Class #220

Hand Weight Feedback

40 min - Class
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Description

Amy takes several arm exercises from the Reformer and incorporates them into today's class using light Hand Weights. This is a great way to add variety to a Mat class, giving students different feedback and challenges.
What You'll Need: Mat, Hand Weights

About This Video

Jul 23, 2010
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Transcript

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All right. Uh, what I thought we would do today is some arm work. As you can see, I've got the hand weights out here and we've got one pounds and two pounds. Now I've got you men. Two pounds is not all that much weight. I realized. So he's got the threes. Yeah, but if, you know too, it's not that much weight, but again, it doesn't, sometimes the weight of the weights doesn't matter as much as the performance of alignment and how we're working our, our own musculature with a little extra weight. And so, uh, who does reformer work in here and who has done reformer work before yet? So I thought today we would do quite a few exercises that are on the reformer just to give our mat work, a little variation and a little spice and our, um, upper body, a little bit of an extra workout. Okay.

So let's do ahead and do a warm up though flat on the Mat. Just have your hand weights nearby. And where I want you to actually put them is right here by your sides. Um, close, you know, nearby. And let's go ahead and start with our knees bent. Pelvis level, shoulders open. Just a quick scan down your posture.

And you don't have to hold the weights right now, but just know that they're nearby. Probably gonna use them for the a hundred and a few things supine. Yeah, that'd be perfect. Thank you. All right guys, so let's all take a nice generous inhale through our nose. We're going to start right away going into the bridging. So taking your pelvic tilt and peel, rolling up to the bridge position. Okay. And then once you're at the bridge, just pause for a moment or two. Just take a quick check in. We know that the ribs usually need to be reminded to pull in the pubic bone pressed up or the tailbone under. So you've got that Nice flat, uh, take off ramp position. Also concentrate right now on the inner leg muscles, the inner thighs, when they add doctors and use them to help you track more parallel. Um, that's sometimes a detail we forget to check in and the knees start opening.

All right, so that's it. Let's take another breath and begin the roll downs for sinking the upper back, sinking through the mid back, lower back pelvis, and finally out into that flat position. Another inhale, exhale and Peele MSE. Feeling your feet solid on the mat. You've got weight on all parts of your foot. Heels and toes. Inhale and Exhale, rolling down contracting the abdominal.

So this can be your abdominal warmup. Feel your shoulders open, inhale and again, exhale and contract and peel. The back of the arms should be firm against your mat, your abdominals. Contract it. Inhale, exhale and rolling down. Again, each segment is very important in your back, so if there's a sticky spot or place that feels less, you know, limber, it's fine with me and you spend some time holding that area or just rocking through it a little bit. Okay, but as a class, let's do three more. Exhaling to peel up.

Yes. Feel the energy in the back of the body. Inhale here, exhale, working down, back of the chest, back of the ribs, and again, a breath in. Two more times and exhale. Starting to send to your mind a little bit more now on controlling your movement, making it more precise, forgetting about what may have happened this morning or what's about to happen later today. Use this time for yourself to learn and feel your body strengthening and gaining some flexibility. Last one, working the articulation to come up. Okay. Let's just hold ourself in the bridge position without your hand weights guys. Bring your arms up toward the ceiling, palms facing each other.

Feel your shoulders flat. Let's do four chest expansion, so I want us to inhale opening arms, not all the way to the floor. Exhale as you bring your arms back into the center. Kind of a warm up for the wait weighted work that's coming. Inhale as you expand the chest, exhale and contract the pictorial muscles. Contract your abdominals, pull the arms in. Two more. Inhale the open. It's a stretch. Exhale and close. And last one.

Inhale as you open now the arms can stay there. They can actually come to the floor. Roll your spine down from here ever growing the stretch across your chest. And let's go ahead and find a level position of the pelvis. Walk your feet in together and arms one hand behind your head.

