Class #288

Advanced Reformer Flow

55 min - Class
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Description

Kristi teaches this challenging Reformer workout that features Side Lying Footwork, some of a Clam Series, Stomach Massage, Side Splits, and assisted Breast Stroke.
What You'll Need: Reformer w/Box

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Oct 07, 2010
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Okay. So let's start. We're going to do reformer class. Um, we're going to kind of try to move it along. Candace is here to help us and so we're gonna start with just a little bit of a warmup. We are set already. Foot bars are down, headrests are up. Um, actually let's put the address down canvas for the one I'm going to do first just changed my mind and were prepared for foot and leg work when the time comes. So we both have three red springs on. So let's lay down and do just a little bit of a matte warm up. Okay.

Sitting near the edge, we roll ourselves down. And then for the moment I'd like your feet on the wood and the balls of the feet are going to probably rest on the foot. Bart, presuming you have this kind of reform or if not, make your feet comfortable even if it means you have to scoot down just a little bit. In other words, if you want full contact with your feet where you feel secure. So for a pelvic curl. Inhale, start the exhale, initiate with the abdominal fine hamstrings shortly after you lift the pelvis off the mat, rolling up to a long line through your body. Feeling the stretch, hopefully through the front of the hips, a little inhale and exhaling down, reminding ourselves that yes, we're going to work. We are going to move rather quickly through the workout, but there's no point in trying to do that if you go ahead and keep going. XL to roll, no point in doing that if you haven't warmed up to a certain extent, if you haven't eased some tension in the body, inhale at the top.

Exhale we rolled down. Imprinting the spine bone by bone until you find that level pelvis neutral. Inhale, exhale. Feel the ABS sink or contract or hollow as you scoop and roll up. Took my time on that one. Inhale, feet center.

Foot centers are nice and even exhaling. Let's do two more. Looking for some supple spines. Exhale to roll up. Starts taking inventory as usual. Check your hamstrings. They should be working. Inhale and exhale. We come down softening through the throat, through the chest, and last one, taking it up. Isilon prove it to yourself. It's never a bad idea to check yourself out.

Roll down and for there to take your hands to the posts are where the straps connect. If they don't, if you don't have that kind of reform or you can take your arms out to a t, you could do that anyway. If it feels better to you. Let's go to the right. Inhale spine to a supine. You're gonna lift the opposite. Hip does not have to go far. Exhale, draw back to center. The feet are relaxed to the left. Inhale, lift up to go over and exhale coming back and again, inhale, feeling the separation or the rotation that can occur right there in the middle of your body. Inhale up and over to the left. Exhale coming back. You're feeling good. We can go slightly faster, but if you're feeling like you need more time, make it a slightly smaller range or take your time but over and draw back.

I'm going to change this just a little bit. Actually quite a lot. Email over on your exhale. Extend just one leg. Keep the knees bolted together. Extend the top leg. I should say thank you. Inhale, hold. Keep it straight. Exhale, come back to center and refold it there to the left. Inhale, rotate the top leg or the right leg, I believe is exhaling. Stir retching. I'll hold it there. Inhale, exhale.

Bring the whole piece back to center and fold the just one more each way in here, keeping the shoulders down. Exhale, the top leg reaches, but the knees stay aligned. Inhale, hold or reach further. Exhale, come back and full less time. Inhale, rotate. Exhale. It's as if the exhale blows her right out to the leg and that's how it gets extended. Inhale. Exhale, back to center. Fold the leg and down with the feet from here. Stretch the legs out over the bar. You might have a slight upward, slight upward tilt with the feet. Take the arms off right above your chest.

We inhaled to curl forward. Exhale to lift off, reaching forward and inhale. Exhale down. And if you're touching your shoulder as, scoot it down just a little bit and inhale, exhale to curl up. If you end up walking back, scoot it down, hold, inhale and exhale down. If you don't like your feet touching the foot bar because the foot bar higher than the rest of you, bend your knees. In fact, let's try it that way. Put your feet on the foot bar it needs together.

That makes it a little harder cause you a little less ground or length through your Lior and down we go lightly touch and inhale. Oh, here we go. Two more. You can always stop, right? You don't have to go the whole way. I'd rather you stop, then toss yourself through the hard part right here. Exhale, or you could ease your arms. That's another option. Did I say two more? Here we go. Last one up. Inhale and exhale.

Great. All right, let's move forward into rolling like a ball. You knew that was coming, but what I'm going to suggest since it is kind of tricky up here is to let the ball open up just a little bit. Be Aware of where you are. I trust that you've done rolling like a ball zillions of times before. Doing it on a reformer with that head, the shoulder rest there so your eyes are forward. We rock back. Inhale and exhale. Hold and inhale back.

Exhale up. Hold. Same rules apply. Good job. Nice job Candace. Inhale back, exhale up. I have a little bit of forward pressure into my shins. That's kind of sustaining that kinetic chain. And one more back to come up. Hold hands up to your knees if they're not already there. Slowly lower yourself down for a double leg. Stretch. Eyes are forward. Here we go. Inhale, extend, exhale, encircling, absolute stillness and back and inhale to exhale.

