Class #2263

Full-Body Tower

40 min - Class
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Description

You will get a full body workout in this Tower class with Benjamin Degenhardt! He alternates between using the spring tension on the Tower, and working against gravity with traditional Mat work. This allows you to work everything so you feel like you have a brand new body!
What You'll Need: Tower

About This Video

Sep 10, 2015
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Transcript

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Hi, my name is Benjamin Degenhart. I'm here with Jennifer and Nicole for a full body tower workout. We're working with bounced body equipment. Um, we're gonna use all the springs that we got where you're going to use arm springs, legs, brings the rollback bar as well as the push through bar. And we're taking the body through a full bodied workout trying to address all sides of it as well as alternate between using spring tension and just doing map work on this apparatus. But we're gonna start with rollbacks. And I said simple. Um, so go ahead and have a seat on your mats facing your wall unit.

Set your feet against it so that you heels have steady contact with it and grab the ends of your roll back bar to start the start position from ease with the knees slightly bent so that you can really focus on lifting your spine up and out of your seat. The crown of your head lifting up. And we'll just take one deep breath before we start moving. The inhale lifts you up nice and tall. On the exhale. Try to find softness around your shoulders and your neck and then activate through the middle of your body. Start to roll yourself down with the support of the springs, the spying, it's nice and round. The spring supports you as you take the body down, touching the low back down. First your head last.

You take another deep breath in here, still feeling you heels against the pulse and then let the spring support carry you back up. Chin over. Chest. Peel yourself away from the ground. Soften behind your knees at the top. Just sit back on nice and tall. Maybe with already more space in your spine. We'll do that two more times. Spine rolls down. It's steady through the heels and should feel by the time that you get down like you standing on your poles that the springs pull your arms and shoulders.

Therefore a second and Chin over. Chest Bend yourself up to come all the way back to a seated position with your knees. Nice and soft at the top. Just one more like that before we add on. Rolling yourself down. Stretch. Let the breath support this movement so it's not so much about synchronizing movement and breath. Just make sure that you continuously breathe. Chin over chest. You lift yourself all the way back up to the top, soften behind your knees. We're only going down halfway.

This time you curl the spine under again to roll yourself to the spot where you arms and your springs line up. So come down just a little bit further. You want to see one long line from shoulders to the spring attachment. We're going to add rowing into this. You Bend your elbows out to the side, pulling the bar towards your chest, keeping the spine rounded and the chest open. As you stretch the arms forward. We'll add that two more times. Pull in and stretch out. So we're really teaching the body to maintain an open chest in our roll downs and our roll ups. After your third, keep the arms straight and lift yourself all the way back up. Sitting up tall.

We'll do two more sets a little bit quicker. Deep Inhale, lift. Exhale, roll on down. Get inline springs and arms. Pull for three and stretch forward. Pull for two. Keep them around and you're back in. One more time. Pull in and stretch. Lift yourself all the way back up to the top. Sit up tall, final set. Xcel roll on Dow.

Let the springs pull your arms forward in a way from you already. Open your chest and pull for three and stretch and pull for two and stretch. Make sure that your doesn't start arching because the springs will act on your spine that way with straight arms, sit yourself all the way up. Let the bar go and then from here just scoot away from your tower slightly die down on your back. We'll go into our a hundred next. Not using any springs, it's just you and gravity, which as we know is the hardest way of doing it, right? You reach your arms up and over your head, stretch your fingertips away from your toes. Take a nice deep breath in and we go into our initial lift. First.

Xcel lift you arms up and forward. Hover head, neck and shoulders off the ground. Switch your feet away from you like you're trying to touch that push through are in front of you. Hold the shape, find your breath, lower the legs, your head and your arms. Reach up and back over your head. We'll just do that one more time. Arms go up and forward. Chin over your chest. Lift yourself up. Reach your feet away from you. Hold the shape for three, for two, for one legs down, head down, arms. Reach back over your head. You guys ready for your hundred? Lift yourself up.

Arms up and fortune over chest. Go and palm breathing in. Two, three, four, five. Exhale, two, three, four, five. Bringing lots of movement to the shoulder, pumping the arms well above the thighs, breathing in and breathing. I think that each inhale, lifting up a little bit higher. Each exhale gets your limbs a little longer. Opens the chest. Remember what that opens chest felt like with the rowing a little bit ago. Use that here as well. Breathing in and breathing out. Two, three, four, five.

We've got two more deep, deep breaths. Make sure that the last pump is your strongest one. Not the, Oh, thank heavens I'm done. One right. Let it be strong, right until the end. You except for five, four, three, two, one and rest release are the way down. Stretch your arms over your head. Flex your feet like you did when you were standing up against the Poles earlier, but keep the legs together. Uh, roll up is next. On an inhale, lift your arms up and forward. Chin over.

