Class #1701

Outdoor Wunda Chair

25 min - Class
117 likes
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Description

Amy teaches a Wunda Chair workout outside, using Gratz equipment, overlooking the beautiful ocean. She was in the mood for Teasers and Twists, so you will be able to work on those while you wring out your mid-body. Amy also includes a variety of exercises including Frogs, Reverse Swan, and much more.
What You'll Need: Wunda Chair

About This Video

Jun 14, 2014
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Transcript

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Hi everyone. We're going to do a cheer workout. I have the luxury of being outside today, so if I squint a lot it's just because I'm outside. I'll try not to have such tension in my face, but I'm using our grass one to chair and I'm starting with some leg pumps. We're going to have a lot of variety with this workout but kind of short, maybe 20, 30 minutes, um, probably more upper body than lower body. And I'm in the mood to do some twist and some teasers. So here we go.

I'm going to start with leg pumps and we'll be in our Palladio's v to begin and I like to start with the pedal all the way down at the bottom so that I can get myself organized for. So go ahead and join me for that. And you're going to get your sit bones as close to the front edge of your chairs. You can lightly holding the front edge of the chair knees no wider than the shoulders and hips. Let's take a breath in and we're going to do 10 of these. Exhale, pull the pedal up. Inhale, press and pull. So keeping that upper body nice and stationary, feeling those abdominal muscles come in and upward underneath the ribs.

Okay, nice and stable on the sitting bones and eight and nine and 10. I'm going to leave it up here and transition and I want to pull my abdominals deeply back to my sacrum. When a roll back on to my sacrum. If I can hold on. Flare the lats. Now let's just think about the rectus abdominis for a moment and I want you to contract that. I'm thinking of bringing my pubic bone up the front of my body toward my chest.

Just holding that. I'm going to peel my feet off the pedal. Extend, come to parallel, flex the feet without coming out of that flection of the torso. Ideally set the heels down round forward. There's some ab work and come to sit tall. So here we go. Press down one and three, getting that nice high pull up heels coming up toward the bum and six and seven we squeeze the legs to push and nine and 10 so same transition contract into the stomach. Round underneath with the tail on the sacrum.

I'm again thinking of the pubic bone coming up toward my chest or rectus abdominis. Low. End Up to high-end. Peel the legs off. Let's just uh, flex through the toes. Put the balls of the feet. Arm. This is a tricky one. Round forward. Get the abdominals to contract and coming up to sitting tall. Inhale, push and lift. Push and left. So start to get the chest a little more opened up.

Think about widening these upper ribs. An eight lift nine lift 10 and lift. Same contraction, same transition. Rule back. Peel the toes. I'm going to do one more position. I'm going to come to the arches of my feet, so I want to just place those arches on.

Wrap into prehensile contract over the legs, sitting up to vertical leg, Jeanie, the arms. Inhale. Exhale three and four. Really squeezing the arches of the feet over the pedal. Lifting the back of the knees up and seven and eight, nine and 10. Stay down there. Let's do some single leg. Start with your heel, a heel of the leg forward ahead and Jeannie again, pump up and two three some pretty heavy springs for the single leg. Mun the third up and one down and eight and nine and 10 change at the bottom. Heel extend.

Plug the shoulders back and one to three really deeply pulling the stomach back to the lower back. Eight, nine and 10 ball of foot and up and up and up without shortening the back muscles. Lengthen six shoulders back, eight, nine and 10 last set. Other leg extends. Here we go. And lift, lift, push and lift. Four five, six, seven, eight, nine and 10 and release. Okay, let's step down. Time to do some washerwoman, some taking the springs down quite a bit and as I said for all those likes, pumps, I had third us spring up and then one at the bottom. It's a fairly heavy, I'm going to take off the top spring, leaving things fairly light for a few exercises. I'm going to change my mind actually right there, not on the very bottom, but the next one up medium. So I want us to step about one of our own foot lengths back away from the chair.

So you just gonna measure that. All right, little space between the feet. Mine with the sitting bones. Let's take our arms nice and lifted up reed and I'm going to have this flex our cervical spine first. How much can I pull my chin into my chest? I'm going around my spine is much over that imaginary barrel as I can. Once I get my hands on the pedal, relax the toes and inhale, push, exhale, pull up and try to spread the shoulder blades off the back ribs there.

Want to really widen your back body and down and lift. Let's just take one more plain one and as we push down, we're going to hold it unless dad some squats. Then I lift my heels, I'm going to crouch down. What this really is, is stabilizing the upper body. Keep the arm street and pushing the pedal. And when a dive, the head toward the shins are added stretch. But keep scooping the stomach. Heels come up now round that Seagram round the sacred down toward the heels, hips to heels and dive your head down three more times. It's really about opening up the back body again, exposing the c curve, connecting to it last too. And you can also watch how your layman is working on your feet.

