Straight Forward Reformer

Hi, everybody. Amy here. Happy to be back with you in front of this amazing window in Ocean and with you all taking class with me. Thank you for being here. Reformer workout today. No box. Very little spring changes.

We'll feel our whole body. I'm not following a traditional list per se, but we will feel a full body workout. We're gonna get started off the end of the foot bar. I have a blue spring. If you have a reformer that has bungee cords, and just do one.

We're really light down here. We're gonna open up with some stretch for our legs and our backs. I want everybody just to stand parallel quite close to the front, and then take your arms up just a nice, easy, shoulder, level, just take in your space, take in some breath, through the sides of your rib cage and into your back and exhale with a soft contraction in your abdominals round forward, place your hands on your mat. Here's a place to just be and start lifting the center of you, the back rib cage also up to the ceiling, settle your shoulders off of your neck and start to stretch your spring. Our hips are staying above our legs. We're not shifting our weight on our ankles.

See if you can really yawn your back open in a flexed position. And then as you exhale, come back toward the bumper. Can you pull up in your stomach anymore? Can you round your tailbone anymore or your lower back? Let's do it again.

So lifting, lengthening, opening things up. You'll hear me say check your shoulders from time to time. I'm also saying that for myself to keep the shoulders down off of the ears. But I will say sometimes in a stretchy moment, it feels good to let the shoulders glide up the back a little bit. At this point, we're not gonna get injured. We're opening. We're stretching.

Can you go a little farther? Now from this long position, let's take a slow change of the spine to an extended spine. So I've just lifted my sitting bones and my tail. I'm just gonna look right at the floor in front of my carriage edge and just pause there. Go back to flexion of your spine.

Keep the spring open. And, again, to extension, so we're working a little undulation of your spine and back to flexion. And one more, can you pick up those low ribs on your back? Stay out in extension and just scapula glide a few times. Feel the connection of your shoulder blades on your back.

Good. And push. We'll go back to flexion, everybody. Carriage coming into the stopper. We're lifting ourself up away from the floor. Get the carriage and bend your knees softly.

Round up to standing. Just leave those arms down. Let's roll forward again. This time placing our hands on one corner. So we're in a little bit of rotation and three times everybody round forward.

I want you to feel the lower back quadrant on the opposite side of where your hands are. So for my body, my hands are left. I'm enjoying the opening of my right lower back above my pelvis and between my rib cage three times. So one more here. Oh, feels so good.

And we don't have to roll up in between each one. Shift the hands to the other side, set to shoulders, rounding over. So can we lift those tummy muscles up over the bar, bring the carriage back in with even more lift? We can inhale as we open. It's an expansion of your back ribs. Exhale contract one more time.

And then we'll take both hands where they were at the beginning, one on each corner. Round one more time, merge that into extension, unlock your knees, We're really kind of indulging without dropping the rib cage, inhale. Let's round to come back up, everybody. And then when the carriage is still, bend the knees softly, and we're gonna roll all the way up to standing. Okay. Such a lovely way to start.

We're also going to open up our hip flexors right away instead of waiting to the end. So I want you to, we're gonna stay on blue. Just tuck your toes down. You can have your hands on the bar. We don't need them for this stretch.

I'm just gonna place mine on my pelvis. And for my body, I already feel the stretch in my quadriceps and my hips. I am gonna ask you to lengthen up through the tummy and this very small movement of the carriage. Very small. But do connect the contraction around the back of the hip so that it supports the stretch we're doing. I wanted to do five.

These are so tiny. Just opening up lengthening, connecting. One more on this hip and then all the way in. Alright? And then just walk around to the other side. No matter what kind of reformer you're on, all of these stretches and everything today is gonna work. Some of the spring changes might be slightly different.

So I'll cue that when it comes time. Alright. Very simple slow stretches. Can you lift your interior muscles through your stomach and your hip flexors as you do your stretch? We're not indulging a big range of movement. Connect the posterior hip muscles.

Two more times. Stay open. We're ready to work our abs now, everybody. Okay? So we're gonna come in we can keep the foot bar up. We don't really need it for a while. So for that reason, I'm gonna lower it because we don't need it. But if you'd rather just keep yours where it was, that's fine. One blue spring.

