just rotating back and forth, rotate and rotate. So you're just really focusing on twisting the lumber vertebrae there.

Of course it's going to, the rotation is going to continue up the spine of course, but just focusing on that rotation. Good. Back to center. Thighs are squeezing. Take a nice big breath in. Then with your Xcel, just start to melt. No. And come into your tech [inaudible] yes. Gorgeous work and release. Well done. Good. Nice. Let's go ahead and put our head rest up and that's where you like it for your footwork and good luck. Bring your like that. Thank you. Um, we're going to take our foot bar, position it. There we go.

And we're going to go right into our footwork here. I'm going to stay on three springs. You can of course make it a little bit heavier or Liberte lighter if that's what you prefer. We're going to go into a wide v position, short and sweet with our legs here on the heels, we're going to do heel positions working widest, coming into the most narrow realm. So pelvis is really nice and heavy. Good. Taking your breath in for me, XL engaging hip extensors. As you press out now here, just hold for me. I want you to really feel, again this kind of narrow drop into your pelvis so you really feeling your pelvic floor contract. So that's the tip of your little pyramid here, and then that energy just radiates sound through the rest of your legs. Okay? Then inhale, come in and let that tip of the pyramid open.

Xcel close the tip of the pyramid as you come into your extension and in, how's that image work in for you? Good and XL. So what I sense here and what I hope that you're feeling by doing this on your own out there is that as Leah's pressing out and she's using that image of those tip of the pyramid coming together, the work is really coming from her center body and from her hips and then translating down through the rest of her legs where we know we can sometimes run into the problem of too much push coming from the feet. Good. We really want that nucleus of the body to be our really good base of support. Lovely. One more time and out.

Good. And let's come in to the small v right there on the heels. We usually, we do this in some cases on the toes. I want you to just have a little more narrow. Start over your pyramid and then xls.

Just keep going with that image and draws together. Now this time the thighs hug together, they touch good, then inhale, feel it widen and open. XL Narrow. Good. So once you really feel that sensation of that pelvic floor closing and opening, I want you to think of without squeezing your gluteus maximus overly, I do want you to think a little bit about as you push the carriage out, your sits bones are going to narrow and draw together. So start to bring it from the top, maybe a little bit down on the inferior aspect of the pelvis as well.

Nice. Good. So I hope that that kind of layering up of those cues of those images helps to just intensify that focus on that center body. Nice. And driving the energy at the very end, you'll drive that energy through the heel points. Good. And then come in, let's go three more here. I love it. Beautiful. And in and too gorgeous and in, let's try one more. Excellent. So all we're going to do here is we're going to come to parallel heels so you can give a little actual list, do it together and let's flex the toes back.

Now this time I want you to think of pushing a little more energy through the balls of your feet and bring your pinky toes back toward the outer aspect of your ankles. So we're going to get the peroneal is a little bit more involved here and just hug the size together. Um, stayed there. Familia. That's good. Now as she did that, there was not like a internal rotation of her thigh, but just the slightest energy of this femur spiraling inward. And what that did was that helped her kind of relax in her hips. It was really subtle. I don't know if you felt that, but really subtle on her pelvis kind of fell into its place in its neutral position. So breath comes in. Exhale, keep everything narrow like your body has a big long zipper right up the center.

Then inhale, yes, let that fold happening. Your hip joint. Yes. It's very challenging to hold the neutral pelvis as we do our footwork. If that's the goal. Sometimes we work in a posterior tilt, but today I really want you to work in a neutral pelvis, but I don't want you to rely on a gripping the back or gripping the glutes. I really want that stabilization to come from deep and internal in your body.

Yes, especially when the legs are narrow. Sometimes we can run into kind of putting a little bit too much pressure, especially on the sacrum and maybe translate into the lower back. How are you feeling here? Good, good, and again, good. These hips or hips are staying really nice and heavy. The weight of her pelvis is down and they can just feel this energy radiating through her body of that really nice activation and squeezing. Last one.

Good holding there. I love it. Good. Come on in. We're going to go into our hip work now. So we usually do some single leg foot work, but in order to work our unilateral legs and stabilization today, I'm actually going to do it with the straps as opposed to doing it with the foot barn. So I'd like you to put your right foot into a strap. We're on one spring, one red spring here, and you're going to bring your other leg, your left leg in this instance to tabletop. Good. And flex the foot for me. So we're going to do, you know, please forgive me here.

