Class #3071

Full-Body Reformer

45 min - Class
743 likes

Description

No Box, no problem! This Reformer workout by Amy Havens is designed to strengthen your entire body using exercises that don't require the Box. This is a wonderful opportunity to let your body move for you so you can find a lift that you can carry with you after the class is finished.
What You'll Need: Reformer (No Box)

About This Video

May 29, 2017
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Transcript

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Hi guys! I'm here for a reformer workout. No box today, no box, no problem! We're gonna get going. I'm on balance body today. Let's start with a blue spring, and we'll start on the outside of this foot bar. This is a full-bodied, just get in and start moving and let your body, let it move for you today.

And you'll know what I mean there. So just kind of get in here, let's get breathing. We're gonna ease yourself right over your legs, soften those knee joints just a little. If you tend to be the locker, if you're not a hyper-extender, don't lock- don't soften your knees. Feel like you can pull yourself up a little bit up off of the feet, off the floor.

Let's take our arms up, take a nice breath in. We're rounding our spine over the bar. Place your hands on the edge of the mat. Notice that you're still weighted evenly on those feet and then just stay in flexion of your spine, and move the spring. I'm not shifting my weight off my feet at all I'm just trying to stretch the spring.

Taking a nice big breath. On the exhale, let's think of lifting and not think of, lift the stomach up, up, up, up away from the floor. We'll do that three or four more times. So I also want you to think of the muscles in the inner thighs, engage them toward one another. I'm not standing all the way together, but if they are touching, and also really pulled way up into the stomach.

Three more here, inhale, kind of adjust those shoulders off the head, off the neck, lift those stomach muscles. Last two, inhale, stretch a little further, see if you can carry that spring out. Lengthening that flexion. Tailbone is down. Exhale, and lift.

Once more, inhale. Letting your body move for you today, that's the theme. Don't get in your own way. Don't get in your way at all. With, should I be doing that, is it right, is it right, is it right, all those questions.

It is right because we're moving. Okay, when it's not right is when you're in pain, and no one's doing that, so here we go! Add your springs for footwork that you do. I'm going three red and one blue. High bar, headrest up. And let's get set up with Pilates V.

Stretch your arms long by your side, just enough stretch. Knees are not as wide as the reformer, in fact, they're just as wide as your shoulder frame. Heels are pressed in and up. Let's go! Inhale. (inhales) So right away as you start to press, into those legs, work your stretch.

All the way from your feet up through your body through your shoulders and your neck, and out your head. Okay, ten reps. So here's five, six. You can spread your toes. And eight.

Nine. You're really picking your stomach muscles up under the ribs. Now, wrap into prehensile. take those feet and as you're wrapped on top of the bar, it's not just the heels down, it's not just curly toes over the top, it's as if you're taking your foot and pressing down on the bar like that. So much you could almost lift your hips up.

And that kind of thing, okay? Inhale away, exhaling in . Inhale away, and exhaling in. And stretch, and pull. And stretch, and pull.

Loosening up your joints. Elongating your muscles. Seven. And eight, notice as you press your feet down on the bar though you should feel more awareness and work in the back of your legs, always a good thing. And then we lift the feet and put the heels.

Inhale, and exhale. Pinky toes are pulled back. Your toes are even, your ankle joints are even. (exhales) (exhales) Six. And seven.

Knees are together. Eight. Nine. And ten. Let's go ahead and take the heels out to the corners of the bar, a little turnout with your legs.

You don't have to go excessively, okay? And here we go! Inhale, stretch, hold on for just a minute there. Now, feel that you're, as you're weighted on your heels, as if you could pull your heels across the bar toward each other, to make sure you're working your inner thighs just as much as the front and back of your legs too. So I'm thinking about pulling my heels across the bar. And pull.

Just a little. Don't overdo these cues. Right work, let your body work for you. And five. And six.

Seven. Eight. We'll also do that same wide position after one more rep here. From the balls of the feet, so let's come on in a step. Heels a little bit lifted.

Ready, and hold again, press that and hold. Might even need to look. Pull the feet toward one another. Here we go! And two. And three.

How long can you feel like you're getting on this reformer? How long and stretched? I've got these cheetah pants on, feel like a cat. How long and slinky they can get their bodies. Move so freely, and eight.

