Class #144

Magic Circle Variations

55 min - Class
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Description

This class takes repertoire traditionally designed for the Reformer, Wunda Chair, and Cadillac. The Magic circle is used sparingly to assist your awareness around the powerhouse and to provide additional arm work. Some of the exercises you will do in this class are Full Pike from the Wunda Chair, the hip work series, the Short Box Series, and the Breast Stroke all from the Reformer.
What You'll Need: Mat, Magic Circle

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Alright, everyone has a ring. Okay, let's begin standing up. All right, we're going to move a little bit. Um, I know that suits you. You can leave the ring out of it for now and I may not use the ring a lot. I just want to use it as one prop a little bit later on. So let's just take it out of the way. So coming to where you face front, I think today and, um, probably best to be just off your mat.

So everybody just take a step back. Watch your rings. There we go. And Jennifer, if you can't see, just say so. Okay. I'm going to make sure I can see you. Um, yeah. Okay, good little just that would be ideal, but can you still see, can you still see? Yeah, off we go then. Alright, let's start with, uh, taking your feet apart. So when you look down, who are going to think about the setup, the outer edges of your feet are parallel, almost are basically, all right. Take a moment now and just feel your feet, especially if they've been in shoes all day and it's a great idea to sort of pick up the toes, stretch out the bottoms of your feet. You still have the, the balls of the feet down and then set them down. Shift your weight forward. Just sort of notice where the energy is in your body cause we haven't really stepped up yet. And maybe you'll start to notice where you dropping weight, shift the weight back a little more toward the heels and then find what feels like over your arches. And the way I think of it as it's just sort of collect yourself, lift yourself up, let the limbs, the extremities be heavy. Yeah, shake out what needs to be released and then light on the knees. That doesn't mean they're bent, they're just lifted, everything's up. Pelvis is neutral. You're not tipping forward or back. Take an inhale.

We're not going anywhere. Just exhale and let the arm bones or the shoulder blades become just a little heavier down your back as the spinal column releases to get taller. So no, no gripping, right? It's ease. Inhale and exhale. You might feel the shoulder blades fall further us. I suspect they're already there, but she can energize the back. Did I excel? We should have. If we didn't go on for a roll down. Here it is. Inhale, exhale.

Let your head go forward and right away you feel the contraction high in the abdominals, the entire abdominal wall. We'll go a little faster than I'm cuing, so oh the way high in the abdominals. Inhale. Exhale, roll back up. Trying your best to keep the hips over the heels means you're going to kind of feel top heavy for most of us, especially if the low backs are tight. Inhale, we go again. Exhale. Take your head for that high abdominal just under the chest begins or is involved I should say. Sometimes we leave that behind. Let tension go. If you need to shake the arms, do inhale. If we come, exhale feeling the back of the legs as they relate to your upper body. All right, from here, if you're not over your center and I'm going to look, make sure you get there. We look good. All right from here, shift your weight.

I know, I meant it. Shift your weight back to just so you could lift your toes. Take it, take your time to shift, uh, to come into a squat. All right. And I don't need you to leave your toes up, but you do need to be back where you feel your glutes. And this is important cause everybody's legs. Lengths are different. Wendy, because of your long legs. Um, what a longer femur, I'm going to have you here today because my muscle focus is the, so it's just Wendy, I think possibly Debra too. Maybe Jennifer, Jennifer, try hindering forward more like that and s sticky butt out a little. Everybody squeeze the glutes and then come back up. So for a windy Debra, try it two, you might like it and forward again.

So they're going to tip forward a bit just to keep it here. Otherwise it's just too much shearing forces on the knees and up. Everybody else is just making sure the weights in the heels. Let's go a little faster. It's down and press up. And so we're in our foot and leg. We're primarily focusing on the heel position.

Yeah. So you end up with uh, the people have longer upper legs end up with more of, sort of a less of a band and more of a hip hinge. Kind of works for everybody. But a little odd probably to feel. And a couple more here. Finding the powerhouse. I'd like you to think of stretching your waist one more time. Go down, stay down. How light are you on your feet? Pretty light. Pretty light. Shifting the weight back. Check it out and up we come. All right. Same thing.

You're gonna rise up. Barely off the s off the heels. So maybe a couple of credit cards or so. Don't know what I'm thinking about. Innercise. Here we go. Same thing. Inhale and exhale. Pressing up. Good. Inhale. Exhale, pressing up. Keep it going. Backs are flat.

You feel it, Wendy? Good. So at this point you should already be feeling the glutes. If your quads are burning, it's probably worth a little break. One more time. And up we come. All right. Lower the heels if they're still up, hopefully. And I just want to have you grab your rings. I should've done it earlier, but I think since they're here, let's use them. All right, next foot position is turned out heels relatively wide at the base of the feet.

And then again, shifting your weight forward to hover the heels. Elbows are wide now before we do anything else. So when does shift your pelvis forward too? So it's not just here, it's a full body. Lean from the ankle or the Achilles tendon. All right, so everybody before you rise up, let's squeeze the ring and make sure you can feel a little chest, but a lot of lat. Okay, here we go. Um, you're hovering, we press in reach and inhale, coming up fully and exhale, resist in reach. You may not squeeze hard at the end of the, um, range of the arms. That's okay. Still focusing on the powerhouse, the glutes. Debra, what I'd love from you is a tiny bit more extension of the chest at lower end. Yeah. Yeah. You don't know. Yeah. You don't have to go any lower.