Chest like in the hundred role yourself all the way up. Take a big stretch forward and let's add that little pulse. Here you come out of the shape of tiny little bits. You stretch further and you stretch even further on the last pulse. Slowly come all the way back down. So it's not an aggressive bounce.

It's just a chance for you to go deeper into the stretch. Arms overhead going in, arms up and forward. Chin over chest. Roll it up. Take a big stretch forward over your legs. Come slightly out of it. [inaudible] go deeper. Try to pull the toes back towards your head and go into your deeper stretch. Inhale, come back down and switch back over your head.

Let your last one are the slow ones here. Be Diagnostic. Check in with how your spine bends this [inaudible] this afternoons. Stretch forward. Check in with where your spine feels sticky and where it doesn't like to move all that much. The next three will be a little quicker. Roll on down. Stretch your arms over your head. Inhale, lift back up. X around, forward for three, two, one. Come right back down and while you come down, press your heels down in a way from you. You're on your last two lifting up, stretching three and two and one. Come back down. Here's your last repetition, but things you've done it five times already.

That's probably more space in your body. It's a brand new spine, so maybe you find a new space to stretch into on your last one, two, and three. Crawl yourself all the way back down. Release your head, stretch your arms over your head, and if that feels all right for your shoulders, being that open through your arms, hold onto the corners of your mat. See if you can give yourself a little bit of a pull. It's almost like you're hanging off of those corners. All right, so your arms are nice and active. Lift your leg straight up. From there, right up towards the ceiling at the backs of your hips, settled down into the ground and we'll take leg circles from here. You stretch your legs away from you to start. You don't think down.

You think up and out. Then you open your legs as wide as your mat. You pull the legs back up to 90 close them back together. Do that again. You stretch your legs away from you and down. Open the legs here and then circle them back up towards one another and close at the top. One more time. This direction. Up and out of the waist. Open, lift and close. Now reverse the pattern you open at the top. Lower down. Press together. Lift up, especially as you lower the legs away from your Paul Heart or with your arms to engage through your back. Here's your last one like that. Down around and up.

Bend your knees into your chest for a second. Stretch your legs out long on the Mat. Shake your legs out. News. How are we doing with our shoulders? It feels like a nice little opening through the chest and shoulders, right? If it feels like too much, you can always bring your arms down by your sides again, but if you can get your arms there, it's a nice opportunity to open the chest.

We're going to add the rollover into this, so the same pattern of the legs circling the spine, rolling over. Stretch your legs up to start. Lift your legs overhead. Open the legs here. Pull on the mat as you roll yourself down. Swing the legs away from you. Go twice, more. Up and over. Open the legs. Pull and roll down. Stretch the legs up and away from you. For your last one. Up and over.

Open the legs. Paul, as you roll down, down, down, reverse the pattern. Open the legs. Lift up, squeeze the legs together in a pole on the corner of your mat, down around it. Up Two more times. Lift. Squeeze at the top. Get longer through your back. It should feel like you're trying to get your blood down on the mat a little further away from your head each time. Squeeze the legs, roll yourself all the way down. Stretch your legs up and away from utility. Land on the Mat. Such great control. Flex your feet, lift your arms up over your head. Take one more roll up here. Chin over. Chest.

Take a big stretch forward over your legs for three, four, two, four, one. Then sit up, spin around and lay down on your back. I'm going to do some legs, springs, snacks, so we've done a bunch of leg circling already. Essentially that's what we're going to do next as well. I liked the leg springs on a nice high setting here. Take your feet into the straps.

Position yourself about an arm length away from your poles so that you can stretch out your arms in the same fashion as you just did. This time you're not pulling, you're pushing against your poles. Stretch your legs straight up to the ceiling to start, heals, touch, toes apart. No space for light or air between your legs. Can you push your poles away with your arms to set your hips a little stronger into the mats. Really make you a bud heavy on the ground.

We go into leg circles again. You press your legs up in a way from you. Open the legs, lift them back up close and together. Just do twice more this direction, up and out of the waist. Open and lift. Take one more. The portion where you want to slow down is where your legs lift of Nice and then reverse it. You open and lower. You squeeze and lift, especially as your legs come up. Almost.

Press your arms back a little harder to stretch your hips further. The other direction. One more time. Open and lower. Squeeze and a lift. Hold it there. Bring just your left leg all the way down onto the mat and stay. Can you get your heel all the way into the ground and let your toes flex back? Let the strap be held by the spring.

Try to push that spring out by using both your arms, the length of your spine and your entire left leg. Switch. Your legs, left leg comes up, right leg comes down, so now the right foot flex is just getting used to that position. Make sure that your hip stay level throughout all of this because that spring is pulling back on you. Flex the foot as strongly as you can. Let the left leg be light and lifted. Switch one more time. Left leg down, right leg up. Point your right toes to the ceiling with the same energy with which you push your left heel out. We're going to take that right leg across the middle to circle it for down, around and up, and three down around an up and two down around and up.