So the only your legs would go low is if you keep absolutely still in the center. Maybe you start that way and you have to pull them up as you go. You're in charge of paying attention to what the point of the exercise is when you're doing it without the instructor watching you. One more holding it there. Extend the left leg, single leg stretch. Let's go outside. Hand to ankle and off we go and it's exhale and taking a little inhale in between. Hmm.

Just off to the back of the legs a little, I think a squeezing the inner thigh. I'm doing two more sets. One, one, one more. Set two to bring both knees in. Roll your head down for the moment. Inhale. Exhale, roll chin toward chest, chest into the mat. As you roll back up, take your hands behind your head, fully laced fingers. And for a moment you want to see those elbows ever so slightly in front of you as you press the back of your head into your hands and curl up more for Chris.

Cross. Extend your left leg, twist to the right and now we go and rotate. Rotate. [inaudible] things to watch for as you pass through this exercise. Glance at your hips. They don't move. They don't rock. Side to side. Let's get four more sets. Here's one. One to Tuesday. Hang up on it. Three, three, four, back to center.

Bend both knees. Let your head come down. Releasing your hands. Rock yourself up. Swell to the side to set your foot bar up for foot and leg work. We're on to step foot bars and we're going both of us to the high bar because that's just the way we go. All right. Lie Yourself back down. Placing your feet parallel.

Yeah, I am going to put my head rest back up. It's completely optional, but I will not be rolling up for a little while so you can rest your head and your feet are planted. As you look at your feet or your knees, perhaps it's all you can see from this perspective. They are sits bones, distance apart, four or five inches, not wider than your hips and not coming in on themselves. Arms are long. Let's go. Exhale as you press out, full extension. Take a second. I always like to take a second adjust for my ribs doing am I stuck on the carriage anywhere? Inhale, pull yourself back in. It is not a ride. Well, it's kind of a ride, but you're in charge of it. Inhaling and exhaling out. Feet are pretty relaxed. Heating ourselves up, trying to find the action on all sides of the body. Not to say it's super intense, but it's connected and ritual along and pull in and reach long.

If you're used to going faster, I encourage you to enjoy a little bit slower pace and finish it and milk it. If this is really or fast for you, see if you can maintain your precision with it. Do two more one and one more time. Hold it out here for a second. Can you feel your hamstrings? Hmm? Try how? Well I'm thinking of just starting to bend my knees via contracting them so it's almost like I'm pushing down on the foot bar. Not exactly that.

That's how I in my mind and contracting them. Come on down. That doesn't mean anything to you to kind of keep looking for it. I've moved my feet to the balls of the feet. Heels are slightly lifted, glutes engaged. Off we go. Exhale, reaching out and pull in. Great. It's definitely leg work, right? Well, we don't need a lot of tension in the feet. Let them just sort of stick on the bar and you lift up off of them, given ourselves. One more. Here we come down, touch the heels together, let the knees turn out, ready to go and reaching out on and pull in.

You give yourself enough time. I'm trying to give everyone enough time to fully straighten the legs, to allow the knees to touch each other. In fact, I would rather the knees fully straighten and your heels come apart. Then to keep the heels together and not straighten the leg. So sometimes that's a question so you would move your feet wider. Let's do a few more here.

Long almost getting a stretch here in the front of the hip. One more time. Come down, stay down. When you transition, make it smooth because you're so connected in the middle. You could do both feet, heels to the close to the edge of the bar and it turned out position from the hip. Let's go. Pressing out all these wide stance positions that we often do and Bassey is a really good opportunity to think of abducting the legs or drawing the five bones toward each other. It's just another element we can use as we disperse energy through the body rather than just push and pull. We can draw in and resist out. We can draw in getting taller, include the action with the body, with the trunk.

I should say go one more time and return again. When you pick up both feet enough, it's going to shift in your back, so make sure you're ready for it to the balls of the feet and we're off regenerative. So as you kind of settle in and warm up, I think about where your risks are, where your arms are, what are your fingers doing? Not that it's critical, it's not, but you might as well put the finishing touches on it. Become sort of present in all aspects of the movement. Go on for three more. One ankles are pretty, still are very still two last one, three. Bring it back in. We're going to parallel feet, sits bones, distance apart. Off We go, ah, sorry.

On the ball of the feet if I didn't say that. And now take a second. Make sure you're not a hyper extended. You don't have a hyper extended knee. Stretch your waist. I won't go the slow all the time. Stretch your waist to reach the heels under the bar as if you didn't want to move the carriage. Then using somewhere above the knee, I'm thinking gluten, inner thighs. Start the contraction there and the heels. Follow that one more slow stretch to go down and then can squeeze through the glutes. Inner thighs and of course adds.

And we go. So now what we're going to do is bend the knees in, come down. We're doing progressive caps. So we push out all the way to extended. We lower and lift the heels one time. Lift him up, bend the knees, go home. This time we'll do two calf raises. When we get out there. Here's one. We go down up one down, up to pull yourself back in without gripping on the toes.

