Reformer for Ballet Dancers

Hi, I'm Diane Diefenderfer. This is my daughter Laura Hanlon. I'm really happy to be back with Pilates Anytime Today. We're gonna do a workout based on a fundamental classic Pilates workout with a eye toward the needs of a dancer and in some cases more specifically for ballet dancers. All are welcome, of course, bring out your inner dancer.

Hope you enjoy. Thank you. Alright, so we're going to sit down on our reformers. And we are on, depending on your reformer work. I am on. I'm going to be on two reds and a green here. Laura's on same thing.

Alrighty. And we have our foot bar at our adaptable height. Headrest up, alright, let's take a position of getting ready, feeling our bodies, pulling the belly in to create a nicely rounded spine. Don't drop the head too much, energy through the fingertips. We're gonna breathe, especially across our backs here. And then we exhale deepening the abdominals to lower ourselves onto our reformers and fitting yourself in there.

Alright, palms are down. We're going to bring the feet to a prehensile position. There's two versions you could do. Low on the bar with the toes more wrapped, higher on the bar to massage the instep. Why don't you do higher on the bar, Laura?

Alright, I'm gonna do a little bit lower on the bar. Both are good. We're gonna stretch out all the way, pressing the heels deep, zipping up the inner thighs, filling the hamstrings and glutes activated without tucking. So we have a neutral pelvis, pubic bone de sacrum, navel to spine, beautiful open chest, open throat, chin lifted, just to get ourselves set up for good success. Let's breathe in here and we exhale as we bend and we'll do 10 and press and in.

So our rhythm is our breath. Laura, you can help me count (chuckles) Feeling the length and the nice engagement of the quadriceps. Keeping very mindful of parallel kneecaps to the ceiling. Again, neutral pelvis is so important. Using your belly to help move your carriage.

So it's not just leg work. Are we about eight ? And 10. Thank you Laura. Alright, let's develop the legs to the ceiling and then turn out. We're doing our first position or Pilates stance and we have our heels together to start, flex the toes, bring the balls of the feet onto the bar. If you wanna look up and check that you're right on center there.

And we have that easy heel position right underneath the body. And we press out one and in and press good. Think of length in the body. As though you were standing and you were quite tall. Six, I believe, inner thighs drawing together.

Turn out correct knee in line with the feet. Two more should be 10. It's okay to do nine or 11. And in, I'm gonna add something here. I'm gonna open my feet a little bit and go to a full releve or demi point, making sure you don't supinate or pronate.

And then we're gonna press out in this position, lower the heels, holding the turnout, going back to full releve and plie, some dance terms and flex. So we're really working correctly our external rotators, again without tucking. Inner thighs facing the ceiling and up and in press. Deep flexion, working those ankles. How many Laura?

I don't know either (laughs). And let's do one more. We do care, we're just, you know, it's not always about the exact number and rest. Let's from here, keep a space hold on your thighs, developpe or develop the legs, flex the feet. Bring your heels to the corners of your reformer.

Please make sure you don't drop the legs or overturn out the foot. So the turnout is equal from the hip, thigh, knee, ankle, foot. Neutral pelvis and pressing one. Two. The inhale opens you, the exhale closes you.

And that's the way I was taught. Name dropping here. But it's important to me from Romana and from Maran Fletcher to lengthen on the inhale, exhale on the close. (Diane exhales deeply) I think we're at seven. Work those inner thighs and back of the thighs without tucking.

Let's do one more and press and bend. Alright, let's come to the center on the releve position. Make sure you're centered on that metatarsal again, so you're not pronating or supinating. We press out, we're going to lower the right heel, stretch the calf without letting the seat muscles go loppy. Sloppy (chuckles). You know what I mean?

Other leg lower calf stretch. Rise, right heel down, knees in alignment. Up, very articulate footwork. You could do this standing up, facing your mirror, finding out where your alignment is. Let's start now running in place one and two and one and two.

The accent or the emphasis is up, down, up, down. And one and two, and hip square, belly tight. And change and last set we're going to releve flex down under the bar stretch the calves again. Rising up and lower and rise. Two more.

One more high releve, flex. You can wrap your toes again and bend. All right, let's put the feet. How we doing? Feel your legs. Laura loves working her calves (laughs).