I'm going to switch you so that they see your front leg working. You could have told me that I'm going to switch here. So let's actually put the left leg in the strap and the right leg comes up to tabletop. That way you can see Leah's work here. So flexes foot for me and come there. So parallel single frog, you may or may not feel how much your right side actually wants to lift up, lift up off the carriage. So it's very imperative that you let that right side melt down and just be really nice and solid there.

So breath comes in with your XL working from the hip, you press out into extension, stretch. Beautiful. Then in healthful as you come back and letting that femur just sink down into the pelvis, into the Acetabulum, good and reach. You can think about that extension coming from your hip, your hip extensors, that's fine. Or you may even want to play with just kind of feeling the bones, move, filling that femur extend out and filling it full back in against the pelvis. Nice. And just keep a lot of energy through that right leg as well. Press this beautiful and in one more time.

Good. Now we're gonna play with internal and external rotation. So come back in and the parallel frog, what you're going to do here is as you extend the leg, you're going to rotate the hip out into external rotation. Yes. And as you draw it back in, you're going to rotate it back into parallel. Lovely. So again, that rotation is coming from the very top of the femur against the pelvis and just feel that sits bone wraparound as you come into a bookstore rotation. Then feel it. Wrap around toward the flip bars.

You come back into parallel last two and you'll feel how you have to have that extra control in your pelvis as you do that rotation. Good. Hold it there. Excellent. I want you to bend into an externally rotated kind of frog position right there. Good. Make sure you don't hit your right foot. We're going to keep this shape, this kind of diamond shape of the thigh. She was going to do essentially a single leg hip opener.

She was going to move from the hip and draw the leg down in toward extension. Yes, so down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down, down until the thigh crosses or the, excuse me, the strap crosses over the inside of the thigh. Then inhale, hinge it back up. Yes. Now this one is probably what you'll feel the most temptation to let that right side of the pelvis come up. And that's where you want to let it drop and stay steady onto the carriage.

Good. That's great. Go ahead. Yeah. So make sure that you're just being a little cautious that you're not pushing your foot down too much at the end, that you're really going where the hip allows it to go better. Yeah. And up last two, and I'm hoping that you feel the work here in the external rotators. So right underneath the hip, those external rotate deep rotators of the hip.

Last one. Good. And bring it up. Now extend that leg up. Good. And take this like out. Good. And we're going to go just there. So that legs just gonna Hover over the foot bar, taking your breath in.

You're going to scissor the legs with the next hill one and inhale, bring it back in next XL two and bring it back in. I love it. Good. And switch. So again, you'll feel that need to zip up through your whole center to fill that stabilization so that if I'm looking at you from your hips, only up to your head, I don't know. Your legs are moving and if I did know your legs are moving, I don't know which one is because you're so centered, you're so steady. You have this perfect rectangle shape across your pelvis, up the side of your body, across your shoulders and back down. Good. Last one for me.

Good. Bring it there. Good. Bring your legs again. Externally rotated. There we go. Keep that leg down. Just like that. Hovering now your right leg sooner. Your left leg is going to go down toward the right, but you're going to cross over the body. So kind of like you've got to go to the bathroom and bring him back.

Yes. So it's tough to let that leg hover over the bar. She makes it look so easy, but the fact is is that that leg without the strap is working really hard. We're only going to be doing four of these in this series. This kind of adductor Ceres holds here in the adduction. The legs are crossed. Now open the legs out to the side.

Inhale and exhale close and back into that cross position. So let's go there. Yes, I know as the toughie open and Xcel close, you got it. Two more open and close that leg without that strap is working really hard. You're getting a little more hip flux around that leg, but you're getting deep at Decter. Hold it there. Now take the legs open and stretch them out.

Nice. And the leg and the shot might stretch a little bit more, which is fine. Good, excellent, good. And bring it in. How'd that feel? Good. Excellent. Now I will say this, if you want to increase your range of motion a little bit, especially when you do the scissors and some of the extension, you can take the foot bar down for the whole series. But I think a good place to start just so you can feel that control.

You're working in a little bit more contained spaces to keep that foot bar up. So we'll go into our frog here. So breadth is in XL. Press out in helm, melted in. Love it. Exhale. Good. So we can, we have all this nice unilateral work. She's feeling solid and strong through her body.

