Brisk Adv Classical Reformer

Hi. I'm Lesa Logan, and today, this is a very advanced workout in a quick pace. And so take care of yourself, leave out what's not right for you, and feel free to repeat something or catch up with me. It's gonna be fun. It's like a level three or four spice. I think it's a lot it's nice to have a quick workout when you don't have a lot of time.

So we're gonna start with one spring on our footwork, and this one spring means you're not gonna start off at the quickest pace because we have you're on one spring. That's really the reality. But be on the balls of your feet, heels together toes apart. And then because you're on one spring, just fill it out for that first rep and pull it in. And then see for eight more, how quick could you go without being in a hurry? Right? There's that John wooden quote, be quick, don't hurry, and it's something I like to think about in my pilates practice.

We wanna keep our pace because we don't wanna torture ourselves on slow, but we don't wanna do so fast, we lose our connection. So your feet should not be leaving the foot bar. Come in, stay on, that setting and lift both feet up at the same time to land on your arches, and go out and in. And now with our feet, a little more on top of the footbar, you might be able to pick up your pace, but you'll notice if one of your feet likes to leave the foot bar. That's your leg that needs to reach more.

So it's giving you nice information. We're waking up the back of our legs on this setting. And then come all the way and lift both feet up at the same time, land on those heels. And good luck. Right? Cause you don't have your heels on top of the footbar, you have them on the front side where they normally go, and you have to work your center to close your spring.

And I'm on one heavy regular classical spring. So I have to pull it in myself. You can do it too. One more. Come all the way in, come onto the balls of the feet, press out, stay out here, lift your head and chest up for your hundred and pump your arms.

So I love this hundred because it's a nice closed chain before we get into a lot of the crazier about to do, but you'll stand on the balls of the feet, squeeze your heels together. The carrot should be still. As you breathe in, and out. Four more cycles of breathing. Notice if one of your ankles is turning out or if your knees are locking.

Last one. Alright. Come in. Sit on up. Get your foot out of the way and add a second spring. We're gonna do overhead. So you're definitely gonna wanna have two heavier heavy medium, which means you also need to get your head rest down. Get that out of the way and grab your handles.

So I want us to take our legs long and together, and here we go, three overheads into three coordination. Take your arms down, take your legs over up, and then roll it down. And we're gonna take those arms back overhead, and again, over up. And roll it down last time. And roll down, bend your knees, bend your elbows, lift your head and chest up right into coordination, open close the legs, bend the knees.

Bend the elbows. Press it out. Open close. Pull the knees in as much as you can. Bend the elbows. Just one more.

Awesome. Let's go into our swan. So get your handles out of the way. Pop off and grab your long box. You'll wanna stay on those two springs, so no changes there.

If you're not doing a big swan, you can do a swan prep, and you might want a little sticky pad on the front of your box. Place your feet on your frame or the foot bar, and then bring your thighs to the front of the box. Arms reach overhead. I like to push my knees into the frame as we inhale lift up big backbend here. Lower yourself down, stretch those legs out and lengthen your heart forward, and then bend your knees and pull it in. Again, big lift up, big stretch, lower down before you straighten the legs, and then a little back bend in the upper back and then pull it all the way in.

Last one. Reach it out. Get long, lift the upper back, and then bend your spine to pull the spring and sit back onto the foot bar. Take a spring off. Three pull straps. So take your straps in your hand, and I like to make sure my shoulders are at the edge of the box. So I'm holding my own legs up.

Pull those arms straight back, open the chest, and lower it down. If you need to have your chest over the shoulder rest, I understand, but it's a different feeling when your chest is on the box for that pull strap. You have to hold onto those legs yourself. Slide your hands down for three t pull, open those arms wide, lift them up as they go back. So instead of turning the palms to see how far back your hands can go over your hips, Keep the palms down and reach back back back back back.

Heart forward, last one. Alright. Put your handles in one hand. Step off to the side, and then you're gonna get on for a back stroke into a teaser. So we're gonna stay on that one spring. So we're gonna combine two exercises.

So you want your hips to be close to the edge, but not at the edge, like they would be for backstroke. Bring your knees into your chest, fist over your forehead, lift everything up, open, circle around right here at this hundred position, flip the pumps and roll up into your teaser, then lower the arms, and lift the arms. And if you're like, let's say I'm very much at the edge, it's okay. When we roll down, you can slide back. Sometimes it takes a couple to figure out the nice sweet spot. Hold the arms up here, pull the waist back, back, back, back, bend into your back stroke, up, open, circle, and roll it up, and draw three circles in each direction. And they don't have to be huge, but the pinky side of the hand needs to stay in the handle the whole time.