We're going to do a little warmup for the belly, so let's do left hand behind the head, right arm by your side. We did this a few weeks ago, so take a nice breath in. Use the exhale for a chest lift and you're in a level pelvis right now. Okay. Now the right arm is going to lift up the height of your knee, the right knee. Now the left arm is going to come over, reaching the diagonal to that right arm and you're going to rotate your torso on your chest just a little bit, okay? Yeah. Now keep your chest up. Let's lift the arms up, trying to frame the side of your head or inside of the ears. Exhale, hands behind the head. You're in that chest lift position, and then let's roll everything down. All right, so right hand stays back, left arm reaches by your hip. Inhale and exhale again, controlling your movement.

Each movement counts just as much as everything else. Inhale, left arm floats up. Exhale, the right arm reaches toward the left arm. You're on a rotation in your upper spine. That's it. All right. Now keep the rotation. Your arms start reaching out and up toward the ceiling. If you can, you're framing your head. Exhale, hands behind the ear head. You're still on that diagonal.

Now come to center and exhale and rotate down. Don't worry. We'll do a few right arm by your hip. Breathe in and get ready. Exhale, Chin to the chest. Rounding through shoulders. Easy. Inhale, float the right arm. Exhale the left arm reaches. That's when the rotation happens in the torso. All right, good. You guys know.

Stay up there. Float the arms up. That's an inhale. Exhale, hands behind the head. You're still on your diagonal. Inhale now return to center and exhale down. One last time with the other side. Inhale, lengthen the left arm. Exhale, chest lift, not too fast. Inhale, left arm floats. Exhale. Here's the rotation. As you reach with that right arm, bite those ribs to rotate.

Now hold that chest lift. Bring the arms up alongside the years of possible. Exhale, hands to the head. Inhale, return to your front and exhale and everything down. All right. Feel a little warmed up in there, I think. Okay. All right. So when we're on the reformer and some of the other apparatus, of course we're working against spring tension, so I thought I'd bring a little bit of that into the mat work today without spring. We've got the weights and most of us either have twos or ones near you.

Okay. Let me know if the twos get too heavy and there's some others in the box up there. But so go ahead now. Find your weights with your hands and just turn your palms face down. And however your arms up hip height, we're going to be doing the hundred with the hand weights. So just start practicing this, the pump for a second, just a few times so you can feel your weight. If any of you start to feel, um, you know, shoulder, wrist or elbow discomfort, you're, you do not have to use these ways. They'll just kind of monitor for yourselves.

Okay. All right, so let's go ahead and raise our legs to the tabletop position. Reach your arms long, so feel your shoulders slide down. Exhale your head chest up. Let's go ahead and extend the legs out on the diagonal. And here we go for our pump. Inhale three, four, five. Exhale, three, four, five and two.

X three, four, five and three. Does anyone feel the difference in holding the weights? Curl forward, higher. Two, three, four, five and five. So the whole arm, Steve, whole arm, two, three, four, five, and six. Anyone want to lower their legs? You can relax the feet. Reach your arms as long against your sides as you can. Two, three, four, five and nine and 10 to three. Four, five. Exhale, three, four, five and N. Okay. Bend your elbows, poems, spacing out, down towards your feet.

We're going into the coordination exercise now as you're doing this, when lift your elbows above the mat slightly and pull your arms very close in towards your ribs, long fingers. If it feels okay, everyone come up to the hundred position. Inhale as you come up. That's an inhale. Actually hold your breath and do a quick open close of the legs. Now exhale, bend your knees and your elbows, but I want you to keep your head up so it's an inhale as you length. Then hold the breath open close into the chest. Elbows bend three more times. Inhale, stretch, open, close. Exhale. Inhale, stretch, open. Close X, Hale, last hot, and now let your head come down. Okay, two choices. Now for the next series, we're going to do the supine arm circles just like it would be on the reformer.

Most of you know what? You can either hold your legs and tabletop. You can lower your shins, or actually you can put your feet on the floor. Either way, I'm going to go ahead and hold my legs up, so start with your arms reaching up to the ceiling and you may need a stag. You're on your mat if you're close to someone there. Okay, now hold on for a second. Feel your shoulders very heavy. The lats are flat and engaged. Reach your arms and now down by your hips.

