Class #1702

Creative Magic Circle

55 min - Class
243 likes

Description

If you love Magic Circles, you will love this class! Amy teaches a creative full-body Reformer workout using the Magic Circle. Explore variations of Footwork, side-lying glute work, Shoulder Bridge, Front Splits, and adaptations of Roll Over and Boomerang on the Reformer, among other exercises.
What You'll Need: Reformer w/Box, Magic Circle

About This Video

Jun 02, 2014
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Transcript

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Hi everyone, it's Amy and I have my friend Kaita here to work out with us. It's for us and for you at home. And we're on Groth reformers today. You can use whatever you have, of course at your house or your studio. And we have our Polonius ring that we're going to integrate in some of the exercises, not everything, but you will see it used in creative ways as I like to do a full body workout. So we're, we'll be starting with footwork.

We're on three springs medium for you, whatever that means. I also want to add as we get started here, feel free to change springs as you need to change positions with your feet as you need to, uh, be more in charge of this as your own workout. I mean, take from me of course, and, and from us actually taking class, uh, and join us, but feel free to make it make sense for you as well in certain places. Okay. And I'll, I'll try to remind you. So we'll start with our PyLadies V and I want you to just first to kind of settle into the reformer. If that means wiggle your tail and your pelvis a little bit, that's fine. Just kind of be aware of where the shoulders are. Uh, making contact to the blocks so the shoulder pads and work the collarbone and roll it back a little bit. The ribs are settled, legs are the knees are no wider than your shoulder frame.

And we'll start with the ring hands on the outside of it. The arms are straight up vertical lines from your shoulders. I've got the fingers open and we're going to be bringing that ring into the chest as we push with the leg. So right away your coordination will be tuned into. So here we go, eight times. Inhale as we press and exhale, return and he inhale. So thinking about this, your chest right away, opening up toward the mat, the ring and the elbows nice and wide.

You'll feel that the shoulders kind of budge their way right up into the shoulder rest. So it's your opportunity to reorganize the shoulder blades down your back, away from the shoulder blocks. So we have one more regular tempo. That was our eight arm stay here we pulse. So just changing the rhythm of your leg work. You're not getting fully straight with your legs.

Just little pulses and four, three, two, one. One more slow one. Bring the ring to the chest. Take an inhale and exhale as we lengthen arms and bend the knees. All right, prehensile your feet. So wrapping the ball of the foot over the top heel, slightly under same stuff. Here we go. Inhale, pull the ring in and exhale, reach it up. So as the ring comes to the chest and to the ceiling, your collarbone gets wide, your shoulder blades drop back into the mat.

You strengthen those legs as you stand on them. Inhale, pull and exhale, stretch and pull and stretch. Let's take two more for seven and eight. I think I counted right and straighten and we'll take our pulse rhythm. Arm. Stay here. So this is a shorter pulse, kind of pumping the quad, keep the shoulders easy away from the blocks. And four, three, two, one. One more slow. One. Inhale, long body, open chest, and exhale all the way in. Lift the feet and just set the heels. Same Choreography. Inhale, press. You can imagine the foot, the sole of the foot, maybe against a wall so the ankles aren't rocking here.

Do you feel even pressure against the bar with your feet that you're using each leg equally and for more and stretch elbows, wide chest, getting wide and opened up, allowing you to take a lot of air in those lungs. All right, we're ready for pulses. We go. I have my legs all the way together. You can keep a little space if you need to. And four, three, two and one. Inhale, long legs, chest end, or the ring or ring to the chest and exhale and reach. Okay. Reap a step onto the ball of the balls of the feet. Now with a little space between, we'll do some calf work, so bring the ring to the chest, keep it there as you stretch your heels under the bar, lift the heels up and return to the bumper. We'll do eight of those.

Inhale [inaudible] and again, as you're reaching the arms up the shoulder blade, stay against the mat. They don't follow the ring so they stay on those mats. Here we go and press heels, heels and up. Four more patterns. Remember, this isn't a lock of the knees there. The back of the thighs stays active to help support the knees last too. Nice. Parallel tracking of our hip, knee, ankle, last one, press, heels, heels up and center.

Okay, one is to bring the legs to tabletop, so there they go. Straighten the leg so the feet come to the ceiling. Woo. Turn out through the legs and roll back to parallel. I like an inhale. Externally rotate. Exhale, parallel. Check your shoulders. Keep those sockets right on the mat. And now one more time.

Turn out, open the legs to a straddle. We're going to do that little rhythm here. Just try to stretch the legs a little more and yeah, Elvis is nice and level. Nice and flat and four, three, two and one. Bend the knees at the heels on the bar. You may need to peak and see where the corners are.