I've given you the image of the rectangle coming across your torso and across your hips. But another nice image that might work for you is kind of the image of an x coming across your body. So you have the diagonal line from your left shoulder to your right hip and from your right shoulder down to your left hip. And that x say solid and steady. And those four points of that x with the middle being a nice an anchor point stays really flat and steady. Lovely. One more time.

And then we'll go in and out of the parallel to the external rotation. So come back in in parallel. Now as you press out, rotate at the hip, let that initial two bras through that sits bone wrap around, then let it come back. Good. Nice. So again, you can think of Musculature, you can think of rotating the hips with the deep rotators, or you can think of moving the bones. I think you'll put spiraling that femur bone. Yes. And just play with different imagery and notice how one might make you move differently than the other. Lovely.

And just calm shoulders using that breath. Keep your upper body calm. Let's do one more empress. Good. Let's bring this foot down a little bit. Bend your knee into the frog. Hold it. Good. I believe we were pointed last time. Yeah. Good. Now from here, let's go a little marks in a rotation for you.

We're going to go down into the hip opener, so reach it down, love it, and hinge and come back up. Good. This one is challenging to keep the opposite hip drawn down. Good. You really want to root in this case, really route that left side pelvis down into the carriage. Let it sit heavy there. Yeah, so that no movement that comes across it is going gonna make it waiver and make it sway. And then that moving leg, just focusing on that external rotation. Good. Able to feel that in the hip. Good down.

We'll do one more here. Lovely. Bring it up. Extend the legs. Both parallels. So the right leg is up and the left leg is down towards the foot bar. Good reaching long. Go ahead and we'll do a nice Sisera XL. Swish. Inhale, Swish. Yeah.

So think of a swishing motion. Yeah. So there's a little bit more of that dynamic there and being mindful that you're really pressing from the back of the hip. It's particularly the one in the strap as opposed to pulling the right foot down into the strap. So again, work from that center body out, keeping those legs fully extended. Love it. Good. And although we wouldn't call this and abdominal series, there's a lot of really nice abdominal work going on for stabilization. Last one.

Okay, good. Swishing back up to the top. Good. Hold that left leg down. Externally. Rotate both legs. And now as you draw the right leg down, you're gonna Cross over as much as you can. Getting the add action. Okay. Yes. So feel like those two thigh bones, those femur bones are going to cross at the very height. Yeah, the highest point that they go. The very lowest point of the pelvis. You're going to have them join together. This is better on this side. This looks great. One more time. Now hold it there. Good.

Now widen your pelvis. Had that duality of your pelvis wide, but your thighs really narrow. Now Open. Inhale. I want to think that both feet are in straps here. That's how even your moving. Yes. Try not to. Just think of crossing your knees. Try to think of crossing your thighs. Love it. Love it. You're doing great.

Two more short and sweet here. The intensity is really there. Last one. Hold it. Good and just open and try to find a stretch. It's a long legs here. Good. Love it and that is our little single hip work series, single leg rather hip work series.

Good to keep with our flow here. We're going to go ahead and stay on the carriage and go into our spinal articulation. We're going to be doing the rollover from our mat. Work here on the reformer, but I want to say this. If for some reason during the rollover is contra indicated for you. If you have some disc issues, if he can't go into that deepest spinal flection.

What I love to see you do, even if you can do it while you're hearing me cue her through the rollover, is to simply load up your carriage a little bit more. Where on one spring right now, maybe go to three full springs or three-and-a-half springs and put your feet on the foot bar and go ahead and go into some pelvic curls so that you're still getting the benefit of articulating your spine, but you're not putting that amount of pressure on your spine that we of course do with the rollover for the rollover hands and straps. Go ahead. The little bit of tension in your arms. Good. That's it. And bring your knees up to the tabletop position. Love it. So just there. Sweet, nice and short and sweet.

This all we really need to do with this exercise. So we're going to take the legs out on a diagonal. Yes. So this is actually our starting position. Inhale, the arms are going to press down to the mat as the legs come up to 90 degrees. Yes. Now XL. I want to see control as you tuck your pelvis and roll your spine over.