It's just kind of list your chest forward and shoulders backwards there, right there. Exactly. Good. And let's go five more here. One and pull off to make an even what? 17 that's okay. I suggest you don't count. It'll just make you crazy. I don't. Okay, fine. Six and take it down. Take your heels wide. Feet wide. All right. If you need to, you can just stay upright, but I think I'd like you to try for a forward again. So reaching forward on the diagonal and press exhale to excellent and very good.

This one's Kinda cool. You can imagine you had a ring here and as you came up, you're pressing inward as well, right? So get that sense of inner thigh or can you hits it an reach? If you find any tension in your neck because of the ring, it's not worth doing. The last one. Stay up, float up the heels. Kind of relax the feet and more upper inner thigh. Okay. From this position you can almost wrap the legs outward to feel a little glute squeeze. Here we go. Same thing. Last few [inaudible] too. I'm learning. Ask Yourself, do I still feel my back?

Working a little bit upper back, primarily making your self feel, both sides of your body have reached you. Pull up, reach to pull up, extending your lines. Yep. And let's make this the last one. Come up. Lower the feet. Walk the feet until they're fully together as best you can anyway, and go bones together. So you want that tactile feedback. And from here, just leaving the arms and just little pulses. So let's forget the hands free. You could do this without a ring, right? Forget about the hands and focus on the subtle reach of the arm or shoulder into the waist. So you should have to have a tiny bit of chest. Okay, that's cool.

From there, squeeze in or rise up on the toes. Keep a sustain a squeeze of the ring. Inhale, reach the waist down. Lighten up on the ring to lower the heels. Exhale, we're just doing a calf raise, Kano slow. Squeeze the ring. Everything squeezes as you lift and stretch the waist to lower the heels and release the ring. A little annex hailing, finding your feet, glue them together. If I were you, I would focus on again the upper inner thigh to keep the heels together. And Yeah, that's a nice lean everybody. And so keep doing what you're doing.

I'm going to chat for a second. Remember in the beginning when I sort of said, when I lean forward and notice where your line of energy is or where you're kind of dropping weight here based on what I see, you look long. So I would imagine that it just feels tall as compared to when you came in. I don't know. Look forward if it doesn't and okay. You can separate your feet back to parallel from that original stance. Yup. And for the ring, I'm going to use it at the risk of, if it bugs you, just get rid of it. I kind of think, why not place it just between your shoulder and your, uh, the side of your head or neck. The heel of the hand is on k, it's never about the hand. So you don't want the fingers working, get them off in a relaxed, that's it. Now, left hand on your hip.

Come into a little squat. So you're just like a little squat. Everybody's going to hinge forward a bit. Okay. From there, pick up your right toes, heels. So you are just there and it's just light, light, light. Here's your focus. I'm Aaron. Let your right foot move over just a little. Okay. So we're going to squat down as you bend for the Bicep and then come up.

Yup. As you're bending, you're also pulling on the ring. Unless you don't want to pull on the ring or you don't have a ring, you can get rid of it. Yep. So the muscle focus is still the hip or the glute and press to come up. That's it for rested the hip back a little bit more, Debra. Just if you can, it looks pretty good actually. And here we go. Altogether. Let's go down fat and and full and up.

You could have that foot hovering if you wanted to challenge herself or there's lots of things she could do and that's it. Right? Good. You know, and they'll tell me. Okay, good. Let's just assume everybody's not counting. All right. Changing sides. Lift your waist. So when you pull, you don't want to feel like you're hunkering down, you're just opposing it. Here we go. Other their foot and take it down to come up. Take it down. Who I liked, what year looks like you're about to do, which is to pull up as you go down. Way Too complicated for me, but I like it.

It's up to you. Good keeping the foot. If you're keeping the foot down, it's absolutely fine. Um, and keep it light. Let's hit three more watching it. You don't jet the hip to one side. Looks good. That's nice. Windy and up we come. Okay, cool. Now heading into an exercise off the one to chair called the full pike. Typically if you've ever seen a one to chair, you would have your hands on the foot bar. Okay.

We're going to use this as our foot bar instead. So basically for now if you, um, holding outside the ring, just like so we may end up putting our hands right on top, but I think you're going to like it better here. You're back to the roll down that we started with. Inhale, exhale, rounding down. I should put some focus here. Let the ring hit the ground, and I'm going to say all five fingers over the top. So I did have the some lube too, but now we're all five fingers. All right, so from here on out, as you look down, your arms are not doing anything else. Your collarbones are wide. You'd have not over rounded your back.

What I want you to start with these, press your hips towards your upper arms, your upper arms towards your hips, encouraging lumbar, low back flection. Okay, that's our only main goal I should say. All right, from here, listen up. Inhale to bend the spine to push the ring down the arms. Basically stay where they started. Exhale to scoop and bring it up. You're welcome. Put your hand on the heel, a on the handle. If that feels better to you. Inhaling down, exhaling and inhale to press. Now as you're pushing down with the spine, pull up on the UBS. Exhale, scoop. Here we go a little quicker now, not a lot. Email down. Exhale up.

I think the best cues are that something that means I'm bringing my upper body toward my lower body, my lower body, toward my upper body. And you're exhaling up. Let's go for more. Exhale, lift whole in helpers, down, down, down. Exhale and inhale and three look for the hamstring. And for one more time we'll come all the way up with that. Hips over heels. Bring the ring with with had it go. Nobody cares. Okay. Come to the end. We're going to have a seat.