One more. Then reverse opened down, across and up. As you're getting used to that, just keep going. I'm really more interested in your left leg here. Key pushing into that spring. Standing down into your left spring. You've got one more open down, across and up. Let's switch right leg down, left leg up. Set yourself up with a strong right here.

You see the left leg is just having some fun. It's really the rest of the valley. That's important. You take the leg across, down, around and up, starting small, and with your control, increasing your strength, increasing your range, increasing. Make the circles bigger to one more over, down, around and up. Reverse it for four case. I haven't mentioned this yet, to make sure that you're breathing right from start to finish. This is just a leg circle. Nothing that should take your breath away.

One more time. Open down across an up. Lift your right leg up to meet your left. Then we go into our walking steps. I like to point the feet up towards the ceiling. Push both arms back to remind your seat to be from into the mat. Take your right leg out first eight steps down, eight and seven and six and five and four and three and two and one up in eight, seven, six, five, four, three and goal again, push the arms back so the hip.

Stay steady on the mat after eight lift back up, so make no mistake, it's called legs, springs, but your arms are working super, super hard. Pushing the Poles away to actually unload your spines so that the spring doesn't compress you. Right? You'll lift back up, up, up, and then we go double temper twice as fat. Take it down. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, two, three, four, five, six, two more sets. Count for yourself. Make sure that your ribs don't start to misbehave. They stay nice and lengthen an arch deep and into the mat and then walk your legs down to 45 degrees. Hold them there. Stay. He lets touch toes apart. Its your military stance. No spiders. Fly your ear between your legs, hold soft munies in towards you as far as the springs carry you and then see if you can go a little deeper using your own strength. All right.

We finished up with what I call the lift. It's sort of the beginning of your airplane. Your magician, there's many names for it. You stretch your legs out until they cannot stretch out any further. You push your arms back so hard you couldn't push them back any further. You make your spine so long that your hips start to curl under and then your hips lift ever so slightly off the mat for three, for two, for one, you'll lower the hips back down. You Bend your knees back in, and we'll do that two more times. It's your first flying lesson.

You'll stretch your legs back out until you can't go any further. Roll the hips under just high enough I can slide a piece of paper and the feet don't fling up to the ceiling. Beautiful. Lower the hips down. Bend your knees back in. And one more time. Press the legs at. See if you can keep your feet this low curly hips under. Push the arms back. Find length through your spine. Find your breath, maybe a little smile.

Lower the hips down. Bend your knees all the way into your chest. And here's my favorite thing in the world. A little stretch. So of your feet together like a prayer. Hold onto your black straps. Open your knees wide, butterfly them open, and then pull your heels towards your chest that you elbows go against your inner thighs. You can sort of guide your knees away from each other and why not rock a little side to side while you're here? Does that feel good or what? Yes sir. Yes.

Take the straps off your feet and then let your legs extend out on the Mat. Reach your arms up and back over your head and take a moment here. So if you're too close to your pushed through our, feel free to scoot away from it slightly. We're going to transition into rolling like a bar from down here. So just push yourself away from your poles.

Think that your fingertips and your toes become your most distal points, the ends of your body. You bring them towards one another. Lifting your arms, head, neck, shoulders in your legs like you're a hundred then sit up, bend your knees into your chest, grab a hold of your shins right by the ankles and find that ball shape. Just stay here for a moment. Use the same strength in your answer you used in your rowing earlier with your roll back bar to pull your heels against your seat. Elbows wide, upper back wide. Now reverse to come back down, stretch your arms and legs forward, Melt your spine back into the mat like your rollbacks. Once your head is down, stretch your arms back over your head or do that a couple of more times. Super slow motion like you're underwater. You'll lift your arms up and forward you an over chest. Float your legs up.

Bring your knees up into your chest. Second time around. See if he can make that ball a little tighter and with tighter, I mean heels closer to your seat and he's closer to your shoulders, not shoulders up by your ears, right and nice and long through the neck. Tons of space for your breath. Release Back Down with the supreme controls. Stretch the feet away from you as a counterweight to your spine. Reach your arms over your head and then do one a little quicker. Lifted up.

Bend your knees in. You've done the hard work. Now you get to have some fun roll back and forth, rolling like good ball. Roll to your shoulders. Lift your seat up and return. We're rolling back and lifting up, especially if you're familiar with this exercise, you can start to explore rolling yourself right to the backs of your shoulders, maybe even towards the tops of your shoulders without bearing any weight into your head. However, rolling back and try to suspend the moment where you succeed as up towards the ceiling. So for a moment you're truly inverted. Let's take three and left and two and up.