And ideally, I'm not noticing when you engage with the spring. Roll it down. Bend it in. Up, open circle, roll it up, stay up, and circle those legs. They can go as big as your chest stays up. And then after three in one direction, you are the lucky one who gets to reverse direction with me.

And then roll it down, then and in. And let's drop off our handles. Get rid of your box, and we're gonna do a fun long stretch series. And I really do mean fun. So you'll wanna put your head rest up, sticky pad on it, and then add a second spring, and then flip our up. Alright. So here we go. Hand hand first with straight wrists, foot, foot, three long stretches.

So use your legs to push out. Close your spring all the way. After three, you get to do a single leg with me. Here we go. Lift a leg up. And go out and in three times on one leg.

The leg that's lifting is from that hamstring, so we don't want the hip to lift with a leg. Go ahead and switch legs try it again. So when a leg lifts, your pelvis didn't change. Right? It's staying where it was. You're just doing kinda like a swimming.

With that leg. Bring the foot down. First, close the spring, transition to down stretch. So both legs same time, and then get your feet into the shoulder rest, and then hips forward. So we're not gonna hang out here. Now, we're gonna pull the center back and lift the chest up and push out two times this time.

Just two. And if you're like, oh, I want more. Put your right foot on the shoulder rest and two with the left leg. Here's your more, and then bring the right foot back and two with just the right leg. And you really wanna lift your center up. It's easy to lean to one side or hang in your lower back. Whoo.

But you can feel which leg. Need to do more work. Right? Place both feet down to transition into up stretch, and then get half the weight on your arms. Alright. Take a moment to make sure you feel the weight on your arms and then push just with your legs. And then bring it in.

And one more like that, push with just your legs and bring it in. Okay. Take your right foot, hover over the shoulder rest. Push with the left leg only. Bring it in and return and reach and bring it in. Whoo.

Take the other leg. Push with the leg. If you are pushing with the arms, this will not feel fun. You gotta push with the leg and then bring the foot back. Slide both heels down. Lift the ribs for elephant.

Let's do three elephant lifting your ribs as you push your legs back, and then take your right leg through the shoulder rest, lift it up, and do three single leg. Place it down, take your left leg back, and three more single leg. Alright. We're gonna hop off and grab our short box. And you'll wanna pull for this. So get your headrest down.

I like to use a pad for my short box. Keeps me honest. Keeps me from sliding around. Place your short box on. Place your pad on.

And your down in front. Here we go. Place your feet into your strap or straps. Make sure that straps around the base of your feet. Alright. Wrap your arms around your waist and round back and round up. And if you want to do extension on these, you can. We're just gonna do a couple round.

And then you'll grab your dial. And a couple tall backs. So look straight ahead. Pull the bar apart and lean back, push the legs away, lift it up. Just two.

I know we want more, but we have more things to do with twist and lean out and come up in the twist and unwind and twist and lean out and come up in the twist. You can repeat that or around the world. Twist to the right, open up to the ceiling, twist to the left, and come up unwind, twist to the left, open up, twist to the right, and come up unwind. I'm gonna skip the tree. You're welcome to do it if you really love it, but I wanna have some time for some side sit ups.

And I wanna give you an advanced version of them if we can. So you can do your side sit up with your knee bent on the top of the box, or this new way I've been loving, it's not a new way. It's an old way, but new for me that I've been loving doing is putting both feet into the strap with straight legs. Okay? You really wanna get that heel in the strap. It's important, then both hands behind your head. We have to just do three. We got this. You can go down and up.

If you're like my thigh hates you, this is your massage. Look at you. You're getting a massage in your pilates session. You're welcome, other side. Now, depending on the height of your box or really the tension in your legs, you might wanna stick with that bent knee version.

The other side, just three. I find three is enough whenever I try to do five. I regret it. Three good ones is all we need. Alright. Come on off your box.

And let's give ourselves a quick little shorts mind because it does feel so good. Right? So get the box away and the bar away. You should already be on two springs, shorten your straps, and your headrest should be down. So go ahead and put those on, and we get to compare ourselves to our overhead just like ten minutes ago. Lie on to your back, and place the feet simultaneously into your straps. So we try not to lift one at a time.

Then arms down by your side, push the legs out, lift your hips up first to take your legs over, bend your knees, and then roll it down. And again, lift those hips should feel good compared to when we're first warming up. Lift and bend, and roll it down. Amazing. Take those straps off. Hop off.

