Classical Tower

Hi, I'm Lesa Logan. Welcome to my tower class today. You can obviously do this on a Cadillac as well. I am super excited it's an all level class, and my goal is that we actually get to use the springs to find our center and really build up to a wonderful standing ending. When in doubt leave any of the exercises out and replace them with something that is a challenge for you. That's going to not only build your confidence, but I believe it's brave and courageous to replace what you can't do yet with something that you can. Now, I wanna talk about the springs really quick.

If you're using classical springs, Then your rollback bar springs, arm springs, leg springs, super easy. I've got some short yellows for my rollback bar. I'm gonna use some short blues for arm springs, and the long purples for leg springs, but in every plies exercise when using springs, it's best to use the springs that support you. It's like a nice dance, not that they're overpowering you or underserving you in any way. Let's get started.

I wanna start with the rollback bar, feet into the poles. I like to start, especially if it's in the morning with my knees bent. Because we want our feet all the way up against these poles, digging those heels into the mat and into the pole, sit nice and tall. And then without shrinking, so see if you can feel how tall you are in space. Pull your waist back, but stay that tall.

And pull your waist back and stay as tall as you can so that your spine is bending, but you're not sinking or getting shorter. Try to go all the way down. Fill what touched the mat and what didn't. And then push your feet into the poles. Pull your waist back to bend your spine and come up, the knees will bend when they need to.

So your pelvis isn't sliding around. Let's do it again. Round back. Pulling that waist back, so you know, taller can be. The legs will straighten when they need to. It's kinda fun. You don't have to think about that.

And then push your feet into the poles, pull your waist back, and round back up. Round one more time. And it's okay if you have a sticky tight spot. Every day is an interesting day in our bodies. Because we're actually going to roll up to your sticky spot this time.

Alright. Pushing into your feet, working your legs into the mat. When you find that sticky spot for you, pull your waist back into it and pulse one and two, we're new 10 pulses. And so the springs are pulling us up, but our waist is pulling back. Trying to open up that tight spot. For you, it might be lower or might be higher, and it might change from day to day.

Let's do three more. And then on the last one around all the way up. Alright. Round back into your sticky spot for a little rowing action. We're gonna round back, reach into our legs, and then pull our elbows nice and wide, and then reach the arms forward. It's kinda like rowing into the chest. So you should feel your upper back get wide.

What you don't wanna feel is your chest pushing forward. So you're staying in that round shape and just pulling the bar to you. And let's do three more. Just to warm up our arms working from our back. And then roll all the way up. Okay.

I wanna do something fun. I want you to take this bar off and put your handles on from your arm springs. We're gonna do almost the exact same thing. And it's fun because you're gonna see which side of your body is cheating. We have a side, right? We each have one side that's just like needs a little more encouragement needs to be invited to the party a little bit.

So hold on to your springs here. And then round back. And, I didn't mention until I got you here, but it's gonna be harder. It's gonna be harder to round back up. Now you have to really work your waist back and pull yourself back up.

And you can see which arm is lower or higher. Or going wider to the side when you are going down and up, that's that's information for you on what's going on in your body that the bar isn't necessarily revealing. Let's do one more. Stay down here and do some shoulder rolls. And it's really nice.

You can feel, like, when you roll your shoulders or up towards your ears and down around, do you roll your ribs up? Can you keep the ribs down, but roll the shoulders in the other direction? Just breathe into your back, and then roll all the way back up. Okay. One last thing, you know, you're gonna hate me for making you change your handles around, but I promise you it's worth it. Go back to your bar. And now that we know what side's going on, with what, you're gonna take one hand in the middle of the bar. I would put your stronger side on the middle of our first. Wrap the other arm around your waist and then roll back all the way until you're on the mat. Okay.

Try to get that arm that's holding the bar shoulder on the mat too. It likes to pull off. So pull that on. And then take your harness around your waist and reach it up overhead and try to grab the side of your mat. If you're on a catalog, you can grab a pole, and then slide that same leg sides leg over. You're in a nice side bend.

If you want, you can cross the foot over the other one. I quite like to have it next to it and just flex that ankle and push the heel and get a nice side bend. Big side stretch. Side the leg back, take your body back in the center of the mat, take your arm around your waist, and then roll up. And the reason we did the strong-arm first is because the side that needs more attention, it's gonna be harder.