Number three out of six, here's lift one. Balance Your feet. You might have to look two and three and pull in. Don't forget the glutes. Oh she's chatty day and number four one and reached down to n. Reach down nice and smooth. Three one more time up for an pull in. Still keep an all connections that you've been playing with. Number five, one and reach. And two.

I always like to see how quickly can I feel it all the way up the leg. Oh is this five? Yes. Good. Last one to six. Always worst paying attention to your body. If you need to stop before six you should. You will. I trust you. Three four. Oh boy.

I might stop five one more and go home and take a second. Ah, relax your feet. Lay him over the bar if that feels good to you cause we still have printing running. I'm not doing a lot of these but we are going to do a few so get the glutes so it's not just a quad pushing you out there all the way. You're high on the tiptoes going slow at first. Let one he'll drop.

Use that foot to get you all the way up to both feet straight and then the other, and now squeeze the glutes so you know that the hips are not moving side to side. In fact, he can put your hands there if you want to check it and it's inhale and exhale. And in here you don't want to just drop your body weight or the spring weight onto your heels. You want to keep yourself sort of lifted as if somehow you're trying to keep that carriage out there. Let's do one more breath cycle and up to tip toes. Bend your knees and come on down. All right, we're going to do sideline, so let's have Kenneth just turn to your right and I'm going to go onto my left and we're flying on our sides. This one's kind of a funky position. You could light in your springs and we haven't.

We're still on three basically, which you want to make sure is that when you're lying on your side that your head is resting on the headrest. We're both taking our our hands and using them here on the shoulder rest so that we brace ourselves. Most likely you're gonna need your hips to scoot to the back edge of your carriage and that's so that you can maintain a neutral spine. You can also use a pillow here. As far as the shoulders concern, I have to say I'm not directly on the shoulder. I've actually rotated back just a little to get off that shoulder.

You are concerned though that your hips are staff. Check that out. All right. The foot. No working like the top leg is the working leg. It's going on the bar. You want to make sure that you could put weight into the foot or the pressure on the bar with the toes being, I'm sorry. Yeah, with you being able to flex your foot. Don't have the foot so far back that the heel can come up. Okay. You want it out even if the toes come off, that's okay. All right. Are we ready?

We should be able to squeeze the glutes easily and our backs are not rounded. We're ready. We're going slow. We're going to push all the way out to straight. Oh boy. Oh boy. Adjust that. Everyone's got to adjust right there. Find your comfort spot. Okay, good. I think I'm good too. And down. We got all that. I got it a little bit injected through. Here we go. Number two.

Yeah, and and the knee just stays at about the height of the hip three and down. So pretty rapidly you're gonna kick right into that glute. I think three is four and all the usual rules apply. Here's five. How about 10 right? Here's number six. Yeah, and it's important. Go all the way straight, but don't rest on the knee joint.

One more time. We're going to go into pumping. What's this two 10 for today. It goes push and push short, but small, fast three and four and five and six and seven out of 10. Eight oh boy. Boy. Nine all the way out with control. Is that enough? Fabulous. Come on out. They are heavy. It feels particularly heavy to me today.

Okay. We're not done. Take the lower leg out from in front of the bar. Take the other one. Set it on top. Cozy. Just lift the top knee one and two and two. I think Candace just rolled her eyes at me. Anything you didn't. Okay.

Four and five. So again, if you, if you glance at your hip and you might want to hold your head to do that, they're staying pretty still. It's just the knee lifting and lowering. And I'm hoping that your feet are resting a little bit. Are they? Oh good. That's even better idea. Okay, so from there, now we're going to take the feet off. So if you were holding your feet in space, you get to put your feet on the bar. If you were not, your feet are up in the air to do another ten one, two, and three and four. Oh boy. Oh boy. Glute medius among other things. Hmm.

Oh, let's do one more thing. It goes four parts. Here's one. Extend the leg. Two rebound, three close for lift, one stretch to reclose. Number three out of five. Here's four. Open reach, return and close. Last time. One, two, three, and Voila. Okay. Set the feet down. Turn onto your back. Carefully.

The leg that was working my right leg Candice's left crosses over the ankle. You may have to stretch the other leg out to straight, which would be less of a stretch if you want more. Support it on the bar and gently guide if necessary, the knee away from your body. If you need more you can pick your knee up and draw it closer to you too. I'm quite content here.

Oh, okay. Other side. So just flip over so you're facing the other direction. Lying on your side. Bottom leg that is not working is just resting. You know, you tuck it up onto the carriage as much as you can with the knee bent. The rest of you, again, very neutral in your spine. So if that feels crowded, move the hips back. We might need to lower the bar. I doubt it.

And make sure that the heel that is on the foot bar can take most of the weight so it's not all in the ball of the foot. Candy. You Ready? Alright, ready? All right, off we go. Full extension. Take a second. You might need to adjust out there once you put weight on it and then we come back to the foot bar. Do it again. Push out and if you're cool, we carry on and it's press out and Poland, I'm going to count that there too and reach out 38 check it. The knee that it doesn't have the working like that. It doesn't drop down if you keep and hitting the stopper. Really, uh, before you think you're going to, you just have to move down a little. I keep doing it a bit. I think about three more. One and pull in.

