Class #2535

Two Different Reformers

35 min - Class
302 likes

Description

See two different Reformers in action during this workout with Kevin Bowen. He has DJ using a Balanced Body Studio Reformer while Kristi uses the AeroPilates Stamina at Home Reformer so you can see the adjustments that need to be made when using equipment by different manufacturers. He shows how each exercise can be translated to different brands, even if your equipment uses springs or bungee cords.
What You'll Need: Reformer w/Box

About This Video

Transcript

Read Full Transcript

Hello everyone. I'm Kevin Bowlin and I am here with my two lovely assistants. I have Kristy Cooper and DJ Lionello and we're going to do, or I should say they're going to do a workout on two different pieces of equipment. One is a balanced body studio reformer, and the other one is an aero [inaudible] stamina at home reformer. So take a close look and you might see some different adjustments that are being made. A, this is Christie's reformer and she's going to show you how to use it to, to work at home. Ladies, come on over here and let's start inside and it's going to be very simple. I want you to sit down and stand up. Yes. Sit down and stand up. Ah, we've got six more. We're going to sit down and stand up. Listen to me when you sit down, stick your butt out in the spread at ou and stand back up. Did I say that?

I did sit down and stand up. You can put your hands on your quads now. Sit down and stand up and let's try three more. One more, down and up. Two more down. End Up in this last one. You get to stay down. Excellent. Now bring your feet in front of you and line them up. Parallel, hands on your quads nice and lightly and all I want you to do is come up on your toes and come back down and we're going to go up and down, up and down. Let's go for more, up and down, up and down, up and down, and stay up on this last one and roll across the toes. I decide, however you want to do it, you can sway your knees.

You can go in opposition. It's up to you or we could, yes, it would be nice to have some music with this workout and swirl your feet around. Rotate them around, go external, go internal, whatever feels good and get your feet moving a little bit. Very good. Get yourself in position. I'd like you to lie down on the reformer and you're probably, yes. Let's put on four springs and Christy is using something a little bit different on this piece of equipment, which they're bungee cords, so she's got four on as well. Let's start in parallel. Come on up, get into position, and we're gonna go pressing straight out and coming back in.

Let's just go 10 times and we're gonna adjust it a little bit. So pressing out and coming in, moving out and in. Excellent. Press and come in. Lengthen your legs completely and come in. Good. Breathe into your body. Breathe into your back.

Stabilize yourself there on the reformer out. And let's do two more and in and last time. Good. Now listen, we're going to go out. Stop Out, stop out, stop and come on in. So we go out, stop out, stop all the way and come in out and stop out and stop out and stop and come in and again, out, out, out and in. One more, and then we're going to reverse out. Out, out, and in. Now push out. Come in, stop in, stop in. Stop again. Press out. Lengthen in, stop in, stop in, stop again. Press out and in, in, in the last time, out in, in, in press. Outstay their work. Just the feet.

Lower your heels and lift up on your toes. There we go. Lower your heels and lift up on your toes. Keep your legs aligned, keep them straight. Check your pelvic alignment. Excellent. Good. Well let's go for more only eight and up three. Good. Last two. And Bend your knees. Bring the carriage on back. Excellent.

Let's go to a wide second position to bring your heels out and drop your knees open and we're going to make sure we have our knees lined up over our toes. And you're going to push out from here and come back in. Check your pelvic alignment, pressing out and coming in. Good. Keep your stabilization. Excellent. And come in for more. Press out. So as you can see, we're just doing eight of everything on the foot work. Yeah, good. And come in, bring your legs back to the center, back to parallel onto your Meta tarsals. Press out again.

Stay out and lower your heels and raise up on your toes. Eight times. We're going back to this. There you go. Enjoy the movement. Really drop in, work through the feet and up. Good. Stay in this position. We're going to change it. We're going to go down to three and up to three and down to three to three and down, down, down. Good. Try to go smoothly now down, down, down and up to three and down and up to three again, down and up to three. One more and up to three.

