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Hi everyone. I'm here for a reformer workout today on the aero reformer. We're going to start with our foot and leg work, so I have all of my cords or my springs on. This is the Bungee cord set up, but if you have your springs, go ahead and put all four on or what you're going to want for your foot work. Okay? And then the other thing I have today, and you might want to join me with this as roll up a hand towel. We're going to put that between our knees and ankles just for a little extra work for the midline and the connection with our inner thighs.
So go ahead and lie on down and we will start with heels parallel on the bar. Pretty close together with the heels and stick that right between your knees and take a moment to contract your inner leg line and press your towel. Okay. That way your, your legs aren't only going to get the workout on the quadriceps, the top of the legs, but you'll get some from the inner thigh and just take your arms long by your sides. Pull your toes back towards your shinbones unless take your breath in together and we'll exhale today as we push the the carriage back all the way straight. Inhale, come back in. Let's go for eight to 10 reps.
Heels Parallel
If that towel between your knees bothers youth falls out, you can ditch it, but sometimes it's nice just to have a little extra, like I said, that feedback to press against and pulling out and pulling in, pressing out and pulling in. See if you can press your shoulders back and your palms down and in last two, press the carriage and pull it in and press and pull it in. Okay. Stepped down to the balls of your feet. I'm going to have a stay in that parallel position. Heels slightly lifted, not so high that your ankles roll, but you do want to get a feeling that your toes are spread on your foot bar. Press the carriage out. Inhale or exhale and pull back in.
Toes
We should Xcel today. Let's exhale. So you get that feeling and flat belly nice and wide across the waist, securing your spine down against your mat and in feel really good. Long through your hips and your leg muscles. And that relationship of pressing and pulling, pressing and pulling glass to press and pull. Last one, press and pull. Okay, let's take the towel away.
Pilates Stance
Just set it either on the floor next to you or on your mat and open up your leg position to that Palladio's v. Press your heels together. Knees no wider than your shoulder rest. Here we go. Now I'm pretend that towel is still there between your legs and contract your leg muscles together. Okay, let's use that. So pulling in, press the carriage out, contract your legs together and pull the carriage. So without that prop, can you reconnect and feel that feeling again?
Heels Wide Second
But ankles are not turned more than than the opening and from your hips. You should have a pretty equal line from your hips to your feet. Reconnect your arms to the mat. Here we go. Press and pull. Sometimes it's um, we get tempted I think to push and use the buttocks muscles when we're doing these leg presses and you don't have to use them that much right now. I don't want you to use them so much that your thrust your hips under this way.
There's an exercise in a minute that we'll do for that, but this isn't the one. This is the one you want to keep your pelvis in a really good flat orientation. Like you're just right on top of that mat and not rolled. Let's take a couple more exhale and inhale and exhale out. Inhale and we'll do the same wide position. Lift up and put your feet, your toes, their head goes back down. Exhale, press
Toes Wide Second
Tendon Stretch
Now press yourself out and then just stand on a tip toe position of your feet. Alright, and use your calf muscles and in your back of your legs to kind of pull yourself taller. But then we'll stretch those calves. So pull your heels under the bar. Lift your heels above or under the bar. I was just thinking I'm going to a tippy-toe in real life and lower for the stretch. Rise to tiptoe lower for the stretch. Rise at tiptoe. Let's take a little faster down, up, down and up. Lower press up lower.Let's take it four more times. Down and up. Shoulders, back. Hands are flat. Okay, we're going to change it up a little bit. Hold your heals up. Pull one heel under the bar, bend the other knee, and just hold that stretch on that isolated calf. She should feel pretty good. Okay, well let's do a little rhythm guys. We're going to go up and down eight times with that. That one heel that's under.
Running - Unilateral Focus
So think up to the other back under. Same thing again, up, back under up and pull it down, up and under, up and under. Four more and three and two. Last one. Hold. Change at over. Feel the stretch first. Alrighty. And then that heel comes up to match the other one. We'll do eight of them.So it's an up and down both together. One goes down both together. One goes down both and down and four and three, two and one. And then hold it up. We're going to just alternate now 10 times. So just one to the other. Three should feel pretty good, nice and stretchy.
