Class #242

Energizing Reformer

35 min - Class
51 likes

Description

An energizing Reformer workout that starts with footwork both supine and side-lying, this eclectic class presents both classic and varied choreography with a slant towards exercises for the lateral sides of the body. The workout moves along providing a challenge for pace and flow. This brisk 35-minute class provides a full body workout with the Hundred, Overhead, Coordination, Short Box Round Back and a killer variation of Side-Overs/Diving For Pearls, Supine Chest Press, Swan, Knee Stretches--Round, Flat and Knees Off, Standing Side Splits, Half Skater and Front Split for hamstring and hip flexor stretches.
What You'll Need: Reformer w/Box

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Transcript

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All right. So tonight we're going to wanna do a little reformer work and we've got ourselves set on three springs. Um, I want to focus a little bit of lateral work tonight, so we'll do regular foot work, but some lateral foot work as well and some short box and some standing leg glides. Probably a little bit more in there as we go through. So let's sit on the edge of the mat, spiral the legs around. Let's go ahead and just do a nice easy roll down. And I think this evening we'll start with our first position.

Nice long tailbone reaching down rib cage anchored. Just take two nice deep breaths here and that sense of length and strength through the waist and through the spines. We'll take up eight repetitions. Here we go. Inhale. As we push away and exhale as we pull our floor itself in an inhale, push and exhale and pulling in. So right away as we start to push off the foot bar or push away feeling the work in the inner thighs are coming together.

Wrapping the back of the leg in toward the center line, making sure not to take the pelvis out of a level angle and return and to more extend and return. And last one. So let's just do a nice easy transition. Prehensile wrapping the toes and arches on the bar. Heels under. Inhale as we stretch and exhale, pull back and you think about not staying back out there too long. We get there, but we come back in with strength from the back of the legs.

We feel the open on opening of the hip, closing of the hip, and again [inaudible] two more [inaudible] the last time, Perez and all the way in. No transition tonight. Let's go ahead and point the feet. Extend the legs up. Just a nice flex of both ankles. Since the heels reaching up the ribs pulling down, sits bones out, tail down. And let's go ahead and bend the knees from there, placing the heels on the bar.

Engage the inner thighs back of legs. Inhale, push, exhale, return and lengthen. [inaudible] so always at leveling out of ribs and hips, prs and return. Getting a sense of length and strength and press pulling in press and pulling into more. All 10 toes flexed, pulled back last one and all the way in. Just a quick transition to second little moderate turnout. Here we go.

Press out and pull in. Same thing how to keep the going in the inner thighs as well as the back of the legs, the hamstrings. Imagine that big physio ball between the knees that we're holding against in pulling in on heavy ribs, connecting into those upper abdominals, flat low belly. Let's just take two more press and in and last one press and all the way in. Yeah, we'll do a transition. This is typical for me.

Extend the legs out on a diagonal. Let's go ahead and just flex and we're going to do a little pulsing in here. Thinking of reaching the heels out to the sidewalls, more external rotation, four, three, two and last one that was point the feet. Bring the legs up together using those inner thighs. We're going to roll back to parallel and just flex at the ball of the foot.

It ribs and sacrum down and let's place the high Relevate so we've got the heels lifted. Inhale and stretch. Exhale, pull in. Inhale and stretch. Exhale, pull in. So can we just get there? Full stretch, put, come in and stretch and come in for more. [inaudible] last one. Let's stay out there. Exhale, heels under. Inhale, heels up for calf raises and under and lift. So still working. The wrap in the legs. Work in that high magnet, high inner thigh four and up three and lift two and a big scoop in the stomach.

Last one here, we're going to right away into some gentle walking. So a lower lift and lower lift in, down and down. Explore the lift, sense of pulling up again, tall down and lift and eight more. One and two, three, four pooling up and five and six, seven last one, eight. And just bend the knees. Come in. We'll just give it a quick shake of the angles. Okay, so I'll leave it up to you. What you're springing tension. If you want, you can lower it to read if you'd like are two red and blue or say on three red for sideline. I'm going to go drop mine down to red and one blue as lie. On our right side, we have us Tucker right arm underneath and hold the shoulder rest that's near the front of us there.