You got it. Love it. Coming to this beautiful 90 are vertical parallel line to the floor. That's not vertical. That's horizontal. Flex your feet. Open your legs, keep it within the straps and lower your feet down so you get that deep stretch. Now Xcel reaching energy through your arms. Roll down.

I try not to let your arms come off the carriage roll. Point your feet. Now as you've circled the legs, close, the arms come up. Yes. Inhale, legs come up to 90 degrees. Pause now. Melt that lower back in. So you're melting and rolling over shoop.

Good flex open. Now hug the abdominal wall and deeper as you take your legs down. So there's this, this extra curve that comes up and over. Then exhale, soften through your throat and you can see me kind of walking back and forth here, right? But that's the energy that I want your body to be moving in. So in health, energy, the legs come up. Then Xcel, the energy of the spine goes down and then it comes over. That was the best one. Flex Open.

Then hug it and even more as you drop those feet down and then Xcel roll down. So steady. Stay with me. Slow it down steady. So really challenge yourself with that east center contraction. Yes. Love it. One more time. We're actually gonna hold at the top. Good and over and add a little balance exercise.

This is a toughy. Okay, so point your feet. Familia. Yeah. Now really hug those abs and balancing on your shoulders, not on your neck. Palms face in. Grab into your center body. Open your arms out to the t or to a v. Just as wide as you know. You can. The next cell hollow and close. You've got it. You got it.

You may fall. That's fine. Then exhale hollow and close. That's why even if you just move your arm an inch or two, that's fine and hollow in clothes. She's got it. She found her spot. She found her sweet spot where she needs the balance on her shoulders.

This is lovely. Package it up and send it palm space down. Flex open low toes. Go down, hinge at the hip and roll down slowly. Stay with me. Stay with me slowly. Now if I say stop, can you stop? Okay, good. And Roll back down. Roll it back down. If I say stop, can you stop?

That's how much control I want you to have. Roll back down and point and close. Oh, give yourselves a hand. That was lovely. That was so good. Okay. Excellent work. Will you come on up? Go ahead. All right, let's go into some full body here. How are you feeling?

Excellent. Good. Okay, so let's go into up stretch one. I'm on one and a half spring, so heels are going to be just halfway up the bar here, or excuse me, the shoulder best there. Heel the hands really direct into your foot bar and send those hips up. Good and lower. I'm just drop the head a little bit there just for Ab stretch one here.

Inhale. Exhale, squeeze and draw it in. Good. Inhale, exhale, drawing it and feeling that nice cold contraction there. Last one or last two rather. We're going to do for good. You can see how her pelvis is nice and open. She's getting this gorgeous hinge at the hip. Now holds here.

Give me four push ups on this diagonal line. Elbows out to the side in helping of bringing that crown of the head to the bar and up. And the secret here, the challenge here is to not move the carriage. Yes. So you're bringing your body down, holding those hip flexors in to hold the kerogen. Yes. Better bringing the ribs and that's it. Really better. Much better in the serratus. They're good.

Now we're going to do the up stretch to a little variation of it. So I want you to come down into the pushup. Inhale. Now hold it there. This is tricky. Now, Xcel slight Tuck of the pelvis and go around your shoulders as you drop the pelvis, lift the head, push up, and then come into the pipe. Wowzers that's a good one. Come into your pushup. So feel the surveyed a strong there. They'll yourself rotating around your shoulders. Yes, I'm having her go into the little bit of the Tuck to protect her lower back.

Press up is one strong piece and go back, Leah. I am impressed. Go down. Keep it strong, strong, front and back body. Lots of energy. You can see how her pelvis and her head. Keep going. Our teeter tottering together. Let's, let's do, that's it. Okay, good. So three that good. So go ahead and fly your feet and just to finish it with a feel good exercise. We're going to take the right hand over to the left. Good.

And I want you to just spiral and look underneath your left arm so you can peek at the camera and say hi to all our friends out there. Good. We're going to do three, just regular elephants with this rotation. So inhale, exhale, squeeze it in. So we're getting a little nice, gentle abdominal work here. Squeeze it. Good. Nice. Now it's continued this, but simply take your right arm underneath your body like you're doing the twist off the mat and keep it there. Three more. Inhale. Very simple here to let your opposite hip rotate forward. You want to keep it back. So your hips, they really square. Yes, a lot of shoulder work that we're getting here. Good.