So you're stabilizing your Relevate, no pro nation or super nation, hopefully and down and lift, unless add 10 tricep presses, elbows pointing to the knees, and to scoop the belly before you press. And four, five and six, seven and eight and nine and 10. And let's go ahead and roll up. Press that pubic bone forward. Almost like you're [inaudible], you're pressing it right out there toward the pedal. Roll up through your spine and just like knowledge your posture for a moment. And let's take a break a little rest.

So we're gonna move down to the ground into our swan from the floor. I've got it still in the second spring up and I want you to lay down my down, hands up and get your, your the palm of your hand on that pedal without no clutching of the fingers. So just really open up the poem. We're going to use yourself for a minute. Head between your arms, lengthen through your legs, feel the stomach muscles coming up off of the ground. Your Butt will probably contract a little bit.

And what I want us to do in one motion is get the shoulder blades to GLI down and arch the front of the chest forward to the chair and up. But what I'm also thinking is not so much about pulling the peddle down as I am trying to pull the pedal toward me. So that's going to help me retract my scapula just a little bit to allow those thoracic vertebrae to arc and extend and lowering down and again, so pulling the pedal toward me, the humeral head into the socket. Lift a really long stretch in the stomach muscles, great tricep stretch as well as contraction. Last two pool. Inhale and exhale and we'll come up one more time. Get the shoulder blades connection first.

Arc the spine. So we're going to hold this one and pump the pedal three more times. Again, pull it towards you. Pull this spring towards your chest. Last one, pull it, lift and let's come all the way down for a little variation. I want you to take one hand and just put it behind your head and you can see what's happening here. So a little unilateral swan. I'm really good. Induced mini little poles of the pedal three to five times.

Okay. And too very tiny. Okay, you don't need to go too big here. And three, let's get one side to have a focal point and four and five and one other side. The other side, bringing the arm into the socket, shoulder blade back on that back. Try to stay equal on the front rib cage as well. And that pelvis three or I'm staying straight. Shoulder blade glide. That was a little better. And last one, five and rest. Okay, we'll remove your hands. Just put them right by your shoulders.

Push yourself back and not a full rest pose. Just feel like you're opening up your back again and we're going to do a rollover to counter all of that back extension. So I want you just to roll down. Wow. The Sky is bright right here. Okay, I need to come back. My eyes are closed because I need to keep my IC and I'm going to hold the bottom edges of the chair. Okay, I'm going to take my legs up.

This will be interesting. All right, I'm rolling over. I come up onto my shoulder blades, lightly touch the chair, breathe, and as we roll down, I'm sending my head toward the chair and my tail lengthening away from my head. I have to say this feels exceptionally delicious outside in this warm sun. I'm going to go all the way down. I feel ready today. Up. Inhale and exhale, lift this AI sacrum. Roll over the bones. Breathing in.

I'm going to try and get a little more reflection in my lower back and as I exhale my windpipe is nice and open. [inaudible] enjoy that. Nice stretch through my body. One more time. Inhale up to 90 release the back to the floor, peel up, pause, breathe in, and exhale coming down. All right, feel free to add some corkscrews there if you want to. I'm going to move on and we're going to come up kneeling side bend and I'll again just keep it on that second spring there, which is going to feel a little light for this, but that's okay.

So kneeling right in the center of the chair, arm up or hand behind your head. Let's see today if I get my arm up, dropping that shoulder blade down and feel as though you've got a nice solid connection between your rib cage, pelvis taught but not short. Okay. And that goes all the way around our midsection. So we're having a breath. I'm going to move the pedal and as I side bend [inaudible] real solid awareness and feeling of even weighed on my knees, not too far in and definitely not too far out even on those knees. And then coming up, let's do five of these. So an inhale to lengthen up over.

I'm trying to go right out to the water there and exhale like the pedals pushing me up. I'm resisting the pull up. And last two, I've got a little work in the inner thighs. My hamstrings, a fairly easy exercise with feels kind of Nice. It's a good preparation for some other things in a bit. And let's come all the way down. I'm just going to flip my back and face ya five times.

Dropping the shoulder blade press inhale as we side Ben and really stretch the spaces between each rib and exhaling. Lift. Inhale, lengthen up over again. Check even wait on those needs. And exhale every opportunity you can. Drop tension off of the upper shoulder. Float the vertebrae away from each other here, all the way up through your head and out your hair even.