Here we go. Around back. But if her brain knows what's coming, sometimes that makes it a little more accessible. And for me, it'll work really hard to get my left shoulder down before I take my right arm up and overhead. Grab the side of the mat, slide that leg over. Now this is side bend on your mat.

So if your shoulder holding the bars off the mat, I usually pull that on. So when you get to your mat practice, on another day you have that strength, slide the leg over, slide the arm over, roll it up. One more time each side a little bit faster now that we know what's going on. Round back. Take the arm over, maybe you can grab a little higher on your mat.

Take the leg over, maybe you can reach that heel past the pole leg a little longer. And then take the leg back, take the arm over and roll it up, and then roll it back. Arm over, leg over. Reach that heel. Don't forget that reach away from the hand.

And then take the leg over the arm over and roll it up. Alright. Now, let's grab our handles. We're gonna spin around and do some arm springs. I love warming up with arm springs before we get into some fun stuff. I think it's really easy to think that armsprings are beginner, but they give us so much information about what our body needs. Right? So I have mine on my armspring setting. You might need to move them higher or lower depending on what's going on in your body.

And then, ideally, you set your hands up over your shoulders, but if that's too difficult for you, you can go closer to the springs. And if you want it to be harder, you go further away. I like to do with my knees bent. Because this has already got a lot going on, when you push your feet into the mat and pull them back towards you, we don't have the legs pulling on the back. Right? Now press your pinky side of your hand in the handle. Let's go up and down.

Push the arms down to the mat. And then reach across your room to lift the arms back up. And just notice if the shoulder heads moved with the arms like a seesaw. The goal is that your shoulders are nice and wide on your back as you push your arms towards the mat, and back up. And you don't have to touch the mat. I think we get obsessed, but like, I've gotta get to the mat. You actually just have to reach as far across the room as you can, and resist the springs back up.

Lift the arms up one more time, and then we're gonna hold it down the next one and do some small circles. So you can obviously do bigger circles if that's where your practice is at, but I like to do these small ones. I'm really working the down and the out with that pinky side of your hand, reverse. And you should feel your center having to work with these springs. It shouldn't feel like even though it's arm springs, that it's an arm exercise. Lift the arms all the way up.

If you're thinking that was a pretty hard tension, slide back a little bit. I like to give myself like a little inch scoot back for some tricep press. So elbows are into the mat. You're gonna push your arms towards straight with your shoulders, pulling into the mat, and then bend your elbows. Now, if you heard a clink, like it's the springs closed you, that's when you know you didn't resist.

So you should be pushing your hands into the handles to close the springs. Three more. Sholder heads back too. And last one, hold it down here. Turn the palms and open the arms up wide, and then pull the arms in towards your hips.

This is where really like to think I'm a jellyfish. Have you ever watched those in a tank? They open up so wide. They take up so much space, and then they quickly can pull those arms in towards well, they don't have arms, but they have those, whatever you call in their bodies to pull it in. And so you should feel like your arms are actually helping you propel through the water. Two more. Last one, and lift those arms up. Okay.

If you're a glutton for punishment, stay this direction for The hundred, I'm not. It's hard enough. So I'm gonna spin around and we're gonna do the hundred with our feet towards the springs, and you're gonna grab your handles. I like to start with my feet at the edge of the mat. And I pull my waist back and squeeze my legs tight together. Okay. You're gonna keep the look feet pointed, and then you'll curl your head and chest up.

Now the springs might pull you too high. So you have to find where's your hundreds curl? And then pump your arms. Inhale for five? And exhale for five. Now if you wanna lift your legs up, that's up to you.

When I do that, I can feel like I'm starting to bounce with the spring. So I would rather dig my heels down and work in my center away from that. But also, Neverizing one particular way is not the best idea because your body changes. You might be stronger than you think. Right? Or today, you might need to have your feet down and get more information. Let's keep breathing in for five and out for five. We have five more cycles of breathing. Do you feel your arms pumping from your back? It's easy to make this about the wrist or the elbows feel it pumping from your back.

Last one. Okay. Go ahead and roll up for a second. Okay. We're gonna do the ab series. I'm gonna scoot in a little bit because it's gonna make it a little easier, but you might wanna stay back where you were, or you might wanna move further back. If you're facing the other way, I recommend facing the way that I am because you'll like it better. So you're gonna lie back, bring your knees into your chest.