Now when your legs go back, I want you to release your right arm and look away. So rotate the other side. Excuse me. Let's go back and then exhale, rotate and come under and look. Yes. Inhale, reach away. And I still keep a little more weight on your right foot. Exactly. So that your hip stays square and then heel bend, you're able to come through and exhale, bring it under and maximize that rotation. Lovely. And let's come out of it right hand up. Good left hand. Yeah, and spiral underneath and look under your right shoulder. Good. Now again, very important that you keep your left hip back in this instance and you keep energy down and wait down through your left foot. So inhale, take it back. XL Gerad in, in. How?

Back? Keeping that back sension for me in hell. Back. Good. Now bring your right hand underneath. Hold it strong. Good. And Go. Inhale. [inaudible] XL, draw that hit back. You got it. You got it. Good. Inhale. And keeping that body just down onto or extending down toward the Carestream, keeping that nice straight spine spine. Now go back with the legs and bring the arm up looking and then Xcel twist and bring it in. Good. I'd like your shoulder to stay at the same height here.

So as you just rotate your torso and bring your legs in and out. Excellent. So really challenging one arm at a time here. Good feeling how that affects the whole of our spine. Good. And come out of it. Good. Just for a nice gooey. Feel good here. Stay with your heels down. And then I just want you to come into a tuck.

Ah, and in how release. Just a couple of times. Good and XL. Nice. And inhale, release. Good. And come down onto your knees for me and we're going to go into a little dealing arms with your feet back up against the shoulder rest.

We're going to be doing big circles, but I'm going to add some spinal work here. So I want you to work on a half a spring and I'm just gonna move you back for this work. Yeah. Cause I'm moving Leah back in closer to the foot bar. So she's going to start in this kneeling position. So really good to move your spine and to get your arms going at the same time.

So the work is going to be exhale. You're going to come forward into your flection, continue your XL as you come up to the full mailing position all the way vertical, and then come down and then halfway down with your arms. You can sit yourself back down and Xcel circle up and in hell yes. Love it. And Xcel circle good. And if you ever wanted to, I wouldn't even object to coming into a little bit of an arc. Yes. And then bringing it down. Good and circle.

So you should just feel this energy coming around your whole body, this beautiful circular energy. Yes. You're praising the is gods, the stabilization. God. Good. Good. Now sit back on your heels. We're going to go the opposite XL. Bring the body up. Good. And then inhale, palms face up as you come down. Good.

Excellent. And reach out. Strong. Exhale. And then inhale pipe over the upper body as you come down. Yes. Yes. I'm really seeing like, um, like the peak of a wave coming up in, over coming over the top of a rollercoaster. Yes. You can see that energy coming over. Yes. And excise. Still getting good shoulder work.

I know you may like lose the focus on the shoulders because you're focusing on the coordination, but you should all ha you should have it all there. Now she's going to hold strong finger, uh, index fingers and thumbs together. Triangle. Bring those arms back a little bit. Bring the pelvis underneath you a little bit. Yeah, I'm going to bring your carriage forward. I want to get you as vertical as possible. Let's finish here. Bend the elbows and exhale, squeeze and go. Ha. Yes. So again, all of this wrapping around, she has her hip extensors pressing her pelvis forward. Her chest is up. Yes, I've tried to choose exercises in the series that does flow from one to the other. So you've continually moved.

We haven't fussed with the equipment too much. We've just been in this mode of moving, feeling the body lasts to bring the hips forward, being the upper body back. You're doing great. Feeling the triceps in those shoulders. Last one, hold it and then turn the palm back and round forward. It should come down. Nice.

Beautiful. Good. Let's finish quickly with a very fun little back extension and then we'll be done. So I'm going to take the foot bar down. I'm going to keep it on a blue spring and we're going to grab our long box here. Okay. So the setup here is I want you to put your hands in your straps and you're going to come forward as if you were getting on the box, like for a breaststroke or something of that nature. Yes.

So you're going to lie right in the middle of the straps, but we're not going to do breaststroke. We're going to do a little, I call it my, my flying squirrel. I don't, that's just, I don't know, just go with it. Okay, so actually the arms are down straight. Yes. And you're going to bend your knees like you're doing a grasshopper at a nice little angle here at the knees are separated here. But all you're going to do here without getting too fancy. Yeah. So determine if you're, you know, you feel comfortable with this. If you want to go Leah, with the straps over your hands in this jobs versus your thumbs, I'm gonna let you decide.