Press out too and pull in. [inaudible] and three. Here comes those 10 pumps shorter but quicker. Here we go. It's one and two work both ways. Three and four and five. Six and seven. Enjoy eight, nine. You're going all the way out. Use it.

Keep working it even here and come on home carefully. You take your feet, rest them on that side of the or on the foot bar on the side. Restack your hips just in case long waist. Here we go. Talk me. Lifts up one and down lifts up to basically the feet. The feet stay together. They'll move, but they're standing together and comes the combination. We lift the knee. One ups, sorry.

Lift both feet up my fault. 10 more here. Both feet are up and now the Nigos one end down two and down three. Five. Hang on and, and finally, here's the combination. We lift the top me the theater still in the air. You extend the leg, rebend it to touch the toes and close the knee. Knee opens up. Extend the leg from there. Try not to move the thighbone.

Reclose I'm sorry we touched them. Close number three, open, extend, touch, close, open, extend, touch to get one more. Here it is. Okay. Siri and dad got onto your backs. Taking that [inaudible] leg that's talking to you and cross it over the talking to [inaudible]. Which one do I do? I'm like, really that that one that's like the Robin, that one. Oh, I have to say that for some reason today for me, what normally would be guiding the knee to the side is a great stretch.

I'm feeling like I want to come up on the tip toes and actually just bring the whole thing closer so it's kinda different for different people. Do what works for you. Okay. Speaking of work, let's put the foot bar down. I'm sorry. Let's just roll up to swivels to one side and take your springs down. We're going to just drop it. We're going to go straight to stomach massage. Okay. Okay.

So we're going to kind of count that as our abs full body integration together. So drop, we're dropping the middle spring. Just a logical, we're going to keep, I'm sorry, go back. Let's keep the one. Um, yeah. Drop the middle spring. That's what I want to do and I'm also going to drop the bar. Okay. I'm going to drop the bar to my lower bar. Make it nice and fun, man.

I have one roomier roomier yeah, thank you. And we're using sticky mats just to keep us on the carriage in fact, but also so that we can really focus on the work. A stomach massage. Have a seat's quite close to your carriage and coming close theater in the Small v position. The first one is called round back, so be close enough that you can put most of the palm in the middle of the palm, I should say, on the edge of the carriage. Yeah. Then lift the heels a little bit and in fact you want a rounded lumbar spine. The whole spine is going to be round, but focused on the lumbar. The low back.

Do this, press the carriage and I'll get there. Eventually press the palms into the carriage so you can drop the shoulders down your back and the collar bone stay wide. It goes like this. Exhale, push out light on the legs. We only have two red springs on. Intentionally focus on the belly and it's exhale. Press out and pull. When the yields drop the shoulders, everything goes with it.

Don't use it as excuse to lean back. Right? You stay with it. Let's go for mark out and let the exhale start. Just before you go to Andy, as if the exhale does it. One more. Come in, stay in, reach back, grab your shoulder rest. Okay. I'd like it where your elbows are bent. Alright, so can you turn your hands the other way easily. A little tight. It actually looks quite good. Now if it does feel too tight though, you have options. You can put your hands down on the carriage and go wider.

It feels better if you get a little more supportive there. Okay? Yeah. Okay, good. So what we want is a flat back, so let's make sure we have that. And the truth is there's a little lumbar curve to do it. Here we go. Xcel, same thing out and pull in. And what are, you don't want us to brace with your elbows, right? This is nothing. You want those elbows bent. Hold yourself up with your back extensors too and pull in. Let's go five and exhale for 30 and Paul work in both ways. Do one more in pull all the way in. Okay. I'm taking out the heel drop. Oh Boyle boy.

Reach one arm forward the other arm forward straight as you can heels up and just push out and pull him. Get in, get in, get in and out and in. Minimize the leg action. I mean, and by that I mean attention and the focus of where you're looking sometimes helps sort of on a high horizon. I'm doing only one more before I change it on you and that will be a rotation to your right. Extend the arm with you one and come back to the left to keep those heels together on this one and even, and again, reach and return and reach and return. Let's do one more each way. Get all the way in. Talking to myself mostly last time. All the way.

Great. Let's take the feet off. It's aren't you just dying for semi-circle? Dying, dying for semi-circle. Could. Let's do it. Put the red center spring on. If you don't have a red center spring put, it's okay. I only want one spring though, as opposed to sometimes when we do two scooted, let's get rid of this sticky mats. Just kinda off to the sides. I'm thinking and we'll go foot bars back. If you had your foot bar back up, there's no real reason.

It's just what we're used to. All right, so we lie back down Small v position again and we're going to walk ourselves out off the edge of that carriage pushing the carriage away enough and you come on up to the high pelvic curl position. No, I did not have my carriage. Thank you. I just like got out there. I push the carriage away and I walked myself down. I'm saying it was graceful either. Okay. Then tuck your pelvis and we're going to be up in the high position. I still, by the way, do not have the carriage all the way in. I probably, no, in fact, I won't have the carriage come all the way. I'm trying. I can tell you that, but to this day I've never done it and actually don't know anyone that has. I don't think that's not a challenge. All right, so here we are a what are we going to do with it? We are going to, which way do I want to go first? I want to go down. So from here, inhale, exhale. Try to keep the carriage still.

