Class #1503

Beyond Postnatal Cadillac

50 min - Class
98 likes

Description

Leah Stewart brings us a creative "beyond postnatal" Cadillac class for women who are four or five months postpartum, or for those who are interested in improving their functional movement. She incorporates arm work into squats, leg work, standing movement, spinal articulation, and abdominal movement. Enjoy exploring the Cadillac in new ways!
What You'll Need: Cadillac

About This Video

Mar 05, 2014
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Transcript

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Hi there, Liz, do it here again and today I'm going to be working on the Cadillac and I'm glad that you're joining me today. This is a wonderful beyond postnatal PyLadies riff, a Cadillac classroom, not on the reformer. Um, and we're just going to have fun with some great repertoire. Really just exploring the Cadillac in some new ways. And the reason I call this beyond postnatal is because as you know I'm so privileged to do the pre and post a lot of Korean postnatal work here on plots anytime. And this is a great class for you moms or for you instructors that are working with new moms as you're kind of working from that pre plots work after they have their baby, reintroducing some of the politest repertoire.

And today we're just going to do some really fun new things on the Cadillac that's also really functional for everybody, but particularly for new moms in particular. So I've kind of dissected the Cadillac a little bit here. I took off our normal springs at the top, which on the balance body is blue and I took off our normal red on the bottom. And what I put on top or two yellow arm springs or the shorter springs with the hand straps here or whatever you want to call it. And we're Kinda gonna move those around.

And I'm also gonna need you to have a long leg spring here, um, which you ever strength that you want. If you want a little lighter or a little bit heavier, whatever you feel is appropriate for you. And we're going to do some work at the beginning here with our push Sioux bar without any springs on it. Now I'm going to have you be lying over the push bar. So I want you to go ahead and grab something like maybe one of your little rubber knee pads here or maybe some of your nonslip to kind of put on the Pushtu bars to that. It's not so uncomfortable and your back because it is gonna start to get digging in there a little bit.

So I want you to say comfortable so you can really enjoy the benefits of some of this repertoire. So let's go ahead and get started. So I'm going to place my little cushion over my push through bar and we're gonna start in a seated position. Now I want you to go ahead and just play here. Be careful, but essentially what I'm looking for is when you lie over or the push through bar, I want it to be right underneath your scapula. We're going to work in this kind of range of motion here. So that's really what I want you to enjoy here.

Now scoop back as far as you feel comfortable. Bring your feet until you feel nice and grounded. Place your hands behind your head. So why don't you to take an inhale, do the high arch here, then Xcel go into a little Palo that curl that don't go too far or you might slip. So just keep it small. Inhale, lift the chest up, let the head rest back into the hands. XL Pelvic Curl as you come up and over Breen that tailbone underneath you. Finding that nice deep scoop of the abdomen. Inhale, lift up and exhale.

So now we're going to play with the arms a little bit. So just place the arms right on the edge of those sidebars. We can even hold onto the poles here. Inhale, lift up. Now exhale, draw the right leg up into a tabletop position. So we're doing a single leg lift, so we're really working. We're going to alternate.

We're going to march on warming up the spine, warming up the pelvis here. Inhale, lift that chest up. Exhale, draw the center body and bring the knee up to the chest and roll into that nice flection. Inhale and exhale. Roll it in. Continue. Inhale. You can see how I'm just articulating and working through that spine. Really finding the flow, finding the openness and draw in. Now I want you to add the arms, stretch the arms out.

Hold it there. Then exhale, bring the arms up. Be careful. Don't go very far with you. Don't have your arms there to support you. Just hold it coming into a high fit position. In ballet, we call it the arms over the head. Inhale, open up, and Xcel bring back two more. Inhale, open a little more extreme here. Xcel is rotten and one more time.

Inhale open and exhale it's Rod. And now bring your hands back here. I want you to come into a nice neutral position. Flex your feet, slides, or legs out. So we're going to hold the neutral XL, draw the men and in here. So just let your back rest on that push through bar. Push your arms forward and draw it in, in him and sound. I'll keep that back extension. Nicest steady inhale and EQ sale.