Running
You've done a good job keeping your pelvis flat. Four more and two and three and four. All right, Ben, both of your knees come all the way into that stopper. Pull your hips down in your shoulders, down away from your shoulder block and pick your head up. Tuck yourself in and just stretch for a moment.Let's try and get into a nice small bowl position. Okay, come on up and let's drop a little bit of tension off. I like a little bit of a weight, so I'm just taking one of my cords away. So come on down again and get cozy. Put One heel on your bar, raise the other leg into your 90 90 position and that pushing legs, foot is flexed. I want you to push the carriage just halfway back and stay there. Okay, now this is another place it could be tempting to really pull under with your pelvis. Try not to see if you can keep your hip joint kind of flex there and your pelvis really flat ribs down. So now with all of that detail, you're just doing what we often call pulses or just little movements back and forth. So not a full extension. Ms Puts a little different workout in your leg.
Single Leg Pulses
You'll probably feel maybe around your dairy or now maybe still in that inner thigh, definitely in the front of your quad here. And of course I've lost count. So let's take four more. One and two, three and four. And then the fourth one. Now we get to go all the way to out. Take a moment, pull this knee into your chest, extend your leg wherever it can go today. Let's just give your ankle a couple circles. Nice to stretch things out. Okay. And then you can bend that knee in.Come all the way down and let's change that over. All right, so the pushing leg foot is flexed. Move the carriage about halfway. Hold there for a moment. Check that pelvis and rib cage down. Okay. Little out and in. And you think maybe three or four inches of movement in either direction, shoulders or back. Remember the system posture. Work in your upper body. So you always want to work on opening up around your neck and your color.
And four and three, two and one. And then this last one. Here we go. All the way straight. Extend. Pull that leg in. Ooh. And Circle your ankle few times each way. Good re bend the knee and come all the way down. Okay, so let's add a little bit more movement for a single leg. So I'm going to step down on the other foot on the pad of the foot, the other leg straight out. Now from that, that long leg will come into the tabletop as this one pushes.
So you have a little coordination game. I'll go slow for a couple. Push the reformer foot, pull the other one, a tabletop without moving your pelvis into that backward tilt. Okay, we're looking for flap is come in slowly, so push with your one foot. Pull the tabletop leg in your belly is flat. Think we can speed it up eight more times. So exhale. Inhale.
Single Leg Toes
Nicely done. Okay, change it over. You sometimes need to look and set that foot right in front of your hip and extend that long leg slowly we go just to check it out. Sometimes the coordination is different on the second side and then come back in one more slow press and pool, even timing. So you're just getting a tabletop by the time the other one is getting straight. We can speed it up now and wait time.
Check that collarbone wide it goes.
You should feel like a pretty good stretch. Okay, please do your head back down. And then I want you to put your feet on the bar for just a minute. It'll stay up the whole class. Wiggle yourself down away from the shoulder block so you have some clearance right here. Now I want you to get stuck, okay, cause now I'll see you get a reach back. Pick up your straps. We're going to work those abs a little bit more detailed here.
Arms Reaching Forward
So knees in towards you. Arms long and straight. I kinda like to make a fist, but you're all free to do a flat flat hand. And if you're doing a flat hand, watch your wrist. Okay, this is really important and plus we really don't want to fold it and move it this way. Make it stiff, okay? It's really important. You're actually gonna feel a lot more workout in the side of your chest wall and your arm right here. Really important muscles in our Palladio's method. So let's just begin. I want you to feel yourself. Just move those arms down and up. Let's exhale as you pull down, inhale, lift him up.So remember the pull down. The exhale is our turn to flatten the belly. Flatten it inside from the inside. Get flat, okay, couple more times with the head down and it'll be your choice. You can keep your head down the whole time. Some of you are going to want to challenge it a little bit more and it'll go like that. You'll lift your head up, you're looking towards your thighs, you'll lower, you'll look toward the ceiling. Again, look towards your thighs.