Facing the back headrest down so your feet go on it. I'm on the balance body reformer, and we've got the double loop system here hooked up. For this exercise, I'm actually gonna have us hold above the hardware or in front of the hardware. As I'm sitting, my knees are open a little bit, and I wanna start with flexion of our spine. We did all that warm up for this reason here to get open shoulder check.

Here we go. Rolling back to our sacrum. On the way back, I'm gonna let my knees close. Lower the arms just a little bit. Sacrum is fine. Or if you wanna lengthen all the way to your lumbar, doesn't that feel wonderful?

Now we get to come up, full breath, exhaling over the legs. As we're moving back, it's really the pelvic rotation that's generating the movement. I'm not pulling with my arms. I'm trying to rotate the pelvis lengthen the muscles of the lower back. Pause in here. Take a breath in and out to come up over your thighs.

Think of lifting those back ribs up a little bit more. Let's do another one before we start adding on. And you also could just stay with this simple, clean, effective movement sequence or skill, of rollback articulation. Okay. But if you're gonna join in, we're going back the same way, really rotating pelvis. You can get to your sacrum or your lumbar.

Lumbar's gonna be a little more challenging. Take what you want, holding the position steady, breathing, on an exhale, flex one hip to a ninety ninety. Now this light spring is challenging. We have to really know our core strength and our internal strength to be able to hold this position without falling backward or arching our back. So if we're if you're having difficulty, I would say change this ring up one to a little heavier.

And or work and get in here. Come up out of the position a little bit. Last one, this leg. Last one, this leg. Pause, breathe in, we get to come up and lift, use those strong abdominals, open those knees, flex forward again.

How are we doing? We're gonna add to that, pelvic rotation, roll, close the knees, check those shoulders, So we'll get right back to the same position. We'll do a right, left, right, left, but it's different. So knee now extend your leg changes the load upon the abdominals when we straighten that limb. This is okay hard. This is harder.

Choose what you wanna feel. Alright. Just one more each side. Stay connected. I'm thinking about chest toward thighs. In my mind. Amy chest toward his eyes so that I don't fall back. You know what? We should do one more each side.

Let's go for it. And me and leg. And me and leg. Last one, knee. Leg. There we go. Ready to come up and all the way to the top.

Okay. Good. Everybody. Come to sitting. Now I'm gonna scoot back on my reformer bed just a couple of inches. Let's sit up tall and take inventory of what that feels like. All that flexion was for the stomach. Now as we sit tall, we're feeling the back.

Feel your back. Just nice and upright. Extend your arms. Palms facing, but we're gonna rotate the elbows and palms to row and return. I do this a lot because it's extremely functional. Feels good to connect into the upper back structure.

Open your chest without popping your rib cage and another one. You can keep that or do singles. I love a single arm pull. Very functional. Sometimes we have a a limb that's a little stronger.

This way we get to isolate it, let it have its own time. Four more. Lengthen up the neck. Right? Are you sitting as tall on your sit bones as you possibly can? Always asking those questions. Right? And one more time.

Okay. Excellent. We're gonna change the grip of our hand. So I'm gonna change my hand and flip my palm so my palm is face up. My thumb is sticking out to the side. It was called that the hitchhiker grip, and stay seated first. And just some start some easy opening or pull open.

Again, no popping of the ribs. In fact, think of sending the front ribs down and the back ribs up a little bit. I hope that made sense. Now you can stay sitting upright or go back into a little bit of flexion with that. On the sacrum and a few more.

Now you won't go as far. Can you connect into c curve of your lower back a little more? And on the next one, I want you to stay open with your arms And then just shift the weight of your body to one pelvic half and then shift through the center to the other. I'm not changing my arms. I'm changing where my body is moving through space.

Keep trying to tug those tummy muscles back in. Check those shoulders. They may need to come down. Around the world, we get one more each side. So shoulders down, stomach is in.

Everyone pause at the bottom, breathe. We're gonna roll your way up, up, up to sitting. Alright? Now I have the double loop. I'm gonna use the small loop but I'm a grabbing both halves. So it's a little more contained for some bicep curl. You have choices sitting tall for biceps or rounding back for biceps.