Now come up with the heels. Bring the toes down. Open the legs out into a butterfly. Now as you extend the legs forward, you're going to go into your pelvic tilt. So you're going to roll into the curve. Then you're gonna extend to the flat that cause you draw your legs in. Open the legs and curl.

Draw the men open and curl. Draw the men open and curl. So now we're going to go the opposite way. So you're going to bring it up and curl as you'd send the legs out and bring the legs up, close them. And Curl is you take the lays out.

So you're getting this beautiful safe abdominal work and bring it out. Spinal articulation. Bring it up and slowly out. Hold this curl. Now I want you to extend where you just, if you need to extend your spine, I want you to grab actually onto the spring, which might feel a little bit weird if you don't want to draw them to the straps. It's too low, so onto the spring, onto the little hooks there, and go ahead and bend your knees and you're going to come into the curl. This is deep curl. You're going to do a lat pull down, so draw the springs down, elbows tight to the waist. Inhale up, exhale, curl. Just try not to remember.

Don't pinch your fingers in the spring there and XL curl. Now I have my leg fully adducted so they're squeezing together as they draw into the curl. I feel the last as I draw those elbows down, I'm thinking of bringing my arms behind me as if I were going into shoulder extension. Bringing those arms back. Now repeat with the spine, extended XL. Think of that lift. Go a little bit faster. XL XL, just looking right up at the top of that Cadillac XL. And one more exhale, come all the way and just slowly and carefully curl up to come out of it. So I want you to sit up nice and straight and I go ahead and just place that on the ground.

Okay. And I want you to take your legs and drape them over the size of your Cadillac. Now you're going to take the arms down, exhale and bring up, says a very small movement. Exhale down and bring it up. So I'm just going from above eyeline, right to shoulder line. Exhale.

And why I like the small movement is I'm having to squeeze my legs together. Some getting a lot of that, uh, doctor work, that pelvic floor work for stabilization and Xcel and bring it up to more XL, some still working on those lats and bring it up and XL. Yeah, yeah. Take the arms out to the side and squeeze them all the way down. Exhale and draw them. Then give a little squeezed at those adductors against the sides of the Cadillac. Bring it up now.

As you bring those arms down and feel like your spine is elevating upward up toward the sky, grounding yourself through the sits bones and bring it up. XO. Squeeze slowly. Think of the pedal pole. Work here, XL slowly yet. Give me two more and last one. Hold it here. Bend the elbows to the side so your arms are shoulders are neck. Sooner rotation. Your hands are out to the side and extend one. And to think of that beautiful length of your body, you can see that nice demand on the stabilization of your chunk, the stabilization of your pelvis, even the stabilization of your upper arms.

You're just extending your elbow to move the forearms. Move the lower portion of the arm. Exhale. Last too. Last one coming up for, I want you to hinge forward. Find that hinge reach. You'll feel a little stretch through your hips. Come a little bit lower if you count whatever resistance you can, you're going to swim the arms you can swimming breath. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five.

Inhale, three, four, five. Exhale, three, four, five. Okay. Two more sets. I'm just moving those shoulders filling. Again, a lot of tries that, that a lot work here, keeping that chunk totally stable. Exhale, three, four, five reach. Then the elbows extend forward, then the elbows extend forward.

So just a little bit of tricep work believing that opening through the chest. I really want to focus on opening up the upper back, working on that shoulder strength, the arm strength in this class today. So even as you would send those arms forward, you're pushing down on those hand straps just to feel again that connection. Extend One more, bring it forward. And I just want you to roll through your spine as you slowly come up, take your arms out to the tee and draw it in.

So really nice way to get into that work. So we're actually gonna move these springs, so I'm actually gonna have you move these springs around. It gives me a little bit through this class. So I want you to come down onto the other side because for this series I need them to be a little bit lower. So go ahead and place them on the outside. And that cross bar should be maybe about two thirds of the way up, or one third of the way down, whichever you feel more comfortable with.