Now I am in fact trying to push the carriage away with my arms. They're straight. You should be to roll. Oh boy. There's no more carriage. Well that's all right. I'm going to find this spring and I'm actually touching it now are you? That's the question you want to know, is it okay? You got to check that out too.

Slowly. Keep your body touching the spring as you ride out just to about, I don't know, two thirds of the way the knees are still bent. That matters. So if you went too far, comeback without a lot of feet, uh, energy in the feet, draw the abs in to roll through the pelvis. You are very much articulating off. You feel the glutes probably now the hamstrings. Carrot hasn't moved yet and you're back in the high position.

Now we'll come back to the beginning. Okay, we'll go a little faster than that, but not a lot. Ian Hill, if you haven't, exhale, roll down. Find the spring. Inhale, ride the spring out. Not Quite as straight legs. Exhale. This is great traction almost as you roll out the spine. Inhale the Durati and there's your hamstrings. Exhale, roll down, finding it for us. Oh, that's far enough. Peel up on the exhale. That's how we're doing it. Oops, I just moved my carriage and we come in. Hold it in. When you get here, just exhale, reversing it. We inhale, push out. Again, not quite a straight legs. Exhale, roll down, articulating your back should be around until it passes the carriage and attaches. Inhale and exhale, scoop and roll.

Inhale, push out from the chest. Let that be part of it. Rolled out. Inhale and we get one more full, one round. Don't just lift. It's very different. Very different actions and out we go to come down to roll, slide in and up. We go all the way. Now this is sort of why you do this exercise.

Half the time you can either just come down or you can take one arm down at a time. Find either your ankles, the foot bar. I go usually to the side of the foot bar and before I get too crazy, I recheck the pelvis to try to get a stretch through the quad and hip flexors. You could separate your feet a little bit. It's not really so much about getting on the foot bar or stop or it's just about getting a decent stretch. It feels good. Oh, play with it a little bit left side, right side and then carefully let go.

Reach back for your shoulder rest and then Shimmy your way back onto carriage. Alright, let's help ourselves off here. Just roll to one side to get up and give ourselves a hip flexor. Stretch. Kneeling. That was fun. Fun. Good. Come on to your knees please.

Or if you prefer, you could do a standing. What are we doing? Just an Estrecho. Okay, so we're still on one spring. Let's bring the left leg up. Yeah, and the bars are kind of high. We could lower it, but we're all right. Now try to find that hip flexor stretch on the right side simply by drawing the pelvis underneath you and lifting the chest totally related to each other. Then keep your body, and I include the pelvis in that comment where it is pushed the foot and the lower lego and the thighbone away from you, but your pelvis doesn't move.

If that's not enough, you can move the carriage a little bit more, but I bet it'll do it. By the way, I'm not on the stopper or are you on this stuff where neither of us are on the stopper, which is totally appropriate. Totally appropriate. You are. Is it nice? Do you have just as much stretch as you did when you left the like the bone move away this, yeah, and you can get, it's no problem to come away. It's just you don't want to go away just to go away. That's all. That's all that's about. Now speaking of coming away, let's use the hamstring, so I'm going to push out partway and then I'm going to really, well actually I'm doing okay.

Let's see if about keeping the back straight as we intent to straighten the front leg. But what I thought, oh that's good. It's not adding to your hip flexor stretches it. You hit flexor stretch. We don't, I'm kind of staying with the hip flexor stretch I had as I go. In other words, I don't want to keep splitting. I want to keep it there. You're going to get pat. Okay, good. Nice. Long back.

And then I'm returning to the start position. Pulling in an app. Yeah. It's even if you're not right on the kneecap. I was trying to get in front of me. Yeah, it's, it can be just too much pressure and then we press out. The body will adjust looking for a flat back. If you find yourself sort of all of a sudden hunching, you're missing the entire point. You'd be far better off to have a bent knee in a street, spine or straighter spine. Alright, let's come in and change sides.

Okay. And be mindful of what you're doing with the back foot too. We all tend to roll one way or the other. You'll keep it straight. So that you are balanced to the foot centers and if you're really tall, you're probably not even going to start out on the stopper. That's okay. If you can be on the stopper and look for the stretch do and that way you have sort of something to measure against as you gently try and press it away, you can take your time here on your next exhale, start to straighten the forward leg, keep the flat back and I'm going to be a little more sensitive with.

She's almost better. I can tell you 10 minutes is to watch for the leg that's straightening. No, right? Like for us, that's the hip that's gonna want to hike up. If we're not thinking you can about it, usually [inaudible] let's return to the first one. Inhaling up [inaudible] energy all up there, and I don't just mean the front of the body, I mean the back of the body as well. Getting along, even though it's curved and we'll press out again. Honor where your body is today. That's all I can say. It's a tough lesson, but it's what needs to happen.