But most importantly, have some fun with this one, right? Rolling back this exercise a lot of things, but it's one that's not, it's not serious. You stretch your arms and legs forward. You roll your spine slowly back down with the same control. You reach your arms over your head and then come back up into your one leg stretch. Pull the right knee in towards your chest, left leg stretches along. Try to reach for my hand and then switch to the other side.

Stretch Paul and stretch Paul and stretch Paul and stretch. Remember our rowing yet again, right? You pull the leg into you with two strong arms. It's a little bit of our theme movement. We'll come back in just a second. You pull to get a deeper compression of your hip to get more mobility into your heads. Later on, we'll do squats. We'll need that mobility there. Take four, switch four, take three, switch three, take two.

Keep curling up. Last at right and left. Bring both knees in. Stay. Stretch both legs out in front of you. Squeeze them together. Press your palms into the sides of your thighs. Like Joe's double leg stretch. You keep pressing into your legs. You Curl yourself up a little higher than exhale. Bend your knees back in.

Empty out the air. Go again. Inhale, stretch your legs out as low as you can. Keep your low back supported. Then exhale. Bend your knees up and into your squeeze yourself. Empty into your rolling like a ball shape. Go again. Inhale, legs down and out. Arms forward. Exhale, come back in. We'll take three more.

Adding in a little roll in like a bar. You stretch your arms and legs forward as your knees come in. Give me a mini version of rolling like a ball. Knees come in, Yurok back an inch forward, back, hips down, legs out, reach on out, x or come back in three times. Row, two, three, hips down, legs out. Let's do two more here. Exhale, knees, come in, roll for three and two and one. And here's your last one, right? A touch my hands. Yes, an exit.

Come back in three and two and one rock is up all the way up to seated. Ah, spin around phase the other way. All right. And then we go back to something more familiar. All right, come forward with your feet against the Poles. Again, like your first exercise today, take the rollback bar. Again, this is sort of our replacement for spine stretch forward. You keep your arms straight in front of you, carried by the bar, the springs pulling up against you first. See if you can press the bar down a couple of inches and use that leverage of your arms getting stronger to lift your spine up. So as the springs open, make your spine open to slowly release that weight back up and you press down just enough so you can find that length against a to mash the openers of the springs and then you release the bar back up. Now at the round of your spine into this, you bring your chin over your chest.

You round yourself forward like you try to bring your head down right between your knees. You press the bar down. Along with that, use the leverage of the barge of puff up your back. Yes. Good. And then rolling yourself all the way back up. We'll do one more like that. Deep Inhale. Exhale around, up and forward. Take the bar down with you. Find more live behind your heart and lift yourself all the way back up. Oh Nice. You guys snuff from here, we're going to add the rowing back in.

Start the same way you take a spine stretch forward. You press the bar down towards your thighs. Now Start Bending your elbows. Pull the bar over your thighs. Start Rolling yourself back to that spot where you shoulders springs, line up. Stay. Keep the bar against your chest. Lift your spine back up at the top.

Release the arms forward. We'll do that one more time. Slow press down. Spine stretch. Pull about over your thighs. Lean your body back. Springs and shoulders line up. Keep the bar against your chest to keep the chest open. Lift back up. Now we got a little quicker. Stretch the arms roll down. Pull it back, pull in, lift yourself back up. Two more. Roll down. Pull yourself back.

Open the chest wider. Lift yourself back up. It almost feels like you spring up there at the end, right? Use the spring. Enjoy the spring. Lift yourself all the way up. Let the arms extend in front of you at the Bargo for just a moment. Then we'll do the same thing up on our knees.

Removing a little bit of our base of support makes it interesting for the body. It has a new way to approach the same movement. It has to reorganize itself quite differently. So they are in a great position right here about an arm length away from the pole system to start. We'll start the same way. Press the bar down as far as you can. Rounding your spine over.

It looks like you go into a four legged position, but your knuckles never get to touch the ground. Slowly roll yourself all the way back up from here. Release your head on top again. Up and forward. You roll. Press the bar down as you press the bar down the back of your ribcage. Lifts up towards the ceiling. Good. Felt that had extra space there.

Roll yourself all the way back up and one more time. Deep breath in and forget to where? Either roll yourself forward and down. No, stay here. Can you, without leaning your hips back, pull the bar against your knees and stay for three, for two, for one. Move the bar forward. Roll yourself all the way back up. Oh, isn't that nasty? Let's do that one more time. We're all up and forward. Chin over, chest round through your spine. Make more space by bringing the bar towards you. Yes. And then move the bar away from you.

Roll yourself all the way up so your feet flinging up behind you, your body shaking uncontrollably. That's part of the exercise. All right, now we're going into the full expression of this that has the same rowing in it, the same tie stretch at the end. All right, spine, stretch forward. Roll yourself down, hands to the ground. Pull the bar towards your knees. Now start to pull the bar up towards your chest. Back into your thigh. Stretch. Open the chest, shoulders and springs in line. Lift yourself back up with the bar against your chest.