Pretty turned out with the FYS today. Same work with the ring. Inhale, pull to the chest and exhale, stretch. So I want you to think about the back of the thighs. Now, way up high here by the Tush. Use that to push against the bar. Use the back of the legs a little more. We've got four more in our regular tempo. Back is staying wide. You might be tempted to arch those ribs and be a little careful. Last one, slow ring stays up. We pull our legs from the back of the thighs. Push in bend, push and bend. And four, three, two, one last one. Slow. Pull the ring in. And exhale.

Now let's just lift the feet. Put 'em right back balls a feed. We're going to do some uh, prancing or walking in place. So if we extend, pull the ring to us. We'll post the right heel down. Four Times left heel. Same thing again. Now we're counting down for two pulses. Twos again, elbows are lifted, shoulder blades are down, the back twos.

Last time and now we saw alternate for 16. Really lift the heel, lift the heel. Eight seven, six and five long neck. Last two. Let's come up to the Relevate or the lift and as we bend the knees, we reach that ring right back up again. Nice wide torso and less rest.

So hopefully your upper back is kind of awake also right between the shoulder blades. So let's just set the ring to the side and we need to change our spring tension down. Take off one on these. It leaves us just with two springs, but maybe on if you have a balanced body of red and a blue or a peak or something there. All right, we're going to take her head rest down. We're going to move ourself into some single leg. So if you roll onto one side, Tuck your bottom arm on to make a little pillow for that head and that neck. Other hand can hold the block. And at first just take a look at your legs. I want him to be, he's nice and Ben the top one.

Then and set the foot flat on the bar. And what is kind of hard to tell a little bit in this is where a teacher would come in handy. Your heel on the bar should be in line with your sitting bone, straight line rat. We've done it sometimes where the foot's in front of you, but I want you to have it nice and straight so that you have a good sense of your hip extensors, your hamstring right up into your butt. All right, now as we bend the knee, track it again parallel. You may not get all the way to the bumper. That's fine. Probably wouldn't. Let's do six Reps. So I want you to use this part and press away. Inhale, bend. So you have to bend the hip, knee, ankle evenly and extend and [inaudible].

Press the heel against the bar. You using those hip extensors. Three more press. Hips are stacked here. Bottom waist is a little lift onto it. You know that and down and press bend. One more here. Press and we're going to hold. Okay, we're still in parallel.

Elevate your heel a couple of inches. So you're kind of standing on a very unlevel surface because the bar is around. Be careful of and feel that the ankle doesn't do a turn in or out. Same movement though. You'll go all the way to the bumper. Now you use here, push in linkedin. Yep. Feel free to check your alignment.

You can pick up with your head and see that that knee as it bends goes straight ahead and it doesn't elevate higher than the hip that's coming in a minute. So this first set of six, we have a nice parallel line here. Three more. So extend Ben [inaudible] extend long up to the abdominals as well. Last one, extend. Hold. Okay. The whole thighs. Gonna Pivot. I'm thinking from my femur head is going to turn out. Here we go. And Ben, it's a little like hip opener on the Cadillac.

If any of you've done that kind of Sorta Pelvis is still upright this way, but the Femur is in his turned out position, you may be able to feel those rotators more on this hip. Three more extend fully and bend [inaudible] even all weighed on all parts of your foot as well. Careful, it's not too much on big toe. And Ben [inaudible] I feel as though I'm not counting quite correctly. So we're going to hold here, take that top arm up and stretch yourself out. Take your bottom leg and lift it to the other leg. Let's do six one and two and three.

So feeling those inner thighs now four and five and six, we can bend and come all the way in and we'll adjust ourself to turn over to the other side. So again, as you're getting set up, you're on your side. [inaudible] start with your legs extended long. You can look to see that they're in line with your pelvis. You step that top leg up, push the carriage away and again, you can check. You want that heel as best you can to be right in line with your sitting bone, not foot forward or too far back. All right, organize your alignment. And here we go. Bend the knee, heel stays on the bar and extend parallel fi for us.

You're feeling the work. Come from the back of your hip, hamstrings up into those glutes. Three and extend. Just let the neck relax into this hand there. Bend and extend. Last one with the foot and a parallel and heel on the bar. All right, hold for a moment. Rise up. Couple inches of heel lift.

Stabilize the ankle. Here we go again. Bend. You'll probably make it all the way to the bumper. Need tracks. Straight ahead. Three [inaudible]. Long legs, long stomach.

Okay, and for Bend and press last one in parallel and extend. Now pivoting the whole leg, but the foot is what you'll feel. Turn on the bar. Pelvis stays stacked on its side and we again bend using the back of the hip primarily to extend the knee. Okay, bottom waist has a little hover to it. Three more. Bend and stretch.