If you're used to looking in a mirror when you do this kind of thing, try it where you're not, where you kind of feel for it and explore a little and come on back. Ha Good. All right. I'm going to step off for this to get rid of the foot bar. Yup. Just going to do two of the rowing, so have a seat facing the back of your Rafal former rowing back. One. One red spring will be great. Red Spring will be great.

So leave a little bit of space. Why don't you, Yup. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you'll be fine for the first one. Yeah. We reserve the right to change springs around whenever we need to, I think specially at the end of the day. All right, so here we are. We're tall and reaching the arms fully forward, body straight. We have our straps along enough to, they're basically loose here at the beginning and thinking of it as a spinal exercise. We inhaled to draw the arms right to the chest, knuckle to knuckle basically. Then from the pelvis, we start to roll down, just keeping the arms with us right at the chest from there.

So you're very scooped. If you will, turn the hand downward. Yep, just like that. Out to the side. From there for the moment, just leave your hands there, bring your body forward and then press the arms down low behind you, straight and reaching. And from here lift up. I will go faster and give it maybe some flow where our straps are loose. Again, our shoulders are down. We're reaching beyond the toes and we roll back up. Okay. Any questions? There's so many versions of this. We're good. Good, good. Here we go. Inhale, bend, exhale, roll down. Keep the hands with inhale, turn the hands out if you'd like, you could start to pull the arms now and then die forward. That was an exhale. Big Inhale. Head stays down.

Body stays still spin the arms when it feels right too. As long as you can keep the arms and the shoulders away from your ears. Roll Up. Inhale, bend, exhale, roll down. Inner thighs are contracting toward each other. Inhale, turn the arms. Exhale, pull and dive forward. Leave some space there between the ribs in the thighs. Inhale, arms come up and around. Reach beyond the toes and roll up your spine.

Inhale, bend, exhale, round. Inhale, turn. Exhale, dive forward. As you reach back collarbones wide. Inhale, the arms come up, continue to reach. Pull the ABS deeper as you roll up your spine. It's a long exhale on that last one, isn't it? Here we go. Last full one. Inhale, exhale, round. Inhale arms collarbones wide.

Even now as you pull back, inhale to reach. The body doesn't move here. Just the shoulders are adjusting and up we go. Okay, next one when you get there is um, Bassey version, which is quite nice but timing is kind of everything. So I'm going to do the first one a little slow. As usual. Inhale, bend, elbows. Exhale, we roll down until the l upper arm lines up with the rib cage.

Make sure you haven't shrug the shoulders forward. Their collarbones are still down from here. Inhale, start coming forward. Curved like you are. This is your exhaling and now start lengthening from your low back. My upper body is still going forward. As I extend the arms up.

Eventually I end up vertical over my hips and lower the arms down. We inhale and it's going to, it'll go faster. So that's the good news. XL. We rolled him, we [inaudible] exhale. As we start to roll up, we extend the back as well as the arms and sit right on top. Inhale. Then exhale, roll check. Collarbones here you inhale. Exhale. We start to come forward. Extend low back, middle back. Arms are added in and down. One more time.

How are you doing? You want this last one? Here we go. Now you don't have to fully straighten the arms either. Rather, keep them somewhat bent. As you're coming up, there's your inhale. Exhale, we come forward. Right? You don't have to go fully extended. That'll be something you worked at that good. Put them away. It's all we have time for today. We've got things to do. Stand up still. One spring. Yeah. Sites. Splits. Okay. Why don't you come around?

You're through either way. I think so. Yeah, so ad actors, it's light. If you've never done side splits, you should go a little heavier. We have still the ones spring and we'll be fine. If you're a modification, you might end up wanting, if you are shorter of stature, you may decide you want a block or a moon box or even a sticky mat so that you don't have to go quite as far. I think we're going to be fine. Yeah. Okay, so please get on with me this way. You've got a, I go to the forward shoulder rest. You can go to the back if you want one foot on the word hand on the carriage and the wood. Yeah, I do. I like to go forward. It's just a habit but you can certainly do it from the back, but it also lets me be closer to holding on the carriage with the the wood.

Then the other foot places out, trying to keep the carriage still as I bounce it up to the front one to the front one. They're both aligned up. Then straighten out your legs as they're going to be. Before we get too far, I do have my big toe of the foot that's on the wood, slightly hooked, meaning just inside the farmer reformer frame. Okay, now you are holding the carriage with the inner thighs, so you're gonna let go easily and that carriage will stay still as you roll up and the carriage doesn't move. Now, if it feels way too far, you just go back down and get a sticky mat. If you want to hold it so totally vertical, hold it on that stopper, hold it on the stopper. Ready? Now this is meant to be hard, so we're not doing more than five and you may decide that's too many. Let it out a little bit. Then exhale and arise up, right? Don't bear down on yourself. Inhale, arms out, check that you haven't tilted. You look great and right, so it'd be real tempting to arch the low back.