It's the sense of reaching out out farther past your hips. Your head is down. Turn your palms to face your hips. Now here we go. Open the arms out away from you to your sides. Sometimes you'll hear us say the t angel arms and then bring your arms back up to the ceiling for more. So it's an inhale down. Turn the palms. Exhale.

Now be careful that the ribs aren't lifting away from the Mat. Imprint them more. Arms Up. Here we go. Three more down. Rotate and open and arms back up. Heavy ribs, heavy shoulder blades. Two more. Rotate. Exhale. Okay, and left last one. This direction. So when those arms are going out to the shoulders are sinking down into the mat and down your back. Okay, we've got five the other way.

Everyone pause for a second. If you're starting to feel any tension again, drop the weights or bend your elbows a little bit. Here we go. Open ribs are down now. Exhale, bring your arms in towards your waist. Palms turn flat and arms come back up. Heavy shoulder blades. Inhale, open. Exhale and contract. Palms down and arms come back up. Three more.

Feel the control in the exercise to focus on the precision of your movements, the breath into the lungs. Ah, well and out of the lungs. And last one, inhale, take in this space. Exhale, close arms down and I want you to raise your arms up to finish right there. And then if your legs were up, just place your feet down, bend your elbows to the Mat and rest we doing okay. Different focus. Okay, let's go ahead and ester stretch the legs out.

We will do roll up with the hand weights. So again, start with your can make a fist if that feels safer to hold onto the weight. And then again, take your arms back. Ideally we want the arms to be level, so holding the hand weights will sometimes expose maybe one more an arm that's more flexible than the other one. You definitely don't want to have your arms on level and uneven. So it might make it easier holding the hand weights. It absolutely could. This might give you a little leverage or anchoring to get down. Yeah. Now. Stay there for a second. Let's get rid of that daylight. Okay.

I don't think I've seen that before, Samantha. Okay, four repetitions this morning. Here we go. Inhale, arms. Head follows. Exhale and round. Go for a stretch this morning, but still keep your belly pulled back. Inhale. Here we go. Now if the weights are starting to feel heavy, bend your elbows bone by bone, each segment all the way. So again, lengthen without showing any daylight underneath your spine and [inaudible] round. Stay curled into yourself. Lower back, opening up. Take a breath and exhale and round it back.

Soften your knees. Soften your feet. Good, Lisa. Two more times. Inhale, arms. Your latch should be active. Exhale and contract. Easy muscles above the shoulders on your straps. Breathe in and pull back.

[inaudible] trying to track right down the center of your spine when just one more time guys. Inhale, arms, head, chest follows. Exhale. Good. [inaudible] now let me have everybody stay up. Actually roll yourself up to sitting. Yeah. Okay, so rowing, there's a rowing exercise. We'll do start with your weights like this. I've got my knuckles together in towards the chest. Okay. Let's just mark something. Can you see me okay, Lisa? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So right now if you just hold your knuckles together, we're looking for our elbows to be out and elbows up, but the shoulder blades down so you get that sense. Yeah. The sense of really good, strong lads. Bend your knees a little Tad and get more up in your lower back. Yeah. Okay. So can we just do a roll back now I'm gonna show this for Tad and for Steve Cause their hips are a little tight. So, and women, your guys are fine and these are fine. So as you roll back, keep the knuckles coming towards you at right at your chest. Go ahead and take that position. Okay, well let's just roll back up and if your legs are straight, it's basically like you're going to do a rollback and you, you're just did that exercise there and exhale. Here we go again.

It's the pelvic tilt. I want everyone to focus on mainly. Good. And then we'll come back up. [inaudible] you could do diamond inhale. Let's try diamond for the men. Exhale and rounding back. Absolutely. I W keep going. I wanted to make it for you where it feels okay in your hip joint cause everybody in here is different. That's the beauty of it.

This is not a room full of teachers. We have one teacher in here other than me, so you know, whereas some of our other classes, it's a room full of teachers. Everyone's different real people and exhale coming up. Teachers are real too, but you know what I mean? Let's get real. Okay. Okay, rolling back. Now we're going to add a little bit to it, so I'm going to go ahead and continue showing it this way.