And lift. And our last one, inhale up and over and exhale and lower the arm. Okay. All right, so we're going to add a little more spring. So we're doing some frog facing away and we'll be doing frog facing in and then some stepping up. So I need some more support from our chair. So one high, one low. Okay. Frog facing away. So here we are and get my the frog position or balls a feet on the pedal. We're back where we started, right for the the leg pumps. Now the hands right here from on the edge of the chair for just a second.

Before we slide the hips off, press your shoulders back and really feel how broad your chest gets. Strong through your arm and shoulder muscles. Pull this stomach in and up and slide your hips off the chair and see if you can just hold for a second. So I imagine that my heels are connected to my sitting bones just for a moment. Then they're going to move away. I'm going to push them away. Pull back up, push away. Exhale, 10 of these four I guess we didn't have to do ten five oh six seven knees, not two wide eight pull up nine pull up, 10 pull up and hold. And then let's change it just for five triceps, maybe 10 to think of this as broadening the Pec muscles.

Contracting the Pex, broaden your pecs, contract pecs length in the triceps contract. I'm going for 10. Here's four more, and push three. Push focus straight out of the eyes. And last one, you've got to have enough lift in your pelvis to slide right back on the chair and pause. Okay, frog facing in. This is a wacky looking one. My hands are on the edges here. Step again onto the pedal in your frog. Plea a no.

I happen to have quite a bit of turnout in my hip so I can clear the edges. You want to work to get those knees on the outsides rather than the insides. All right, inhale here. Now I'm going to pull that pedal out and a whole two, three, push down. Exhale, pull up. Hold two, three, push down.

And I'm holding because I want to squeeze those external rotators. I want to find my rear shoulders and hold one more slow. One. Pull up to three. Now five a little faster. One to the reach chest is open. Four and five. And relax. Okay.

Soften your leg. Pull that pedal up and pause just for a moment. All right, so we're getting ready for this side. Stepping up, stepping upside. Uh, I'm starting my left foot. Depending on where you are, I'm stepping on that pedal. Get all the way down. Hold on if you'd like. We don't have the poles mounted as you can see, so you might want to use that for security. My feet are a little dusty outside, so now this is interesting. This leg is parallel. This one's turned out before we shift weight a little to the bent leg and go up. Connect your your thighs for just a second. This is how I learned. It was great. I don't remember who helped me figure that out. I would credit them if I could, so thank you. Whoever that was, these inner thighs need to go toward each other.

That contraction for me then will help me go up that way. I don't have to load so heavily over here and shifts so far that way, but I also do my arms out to the side and let's just not worry about how high up we go initially. Okay, so think about this inner thigh going that way. This one coming this way, and then in the middle you'll go up. Now I'm going to move a little faster up and lift. I like these. I'm going to go to 10 so this is my sixth one.

Seven I've got energy going this way out. My body out my arm so I don't travel too far over my bent leg and nine, 10 I think, and 10 all right, I'm going to transition down here. You could do it up there too. It's just a little safer now. Step, turn around. Hold on. Foot connect for just a second again before you actually do the exercise.

I am a firm believer in setting up some times before you actually move it. Dropping the hip much as you can. Lengthen both sides. Inner thigh to inner thigh and like magic you start to rise and the little higher really connect the foot that's on the pedal. Being mindful not to roll it in or out. All right, and a little higher. You've got five more wo and six that was a bird that made noise and it freaked me out. And eight, nine my last one.

10 and lower and rest. Okay, and release the pedal. Okay. So we're going to back off the legs a little bit and do some more upper body. So I'm going to lower this spring tension and I think I'll take off one side completely see five not too swift with that. Gosh. Yeah. And then the other side instead of being up on the third.

Yeah, I think I'll go down one. Okay. And what I have planned here for these next few are some of the reverse one or reverse chest expansion, adding a little rotation to that and some teaser with rotation. So here we go. All right. I'm going to keep it on the same spring for the rest of this series. Dust off.

So as we set up for the reverse swan or chest expansion here, I like about a fist width between me and the end. Please. Your hands on the pedal. I'm a, I like fingers in because then I have to really rotate those deltoids back and get my upper back extended and I want to, Gosh, find that the triceps and really press those triceps back. I'm looking toward the ocean. I have the have great view here or my feet. That's a breath in. Now as I come up, I want to use the timing, that transition that we started the foot work with. I'm going to come up into my teaser as I lift the pedal, keep the deltoids wrapped back. Inhale as we lengthen, I'm dipping my toes in the water there. Wrap the deltoids. Here comes a train.

Exhale. Inhale. Talk about mind body work. [inaudible] two more. Inhale, how long can you stretch from your hip joints and lift? Last one. Inhale, I'm on sacred mum. Wrapping those deltoids back. I'm trying to get nice and flat.