Bend your knees and bring the carriage on home. Excellent. Put your head rest down. Come into a parallel position. I want to have a deep Cox six curl and lift the pelvis up to keep the coccsyx curl. Very deep. Place your hands back on your gluteals to see if they're working, if we had the smile muscles working. So lift up, hold it there. Place your palms flat on the reformer. Push out almost to a straight leg.

Stay for four, three, two, one and come in yet. It's a little tight, isn't it? And again, press out. Stay up. Hold it. Therefor three, two, one and come on in. You only have two more to do. That's all breasts out. And hold two, three, four and come in. And one more time. Press out, hold two, three, four and come on in lower. All the way down. Pull your knees into your chest. Give yourself a nice stretch. Oh, that's what we need. More stretches please. More stretches.

Now Rock yourself side to side a little bit. Loosen up your lower back. Okay. And Go ahead and let's sit up and we're going to adjust the reformers to go to two springs. Okay, DJ, you're going to put your foot bar down, Christie, you can leave yours up and you're going to lie back down and you're going to pick up [inaudible] DJ, pick up your long loops and Christie, your long loops as well. And we're going to do a little upper arm work and a little abdominal sequence. Yes. So bring your legs into tabletop, lift them up in the air, put your feet together, separate your knees apart.

But I want your inner thighs working cause you're squeezing your feet together. Your arms are lengthened up, your shoulders are open, your collar bones are going out to the side and lower down. Lower your arms and lift back up. And again, lower them down, lift them up two more times. We'll lower them down, lift them up, check out where your body is in space on top of that reformer. Lift them up, lower them down. Hold them down, Ben, that your elbows and lift your forearms. Press your forearms down. Lift your arms straight up in the air. That's it. So we pull down elbows.

Stay glued forearms. Bend up four arms. Press down. Full arm lifts up in the air. Two more. Pull down, elbows stay down. Lift up, lower down both arms. Lift straight up. You've got one more to go here. Press it down. Elbows glued up, down and lift. Head and arms together. Peel off, round up. Look at your belly, dig it in and returned back where you came from.

Keep your legs energized. Keep your feet together. Pull up, round up, hold and release. Go back down. We've got two more rounded up. Hold it there and release and go back down. You've got one more. You're going to hold this position. Hold that position. Reach through your, spread out your shoulder blades a little bit as they slide down your back. Slide your legs out. Hold it together right there. Belly in. Breathe.

Lower your legs, six inches and lift them six inches again. Lower them six and lift them. Six two more. Lower and lift. Oh yes. Lower and lift. Bend your knees in and your arms lift. Your head lowers and you can put your ropes and your straps away.

Ah, happy day. Happy Day. Rock yourself up. Okay, we're going to do a little bit of rowing. So we're going to turn around and face the back end of the reformer. DJ will keep her foot bar down. Christie will actually keep her foot bar up. Now pick up your ropes and your loops and cross them over so you have a little bit of an exposition this way. Yeah. And then bring your arms up.

So think of this reverse hug a tree, squeeze your shoulder blades together and bring them back. Now two springs, maybe too much. One spring is enough. Christine, want me to lower the Bungee Lord? Okay, so you're on two and DJ's on one pull in. Squeeze feels similar. Excellent. So there is where you see some differences with the equipment. You've got three more to do. She's two bungees. One red spring here. Good DJ.

Excellent. Last one. Great. Let's uncross these. Okay. Reach your arms forward and hang on and rotate and pull your arms back and down so your elbows come in alongside. There you go. Not Quite, not quite. Just pull straight back and down. There you go. And reach out. Pull straight back. There we go. Okay, good.

Feel as if your upper arm is really doing all the work as you pull back. Excellent. Kristie. Excellent. Three more. Good DJ. Keep this low. Bring it in. Good. We've got one more. You're going to stay in the back position. Hold it right there. Press back an inch further and inch further, an inch further and release all the way. Great, but those down, we're going to turn around and we're going to face forward.

Very good. Okay. We're going to do a little rowing towards the front. Ah, okay. Kick up your loops. Start with your hands underneath. Come up, rotate. Come in, press out, rotate, pull down. So we're just doing a little rotating sequence, a little rotating sequence.