And then let's take our left heel on the front corner of the bar in a turnout and then just check for a second. The bottom waist has that lift. You could easily slip your hand under there. Your hips are stacked just like we would be in sideline mat work. And then it's up to you where you'd like to put your left arm. Sometimes we'll put it up on the rest. Um, let's do that tonight. Okay, so again, inhale as you push the carriage and exhale is we come in.

So you've worked in the external rotation of that top hip without falling back. Exhale coming in. So we've got that same rib hip connection in the front and have this focus on the high hamstring, low glutes. Do more or less prs and in now press out. Hold yourself out there and stick a nice lift.

Now parallel the bottom leg. Let's flex that heel and I want you to pull the leg up. Think of inner thigh, the inner thigh. Inhale, lower the bottom leg. Exhale, pull the bottom leg up and inhale we lower again. Exhale, lift. Lower, says we're taking the leg up and down. Trying not to let the carriage move. Three more and lift lower abdominal still engaged.

Ribs and hips flat and last one. Pool up and lower bend that left knee. Come all the way in and we could roll the face. The other side. I'm gonna have to move this real quick. Okay. Okay.

During that turnout, top heel, [inaudible], bottom leg is long and parallel keeps her stacked and our bottom waist is lifted and working through the back of that high hamstring and lower glute. Here we go. Inhale and for us, exhale, return. Trying to hold that turnout. Inhale, press. Exhale. In Pool. Inhale, press and feel free to self. Q. If you'd like your hand on your knee, a little encouragement. We'll put the top of the hip, a little encouragement on the hip. Three more press and in and press. Yeah. And last one we're going to press and hold. Okay, so flexing a bottom heel. Paralleling the leg wasn't already.

And then the exhale. Pull that leg up. Inhale, lower down. Exhale we pool and lower. So that high inner thigh and the bottom leg active for more holding the carriage. Still down and pooling up. Two more. Pull up. And last one, pull up and lower. Point the foot. Bend your Tuck knee. And let's come all the way down. Roll ourselves up.

I'm going to have this changed down to one red, one blue. We can take our foot bar down for the hundred and also going to have us take her head rest down right now. Give us a nice preparation for the rollover. Alright, so let's begin with our legs and tabletop arms reaching up. Take a nice breath. Just start. Exhale. Let's curl ourselves up and open into the a hundred position.

A little turnout of the legs and pumping. Inhale, three, four or five [inaudible] so you get the good vigor. In our arm. Pump open chest. How long can the arms be against her sides reaching past the hips? [inaudible] do you want to go a little over with your legs? You could or not. I'm going to watch out for my back tonight. I can't test it today. Eight two, three, four, five and exhale. Nine two, three, four, five and exhale, 10 [inaudible] and hold. Bring it in.

Bring the arms up and just adjust yourself if you're nudged into the shoulder blocks. Yeah. All right. The rollover, the overhead. So let's take a nice position here. Anchor the ribs, take a good inhale. Exhale the arms down first, lifting the hips up, reaching the hips overhead, flex the heels, let the legs open about shoulder width, shoulder blade width, and then rolling down the spine. That strong. Reach into the arms. Open that chest. Let's just come to level pelvis. Point the feet. Bring the legs together, arms come back up. Inhale, arms down.

Feel the hips. Reach up first. Oh, overhead. Flex the legs open, just shoulder with rolling down bone by bone, pulling from the back of the sternum. Reaching along with those arms. Circle around. Inhale, arms up last time. Wow. And that flow of the spine, bone by bone coming down.

Okay. Again, in that level, pelvis, that's just bring our knees into a tabletop. Bend your elbows right against your sides. Let's do five coordination. [inaudible] two more. Getting a little more curl. That's it. Last one. [inaudible] and let's rest. Okay, let's hook our handles down.

