Class #378

Spine Corrector Introduction

30 min - Class
54 likes

Description

Amy introduces Pilates Anytime to the Spine Corrector (Arc/Step Barrel) with this 30-minute moderately paced class. Amy assumes you have some knowledge of the Corrector, but breaks down the anatomy of the barrel. The Spine Corrector is an incredibly useful tool for teaching and/or correcting proper positioning and spinal mechanics. For those who experience neck strain in a traditional Mat class, Sitting in the crevasse, Amy works with the green Stretch Out Strap® for some shoulder mechanics leading into side bending and rotation. This can also be done just by sitting on the floor or with a small pillow. Two dismounts are shown so please take caution when attempting these. Enjoy this first Spine Corrector class and look for more soon!
What You'll Need: Spine Corrector, Stretch Out Strap®

About This Video

Feb 16, 2011
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Transcript

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Okay. So I'm gonna just gonna take a quick second to outline, uh, some anatomy of the spine corrector that we're working with. We're working with the more of the Clara Spine corrector, although it's slightly different. Clara Spine correctors from balanced body, uh, don't have these um, metal handles on the outside. They have more of a cutout handle and we're using a different one today here with the handles. And I'm going to ask us during the class, not to hold on to the handles, rather we'll be holding onto the frame of the corrector. So just a quick anatomy of this. So will cause it in certain positions. We're using different angles of the corrector.

Right at the front edge is the lip. This would be our incline, the arc and that cut right in the middle is the crevice. And so certain exercises take place in certain angles on the corrector we'll be starting sitting on the lip. So let's have our ankles together, knees together and ankles just right below the knees. I think we'll start with our hands at the front of the knees and just establish our first vertical line. So there that pool with the arms, elbows out to the sides, making sure we're not thrusting the ribs, but rather tucking those in. And then getting more of the lift of the sternum. Let's twos take a nice breath in and honor exhalation pulling the sitz bones together, working posterior tilt and opening the lumbar back.

Inhale as we come back up to sitting tall, we'll take it four times. Starting here, pulling the low abs in and up. Inhale, back to vertical. So as we roll back off the sitz bones, we're still trying to pull energy upward through the top of the spine so we're not collapsing, but rather tilting and actually growing longer up as we flex the lower back or isolate the flection of the lower back. Inhale tall. One more with the hands holding, feeling those sits bones close at the base of the pelvis and inhale tall, same thing, arms reaching in front of the shoulders. So now activating a lot more of pulling down in the Latinx Hummus or the lat inhale coming to vertical and exhale curling back like there's a big source of pull something back behind you. Getting those lumbar to come back.

Inhale up through sit and tall. Exhale and curl. Getting ready for a bigger flection in a moment. Inhale up to vertical. Sit in the last one. So often we'll call these our butt belly squeezes and inhaled as sitting tall. Taking it all the way back to the arc. Two breaths. Ah, okay. So often I'm going to have a sit here for a moment.

Just feel the work in the abdominal musculature. And as we know, this often relates to mat work. So if we simplify, think, okay, if I wasn't a math class and I've just sat from vertical and I rolled back to my sacrum or my lower back, we wouldn't just collapse back. We want to establish the strength of staying flexed. Forward head, easy. Neck is easy. Let's go ahead and post this position. So we use the corrector to push off of to help us go forward so we can inhale. Inhale, exhale, exhale.

Pulling the shoulders down, starting to think of energy through the top of the head. Squeeze the legs, three, two, and one. Press off and lift this whole spine up to vertical. Right on top of the sits bones. We'll go again. Just one breath, exhale and pull little pulses. Just four, three, two, one and all the way up. Lift through the chest, lift through the top of the head. Get right up on those sitz bones.

One more time. Inhale, same thing. Exhale, pullback. So we're warming up into the spinal flection and trying to hold this in and use the corrector. Press off of. Here we go. All the way up to vertical sit. Okay, I'm gonna skip forward adding some thoracic extension. So building blocks. Take a nice breath hall, scapula down. Exhale again, tilting the hips back, see curve reaching the lumbar back.