Now you can always give yourself a little bit more resistance if you need to. So I want you to grab those straps sitting here. You take your best. Then you're going to slowly start to roll yourself down into this beautiful seated roll back with this nice curve position here and slowly roll yourself up. So just to get ourselves into it, we're going to work through this range of motion. Exhale and bring it back in. Last one, exhale down. Now turn the palms facing in toward each other.

I want you to pull the right arm back and rotate to the right XL center four on each side. Now I want you to initiate this with the waist. Let the arm follow. Exhale. So initially it with the race in the rotation or unfollow. So this beautiful like drawing a bow back, pull, and then go the other side four times. Exhale. I'm squeezing those legs as tight as I'll go.

So I'm really feeling that beautiful control. Exhale. One more time. Drawing it back. Hold it here and roll yourself up. Now come back down. Turn the pumps to they're facing down. Do a high row. Bring the elbows back. Draw the scapula together and extend forward.

So I just pull the center body and deeper as I draw those elbows back. Draw the scapulas together. Fill that power through your upper back, but feel that stability through your bet lower body. So you're really just mending, pulling, connecting those abdominal muscles to the center body, becoming reacquainted with them in a deeper, deeper level. And that works for everybody. Now here, hold it, extend the back, draw it in a little bit deeper. Pulse back three times. One, two, three. Draw back into the curl. Come back into the extension. Go into the high roll. Pull back one, two, three and curl back into the extension. Or excuse me, into the flection or [inaudible] arms extending and come back and pull back.

One, two, three. Initiate from the pelvis. Roll. No glues. Don't engage the glues. Let it all come from the front body. And now curl back up. Pulling one, two, three, and roll. Exhale. One more time. Pull the back. You fill that upper back is warm. Those shoulders are warm to three and roll.

Now Roll yourself up. That's awesome. That feels really good. Now come a little bit more forward for me because I'm going to have you roll all the way down into a supine position. So I want the elbows to be straight and the legs to be fully extended. So here we're going to work on a double leg slide. If you're a little sticky, maybe a little bit more difficult, but I want you to draw the feed in and pull the arms back at the same time.

So it's a challenging movement here to not let your body go into an anterior tilt. So slide the legs out and extend the elbows. So keep that body nice and strong. Draw the legs in, exhale and extend out. Now if this is too challenging for you, keep going with me. All you need to do as a single leg, exhale and extend. So single leg. If the double leg is a little too much for you and you feel like you don't have the control that you need here, remember, we want to keep the integrity of the movement. Now, if you want to bias your pelvis a little bit toward a posterior tilt, I feel comfortable with that. So should you. The goal of course, is to hold a solid, neutral spine and a solid neutral pelvis. One more time. Exhale. Yeah, from here, both arms straight. I love these moves. These are fun. Let's have some fun here.

You're gonna lift your left hip that you're going to rotate over. So go as far as you can. So I'm rotated completely onto my right hip. My left hip is up. This is the beautiful part right here. You're gonna come into a pelvic [inaudible] curl roll across that lower back. Let the arm shift over to the right and bend yourself like a bow.

A beautiful bow over to the left and rotates. So getting that wonderful oblique hair work, oblique work here and pulling into that bowl shape. Push down with your left arm. Feel that stretch across the left front of the chest. Feel that reach through your body and then curl that massage. Rule your back, melt your spine into the carriage, into the mat and come back.

For some reason I still think I'm on the reformer and curl back in onto the bed of the Cadillac here. Roll. And let's go one more time. Each side feel that stretches. You. Find that rotation and pool back. And one more. Finding it, pulling that right on away from you. Getting that connection with the back of the arms and all the way that feels really, really nice.

So I'm going to go ahead and slide up a little bit on my bed here. Got pulled down a little bit. We're gonna continue with this. So now you're going to bend your right knee and bend your right elbow. So you're going to come into that boat again. But now you're doing single leg. So here, then you're going to roll back to the flat position.