We'll go down to one spring for some snake. Now if snake's not in your practice, then you absolutely can do up stretch again. Right? So place your hands in line with each other, and then your foot is turned out on the foot bar, drop the head down, and lengthen put your foot over the other one, and then just push with that standing leg into your snake and lift your head and pull your waist up. So do you feel that single leg up stretch that we did? I hope so.

One more. Use your breath. And this time push out halfway and then twist your hips, lift your hip up, close the spring, see if you can keep the spring closed. As you step off, Let's do the other side. That's the hard side for me. That's the side I have a hard time closing the spring.

So know that we all have a good side and a another side. And let's set up on that second side, and when you're ready, push out. So you're not using your arms to push out. That's gonna feel like the carriage got away from you. You're using that standing leg.

So going back to that footwork, we did on one spring. And then after three push out halfway, twist your hips. Lift your center, close your spring step off, and roll it up. Okay. Here we go. Add a second spring, foot bar up, knee stretches, knees off. If you hate that, you're gonna do it.

If it's too hard, you'll do the round and flat with your knees down. Otherwise, join me in this setup. Place your hands first with straight wrist. Place your first foot on, but don't let the knee come down. Place the second foot on and sit back. And then push your legs and really work the legs back. I know it's a mean setup.

Three, two, and one, close your spring, Step to the floor. Oh, just a fun. Can you do it without touching your knees down? And then add three to four springs. So, we'll add, but have three to four springs on. It's gonna feel very different than we were lying down earlier. Because the weight will be heavier. Put your head rest up.

Let's go for our run and see how our body's feeling from the beginning. Push out with parallel legs, one heel under, one heel up, and up switch, and up switch, up switch, and lift both heels up and come all the way in. Place the arches wide on the footbar, lift the pelvis, let the heart sink, and push out not to straight legs necessarily, but just from the back of your legs, how far can you go? Let's let that heart rate come down. That's why I love running a pelvic lift. It just like, brings you back down.

Roll your spine down. We're not done. We do have a little grand finale. We're gonna hop off for our control push ups. If your equipment does gear out, you're gonna want to do that. So I take all my springs off.

You may not have to to gear out. But you're gonna take your equipment and go to the next gear. And the reason is is for the control push ups, you want a little more space. Right? And so now we'll put our block in. And then this can be done on one or two springs. I prefer one for my body. You might prefer two for your hours. Now, really important how we place the wrist.

So place your hands on the back of the shoulder block so you have the straightest wrist possible, and then place a foot on the footbar, and lift your hips up. Look through your legs, and now you're like in an elephant position, right? We're gonna push the legs out, so we get into a plank, reach the arms forward and pull it back. So you can just be here in this reverse chest expansion feeling, or we take everything we do with our long stretch, and we lift a leg and reach the carriage out. Lift a leg, reach the carriage out. So something I'm working on is lifting the leg and not lifting my hip.

It's just three each side. Hold it still, and you can hold the plank or bend your elbows three times. Lift your waist. I know you wanna get off. Close the spring. Step to the floor.

Awesome. Alright. You can stay on that spring setting. We're gonna do the reverse. So now the hands go to the front, and then you go with the foot, then hand then foot. And you can just be here pushing the arms back.

Or you can kick a leg and kick a leg. It's better if you smile. Smile with me as we kick and push. Kick and push. And if you really like it, you can kick and circle and kick and circle. And reverse the circles and kick in circle. Hold, bend your elbows three times.

Awesome. Come all the way in. Let's gear back in and bring our heart rate down with a little first part of front splits. So come kneeling, place your feet into the shoulder blocks, bring one foot up and just push the back leg back. We think we need a full hour to work out or do an advanced workout, but we don't.

We just have to get our heart rate up by picking up our pace. And sometimes when we pick up our pace, we can see what connections we still have to work on. Go ahead and switch legs. And I think that's important. We actually never nail any of these exercises.

Switch legs push. We just get better and stronger. They get more possible. And so hopefully going at this pace allowed you to feel which connections you need to actually work on. Because if you can only keep those connections by being, like, stuck, or moving so slow, You might not have them to begin with.

Bring it all the way in. Give yourself a pat on your back. Take some time to notice which exercises you need to explore more. Maybe the choreography, maybe the pace, maybe the rhythm, and then give yourself time to come back to this and compare yourself to yourself. That is the best way to see where your practice is at.

Thank you so much for letting me move with you.