Arms Reaching Forward w/Forward Flexion
Reach your arms long. You can do fingernails long or fist long and come back down. I want you to think that your arms are really stiff, straight and strong, and lower back down, flat abdominals. Okay? You can stay there or come with me. I'm going to add my legs. Go into the ceiling as my chest goes up, up, then the knees back down, flatten your tummy back down to more like that and back down coral and hold it. Hold it there.
Arms Reaching Forward w/ Leg Extension
Now start to move your arms up and down. You've probably seen this in your mat classes. If you haven't, you should. This is some of the exercise known as the 100 the goal is to get up to 100 movements of the arms with the head up like this. If you're feeling like that's too easy, there you can take your legs down. He breathing in and out. Look towards your knee.
Hundred
Coordination
Like a bird just tucked its wings in from this position. I want us to come back up to the one you just are in and that big movement, so arms move, head comes up, legs reach forward and let's fold back in. Two more. Come up and hold for a second. Come back in, come up, hold for a second and back. No one would come up and hold. We're going to do a little extra movement with the legs. Open, closed, legs back in. Let's try again. Pull up just the legs, everything in we and up, just the legs.Everything in two more. Reach, Oakland, close everything in. Sometimes you'll hear us call that as coordination and there's a few different ways to do that. Exercise and timing, but there you go. Just move your knees a little side to side. Okay, one more with the hands and the straps, but this one, just fold your elbows. Now kind of a perpendicular design elbows down again, you can have a long hand or a fist. He get really detailed with your legs in a tabletop position and I want you to flex your ankles. Okay?
Tricep Press w/Single Leg Extension
Just push one leg out and pull it in. Heck sail the other leg out. So that's what the legs do. What we're going to do it with the head and the chest up and push and in and push and in and the arms will move. When the leg moves out, they come back in. When the knees bend, the arms move. When the legs move, they move in the knee bends.
Open Close Arms
I'm actually gonna stay on this one today. It feels pretty good for me. Cross your ankles. Just let your legs come up and fold. Now take those arms again. Straight up. They've already done lots of up and down. So I think we're ready to do some open close arms.
So I'm going to have you do this. Open your arms, but keep them in the peripheral of your vision. Okay, so I'm going to wiggle my fingers to make sure I can still see my hands and I can no lower to the floor. Okay. Now for a moment, just pull your armpits towards your hips in the down direction. You should feel a lot of intensity underneath your arm and your shoulder blade. And then use that to bring your arms to your hips. And we'll just go open, close. And here you go. I'm going to have you exhale when you pull your arms in our member's time to flatten the belly inside. It's nice and flat and wide.
Pull it in and open. And then once they're open, pull your arms straight up to this Thielen. Keep your shoulder blades back. And then bend your elbows. Hey, way to go. You did it. So I'm gonna also keep my springs are in the straps where they are, but let's put our feet in the straps. Okay, so I've got the two looped a straps. I hadn't told you what I had my hand in the long strap, but now I'm going to go into the short loop for my feet. I can do one foot at a time, sometimes that's easier.
Frog
Okay. And then for a moment everybody just put your heels together, arms by your side, and allow your tailbones right now everybody to get picked up off of the mat a little bit. And maybe your stomach is doing a more of a scooping in or pulling in to get your hips to curl. Hopefully feels pretty good right through this backline and maybe your low back. All right? And just enjoy it for another moment. But then as we start moving the legs in different positions, they want to make sure that this is not so high up in the air.So I'm going to pull my pelvis down, tail more down this way and the sit bones now are more straight out in front of the reformer rather than up. Okay, we're ready for frog. Heels are still together. The toes are facing out to the sidewalls and the goal is to keep those heels together as you move your legs and also the tail stays down. Exhale, inhale. It's okay to relax your feet in those loops. You could also have a strong flex.
It's up to you. See if he can focus more on the quality of feeling up in your upper leg and maybe around the back of your pelvis and out and in. Let's just take last two out and in his last one we're going to stay out long and just enjoy that long feeling parallel your legs, what that means. Just close them so you've got one long line between and I want you to flex your ankles if they weren't already and articulate your feet to point your toes and flex and point. Now if you feel as though this might be straining your back or your like arching and your back is lifting off of the mat surface, chances are your legs are too low. So I'll show you.