I'm gonna show four sitting and then four round. Sitting up, you're using the back. Right? Poster muscles, shoulders easy. Some people say the, this is a little harder on them physically than round back. I'd go for what kinda needs to be challenged sometimes. Right? You can always stay here or you wanna do your next four and a little bit of c curve.

I've got enough room to do four. For me, this is a little harder. It demands my back to be in that c curve, which is my constant work. Right? One more time. But both feel really good, both are important and of option for you. Alright.

Place your straps down. We're doing more abdominals though. We're coming into kneeling, facing the back of the reformer, walk your knees right up against the shoulder rests, arms pretty long. I'm gonna ask you to instead of having them right underneath your shoulders, which we do often, come forward. Come into a long neutral spine first.

And can you press the tops of your feet down? And then round mainly your lower back. If you can get from the mid back to your tail, that includes the sitting bones down into the flesh of the back of your legs, and of course the lift of the front underneath. Ready? We're gonna do five pull the carriage towards your hands. Try to go back slowly. And you can do this in neutral spine.

You do. You can. Neutral long or round like I'm trying to do here. And one more for five. Okay. Easy does it hand to the one side just like we did opening the clasp up, round that lower back, and pull. I'm thinking about knees driving into shoulder rests, lifting my tummy up, really from behind my naval.

One more to go. Take your carriage back. Just walk your hands over to the other side. Reposition your scapula, round that low back, ready to go. Five lift and pull four.

Trying to stay in flexion. It can be a smaller range. To lift and pull Okay. We're gonna take ourselves out of this, and everyone come to a toeset. Alright. You know me? Some of you do I love a good toeset. It's important to bend at the toe joints.

There's a lot of muscle connective tissue under there, makes the ankle knee hip relationship pretty juicy, and just be there for a moment. Okay? Next exercise is chariot, and I'm gonna stay on the blue spring. You could go heavier if you wanted You're always up to doing that if you need to, but I like a light spring. For this, again, I'm holding above the hardware, knees stay against the shoulder rests, and begin with your arms in front of you. Wrap your shoulders back. And for a moment, See if you can feel your hamstrings working to open the front of your hip, the inner thighs are connecting, and you're really lifted up. Right? Now stay with that connection. Pull your arms behind your hips.

Flex your hips and you're gonna just kiss your heels with your sitting bones. You come right back up, quadriceps strength, and arms return. Each piece has its own significance. There's motion, there's motion, and there's stability in parts of our body. Right? So as I move my arms back and hold, stabilize that position.

Move from your hips. Your back is working. Your glutes and hamstrings are working. Of course, your triceps are working. Couple more.

This is where Red Spring is tough, I think, but doable. One more time, pull. You're looking out in the horizon. And up. Now we're gonna repeat just the arms single arm, add some rotation of the torso. Aren't you happy you're on a blue spray? I think.

Keep working the back of the legs and the inner thighs. And pull just one more each side because we have some more arm work coming. Wonderful. Alright. Place the straps down.

Now I'm going to do an exercise You can lift your head rest right now. Turning sideways to you. Some of us know the draw, the sword, this movement here where we do. I'm gonna take it lower. Small loop.

I'm bending down on my knees. I'm hinging up my hips a little. Just changing that. And this other hand is here on the shoulder breath and just hold the shoulder steady. You can stay low and to repeat all of your jaw swords down here.

I had eight plan, four down low, and then the second set of four will press up into our hip extension, just like you did in your period. So you've gotta use the back of your legs. And steady your balance. Pull and lift. I'm gonna ask myself to hug the midline with my inner thighs and hug that midline. There we go. And rest.

Okay. Other side. So a variation on the theme, right, kneeling of that subtle little hinge at the hips, flat back. Hand on shoulder block, square your shoulders, and let's go for four pulls. Control the return. Just down low. It's a little different sense of balance on your knees.

I think you can feel that. Right? You can always stay down low where I'm gonna come up. Here you go. Use your hamstrings and your glutes, everybody. Your hip extensors control. Three. Wonderful. One more. And four.

Alright. Now we're taking ourself to face the front. Alright. Another tow sit. While you get adjusted. Once again, I'm gonna use the small loops, but I'm doubling up the handles here.