If I wanted to have a lot of fun, I could say something else, but I'm not going to [inaudible] and rotate and pull back. Keep your elbows close into your body. There we go. Pull back down. We've got one more. Reach it up. Hold it there. Reach up higher and circle around and come down. Good. And again, reach up. Hold it there. Reach up higher and circle around and come down. And one more time.

Reach out. Hold it there. Come up a little higher and circle around and come down. Cross your legs. We're going to hug the tree. It's California, California. Pretty close, but okay, it's Granola time. Here we go. Hug the tree. Good, nice and tall. Pull out of the top of your head. Think Elongation.

The least amount of effort to hold this position and do the work. Not the most good. Squeeze in two more. Pull it in. And last one. Hold it there. Raise up. Oh, go down. Open. One more. We're going to come in, hold it, lift up, come down, open and release down. Move your shoulders around. Ah, I know that's a little tough. Yes, yes. And let's do this.

We're going to go in and out and in and out. Ah, one more time. In and out. Excellent. Put those loops down. Let's grab our boxes. We're going to put our long box on and I'm going to put Djs foot bar up in the high position here or higher position and lock it into place. And Christie is going to, we're going to go long box and Christie. Now we're going to get on the boxes with the head facing the foot bar. Do a little swan exercise.

Christie's adjusted her foot bar to the second position, which is straight up. So onto your boxes. Mount the box. There we go. Get on, relax your head, relax your neck. Put your hands on the foot bar, lengthen your body out and hover your legs in the air. Great. Just use your upper body, straightening your arms, elbows wide and come back in only four. Here we go. Press out and come back in. Great.

Push out and come back in. And one more time. Excellent. C'Mon and drop your elbows down, reconfigure your shoulders to get an uncomfortable position. And again, press out. Good DJ. You may even want to slide a little more forward too and come in. There you go. Trying to get into the back of the arms, pressing out and coming in. Don't forget we got to hover the legs in the air so everything is working.

One more here. Stay out. Now Arches. You come in, lifting your body up and press back out. Beautiful. And Bend your elbows and come back in. We're going to do two more of those. Push out. Good. Come all the way up. Lengthen, open through the shoulders. Beautiful. And press back out and come back in and last time push it out.

Pull it there. Lengthen and arch. Draw up, support it and press back out and bend. Your elbows can come in. Excellent. You can step off. Yay. Okay, we're going to put 'em Djs foot bar down and we're going to do pulling straps. We're going to lower Christies a little bit and her legs are going to hover. There we go.

So we've got the foot bars down and we're going to do pulling straps. So they're going to get on the boxes facing the other direction. Christie's foot bar's going to stay up. DJ has one spring on and Christie actually has two bungee cords, which tend to work better for this piece of equipment. Just a slightly forward, we're going to choke up on our ropes so we can reach forward. We're going to lengthen our legs out, hover them up in the air and we're going to inhale and pull our arms straight down and back and lift up and exhale and return.

Excellent. Two more. Inhale and pull. Exhale and return. Great. One more. Hold it there. When you get in that position, lift your chest up, keeping the elbows hugging in tight to the body. Bend your elbows. So we're going to do a little tricep work and press back out. Excellent. Bend and press back out. Two more. Press out.

And one more time. Hold it. Lift your chest up higher. Draw the ABS up inside you. Lift the legs up in the air and release and go back to where you came from. Ah, reconfigure yourself. Slide your hands down so you can have a wide position. And come into the tee position. Open your arms out to the side, get nice and strong, lift your chest up a little bit and let's rotate the shoulders open and inhale as you pull your arms in and exhale as you open them out to the side.

DJ is hanging onto her straps. Christie has her hands reaching through the straps. Two more please. Ladies. Inhale and exhale. And one more time. Inhale, hold it. Hold it. Pull your arms in closer to the side of your body. Lift your chest up in the air and release. Ah, put those ropes down.