Extend the arm, but keep the knee bet and come back to lying supine. Bend the elbow, draw the knee out. So you're stretching that left side, oh bleak, and then pull it in and I'm really deepening into a pelvic curl as I do that. And exhale. Inhale, hold, exhale, draw. And you can see how I'm really dropping down into that center body, getting that simultaneous play with stretch and contraction and a really nice safe way. Let's do the other side. So slide the left leg up, bend the left elbow and reach. Inhale the next cell. Come into the pelvic curl. As you draw that knee up, you come back to supine XL.

Inhale, hold, exhale, draw back to center and two more and draw it. Feel that shoulder strength, fill that reach. Um, Ooh back and last one for me and draw back. Find it, hold it and draw all the way back here. Now in this position wants you to bring your feet flat. Draw your arms down. I want to finish with just a few pelvic curls. Take your breath in, roll through pelvis, articulate all the way up. Find it.

Turn the palm space in. Now as wide as you can go here might be limited. I want you to come out to a t XL one drawed XL too, so push it down through the fee. Fill those glues and gays. You feel the power of those hip extensors. You need to stretch out the front of the head straight in the posterior chain. So important for our postural control and bring it in to more XL out.

Drawed in one more time. XL Out. Hold it, palms face down and roll down. Reach the energy out through the knees. Let the shoulders glides down, slide through that posterior tilt and melt the pelvis. Relaxed the pelvis, release it, breath in. Roll yourself up. Feel that energy coming up and over the top. Now we're going to do one arm at a time, right arm comes up. It's small, but it's powerful and switch one and to keep the body steady. Three and four push into those hips.

Keep going for me. Use those arms multitasking here. Functional movement, stability with movies meant and hold both arms up and roll down. You should be feeling those glutes nice and warm. The shoulders nice and warm. Take your breath in XL, collect all the energy through the center, let it pour from the pubic bone all the way up as you roll power in those shoulders. Now here we're going to do the same arms, but we're going to rotate the pelvis in the opposite direction. So as you lift your right arm, you're going to dip the left side of the pelvis down and then alternate. Exhale, alternate.

So keep the abdominal wall as flat as you can as you do this work. Really getting some beautiful oblique energy here. Getting some great rotational component of the pelvis of the spine working, mobilizing through the hip joint as that femur reacts with the rotation of the pelvis, getting those shoulders to join in. Keep going. Keep those hips high. Try not to let them hinge down at all. Keep pressing it to that extension. Last set here, all the way up. Hold it and roll it down.

We have one more. Stay with me. Use your breath. Okay. Find it all the way up. Palm stay. Sapp bicep curl XL one.

Extend to reaching energy out. Just when you want to give up. You keep going. Just me wanting to say, okay, I'm done with this series. You keep going. Perseverance, dedication, focus, breath and calm. Keep on going. Five more. Keep the front of the body open. Glorious Energy.

Just reaching up toward the ceiling last to keep your face relapsed, your jaw relaxed. Hold it, palm space down and roll down. As you get down to the bottom, release the glutes, release the pelvis and settle. Settle into the rest. Find your breath. Feel that blood flow, that circulation, that vibration, just pulsating through your hips, your shoulders, your abdominals. Yeah. Nice short break. Let's keep moving. So go ahead and carefully get yourself up and we're going to move on to our next series.

So we're going to grab our yellow springs. We're gonna Mosey on over to the edge of our Cadillac. Now normally wear our red or heavier like springs are attached here. We're going to attach the arms springs, a gesture, sweaty self, and we'll keep going. So we're going to do a little bit of a squat series.

Now if you're familiar with my prenatal work, I did a lot of squats. Things served a very different function than the prenatal work in the postnatal work. Our squats have really made for lifting, bending over, lifting, carrying all of that in everyday life. You can do squats for bending, picking up strength in the legs, green pelvic floor work, great arm work. So we're going to work on that a little bit here. So I want you to come into an open v position or second position. You want ballet terminology and I wants you to hold your straps with your thumb underneath and your palms facing forward.