Parallel Point and Flex
Just raise them up a little. Then allows your back to get more connected. Let's continue flex and point your feet flex point. Don't forget those toes flex and 0.1 more. Flex and point. Keep them pointed. No, open the turnout or rotate the legs. We're going to do a nice easy movement. Stretch your legs apart.
Open Close Legs
I feel like good stretch on your inner thighs in the back of your legs. Flex your feet, drag your heels together, points your toes, stretch the legs apart, flex and drag the heels together, all with a flat pelvis. So we open and close two more times gliding that carriage along the track, keeping long within your body. Okay, now time for some circular movements of your legs. I like to go back to parallel to start it. See if you can bring your legs up above your hips, but not have your hips, hips come up with you, right? So you keep that anchor your pelvis down.
Leg Circles
So leg circles today, we'll go down that middle line, keeping your back down on your mat. Open the legs in that arc. They make their way all the way back around to meet at the top. Continue down, turn out the legs, arch open. It's like each leg is doing half of a circle, mirroring each other all the way around. Last two this way and last one and we'll reverse our direction of the leg circles and do six or seven, five or six. Repetition. I think I might've done five around.
Then let's go back to checking how the shoulders are doing. Or you're still away from your shoulder pads. Hopefully, yes. If not wiggle away. That allows your neck to be long and free. Arms are long. Your hands are down.
Low Back Stretch
Okay, relax your feet. Now this is a low back stretch I want you to do for yourself. So I'm actually going to move my arms and pull the straps up to the ceiling and allow that help from my arms. Now to let my pelvis get pulled up like a little crane from my body. It feels really nice to unload this leg weight from the Mat.My back feels pretty well kind of suspended and then come back down is twice more. So use that. Reach the ropes up, pull, leave the stomach in and down. Almost like you're creating a little hammock right here. And then lower. Let's take that one more time. Lift.
Can you pull that naval area inward into the floor underneath you? What does that feel like? And then come all the way down. Okay, finally take the feed out of these loops. So just step one out. Remember the foot bar still up so you can reach for it. Take the other one out and then we'll come up off of our back for right now your buddy, you can just put those down like that. All right, go ahead and roll on up. All right, it's time to change the tension a little lower. All right, I'm just going to take off one of my cords so that leaves me still with you and let's get the box. We're going to do some things with sitting up on the box to put that up and to do a long setup like this. Okay?
Roll Back
Make sure even between each side of the reformer actually really matters a lot. And then I like to make sure that the headrest is flat for this cause then your feet will go here, pick up your straps, sit up on your box, and we're facing the back of the reformer. Now everybody okay? In case you weren't feeling your abdominals earlier, you're going to feel a little bit more now, right in your tummy and then stretching your back. Okay, so hold the rope. No Way. I want to hold the rope today. I'm gonna grab it and make a little fist right around where the metal break a bracket is and then just kind of pull, see how I brought my, my body more upright. If your knees open, that's fine.Let's take a breath and as you exhale as pull that stomach area, that flattening I had to do earlier, but now make it so much that you're also adding a little curl back of your pelvis or a tilt to the curl or sometimes you'll hear her say c curve right about there. So the back of my pelvis is almost flat on the box. I can feel I have a little more to go. How that's going to happen if I pull my hips under there? Take a breath now how to get up from there, lift your ropes a little bit and sit right back up. Try it again. Take your breath. Making the c curve shape.
So the effort of the c curve is actually what stretching does. Bungee cords back there. If you don't like your arms up this high, you can certainly bend them and keep them down a little bit. Take your breath now. We've come up though. Let the ropes help you lift. Come back up, sit a little taller for a moment through your chest. Take a breath, move from your pelvis like you've got little wheels underneath your button and roll under. It's a weird cue, but it works a lot of the time.
Hold there. Remember, you're allowed to bend your elbows. What we don't want to have you do is shoulders weigh up on your neck with a tension, so drop that down. Whole roll back up to a little more flow. That means I'll just want to talk as much. We'll roll back up. Three more. Roll back.
Rural backups at tall. Last to roll. We're all up last time and roll.