Release your arms at the top. Go again. Rolling down, pulling in. Pull the bar up as you're rolling in and out. Keep the chest open. Lift yourself all the way back up. Let's do two more, a little quicker. Rolling down, pulling in, rolling back and lift yourself up. Let's take one more. Take it down. Shooting over chest.

Pull the buy against you. Lean your body back. Hold and spring back. I've stretched about away from you. Let that go. I believe it or not. We have one more variation of this later for right now. We'll give that a little bit of a break. We'll set up our push through bars with two springs from above depending on which manufacturer you work with. You might want to use one here.

It should be enough tension to give you some good feedback into the stretch. We're about to do. Play around with that at home we used to, here we come to a kneeling position. Let's have a right hand on the bar and then face out from there. So you're going to face the ocean to start and for the kneeling position here, we'll start with the feet together and the knees about hip distance apart and your right arm outstretched to the side. You take your left arm out the opposite way, like there's another push through bar underneath your arm. All right, we're gonna take a big side bend from here first.

We'll set up the position and see that we're in the right place. See if he can pull the bar down just half an inch without having to lean into it or away from it. If so, then you might have to adjust your distance from, it's slightly slowly lifted by backup and do that again. You pull the bar, about half an inch down, you feel all that strength comes through. You're back here at the same time. Lift your spine up super tall and then let the bar lift back up. We'll take one more like that. Press the bar down. Hold it there.

Stretch your left arm up against your ear like you're trying to touch the roof right above your head from here. Bend your spine over to the right. Your spine bending is what now moves the spring. Hold yourself in a stretch where your left knee can stay heavy against the ground. So don't take weight out of your left knee. Slowly roll yourself up sideways and we'll do it one more time. Pull the bar down, stretch your left arm up and lean up and over to the side.

Keep your left knee heavy. Avoid any arching here cause that's just going to steal your side. Then there and then slowly come all the way back up. We'll take one more and we'll add a little twist to that. Literally you pull the bar down, you stretch up, you reach over from here.

Think that you corkscrew your head towards the pole, lifting your chest up towards the ceiling. Good. At the same time, they'll push your left hip forward still. Does that feel good? Yes. So yes. Take a deep breath in and slowly roll yourself all the way back up. Left arm comes down that go over the bar and then face the other direction. Ah, thankfully you get to do it again because we have two sides. So now your left hand is on the bar. Your right arm is out to the other side. Give your hips a little, push forward, making sure that you're not sitting back into your flexors. You press four, which was stand up tall on your knees.

You press the bar down just a couple of times and just about half an inch against the push down. Lift yourself up. Keep the length, release the bar one more time. Press down a little, get taller lot. Hold that and release the bar right and lift up as the bar comes down. And if you're right, I'm up against you. You touch the rules above your head and then side bend over to the left. Think of the right side of your rib cage opening like an accordion or I do make lots of space here.

Breathe into that stretch and then a little lift yourself back up. One more time. Just that. Press the bar down that you're right on up. Stretch up and over. Get more length between your right fingertips and your right knees. Stretch them away from each other.

Breathe your rib cage open and lift yourself all the way back up. Ready for that twist. Press the bar down. Lift up to the right arm. Stretch up and over. Try to keep your hips level. Rotate your chest up towards the ceiling. Keep pushing your right hip forward at the same time. Breathe into that stretch.

Oh, I'm a little jealous right now. I have to say I want to do to lift yourself all the way back up. It comes through center and that is done. Nice work you guys. If bringing your arms over your head earlier on when we did, our rollovers was okay for your shoulders. We want to do our swan dive using the bar.

I think you guys are both ready for that. I take the bar down. Lay down on your stomach because we didn't know graceful getting into this. Watch your teeth. All right. Press your headphones down, bring your legs together, heels touch, toes apart if that's okay for your hits. Try to keep a connection between your legs as much as you can and then scoot forward so much that the bar is right in between your poles. So come forward and call just a little bit. Yeah, right there. Okay.

The feet are going to stay down for the first one. In a perfect world, the bar stays exactly where it is as well. Try to keep pushing forward against it as you lift your eyes up to look at it and maybe look up towards your roll back bar, maybe all the way up to the top of your tower, maybe to the roof until one day you see your own feet behind you. Until then you keep working in back bending and pushing forward all at the same time, lifting the bottom of your rib cage and then you push the bar away from you to come back down. The goal is not height, it's length, right? So you stretch your feedback, your head forward, you peel yourself up. What sort of bone by bone in a roll down is ribeye rib in this back bend here.

So you've come up sequentially, you try to maintain length in your lower back as much as possible and then slowly push the ball away from him. Come all the way back down and slowly is probably the last word you want to hear right now guys. Right? We'll take it a little bit quicker. Three more. Lift yourself forward and up and up and up and push the bar away from you. Come all the way down. Two more times you eyes lead the way. Bring your chin away from your chest.