Nine, they can conserve their energy when they need to. And use it when they need to. Okay. So let's channel that. Take our legs out again, and lower both heels for two, count and up for two. Lower for two, lift for two.

I have my legs nice and close together, trying not to lock out those knees. It's a controlled flexion of the ankle, controlled extension. We've got five more. But as I lower my heels, I also thinkin' of pulling my toes up toward my knees. Toes up toward me.

It's a different work down in the shin muscles. Last two. And last one. So save our walking in place for the next little series. So let's come up and change our springs.

I'm gonna take away the blue. You can take away whatever you want, but just make it a little lighter because we're going into some single legs. Okay? Now look at the bar, place your feet in front of your sits bone, so that's gonna give us a little space. Extend one leg, parallel, the other leg is parallel on the ball of the foot. And we're gonna do a little passé developé.

And then keep it straight today as you come down. Okay? Nice and fluid. (inhales and exhales) I am trying to extend and stretch the back line of my leg. (exhales) Feel that nice hip joint motion and extension.

Two more. (exhales) Last time, and then change legs. Just swap out the feet, you might wanna look and see that it's inline with your system. Inhale, and lengthen, stretch. And lower.

Inhale. And exhale. Stretch those legs, keep that tailbone as anchored as you can. Inhale big. (exhales) (exhales) Halfway there with the set.

(inhales) It's okay to use the back of your arms on the mat, might help you open up your shoulders and your chest. Three more. (exhales) Last time. Okay! It's gonna change a little bit. Let's go to the first heel on the bar, the other leg just in tabletop.

And then there's just eight regular extensions. (exhales) Okay, really feel like you're anchoring both of your hip joints down into the mat. No hiking up or rotating. And five, we're just gonna go three more like this. Six.

Most of you know what might be coming. I like to do some rhythm change. Little pulses now so we do a little out, and in, and out, and in. Yes it's for your quads, they're important muscles. (exhales) Seven, just one more.

That's all, I'm gonna go all the way out, extend that leg one more time. (exhales) Flex your foot, point your foot, flex your foot, point your foot. A couple of times. Your feet should move like little hands. (laughs) And all the way in and change sides.

Okay! Tabletop, here we go! Eight regular extensions. This is your chance to anchor the pelvis. Keeping things square. And press. And six.

Actually that's five, I know how to count. Six, most times. Seven. I'm just excited for the pulses. Okay, so we do eight rounds of pulses, here's one! And. Three, four, five, and six, and seven, and eight.

Then we go right back up again! You hold that strong, straight leg. Take the other one up and just give your foot a couple of flex and points, really articulate those bones, and those joints in your feet. Last one. And then come all the way down. So now we can take our prehensing in place. Ok?

We're gonna change our rhythm a little bit. Put one heel down, then the other knee. Pull in here eight times. So we have, (exhales) Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, up to the other side. And one, two, three, and four, five and six, we'll go to the first side for four of these counts.

One, two, three, other side. Four, and two. Let's repeat the fours again, here we go! One, two, three, four, other side. One, two, three, now I'm gonna change it to twos, you guys. Down and up and down and now a little more precision on this up.

Down and up, other side. Change sides. Two times here. Say it with the twos. Down and up and down and up. Second side.

And first side. And second side, let's just change singles for sixteen. Two, up, three, up, four, up, five and up. And six and up, it's a little different to do this. Accent the up.

We have eight more. Two, three, four, lots of strength building here. Six, and seven, and eight, stay, tall, extended. Bend the knees and come all the way in. Well done! Shake your feet out! They should be nice and warm in your calves.

Okay, everybody come on up. Change your tension down. I'm gonna do red and blue today. For Hansen straps, supine. Take your bar all the way flat, we don't need it.

We can keep our headrest up for a moment. Everybody come on down. But I do want you to start off with, is some space between your shoulder rest and you. So that you have some luxury to move your shoulders freely right there. Okay?

Hands in your straps. Now today with your knees up, instead of tabletop, open your knees a little bit, the edges of the feet are touching, your shoulders are ready. Let's just start some easy armpulls. (exhales) Not gonna tell you where to breathe. I want you to breathe where you need to breathe.