We have us come back up off of our reformer and grab our short box for some short bucks. Okay. A little more abdominal work and grabbing the [inaudible]. I'm choosing not to use a sticker poll tonight. We'll just use our hands behind her head. All right, so sitting pretty close to the front of the box.

Let's do a wrap around the ribs and then take a second. I'm going to have us pull out on the strap with the ankles and try to stabilize that. Pull out quality. Okay. Rib Cage Jam. Let's start with a nice full breath sitting as tall as you can and the exhale is that, but contraction, belly contraction, rounding of the lower back. You can go a little farther. Probably tonight than I can so you can demonstrate going farther.

I'm going to stay on the shy side right now. Hold right here. Inhale. Now as we exhale, we dive in deeper contract forward, pooling that area and even more and rolling up to vertical set. We'll do a total of six and it's a dynamic contraction trying to reach those lumbar. Let them open up back. Don't you get that sacred Tuthilltown under. Let's hold there. Inhale. Excellent. Exhale, curl forward. Ah, rolling up to sitting. And again, exhale, sacrum going under and down toward the back of the legs. Hold. Inhale, exhale and round [inaudible] three more. Of course we're going to put the other arm on top.

Inhale and exhale pool. So those abdominals ribs pulling in away from those risks and forearms. Tilt up, pelvis started dry that sacred under excellent hold. Inhale and exhale, curl. Pull out on the strap, diving over the thighs in heels, sitting tall, do more. And we exhale. Contract. Really get a visual image that I'm trying to make this very convex to open those lumbar back. Hold. Inhale. Exhale. Keep the lumbar back cause we round Uber.

Excellent sitting tall. Those lumbar restore to their position last time. Exhale, curve [inaudible], round, round, round, round, round, round, round. Go, go, go, go win hill. And exhale. Hey, good and rounding up vertical center. All right, hands behind her head. So let's start right here and it's still pulling out on the, his strap.

One is to hinge forward. So of course for you and I, that's fairly easy to do. We've got to work to stabilize our ribs so we remain very long in our thoracic to lumbar. Okay, so we're going to come back to this position each time. More lift in our sternum. Now let's just take an easy hinge back through. We're thinking of weight shift to the back of the sitz bones is called that. In inhale, the exhale is going to bring us forward.

Inhale, hinge up and back. Of course might be like a little like the neck, Paul and Matt work. Exhale forward and again, pulling out on that strap. Shoulder blades down. Exhale, lift up a little more. Hinge forward. Tuck the ribs in sternum. We've got two more. Inhale, hinge and exhale up. And last time. Sure. When is going to give us a little extra? Something here. Hinge back. Now from the hand is go into the round back position.

Flex the tailbone under curve. Let's grow back into the hinge and [inaudible] grow and pull it forward. Okay, a couple more. So it's taking the two components together in hold. Breathe now lengthen into good into the flection. Top of the head, tall sacrum under. So now those points re extend and a lift. Lift, lift ribcage and back into the hinge.

And again, inhale, hinge back. I'm going a little too far, so I'm going to minimize my movement. I felt myself around getting a little too excited and then coming into the hinge. Find those lats. That's it. And up over the sitz bones. Okay, one more hinting back and contract and hint, grow that hinge and forward and then up to vertical in this rest. Great. Okay, so let's turn. I'm going to have us turn. So a right knee leaves the strap or leaves the left leg stays in.

Okay, so lean out over your side. You can have your right Shin level with the front of the box that find a good lean, a good, nice tight pull into the strap. And let's go ahead right away and just have our arms. Let's do this position. Left arm over our head, right arm, reaching past the left hip. And if I could, I'd hold both of your hands and pull you in the opposite directions. All right, so just spend a moment in the pool, the region, both sides. So we're gonna focus on this top exposed waist on an exhale.

Contract those obliques to pull yourself up a little bit. Now hold there, rotate to face the floor without letting that pelvis drop forward. So we're really working on upper body spinal rotation. Now go ahead and round your spine there. Okay. And then work from here. Reach out into the flat back. As best as you can assimilate, re rotate.