Have a seat on the floor, moving into the adblock, but we're doing hip work to do it so it'll lie on your backs just to take the ring off to the side. I'm probably not gonna use it for a while. We roll down bringing the knees bent position and then before we go any further again, it's kind of mattering to me tonight. For some reason we're going to initiate the back of the ribs into the mat right now. So get that down first. Take your hands behind your head, deepen that contraction you just did by rolling your chin slightly towards your chest. To come up into chest lift position, gently press the back of your head into your hands and allow yourself to see the elbows in your peripheral vision. Okay, so Aaron slightly going forward is what I need out of you. Not Higher, but yeah. Is that okay? It's great. Picking up your feet to frog position. Okay, so from there, exhale on a high diagonal on email. Pull in. It's a habit for me to point and flex. You don't have to.

I point on the way in flex on the way out. It's usually flex the whole time. And as far as your legs go away from you, your upper abdominal, the entire abdominal is pressing into the floor. I'm just saying upper abdominal cause I'm noticing too many people are only doing this sort of low scoop thing. It's everything. Last one, go up, stay up, raise the legs up a little higher. And now we lower down a little inhale round up together. Exhale down.

Inhale around, up together and down. And how light can you make your legs. There's absolutely no changes of pressure on your low back. One more full circle and hold. Pick up the legs. Inhale, open. Exhale. Squeeze them together from the glutes.

Inhale up, open X. Hey, and I'd go a little more narrow. Jennifer, just a little more narrow. You'll be able to get a little deeper into the powerhouse too. More polling up and pressing down takes very little leg strength to do that. A lot of ab strength. Bring it up all the way. Let your heads go down. You have a couple options here. You can just stay like this.

I'm going to recommend that you take some part of your hand just at the tip of your pelvis, so right at the base so it forces just a tiny bit of a tuck. Okay. It's going to release your hip flexors a little. Let's go. You're good. You're good. I'm just using you. Turn the legs out. Aaron. Bring your legs over you a tiny bit more. There you go. And we separate the feet out. Inhaling, flex and draw back up, reaching through the ceiling and point. Inhale out. Keep the turnout. Okay, good. And exhaling up you guys okay with your room. Perfect.

It looks like that's it. So even here, go out, hold it out there for one second, everybody fine. Now to lift, don't lift it from the hips you are, but refocus just below your chest and then bring them up. Go five more. Inhaling out. Exhale. So you feel the entire powerhouse. [inaudible] let go. One more to the top and there you go. Just to hug your knees into your chest. Lovely. Set your feet on the floor with the arms right alongside it.

We're going into a shoulder bridge, so include the arms long. Here we go. Inhale the feeder apart. Sitz bones distance. Exhale, rolling up. Drawing your hips towards your heels to length in the front of the hip. And I will say it again at least 50 more times in class. Connect to the whole front and back. Take your right leg straight up, reach it up, up, up, and we'll go. Kind of slow. Kick down on flex to come up.

And two, it's about the stillness of the trunk. [inaudible] one more. Up for six, holding it up, holding it up, riff. Place it. Check your body. You might have to look down straight lines. Either leg left, leg up, and we kicked down a hole. One flex to come up and two nice positions. Three exhale, reach. One more time. Down and up. Hold it. Check your alignment. Replace it in here. We're coming down.

Exhale to roll down, upper back. Oh, and here's that lovely lumbar curve. Notice you can do it without thrusting the shoulders forward. All right you guys that for sure. It's fine. Yeah. Great. I think you've all seen it so I see. I'm going to just go for it. The main deal is, especially if you're used to doing it on the reformer, which I guess you would be, um, is that you're not getting, there's no momentum at any point. It's a little different than the rollover.

So your feet are Kinda high. Have you done this with mirror? Okay. It's slow enough. I think you'll be just fine. You XL to reach the legs on a high diagonal point when you get there. This is the fun part right here in pulling your size as close to you as you can. Your hips will come up a little bit when you get to about mid back, so keep pulling right out there.

Now you're going to keep the angle your legs are on and you travel directly up on that line. Exhaling to get there, so not over like a roll up and not a jack and I from that point, I keep talking about that. High Ab, you bend the knees to frog. Keep your butt where it is and now this is the really fun part. Keep your shape, start to roll down. Keep your shape, articulate, articulate, articulate. Just before you fall, flex the feet and bring it home. Yeah, lovely. Here we go again. Press out on the high diagonal. That was your exhale. Inhale, wait for it. Wait for it. See what you can do on your own. When you can't go anymore. You exhale.

Follow that line. Feel the glutes reaching up. You should be feeling the little hamstring, not a lot. Inhale, bend a frog, and now from your throat rolling down, pressing the bones of the body, you'll feel your legs are just getting closer to you as the spine presses into the mat. Eventually flex the feet and come back to the start. Everybody. Okay, pressing out in health a foal. Take your time. Enjoy. Let the hips start to come up and roll it up. You have to use your triceps here. Okay. Enjoy. Inhale, pull and deepen your contraction. Exhale, keep the lumbar curve. That's the hook. That's the main draw here. Flex and bring it over. Let's do one more. Press out, pull over.

This is my inhale. I do let it up and then I exhale and follow the line. Inhale, draw the knees in closer, but leave space between your thighs and ribs and exhale, we calm down. Heal those upper most vertebra tucking it feels like as you come almost all the way down and then just rock yourself up. I broke a little sweet on that right from here. Drawing the legs in quite close. And in fact, this, just go right into a rolling with the same, it's the same shape, isn't it?

Only flex your feet coming out. So shoulders down, emphasizing the lumbar curve. Let's just do four. Here we go. Inhale back, exhale up. And I caught myself. I just, I was doing the short spine in my head so I had my knees apart. Feel free to do it that way or together. One more time and holding it up.