Bring your arms by your side. Lift up off of your sitting bones a little and make a c curve of your back. Feel that. Pressing your heels back, your hips forward, scoop your arms up, change your arms to a salute, return by contracting and c curve. I'm not collapsing onto my heels.

Stretching my low back down. Scoop, heels are back, hips are forward, lower back, lean curbs back. Ready? Last two. Check that you might be smiling occasionally. I found myself getting very serious just now.

Wanna make a little smile. This is enjoyable. I do love to feel my body moving whole. And for more salutes, These double straps are big on my head. Three and four. And then I'm gonna ask everybody clasp their hands together.

Raise your arms a little bit higher. Now hold this shape. It's a lot of work. Help your inner thighs to the midline. Bend your elbows and let your hands come behind your head and then press your elbows straight up.

Right? If you need to look down a little bit to let your head come forward, that's okay. You're not sticking your chin out, you're not sticking your ribs out. Flexins extend the elbows. We have one more, and then we have five hug a tree. We're gonna open that shape, check the shoulders, ribs, and inner thighs. Ready?

And four. Three. I may have said five. We're doing four. And two. My heels are back.

My hips are forward. Four. And we're gonna sit all the way down. Oh, my gosh. Good. Hook your handles.

We don't need those anymore. We are finally doing a spring change. I want you to bring up two red springs. And I'll say, technically, We could have just stayed on one red one blue, but I learned it on two spring, so I wanna be true to what I learned. And I want you to sit straddle on your reformer.

Okay? Quite close to the front of the edge here. Chin bone is right underneath the knee, toes are facing out a little bit, and just b. Take a moment. Set all the front of the ribs. Feel like you're lifting the back ribs up. Front ribs down. Okay.

This is about hips. I want you to contract your hips. Press your thighs back. Return the thighs. So contract, and you'll see my thighs move open a little bit. I'm not cheating my feet and move my feet.

They're down. It's the hips. Okay? Move a little more pulse and pulse. We're upright with our spine and pulse four more. External rotators. Right? Last two, you're gonna stay open, hold hands on your knees hinge at your hip joints. Everybody lean forward. Can you go pretty close to the foot bar? It's a deep stretch for your rotators.

Using of your back, stability of the spine. The farther you go, you'll feel more external rotation hip stretch. That feel good. Okay. One more time. And then we'd get some lateral side bending. So everyone's stage tall.

You're gonna take your arms out to the side. One arm. I'm gonna take my right arm up by my ear And go into the space to the left and stretch. Think short box side bend. Right? I'm gonna pulse three times. Reach. Trying to stay even on my sit bones and three and come all the way up. Other direction. Arm first.

Go into this side. Go into it. And reach a little farther. Open the ribs a little more. Open a little more and come up.

Let's do it again. Ready and it's a reach. It's a reach. It's a reach Anne. Come up.

And last time here, and two, and three, and hold your arms open. Take a breath. You're gonna contract and just make a c curve shape of your back. Once again, inhale up, contract and round. Two times to one side.

I'm gonna go this direction and round. Kinda put this in a few places in this class that lower back quadrant stretch and other time, other side feels so good. So important. Okay. Now we go back to the hinge with the arm set to the side. Palms face down. Send energy out everybody hinge.

Now you're gonna pulse eight times. Three, and four, stomach in, shoulders down, all the goodies, seven and eight, stay on eight. If you don't have to, don't put your hands on the foot par. If you need to, you'll know, and you wanna put your hands down. I want you to lean and stand. Sit back down, come out of the hinge.

Make it a little more fluid. Now you notice I'm not coming all the way to a vertical there. I don't want you to. I want you to get the power in your hips and your legs. Alright?

Yes. You got a name and lift. Just two more here. Phew. Because there's one more big hurrah, which we mean we stay lifted and we just pulse down, three, and four more, four, three, hello, happy hips, and then all the way down. Delicious. Okay.

We're gonna make a teaser shape. Okay? Joining me for this. Bring your feet up on your bar, your legs. Please bring your pelvis close to the front edge edge and wrap your hands. Think of that, stomach massage exercise. Right? When we're pulling ourselves forward and up, I want you to roll back on your spine. Keep your hands holding the edge of the carriage.