Bend and stretch. Ben, last time stretching. Hold. Take your top arm, give it a reach overhead. Six Times the bottom leg comes up and down. Feeling the inner thigh. Three for sure, five and six and then bend all the way down and less rest. Okay, so keeping your head rest down. Let's turn around.

We're going to keep our two red springs and we'll do some articulation of our spine. So if we roll back on our back, I'd like us first to step our legs through the ring so that the ring is right on the outside of the knee lower thigh. It feels best for my feet to be on the arches, but this is where you can make a personal choice and ball of the foot heel either way, but stay in parallel. All right, have some space between you and the block. Take a breath. Here we go. Pelvic curl. So we articulate from tail mid back, right up between those shoulder blades. We're going to move this bridge back and forth three times. Keep pressing your thighs out in the uh, the ring to be aware of the alignment here and the use of your lateral hip muscles. One more time.

Press and in. We're going to hold at the bumper. Breathe and roll down. As we exhale, massaging those joints, we're going to go back up and do the moving bridge two times. Breathe in here. Exhale and round through the low back. Scooping in that tummy. Really standing on your feet. Use the back of those hips again. Two presses away, one and note the further you try to attempt pushing out, you must use the back of those legs so that we don't droop the midsection.

We rolled down our spine. No roll. Upper back, middle back, low back pelvis. Last one with one. Moving bridge, Rola. Here we go. Feel the work in the body. Ah, feel the breath. Breathe in here. Here we go. Rolling down. We're still on that lighter spring section to spring settings, so if you needed to add some, you could've probably come up and do it. Let's move the ring to the inside and so it's same choreography.

We're going to do moving bridge. Squeeze in now as opposed to [inaudible] pressing out. Here we go level pelvis to start Helvic curl. You may find this one a little easier. Who knows? Three times one, I can't go as far away keeping the spring the circle squeeze and I want to emphasize the strength in the back of my thigh. Inner thigh all the way to the bumper hold and rolled down.

Keep squeezing the ring and all the way to level pelvis, a breath in. Exhale. Here we go. Curl, so use their as much squeeze as you would like to moving bridges, one in Linkedin to hip, stay lifted in and roll down the spine. Massage your collarbone stays broad. One more to go. Imagine this feet like section cups, just holding onto that bar and press out. Pool in hold at the bumper and let's roll all the way down and we're going to rest. Okay, so take the ring out just for a moment. I like to take the foot bar down when I do the 100 which we're doing next, so lower the bar down all the way we will stay on, or two red springs or red and blue at home.

You're going to put that in the circle, right between your ankles. We're in a table top or rather parallel. Reach back and pick up your straps or handles. Make sure you've got space between the blocks in your shoulders and let's go right up into the 100 position. Press on the circle a little and here we go. Inhale, three, four, five. Exhale, three, four, five. Exhale.

So we want to work that flection of the thoracic spine, but keep the collarbone wide. So if you feel adventurous, let's take it down just a little bit. Only if your back feels safe and ready. Keep releasing the lumbar down nine 10 and so we're going to challenge your ab strength three times. We're just going to move the arms up and down, challenging that chest lift.

Last one. Good and keep the arms there. Bring the legs to 90 degrees. Arms, come back up. We're going to take just three rollovers down. Just like the mat work. Exhale, arms go down, pick up the tailbone room, roll overhead, flex your feet, squeeze into the ring slightly. Breathe in and roll down your back. Reach into that wooden handle or your strap. Reach out through your heels.

You can lower your legs and raise your arms. Here we go again. 90 degrees, arms down. Exhale, flex the spine. Rollover sitting bones facing the ceiling. Hands are flat on the Mat. Breathe in. Here we go. Roll down. It's almost as if we're still trying to create that tail under, oh all the way down the spine. One last round. I get up rollover. So pause for just a second.

If your tail could wrap so much, it'd be between your legs, kind of on your, on your naval. That's what I'm thinking in my mind and keep that as we roll down the back. Keep it, keep it, keep it, keep, uh, keep it until the very end. It has no choice but to level out. Let's bend the knees and take your hands out. You could take the ring away. Come on up. Okay.

So set it in your wife cause you're going to use it shortly. But moving on, we're going to take off one spring, we'll face back. We're going to do a little kind of, I don't know, mix up of the rowing facing back and add a little boomerang kind of thing to it. So you've got at least to let him length, knuckles together, elbows lifted. You've already prepped plenty for that with all that magic circle. And then before we do this exercise, imagine your your chest in your thoracic spine and right between your, your pectoral muscles lifting and bending back.