Alright. Feet on the ledge please, breathe in. And we're gonna roll up. Now I'm going to reduce, take my green off. So I'm going to be on two reds. You do what you feel. We're gonna work on single legs.

So wherever you are at home or in a studio, you can just lighten the load a little bit. Alright, inhale again. Exhale. I'm reaching out to the Pacific Ocean. Woo beautiful. And down we go.

All right, let's put the right. We're gonna do some work in parallel because it's so super important and we're gonna do some turnout. So there's a lot of legwork here it is as I said, a dancer inspired workout. So you're on your high releve. Just make sure you don't do something goofy with your foot.

Goofy. That's a technical term. Don't do goofy. Keep it straight. Other leg at tabletop. We're gonna do four here. Alright, pressing out one and in. And this other leg is a working leg too. So you wanna be aware of where it is in space.

And in and press, that was for extend the left leg slowly developpe up, flex both feet and rise on the feet and reach, we'll do three more of these. Trying to work on my standing seat muscle. So if I were standing up, that standing leg in releve would be strong. We have one more. And we'll do a little brand battement.

We first do up flex both feet, sorry. Go flex and point now touch the toe to the bar kick and take it through again, stretch it. Flex both. And point tap up and down, two more this time you'll do the same beginning. Now flex the top foot kick point and dela coordination drill here, stretch, flex both, point.

Flex the top, kick and in. Other side, left foot on the bar. Check it out, it's right underneath your sits bone of that leg. Precise tabletop for the other one. Hip square, pelvis neutral.

Four here, one. Two. Think about the upper body as well. Calm. And four, stretch the right slowly. Developpe and flex and point and reach.

We're inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling. Two more. Your breath fuels your movement. Don't forget about it. This should be four I hope. And point going into the grand battement we start the same and flex.

Now we toe tap the bar, up and through and stretch. Square hips, point hold the belly up and through. Two more. A little bit different than coming up. Now top foot flexes, kicks points, through last one of these. (Diane breathing deeply) And through, hug your knees to your chest.

I feel that, you feel that? Turn out a little bit. Turn parallel. Yeah, turn out a little bit. We're just taking a mini break here.

Alright, next. This exercise is a variation on a theme of what we just did. So you're going to put your standing foot in the middle of your bar. So quite frankly, it's right under your crotch, right under your tail. The other foot's coming into a coupe.

Little rounded, stretched toe foot position. Your knees are equal. This is what it's all about. Square hips, strong center. You're going to press out and draw the left leg toward the knee without turning the whole thing around. And then lower.

So you're doing a fondu to a retire. I did say it was a dancer workout. So I hope you're okay with the dance terms. Really works he legs, whew. This is four I think yeah.

And now we're going on. You bring it through the retire pass it to the top. Lower to fifth position crossed thighs and fondu. Fondu, developpe. Lower to fifth and in, two more times.

This is more about hip and pelvic stability than the legs. Of course the legs are working too for sure. But if you don't have a strong center, it really isn't correct. You good? (laughs) You still love me.? Other side.

Put the other foot on the moderate releve as you extend it'll go higher. Square, V, if you're looking at yourself, you'll see Laura in the camera, V. And we go to retire. All right, and in. Retire is spelled like retire or to withdraw. So the foot is coming from the ankle and it's withdrawing to the knee.

One more. And then it becomes a passe because we're going passing to the top and fifth fondu. Passing through the knee to right in front of you that's where it should be, all right. Know where your line alignment is, in front of you. Fifth bend. Woo. Last time and rest.

I felt that I'm sweating. Hug your knees. Now to be honest, we're not gonna do any more of that, but you could do it to the side as well. You wanna practice that. Remembering the hip and pelvic stability is key. Okay, let's rock ourselves back.

Careful of your foot bar. And you're gonna come up and straddle your reformer. So come up and you're in second position. Hope that worked out okay for everybody. We good?

Alright, place your hands. You can go this way. I like this way as well. Check out my thigh, knee, shin, ankle, foot is in alignment. If you're not super turned out, that's fine. You can work here.

Just don't do this with your foot. Screwing it around in the ankle. Really bad news. Especially when you're weight bearing. Alright, putting the arms in here. I'm gonna sit nice and tall.