Right. Sit your feet down. Slide your hips back. Finding a comfortable, comfortable spot. All right, drawing, um, your knees slightly bent, slightly bent. Probably gonna need to flex your feet. I'm gonna do a little short box here. So from here you go form over forum. Yup. And then at the moment we are going to do round back, but this version, we're coming into flat every time. So sit up super tall. Never do one of these. Not your feet. Sorry, I'm just looking at collarbones. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Very slight ribs. Perfect. Okay. Janitor. Look alive. Here we go.

Inhale. You're going to roll the hipbone backwards and you're just following it. Keep talking. If you have to move your feet, I would flex like Monday is, that's what I'm going to do. Inhale. Exhale. Keep the hips where they are as long as you can. You just bring that shape forward. Keep the curve when you get a little bit in front of her over your shoulders, over hips. Then straighten up and let the arms fall. Exhale, pulling the hipbones back so the very first thing you're going to maybe feel or do is around that low back via the ABS. Hold. Eyes are forwarding. Inhale.

Exhale. Pull the belly button backwards or down as you curve forward and inhale up. It's looking good. Let's go a little faster. Inhale, exhale, roll. There's a pause here. Inhale, make sure those shoulders are in front of you and exhale forward and inhale, stack the spine. Exhale, it'd be absolutely fine to gently press the heels into the ground. Encourage the hamstrings, why not, and when you're ready.

Exhaling forward to come up before we put her arms behind her head for flat back squeeze. But pull the ribs in. Hands behind your head is not a neutral spine. Inhale hinges back. It's not going to be as far if you're used to the reformer. Exhale, come forward. Inhale back. Excellent. Exhale for my suggestion. Squeeze those inner thighs like you never have. Kinda try and relax the quads. I would at this point, relax the feet too.

I then don't have to be down, but just relax. I'm only giving you one more. Here we go. Long, long, long, and exhale. You'll be coming toward the front of the room for the twist. I'm skipping. Tilt. Inhale, rotate. Do it. Tall, tall, tall, hinge back. Theoretically we're still inhaling. I know I'm going slow. Exhale, come back up in that rotation and then finish center. So it's two breaths.

Email, rotate and lean back. Exhale to bring it back up and center. Let it be small. Gang. Inhale, sink up and up and exhale, center and in to Leigh. Exhale and center. Meanwhile, the hips aren't moving. I know they're not. I'm looking at you, but I got to say it last one. Feel this fine to go back. Calming up and central. I'll get to climate tree in just a second, but for now, stretch out your legs. Hands are back. We lift up. Do it by squeezing the glutes hinge to come down. Lightly touch. You're going again, slightly. Bend the knees.

If you hyper extend to go up and [inaudible]. Deborah, I want you to look at that beam instead of anywhere else and down. One more time. Up, up, up. Stay here for one second. Can you squeeze the glutes toward each other a little more? Squeeze those glutes cheeks toward each other and down.

Taking your right knee in your hand. I'm just going to skip forward to show Jennifer this position. Good. Like so. Now a big part of this first part of climate tree, this version anyway, is for back extension. So because we're on the floor and we can't bend, we get to lean back a little. So enjoy that. Yeah, right? And I recommend letting the elbows go out to the side and get a firm grip here. So you're just gonna do a little pulsing in and it's really, again, more about back straightening three times, right? Then straightened up the leg.

If you can then have to be straight, you just try for that. Roll the leg back to 90 degrees are almost to start walking down. Press your lower leg into the ground. We'll go into the shoulder blades. Eyes are forward. Inhale liquor. Circle the arms. Find your leg walk up one. Press that lower leg down.

Keep those shoulders on your back. It's not going to be easy. Inhale, sit up tall. You can be leaned back to do it. Refold here we go. Exhale, pull two, three, stretch. Take it back and walk down. One. Eyes forward to three to shoulder blades. Inhale, circle arms and exhale walking up. One, minimize arms, but they'll have to be there. They're right. He'll stir Rach and one more. And pulse one to drop the shoulders theory good and, and bring it back. Walk down one, two. There's your treat. Inhale, circle.

And if we come deepen, deepen, oh, it's so hard right there. I'd be okay with letting it go a little slower. Flex the foot point again. Oh one more comment and bring it in. Take it to the side for just a moment. Sitting up tall.

I've just dropped the knee out to the side. Hinge forward as long as you can with the long spine and then allow yourself to grab on where it's most comfortable. Do Guide your chest toward that leg. It's going to mean a little bit of a rotation and then help yourself up. We change sides so the other leg is out. You want it long, so enjoy that. Bring the other one and check that your stacked on your hips and then slightly lean back for comfort. If you don't have to, don't I for some reason feel like I need to. All right, it is a pump of the knee kind of, but I'd like you to focus more this time.

Hug It in as close as you can now and focus on the length of the back of one two, three. Keep what you just did. See what you can get. It doesn't matter if it's straight yet or at all or roll it back and down we go. Now it's again pelvis moving just like you did in the round back. Inhale, circle arms, exhale, and more apps. Yes to the Riesterer. Rach, if you've got a little bit tighter hamstring, you just bend the knee. That's not a big deal and fold. Let's go one and two and three and Sturt.

Bring it back. Look down at the knee now nurturing the leg as you go. Circle and keep looking at the knee for a little while. Don't look at the foot, it's too high. And now if you're going to look at the foot, it's only because your chest is shining a light on it and to pull those shoulders down. Good, Jennifer. Good inhale, stir hatch. Roll it back. Inner thighs, even in this position down to the re. Inhale, circle [inaudible]. It's almost like you feel the abdominals. Press down so that you can go up. Find your lengths. If you can sit on top of it, you do. And we flexed and we pointed.

Now if you're holding a place that doesn't let you flex, you might have to adjust that. Sometimes I hold tight on my Achilles tendon. I can't move my foot. Right. Okay. That's it. Bring it in. I'll get flip it out to the side. Sit on top of yourself again. Take the big stretch before diving forward. Probably rotate a little over the thigh. I like to flex the foot.