And just do that a couple of times. Kinda give an encouragement, lifting and doing an upper back and bend. Okay, that's going to show up here in just a second. As you pull on the straps and take your arms out to the side, there'll be a arm pull in a chest arch happening. Okay, so let's take a breath. We're gonna roll ourselves back until we're on our sacrum and you should feel pretty balanced right there on that set of bones at the back of your pelvis. Now flute your legs up a bit. Kind of looks like boomerang from the Mat.

So we're going to add our variation as we start to come toward the legs with our chest. Let's actually first change your legs. Yeah, open the arms. Here comes undulate your chest up to the upper back arch. Use some strong shoulders. Start to lower your legs and keep reaching your chest towards your thigh. You are going to arch your back on purpose. Bring your chest over your thighs.

Reach your hands back. Before we do the arms, I want you to pull your stomach back to your hips. Circle your arms all the way around will flow. Now, here we go. Now that you know what it is, we roll back to the sacrum. You hover the thighs, give them a little change. As you start to open your arms to a t, you're lifting out into the chest, chest toward thighs. Pull on the strap. Try to get the chest to the thighs. As you arch your thoracic spine over you, go pull your stomach to your hips. Circle your arms to your feet.

Two more to go. Let's take a breath and exhale. Get on that sacred fire the thighs. You can switch the legs. Here we go. Open, chest up, pull on the straps. Aren't you back? We just had some visitors walk by. That was pretty cool. Come on down. Circle your arms in one more time. K to inhale. How are you doing? Exhale. Roll it back. Yeah, it feels good, I think, and up with the length. Little switch.

Do you have to really find some strength in the shoulders and your upper back pool and open and take it down. Whew. And Circle and bring everything up. Okay, let's turn around. Stay with the one spring. We are going to sit cross legged I think like feel pretty nice right now. Bring your ring up here.

Only pilates teachers would think of this as a hat, but I, that's what I'm doing. I'm thinking of my circle as a top hat. So set it on your head right now. All I want us to focus on first is pressing the knees down, pull the stomach back into the hips and we're going to straighten and reach our top hat up and put it back on the head. I love it. The hats, the terrains. It's awesome. So things to consider here. What's your rib cage doing?

It might want to forward. Try to keep it a little bit less thrusted. So right, you've got your some strong abs hugging those ribs in. I'm gonna do a couple little variations. So arms, you're gonna go straight up. Now, lower your arms in front of you. You'll have to navigate with the straps. I realized bring the ring to the chest just like we did in footwork.

Reach it in front of you, and then as it goes back out on the angle, and once you think stomach to hips, stomach, back to hips, you're coming out in that diagonal and you're going to put your top hat on. And we'll do the thing one more time. The pattern we extend as you lower your ring in front of your chest, collarbone rolls back, you bring your ring in, your stomach pulls in, you start to reach the ring forward. Your stomach is moving into your hips. That's what might be moving the carriage back.

And then just re place your hat on top of your head and let's rest. Okay, good. So hopefully feeling some upper body, some upper back. Let's set that to the side and hook our straps down. Now it's time for some abdominals on the box. So we're going to grab our box from the back, put it up in a long box fashion.

In a moment we'll need our high bar. So we'll put it up now. Alright, I'm going to have a sit on the box space in the back of riff, your reformer and the distance. You should set yourself at least one fist from this end of the box to your your pelvis. Maybe a little more depending. Okay, so find those straps roll onto your back. Bring your knees in. Now I want you to interlace your hands everybody, and put those hands right behind your head and sometimes you'll hear us teachers talk about the hands being a hammock for your head. So really do lay your head back in the hands. But on these reformers, those leather straps underneath our shoulders are helping to keep us up in chest lift and we're going to take our right leg forward.

Let's just do eight single leg stretch, really holding stable in the upper body position and five, six, seven adding crisscross, turning toward the bent knee and to trying to keep even contact with those straps. Five, six, seven. Okay. And eight, bring both knees in a little variation. Double leg stretch. Put your hands by your shoulders. They're going to reach back along the side, the ear tips as your legs extend forward. Take your arms out to a t, reach toward your feet. The straps are going to go slack a bit and then return hands to shoulders. Knees in two more. Stretch. Keep that chest lift up and hands into the shoulders last time.

Exactly. And stretch and open. Rena, verge that. Merge that into a teaser. So let's go extend from double leg and that was the arms go out. Invite the upper body to come up into that teaser position. Ooh, just hold for a second. Check your color bonus rolled back. No. As we started coming down, I want us to roll off the sacrum.

Take the arms a little bit out to the sides. Re Bend the knees and elbows in. Starting again. Double leg stretch. Prep out. Open the arms. Feel how the strap just kind of allow us to float up into the teaser. Pick your legs up higher. If you can.

Start to stretch the spine toward the toes. Pull the upper spine toward the head. Lengthen out. Re Bend. We've got one more Keda and stretch arms open. Let the straps because up, just like wind carrying us up. [inaudible] inhale, exhale, and let's roll down.