You're not going to let that happen. You'd rather have a narrower stance and working both legs equally. I think this is four already. I have a little bit of pressure on the outside edge of my foot more than the inside. A little easier on the knees from the most. And guess what? That's five. Now we've got a special way getting out to bend the leg, pull yourself toward the would get over here, get over here, get over here and touch, grab on, bring it back to the stopper and take that leg that was on the shoulder rest to the back and step down who? Yeah, one red is a bit, it's challenging, right?

But that's what we're doing in this class. And you could easily put, if you have a quarter spring, that would be good. Or maybe a green one's a little heavier, but if you go much heavier you could easily switch it to the other side or the glutes. Not what I was going for. Let's come around. Good. So we'll go into this just a little quicker foot on the word again. I stepped to the forward shoulder rest. Yup, Yup. And then we'll reach it out. You don't have to hit it. Exactly. You can shimmy it out there a little bit.

But the point is is once you've straightened your legs, you're trying to control for that carriage. The exercises officially started, right? So roll up. Use the inner thighs, inner thighs, rolling up inner thighs and a trick, and I don't know why it works, but if you relax your feet and focus more on the inner thighs, much easier than if you grip the feet. Ready. Here we go. Inhale doesn't have to be big or it can be if you want it to be as long as you are level and exhale into, come up, kiss the stop or hold it there and again, inhale out and I remember you can take care of yourself. You can bring the foot in a little closer if you want. Just make sure if it's not slippery on there and two to go. Checking level hips, you'll want more hard to know. Sometimes it's good to hold the hands on the hips or if you have a mirror, use it. Last one, find it, bend the leg that's on the would lean toward it. Grab the frame, take this working the leg closest to the shoulder rest and slide it off to the back. Yep, exactly. Fabulous. Okay, good.

We're there. Let's grab the boxes please. And we'll start with site overs. That's about right. That's about right, Mr Pele's. Definitely. You know, I, I'm not, um, you may want to, I'm going to actually suggest that you do simply because you're a little taller than I am. Yeah. So what we just did was, the question was, do you go over the shoulder restaurant? I don't need to. Um, if I go, if I move my box over the shoulder rest, which is an option many, many people need to take, um, I ended up where I don't, I'm not long enough to actually have enough weight over the head. Um, so that's why I don't do it. But you may want to then make sure you, that your safety strap or your foot strap is in fact clipped on. Um, we're gonna move our bars forward just so we can do that.

And before you actually go to put your, uh, to pick up your foot strap, let's put all the springs on so the carriage just doesn't move or most of the strings anyway. Okay. Then you to climb aboard, get your foot hooked under there and sit sideways on your hips. So I'm going to go straight forward. Okay. Sit Sideways on your hip so that you're not straight up and down, which is one way you are in fact on the side of the hip. Like I keep saying, I guess. All right, I'm making sure my thing is not hooked. Put your hand down on that head rest and then pick up the foot. So the foot airborne and do a position check again. This one's too, too important to kind of get it set up. So the foot's in the air, the knee is pointed forward, the toes are pointed forward for the most part.

Then take this leg that's in the air and reach it. Yeah. Okay. So we've done that. Now we're going to lift up to our, um, I think fingertips here so that we know we have this underside ready to go. It's real easy. Down here on the hand. First option is to take your hand across the waist to feel a little less intense or right here at your head. And I'm doing six maybe. Here we go. Inhale, we reach out and down. Exhale to come up to a diagonal line. Not here, that's not where I'm going. Inhale down. You can do it, but it's a bit of a rest.

So just know your resting a little and how I'm shoulders are away from ears. Here's three I think, right? Look straight ahead, candy, everybody straight ahead and four and exhale and reach a fi. Let this top like help you as it reaches here. It is already sort of already six hole. Okay. The hand down. Okay. And either it start by, you can take the top hand down to start by either going to your forearm, I'm stretching and reach over. Or if that's too crowded, you can help yourself.

Take that hand to the floor. If you don't have a raise, reformer and stretch there. Again, still reaching that leg. Hmm. Then to get out of it and do not just lift yourself up and use your hands. Find your frame. I'm going to do my favorite stretch right here, which has continued reaching the leg. I've got a hand on each frame. Extend your spine.

So it's like I'm starting to try and arch my upper back as I reached the leg away and through the strap and that is my definition of heaven. Or at least one of them. All right. Hands to the head. Rest, hands to box and turn. Yeah, so lose the energy now and we've got one more exercise after after this one. And I'm talking to myself mostly. So we go to the headrest, we do the whole set of h and every time because it matters. So we're on our side, we find a straight line, we reach through the hips that we have support in opposition.

Once you're comfortable with that one hand top of your head, the other hand, the bottom, and here we go. Inhale to reach. Exhale. Try to keep the tempo the same. In other words, don't jerk to come out of it too. [inaudible]. Exhale, the with three inhale, exhale, lift four. That's occurring to me that I have a marathon mat class in the morning.

I should have chosen different exercises. Is this five or six? Oh boy. One more rich and we let the hand go down. We only get down, they did six forearm to the head rest. Make sure it's okay for you there. If you'd like to go lower, you can put your hand on the ground. You'll be just behind that headdress. Most likely. This should feel good though.