Now again, as you're in this position, we're trying to close any gap we have here behind us. So say Crim to the corrector, requiring quite a bit of inter abdominal compression of the abdominals. Now let's see if we go into thoracic extension, keeping the arms just right in the frame of our shoulders. I like to kind of think of just holding that little lime or lemon underneath the chin. Let's do one to show it incorrectly releasing the rib cage, which would just be a spill. The head may fall back, all of which were trying to avoid. All right, can losing those ribs and let's just come back into a chest lift. So we'll take a breath pattern. Inhale, exhale, the rassic extension, working a little bit more diligently and holding stability here. Inhale, exhale.

Coming forward. Four more shoulders are open. Wow, you absolutely could hold a prop that would be about the frame of the arms here, like a spine magic circle or a ball. Really want to utilize though the spine corrector for getting mobility through these thoracic vertebra. Let's take one more. Just holding the shape is holding the shape, letting the Chin not be thrusted forward, retracting the skull back. Let's take a breath. Use The exhale.

We're going to curl forward and just hold. Okay. I'd like us now to move into some of the mat work. The a hundred so let's bring our thighs to our chest. Extend the legs up, hands toward the ankles for a little stretch for a moment. So we're trying to establish 90 degrees of hip flection without laying back on the corrector, which would be easy to do because it's there for us to lay on two. But we're trying to not use that, uh, for the work but rather know it's there and pull forward off of it.

Alright, so we'll do our hundreds. Starting our legs here. Holding arms down by our sides. We're pumping in twos. Three, four legs. Go down five to 10 inches. Hold them there. Yeah. Filling up the space with the Lumbar [inaudible]. Add a little lower with the legs. Hope flex little lower with the legs and hold.

Yeah. Last level down in line with the lip for three do last breath cycle. It's hold to see if we can hold it. Ah, so associated that with the Matt. Great way to train for the abdominal strength though.

Having the next stress cause your head and chest is up, not having a fight. Gravity coming off of the floor. Okay. Let's bring our knees in. Single leg stretch. So if we extend our left leg, we're going to take it in line with the lip, right hand or low, you know, the single leg stretch, shin level work, your sit bone reaching forward. Let's just take an inhale. Exhale to change. So paying attention on as the legs are changing the spine, not losing its weight distribution on the corrector [inaudible] that's really feeling the compression of the stomach to the back to the corrector.

[inaudible] for tracking parallel. Last one coming up here and in double leg stretch. So both knees and we'll do five repetitions. All right, so this is a tricky one. As the arms come up, framing the ears, very likely we would want to fall back again. So let's show the wrong laying out.

Not so good. All right. If we did that in Matt, we'd be really in trouble in the neck. So we want to stay forward. Here we go for five legs in line with lip at seal circle and catch for more. So there's a continuation of up with the truck. Reach up out and around. Two more. [inaudible] one more for good luck up out at Arou. Okay, let's extend our left leg out.

So scissor and a little stretch. I'm going to have, let's hear two different things. If we can, will you go ahead and put your foot on the floor? Okay. I'm five three ish. Lia is five nine ish, longer legs I think have an easier time of letting the leg all the way to the floor without a lot of disturbance in the pelvis. So for my legs, if I take my outside leg down to the floor, I can do it. But I have a harder time keeping this position stable. I actually kind of have to adjust a little there and I'm not wanting to do that cause I'm losing the connection on my back on the barrel.

So for this demonstration I'm going to show my leg in line with the lip. Okay. Yeah. And now let's work the hamstring stretch. So the same thing as we would in mat. We will inhale as the legs change. Little Double Pool [inaudible] so we're trying to keep, keep going. Our back, constant pressure, consistent pressure here on the barrel. [inaudible] let's take four more and one and two.

Three and four hold. So a modification for that it would be does, this is quite challenging to change the legs here is to switch the legs higher in the air list. Maybe show six like that. So the switch would happen higher here. Bring that bottom leg up before you let go of the top one and your scissor. It might be smaller, little smaller, but very deep in those abs and three and two.