Very nice and okay, come on up. That woke everything up in my mid body. You're going to hook his straps on, roll back onto the back again, and we'll be doing some hands on the foot bar with this one. You may need to pull your pelvis forward on the box. I'm okay with having my head slightly, kind of hanging off the box edge, but let that be, um, personal choice. You definitely don't want to feel unsupported or dangerous. Okay, so now as the hands are on the foot bar, make sure you're out of the corners of your eyes.

You can see your elbows and knees in tabletop, wrap those ribs so that we're very snug here in our, our obliques and our abs. We're just going to do some extensions of our elbows and band. Exhale, and I'd like us to go ahead and push all the way, even if your shoulders elevate towards your head here. If you're so used to pulling your laughs down, this may feel really nice to liberate them the other way in length in the three more times. Say Press. Keep wrapping those ribs into.

We're about to do some single arm and I think you can let go with either arm. I'm gonna start with one up, three repetition. So press check that the body doesn't roll off the box. I decide keeping nice and stable and then alignment. And our third one change while you're out. That's fine.

Three times one. So with the elbow out in the slight angle is getting the arm and shoulder one way. Let's hold now. Hands on both on the bar. Now let's walk our hands closer together. Now when we've been, we're gonna focus triceps down. I want to bend my elbows and if there were flashlights or pointing up to the ceiling rather than, than out to the sides. Exactly. Let's do six of these. The further you extend your elbows, be careful.

The ribs may want to thrust or arch. So keep wrapping those ribs in three and for go for length and strength. Really stretching through those triceps. And last and last to extend and Ben Extend and band. All right, so we're gonna bring ourselves up high and turn sideways with the box. Head rest can come up mainly because it doesn't need to be down. Let's do some stomach massage, two springs now and okay, this is, I like this. Oh, what do you, yeah, to rid. Okay, so let's make a round back [inaudible] and take a check on your feet first.

We want all five toes of each foot on the bar. Pinky toe sometimes hangs off knees narrow toward our shoulders. Try to get all the way to the bumper if we can. Now, and I know that's not, I'm not getting there right now, but I'll get there at a moment like that. Okay. If we delay pushing our legs and think about what straightening those springs are, stretching them is the effort of pulling our stomach back to hips. Let that be like 75% of the work and 25% in the legs maybe.

And then return and press and the hands are nice and light are back as broad. We've got a sense of levity in and around her abdomen in our spine. Two more here. Just keep in mind that the stomach presses into the pelvis to move the pelvis against the box and then come vertical arms behind. So let's try something first.

Let's do the wrong thing and drop the shoulders forward and then do the better thing and pull them back. Here we go. Inhale and accent. So we're the box kind of adding as a little assist possibly for getting upright in your spine. Do your best not to rely on the box. I want you to feel your back against it, but not leaning into it and the stomach as it's traveling in toward the pelvis. Pelvis makes more contact against the box. Okay, one more time. Unless you simply reach down for a ring and take it in our hands and same movements with the legs.

Just pushing back and forward stomach to hips. I realize I didn't put it in the drop in this and that's okay. Three more. Lift up out of the waist. Shoulders are on our back. We're going to add a twist in a second here, but as we do a twist, I want us to drop off one spring really light for us.

Now we've only got one spring in this little setup and as we do a twist, let's go to the right I guess, and open the those body and hold it for a moment. So notice that you feel your back against the box, but we're not leaning back on it. You notice that there. Stretch your chest more toward the ring feed or even on the bar and come back in. We'll just check it on the other side. Once it's kind of my, my style, sometimes I like to hold it feel and then try to maintain it. We'll do right, left, right, left. Inhale, rotate and return. Rotate and return to one more. Each one, make it count. Twist as much as you can. Beautiful Qaeda can see you in the reflection and twist and center. Okay, holding on, make a slight c curve, extend your legs and undulate your spine up to vertical.

Take your ring above you and then continue that upper back extension like we felt in the boomerang exercise. Lift the stomach and return everything to c curve. We'll just do two more there. Extend undulate up strong legs. Lift this the spine, lift the chest, upper back, bend, and return. Once again, kind of dancing through your stomach massage. Lift, not relying on the box and okay, let's put our ring down. I think we deserve a little stretch. I want to put my feet wider. Hands in the middle, and then monkey stretch.

And with the monkey stretch, I'm going to have this be more parallel with their legs. Now lower the heels down, pull the stomach still back toward the box. Bend the needs. Let's do it one more time. Right here I have my shoulders near my head. It feels good to stretch my upper back like that.