Roll all the way down. Now we get to roll up, and I am gonna use my arms. I'm helping myself. I'm gonna take myself at the top for that nice teaser stretch. Go back again.

If you don't need your hands, don't use them. I like the feeling. It also helps me achieve the articulation that I'm seeking through my back. We'll do it one more time all the way down and up. And all the way up. There we go. Stretch quite a bit here.

Stretch it's okay if the garage moves. And then we're done with that exercise. Okay. Everybody. Come on to your knees. I'm gonna face you for this because I think it's safest that way. And we're gonna do a nice lateral hip exercise.

Think, arabesque with a little leg rotation, but we're doing it from kneeling. So if we come down to quadruped, hands pretty with, pretty much the width of the shoulder a girdle, my inside leg, that's gonna be the one closest to the footbar. You can't see it exactly. But what's gonna happen is I reach my leg behind me, toes to the floor. Lift your leg to hip height. Rotate and lift that leg up and over the footbar.

Just gently tap it and arc all the way back toes to the floor. Again, I want you to really try to lift it up and higher than that foot bar arc. And around. Couple more. Had five plan. If you're really going forward, you could try to get the leg all the way to the front edge of the foot bar. And then we're gonna change legs.

I'm not turning around You don't need to see that. Okay. You can kinda guess. But I'm looking at the risers. I'm gonna try to aim my leg higher than the risers. Ready? Leag behind, lift, look at it, and go up and over and up and over to the back.

Lift and go a little higher. Don't don't fall if you can. Right? Left and arc and up and down. Two more up and arc. And up. Last one, the last exercise on the reformer is coming up, and everyone's gonna love it. It's shorts fine because our back needs some massaging. We did a lot.

We have two exercises actually short spine and then something else. Keep your two red springs. Please come down on your back. Saddle in. I like to do feed in the short loops when I'm using the double loop system.

Some of you like to do the long. Do what is best for you. Take that headrest down, and then just settle in. Take a breath. So let's push those legs forward just to a few frogs, feel the springs, feel your body.

Last one, push forward and hold parallel legs. Let's do the version where we bring our legs quite close to us. Flexing at the hip, and then rolling, pressing your feet into those straps. Keep the tension. Keep the tension. We wanna really round and rotate. Right? Flex the knees.

You're still keeping tension. And then start to roll down. I'm gonna do the first one, keeping my legs in the rolling like a ball shape. Feel so nice after that big hip extension exercise and legs forward. Again, bring your legs close to you.

Articulate from the tail to following those heels that are way up there. So I've gotta really reach my tail high. Keep the hips high as you flex your knees and your hips, and then start to roll down. I'm gonna bring my pelvis down a little bit ahead of my feet and then my feet will follow. Three more. Let's just flow a little more now, everybody.

Principal of fluid motion. And roll down. Let it feel good. Let it feel good. Two more. So we got all of our ranges of motion in. We certainly got flexion.

We got extension, rotation side bending. We worked our hips. We've worked a little bit of balance. We have one more short spine. Inhale.

Exhale rolling down. Once you get down, want you to take your legs into a nice open hip stretch. Hands above the ropes and just let that stretch come. You can allow your legs to come up a little bit higher towards you. Always so grateful to move their body.

Let's take our feet out of the loops And we are gonna finish the way we began with one more little bit of extension of our spine. Okay? I love to leave with extension because it's so healthy. And you go ahead and come up. And walk around the front of the carriage. Change it to the blue. And before we round forward, place your hands right on the edge of your foot bar.

Press the palms in, press the shoulders back, and lift your sternum up. Like, you're trying to bring your chest right up to the sky. There we go. And we're gonna roll forward, round that head down, hands on the corners. Hopefully, you feel great right now. I do.

I just love working here and moving my body and sharing the love of this work with everybody. So thank you for joining me. Let's come back in around. Take about five slow movements to come up or counts. We'll do one.

Two, three. Hands on the bar, four. Five and one last kind of lift for gratitude. Aren't you so happy you have a body that can do these things? I sure am. Thanks for joining me.

I'll see you next time, everybody.