You can join me if you want. Now from here I want you to keep the shoulders stable, keep that abdominal wall pulled back and start to open the arms. We're going to do kind of a variation of rowing from there. Bring your arms back in. Ah, let's do three more and inhale as you open.

Exhale as you close, inhale as you open. Are you glad you chose one pound weights? Now exhale and inhale and open and exhale and close. Now everybody, if you're bent need, go ahead and extend your legs. Let's go ahead and do one more time open, so to add onto it. Contract your abdominal. Start to bring your torso forward.

Now turn your your weights and your arm muscles are going to rotate. Your bones are going to rotate. I want your chest down close to the legs. If you can let your head hang. Now at guys, you can either keep your arms low or you can press the arms up and to feel your triceps out of either way, I think. Okay. Now from here I want you to go around from the back to the front. Your arms are going to circle your upper arm bones.

You're going to circle right into the joint. By the time you come around, your palm should face each other and let's roll back up. Knuckles to the chest. That's the full rowing. Let's do it two more times. Exhale, contract back. You don't have to go very far. I would suggest not rotating too far back. Okay, and inhale, is the arms open? Work your control and exhale systemic. First, flexing the trunk forward. The arms rotate inward there, Samantha. Arms come back.

Now you can again take your harms lower to the mat or you can raise your arms higher. Again, check in. You don't want tension in your neck. All right, now stay contracted. Let's move the arms from the back. Circled them around. Now the arms rotate outward. Palm should face each other and let's re stack up to sitting tall. One last time as tall as you can. Sit, breathe in and exhale, contract that precision and control. Inhale, as you open, stay focused in your movement. Exhale and over the arms.

Rotate inward, poms. Move behind the back. Now inhale the arms move from the back around to the front. Shoulders down the back, stomach into the spine. And let's roll up to sitting tall and pause. Okay, and drop this for a second. Do a quick neck stretch, just ear to shoulder.

And then I'm going to bring us up to our knees if we can. Now. All right, everyone just come up onto your knees. You can still face each other. I'm gonna just show profile trying to keep the that rib cage flats, that rib hip connection. That's one of our strong fundamentals. Okay, so we'll look. We'll do the a hug a tree or hug a hug, hug, hug. So arms are outstretched, arms are not behind the back. They're slightly actually in forward front of your shoulders. Okay?

Yeah, and again, the elbow should be a little bit bent. Good, good, Louise. Beautiful. Just hold that. That's a lot. Just to hold there. So concentrate again on the support of your stomach and your lats. We'll just do five. I want us to inhale as we bring our arms forward. Make a circle. It's okay if your fingers don't touch, but ideally we're looking to have that. The fingers touch in the front. That's an inhale and let's exhale and open. And again, you're not going too far wide. As you look forward, you should still see your hands near peripheral. Inhale, close and exhale as you open.

Lift your torso there and your sternum. Exhale and open two more times so you can make your muscles work harder. Even if you're holding, just set a one pounds. One more time. Inhale. Now hold that position. We're going to transition. Turn your palms face out. Put your fingertips to your forehead. Open the elbows back.

Rib Cage in. This is often called the salute. Good, Lisa. All right. So again, I want us to inhale and start reaching the hands forward. Guys, you do not have to get your elbow straight. If you move your hands forward about six to 10 inches with your shoulders down, that's better than going all the way out with your shoulders. Hunched up. Exhale as the hands come back to the forehead. Four more times. Inhale, press. Exhale in. So flatten the front of your ribs and hips with your abdominal muscles. Yeah.

And your hamstring muscles. Exhale. Close me. Closer. Last one. I think I might have miscounted. And the next day you can bring your arms back down. Okay. Rest your arms again. A little neck stretch if you need to.

Chest expansion. Next one. Chest expansion is more now for the back of the arm above shoulder lats. So, um, hands here, right by your hips. Okay. [inaudible]. Does anyone know why it's called chest expansion?