I wanna feel my sits bones anchored to my carriage and I have a tendency to splay my ribs. So we don't wanna do that, long back. We're just gonna pulse those thighs, back, back, back, back. You can breathe in and out. Whatever you do, just don't hold your breath working those external rotators and hold, good.

Take the arms out to horizontal, feel energy in the arms right? Not behind you, not in front of you. In line with your shoulders, you're gonna go to a palm up, releve, and flat. Again lifting palms and pressing down and up and press. I'm holding my belly in to hold my body in place.

Let's do two more (exhales). One more, shoulders are down and leave the feet. We're gonna pulse the arms back, back, back, back. This is an old Ron Fletcher exercise. Back, back, back center, back center, back center, back center, let's do palms up.

And palms forward but the pulse is still to the back, back, back. Watch those ribs and palms. Back, back, back, back. Last set. You should feel your arms and good. Now you're gonna squeeze like you're riding a horse. Squeeze your wood frame.

Contract the belly round your spine. You can grab your hands and then open. Turn out and stretch. Arch slightly. Looking up. Inhale. Exhale.

This should feel good. Inner thighs relaxing a little bit. Inhale. Exhale. (Diane breathing deeply) Contract breath, contract the belly, the spine around. Leave your legs turned out. Place your hands behind you.

You may put them down and actually arch back carefully. Don't let the neck fall behind you and enjoy the opening of the stretch, the chest, the stretch, and the heart. All right, coming back to center. Let's have you take your arms up to a in dance of fifth position, alright, so here we are keeping both hips anchored. We breathe a little bit, right.

(exhales) A little more. The third one, center and open. And one and two. I'm thinking of my opposite hip, anchoring, three. Center.

Again. Keep the head and neck going in line with the spine, three. (Diane breathing deeply) Hold your head as a center point of your frame arms. And open, hands to the shoulders. Alright, we're gonna go over to the right carefully.

Put the right hand on the wood. Take the left arm, reach it up. You can look over to your right knee, and then inhale, turn the head. Look over the left shoulder toward the ceiling. So we're giving a little bit of a rotation in the upper spine and the neck, which just feels good.

One more rotate, press the shoulders down. Looking left, bring your left fingers to your shoulder. And then center yourself other side, inhale, exhale to get there, left arm around your wood or whatever material you have on your reformer. And stretch the right arm up as you look to your left knee breathing in. And look more to your left knee, sorry to the ceiling.

And then over. Just feel the movement, right? It doesn't have to be perfect. Enjoy the changing of your head and neck and shoulders a little bit. Good. Thank you for breathing.

And then look up. And coming up to center and finish. Good. All right. I think we've been turning out enough. We're going to go on to some hundreds because everyone needs hundreds.

All right, so we take our bars down and you choose your springs. I'm gonna work on a green red. You could do green, yellow, green, blue. Depends what color combo you like. Alright, bring your feet to your ledge or your bar and your straps are at the ready.

Alright, breathing in and rolling down again. So every time we come up and down on our equipment, we wanna use our abdominals, that's pretty obvious. Taking your straps, alright, we're gonna do our classic hundreds in five out five. We'll do five with legs parallel and fives slightly turned out, alright not too turned out. Okay, so bring the legs tabletop please, get a little pull on your ropes, inhale here (inhales).

Exhale position. And inhale. Three, four, five, out. Two, three, four, five Small subtle taut pulses. Two, three, four, five, three. (Diane breathing deeply) Four and five.

Two, three, four and five. Keep the tempo. Turn out slightly. Six. Seven and eight. Nine reaching long through the fingertips. Shoulders down but off the mat.

10, two, three, four, five. Parallel bend and rest. Alright, now I'm keeping my same springs, putting my feet in the straps. Alright, we're not rolling up so we can leave our shoulder. I'm sorry, our head rest up.

Alright, bringing the legs to about a 45 degree angle. You never want to go too low. Again, I'm gonna talk a lot about pelvic stability. So I like to put my hands on my hips for the moment. Be mindful sacrum on the mat so we're not tucking, lifting our pelvis.