Bicep Curls in C Curve
So just practice this with me. Just bending and straightening your elbows a little bit. You could do this sitting upright and that's a good workout, but I like it. With that little roll back, I think it's intense. More a little more intense. So take yourself back to the c curve. Okay.
Stay in the c curve shape if you can. That means you're really going to have to make your stomach stay in and then exhale, bicep curl. Inhale, unfold. Let's take eight of them.
Shoulders should be low away from the neck last to keep those eyes level. And last one. Okay, we did it. No, we roll back up. Change the movement to a seated tall position. I'm going to take my hands away from like the fist hold and do more of this position. So I've got my arms straight. Still a fist, but not curled. And then pull straight arms back and straight. Arms forward.
Tricep Extension
You'll know where this is supposed to work right into the fleshy part of the back of your arm. Tricep muscles important to sit tall as you do this and try to keep the collar bone expansive and wide.Okay, good. Let's set these down guys. Yeah, we'll just set them on down and me B can do it there. Okay. I'm going to have you stay on the same chords that you're on now will lie on her stomach this way. So step your belly on, put yourself on, try to go with your chest or your underarms, right? Pretty close to the corner of the box. Set your hands up, pull your legs together and you're looking right down at your chords for just a second there. Okay? Don't want your head to be lifted. This ensures your neck to be fairly long. Okay. This is a act as if, and I do a lot of that one. I teach.
Prone Shoulder Press
Act as if you're going to pull the bar apart if you could. Okay, so you kind of see my arm muscles activate. I'm kind of ripping the bar. Use that to move your carriage now back and forth, especially as you come back into that stopper, press away. Come back in as if you're pulling the bar apart. That's a really nice shoulder work and upper back focus.Pause for a second. Take a glance at my body if you can. Everybody look away from your floor and notice here's one place that could be occurring. Instead, we want to go way down there. That's go again four more times. So press pull low shoulders right off that neck. Press. Pull the carriage bar apart.
Swan
It's a nice stretch for your abdominals. Make your legs very energized behind you and then reverse it. So push away, lower the tummy, the ribs, the chest, and the head. Bend your elbows. Come back in. We're going to do that a few more times. Press away arm, stay straight so your face looks up.You look at the wall in front of you, you lift your chest a bit higher, your ribs. And maybe your telling me up. Low shoulder blades. Feel some strength and stretch. Okay. Now the other way you have to push, keep your tummy lifted inside. Put your ribs down, put your chest down, bend your elbows, come in. I think we can all go one more time. Push face, chest, ribs, tummy, legs extended. Ah, should feel good. And then reverse it. Tummy, ribs, chest, bend your elbows. Everybody come all the way in and then hands on the box. You can step off. Yeah, pretty good. All right, let's move this away.
Speed Skater
We're going to work on the side of our hips. Okay. And you're going to come around the side of your reformer head. Reskin stay down. And then let's take a little moment here and checking on our attention. I'm going to keep two chords and I'd like you to keep two chords also. Okay?And we also gonna leave the foot bar up and we're going to use this as a little kind of a guardrail, if you want to call it that. You can hold onto it for safety. We're going to step up on the reformer, okay? So make sure when you step up, it might seem obvious, but if you step up and push it out, it could get away from you. So you know we're not hoping to do that. So step up, this foot goes right on the wood platform while this foot is on the pad. All right, now I want everybody to do this with your knees bent and feel your the side of your calf here. Lightly press against the foot bar.
And for today's exercise here, for the side of our hip, I'm just going to have you stay in the bent leg position. Okay? And then press your carriage out. But also keep this calf against the bar and just hold it there for a minute. So you should be feeling a pretty easy to sense contraction in the side of your hip. I'm going to put my hands on my pelvis now and then pull that leg back in. Let's go for 10 of those. Press out and, and so what's going on in the spine position is a long diagonal from the head to the tailbone. I've got those abdominals pulled back and wide.
I'm going to exhale with your gaze. You might think you're kind of gazing out in front of you. Definitely not head down and up, down and out. So by keeping this leg pressed against the foot bar, you're keeping your body weight organized over that leg. Some really good stabilization of this pelvis frees up this leg to move and hold. Okay, now take your arms out to the sides a little bit.