Reach top arm over, left term under. Now use those leftover bleaks. Pull up, rest your foot on the front platform and do a counter stretch. Okay, so we'll go through that with a little more flow three times. So let's pick a breath. Exhale, arm over and under. Lift, contract, rotate and reach. Oh, we can add a little spinal flection. Dropping the head and coming out. Lengthen.

Find your rotation. Top arm over. Bottom arm under reach. Try not to float. Pull the arm. It's the waist lift. Place the foot counter stretch. I'm holding onto the front of the blocks. Yeah, that's okay. And two more. Sure. You use your obliques, not the top arm. Up and over.

Counter stretch. Last time left our mover. Right arm under reach like crazy. Pull yourself up with your waist. Rotate over. That's it. Keep the breath and top arm over. Reach with the bottom arm. Now use those obliques up. We come. Place the foot and counter stretch and just hold that for another full breath cycle in and out. Okay, other side.

Okay, so pulling out on the ankle strap. Get a good hold. She level. Okay, so I think we know it fairly well, but let's just spend a moment to check in. Right arm is going to be over shoulder blades, down, left arm reaching. How far can you reach him? Both directions. All right, so really stretching and exposing this top side. Now use that contraction to pull up.

Rotate toward the floor open. Can you stretch your arms out farther? Drop the weight of the head. That's it. Now we come up work to go toward a flat line. Then rotate top arm over bottom arm under using the obliques. Place the foot and counter stretch. Okay, three more.

[inaudible] lift into that side. Bend two more. So always finding how can we lengthen through the body to strengthen everywhere. Over lift, rotate. Reach with both arms. Now use those obliques. Lift the torso and side Ben Rib cage back one more time.

[inaudible] [inaudible] this is sure to whittle the waste away. Yes, and up we come. Place the hand. We'll spend a couple of breaths there. [inaudible] all right. Yeah, let's rest. Good. Okay, so I want to move us into a little bit of a long box. Just yeah, let's take our head rest up. We don't really need it down. I think a red, I'm going to go low bar and go chest down. Hands on the foot bar. So are chess line right at the front of the box.

Hands on the edge of the bar and forehead from my forehead in new ways. Just barely hovered above the Ja. The foot bar. Yeah. So let's just spend a second again engaging the abdominals there we go. Up and to linkedin out that Lumbar, just relax the legs. We're going to easily just press the carriage back and forth, not lifting the torso at all.

Just an easy press and exhale as we come forward. Think of reaching the elbows out sideways to the sidewalls. If the foot bar where rubber band, we could actually think of, you know, pooling this outside ways. Yeah. So pull the elbows left and right four more times and as we know with two arms working at the same time, we don't really feel if one side's working more than the other side or the lateral side, if something's working more unilateral. Ms. Gaines. So let's go ahead and just keep your non dominant hand.

So I'm going to keep my left because I'm a righty up on the bar. I'm going to put the other arm just back behind my back, just resting and we'll take six repetitions, single arm, and just check in as you work the single arm that your body doesn't rotate to the side or roll to the side of the hip. Roll off the base of the ribs. Ideally nothing should shift and using the one arm [inaudible] last time and yeah. Okay. Changing hands and just noticing of course a much different sensation or ease. Most likely.

[inaudible]. If we could check out the front of the body, our ribs and hips would be in that nice flat line. Three more [inaudible]. Last one. Okay. Now I would like us to place both hands on the bar and then without pushing the carriage away, reach the sternum forward.

Start inviting some upper back extension and then a little more in the back extension. Well, I'm more in the back of cinch and there we go and just hold. Let's take a nice inhale as we push the carriage length in the front of the chest, down onto the box, and exhale as we begin lifting work to imprint the pubic bone and hip bones onto the box. All right, and again, just two more full extension to go back. I think that this also is a nice, delicious abdominal stretch here. As we're coming up, it doesn't pop out. It just linkedins up, up, up. We've got one more inhale as we press long chest. Exhale, come forward. There we go. We're going. Just bend our elbows out and bring our chest all the way down.