Put those loops away and breathe a big sigh of relief and we have to hold those positions. Woo. That was a fun thing. Okay. Since we have the box on, let's leave it on and turn it for the short box and we'll make a couple of adjustments here. That would probably work out for everyone. I'm going to have DJ put all of our springs on so she doesn't have to deal with the carriage and moving. And Christie's going to do the same thing with the bungee cords. Uh, this has, this reformer has a very narrow strips. So to make it a little easier on your feet or your ankles, I should say, in the tops of your ankles, Christie is actually putting a towel underneath the strap to protect her skin.

And DJ, um, has a wider strap and she doesn't have to do that. So we're going to do the basics. Let's just get up in this position. Push one arm out, put one arm in, sit up tall. Inhale to prepare an exhale round back. Go out halfway. Lengthen back. Hold it there. Inhale, exhale, round, back up again.

Come all the way over, all the way over, all the way over. Straighten your upper body and go back again. Inhale, exhale, round back. Inhale there, exhale round and come back up. Come all the way over. Stack your spine into its neutral position. Inhale, exhale, round back in deep. Hold it there. Rotate to the right. Come to the center, rotate to the left. Come to the center. Inhale, exhale, come all the way back up.

Round forward, straighten out one last time. Just like that. We're gonna do it again. Exhale back. Inhale, exhale, rotate. Center, rotate, center. Inhale and exhale and round. Back Up. Excellent. Excellent. And Stack your spine so it's in neutral and good. Bring your arms up higher. Okay. Ha. Yes, yes. And we're going to rotate and you're going to lean out.

You're going to come back up and you're going to come to the center and rotate around. Rotate. Lean out, come back up and come to the center. Rotate. Lean out. Hold that there. Try to rotate a little bit more and come back up to the center. Rotate around, rotate. Lean out. Hold it. Try to rotate a little bit more. Oh, and come back up and come to the center. Excellent. Put your hands up here.

Ah, palms facing forward. Elbows wide. Air The pits out. Can I say that? Here we go. Okay. Pull up tall. Pull up tall and lean back. It's okay to smile and laugh a little bit. When we do police. Jeez. Who wants an uptight teacher? Okay, lean back and come back up. Good.

Pull up nice and tall. Get really low and hinge and come back up. We got one more. We're going to go back. We're going to stay there or we're going to smile. Oh, look at that. It's a beautiful ceiling. It's lovely. The windows were just cleaned.

Come back up and relax. Oh, that was so good. I'm a little light headed right now myself. Okay, let's go side over the box. So we're going to turn and we're going to start with the right leg in. So turn sideways. Good. Keeping the leg bent. The left leg is bent. You're going to lower your body completely over so you can get a nice big stretch. This is your desert. We're going to start with dessert. Okay?

Come into a comfortable position. Make sure that your pelvis is stacked so that your hip bone on top of the hip bone. Okay? Rotate forward a little bit and rotate back. It should feel good. Don't go too far back. Rotate forward a little bit and rotate back.

Put Your right arm at your side. Bring your left arm behind your head and cup it there. And we're going to lift up and go way down. Go way down. Bend at the waist, lift up and go way down. Low, low, low, low, low. One more time. Lift up. Hold it there.

Bring both arms out and extend them over your head and smile. Hold the position. Come up a little higher and release and come all the way back down. Just let it go. Go back to dessert. Dessert. I like dessert. Good. Rotate back and forth a little bit. Excellent. Excellent, excellent.

And let's come on up and switch to the other side. Sometimes you might get a little nauseous when you're hanging over like that and you come up too fast or you might get a little dizzy. I know I do. Okay, so get yourself in position. Yeah, and if I do, I stay up until it passes and then I move on. Because if you continue to move too fast, you're liable to lose it. Okay. Go all the way down. Let's have a little dessert stretch into it. This is your time.

Roll forward and backward a few times just to get a little loose. Okay. It should feel good. It should look good and it's good. Okay. Get into position now. Put your left arm at your side and your right arm behind your head.