So we're going to come into a little path bend or a little dummy plate. You're going to hold this position really strong, nice and steady. You can do an overhead press with your arms XL. Oh, this is a toughie XL, so keep those shoulders nice and strong. XL, I feel the energy reaching upward through the spine. One more time. XL.

Yeah, we're going to take a little step back and you're going to go all the way down as if you were picking something off the floor. When you come up, you're going to take your arms out to the side. Exhale, come all the way down, palms facing in x sale all the way down. Feel that pelvis widening here as you lower down. Now, if you're doing this as your postpartum Cadillac workout, that soreness and tenderness of your pelvis by four or five months postpartum should be fairly gone. Should be gone completely. So kind of going into this big stretch here of the pelvic floor into the squat shouldn't be bothersome at all. It should feel comfortable. If it is for any reason, you need to not go as far. Now you're going to come back down. You're going to bend your elbows, you're going to sweep your left arm under your right arm.

You're going to cross your springs and bring it out. Yeah, come down. Just think of sweeping something off the floor and reach out and come down. Steady breath. Two more. Reach all the way down. Notice how I'm keeping my back flat as I go down, even though I'm hindering forward slightly, my back stays flat.

Come all the way and hold it down. We're going to do that again. Come forward. Come into your bent isometric hold of your demi play here. Arms up five times. Exhale. Now feel grounded. Feel the knees in the right position, right over the feet, the external rotation of the hips and that work of the deltoids. As you bring the arms at the last one.

Exhale. Now come back, palms facing together. Go down, XL up. So feel that nice connection XL up. Bring it down. Exhale up last one and hold it up. Now we're going to sweep the right arm under the left. Go down, sweep and rod up. Go down, sweep, and rod go down. Sweet. Filled the rotators of the yard, filled the extensors of the elbows. They're down. Don't lose your form here. Don't lose your precision.

Keep that stable torso all the way. Now parallel with your feet bending forward. Alternate the arms. XL One, two, three, four. Now look to your side. Okay, and hold it. Come up and release guide. So really great wonderful squat series. So go ahead and let those springs just go down.

And we're going to move to the other end of our Cadillac. Before you go though, I want you to just take one of your springs. Now we're going to do a little standing hip work series with our big heavy leg spring here. So we're not gonna use the arm spring quite yet, but I do want you to load it up. So go ahead and Hook it on to your outer little um, islet here and your leg spring is going to be hooked onto your outer islet as well. So go ahead and place it high as you want for resistance. So this cross bar, of course, as you know, the higher it goes, the more resistance you're going to have, or if you step further back. So we're going to place the leg strap in the right foot.

You're going to hold on to the Poles here. So we're going to do a little standing unilateral work. Really great for the stabilizers of the pelvis, the stabilizing of the hip, the Gluteus Medius, the hip abductors, which I really, really want for you, particularly if you're a new mother and you're really working on some of that functional standing movement, which we so, so need functional standing movements, functional posture for when we're holding our little one. So go ahead and come into hip flexion with that right knee, bring that foot up. You're going to bend the left knee and you're going to hinge forward.

So everything's going to be reaching towards that diagonal line. Your legs should be on the inside of that lake spring. You're going to push out into the extension parallel position. Inhale, press out. So I don't mind if you'd go a little bit higher, as long as you keep the integrity of that lumbar curve intact. I don't want you to go into hyper, uh, of extreme hyperlordotic position here.

So if you do, that means you're recruiting too much of your lower back than that hip extension and you're not letting the glue maximize its work. So take the leg a little bit lower and focus on that glue for the hip extension. Exhale, I said that all really fast, so hope you got that. Inhale and press out. Okay. Now the secret here is to finish with a beautiful long line where you really push energy through the heel and you feel boom, that extension right through that right glue and hold it.