Last one. Okay. I'm going to have a splendor. Knees. Place the feet on the floor. Notice we haven't gotten out of this position yet. It's a lot of work going on in the core, so we're going to take her hands behind her head. We'll show some Chris Cross with the feet on the floor first. That good breath rotate to our left.

So we're going to think chest toward the horizon. We're ready. Inhale, center chest toward the other horizon. And again, if we were on the floor doing mat work, keep going. It'd be very tempting to lay back and do the crisscross back here. Go ahead and keep going to the side. Yeah.

So you hear your teacher's shoulder blades off the and you're fighting to get up. The spine correctors, therefore you sued actually can help you train and strengthen up into those abs. Not Cute. You and your neck. Here we go. One more without the legs twist and last time to the right. Now as we come back to center, we're going to bring her legs to tabletop. Regular crisscross. If we extend our right leg, let's exhale and change. We'll do eight of these.

Trying to continue to pull forward toward the thighs. Four and three and two and last one. Both knees in. Let's take the legs behind. One more stretch. Want you to bring your chest toward the size dyes toward the chest. Okay. Then the knees. Let's put the feet back on the floor.

Reaching the arms. Four. Let's go and release this a little bit for a thoracic extension. Alright, so imprinting the spine to the barrel, please. If your neck starts to get fatigued, just come up out of the position. We're going to do this for and tear your chest stretch or chest expansion.

So we inhale arms wide. You could get the fingertips to the floor if you don't do it this way. So we want to establish that. Good solid plank there. Exhale, center. Inhale open and exhale center. Inhale. So if the barrel were the floor, I'm in printing my ribs to it. Arms in two more.

Inhale, crown of our head going back center and last one. Inhale and exhale and the curl forward into the flection. Let's go one more time. Four times only burst those arms open. Give some energy. Yeah, close and open and close so that at any time you're ready to roll up because your spine is ready to flex. Let's do a few pulses to come up. [inaudible] and four, three, two, one and for ass and left. All right, let's go to some lateral flection. So we'll be turning and we do have our green stretch out strap that we'll be using for the side bending section. Yeah.

And we will sit in our diamond in the crevice now. Alright. We can go back into some fundamentals of the box or the classical shoulders over pelvis and also staying in the lateral plane or the side plane side. Bending can sometimes cause a back bend. So that being the piece of toast in the toaster slot image or between two panes of glass, some cues to here.

And I think we'll go from the center third loop out or two on one side and three on the other. I'm gonna stay with three and three feels long for me today, but uh, maybe that's a good thing. All right, so let's establish a nice press out into the outside edge of the strap. So we're turning on the shoulder girdle, pulling those ribs back in and we'll take our arms above the head and then back down the line with the chest. Just a simple inhale. Exhale to come up and inhale. Exhale to come down. Yeah, and as we're lifting the arms, we're applying that shoulder blade stabilization. I'm just watching your back.

So as the arms lift, the shoulders pull down rather than elevated shoulders. All right, one more time. All the way up and all the way down. Next section we'll do an arm stretch. So taking the arms back up over the head. So the arms stretch, we'll move our right arm toward our ear and just the left arm will be out in a horizontal line to our shoulder. It's this top arm, that lat that's going to stretch down. That's the arm stretch. And we can pull that shoulder down without thrusting the ribs laterally to either side. All right. And we come back to the v above the head, left arm toward the head, the left lap, pulling down ribs are stable and inhale, exhale, coming back to center. So to the right, right arm, I meant to say. Sure.

Left arm. Sure going. So we're wanting that arm. I'm just going to do something here to stay right in line with the shoulders. Go ahead. So her arm is right in line with that shoulder right off the edge of the ear.

One more to each side. Since this lap that's pulling down good and center and to the left arm, up to the ear and center. Lower your arms for a moment. So that's our arm stretch in the arms stretch is actually gonna assist us with a side bend now. So if we take again the arms up to the ceiling first, this will be a side bend and we'll do a three breath cycle holding in the arm frame here for the two first breaths on the third breath will be exhale, the arms going to come that find that stretch. So inhale, lengthen up. Okay. To our left we have exhale, exhale.