Come on up and we're going to lift up and lower weighed down again. Lift up and lower, weighed down. Good. Lift up, lower weighed down. And this time come up and hold the position and reach both arms out over her head. Hold it there. Come up a little bit higher. Ah, and releasing. Come down, drop all the way down and give yourself your dessert again. Stretch out real forward and back. Excellent.

Very good ladies, it's time to move on. You're going to come up off your box, put your box away. We're going to put the foot bar up and we're going to go to two springs and two bungee courts and we're going to do long stretch, so you need your head rest up as well so your feet can go in there and then go ahead and TJ, you're going to start here standing and you're going to put your feet into the headrest and your hands on the foot bar, right hand, left hand, right foot, left foot. Get into position and try to hold it, keeping your body nice and straight and in alignment and push back. Inhale as you press the carriage back. Exhale as you bring the carriage home again and again. Inhale as you push back, try not to bang the carriage on the way in.

Exhale as you come back home again. Inhale, push back. Exhale, come in. Good. Keep your alignment. And again, inhale, push back. Exhale, come home. Take your right leg, lifted a little bit in, place it on top of your left and hold it there. Zip up through the thighs. And here we go. Inhale, push back. Exhale, come forward. And again, inhale, push back. Exhale, come forward. Open it up and he'll push back. Exhale, come forward. Hold the position, take the right leg off, place it back down, lift the left leg up, place it on, get in alignment. And here we go. Inhale, push back. Exhale, come home. With that said, and again, don't bang the carriage. Inhale, push back. Exhale, come home. Two more. Inhale, push back. Exhale, come in and last time, inhale, push back. Exhale, come in, take the left leg off, kneel down, and sit back and rest a moment.

Just you can push the carriage out if you'd like. Ah, okay. Let's try a little down stretch. So kneeling hands on the foot bar. Kristie has her foot bar set straight up. It could also lean forward, but it depends on what position is the most comfortable. Okay, pull in, stabilize your lower back, open your chest up and press back. Inhale, exhale, come home. That's it. And again, inhale, exhale, come home. That's it. Two more. Here we go. Inhale, exhale, come in. And last time. Inhale, exhale. Come in. Now I want you to transition and stand up.

Get onto your feet, walk your feet forward, all the way to the front end of the carriage. There we go. Bend your knees and straighten your legs. That's it. And again, bend and straighten each time. Try to get a little bit deeper into your stretch and straighten that it. Bend and straighten. Hold it up. Walk the right leg back. But the heel, touch the shoulder block.

Walk the left leg back. Let the heel touch the shoulder block for elephant. So we want to get into elephant. There you go. Pull and round up through your lower belly and press the carriage out and pull it under you. Small movement. Inhale back. Exhale, pull it in again. Inhale back. Exhale, pull it in. Two more. Inhale back. Exhale, pull it in. And the last time, hold that position. Stabilize through your shoulders. With the right leg off.

We're going to do a little one leg at elephant. You can either lift up high like TJ is, or a little lower like Christie's going to do. Hmm? Try not to rotate through your shoulders. Is that what I'm gonna do? That's what I'm going to do. You're going to do what I tell you to do or I'm firing you. Okay. And let's come on in and switch sides.

Stop having fun. Okay, DJ's going to go way up in the air. Come on, stabilize. Here we go. Inhale and exhale again. Inhale and exhale again. That leg is up there. Oh, look at Christie's leg. Alright, and stop. Bring both legs down a bend again. Let go of the foot bar. Let your hands hang on.

The floor are almost to the floor to your carriage stretch. Straighten your legs round up. Round up. Ah, they're way up there. There we go. Now when you do this, he very careful when you step off your reformer please. So you're going to step off the reformer?

Yes, my lady. Okay. And we're going to go right into splits now. Are we ready for that? So let's do some spot side splits. We're going to lower DJ's foot bar down and out of the way, and Kristy is going to take her off, which is the unique piece for this equipment. It actually needs to come out and come off.