Turn yourself your chest toward the foot bar. Okay, return to face the direction you came from. Let's try that a few more times. So this is intended to challenge your balance a little bit, a lot. Also work your waistline a back of your waistline, your standing balance, your legs, lots of good stuff. Okay, so I like to put things together sometimes. So come all the when add the two parts together.
Speed Skater w/Rotation
So we'll push the leg and then turn the torso. Here we go. Push the leg, turn the torso, return the leg. Return the torso. Eight of these?Lower your arms and then step back. Reached down. They'll hold that bar if you need to step backward to the floor around we go for the other side. Okay. We started hold your bar. Step up on your mat, step up on your wooden platform. Feed right on the edges. We begin with those knees bent calf against the bar. Hands on your pelvis to start. And then just easy. Here we go. We did eight of these. Eight to 10. So again, where are your eyes?
Speed Skater
You're looking forward slightly at a former diagonal. Your body's nice and stable over the standing leg, that foot on the wood, freeing you up to work aside movement of your thigh. Let's take last two and we'll hold the last one out there, which is now hold it out. Okay. Take your arms in that low stretched out position. Turning your torso toward the foot bar.
Speed Skater w/Rotation
The foot leg on the flat form.
Stomach Massage Variation w/Stretch
And then add one more chord or back to somewhat heavy turnaround. You kind of cozy. Have your hands on the edge of your carriage pad and step your feet up. Push the carriage back. Just look at your feet for a minute. Heel should be together and what your heels up.Use your hands to help pull yourself up tall. Okay, now if you can, I'm sure you can put your hands on your ankles. Okay. Can you get yourself to come lower to your thighs? Why am I having you do this? Well, this is a wonderful stretch for the legs. You're probably feeling that all the way through your back. Okay. Roll yourself up.
Put your hands on the pads again and then this time returned. Sitting tall. Hold the back of your legs for a minute. Sit Tall here. So let's see what happens if we move the carriage back and forth. Hands behind the knees or hands on the side of the carriage. Okay. This is pretty challenging to do. Sitting tall.
Keep your back up, keeping your heels up.
Drop your head towards your knees. We'll just take a shoulder relaxation in a moment. Let the weight of your head drop down towards your legs. Let's scoop the stomach in and back again.
I promise. This is a stretch for our hip flexors. Take one of your cords away and it's pretty common. We do lots of this and pull lattes. It's really nice. Put One foot back against your shoulder pad. Your knees down front knee is bent, and for today, just go ahead. Do to come down and lean gently on your elbows. Stretch the carriage back to the distance where you feel like you're getting a good stretch in the front of that hip.
Eve's Lunge
It's going to be different every day probably that you do this. Hold your stomach back. Okay. Just hold that stretch.
Take one more breath on this leg, pull the carriage forward and then we'll walk around and do the last stretch on the second leg for today. Okay, so pretty well rounded workout. All our body parts got in there, so bending. Then front knee, lean gently down on your elbows. I'm going to feel this broad stretch all through this hip and thigh
Get this thing in motion and give yourself some really good time on your reformer. I'll see you next time.
Pilates at Home: Reformer at Home
Mention
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Amy Havens (Teacher) |
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Marta I |
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Frances K |
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Margaret |
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Excelsa S |
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Symeon K |
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Gail D |
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Sarah |
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Beth P |
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Teresa |
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Sarah M |
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Deepa R |
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Anne-Marie S |
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Katherine W |
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Samantha S |
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cesar |
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Ana B |
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Dariusz N |
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Jessica H |
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Christine T |
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Sonia R |
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Janie Flemming |
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Jennifer H |
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Judit A |
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Milena S |
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Lise B |
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Tanya T |
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Josette Wehbe |
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Ana Margarida Cordeiro Ferrao |
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Pixie B |
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Zahra A |
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Marcia H |
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Natasha J |
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Rena W |
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Kristi B |
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Connie M |
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Lori |
Comments
Fun side standing series with the heavier springs and the support of the calf into the bar. Really enjoyed that one!
Always appreciate your sessions, Amy!
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