Take your legs approximately where you can without tucking and then fire the hamstrings on the way down. And again back. Now my carriage is a little light. I'm not gonna get up and change it. You decide what feels good to you at home.

Turned out upward, feel the external rotation, seat muscles stretching here, engaging without tucking. You'll get tired of hearing me say that. I hope not. One more, up and down and good. Now we're gonna combine for circles. We're gonna go up in parallel.

We're going to turn out and around. We're keeping our feet pointed for now, parallel. Turn out and squeeze, parallel. Parallel, turnout in turnout, parallel, one more. Now we're gonna reverse it with flexed feet.

Turnout circle. You're in first parallel. Lower and we'll go smoother now up and around and down and up and around and down and up and around. If your feet are slipping, you might wanna change your foot position, one more up and around and my feet tend to slip. I'm gonna point again and go to a diamond. So make sure you're not sickling your feet please.

You could flex or point, diamond is consistent flexion in the knees, we're bringing the diamond upward without lifting the pelvis and down and again up, working this lower, once more. Stand by hold straight and squeeze and bend. And one and down. And two and lower. A third on the 45 degree angle.

Squeeze and bend. Inhale, exhale. Here's our third. Let's flex the feet, squeeze, reach, bend point, fourth set of this. So you have three diamond movements up and down, yeah. Third one and flex, squeeze and bend to the diamond.

Alright, now still turned out stretch to where we had started in turnout. We're going to do Peter pan, bend the right, and it's right on your midline to first. Watch that side leg doesn't go crazy, yeah first. And bend legs stay on the same 45 degree plane. Little quicker, one and squeeze.

And one and squeeze and one and squeeze. One time, hold. Let's flex, point, flex, point, flex point. One more flex and point. Now we're going to a like a passe position behind the knee, other leg, vertical. And back to first, other side.

So for you all that are dancing, you're doing your pique turns. And the foot's behind the knee and back, use those hamstrings. Equality of turnout. Hips, square. How you doing Laura?

Okay, good (chuckles) Up and lower. Now being very careful, don't go past perpendicular. You may open all right carefully to stretch. Please never do a circle this wide. It is completely inappropriate.

You can harm your back or your hips, your inner thighs. And we're not gonna stay here long and we're not gonna bounce. Alright, so you got a good stretch from all that work you've done. Take your ropes with your hands, get yourself out of it as gracefully as possible and close. Alright, I'm gonna loop my straps over my poles back here if I can find the thing.

Putting the feet back to the ledge. Alright, arms to the ceiling, inhale and curling up. Yes. Good. Alright, we're gonna go into some arm work now. Alright, I'm sweating.

We've been on our backs for a while, but it's time to sit up. So I'm gonna go to a green I believe I'm a little not sure about the colors. Everybody's colors can be different. Just do what feels best to you. Don't hurt yourselves. We're gonna face the back, so Laura will face front, I'll be in the side here.

We're gonna do some, a little bit of bicep tricep but not much. We're gonna go into rowing. One rowing. So scoot forward. So you have carriage behind you. If you have to cross your legs, that's fine. So when you do go back, you have a support for your sacrum.

So take your straps, you good Laura? We'll do five bicep pulls, one and reach. So we call this the arm work. I think we know that. Keep going. Straps a little, four, but it's body work. Potty posture, triceps, back and through and back.

Being mindful of the spine, the ribs, the shoulders, the neck, the whole body. One more is five and we're good. Alright. I kept that kinda light because I don't like heavy, heavy weight on rowing for me with my shoulder. All that rotation we're gonna do. Alright, we're gonna do bicep pull on one, deep contraction rolling back, stay curved forward, sit up tall reach, take it around and stretch.

This is why I don't like the straps, too heavy, the rope's too heavy. Press, circle and get a nice stretch. Roll up. Bicep pull, one, inhale. Exhale, back and forward. Use your breath. Release tall.

Contract the belly. Round the spine, stretch the arms. Let it go, carefully here and stretch. Now to be even I have to cross my other leg. For the next two. Let's do flat back bicep pull, one, hinge. Come up flat, reach it out.

Contract the belly. Rest of the exercise is the same. Get a nice shoulder stretch. Don't go too high here. Hard on your shoulder joints and over. Last one, bicep pull, flat back hinge.