Okay, so let's go ahead and take our long box away the box away. All right. I'd like us to come around for some knee strip series. So two reds high bar. Good. Okay, so toes tucked. This is good. Turkey, man. Hell vis under ribs back. Stupid. That low belly. Yup. And then expose those backbone bones back. Nearly reached the spine back. Okay, so let's go with 10 reps. We know again, we're going to accent the end.

Here we go. He's just passed hips. Four, five, six, seven. [inaudible] and hold extend sternum up, tail bone, back rib cage, back. Here we go 10 times and push and we can go a little farther, but not without releasing those rooms and it's like wearing that corset and four accent in and too. Last one in round again. Now let's go ahead and put weight into the hands.

Stand up, bend your knees a little bit. Keep those heels back. All right, going to descend slowly. As we descend slowly we're bending the knees, but keeping the spine elevated. Let's go with eight repetitions. Here we go and [inaudible] and carefully come down. God. All right, fantastic. So let's come up. We're going to take our foot bar down again, one red, no others standing right up, kind of out right in front of the foot bar. So we'll step up our platform up to the carriage toes in line with each other and go ahead and look down to check that space. Pelvis nice and flat. Let's go ahead and just have Jeannie arm position here again.

So working more these lateral edges, pushing the carriage. We'll do 10 we want to feel work in both phases. Pushing out, but also as we come in, push, come in like we're squeezing the inner thigh, pelvic floor and again progress. The farther we go out, the more rib hip, that nice flat line in the front. Two more times. Good. And, and, and last time. And, and okay. So let's go ahead and just take the hinge forward again. When you have this change your hand position back behind the lower back or sacrum and you, depending on how you feel, if you want to go a little lower in the squat, of course you're loading your legs and your glutes.

Who can stay a little higher in the chest. I'm going to go down a little bit and then the standing leg stays absolutely still. Of course it's the inside like hold right there. Just hold it. Feel that we're right on the side of the Tush and coming back in with control. So this like stationary press hold. I like to think of reaching inner thigh to arch a foot and then coming in prs as well as hip to heal.

Good and coming in and press and coming in and strong hips. And coming in three more. Also Nice level foot through, easy to over-rotate the foot and lean out to the lateral edge. So all parts of the foot, even picto cross to Pinky toe and [inaudible]. Let's take one more per asshole and all the way in.

Now from here, one is just a round over. Oh, just let the weight of the head go. Take a nice breath in, roll up to standing, keep shifting the weight forward and we'll back. We'll walk backward off the reformer. I'm walking in front of you this way. And then other side. Oh thanks. Good jokes right in the middle of our carriage and our platform. Looking down to see the evenness of our feet coming up.

If you can remember which arm was on top, rear hips. Here we go in Perris. And again, you're pulling with the inner thighs kind of slowing down the return, the carriage, slowing it down, resisting and press okay. But also going taller through the top of the head Perez and explore going out. Prefer a few if you're feeling okay in your knees, I think you are tonight. Yeah, your pelvis goes right along with the carriage pointing, straight down press and in two more prs and in [inaudible] last time we'll press out and we'll come back in for that half skater, lateral hip. So again, we're finding out squat hands back behind the small of the back knee is tracking straight ahead, standing leg, absolutely stable, strong to hold our body weight, push with the outside leg hold and then coming back in parece and whole and coming back in. That's it. So can you can think about inner thigh reaching, connecting, lengthening toward the arch of the foot, the hip to the outer heel bone and in ribs or in [inaudible]. See what it feels like to maybe shift the weight slightly forward on the more on the front of the foot and n three more prs and [inaudible] and to last time prs and in. And then the same way we finished the other side. Just rounding over.

You can see the world upside down for a second. Can I use breath? Roll up, sacrum down, shifting the weight more over the balls of the feet, ruling up to standing. We'll do finish things with those stretch for our hips, hip flexors. So I think we'll come up to a high bar. Okay. And let's go with the red and blue spring. All righty. Wow. Okay. Always a surprise.