(exhales) One more without the chest up. Alright? So let's build this, so add our chest lift. Lift, lower. (exhales) Lift, lower. Reaching long, fingertips toward that foot bar.

Yes, we're contracting abdominals, but we are stretching our spine forward. Up and forward. Keep it going! I'm gonna extend my legs in a small, little V. Stretch, and in. Stretch, and in .

Stretch, energy through the legs, up to those toes. Next one, we're gonna stay up there for a little pattern. So we're gonna go out, hands are gonna go in, hands will go out, and let's come down. Alright. Hands are on the outside. I just changed my legs, by the way.

(laughs) okay? So let me regroup. Come into tabletop. Come up to the hundred first, here we go everybody! Up to your hundred. Open the legs, reach through now.

Close the legs, reach there. And come back down. Here we go! Three more patterns. (exhales) (exhales) (exhales) Two more patterns. (exhales) (exhales) (exhales) Last pattern.

(exhales) (exhales) (exhales) And rest. Okay, so we did that. We're not doing the hundred today. I'm sure you're fine with that! But let's do a little arm circle pattern down and out. Our normal supine arms.

Let's go four times. (exhales) We'll add more arm workup on knees in just a minute. But this way just kinda get into those nice shoulder muscles and joints. Reverse for four. It's always okay to throw some fundamentals in.

And three. And four. Okay. Now adding onto that, take one arm, one arm is gonna stay to the ceiling, take the other arm out to a "T". Most of you know this. And then pull both arms down to the hips, the first arm goes out to the side, the second arm comes up to the ceiling.

You just alternate. And exhaling down, inhaling one is up, one is out to T. And down. One is up, the other out to T. (exhales).

Now move it a little bit more. Exhale and inhale. (exhales) Let's open those knees a little bit again. That means your arms will kinda have to frame those legs, four. And three.

Two. And one. Both arms come straight up and bend. Okay. Come on in for just a moment, and I think I want to move into some more arm-work first.

Come up to seated, everybody. Take off the blue. Hook your straps down. I'm gonna have us come back up to a high bar, or mid bar on this reformer. And safety clip it in there.

Come to kneeling. Knees about six inches or so away from the mat edge. And put your hands on your bar. And I want you to externally rotate your upper arms. Okay?

So, you know, we're like this in the, on the, this'll be the foot bar, elbows toward one another. If you have a yoga block, or you kinda know the width of a yoga block, imagine that between your elbows right now. Okay? Now, I wanna lower my chest down. Don't wanna really death-grip with the hands if you don't have to. I'm looking right down at all the springs. Okay?

Keep those upper arms externally rotated. Now, if you can, extend through your thoracic spine just a little. Now my eyes are looking at the platform. And I'm gonna work my triceps to extend, and bend, press and bend. Working external rotation of the upper arm.

Want you to feel where your thumb and index finger pads are on the bar, and press those into the bar. Press, elbows down. Consider this a little like a preview, or preparation practice for Pilates pushups. See how that would be a Pilates pushup, right? One more time.

We won't do those, by the way. We're kinda doing it now. Alright. Now I want you to reach and put the blue on, take the red away. Keep one hand on the bar, put the other one behind your back. Now, when you do single arm, and single things, the chance for instability shows up.

So you may feel like your ribs go side-to-side, we wanna minimize that. Also keep even weight on your shinbones, okay? Get that same connection, here we go! Press. 'Cuz we do need to do single arm work, and single leg work. Strengthen that unilateral concept.

Okay? I'm just doin' eight, so here's five. Six, externally rotate, keep weight on the thumbpad and index fingerpad. Here's my last one. Eight times.

Change it out. Get connected first. Here we go! And press. And press. Usually one side feels like you have more coordination.

If you feel the urge to go back to the side that feels less coordinated, you can do that. Five. Six. Keeping those shoulders low, away from the ears. One more time, that's it. OK! There's our eight.

Come on up. Now let's take ourselves to face the back, headrest will come down. I want everyone to stay, um, change the spring back to a red. Okay, one red only, no more blue. Have a seat.

I'm gonna choose cross-legged, that feels good for me. Pick up the straps. I don't know, a hand-width between you and the end. And for just a moment, as you're sitting tall, I often change my mind. I'm thinkin' diamond-feet might feel better, so the bottoms of your feet touching.