And then for single leg stretch, we just push the arms down, pull one knee and stretch the other leg out. And then switch. So the arms are actually just reaching down. As the legs switch, you have to use your stomach to pull that knee in as much as possible. And then the other side. Right? And the whole goal of this is just to help you find that arm back connection that we need to do harder stuff. Right? We kinda think about the stomach more than we think about the arms and the back connecting. One more time each side. And rest.

Alright. The rest is over. Curl back up double leg stretch. So both arms push down as the legs reach out heels to the other toes apart. Pull the knees in. If you want to lift the arms up for a little break, you can. So you can press the arms down as the legs go out.

And then bend it in. Three more. I hope this also helps inform your mat practice because a lot of times when we do the ab series, we don't think about the arms working, but they're a big part of it. Oh, one more. And rest. Remember, you can always scoot in if you need it to be a little easier. But hopefully you're feeling a deep connection, knees into the chest, head and chest up.

We're gonna do the next two without a break. So both legs up, push the arms down, single straight leg stretch, one leg towards you, one leg away, and then this leg pulls in one extra time and then switch. So pull pull. And pull pull. So usually we try to make the pull from the single straight leg stretch from the arms, but it's from your stomach.

Last time each side, Alright. Both legs together. Just three, double straight leg stretch to lower in the lift, the legs. One, two. Alright. Last one. Lift those legs up. And then we're gonna skip the crisscross, although if you really wanna do it.

You can. We're going to set ourselves up for some rowing. I love rowing on the tower because it really allows us to not get obsessed with the carriages moving, allows us to focus on where we're moving from. Right? So into the sternum, have your thumbs towards each other, sit up nice and tall. And just like the roll back, you're gonna stay as tall as you can as you round back. Then you have to hold it here, push those legs down like you just did in your double straight leg stretch, open those arms up, and then push them wide behind you and then circle them all the way around if you can.

Lift them up to lift your center up and reach over your toes before you roll up. Again, round it back. Find those shoulders on your back like you did with your rollback rowing. Right? Open the arms up, push them behind you, dive forward, and then reach to the mat behind you, lift your arms up as straight as you can. You set to lift your low ribs in the front and circle around. And again, luckily we only do three. There's a lot of goodness in this, but it's not easy.

Push the arms back and dive them forward. If your springs are proving to be too heavy for you, you can always do this with some light weights. Right, elbows up for a 90 degrees. Now, it's not a bicep curl. So we're just gonna lift those elbows as high as our shoulders, and then as tall as we can, we're gonna lean back. And if you're like, oh my god, I don't go very far.

Me either. Here we go. Lift up. Reach for your tower, reach across the room, flip your palms, and then push the arms back towards your hips, reach the legs down and lift the ribs up, circle the arms over the toes. And let's see. Can we get taller and longer? Here we go. Reach maybe we can get a little further back push those legs away from you and lift and reach the hands down past the hips and lift your center, lift your arms circle over to your toes. One last one. Lean back elbows nice and high, lift and reach. Push the arms back towards the hips, lift your ribs and circle. Okay.

When we spin around for rowing three and four, it's easy for these to get into the hip flexors. So that's a sign that we have more work to do on the back of your legs. If you have to sit crisscross a couple of times, it's fine, but make sure you're giving yourself some thigh stretches. And some hamstring curls in your practice. Here we go, legs together.

The spring will go above our arms, and we'll reach the arms forward from from the chest. Push the arms down so you can get taller. Lift your arms up. They're gonna wanna pull you back. So can you lift up against the pull of the springs?

And then push the arms down to the side. And again, bend the elbows, reach. I have to squeeze my legs down more, lift and lower the arms, reach them up and around out to the side. Can you get taller and taller and taller? And bend. If the arms are circling behind you, that's gonna pull you back. Right? So we have to stay in control of our spring. Reach the arms forward.

Lower them down. Lift them back up to the ceiling, and then push out to the side. Alright. Rowing four. Little fun fact, my favorite rowing.

Squeeze the legs together, slide the hands along the mat all the way to your feet, then lift your arms up, push your shoulders on your back, and you lift up with the springs. Open the arms out to the side. And again, reach. So your stomach, pull back, lift the arms up. Allow the springs to push your shoulders onto your back outside of your ears. Right? They they tend to go up on this one.