It expands your chest. Yes it does, but you know this is that conversation here are lungs right along as you're in there, the ribs are around the lung, so if we inhale fully the ribs expand the chest expanse. So that's how I used to kind of think about and I still do. If my ribs expand enough, they'll move my arms out of the way. They're going to move my arm stack here. If I inhale enough, my arms are going to go this way my arms are going to go back. Okay. Without puffing out the tummy like I just probably did. All right, let's go with five. No head rotation on these first five.

It's lots of volume of inhalation. Here we go, and exhale, fill the ribs, press the arms back, exhale and to your sides. I've got a pretty darn good plum line going. Inhale. Good Sabrina. Good plum line guys. Good Louise. Exhale, center your weight forward. A Little Samantha thing there. Keep that. Keep going. You guys. Keep that going, but tuck your ribs back and lift that sternum. Okay.

Could do it again and keep your weight forward a little bit with your sternum up. Stay there. That's it. Keep going. I've got to have it two more times. Samantha just turned onto something new. The weight forward. Sternum up. Very nice day there. Stay there as the arms return. Okay. We're all gonna add a head turn. So inhale now hold your breath. Rotate your head to your right shoulder. It's a neck stretch.

Keep holding your breath. Rotate your head to the left shoulder center. Exhale, arms return. One more. We'll start head turn left. [inaudible] and right. And Center. Exhale. Return. Okay. Sit back for a second.

Okay. All right, so that's always interesting, isn't it? Hello? I was going to ask them to join in. Uh, let's come back up onto our knees. We do this, we've done this a few times and a little variation. So if you guys start with your arms for renown shoulder level, so we're gonna work into the thighs, the quadriceps, and the lower extremity a little bit. Okay.

So you're just going to s sit back. I want us to really to keep that feeling of that plum line and you're gently going to touch your heels wet. It's kind of sitting and then as they come up, we're going to add a little more of an arm pool. I can show you what not to do. Will that help? It's not like a, not the thigh stretch. You're thinking five stretch? No, I don't think so. For today, if it hurts the knees, I wouldn't do it. Yep. Yep. We have a few or just a little bit. Definitely. This is what we wouldn't want.

Should I show, you can see me I think is to do a break in the hip and stick out the the rear. That's not really it. I want to see if we can keep this line flat as you go to Elizabeth as you travel back, it's a, it's a, it's a way to strengthen the hamstrings and that's a fairly okay example I think. Okay. And the news, you come back up the arms, we'll press more into that tricep extension. Okay. Let's try for it. Yes. If your thighs and knees are not happy now, don't do it. Ready? Here we go. And arms stay lifted.

I think about squeezing a but a lot and pulling my ribs in. That's it. And then arms down for word with your torso. And again, going back, arms floating upstream. Forward. Now first time you had to break out your hips a little. You need a little break.

There you go right there and coming up two more times. So you do get to break at your hips a little. That's better. There we go. And pressing up last one and pressing back. Arms are floating shoulder level keeps squeezing your hamstrings and your glutes and your abdomen. Lot of lower body there and purists ourselves.

Up and rest. Okay, good. Uh, can we stay on the knees? No, I want to come down. Stay on. If you can come down, if you don't want to be up there. Okay, then turn my way. Nice. A separated hip with the part sitz bones with the part can turn this. Yeah, that's okay. My literal thinker there turned my way.

So he did my way fist forward. Arms snug into your sides. This is some external rotation. And then again, lift the sternum, get that rib line flat, and let's just do five. So opening the forearms away and then closing forearms just straight in front of your shoulders and again open and we can exhale and return. And we open. Exhale, return. This is to defy the force of computer work in our shoulders. Hold that forward. Bending that we do stooped at the computer or cell phones.

And inhale. Exhale. Now let's open back one more time. Okay, I'm just hanging out there for a second and feel your elbows pulled toward your waist. Right now we're gonna move the arms away from our waist to stretch the wingspan. And then as we come back in, really think elbow, elbow to hip, elbow to hip, elbow, and the collarbone is very wide. We're just going to do four more. If we had a theraband, we'd be stretching that elastic band with a lot more tension, much more like the reformer springs and then coming in, lats or down. Elbows are to the waist three more times. And we breathe and exhale taller spine.