Come up tall, reach it out, take it around. Stretch it out and over. So if you're into ballet you can pretend you're doing "Swan Lake," here. Oh gosh, couldn't help it. All right, loop your poles, you'll turn around facing your front, crisscross is good.

Nice tall spine again. It's interesting how we call it legwork, footwork, inner thigh work, this work that work. I'm just taking a moment to say it's for your whole body. So many of you know that when Joe Pilates was asked, what's this exercise for, he would fairly scream his answer and he would say, it's for your body so just do it. So that's a little, maybe a little old school, but I get what he meant, it's for the whole body and I like that.

Alright, let's do hug a tree. We're gonna add something. So your arms are probably behind you like mine. You bring them into a good alisicone position for the hug. And you hug your ball, hold it.

Middle fingers together, turn the head right and left. Next time we'll go left, right. (Diane breathing deeply) Wrap that arms around a nice big tree, left, right, center and open. Alright, last thing here, which is so nice for the body. Put your thumbs in your loops.

I bring my arms down to the mat. Some people might start higher. The idea is that you're pressing down the shoulders, lifting the chest, beautiful posture. We bow the head inhale and we reach forward, rounded. We're gonna go directly up straight, arms parallel.

I went straight up, you did a roll through, which she's fine too. Up and around, and why don't you do your version. Laura, you go once please, bow the head, scoop the belly, go forward. Now she's going to elongate the spine. Arms by your ears, lengthen your spine and right up, good.

And then we'll do the other way. Head down. A same beginning. Now as you sit up your arms go directly to over the legs. Press, up and around and bend, one more with flexed feet.

(Diana exhales deeply) Strew directly up. Press it and up and around and again. Okay good. Alright, let us come off now and we're going to go into the long stretch or part of the long stretch series. So I need to bring my bar back up.

I might need some help here. No, that's too high. So you're seeing me there? Is that good? I think so. All right. So with all the wonderful new inventions and additions to equipment, I'm still sometimes figuring it out.

Alright, I'm going to use a red and a green and we're gonna do the long stretch. Is that what you're using? Red and blue. You did a red and a blue. Okay, we'll do that.

Alright, so headrest is up for long stretch. Alright, so ideally you wanna get on this hand in a foot and a hand in a foot as gracefully and as economically with movement as possible. So we'll do that here and here and here and here and here we are. All right, press those scapular muscles down. Pull the belly in. I'm talking to myself.

Squeeze the inner thighs, pelvic floor engaged. And we press back. Oh this is heavy, and forward and back and forward. Shoulders down. Keep that nice alignment.

Four, we do five and press and return. Gently kneel. I'm gonna switch to a red and a blue. That green's a little heavy for me for this. Alright, we're going to go carefully into our down stretch. So do what you can, be careful of your back.

We inhale back, we exhale, three. Open that chest. Inhale, keep the head up. (Diane exhales deeply) Squeeze your seat once more. Feels good. Opening the chest.

Three, two, get all the air out of the lungs, one, stop, pause and then contract the belly round your spine you all can sit all the way back on your heels if that works for you. Good and get a good stretch, Laura's demonstrating. So I have a knee replacement so those don't work for me, but that's okay. Alright then come on up. We're gonna do right into the stomach pole, which is not the upstretched and it's not the elephant.

This comes from Ron Fletcher's work and I love it. We're gonna do it. We're gonna go to flat feet. We're going to bring the torso down. The arms frame the head, the sits bones are pointed up, the stomach is pulled up. That's why he called it the pull up.

All right, so pressing back and (exhales). Pull the hips to the ceiling, pull the belly in. Stomach pulling up. Nice Achilles tendon stretch calf stretch. You gonna like that Laura.

(Diane breathing deeply) One more. And we pull and hold. Let's put our hands to the carriage for a moment. Turn the wrists the other way. Let's bend the knees and roll up slightly.

We're not gonna lift our arms, we're just gonna feel ourselves come into a nice vertical position. Pull those shoulders down. Let's shrug them up and down. (Diane exhales deeply) Once more and down. Then we're gonna go into some simple parallel splits. There's tons of splits and controls and things and we only do so many things in one day.