Then reel your rib cage forward and up into the highs back when you've got beautiful and take it all the way down. Last one, I just had a fun idea. That's your swan dive here. Lift your chest forward and up and stay. Now come about halfway down to place where you feel like you could lift your legs. Actually to match the height of your head with your feet. Stay there if your chest a little higher. Rock forward and back. Rock and rock and rock and rock.

Keep your back bend head to feed for four, four, three, four, two, four, one. Slam on the brakes to come all the way down. Release your head. Take a deep breath in. Exhale and plan your escape wisely from here. All right. Don't let that Bargo against your head. I'm going to help you a little bit. Ah, nice work you guys.

We're going to counter that now with a forward bend. Um, it's our backstroke going into a teaser, so we'll adapt a little bit of the reformer work to a work here on the tower. I want you to spin around, faced the other way. Lay Down with your head, um, underneath the bar about a hand width away from the back of your space. Hold the bar with both hands from there and then bend your knees into your chest. Let's outline the movement first. It's very simple. Your head stays down for the first one. Here's another leg circle. I've done a gazillion of them already, right?

You set your leg straight up to the ceiling. Just start like a backstroke. You open the legs as wide as your mat. You circle your legs forward and down to the lowest sustainable point. You hold it and then you bend your knees back into your chest. You go again, you stretch your legs up, you open them as wide as you mat. You circle them forward and down, maybe a smidge further down maybe, and then you bend your knees back in. One more time. Legs go up. They open.

You circle them forward. Hold three. Hold to hold one, bend your knees into your chest. Now we're going to add a head, neck, and shoulder lift. The moment your legs meet in front of you. All right, stretch your leg straight up. Head is down. Open your legs. Head is down. Circle the legs forward. Lift your head, neck and shoulders up. Adjust to your shoulder bay tips for three, two, one. Keep the lift, bend your knees into your chest and once your knees meet your nose, you roll your head back down. Two more like that. Legs go up open. Circle everything forward. Feel like you try to come all the way up. But there's a seatbelt around your waist holding you back. Knees come into you.

Release your head at the end. One more time. Legs go up. Open. Circle forward. Hold it. Three, two, one. Bend your knees and more to get your low back to round and stretch. Release your head all the way down. And while you're here, just take your feet to the ground right in front of your seat. Open your feet about hip distance apart. Take weight into your heels.

Lift your hips up towards the ceiling. Just a stretch. Other friends of your heads for a second here. Think that the weight of your lifted hips goes away from your head and your neck. So you really reach your knees forward over your toes, strengthening the back side of your body here. Take a nice deep breath in and then exhale, roll the space behind your heart down first, try to sit your hips towards your heels more as you come down to find extra length there. And let's do that one more time because that feels really good, right? Lift your hips up, press your heels down into the ground, switch your knees forward and away from you. If you want to give your arm something to do here, almost feel like you're trying to push the bar away from your pole system.

Take a deep breath in and then roll the back of your heart down. Upper middle, lower back hits. Close that, do the heels. I just had a fun idea. What if we took that backstroke and turned it into a teaser? Let's try bend your knees into your chest. You guys don't seem very excited about that and yet I am very excited about that. Especially straight up to the ceiling. It starts the same way. You open your legs as wide as your mat and I'll circle everything forward.

Lift your chest up, lift your whole spine up into a teaser. Curly you hips under enough so that your legs stay up high. Now stay here. Bend your knees up into your chest to round out your back. Then slowly roll yourself all the way down and once your head is down, you start the whole thing again. Take your legs up open. Circle the legs forward.

Keep them high because this time you lift yourself all the way up. Can you push the bar up a little higher? Can You keep it high as you bend your knees in? Don't let that bar sing and then roll yourself all the way back down. Oh, all evil. Two more times, legs go up. Open. Circle everything forward lifted to the highest point possible.

I'm only looking at that bar. Keep it there. Bend your knees into your chest. Lovely. Roll it all the way down. Down, down. Here's your last one. I promise. Take your legs up open. Lift yourself up so high you no longer need the support of the bar. You take your right arm forward trying to touch your toes.

You take your left arm forward trying to touch your toes. You hold the shape but not the breadth for three. Give yourself that lift. It looks like a rollout, right? Can you make it feel like one, two and one with control? Roll yourself all the way down until your feet and your head land. Reach your arms over your head. Roll yourself up one more time. Leg.

Stay down this time. Take a stretch forward over your legs and exhale. If you have done awhile. Ah, flex your feet. Give yourself a nice little pool. Good work. Nicely done. We're not quite done yet though. We have two more things to do. Coming up to standing. Watch your heads you pushed through are still set up.