It's up to you. And then when you can go no further, let the arms be where they can help you and or will just feel really good. And then just rule yourself up. Swing your feet around so you're on your hands and knees plates heading into some of the full body integration or the knee stretch case. Maybe. So hands are closer than you'd think, but I can't say exactly. I try to get them as close as you can where you can still round your back is pretty much how I look at it. I'm going to tell you, I like to flex my toes under like that.

It's not available to a lot of people so it doesn't deter the exercise. So you can keep the toes down. All right, so as you're looking down, remember earlier we [inaudible] you said hips towards face, fe, um, base towards hips or I think even better. His shoulders to hips, hips, shoulders. So you have, if you're looking at your front of your hip, it's open as much as possible. That's not to change all we're doing, not a lot of weight in your arms just yet. Inhale on your exhale.

Draw the abdominals in so much that you feel more contraction, more scoop, but the body didn't really move. Release a little. Inhale. That's it. Beautiful. Exhale. Scoop the belly. Looking down. Press the shoulders to hips, the hips into the shoulders and release. I mean, that alone should almost be enough for everyone in this room cause you guys are all connected and exhale when it's time and slight release and exhale. Now a welcome to stay with that or we can add to it on the exhale, it starts the same, but you'll eventually hover the knees in that same breath. Inhale, prepare, start. Exhaling. Hips to shoulders, hover the knees off, but the position doesn't change. Inhale, set them down. Exhale, scoop belly more. Feel the glutes even here, hover and down. Sometimes when we have her, we instantly draw the shoulders up, so if you're doing that, you might have to move your arms forward.

Exhale up and down. Either keep that or the first version or we're adding single leg so it goes. Exhale, scoop, hover. We're going to stay Hubbard. Point one, two off the ground. Inhale, reach the leg back. Exhale, scoop that knee right into your nose. One that legs coming forward toward your nose from the middle of your body, not the hip joint. Change legs. Reach out. You need aleks. Helpful. One light on those arms. Two, you're going to feel quad three most likely or foot goes down. Knees go down. Release the toes.

If they were up, I guess they would have to be. If you did that one, actually they wouldn't stretch yourself out. Get a nice long stretch of the body. Move you into combination. Again, most of you have seen it, but I can talk you through it. I think keeping your hands about where they are, we're going to draw the ABS up. Tuck the pelvis, keep the collarbones wide to roll forward into our hands. Right about now.

Feel the glutes and we come through what a down stretch with the arms straight. Your glutes should be tight and your chest are open from here. Inhale, if you haven't, I'm going to do a faster breath in a minute. Exhale, pull up right away. Taking weight out of the arms. They don't really move, but there's just not a lot of weight. Can we do it on a one breath cycle? That means inhale the whole way there. Exhale, get out of it. Here we go. Inhaling, forward energy is up. How could we do this without arms?

Probably couldn't, but we could try. Exhale back. Yes. Not quite giving up on it and again, inhale, rolling. Make an unrelated. Get a rhythm going in your body without collapsing through the hips are waist. Exhale back and putting weight on the arms only when you have to. Yep, and lifting. The one thing I don't want to have you guys do come up to neutral and just take a quick peak here is what do I want you to do? Oh, when you're here, we don't want to do that and maybe it's okay, but I don't want you to, I'd rather it be so you're keeping the glutes as much as possible.

So let's go to more your gums. Inhale, roll. So already you feel the glutes and now you're going to keep the sense of, I'm trying to tech to go back last time. Here it is. Inhale coming up to press forward. Wow. Right? Moving into the long stretch. If you've had enough on your wrists, do this next one on your forearms. Otherwise come up to hands and knees.

Extend your right leg back. Okay. Going into the plank. Extend your left leg back. Exactly. Shoot Energy at the crown of your head. So you are looking at the floor. Yep. Good. Nice positions. From there, we simply exhale. Point the toes. Inhale, flex them. Now knowing what we're doing, if that was too much of a range on your wrist, walk your feet back a step. Okay.

That'll give you an exhale forward. Inhale back. And quite honestly, you can breathe either way. It might even be easier to exhale going back. But I'm gonna stick to it. Feel the shoulders preaching to the hips again, the hips reaching into the shoulders but in a plank, like a fashion. One more time and back. And with that, lower the knees, just shift weight out of your arms to transition your right leg forward. Pretty far forward. Yup. All right. Coming into a lunge. Um, even now, like before, like in the combination, there's a subtle attempt at taking the pubic bone toward the sternum.

Go ahead Wendy. Don't let me hold you back. Seriously. You're fine. Okay. So one thing I'm just gonna mention is I do have some, I have energy through my shin. I'm not trying to push but it's not all upfront. Alright. If that feels okay to use the leg a little to help you come up. And certainly if you want to go into the arms overhead you can go, I'll be there in a minute or a second. Yeah. And if you're going to now be a good time and perhaps think of not just stretching through the front of your body cause we, it is a hip flexor stretch, but lengthening through the back of your body lifting, you could almost lift up, right almost. You don't need to.

Then here's the thing. This, like I said, not to do earlier on where you stick the rear end out, you're going to push into the forward heel anteriorly, tilt the pelvis and head into a hamstring stretch. Now my friends with long legs, you're, you're gonna move them. You've got rings nearby for so you don't have to reach to the floor cause you do want that long back. That's just, you need it. Yeah, it's if you need it, that's fine. Jennifer, let's get stretch. Just keep your back flat. The subtle sense of trying to reach the sits bones back, knowing that a tendency for most people is that as I try to straighten my back, I look forward, but I never talked to my spine.