So I've chosen this one today. So go ahead and take your bar, please take care. If you need to lower the bar, you could. We're gonna have the left foot on a slight releve. Not too high, right leg up on the bar.

You may need to get into this differently on your own. Try to square your hips. The tendency is to really go crooked here and don't slip. And carefully backing into the split and pulling the belly in again, so it's a relative of stomach pull that we just did. Pull the belly in.

Did I say that enough? Pull the belly in to bring the carriage forward, last time you can bend the front knee if you like. You get a little bit more lunge, stretch, careful. And then step back, other foot on the shoulder block, other foot up to the bar in front of your hip. Trying to get myself square here.

Don't let go. My hands are getting a little sweaty and pressing back and pulling the belly to bring the carriage in. And inhale, same breath idea, as we open and expand, we breathe in. As we close, we breathe out. Makes so much sense. (Diane breathing deeply) And we'll do one more.

Bend the front knee if you like. Do what you can. It gives you a nice stretch on that back hip flexor and stand, step and will gracefully step off the carriage. And pause for a moment. Alright, I'm going to have Laura demonstrate back please. Back control.

She does it better than I (laughs) and I'm so pleased. Alright, so take your springs. I think that's good. If not, you could go lighter would be harder. I think you're good with this. And bar up for you or down.

Let's go down. Let's go down. We're discussing this as we go. All right, so we've done both ways. Bar up or down. Alright, please step onto your equipment and let's have you put your left leg behind you catty cornered.

There's a version where it's parallel. We're gonna do this way, be really careful of your knee. Step the foot, halfway up the headrest and then she's going to lunge with her left arm forward as deep, hello, as you can. Alright, beautiful line. And then go ahead. Five times.

So from your view, I hope you can see that her right knee is tracking right in front of her thigh and shin and she's not coming back to more than a perpendicular shin alignment, good. You could go, stretch that out again if you're feeling up to it, go forward, take the shoulder blocks and do another split here. Not like we didn't do enough splits, but. Oh she's flexed her front foot, aren't you fancy? Be careful with that one.

This is getting pretty advanced and many folks are just great with that. Yes, and I wanna emphasize too the alignment of this knee. All right so she's engaged her quad nicely to support the patella. Other side, my dear. All right, how you gonna get outta that?

Alright, so check out the foot catty corner ball heel. If you need a gripper use it, you don't wanna slip for sure. Thigh engaged to help the knee. Nice opposition, beautiful. And go ahead and it's for the whole body.

There we go. You could go a little lower on this side. Yeah, exactly. Nice, looking good. Great exercise for everybody. I used to work with a guy that was actually a baseball a pitcher, professional league.

I won't name his name. He loved this exercise 'cause he ended up in this position a lot when he threw a pitch. So it's not just for dancers. Great. Good. Maybe one more so you're even, lovely.

All right. And we try to dismount gracefully. I like it. Thank you. And then step down. Great. We're almost finished but not quite. If you would like to pause your device, we're going to go to the jump board.

So if you don't have one, thank you. If you're gonna stay with us, go get your jump board. Okay hi, We're back. If you decided to do jump board with us, we're not doing a whole lot. It's primarily legs and feet. Well and the belly of course.

So again, focusing a little bit more on the dance related landing and jumping and being careful with our joints and being careful if we've been injured. I'm using a green. I think Laura is as well. Some people like to work heavier, lighter in a way for me works the belly a little more heavier is a little bit more work on the legs. So maybe you wanna try from week to week if you repeat this video with us, I hope you do. Maybe you wanna try different springs, so that's up to you.

Alright, let's get down in here. Alright, we're gonna start in parallel, hip width apart our basic, you know, opening stance in so much of what we do. So check it out. And again, I like to check my hips here. Pull that belly deep. If you wanna put your hands on your little belly to check it out and remind yourself, that's fine.

Just don't like drop your elbows or do something funny. All right, off we go, press and bend up. Good Laura's inhaling and exhaling. So I'm trying to be aware, even though I don't wanna look up and see it, I wanna feel my legs exactly in alignment. Like we did our legwork earlier in the class.