We are going to use it for a nice little squad action. Um, and a little roll down cause that's sort of our theme today, right? You hold on with both hands at shoulder distance. Okay. There. Yeah. Make sure that bar is out of your way. Your feet are hip distance apart and possibly ever so slightly turned out because that's typically a really good position to squat into.

I want you to think of this almost like a child's pose, but standing up, meaning your lower back gets the stretch of his life fully relaxed and you get the support of the bar. Sit yourself down, bend your knees, try to keep waiting. Your heels start to finish. Sit all the way down. Some people call this ass to grass, right? So you're trying to go all the way down. Since you have the bar in your hands, see if you can pull a little bit on it to lift your chest. Yes, exactly. But still keep your lower back, relaxed.

Take weight into your heels to push all the way up to standing again. Nice, good. We'll do that a couple of more times. Feels really great. Once you're down there, it's the way up. That doesn't feel all that great, but it's really good for you. Bend your knees, come all the way back down, down, down. Keep pulling on that bar so it keeps your chest active and open. Right? We've been teaching the body how to relax to the lower back and create a stretch there without slouching on top, keeping the chest open. That's true here as well. You come back up to standing, pushing the heels down without the hips having to go back first and we'll take one more like that. Take it all the way down. Enjoy this one and then press through the heels to come all the way back up to standing. Once your legs are fully straight, keep them straight.

Stamp your heels down into your mat. Keep your arm straight as well. Now we mobilize the spine. Bring Your Chin over your chest. Start to roll yourself down. Push the bar towards the ground as far as you can. Keep weight on your heels and your legs straight. Think about that spine stretch with the rollback bar earlier.

Remember how you are pressing down to create more space in your back. Do the same thing here. If that feels like it's doable too, you push the bar so far away from your spine, straightens out maybe into a little bit of a back. Then maybe you can even look at that bar. Take a deep breath, then reverse it all shin over chest. Puff your spine up and roll yourself all the way back up to standing. Sit down into a squat. Once you're up, bend your knees all the way down as to grasp.

Hold it for a second and stand back up. First year he goes into the ground, Chin over, chest, roll it down. One final time, a nice little stretch in a standing position with full support because next up we're going to do this with the arm springs standing outside where you don't have a steady bar to hold your in place. Roll yourself all the way back up. Feel your legs, own the weight of you. Lift yourself all the way up. You can let go of the bar and then step away. All right, so the final thing we do is the same theme move we have, which is taking spring way down with our spine. Switch forward, rowing it up towards our chest and then coming back up. We'll do it in the standing position. So we're going to finish off with some standing arms spring standing outside the tower. I'm challenging our base of stability, a little bit more about being upright and it will start to feel the notice right away. We're going to start with some boxing.

You're going to center yourself facing out right between the pulse and once you have the handles in your hands, always worth looking back and making sure that you're right in the middle between those two poles because sometimes that's deceptive. I'll check in with you as well. That looks great. You take your hands right against the front of your shoulders, your heels, that together your toes are apart for a nice wide base of support through your toes. And then from there without changing much, try to stamp your heels further back and down and lengthen the crown of your head up in direct opposition to that. Keep all of that length as you punch your right arm out in front of you. Stretch it out far. Feel the spring, pull the shoulder back, but try to keep yourself as square and level as possible. Retract the arm, take the other arm out and you stay with that tension for just a moment.

Let that left shoulder, pull back in space and then retract the elbow to come back in, right arm out. Push it away from you. Slowly take it back in, left arm out, and we'll do four more of those. Become less fascinated with your arms and more with the length between your heels and your head. Maintain that one more set right and left, and we're going to add a little rotation to that. You press your right amount in front of you once it's straight, pardon a punch that on so far out your shoulder follows you towards a rotate into the stretch, but your heads stay level. Slowly retract the arm. We'll do the other side. You push your left arm out. Once it's straight, reach into it. Keep your hips level, feel your back stretch almost like the saw, and then bend your arm back. We'll take one more each way, right them out.

Press it away from you. Punch it a little further out and away. Both heels heavy. Take it back. Here's your last one. Press your left arm forward and out. Try to create more distance between your left knuckles and your right elbows to create more of a twist and then slowly come all the way back in through center. Set yourself back into your feet just for a moment of rest.

If your toes were gripping the floor, you can just let them wiggle out for a second and then we'll take the hug next. It's the same stance. If you feel like you have too much tension from your springs, obviously you step closer to the tower. If you crave more, if you can handle it, then by all means walk forward would be my guest heels together, toes up, articular arms out to the side. Lean your whole body forward with your arms in your maximum wingspan. Find the same length again, heels lengthening down, crown of the head up indirect opposition.

And then pull your arms together away from your chest, widen your upper back and open the arms. Go again. Pull the arms together, open them far apart. And again, I'll step back, I think. So pull the arms together and open wide. So the mechanism of your arms coming together gives you more space in your upper back. Can You keep it as you open the RS? Close and open three more times. As you open the arms, feel how your chest opens. Can You keep that open as as you close? Yes. So you stay wide across the front of your chest as well as the back of your upper spine.