So make sure it's coming from the spine. If you're in fact looking straight ahead, most likely you're looking down. All right. Coming forward. I'm going to go ahead and transition just to get more in. So change by putting your hands on the ground, carefully pulling that leg out and other side. Nice. Windy. Nice.

All right. Focusing there on that front of that hip, hip flexor. Okay, Deborah. Okay. Can you move the left foot more forward and then sink forward a little if it feels okay. All right, great. So you're up to it. Go ahead and let yourself come up. Just a quick word about the alignment though. Doesn't look necessary. Just make sure the knee doesn't go beyond the toe. If you're feeling a lot in that forward knee, it's probably energy's getting too far in front of your foot. Keep it behind.

If that's lift up, kind of taking weight out of the low back to lift it up. It looks beautiful. Yeah, using the forward foot too, if it feels okay, anteriorly tilt and then flex always takes me a little while. What I like to do just as a tip, but if you're there, stay there is as I'm transitioning, I just bend the knee a little so that I can start to feel or my hips pretty square. Like I said, I never know for sure that someone tells me [inaudible] okay. Alright. Okay. That was a hand. Good. Oh, chicken with your neck. This is where we can kind of just get bored and hang out and wait, that's not at all what we're trying to do.

We're trying to reach the heel one way, the other end of the leg the other way and the next long. All right. Transition forward or help yourself out. We're just going to come into the mermaid. So turn to face front. I'm going to try a different mermaid on you if I can remember it. Um, I started out, we started out. Yeah, let's all go together just cause I'm going to try and teach it new and I'll mess you up. So we flip your legs there and thank you. Maybe you too, Jennifer, just flip your legs to the other side so I don't say right left and messed you up. Um, oh, did I do that? Sorry, Debra. Yeah.

Okay. It'll work itself out. All right, so your legs are um, one in front of the other take. Let's just take the left arm out or the right arm out pretty far. Yup. And then let's go a little further. Yeah, I think, but you still feel supported, I hope. Okay. Everybody side bend, like you're doing the side bend and then release it and it's inactive. Pulling that arm into the waist to lift and do undo it again. Something to check for is that your back is in darkest. Okay.

It's neutral probably. Okay. So that's the sensation of kind of lifting away. I'm not going to have you go into an arch. You're here. First part is to draw the elbow toward the waist and touchdown. Okay. Push it up. That's where I should have started to do from there. Rotate.

Yeah, reopen. Inhale, exhale. Draw the armpit to the waist and lift up. Pretty Small and exhale. Trying to keep the hips basically where they are. A little roundness to the back would be fine. In other words, you're pulling the ribs away from the Mat. Reopens are here and Elbow and elbow strains and you exhale turn and open elbow bands. Almost like you're going to take weight out of the arm up and churn. Last one, open it up and then the fun part, we're going to try and get out of this from here. Slide it in and up.

Fine. Just trach. Which do you like better? That's just different. Okay. I could do a combo. Ooh, I could do a combo [inaudible] but I can't count Deborah. That's like a six part or I can do like eight counts. I used to teach aerobics. I can do eight counts, but okay. Well grand finale yet on one side, one side. I'm sure I'm not. Yeah. Even as it is, oh, here we go. Oh right, we're here.

We're here. Okay, so technically we're going to start the ground, but we have to do that side bend thing for us. So in between two plates of glass, basically. I'm not giving you a lot of setup because I basically just want you comfortable on your hip. The legs that can be a little stretched out. That can be a little forward. It's just hip to shoulders really where you're looking from here. Pull, keeping the arm straight. Just pull the rib cage away from the floor. That's it.

And then really set now's a good time to practice keeping weight out of the arm as much as possible. And it's pulling. Yeah. Pulling with the ribs. Absolutely. Um, and I, I personally feel like that's the cue as well as light on the, um, hands. All right, so from here, like someone's pulling perhaps. Okay. So someone's pulling Kinda Kenny as you and it's so much so it Bend Your Elbow, Huh? Yeah. Right. I Dunno. [inaudible] no, right. Come back up. Sorry guys. Up and rotate. Oh, lovely. Inhale, reopen elbow Benz. Draw the shoulder.

So you want to feel that our shoulder blade reaching down to your low back and up and exhale. Inhale. And Debra's creating lots of choreography. [inaudible] he like the what? Yeah. I love this part. If you could pull it exactly like you're doing the single working.

If you could pull the elbow towards you, kind of like you're doing the single leg. Yes, yes, yes. Single leg stretch. Right. Okay. We are coming up and I promised you I would try it. So come up first. All right. And those of you who want it, if you do not want to come, don't. But Debra wants to try a combo of the old with the new, so we would go out, we would land soft, slide out a little bit. Then we would rotate, I think. Then we would open and then we would dry and then we would straighten MOF for no Bush. Gotta do it again. I, you know what mean? This means right?

Other side. Yeah. Rotate elbow and up and don't stretch. You don't get to stretch anymore other than right over our top leg over and set yourself up. Here we go. Reaching out for two, I believe. Rotate holding the hips in place. Reopened elbow. Oh, I went a little far. I can't even bend my elbow and up and up. Kind of tell me how. I don't know what I'm doing now.

Rotate. I'm not giving you a hand cause I don't know it. Just keep it consistent. Elbow bends and we straightened to come up. Oh definitely the hard side. Okay, stretch. We did do one stretch. Okay, line all the way down on your side again or all the way down I should say.