You'll fill that outer hip here on the left. Pull up. One, two, three, four, five. Keep going. Now this is a time to really take note of your postural control here as you do this. So you're moving one part of your body, but you're holding the other parts really steady, holds it here. Little circles. One, two. Now even the air on the side of slightly internally rotating that right femur and you may feel just a little bit more glue. Keep the foot flex. Two more circles. One to hold it.

Bend the knees so you're in a externally rotated frog. Extend the left leg just to get a little break here, right? And Bend it back down. And you're going to lift up here. This isn't in dance. We call this an attitude in the posterior. So press up back attitude. So up you go.

Keep that foot flexed, keep it flexed, making sure the center body is seen nice and intact and bring it up. Last two up and hold it. Extend the leg out. Come up. Wants you to come too. I'm sorry to use so much dance terminology, but a posse. So basically keep your foot flex, come to a vertical position, and put your heel on the inside of your left thigh.

So you're up there going to push it back into extension. Bring it up and push it back into extension. Bring it up and push it back into extension. Two more. Bring it up and press that. Push it energy through that foot and up and press.

Hold it there. Now take your left hand, bring the spring back, come up, and let's do us a little favor. Take your right hand and bring it underneath your spring and you're going to push back. So from here, both arm lay, you're going to lift one and two and three and four and five, six times. Hold it. Six then the elbow and the knee. More tricep work. Extend. I'm keeping that right leg. Everything's in external rotation. Extend just four of these. We've already done a lot of them extent. Last one, hold it.

Bring the arm and leg up a little bit higher and bring them away from each other and back in toward the midline of the body, away from each other and back in. Keep that center body intact. Draw your focus here. Keep that foot flex. Keep yourself grounded. Two more and draw it in. Last one, draw it in and slowly come up. Nice.

So let's go ahead and release and they just love the focus that's involved here. As that series really starts to build that you can feel how all of your staplers is, all of your control wants to start giving in once they start releasing. And that's really where, in my opinion, that Polanyi is really joints in where you really have to grab onto that control, grab onto that focus, grab onto that strength and keep on going. So here we go. It's going to feel really good to move this leg. Now that we've been stabilizing it, so much. So up with the left leg calming breath. And here we go. Exhale, bring it up and exhale, keep going.

I'm just going to move my spring out for the Mike and Press. Bring it in and bring it in and press and let's stay down this. So keep that v bent on the right side and bend and extend that left leg. Now remember to keep that body upright, feel that extension coming from your glutes, keeping that nice natural lumbar curve present. We don't want to flatten it, we don't want to overly extend it, keeping that energy reaching out so there's a line from the back of your head all the way down through your heel. Last one, hold it energy. Press up. One, two.

You can bring your arm under the spring if that's more comfortable. Now again, you can just put a slight internal rotation on that left leg, that left femur just to feel really nice and isolated into that glute. Work up, up, up, up, and hold it there. Little circles in toward the leg and out. Exhale, keep your focus filling that stability. On that right leg. He kept that little circle going in that left tip filling the glute work and hold it there. Come up. Now we're going to rotate the leg outward and we're going to go down and we're going to lift up XL one and two and three and four and five.

Just feeling that nice external rotation. You're in that back attitude position and lift and lift and two more and whole. Come up to the posse position. Bring that left heel into the outside of the right thigh and brewing it down and brewery and up. Inhale and exhale, bring it back and burying it up and Xcel back. So you're coming up into this beautiful extension building that back lifting. So again, we're just repeating a version of squatting down and coming back up.

A really nice functional movement here so you can fill that hindering at your hip, that nice stability through your torso. Take the right arm into the strap, extend both, bring them both up XL one [inaudible]. Hold on the control [inaudible] and hold bend and extend. Bend and extend reaching that power. So fill the extension through the hip, that extension through the tricep.

Two more. Last one, and hold. Take the leg and arm out from the center body. Bring it in out from the center body. Bring it in. And you should be really challenged at this point, bringing it out and in lots of energy through the body. Last one, bring it out, hold it in and slowly come up. Well that one got me good.