You wanna pull the waist back, but the springs push your shoulders out of your ears, you lift up against these springs, and then now crisscross applesauce hands behind the head. Reach those arms up, up, up, up, up, and you can see like my legs wanna lift with my springs. So I'm gonna push my feet down to get more seat and push those arms up. If you're like, Leslie, I hate this, I prefer to kneel. Okay. Full permission. You can do this kneeling.

It's a different exercise, but I really love what this makes me focus on with my legs. One more time, switch the cross and open the arms for your hug and pull those arms forward and back. It's not about the arms touching as much as it is about the arms working wide from your back. So if you feel your shoulder blades close in an opening, I want you to think about more width and then keeping that width one more time. Alright. Our arms are nice and toasty, which means we're ready to do some leg springs. So I like to start my leg spring practice with a single leg spring from across.

If you've got some knee hip stuff, you can do same leg. Same spring. Otherwise, it's gonna go right spring on left foot. Easier is to have your head closer to the bars with bent elbows, hands higher than your elbows. Harder is gonna be to have straighter arms, you still want those hands higher than your shoulders, and then the strap is around the foot. My right leg is bent pushing that foot down just like in arms springs, and my left knee is pulled in. Now, when I push my leg out, to the high diagonal and then bend the knee in.

But that high diagonal kind of direction is a little misleading. Wherever your foot is in space right here, it's gonna stay along that line. I don't remember which one is which longitude or latitude, but think about that. Think about those lines across a map, and your leg is staying along that same trajectory as it goes out and in. Otherwise, it's easy for the spring to do the work. If as your leg goes out, the foot goes up, you probably hyper extended your knee or let the spring open you. If as the leg goes down, it falls down, that's the weight of your leg drop into the spring. You wanna push out and pull in.

This is gonna change those single leg stretches we did earlier for next time. Stay on the next one. Hold it. Push the leg down and lift the leg up. Here's your single straight leg stretch we just did. Push it down from the back of the leg.

And as you lift up, you can go as high as the back of your leg stays in the spring. So it doesn't matter if you are, like, small, like six inches, or if you have some sort of flexibility strength to close the spring. As long as the hamstring is staying engaged, you can go as high and low as you want. On the next one, stay down. We'll do a little bicycle. You're gonna pull that foot in towards your seat. A lot of people let the heel touch the butt.

I want you to drag it in and stop around 90 degrees. Pick that knee up in that shape. Here's fun. You're gonna push that shape down and then slide it out and lift it up. It's like a little mini bicycle. Bring it down, drag it in, around 90, pick that shape up, use your stomach, push this leg down from the back of the leg and slide it out.

One more time. Drag it in, pick it up, put it down, slide it out, and then lift the leg up straighten your right leg. I'm gonna circle this left leg across the body down out to the side and back up. Now that spring is pulling from across the body. So you have to push into that spring to dictate how fast that goes and what that shape is.

The spring winds, you'll draw a little zigzag and reverse. The more advanced you get, you can actually lift this hip up to circle the spring, but let's enjoy the hip down today. We've done a lot of work so far already. We've got one more. And then bend that knee in, and we get to do the same thing on the other side.

Alright. So spring goes across the leg of its own leg as he did on the first side, or if you did same leg, same spring, do that again. Just repeat what you did. Otherwise, we're gonna bring this foot down. Now this leg is pushing down. It's nice and warmed up. So you should feel the back of the leg pushing into the mat, and then we're gonna go out and in. Sometimes when I don't know what to do with my workout for the day, I will start with these because they're very revealing.

If I feel my shoulders are my ears, I know I have work to do. Let's do two more out and then or if I feel like the spring is winning my leg, that's information where I have work to do. Let's me know if I should do mat or a former. Stay out on the next one, and then lower and lift the leg. Now, we have two different sides as we notice when we did roll back with the arm springs, and I can tell on this side, my hip is a little more wobbly. Right? So I have to reach into my springs a little bit more as it goes down, and especially as it comes up. And then we'll lower the leg, drag it, pick that knee up, and push it down.

And the importance of you picking up your own leg is if you are wanting to do, rolling stomach massage, it's gonna happen later in this class or airplane, you have to have the ability to pull your knees into your chest from your sender, not just your hip flexor. So standing in the spring, picking that leg up is gonna allow us to keep that hamstring and glute on. Help us use our center to lift our leg last time. I promise you. There's a method to the madness.