Great. Taking your legs slightly forward. Turn both legs out. Hips are stacked, who reach your waist. In fact, I'm going to say this for reach your top hip longer. Pick up the bottom hip. By doing that you might even need to reach the bottom foot or leg. I mean meaning, sort of stretch it out even if you have to adjust to do it. Okay. Top leg lifts and we're going to lift up and touch front.

Oh, touch back and it's inhale. Inhale, exhale, exhale. The resistance theoretically is on the down. You're push, push like it light on the way up almost and press and press. Let's go back to inhale and exhale and inhale. Knees are soft and exhale. One more red cycle and in and out and align them up. Good. Reach the leg a little bit more length in it. Take two fingers, make sure the lower side of your waist is involved, meaning your abdominals.

Entire abdominal wall. We go take the leg. Well I'll come back to scissors. Go forward. Lift the leg up. Spin leg to the back. Basically here, trying to get the largest range of motion you can without moving your hips. So there's going to be some movement of that hip joint and not the drunk the leg in the hip joint. So protect yourself or recommendation I have is to relax, relax, and only hold through the powerhouse. And I do include both sides. Let's reverse it. Take it to the back end. Basically the turned out, I mean there's going to be movement, but when you come back through the center, you're externally rotated.

One more time, up to come round. There we go. So now take the leg to the back. Continue reaching it. It's slightly higher. Jennifer. There you go. Bottom leg lifts up. Focus on the back leg. Whichever one it is, cause that's the one we want to stay in the middle of our so-called scissors. So start here with two. Pulse. Inhale, inhale, inhale, switch. Excellent, excellent. Controlling from the center. Excellent. Excellent.

This is one of those places where I think the potential for us who are used to working or abs is to grip and to shorten and to pull in. So don't be long, but still use your abs one more cycle and that's it right there. And then bring the feet together and down. Does that make any sense at all? I think so. Okay. All right. I expected you go. Yeah. There we go. Into this. I'm gonna use my ab thing and it's just short, short, short, short, short. Get as long as you can. Yes, use your abs.

But I think it's less than some of the strong people think other side. And we end up here, especially with the teachers in the room, I think because we're often looking down, but I digress here. We are long, so let's think of it now. Easy through the hips. Externally rotated. Did I do anything with this hand? No. And it's lift and press one and one and two, two and three. Both weights. Three. I'm sort of personally, I'm you soft point is what I'm looking for. You can do something fancy if you want to. It's fine. What I notice is if I don't relax my lower leg fully I high, I don't hyper extend, but I energize the back of the knees and I lose the hip work.

Let's do one more breath cycle. So keep it relatively soft. Okay. Then line them up. I'm going to go into circles first, but really lengthen and on the ground and we come forward lifting it up to reach it back. Yeah, coming forward. Now, right here, oppose it by almost pulling a sip on backwards or reaching it. It doesn't really change, but if you think about it that big, this hip becomes your anchor point. One more spin and we'll reverse it from there. Take it to the back. Look for a little bit of a stretch lifted up for the next three.

Put your hands somewhere around your waist and try not to move the hips at all. Especially right here. They got the hip bones are gonna want to drop into your sides there. And by hipbones I mean the side here might limit your range, but I'll bet you get more work out of the deal. This is the last one.

And take it to the back stretch in case bound bound up on you, lift the lower leg. You can put your hand back down at this point. And starting here, inhale pulse. It's inhale, inhale. And it doesn't really need to be big, but you want to feel its hip extensors then this particular part. So reach back, back. Extend the hip and rich. Rich. Yeah. And can you be any longer without tensing the legs? How about one more cycle and this is it. Finish it there.

Set the feet down and that's it. Right? Good. Sorry. I think the full moon, I must be parked werewolf cause I blame the foreman. Okay. I'm Mary. What do you want to do that we have not done? Cause I can't quite remember what we said. We might do anything. Breaststroke. Okay. So the breaststroke, if you've done it on a reformer, are you guys okay where you are? Yeah. Okay, great. I'll, I'll, I'll come right back to it. Um, the breasts typically would be inhale, coming round and down here, because I want you want to, we want the external rotation of the shoulder. We're going to start, we're just going to reverse it. So if you know at regular we're reversing it. If you want to flip, flip, flip. Yeah. Sorry about that. I didn't think.

All right. So you're basically on the ground. If you can stand putting your forehead down, do, if not just float your head, but slightly chin down. Your arms are on the floor, okay. And they're going to stay there as best you can right now. Draw the scapula shoulder blades down your back a little so you'll feel those arms slide down. Then slide the forearm along the floor until you get back to your straight arm position next to your legs. Great. From there, you're going to lift your head, your chest and your arms all the way around to the front.

Leave your legs on the ground the entire time. The arms are straight overhead, lower the entire position down when you get there. Rebound. Okay. At this point. If you want to backup, do if you need room or stagger. There you go. Okay. Elbows enclose. Let's go. Inhale, reach back as soon as your arms get back there and lift the head, the chest all the way around. Theoretically, still inhaling. If you have to exhale, you do XL now to lower everything down and slide the arms back in. Inhale, stretch the arms back. Lift like someone was pulling your arms. Keep bringing them all the way around. Once you get there, you exhale lower and then slide back. Inhale. Good work.

Lift to come round. Nice. Good, good, good. Nice. Jennifer and Dan, can we do last one even for real and up to lift? Yes. Place your forearms, one in front of the other. Just like that. On the ground like that. Okay. From there. Oops. She's getting crazy. Draw the ABS in and I actually came up higher than I meant to.

I'm like where Mary and Aaron are and Jennifer, you're good. You're good. Pull the shoulder that back like you're about to do this like you're about to pull forward, but you don't. That was my feet that did that. Pull the ABS up. I don't, I kinda mean literally, but you're not literally going to get them off the floor. Most likely. Especially if you're as low as I want. You reach the legs so far. Really reach retreat. That's all we care about. Then that might hover.