Two more to go length and open it up. Annex heel coming in. Good. Last one. Inhale. As you open an Xcel is become in, and then just rest for a second. Okay. Now similarly, but with palms turned up. Same thing. Arms right by the signs and external rotation. And you might have more rotation this way. Not sure. Maybe you probably will.

And close. Same pattern. Just palms face up. So four more an open. Really want to press your upper arm in towards you and close. I don't really pay attention. If your neck is feeling like this is heavy, you know we don't, we don't usually do it with weight. You can do just holding it. You don't have to do or you just put your weights down and do the movement with no weight. I'm close. Last one. Let's open. Exhale. Just hold there. So once again, five repetitions.

You're stretching the arms away and exhale, coming in, elbows to the hips, sternum, tall. Inhale. Keep thinking about what the role of the abdominals to support our lower back. Three mourn ago. Chest Open. Exhale. Very good exercise for shoulder health back strength.

Ah, last one. An inhale stretch. Nice work you guys. And exhale and let's just rest. Okay. Go ahead and just sit back. Let your head Tuck in for a second. Who's, let yourself kind of rest from that [inaudible] cause they're a little bit more, I don't want to do now from kneeling and this will kind of look a little bit more like the side or a mailing series on the reformer. Okay. Partly so let's go ahead and come up just with one. Wait, I'm going to mirror you guys. Okay, let's go into your right hand. I'll go in my left hand.

The other arm is long by your hip. Okay. Elbow forward. Four arm. Going to go straight up to the ceiling. Again, we're just going to go with three repetitions here. So the higher the arm goes, focus more on keeping your shoulder down. Some of you can go all the way up with your arm without your shoulder elevating. So choose that. We want to strengthen the shoulder girdle. Yeah, as long as those ribs don't flare forward. Okay. And then bending the elbow down for arm, arms in a straight line.

Two more times we can inhale going up and the shoulder girdle is square. Get this right shoulder, there's your arm. Okay. And then bringing it down and reach. So we want to disengage this upper shoulder muscle. We may need one more repetition.

And if this is feeling caught on your a little bit thick and kind of [inaudible], you just go a little, we want to disengage that to lift the arm just seems kind of counterintuitive. And then Tan we go. Okay, switch hands. Do a full extension of the arm. Pull that arm up. This is more that draw sword or pull the arm across and then bend the elbow. You're going to bring that weight right by your navel and lead with your elbow, forearm, wrist and hand and hand.

Forearm, elbow and hand to the naval. Two more times. Yeah. Nice shoulders. Trying to keep your lats fully engaged and no elevation. One last time. Here we go. Okay, now put it back. All the oil. We keep it in this hand. Open the knees a little wider and a good old side bend.

No. Let's first just check in. Um, can we get there? It's a big stretch in the side of your waist. Look for, look out this way. Good. All right. You know right away that if your shoulders feeling kind of near, just put the weight down. Yeah, good choice.

You can do it just with your arm completely fine. All right. Now just stay there. Is everybody feeling the stretch in their side a lot? Yeah. This, this make more of a stretch. It should be making more of a stretch in the tissue along the side of your waist. Okay. This may be enough. Or if you want four repetitions, I'm going to have my palm stay down. Some of you may want to do palm face up. Let's extend the elbow.

So it's a pull up and then down with the, yeah, so the upper arm stays relatively in place. It's from the elbow that we extend do more times and extend and bend and last one and steroid. Eaton and Ben. Okay. Now to get out of that. Can you all really do? Can almost like that child's pose. Let that weight go. Come on down. Let that side of your back. Relax for a second. Okay, now we have those exercises on the other side. [inaudible] here we go. So you can use the other weight the same hand that you just worked.