Here's the arms stretch that helps us go over into the side bend. Just hold that position, anchor that opposite it's opposite hip, both shoulder blades down. We'll take a full breath to come up, pull with the strap and center. Inhale, hold to the right and we exhale. Arms stretch to come over. Full breath to come up. So again and sure, sure. Arms stretched to come over. Stay there for just a second.

We're also wanting the crown of our head to be aiming toward the strap and the strap to be a vertical line. So increasing side. Ben, we want to open up this right side. Here we go all the way up and again to the right side. [inaudible] arms stretch vertical line with the strap. Crown ahead to the strap. Shoulder blades down and let's come up and we'll find four more without me talking.

Sure. Full breadth up. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] one more each side. [inaudible] last one. Ah, slower the arms. Keep the spine up. Strong.

Arms backup. So side bending without the arm stretch. Inhale first. When long exhale to our left. [inaudible] inhaled to our center [inaudible] so every chance we get we're trying to pull the shoulder blades back down into position. Lift the sternum up and over, opening the side of the body and up to the center here over to our right. Inhale up to the center. One more each side. [inaudible] last one to our right.

Exhale over and inhale back up to center and I'm going to lower my arms for a moment. Turn the head right and left. Just give the neck a little bit of release. Oftentimes the arms being above the head, that long can get a little Stinney up in the neck and shoulders. It's good nerves, stretching, but also hard. It's hard to hold my arms up, so we'll add a forward flection from our side. Bend. A little bit of salt, kind of appearance in the trunk positioning. So again, we'll establish a sitting tall position. Inhale, exhale, arms above the head.

Inhale holds it tall. Exhale to our left. Wow. Yeah, we hold on the inhale. The exhale comes from high underneath those ribs that we round over the leg. We're trying to keep the strap taught opposite.

Sit Bone rooted and twisting that trunk over the thighs. Yeah, let the head go. Inhale back up to the side then. So if we just go through flow, exhale over. Inhale to the side bend. Yes, right there. XLS returning right from this center part of the abdominals, the high abdominals.

Inhale back to the side bend and one more time. Exhale over. Inhale back to the side. Let's exhale through center. Inhale their lift and side bend grounded the head to the strap. Inhale, hold and Oh, it feels so good.

I'm going to say for myself, my low back lift that left side open. Exhale and over trying to get most of that rotation. A start again, right in those upper abdominals where a crisscross would start. Inhale back the side, ven last one and [inaudible] and back up to vertical. So we'll have a little pattern. Inhale, center, exhale, side bend, inhale, hold, exhale, rotation and heel side. Ben, up to the other side. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] neo. Exhale sales side. I liked it that think of the inhale on the side. Lift. Exhale, rotation in hillside.

Exhaling up again, one more to the right. [inaudible], [inaudible], [inaudible] and all the way up and rest. Okay, let's put our strap away. So as we're blending a little bit of classical mat, like the AB series of five that we had done that a little lateral and side bending rotation, we're going to go back to facing our original side and go over the correct over the top of it. So I think a safe way and most of us know how to get there would be to slink over. I'm going to adjust my shirt holding here on the wood. So again, we're not on the handles and just stay with very imprinted as you over the barrel, shoulders on the floor, and we did not adjust and put a mat underneath us. You absolutely could throughout the whole series have done this with the mat underneath. Little more support for your neck. We're okay with it without.

All right, let's start with our legs up to the ceiling. So we're again establishing 90 degrees of hip flection with our sacred imprinted. Let's show the uh, incorrect tuck for a second, which actually feels quite good I think in the lower back to feel it open and that could be something else we do later, but let's establish that level. Pelvis and triangle and legs at 90. All right. Hip Extension, right hip, left leg. Just let it come where it will. I don't want us to focus on hamstrings. I want us to focus on the hip extension and how we can achieve that and engage the deep core muscles and a deep inner abdominal compression.