That way you may have more steadiness in your pelvis. Okay? Yeah. Here we go! Arms in front of you. It's okay if there's a little slack. I measured these straps with a little bit of length over the shoulder there. Okay, bicep curls.

I know this seems easy. (exhales) It's okay. Upper arms are externally rotated. Upper arm stays the height of your shoulder. Now, if you're doing these and your neck is starting to feel icky, you lower your arms, something down here, and you do what you can, okay?

But we want to strengthen, we wanna get stronger. Keep those arms up. (exhales) We're gonna do a couple different sets of biceps today. So this is the first one. Kinda easy.

And eight. Okay? Now let's do a seated tricep press. So just pressing back, and forward. And press. Again, let your body work for you.

And I mean also with your breathing, wherever it feels best to breathe right now. Keep it going. Your arms are stretched long by your sides. You're seated tall. Your chest is open without having to force it.

A few more times. Eight. (exhales) Nine. And last one. So let's combine these, I've done this before. It's an interesting timing of the straps, too, keeping the tension even.

So bicep curl one side, tricep press the other side. The ropes are still even, and tension is the same. Switch it out. (exhales) So the bicep curl arm, you have to stay up with it. You have to stay lifted in that upper arm and elbow. To keep the tension, okay?

See if we can pick up our pace a little bit, exhale. (inhales) And exhale. And phew. Ribs aren't pushing ahead. And left countdown four, three, two, and one.

I'm gonna have us go back to bicep curl position. And just hold it. Now I wanna think about the elbows, kinda aiming toward the straps here. And as I aim my elbows up toward the straps, I'm gonna start to lift my upper back into that swan position. And then bring myself more upright.

Just about three or four of those. So think about the shoulder blade coming, kinda aiming toward the elbow, elbow toward strap, that's what's picking up the upper back. To come into that extension, okay? Two more times. Should not be this only feeling in your low back, you wanna be up, up mid back and upper back.

Probably also in your shoulders. Let's take it one more. Up. And release. Make a round spine for a minute.

Stretch your legs long. Now back yourself so you're all the way up against the edge. Going into one more arm work position here, legs together, everybody, and flex your spine. Now as we flex our spine, we should stay even-weighted on the sits bones but not pitched forward, right? We know that.

You've got a lot of lift here, arms long. Now as the arms pull back, they probably won't go as far as they were in triceps. I wanna pull my stomach in more, than move my arms really. I'm thinking stomach in, allows for my arm to get pulled back. (exhales) Lift, lift, lift, lift, lift the stomach underneath the ribs.

I'm thinking of going back toward my spine, under the ribs. I'm not doing full rowing. You can see how this could lead into rowing, however, feel free if you want. I'm just trying to get my abs involved right now. Last two.

Stomach staying right over the sits bones in the same place. Last time. And release. Okay, we'll get back to more arm work in a minute when we come up on knees. But let's go back down on our back.

For feet in straps. I'd like you to put on two red springs, take off the middle red, so I'm only having two. Foot bar all the way down. Feet in straps, let's get some hip movement. Feet in, in a good diamond position.

Bottoms of the feet together if you can. Heels touching, get organized. Now right at your hip joint here, let's see if we can increase the flexion. I'm thinking about bringing my femur vertical now. Okay? And then taking it down, down, down, and you may see that the strap can come pretty close to the shoulder rest here.

And back up. Flexion of the hips. And extension. Let's go for eight of 'em, so we're on our third one. (exhales) Just feel the flow.

Not just your movement but your breathing. Mental participation. Not getting in our way, feeling the movement. (exhales) Two more. (exhales) Last time.

From the bottom, but come halfway up-ish, that's about half I think. And then from the hip joint, start to close the leg into your parallel alignment, okay? And then go back out to your diamond. So this is really ball-and-socket work, we'll just do a couple. You're starting to turn toward parallel, then extend the knees, slight bend at the knees externally rotate.

Okay? Maybe one more. Internally rotate and stretch, little bend and turn out. Now, extend again, light circles. Let's come up. Same thing, can you find your 90 degrees with your pelvis still anchored?