Lengthen and exhale and left. I'm going to let go one hand, the other hand and hold and hold and hold. Okay. Ah, that felt really good. Nope. I need to stay for the next one. Witness the twist. Adding that twist on here. So within such a moment, uh, arms up.

I'm going to rotate towards you all first. What I want us to think about in our hand is going to go away and instead of it being in your comfort zone, if you feel like you are in one with the hand just on the edge, what if we challenge it and try to turn our back more around? Okay, that's my my obliques. My rotatory is in my spine. I'm actually going to kind of gaze over that shoulder. I really want to continue then twisting as they push the pedal down and I'm not going to give up in my rotation as they come back up.

I want to keep thinking of spiraling around only gonna do three here and it's a really long twist, a long, long twist. That's my next one. One more, still lengthening through my legs. Trying to twist a little more. I'm going to ease those upper traps down. Exhale. Now I'm gonna stay in the work. I'm going to take both arms up, twist to the other side, plays the hand, feel comfortable for a second and then change your mind. Get a little more curious about more rotation from your inside.

Move it around your back. Inhale as we twist, keep twisting as you lift those springs that spring I should say twist more both legs, stretching from your pelvis, twist a little more, twist a little more for your last one. Using neck and shoulders all the way up. Arms up overhead and rest. Okay. Building up for the last one. So this is our teaser, uh, from the diagonal with rotation. And I'm going to face y'all first. You're going to see my back. How you sit here I am in the back of the chair. Here's my left hip.

I'm going to sit more toward that corner and face, right, if that makes some sense. Okay. Cause I want it. You have to have enough space here for your hip to roll over too. You're going to be moving your hip into that curve there. Okay? So as you take your legs up, left leg is on top, left arm is on top, left hand is on pedal. That's a lot of work there.

It's a disc kind of Bobby related because of the angles here. Now I'm going to start to t a rotate my teaser. First I want to think about reaching out to my legs. Tip over onto the hip. The arm is coming overhead. I'm going to try to gaze back almost toward my feet.

Engage my hamstrings and pull them back as well. Not Arch the back. Too much meaning pop the ribs. I want to find upper back extension. Get some swan. Okay. It's a little light. Spring is challenging me like crazy. Exhale and lift. Okay, reach out, rotate and twist. Find those hamstrings and glutes. Get some additional hip extension.

Breathe and exhale. Curl back in and lift. All right, one more if you can notice, but the sun's coming out. It's great. Or we're burning off the clouds. Reach contract the inner thighs for a minute. Feel how solid that might make your lower body feel and go for a little more arch there and recoil and transition. So I'm just going to bend, switch, lift the other hip and leg up.

So this time it's going to be right leg over the top right arm, up hand on the back corner. Now breathing in. Here we go. Rolling to the hip. Arm overhead. Find some upper back extension. Use it. Use your hamstrings. Use your inner thighs. Breathe. Find those external obliques to an exhale.

Come right back up to the teaser and again, reach it out. Roll onto the hip, track your eyes with the direction of where your head is going. Squeeze, lengthen, breathe in. Exhale and recoil and up. And last one. Really explore reaching into space here with your body. Track your eyes with your head. A little more upper back extension. I can almost see my feet getting there. Inhale, exhale, and lift and finish. Okay, we're all done. I've rung out, literally rung out my mid body work, my arms and legs. Had a wonderful time outside. Hope you enjoyed it.

Thank you.

Comments

1 person likes this.
Love this! As always Amy you never disappoint! Love your way of teaching. Thank you
Lucie Bécus
This was great Amy! Loved the inner thigh cue and you've given me some twists to work on for sure there at the end
Loved this class! I always enjoy your classes and learn from them. As you cued for engaging the inner thighs I thought of the workout you demonstrated last summer with Cara Reeser on the Wanda chair. Perhaps she was the one you were looking to credit...
Thank you guys! Sari.....I think I learned that inner thigh cue a long, long time ago, in fact I know I did. I may have been one from Gary Calderone (my first teacher) and he was a student from the Boulder school, Pilates Center. I have a feeling it was a fairly 'original' cue for that exercise, but nonetheless, it works! :)
Thanks for taking class with me!
Loved it! I also love the inner thigh cueing and the cue gave when doing Swan about pulling the pedal toward you rather than thinking of pulling it down, really helped with retracting scapula. thank you Amy!
Thank you Connie!! :)
Really good class, excellent execution of some tough moves. Thanks
Thank you for this excellent short & sharp class Amy! Love your attention to detail :)
Wow...you make it look effortless...this is a great one to show advancement...less spring, more me? Thank you! Again WOW
Thanks everyone! :) I love the Chair and yes Jennifer...less spring, more me....or YOU! Enjoy!
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