The kneecaps might hover. That's it. All right. Parallel your legs. If they're not, they don't have to touch. They just have to be parallel, not turned down. Do you have resistance in your hamstrings? Good from there, bend your knees and pull the hamstrings, the feet towards you as if your feet were super heavy. Then reverse it. Push away. Pull in. How about inhale in Exhale, push. Never losing the resistance in your legs.

I can tell you that a lot of us have trouble staying parallel when we get more bent in the knee, so watch for that, that you don't splay the knees, you'll just lose it and if absolutely necessary, you can slightly widen your knees or feet. Legs. One more time. Do you feel the hamstrings? Oh, I think it's so intense. I can't believe people use a lot of springs on this. One more time. Poor Paul, Paul and rich. Okay. With that we'll come to hands, curl the toes under and let's just push up and go into an upstretched position of we'll follow you into a pyramid pyramid. Good hanging out there for a moment.

I'd say feet slightly apart if they're not enjoying a bit of a back stretch and certainly a little bit of a hamstring stretch. More interested probably in getting the back long than the heels down. Heels would be second. All right, now thinking about that. We're going to elephant our way home. Thinking about the highest part of your rib cage in the front.

Just engage their a little. It's going to probably create a little bit of a round. Keep what you just did and then squeeze your upper inner thighs. You won't, there won't be much movement, but you might feel pelvic floor from there. W any bending that is occurring is happening at that initial rib cage area down to the waistline, so we're going to pick up one straight leg. It doesn't come right out to the side.

It comes vertically forward or vertically, whatever forward. Hang your head in. He'll pick up the other leg. Try not to shift XL. Let it set down. Inhale, watch the shoulders. Pick up the leg. It's the closer you get to your hands, the more deep you have to pull the leg bone into your trunk to let it come forward. And the mortar head hangs again. Let's go try for two more. Almost looking at your belly button. Rock wrap their shoulders around like you do your leg sometimes and then scooped the belly. Let your hands leave the floor. If you want to bend your knees, you do to roll up. Alright, you'd think we're done. We got one last thing.

I do want a big inhale here though cause and let it go. Let's just end with um, forward lunch. Okay. So what that means, go ahead and turn front again. Watch your rings, but be off the side of the, uh, of the back of the mat. I mean, yeah, you can be here. You can step on our mat. She's done with it. Okay. So you're either on or off your mat. You're going to take your hands to your waist and take your right like just behind you. Exactly. Then bend your left knee a little. That's all. Take your right leg further back. Now primarily you have the weight on the forward.

Like I remember earlier we all pitched forward. I want everyone to do that part there. Everyone's sorta shifted the trunk toward the ground. Exactly. Exactly. Squeeze. But yeah, and now as you straighten the forward leg, the back leg lifts instantly. Then you bend the forward leg and it lowers and touches. So you're not lifting the leg, it just comes with you. Yup. Yup. And done. Now if you [inaudible] I wanted to, if you didn't want to lift the leg, which we could be absolutely appropriate.

You just slide it. Yeah. In which case you may not want to be on that map. Okay. And he keep going. Here's the real point. That tendency is to shift the hip. You're standing on out to the side. So you've got to keep that in and I probably should have counted this time if anyone knows. Thank you. Six is good.

Bring it back in and change legs. Thank you. So I, you could go right into it, but again, check it out that the foot, make it comfortable, but if it's right in the middle of the hips, gonna come out. If it's not right in the middle of it can come out and you can take a wide stance. That's fine. All right, here we go. And lifting heavy awareness around the front, depending on proportion. Size meaning again, leg length and comfort for the knee. You may find yourself sort of traveling backward a little and ever so slightly forward. That's absolutely fine as well. That's three I think hanging on for two more of this focus. This balance can do.

There were equip equipment work anywhere. You can do polarez anywhere in getting time right. Okay. Put it back in place. Hands on your knees or above your knees, round your back, looking down, make it comfy, nothing severe. And then with the knees still bent around your back flat and you're back. In fact slightly arch your back and round again and flatten and all the way up [inaudible] to end with a stretch. Once you get to the top, let's go feet fully together.

This will be it. I promise. Grab onto your left wrist. Bend your knees unless you slightly tuck and I don't mean your whole body, I guess I just mean the pelvis under. Then you are side bending to your right. Bless you. Then press the hips out. Ah, so probably, I don't know if you have more weight on your left foot or not.

Not much. Okay. Now I remember we did the Tuck, right, so that's still there. Keep the hips or they are turn your chest if it's available to you toward the floor. [inaudible] then we reopened the same way, so you're going to open from the right or the left hip. Then the left rib cage, the left shoulder. Press your hips back to center to help you up. Otherwise that would have been severe. Yeah, circling arms, whatever works for you. Loosen them up. When you're done enough of that, get back up there, grab the right wrist, bend your knees, Tuck a little side, pull that shoulder up. Oh yes, I said it. I noticed I've taken to resting my head on my other upper arm. It's quite nice.

Stay here a lot longer, and if we didn't talk, do and turn the chest, my head comes off my arm there and then reopen open. Press the hips to lift up and a couple more little one each way at least, and inhaling up and exhale. Thanks guys. Good job. Good job.

Comments

I wanted to do more a standing work out this morning and I saw this class that probably it wasn't really what I had in mind at first but after I felt incredibly long and taller. I actually find that these "old"classes of Kristi are very helpful for more subtle cues that help to discover a deeper work. Thank you.


Thanks for sticking with it and looking for the older classes too Marta!

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