Again, in printing us to the barrel and just feel the stretch. Let's do a nice breath and exhale from the ABS. Bring the legs up to join in the center. One check in on the other side. Just don't worry about your right side. How, how fully extended can you get from that left hip? Say looking to the ceiling. My hands are on the wood.

I'm pulling myself into the corrector so I'm actually applying, getting some lat work in there, keeping me close to it and bringing the legs up. Now let's do inhale. Exhale, scissor [inaudible] her hip extension center and again, so we are trying to keep our knees straight [inaudible] for more and inhale, exhale to the reach. Lift all the way up, lengthen out of the hip and reach all the way up. Last one on our right and all the way up. And last one on the left and all the way up.

But I'm going to have us actually go back to the right. I'm going to talk about one more aspect here. Scooched is when the hip is extended over the barrel, we could be there passively. Let's show passive or active, stretch the leg, fire your hamstrings and the lower gluteal muscle. And we're going to pulse the leg down. So we have [inaudible] four, three, two. Let's take both legs up and Shane's were pulsing. Hamstrings, hamstring, sure.

Four, three, two and one all the way up once again. And pulse, four three, two, one and lift last time on the left hamstrings. Sure. And four, three, two and one. Let's take him up and hold. Okay.

Flex the feet and point the feet and flex. Just a little transition point and flex. Even here, we're still placing that sacrum on the barrel, so again, it would be very easy to be up in a tuck. Stretch that spine over the top of this arch. So sacrum and tailbone.

Flex and 0.1 more. Flex and point. Now keeping the legs extended. Let's turn the thighs outward. We have an inhale and exhale back to parallel. Inhale, rotate and exhale. Parallel. Just two more open from the hip. Let's inhale, hold and take out into a straddle or a v. Again, just holding the position for mum.

Think about where the Femur is at the pelvis. Try to open more rotate. Can the inner thighs face more to the ceiling or even the back wall behind us. Let's try to pulse this position without tucking those hips. And we have, I think of it as reaching to these sidewalls. Sure. Four, three, two and flex. Same thing.

Reach through the heels, toes to the floor, and four, three, two and one. Bring them up. Heel to heel. Seem to seem point. Roll back to parallel. We're going to do our a dismount. Will you show the dismount that we usually do? Not for everybody. If you know spine corrector, that's pretty fun. If you're safe, no neck problems, no lower back, although you wouldn't be doing this anyway, or a very safe is tuck-in come on down this way, you know, get down to the ground there and sometimes we'll just roll to the side to roll up. Okay, so that's our first spine corrector class.

Thank you very much.

Comments

Hi Amy ! I couldn't have been happier when I saw this class today !! It feels so good....love the shoulder and rotation !! Thanks so much ...please do more !!!
Hi Ms. Amy: Great class! More please! :)
Hi Amy! I've been thinking about purchasing a step barrel. Which one are you using? What is the difference between east and west coast styles? Can't wait to try this class!
Hi Janice......yay....so glad to hear you enjoyed class on the Spine Corrector. It's one of my favorite pieces to work on :) I will do more, don't worry!!
Hi Susan, of course I'll do more....just for you, well, and me too! :)
Hi Rachael, I was using the version of barrel that's made by Balanced Body----if you look to them, you can ask for the Clara Step Barrel. They also sell a foam version which is also quite nice and a little less expenseive than the one you see in my class. It's nice and light, easy to move around and cost effective. The difference between east and west coast styles: west coast is longer from front to back, east coast a little shorter and narrower. I prefer west coast, but that's also what I learned on. Let me know what you think! Enjoy!
Bravo, nice work. I love the spine corrector. The workout felt great. MORE MORE MORE
Thank you
Hi Stella! Thank you.....yes I love the Spine Corrector too. This was the first one up on the site so I kept it fairly basic, but I have another class planned to film soon. More on the way! Talk to you again soon!
Thanks for a great class Amy! I really enjoyed it. ALSO so great to see a response from the wonderful Stella Hull - hello from Indianapolis beautiful Stella!
I appreciate you taking class with me Stephanie, thank you. Glad you enjoyed it. And how fun that you saw a post from a friend of yours!! Isn't that grande?!
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