You could make sense if you want to have shoulders down your back, that's fine. Mine feel pretty good up there. And then we're going to come all the way in. Okay. We need a little lateral work, so we'll take our foot bar down. Add all of this brings on so we're nice and stable. We're going to sit up on our box strap under for some side overs.

They're a little deadly I think. So here we are going to use our ring and it's going to go behind her head. No, we're not pulling on the ring on our neck. We actually merging our skull back into the ring to to feel the lengthening and the release in the back there. Okay, so to start this, go ahead and lean away. Flex the foot into the strap there and lean a little. Don't have to go too far and just study that for a minute so that the bottom waist is lifted.

Decided as long your head is kind of back in there. We're only gonna do five of these now. Release the outside arm, the long leg arm, press that lad a little bit. We're going to go over the edge. Breathing in. Exhale, head stays back. The long arm kind of helps us there. The other elbow I can see out the corner of my eye. It's not too forward.

It's not too far back and I'm going to use those obliques and lift and three more. This hip will work as well. The low belly is lengthened up. All that stomach massage is tuned it up. That reverse abdominal work is supporting this last time [inaudible] I want us to go over, you can just kind of make this make sense. Not the best choreography right there, but that's okay. Hand on the frame and on the frame and turn your shoulders.

Let yourself drop down a walk your hands further out so it's a really long stretch. Pull on the ankle strap a little bit, so we'll do our five on the other side. Go ahead and pick up your ring and just swiftly turnover. All right, and starting. Ring behind the head, right behind the occiput or the base of your skull. Hands on the inside of the ring. Parallel leg. Lean over first. When you're ready to release the outside arm, make sure your bent elbow arm is in your elbows in your periphery. Here we go.

Inhale, going down toward the floor. Exhale and pull your old leaks up. Inhale, going down. Exhale, keeping awareness the head lightly pressing back into that magic circle or that ring two more times over Lyft last time over Lyft and release all the way over stretch and you can put the hands on the frame. Make sure you're still really centered in between the frame here with your chest and we can come all the way up. I think for now, let's just put our ring onto the side of our reformer again. We'll move our box away. Okay. We have sufficiently prepared our body for some weight-bearing.

I'm pretty sure so high bar, two springs, Yup. And long stretch series. A few reps of each. We're not going to go crazy. One Hand, a stiff legs. You go up on that head rest without bending in the knees or putting any knee down. You get onto the other hand. You're in a little parallel alignment. Before we press, I want us to lift our hips up a little bit. Let's go with maybe four reps.

Qaeda inhale demands the shoulders to push, doesn't it? Rather than the feet? Yes, so really push from the shoulders, shoulders, shoulders, and control the return. Lift the belly and push and pull strong legs and push and all the way in, knees down carried stays forward. Now because you and I have some ability to back then let's use a little bit of it but mainly think of upper back so the butt should be squeezed. Tailbone under and lift your chin, your chest more.

Let me watch you for a second even more, even more. I'm not a yoga person, but I do know what Scorpion looks like. So yes, and Katie is yoga person so she knows she's accessing your upper back. Try that. Here we go. Push from the shoulders. Inhale back more Scorpion if you want it as you come in, the heels are pushing back as well. We're lifting up and pulling that chest back. Last two, pull, pull, pull and last one and up. Okay. Round. Yay. Good. Okay. Up onto the balls of the feet just for up stretch. Here we go.

We'll do your style. Meaning come in with kind of flat. Yeah. And then pipe the hips up. So same thing, pushing from shoulders, lower the hips, get that plank line, pull the playing forward. Pipe from the hips, dive the chest toward the legs. Two more push, making sure those glutes are working also to push that carriage back. Good. Now what I would like us to do with standard feet flat for elephants, we're doing a fewer repetitions. Don't make it a curvy elephant, so really rounded spine, elephant and round your C. Curve your low back and push from there.

One and c curve pushes. It's really the butt pushes and pushes. Now you're going to bring one leg towards your chest, knee to nose, four times on the single leg and two, three and four. And then stand down. Carriage is at the bumper, other side and one trying to maintain c curve in the low back three and four and stand. Okay. Come up to standing just for a second kid actually kind of liked this. Yeah.

All right. We're going to move into a side plank or a prep for star or yes. Star. So let's go ahead, Kate and make a choice here. I want us to stand down to the floor first. Okay. Feet again. Back on the shoulder blocks now. Nope. Nope. Headrest.

Thank you. That was my, my my thing. Okay. Here we are right hand to the middle of the bar. We need to play with the feed and kind of navigate them. I'm going to take my bottom foot to the shoulder rest that's in front of me. Lean onto that straight arm. I haven't moved away from the bumper.