We're trying to go toe ball, heel, sometimes my heels don't touch. Depends on the stretch of your Achilles tendons. Let's work the buns and the belly. Do remember to keep my chin up so I don't drop in here. Self corrections always important.

(Diane breathing heavily) And we're gonna go to first position and bend. Allow yourself enough space so that you can try to get your heels, maybe not down, but approaching down. Same thing as we did earlier. You can go turn out correctly for yourself. I wouldn't go any wider than I'm going.

Pull those inner thighs up. They're not gonna touch in first. Reach, plie, press, let's add arms. Middle open, middle, open. (Diane breathing deeply) Two more and rest.

Take a moment, hug your knees in parallel. Ooh, a little mildly aerobic. Alright, now we're going to work in fifth position. Right foot in front. So just to review here, here you are.

We'll do three here. Superso and a soubresaut, a change. All right, so take your as best you can fifth position. It's not gonna be, you know, super out there 'cause it's impossible to really get it into this foot board. Keep those hips square.

Alright, keeping your right leg in front. Go ahead. Squeeze inner thighs and plie. Inner thighs and plie, inner thighs and plie. Change right away. Plie other side, three, left foot in front, right on center line, one more.

And a soubresaut, meaning to change. Fifth like a straw streamlined. (Diane breathing deeply) Soubresaut and fifth, cross the thighs. Cross the thighs and change. Now we're gonna do all soubresauts, change.

Change on the way out. Change on the way out. Change on the way out, again. How you doing, Laura? Great. Good.

One more. And plie back to where we started. Hug the knees again. (Diane exhales deeply) I'm gonna wanna take a moment. Rest your right foot on your bar, on your bar, on your foot board, jump board. Take the right leg up, let's stretch it.

Try not to make your hip off balance. Keep it square. Flex the foot. Get that calf stretched. Maybe bend the knee a little bit. Stretch it out.

Bend the knee, stretch it out. Woo. Put that foot down, other side. Feel that nice hamstringing. Flex the foot, bend the knee. You don't need a TheraBand, although we do this a lot on our floor work with a TheraBand.

Get that calf stretched out and stretch. Alright, so next you're going to do, we're going to do three entree en croix and an entree se sous. I did say this was ballet inspired. So it's not your thing. Make something up. Just be careful. All right, so your legs are gonna do, and change and change and change and change, one, two, three.

And change and change and change. One, two, three All right. Right foot in front again. Hold your belly. I'm gonna remind myself of my hands to start with. Ready? Go, entree se croix, entree se croix, entree se croix And now you do three. One, two, three, which brings the left foot in front.

Now left foot back front, back front, back front. One, two, three, close. Again cross the thighs. Great inner thigh here. And two and three. One, two, three, change, last time.

Left foot going back front, left foot back front, back front. One, two, three, change. Woo, I'm feeling my heart. All right, finally, let's go to jete. which actually means to throw, but we're gonna be throwing our body correctly.

So you're gonna go right foot push, right foot push, right foot push, and then jete to change. Three on the right and change. Alright, so if you remember earlier in the class, we did this position where we did the legwork. Now that foot's behind you or behind your standing leg, your pushing leg. Hips are square, thigh are in an equal V.

Here we go up, one. Oops, that was not very controlled. Two and three, change. On the left press. Feel where your knee is tracking, two and three. Battu, change and one and two and three and change.

And one, I'm still trying to get my heel closer. My Achilles are just not that stretched. One more set, coupe, bend, stretch, bend, stretch, land. Battu and one and two, and three, and battu, land. Hug the knees again.

(Diane exhales deeply) Let's go back to parallel and just follow along. A little kind of marching, running movement. Ready to go out. Land on the right and the left and the right, stretch both the left and a one and a two and a change. We're back to parallel natural alignment.

Easier to get the heel closer. At least it is for me. Let's place the hands behind the head. Come into a crunch. (Diane breathing deeply) Deep in that belly. You can see where your legs are now.

Although you should be able to feel it without seeing it. Change and change. Looking good Laura. Change and change. Almost finished. And change both. And close.

Let's hug our knees in. Rock your pelvis back a little bit. (Diane breathing deeply) So we can't really roll up here. So well, I'm gonna swing my legs to the side. Alrighty.

Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed our dancer inspired workout. Be well. Thank you.