You know, put the hand weight in there for the reaching up. So elbow is forward. Four arm is in a vertical line. Elbows right in front of your shoulder and your shoulders. Square tabs. So get that left shoulder back a little. Perfect. Okay, here we go. And elevating the arm but not the shoulder. Go as high as you can and then bending back down. That's it.

Arm coming up, shoulder, staying down. Good. Lisa. And two more times we lift. This is one for me. I can't go very high. I know my shoulder muscles, they like to engage. If I take my arm too high and I'm satisfied with just that movement today. Okay. So hand in the other weight in the other hand. Right in front of the navel. Elbow is away from us. It's the draw sword or draw the chord.

So over we go and backend you can think of bumping with your elbow, forearm, wrist and hand and hand. Forearm, elbow and upper arm more times. So although this isn't directly in abdominal exercise, you're recruiting in there for the support for your lower back and your spine. Good. Shoulders, last one. Nice and square. That's since you guys and in we return. Okay. Side, then open up the knee a little bit. Side bend to your left. I'm going to my right arm overhead.

Wow. It's amazing how much that stretches. This extra weight is really doing a good stretch on me down at my hip. Okay. Pelvis forward. Ready for repetitions. We are working to extend the elbow and bend at the elbow.

Keep drawing the shoulders down, the back, extend and in and two more extend and in [inaudible] and last one time extension. Yeah. And in, and then again to get out of it round forward, let that hand weight go away and just sink back into that. It's of settle a child's pose or little cat back if you need that too. Okay, we're going to do a one down on prone down on our stomachs. All right, so bringing your weights with you on the reformer.

It's more like pulling straps or the t press. We can't do pulling the reel, pulling straps when we're down because we're on the floor, we pulling straps. You'd need to be elevated. Most of you guys think no that, um, but we can do a version of it. Let's go ahead and extend our arms by our sides. Palms face up. Okay. Engage the abdominals. Feel your pelvis, imprinting the mat and again, lots of recruitment of your lats and deepen the shoulder girdle downward away from the neck. So we're stretching the neck long. All right, now breathe in here. As we exhale, lift the head and chest.

We know the float and also bring the arms up. So we're going to be loading the back as well as the triceps. Take a breath there and let's just simply come down on the exhale arms too. I'm going to do eight of those and he'll prepare Xcel and let's lift. Can no worry about coming too high. Inhale, exhale, come down. Inhale, exhale en up, reaching your arms long and coming down and again, long arms. The reach of the arms is going to help you come up and lower. We've got four more. Inhale, exhale and we come up.

Press the pelvis to the mat, feel the lengthening of the arms and lowering down. Three more. Exhale and lift from that upper back. Left. You got it. This so good for you and down. Gorgeous you guys. Two more. Just drop your Chin a little and down. Gorgeous. Last one. Lift and hold.

Now five times, just press the arms a little higher. Let's do a little more tricep. One and two and three. Abdominals back for just one more. Five plenty. Come all the way down. Let go of the weights. That's plenty of that.

Just set them off to the side. Come on back into arrest pose. Good. Nice work with those adaptations were just a way to bring the some arm work into the regular maps here. You know, we didn't do a lot of the Mat, traditional mat exercises, more reformer pieces. Today we do get one or two classical things in there.

Comments

Nice class Amy! Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed this Wilma. Nice to meet you!
Love working with arm weights. Great workout Amy!
Hi Elaine! Yay.....glad you enjoyed it. I'll do more armwork in my next class....stay tuned!
nice
love the "PR" work for mat. Thank u
Hope they like it in the am here in austin.....cause thats what Im doing!
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Hi Jennifer! Glad you liked the class and the PR work.....and let me know how your class likes it too. I'll do more of that again soon...it's so great isn't it? Talk to you soon!
Love your cueing - great class. Thanks.
Thank you Maria!
Lots of creative armwork, thanks! I did modify the poses on the knees to be sitting on a ball instead -- neither I nor most of my students can spend that much time on our knees.
Hi Emily, thanks for your feedback. Yes, staying on the knees for that long may be troublesome for many. I offered that as an option, but certainly doing these sitting or standing would have been just fine too.
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