The outside leg and rest on top of the shoulder block. Now we did all that side over work. We're using it against the sides there. Lifted this, the top arm. Left arm is gonna reach it just right in front of you, right and then bring it back in. Now add the leg moving with the arm. Carriage is still the in. Let's try to move the carriage now with the arm and leg gesture.

Let's do that one more time. Qaeda. Good. Now the RMC is going forward. The leg goes behind us in a little arrow. Basque. These are small movements. Last one. All we need to do. Perfect. Alright. Navigate the feet. You gotta creep them in. One on the headrest hand. Hand pause.

Okay. Other side, hand in middle, twist the pelvis. Bottom foot comes to the inside, shoulder rest, foot on top for a moment, your outside arm is just on your hip. Lift your obliques, just they've top arm forward and in arm and leg forward. And, and now move the carriage a little. You have to push with the bottom foot and the shoulder muscles.

Make it kind of tiny. One more. And we're going to take the arm forward, leg behind and in. Nice Keto, one more Bush and in, and then turned foot on headrest. Second Foot and headrest. Finish with a nice front support and then come on down. Very nice. Make a c curve just for a second. We're doing well. We're almost there. Let's go ahead and do some quad stretching.

So I want us again to lower the foot bar. We can keep her two springs. We'll turn to face of back of the reformer. And I like to put my thumb right on top of the leather and I like to aim that some down there for the wheel. Take a moment to press the thighs forward into those shoulder blocks. Tops of feet down. Shoulders are set. Let's do three. Um, by stretch. Look down to the thumbs, press the shins in the feed into the mat.

Lift the straps a little bit to help you come up, keeping the shoulders open and again, press can consider trying to bend the knees a little more. Lift and up. Last one. Now adding a little chariot with, with that is I want us to make some tricep. Get the triceps active. So again, pull on the straps. Arms behind broaden chest. Now Squat tore the heels.

Keep pulling on the leather. Bring yourself up onto the knees, squeeze your glutes, return the arms. Two more pole. Keep those triceps and lats very strong. Bring the arms in front and last one. Pull the arms back. Keep them there as we bring the buttock down to the heels up onto those knees and return. Okay. Yeah, hold onto this job there. Now let's do some feet in straps.

We're going to keep our two red springs and we're going to just change these real quick. We are going to use our magic circle for the feed and straps. We will be going over in short spine so you can prepare for head down. This is the tricky part. Gracefully getting in as good Polonius teachers do. Stepping in and stepping in. All right, so I'd say again, kind of settle in.

Let's start with legs extended, not hyperextended for either of us in our knees and let's just do maybe five or six [inaudible] probably six. Parallel frog is what I call it. Initiate your leg extension from the back of the hips. Inhale as we bend, trying to steady the ring and steady the leather best we can. Three more. Inhale, so that stomach pulling into hips business just like we found in stomach massage. Wow. Two in this hour. Stomach into hips. Last one. Okay. Legs to 90 degrees. Legs down to about 45 degrees up to 90 contract. Those inner thighs to move the legs down.

Six total here. Squeezing that circle legs down. If this bothers the back of your knees. Anybody just do slightly bent knees, just slightly last two. Okay, last one. All right. Now as we go to short spine, keep it a little squeeze on the ring right away from the legs out there.

Start to lift your seat in control. This little ride as we come in to the stopper. Before we bend our knees, lift the pelvis just about half an inch higher again, that like the tail. If it were curled so much between the legs, it'd be you right up on this tummy like a monkey tail. Okay, so I've got a lot of concentration on pelvic tilt. Flex the feet in the knees. Try to keep the feet facing the sky, your knees on the shoulder rest probably, and massage that beautiful spine down onto the mat. Try to reach your hips even more to the mat. The knees might start to be, it's extended here. Okay, cause you're lengthening those hamstrings.

Now use those hamstrings to bend heels to buttocks and away. Now we'll flow with that. So lift, control the ride up. Inhale, knees to shoulder blocks. Exhale, massage. As you come down, reach the hips away from your head. Then heels to button and press lift up and over. Ben, massage down.

Try to lengthen the hips away from that magic circle as much as you can. And then the magic circle comes back into your hips. Extend to more round in the spine, lifted a little more monkey tail, that tailbone, roll it down, have one more, and then we'll be finishing the workout with a front lunge and some splits for some stretching of the hip flexors rolling down. Okay, so first, probably safest to take the ring away on the floor, grab the leather and then carefully send the kerogen. You can then grab the handles, shake the leather out, and put those on the hooks, right? All right, so up we go. High Bar. All right, let's stand on the reformer first. There are a few ways to do this, but today let's take our left leg as externally rotated back against the shoulder block. Step on the bar with your right ball of foot.