Once your arms out to the side that it carry you back onto your feet. Release the springs. And to finish up, we'll turn around, face our towers and to start off, position yourself about an arm length away from your poles. Remind yourself of that motion we did. Sitting down with our legs out in front of us. Roll back bar in hands, pushing down to pull up. We did a kneeling as well. Now we'll do it standing. First off, no spinal movement.

You just press your arms down by your sides and back behind you to engage the spring. Stay there for a second. Soft enough behind your knees that it doesn't pull you forward into your toes. Then lift the elbows up behind you. Try to keep tension on the spring as long as possible. Release forward at the top. Let's do it once more slow.

You go in and out of tension on the spring. So there's that awkward moment where you lose the tension a little bit at the top. Then you stretch the arms forward. Let's do it three times really fast. Press ADAP, pull it up and stretch it away. Pull it down, lift up, stretch away. One more time. Pull it down, lift up, stretch away. Now reverse it. Open the chest as you pull back. Stretch it down.

Lift the arms away from you for two and one more time. Back down and up. And that was only half the fun. We're going to add this vinyl rolled out into this. So think about what you just did with your push through bars and your hands. Bring Your Chin over your chest, roll yourself down.

Press your arms back behind you. Bend the elbows as you roll yourself up. Try to keep your hands behind your legs as you lift yourself to the top. Stretch your arms away from you. Pretty impossible, right? Try it again. Round up and over a promise. Second time already goes better. Arms go back, bend the elbows. Roll yourself all the way up. You can totally make noises with your mouth as well.

Roll it down if you feel like you need to squeak because you otherwise fall. I do think it doesn't help though. One more time. Press it down. Pull the arms back behind you. Lift back up. We're going to reverse it three times at this pace. Poly arms back behind your first roll yourself down, Shin over chest. Paul, the arms away from you. Roll yourself back up. Two more back. Roll down.

Pull the arms away from you and up. So this becomes more and more about your balance than about the movement itself because you've done it so many times. Lift yourself all the way up to the top. Now let's finish up really super strong and crazy. We'll do the same thing again. Three more times each way, twice as fast, or you ready? Straight down. So start pull them down and back behind you. Roll down. Pressmen back. Lift up and shoot. Roll down. Pull back.

Roll yourself up. Stretch the arms away from you. One more time and lift. Reverse it. Pull the arms back. Press down, Shin over chest. Roll Ab with control. Head is last to roll down. Lift the arms. Lift the spine. Last one back down. Arms pull forward. Lift yourself up. Step a little closer to your tower. Take a deep breath in.

Pull your arms down by your sides. Open your chest and try to bring your arms back behind. You. Pull in more air from the soldier feet. Feed through the crown of your head. XL. Release the springs. But keep the length. Do that twice more. Pull the arms back behind you. Expand to the chest, take in more air and exhale, release. Here's your last one.

Pull the arms down and back. Open the chest nice and wide. Press your knuckles back and down and away from you. Exhale, come all the way in, but the handles go. And I would say you guys are cooked. All said, nice work you guys. Thank you guys so much.

Comments

Z A
3 people like this.
Thank you:) i especially liked the rolldown with push through bar. Can we have a full studio workout from you next time?
Loved the backstroke and teaser variations. I think they'll be so much more accessible to many of my students than the traditional reformer exercises.
Thanks Benjamin! I really liked the flow between mat and tower exercises, the prep and... your cuing and energy were great!
Benjamin Degenhardt
Thanks so much—it's so wonderful to hear the feedback! ZA, you mean utilizing a variety of apparatus for a single session? That is a great request! Holly, it's true that in these variations I chose to use the Tower to provide support in the curl, which the Reformer typically resists. The Pilates system really shines in being able to magnify different aspects in each movement pattern, simply by applying the springs/load in different places. Let me know how you and your students get on! And thanks David, glad the energy comes through—we had so much fun filming this class!
Z A
1 person likes this.
Yes exactly. That would be great, i feel like I am in the studio having a private class in your classes. Thank you once more.
1 person likes this.
This was SO much fun to watch you filming, I have been anticipating its release so I can do it myself. It was even MORE fun doing it. Congrats my friend on another awesome, creative, and fun workout captured by Pilates Anytime. ??
Leelee
1 person likes this.
That was fun, a lot of work, but fun...thank you...
2 people like this.
Great session....definitely pulling some of this for mat too! Love the build to 100s, the build to backstroke & teaser, oh and the double leg stretch sequence. So much - even the cue of "under the water"....love love love thank you!
1 person likes this.
awesome class, I would like to see a class adding the Pilates Chair.
1 person likes this.
Loved the class! Can't wait to try it on my apparatus. I enjoy your cueing too.
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