You can put this drops all the way in your palm or you can put it in your son. Yes. So I want you to go inhale, I want you to lift up and make an x with your body so your legs will spread wide. Yes, you're flying, you're skydiving. We should call it the skydiver. Then you're going to circle the arms and the legs together. Then you're going to bend your knees and bring your upper body down. Yes. So we're getting posterior shoulders here, upper back, hip extensors and reach.

But because circles squeeze everything together, narrow that body energy out to the crown of the head and lower down. Yes, I love it. And reach up wind. Those likes a little bit more. And Circle. We'll just sue for and burying it down. It looks great. Last one, and up with, through the body and schoolies and bringing it down. Good. What I'd like you to do to come out of it carefully here is put your hands on top of the front of the box. Bring your legs in, like kind of straddle the box and sweep your hips underneath you. Yes he could.

And then what we'll do is we'll put our feet on the carriage. Good. That was great. Good finish here. Well that's okay just to do a tiny little cool down. Go ahead. Bend your left knee here. Let's do the right so they can see what I want. The legs. So the right knee bent here. Good. And you're a little taller.

So yeah. And this knee is going to be bent and resting down, however it feels comfortable for you. But I want you to spring your body so that basically your left side is almost off. Yes. Does that feel okay? Good. Nice. So here I'm trying to get a quad in. Hip flexor stretches might be tough. I want you to reach back and lift your sternum up. So again, can you feel a stretch here?

The more you let this like hanging down vertically, the better. And again you don't want both hips on the box. You want to bring the hip of the leg that sound completely, not completely off the box but almost off the block so it can really, really hang and push your pelvis forward so you can maximize the hip flexor stretch as you push down into the box to get the sternum stretched, the hips stretched, excuse me, the chest stretched good and just kind of come out of it. Really sit for just a moment. Good. And we'll do the other side.

Just a nice little stretch for the ends here. Just bring your breath back in with you and if you have some extra time here you can add some extra stretches as well. This is a fun little position to stretch in. Good pelvis comes forward. Yes. So again, the key is to get that leg back as far as you can, make it as vertical as can so it's hanging off your box. Pull the pelvis in a posterior direction and then bring the chest up so that you're just drawing a pool along that whole front chain.

So you get that beautiful stretch and then don't be afraid to push it down into your heel of your hands. Yes, that's it. Yeah. And that just looks so darn pretty good and slowly cannot have it. Good. Go ahead and come forward. So your facing everybody good and I see breath, how you feel words. Where do you feel good in your body? Um, my hips. Your hips. Nice and Oh yeah, we did a lot of good hip work today. Laura, back to you. Ooh, that's a good one. Awesome.

Well thank you so much is we can all agree she's a gorgeous mover, so thank you. Thank you. And I hope that you enjoyed that class as well. Maybe you felt really or you feel really good and challenge to opening your hips and maybe open and mobilizing your lower back as well, or whatever your body needed today. So thank you so much. Nice work. And thank you.

Comments

2 people like this.
Super Awesome Class Leah(s) !!
love your teaching style; beautiful movements with seamless transitions :)
2 people like this.
Loved this class. Where would I be w/o Pilates Anytime and the awesomeness of the teachers. Thanks Leah, for sharing your gifts w/us.
Thank you, ladies! It's a fun class
1 person likes this.
Great class Leahs!!!! Thank you so much!
Erika Quest
LOVED it! Thank you my dear, Leah! Well done, yet again.
Leah you are delightful to watch and listen to! I love the energy and always enjoy your wonderful cuing! Thank you for a great class
1 person likes this.
Leah, you are not only a delightful teacher but also so insightful and precise in your cues. Will be looking forward to your next class.
Thank you for a great class! Really helped to open up my hips today.
Thanks for a great class..the queues were so helpful
NIce. I've been working on hip opening and your class allowed both ease and stability while building strength and flexibility. Thanks1
1-10 of 18

You need to be a subscriber to post a comment.

Please Log In or Create an Account to start your free trial.

Footer Pilates Anytime Logo

Move With Us

Experience Pilates. Experience life.

Let's Begin