So don't go to any, oh it hurts. So good. Kind of stretching ever. At least not in my class. Alright. Hand to frame and a frame, whichever. And then for the second stretch, we reached the leg through the strap. I'm not really putting a lot of tension there, I'm just reaching it and then trying to somewhat arch be back the upper back primarily gently. And then hands go back to the headrest. You can minimize the reach of the leg, hands to box and take yourself out of it. Okay. So we're going to turn the boxes for breaststroke to finish up a lot of sort of important queuing that could be happening here.

I'll do my best. Um, I've never think it's a bad idea to do this one on a blue. I'll do mine there. Go ahead and feel and you'll do some here and then I'll have you assist me if you don't mind that good. So I'm setting up candy here. I'm gonna, I'm actually gonna cue her through it. That's probably a good idea. So I have her on one blue and actually you can, you can just leave me red there. One red's perfect. Just leave the bar where it was. Oh, that'd be good. Yeah, I think. Okay, so come on over here.

So when you get on, you're going to take your, your straps, some thumb. So she's just got her thumb in there. She's got, she's on one side of the reformer. She is not getting in the middle and she's not putting the straps behind her back. She's going to put one foot in front of the other, engage your abs, and then just lean forward to grab the front edges of the box. Now she can just come right over the top, simply laying the box just right at the edge of her chest. Okay, so then what's going to happen here is I need to shoot you over just a little lot of good shoulder work in this. Outside of the obvious back extension you're going to get, you're gonna place your hands as near the shoulder is possible.

With these elbows down just like this. As it looks great and the shoulder blades are down your back, all you're going to do is inhale, extend the arms forward, lifted chest, a little, circle the arms, all the way back to your legs, little finger kind of aiming toward the body. That's good. And now as you fold the arms back to the starting position, you also lower the chest. Very nice. Here we go again. Inhale. So this is one way. If you had someone there to assist you, you would do it. She's gonna float all the way back. Getting the, I said open chest and then she'll fold the arms and lower chest as she goes.

Again. Inhale without me this time reaching. Good, good, good. Coming all the way around. And then at this part, the good part, she skims back in. Nice enough. Good will you assist me in a different way on this one. And now I said that I'm going to made you keep the bar that way and I'm putting it back. I have one spring on and the spring bar is out. Oh, lovely exit. Thank you. Okay, so candy is going to come around the side and just give me an assisted stretch where it'll allow me to go a little bit. Either way, allow me to go a little bit more into it. Um, I can tell you that I'm doing this only with her help, um, for the height that I'm gonna get.

But also the reason it is safe is because I'm going to be using my hamstrings even more. So it's going to disperse the energy and it's not going to be all in my low back. If it is, I'm gonna stop. All right, so lying over the top, pick a side, any side, and basically she's, Candice is going to do a wall from me, so that's great. And that's perfect. All right, same exercise. I'm going to do one without the big lift just to get used to it. So you know about my speed. Here I come. So she's just, she's not pushing on me.

Just so you know. I'm going to push into her. You can push on me like you had, she had, she was from pressure. Tiny, tiny bit more right there. It's perfect. Okay. So then we wait a little bit more. You gave up on me. There we go. There we go. Now a lot of hamstrings. I am not relying completely on my back here. I promised you and then I come to perfect. Okay, good.

You've got to protect yourself as the assistant to right and fall and it's inhale opening the chest and skim to close. Two more up opening a tiny, tiny bit less pressure. I'll do more work. Good. Thank you all round and Wallah. Thank you. So it's the breast. I've got it. Thank you. And then to get off, you just shoot me or the eggs will come around and we'll leave that and I'll let you stand here for a roll down. Thank you. That was a really good and lovely and let's just do a roll down to finish it, right? We've kind of covered everything, haven't we? A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Let's face that way. Take a big deep breath and exhale.

If you're not ready for a roll down pip, let's bend the knees. Since we just did breaststroke us, bend the knees, rounding over, keep them bent. Inhale and exhale. Keep them bent as you roll up the very last moment, right about now, straighten the legs. A little glute action. You can even extend the upper back a little to look up. Same thing. Exhale, head goes forward. Start to bend the knees, pulling me abs round. You know of supporting yourself here. Inhale, exhale, keeping the knees rounded or bend to round up near the top. Straighten and the legs. Find the glutes. You're vertical, but you can add a little upper thoracic extension. And last one like that.

Bend the knees. Okay. And exhale up with them, Jenny. Good job. Yeah. Thank you.

Comments

1 person likes this.
Thanks for the "Dancin Clam", reminder. I love this Site :D
I loved the fluid movement and cueing of the breast stroke. Keep more Reformer classes coming.
Great class, great cuing and nice choice of exercises. Thanks Kristi!
GREAT class, great pace..Love the way you cue getting on/off the reformer for side splits, breaststroke, etc : ) Thank you!!
Very good to hear you are enjoying this class. Thank you.
Lovely workout! I appreciate the fact you give options to people who have a different reformer :)
Thank You Tania! What kind of Reformer do you have? Just curious
Stamina's aero. No different color cords but I've had it long enough that I can gage how many springs I need for a few of the exercises.
Fantastic!

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