And then the left foot will start up on the flip bar. Left right foot back by the shoulder rest. Excuse me, I need to get re situated. Make sure that's in. Okay. And let's go ahead and put the foot there on the bar. Hold for just a second. Now, how far can you bring your kerogen?

Let's see what happens if we pull that carriage all the way forward. Put in quite a bit of bend in the front knee. See if that feels okay. What I want us to do here is start pushing the carriage back. Keep the chest down over that front knee and also let the head hang a little bit. And you know you don't have to go to a full straight knee, but you can absolutely. I want you to keep that head down. So it was double stretch, hamstrings, gross hip flexors and quadriceps.

And just notice this may feel easier than if we were to keep our backup into a flat back, which we may try on the next stretch. Okay. So let's go ahead and bend the front knee. Keep coming forward with your chest down over your leg. And maybe one more time like that and do what you need to do for the stretch. Um, here we go.

Okay. And then coming forward. Okay. So do we have that much extension when we're flat? Okay. What did I keep thinking of that back leg being straight. Yep. A lot of times people tell me anyway, hey man, I can't go.

My arms aren't long enough. So you go where you can, if you stretch the muscles, you can go, that's it. Reach your left. Sit Bone back. More left hip back. Yeah. Think of pulling that left hip back towards your office, that heel that's working as square, that hip. So if we're doing climate tree, the same thing, squaring those hips forward. Okay. Now let's go ahead and bend the front knee. Come and we'll do one more like that. Hand back. So sternum up if down. Yeah. Good.

All right. And coming all the way in. Let's chain step down onto the carriage with that foot and up with the right. No, I'm pretty well. Right in the center of the bar. You absolutely could be a little bit farther up to the side. Alright, so chest down, head down.

So let's work to stretch the carriage open both leg straightening, chest down. Don't forget the importance of abdominal connection or scoop here. Ah, and as we're coming forward, bending the front knee, getting a good long stretch in that left hip and back again. Different side, huh. Okay. So then as we come in, coming forward, going into more of a back flat back position. Here we are stretching out so we can get that. I'm going to work my right hip now, reaching that right hip back, chest up, rib cage down. And Dan going forward and last time pressing out just square the hips, pulling that right sitz bone, right hip, back long to the back knee.

Let's do one nice big inhale. Exhale coming forward. And to get off of the carer, just go ahead and just step that foot down and step off to the side. I'm going to have us do one nice, easy standing roll down does here, and just taking the head and shoulders forward, putting a little finish to the class, finish to your workout, and then rounding all the way tall, shifting the weight forward over the balls of the feet. So much that I fall forward and rounding all the way up. All right. Thank you very much.

Comments

the video kept pausing
Loved the flow and transitions, enjoy all your classes thank you.
Lorraine
Thank you Lorraine!
Thought that this workout was very good and will definitely do it again :) Thanks!!
Thank you Meghan...hope to talk to you again! Have fun with Reformer work....it's really wonderful stuff!
This seems like it could be a good short workout but I can't get passed the frequent pauses in the video - you might try and upload the video again OR re-record the workout.
Hi Lara, Sorry to hear you're having trouble with the video. This class has been on the site since August of 2010. There isn't anything wrong with the video itself. Sometimes its bad connection, but I've also learned that if you have a lot of programs open it can slow things down, or if you havent turned off your computer in a while...maybe check that?

Hi Lara........thanks for letting us know that you were experiencing some stops/pauses with the video. I agree with Kristi 100%.......with too many programs running, videos will absolutely run funky. Did you try this solution? Did it help? I sure hope so as I'd love for you to be able to take that class. I will be doing more Reformer classes for the site so please do check back for new classes from me/us. Thank you!
Hi again Lara....I just watched the class again and had no problems with it stopping. I did close all other programs and it worked just fine.
GV
Great class. I am using a home machine from QVC, so I can't do everything the exact way the instructor did, but I did the best I could, and I feel like I got a good workout. I also don't have a box, so I just rolled off my machine and did some floor work (roll-ups and neck pulls) during that portion.
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