I am a sweaty and a shaken and feeling like a strong lady. So go ahead and take that arm spring off. And I want you to lift your cross bar a little bit higher. We're going to work on some seated leg extensions. So you're going to sit at the edge of your Cadillac.

Go ahead and take your right foot into the strap. So wants you to bring your right knee up as high as you can. Get really vertical and your torso and you're going to extend the leg out. Draw the heel down toward the floor. So feel that energy, bring it up, XL, extend, bring it up, XL, extend and bring it up and up. So you're really getting this beautiful sense of hip flection, postural control. So again, just working on getting that deep movement in the hip.

You should feel a little bit of quad work here, a little bit. Hip extension work. Now I want you to keep it down. Now lift your leg up straight and lower it down. Tap the heel to the floor straight and lower down, straight and lower down straight. So you just really feel that focus. Draw that heel down.

Reach opposite energy. Heel down, body up, up and down, up. Ground yourself through that left foot down. One more time and hold it. So now you're going to bend your knee, come back with your body, push the leg out and come down. So you're making a bicycle bend, come back with the body, push and come up. Bend hierarch with the upper back press and come up.

So we're adding more dynamic of our upper back extension and that hindering of the hip and hold it Presa down. President Downfield the hip extensors. And so just a really nice little series. Let's go ahead and switch sides to the left lake here. So grounding yourself through that right foot on the floor, bringing that left knee up as high as you can. Um, press.

Now, this type of exercise would be really, really fantastic for pregnant women. Really fantastic for seniors and for just people in general that you want to work on their postural control. You want to work on the unilateral work in a more functional seated position, but maybe their balance is a little, uh, compromised and you want to keep them nice and safe. I just really loved this series for that. It reminds me of the one to chairs as well, some of the good function of the one to share.

Bring the leg straight up and press down. Now I love this extension because this is where I can really feel energy down through the legs, energy up through the body. And it's just that just you can feel that opposition. You can feel that hamstring work here. You can feel the contraction through the torso.

Feel the openness of the shoulders just by placing your arms simply on these poles here. You're not going into any sort of big stretch here, but just if we could take this and transfer it to sanding and walking, it would just be so lovely for that functionality. Hold it there, Ben, the knee, lift up and press. Bring it over the top and bend the knee. Lift up for us and bring it over. When you bring it over the top wants you to feel like you're coming up over a peak. So thinking up and over, almost as if you're going to lift herself, your seat, your bottom off the bed of the Cadillac and lift app two more.

And lift happened over last one. And lift. Hold it there, bend the knees and come in. It's still really nice. Really lovely. Okay, we're gonna move on to a wonderful but challenging side exercise. So go ahead and grab your trusty arms spring here, your yellow spring, and go ahead and load it in the center on the top of the side of your Cadillac where you have your push through Barb. Now again, your arms and shoulders may be feeling a little fatigued here, but you're going to need to grab onto him for just a little bit more cause we're going to keep on, keep on. And so I want you to take your springing your hand and set yourself up to where your elbow is bent, but kind of hanging off the side of the Cadillac and you're holding on with your palm facing down to the pursue.

Barb bottomy bent at 90 degrees top arm in the spring and your bottom, our top leg rather extended. So take your breath in, you're gonna lift up, push that arm out and let your leg and your arm meat soda and bring it down. Inhale is a toughie XL extend or lift rather, extend that autumn arm, that bottom arm, push down that top arm and then then come all the way to exhale. So it's kind of like a little bit tougher version of side lift with the push through bar and extend up. Lot of work on that shoulder. Tricep side, body, outer hip. It's really a beautiful full body exercise and XL barely gonna make it up on that one. Hold it. Now keep your leg up, take your body down and hold and rest.