You both have some form of standing platform. So let's step up on the standing cleft from, let me see if we can do that. There we go. Up We, we go. Okay. Pretend like you have suction cups on the bottom of your feet. Bring your arms up here. A Little Barbara Eden. Action please. Green. Okay. And bring the carriage out. Ooh, something very important. When you're teaching, you don't want to stand in the way of the reformer carriage and bring the carriage in and again, push it out, get stabilized and bring it on in. Oh boy. Oh boy. Oh boy.

Push it out and bring it on home. And one last time. Push it out. Hold it there. Hold it. Push it out a little further. Oh my God. Bring it in a little closer and bring it all the way in. Okay. Be Very careful. Step off if you need some assistance. Here I am. And you're gonna walk around and get on the other way. Okay, so we're going to step up, step up and get on the reformer.

Get to get those that, what's that? Yeah, that's good. Suction cups in the bottom of your feet. Visualize this. Here we go. Let's take it out and bring it in. And again, let's take it out. Great. And bring it in. Stay stabilized. Take it out and bring it in. And one more time. Take it out and hold it.

Hold it there. Go a little bit further. Hold it, bring it back in a little bit. Bring it back in all the way. Excellent. Excellent. Be Very careful in step off the equipment so you don't kill yourself. Thank you. Very, very, very, very good. Okay. I want you to stand here in front of the equipment. Go to one springs.

So DJ, I'd say put a blue on. Yeah, and Christie has one bungee. You're going to stand in front or you're going to reach your arms up. You're going to exhale and round over to your hands. Touch the carriage. Hold it right there. So DJ puts your hands right on the carriage.

That's it. And push the carriage out four or five inches and bring it back. And you don't have to go far. And again, push it out four or five inches and come back in and round up through your back. Pushed it out again. Good. And come back in this time you can go even further.

Get out there and then arch a little bit. Lift your head and chest up. That's it. And then come back round and drop the head and round the whole body back up. We're going to do one more like that. So you're going to go out, press out arch. If you can go a little further. Inhale, exhale, round, and bring it all the way back in. Round your body all the way up.

Good. Excellent, excellent, excellent. And you're going to round forward again. Put your hands on the carriage, and just stay there and pull in deep through your belly and round. Here you go. And then release and round yourself back up. And then I'm going to have you move around this way, Christie.

So you guys don't run into each other. We're going to reach our arms up. We're going to press our arms are palms up in the air and stretch up. There you go. And then you're going to release that forward and you're gonna come to your fingertips here and you're going to come in, go out, come up and down. So in, out, up and down. One more. In, out, up and down. Open your arms, lift them up, come back and give yourself a hug. Okay, thank you. Ladies were a lovely little class.

Comments

1 person likes this.
Kevin- your classes are always delightful! Thanks for clear, consistent cueing and spring setting alerts.
1 person likes this.
So much fun to see Kevin on PA today!! Love your classes, cues and instruction. Thank you!!
2 people like this.
Loved it! So snappy. Lots of fun. Loved the holds. Flew by and felt like I've really worked. Thank you. More please Kevin!
Trish K
1 person likes this.
loved the workout, I really like the combinations you did on the foot work, as well as when using the straps. Thank you
1 person likes this.
Great! Perfect time! And I agree all need to have a little more fun!
1 person likes this.
Kevin this was fun I found myself craving up many times. In our local Pilates and red cord classes, we are always laughing it up while working hard works our muffin tops even more! Thanks
6 people like this.
I really liked this class. Was very appreciate that Kevin mostly had the students changing the equipment/spring positions. I find that in alot of other pilatesanytime classes, the instructors do it and since I'm at home with no instructor helping, puts me behind what's going on (and the computer isn't close enough to pause nor does it have a remote).
Thank you Linda, that is helpful feedback!
1 person likes this.
Great cueing! Really liked the use of different reformers. The stretches were amazing. Thanks for a great quick workout.
1 person likes this.
Great quick class! Really enjoyed the cueing and pace of the class.
1-10 of 26

You need to be a subscriber to post a comment.

Please Log In or Create an Account to start your free trial.

Footer Pilates Anytime Logo

Welcome to Your Pilates Era

Experience Your Joy

Let's Begin