Most times we can say Yes! Here we go. Down for circle, externally rotate go as wide as you wish today. That felt amazing! I have to say! Both of my hip joints had a release in a sense. Stretch, close, eight times. It's important to feel some range, right in these movements.

Stretch. Four more times here. Belly down. And six. (exhales) Seven.

Sits bones pointed to the foot bar, stretch stretch and close. One more this direction for eight. (exhales) We have to reverse. Open wide! Now, how are you gonna pull your legs down? Not from the feet but from these hamstrings way up here, pull the legs together. Imagine your feet were right here, right there.

That's where you work from, pull together. Always an interesting image to think of the feet there. (laughs) Like the little hands, you get the little feet. Little feet, pull. Four more times.

Open. (exhales) (inhales and exhales) (exhales) One more. Stay down, flex the feet, a little bow-and-arrow one leg goes out to the side, the other knee bends. Even tension on the ropes. And pull to the midline.

Let's just do eight, four each leg will be great. (exhales) I like to keep the feet flexed here, you can point or flex at your discretion. Keep those sits bones open when you're coming into that position. (exhales) Three more. (inhales and exhales) One more each leg.

(exhales) And we'll take a little short spine next. We know we have to come into frog, take our headrest down. If you feel like you're jammed up against the shoulder rest, come on down a little bit. Alright, let's take our short spine, everybody take your legs out, parallel. Here we go! Take it slow, please, the first one.

Let yourself experience the stretch of your legs, look up at your toes, right? And you're gonna peel your sits bones and lift them toward your heels. In that direction, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift! Yup! Make adjustments! Okay! We did it! Frog! Now, keep your feet up, roll your hips away, keep looking up at your feet. Keep looking up! How much can you get your back down? How much? You can go a little more, I know you can! Stretch, stretch, stretch your butt out toward your bar, and then down.

Now we can flow. Find the precision though. Remember don't fight yourself, work, find the breath, use the breath. Inhale frog. (inhales) Exhale it down.

I'm thinking five of these. Stretch! And three. Find that footwork, get into that carriage. Just peel, peel, peel, peel. (inhales) (exhales) Two more.

Keep acknowledging how healthy this is! How healthy! Moving your body so freely. (exhales) One last time. Wow, okay, and frog, inhale, and take it down. And once you get your pelvis down, just stay for a moment. You can put your hands on your shins, just give yourself one little extra squeeze.

Reach in and take the straps off of your feet at the same time put them down on the shoulder rest. We did it, let's go ahead and come all the way up everybody! Good! Alright! Take off one, no, put on one blue spring. That's what I'm gonna choose for my kneeling arm side. Okay? Come on up, headrest can come up now.

Kneel, put yourself right against your shoulder rest. Let's face each other first, of course, I think that's the best way. Make a fist, and put that fist right out in front of your belly button. Okay? Square your shoulders, this other arm can be pressed lightly against your side. And then we're going in for draw sword.

You all know me well enough, I think, if you don't and you're new to me, I do this with my thumb face up to help me keep my upper arm externally rotated. That's just the way I do it, I learned it that way, it feels right for me. And come back in. What I want you to focus on is keeping your trunk right over your legs so that your ribs don't shift. You're really trying to power this with your shoulder muscles, right?

Not your trunk, and not moving that around. We're on a blue, I'm gonna go eight repetitions. We're coming up on five. Make sure your legs are doing something. Six, I'm thinking about pulling my legs toward one another under there.

And seven. Okay, one more. (exhales) And eight. Time to change hands, put it in the other hand. But now, close that carriage, walk pretty close to the carriage-edge side.

Okay, this is a little more balance workout here. Still think about pulling your legs together. Put the hand that you just worked on right at your sternum. Okay, that's your center. Take the other arm, single arm hug a tree.

And as you circle this arm, that's where it stops. Right in the middle. Check out Diane Severino's tutorial if you're wondering about what to do here, it's amazing! But the arm doesn't travel any further than that. You wanna establish that position. And then open, okay?

You can keep this hand here, (exhales) or, you can lower it down for eight of these. So we have three. Legs are pulled together under there. Five, actually that's four. I'm counting right. And five.