So you don't need to do very many of those to really get the benefit out of it. So we're going to go ahead and move to the other side. So the elbows bent struck in the hand, bottom leg bent, top leg up. So breathing in XL, lift up, extend that bottom arm, come into this position and bend and come down XL. Lift up with the side body, find it in the middle and reach. Lengthen as you come down. And Xcel, that's probably the toughest part, is not wanting to collapse as you come down, not wanting to sink into that bottom shoulder.

You really want to feel that power. Keep the lots connected, keep the serratus connected as you slowly lower down. And one more up. Press press as slowly down. Turn yourself into a prone position and we're going to finish with some beautiful back extension. So bring your arms forward, feel that nice stretch and just enjoy that for just a moment.

Now remove your left arm from the bar, bring it out to the side. Take your breath in. Find the connection through the abdominal spine, the connection through the hamstrings, pulling those initial tuberosities downs who really feel that stabilization. Take your breath in and lift up [inaudible] and take it down and inhale up. Okay, and take it down. Inhale up, up and up. Now switch in the up position. Take your left arm to the bar, take your right arm out and lower it down and take an inhale up. Pull that shoulder down, left shoulder down.

Reach the right arm out nice and long and brewing it up. Head, neck and chest. Working in that concept of reverse articulation and take it down. One more. Glide that Scapula, lift the head, neck and chest, and bring it down. Let's go up again and bring that right Armand.

Now from here, you're going to rotate, rotate. Look under your right arm. Bring the right hip up so you're rolled completely onto your left hip. Make sure you stay on that Cadillac and now keep the extension as you spiral. Spiral to the center plus down with your arm. This is tough right here.

Use your body is one piece. Look under your left arm. Give me a little smile. Then reach energy. Reach energy. Think of yourself rolling like a log energy out through my feet as I use my oblique to rotate my body and a power. Power through my upper body. Power through my shoulders and again, rotate as one solid pieces. That's the tough part right there, but it feels so good and reach. Hold it, hold it.

Lift those legs from those hips from the glutes. Reach a little bit higher. If this feels good. Now I'm going to challenge you here. Wants you to release your arms and bring them out. It's energy.

Just like your floating feeling soft feeling in control, reach, reach and slowly come down. Bring your arms in, push up if you still have the ability to and rest. Stay there for me. Just rest and breathe. I just feel that, um, want to use the word vulnerability in your shoulders is they may feel really kind of alive and awake for all that work that we did in your hips, but particularly your shoulders and your upper body. Because you know our shoulder joints depends so much on muscles for their stability, they don't have a lot of that bony and and ligament support.

So we really want to work on strengthening the muscles that surround the shoulders for good functioning, good support and that so, so, so, so important for you. If you are entering motherhood for the first, second and third time, it's so important for you if you're not a mother and you're just really trying to get through life and work and be functional and that arm work is so, so, so important and you who feel in this class that we really kind of worked on bringing all of that arm support into everything else that we were doing into our squats, into our legwork and to some of our spinal articulation, abdominal work. We've really incorporated that arm work into it just to kind of draw the whole body and the whole picture together. So as you roll up, you should have been breathing as I was talking to you about all that. I hope that you feel fantastic. I hope that you feel wonderful. I had so much fun teaching you that class. It was fantastic. And I am so looking forward to seeing you again. Thank you.

Comments

Thank you Leah, for sharing your creativity and charm. This is a fantastic class!
Pele
1 person likes this.
I'm not post or pre natal but did this anyways and loved the creative variations and flow. I am hoping you 'll teach more classes a level 2/3 on reformer or Cadillac. Will wait!
Thank you so much--brilliant and creative functional movement. Completely opens new doors to the caddy.
1 person likes this.
One of the most creative Cadillac sessions I've ever seen. :)
Amazing! Thanks Leah! You have a great understanding of all the changes the body gets from a pregnancy. I really like this lesson and the way you teach!
Thank you ! One of the most creative, yet functional and achievable sessions I have seen in a long time !
Beautiful class!! I hope to see more functional movement work from you like this on the Cadillac and Tower!
That was fascinating. There are many brand new things here!

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