So head down and let the head kind of drape over the knee, Brina, stomach and pelvis in and up. And if we move the carriage, I want it to be because we can track the seat of our left or body. So squeeze the glutes to push and come back in just to have those, I met two more. Sorry. Last one. Squeeze and push and [inaudible]. Okay, now we start to balance it a little bit more. Come up onto that. The leg though. This quad is going to get loaded lunch, but again, still have the support here. Anchor your pinky toe on the back foot a little more and maybe less turnout of that foot. So what I'm noticing with Kate, it might be happening with you too. Yeah.

And I should've noticed at first she's got so much turnout, she's a dancer. Her foot was turned a little too much and I narrowed her back in so that she actually has to feel this and yeah, squared her pelvis. She may have done that on purpose. So I saw her hands behind your head. Okay. Just like the magic circle was there awhile ago. Head into the hands. Now we can do the front leg.

We're not completely square in the pelvis, most likely that we're working toward it. And in and last one. We certainly have a nice supported back knee and we're coming in and reach down and hold. Okay. Part B to this, pivot the foot, ped the knee down, Brina carriage and reposition your foot. And as a variation for this, I do want us to take this foot over to the corner of the foot bar, turn that hip out much, much more now and stretch. Go as far as you'd like to go. I have the arch of my foot actually on the bar more than the ball of the foot and I want to really work the flexibility of my right leg, my front leg and I'm coming in two more there.

But again, the stomach and the hips are still be there, was really supportive. I'm not just hanging in toward the floor. Yup. Oh man, that feels good. And come in. Then the last one, impress and who can go a little lower if they wanted to and all the way in. Okay. Yes. Other side. So we stand back foot not to turned out. Yeah.

Yeah. Front leg up and you're draping over this front knee. The head is down, the shoulders are relaxed, what's contracted deeply are the glutes of the back leg. Those can help push that carriage open and pull back in. Excellent. And the Pinky toe side of that back foot is anchored. Does it feel different in your glutes? Yeah. And then push and pull. Okay.

Up we come testing our balance. So again we have a lift in the tummy, a lift somewhat in the hips, but lunging here, hands behind the neck and head. Now we can straighten the front knee if we'd like. Keep squeezing the back loot and coming in and for us trying to square that back hip and last one. Hmm [inaudible] and then hands down, lift the back, heel pivot, set the knee down, reposition your foot and then over to the corner.

Last three stretches here everybody. And then we're going, we're going to straighten this front knee as much as we can. You can bring your chest down if that feels good. Stay connected to the back foot against that shoulder block and come in. And last too, and this is what I mean, make it make sense. If you'd rather put this foot somewhere else. This is your chance to kind of play with that.

An n last one. Deepening that flexibility. Do you want to go a little lower? Support this with those strong abdominals, easy neck, and then come all the way back into the bumper. Last thing I wanted to do just to put closure is maybe just sit on your carriage and just feel your feet on the ground. We move a lot in on the reformers and sometimes it's nice to before you walk away. It's just a feel solid ground first or again, it's close your eyes for a second. Take a couple deep breaths and thanks for taking class with Keda and I thank you for coming and playing with me and we will see you again soon. Bye.

Comments

Amy you rock!! loved this class, so creative with great flow and cueing. thanks so much!
I am very challenged by using a Magic Circle on the reformer. This class was great but I still can't keep the circle between my legs while in straps. Amy I sure could use some tips or tricks. Love your classes!
Wonderful class Amy, love he approach to changing up the order of exercises and adding in challenges. Short spine near the end far better than at the beginning. Thanks !
thank you gals.....so glad you enjoyed this fun and varied class. Katherine.....yes the circle provides a nice challenge----you've got to squeeze baby, squeeze! :) Use your high inner thighs....and it may help to slightly, slightly rotate your femurs inward while holding the circle. Let me know how it goes!
Lynn....thank you! Glad you enjoyed the change up and variation of order also. I love Short Spine at the end sometimes too!
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THANK YOU :)
Have loved seeing props come back to the Reformer classes and the circle makes for Very Challenging work !! really liked the variations and stretches were great
Z A
Very much needed.thank you very much.
I too love using the circle on the reformer! Very challenging. My legs feel like jelly. Thank you!!
1 person likes this.
I also love the magic circle on the reformer. My 5:30 class was cancelled tonight, as we are in the midst of tornado's whipping through Omaha....gotta love spring! So glad I have a reformer in my basement. Amy, loved boomerang (need to practice tho) and the teaser! Thank you! You're awesome!
Hey everyone.....wow, thank you so much! Happy to hear we all love the Magic Circle with Reformer work, yipee. Will do more of this for us soon! I really appreciate you taking the time to leave comments on what things you like and what exercises work for you!

Love this Amy. But don't know how you talk so calmly while doing it!!!! :)
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