Six. (exhales) Seven. And then we will add something, stay out here on number eight. Now, clasp your hands. Now I want you to use more of your trunk muscles, your abs to turn and then return slow with control.

(exhales) Turn. It's not my arms that are doing it, I'm trying to turn at my waistline using my obliques. My arms have done a lot, so have yours, so think about turning from your middle. Okay? Your bellybutton area, your ribs. (exhales) Let's just do one more for five, we don't need as many here.

(exhales) Well done! Let's go to the other side. Close the carriage. Quiet, we're gonna go all the way first for the draw sword. Your knees are right up against the shoulder rest. I can't see you but I know you're doing a great job! Make a fist, put that right in front of your bellybutton.

Ready, stretch your other arm by your leg. And we go! Exhale. Inhale. (exhales) Your arm can go out to the side in line with your shoulder. Or, you can go higher.

As you get stronger, you all know that you can increase ranges. Alright? Four more. (exhales) Thumb is up. (exhales) Square shoulders, knees are toward one another they're trying to adduct. Last time.

(exhales) And in. Okay. Change hand, walk toward the carriage-edge side. You're almost to the absolute edge. Up you go! Single arm hug a tree. And, one.

Keeping your torso like a cylinder right above your legs. Ribs don't translate, shift. (exhales) You will feel some oblique muscle, which is good! Again, it's that unilateral stuff. Gives you an opportunity to feel some more local muscles. (exhales) Okay?

And one more, we're gonna stay out there, clasp your hands. Now increase your trunk rotation toward the foot bar end of your reformer and inhale slowly, unwind, turn to face the rope. We're gonna start counting now for five. You can exhale. (exhales) I want you to stay evenly weighted on your knees.

(exhales) Tall in your spine. (exhales) Sound like Darth Vader back there, sorry! (laughs) Four. Last one for five. Alright, there we go. Good! And let's set that down. Okay everybody, let's do some more leg work, okay?

Some quad and hip work. I think some knee stretch series would be in order. Attach your middle bar again. Two red springs, or maybe a red and blue. You can decide what you need today.

Let's go round spine. So this is where we get to channel our cat. Little different cat sense here. Your head is rounded, your tail is rounded. You've got this kind of ball-like connection here.

Okay, just take a moment, settle in. Settle into the feet, okay? And instead of hanging here, watch what I'll do. See if you can try this with me. Pick up, pick up the space.

You see that? So here's one way to do it that's fine. But let's try to see if we can improve some of the support in our body. So we're not resting inside ourselves. We're lifting.

Move the legs out, and in. Out, and in. Ten times today. Four, five, you wanna keep that roundness and that lift. And seven, and eight, and nine, and ten.

Pull in. Now articulate into that extension, look up a little bit, mainly upper spine. Ten times, one. And two. Hips extend, hips flex. And four, and five.

Trying not to bang the carriage into the stopper. Seven, eight, nine, we're gonna do a little combo. So I want you to come back to round. Push out in round, stay out, flip your tail and head up and come in. Now stay arched like this as you push out.

And flip your tail and head down to come in. It's very connected. (exhales) Stretchy. (exhales) (inhales and exhales) (inhales and exhales) Four more, moving from point to point. Fluidly.

(exhales) Two more pathways through. Round, to extension, extension, back to flexion one more time, flexion, up, high tail, up and again. Okay. Lift again, step one of your feet forward right to the front of the mat. Take the other knee up off the mat, and for a moment just settle in here. Okay? So you're hovered, round your back.

And push with your back leg. Stay round in your spine. Butt goes under. Inhale, exhale five times here. Push, and pull.

Push, you wanna push back with your hip muscles, not your knee, push and in. Now, how are we gonna change sides today? I want you to straighten both of your knees. A little balance work. You gotta scoop up in your stomach.

Just lift your arms out to the sides of the room like a T. Bring your tail under, get some good organization in your posture. That's kinda fun! Let's bend, come back down and change your feet from here. Change, and change. Okay? So get on down into the squat, heel is slightly lifted in flexion.

Looking through your legs, here we go! Push it back, pull it under. Push it back, pull it under. Three more! Push, and pull. And push, pull once again! Push, and pull. Center your weight, straighten your legs.

Start to roll up to standing. If you can think of adducting your legs you can. It's a little weird when they're offset like that. Pull your legs to your midline. Get that sense of posture and alignment.

Good balance work! Back down. Contract. Lower the foot and step off the reformer. Okay, good! Now let's go up one more thing here. Let's take it down to a red, no blue.

Take your foot bar down out of your way. I'm gonna work that half-skater or full skater I'm gonna step here for just a second. So let's do this with each other, just weight shift. Just this side to side. We're gonna do that up on the reformer here.

So this will be the platform foot. You're gonna push off of that foot onto this foot. Push this foot away and back onto this foot. Push away, push away. Okay? See if you can get that connection up here.

If you've never done this before, it's an interesting sense. So what I like to do with my toes, is hook a little bit big toe-edge over platform-edge and a little bit over the carriage-edge. Not so much that we knock knee. That's too much. That's not stable in the ankle structure either.

It's just a little bit of the big toe. Okay? Bend your knees. Let's put more weight on the platform side. And then we can kinda warm up a little bit with just starting to feel the half-skater which is this. You've seen us do this before.

You can stay with this if you'd like to. That's wonderful, 'cuz you're getting the push here. But let's make it more exciting! So you have to off of this side first. Then over to that side and back in. This is my language.

I push off, I push into and I come back. I push off, I push off, and into. You can jazz dance your hands, get you're roller blades on and put your headphones on! Don't get too funky with your ribs, let's see if we can keep it in the hips. And hips, and in. Okay? So we push, and we push, and we're in. Go lower if you want a little more quad and glute.

Push, push, and in. Couple more. Push, and push, in. We're trying to get to a straight leg, a straight leg, and in. Okay? Other side, step down first though. Walk around, feel free to do this on the way! (laughs) Up.

Again, you can hook those toes ever so little. Bend, and just start getting the sense of pushing here. But that's just half of it. So the first part, push off the other foot into that leg, off that leg, in. Push off the platform, push to the carriage and in.

Push off the platform, into the carriage, in. The platform, the carriage and let's take up the tempo. (inhales and exhales) And four more reps. Go lower if you want! Try to keep it in your hips, not your knees. Push from the back of your hips.

Last one everybody! Push, push, and in. Okay. Straighten your legs, step back. Let's do one more exercise today. Since we didn't use any box, we can still do one more back extension piece. I'm gonna go back down to blue.

Get on your knees, walk that to the back. Grab ahold of those risers. And just hang for a moment. (exhales) Kinda nice to either leave a reformer session I think with a stretch, like through our hips or hip flexors or quads or hamstrings, or leaving yourself with a sense of extension in the spine. So that's what I'm choosing today.

So what I wanna do, without bending the elbows, is work extension of the spine. And I'm thinking my upper spine. Lifting, lifting and lifting. Pulling that strong spine up. And carrying it down.

Three times'll be great. Complete and full body work today! I think we got all our body parts, really think of pulling your chest forward. And up. And lower down. Last time everybody! Let your body move for you.

Breathe. And release. Okay, carefully take your hands to the frame. You can have fun and slide back, and slide back. Okay! Well done! Thanks for joining me, and I'll see you again really soon for more Pilates.

Thank you!

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Comments

2 people like this.
Amy i like your bicep curl, tricep extension combo. Another fun tool to add to the tool box!
1 person likes this.
I loved this workout! That "one with the Reformer" feeling and a great full body session! A favorite :)
1 person likes this.
I loved this so much Amy! Thank you for your passion and creativity!
1 person likes this.
Great coordination sets :) Another workout one I will be re-visiting! Thanks!!
Leelee
1 person likes this.
Thanks, that was nice. I love reformer workouts without the box...I will be doing this one again 😀
1 person likes this.
Thank you Amy-the bicep curl combo was fantastic as well as side arm-great work-thank you again
1 person likes this.
Great class. I feel great. Thankyou Amy :)
Z A
1 person likes this.
Thank you Amy, always great and calm.
2 people like this.
I also loved the bicep/triceps combo. And, the extension stretch at the end! Thank you cheetah girl!
1 person likes this.
Thank you Amy, that was wonderful! I loved the knee-stretch series and the skating! It is always good to step out of routines and make the brain work too! ;))
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