This fly system is really amazing. Lift this leg up. Straighten the leg out and across the body first, then out to the side. We always go across the body to gather up our center to see how far out to the side we can go before we have a chance of losing it, and then reverse. And you're standing leg, the leg that's on the mat is just reaching down, reaching into an imaginary spring.

It helps anchor you and lift it up. Okay. If you're like, wow, my legs are on fire. Good. Now you get to do two springs. You get to take that action. It's kind of nice.

It's like when athletes work, they don't just go, oh, it's tired. I just worked. Let's take a break. It's like, let's challenge it more. Right? So you're an athlete. Pilates is very athletic. Reach your hands into the hand the poles.

You can move closer to the poles and make it easier, please do. He'll see other toes apart. Each foot has a spring when you push out like a frog. Stay out here and draw circles. You go up, out to the side together and around. And let's make him swift.

So those inner thighs are trying to get together as soon as possible. Two more. And then reverse five circles in the other direction. And you'll notice you might have one leg that veers wider than the other. That is information for you.

On work that needs to be done next time. And then after five squeeze legs together frog it in, frog out to that high diagonal. This time, hold your left leg still. We're gonna walk, take your right leg down a little bit. Hold the right leg still, take the left leg down. And then right and left up to six steps, then you reverse.

So it's not that both feet are walking at the same time. One foot takes a step, then the other than the other. I see a lot of people tend to shimmy, and we lose out on, like, it's really hard to hold the legs still. It's actually quite a challenge. One last set. The backs of your leg should be telling you they're working very hard.

It's a great sign. If you're feeling this in your knees, that's information. You're probably hyper extending them using your knees to push down, push the after you frog the legs in on that last one frog back out, and then we'll go into a bicycle. So you just did a single leg version. Now you get to do two legs at the same time.

And you really get to feel yourself pull that foot towards your seat, dragging the foot along the mat, and then reverse it and reach. And you really wanna have one leg straight, while the other leg is bending. This is gonna help you when you do leg springs in the air. Also, as a magician, don't worry. I don't have that in your practice today. If you're like, that's enough leg springs.

It is. Bring your heels together. Frog it back in for my favorite leg spring exercise, bringing the legs back out. And beat, open and close the legs eight times as quickly as you can, then hold it for eight counts. And this is really weird. Like, why? Because then you get to move it down, and then do it again, eight counts. And then hold it and see if you can stay reaching the spring or do turn off, and then lower those legs again, and eight beats here.

And then we hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it, and then for fun, we do five little tiny circles down here, and then reverse those five little circles. Can you keep it together? And then bend those knees in. Alright. You're not done. Don't take them off.

This is the big frog. You're gonna take your feet in this frog position and push them down to the mat. Just like we did with that single leg bicycle. Right? Slide the feet along the mat. Open the legs up as wide as your mat, lift your legs, squeeze them together.

I promise you were building up to something. Bring those frog legs in, slide them along the mat. Don't open until you get your feet, your legs to straight. Then you open, lift the legs, close, bend it in. It's easy to kind of bring this movement together as one, but be pretty particular about it straighten the legs, then open, lift, then close, bend the knees in.

Now reverse, push out. Open the legs, bring them down, slide them together, drag them in, pull that shape in, and then reach it back out. If you feel your inner thighs are on fire, way to go, gold star for you today, bring those legs in, one more time, push it out, open, drag it down, slide them together, and pull it in. Alright. Let's take these off and come to some kneeling work. Now I'm gonna do the kneeling chest expansion thigh stretch and long back arms with arm springs, handles specifically.

If you want to use the bar, you absolutely can, but I think there's something fun about seeing what happens when we don't have the bar to do the work for us. So we'll take your bar off and you'll use handles. If you have a arm that is stronger or a side that's stronger, it is going to reveal a lot of information for you. So the other fun thing with the arm springs, the handles is we can actually take our hands past our hips. So you wanna be ideally an arms distance from the poles for your setup, knees are our hips distance apart, but they're squeezing together. And then from your back, you're gonna pull these arms past your hips.

Look both ways. And then bringing the arms forward. So we already did the arms up and down lying down. Now you actually get to do it kneeling and see, can you get your arms past you more? Because there's no mat there. And how much are you using your legs and your center to help you achieve this?

I mean, it is called chest expansion for a reason. So you wanna expand your chest, and that means getting those arms past your hips. Awesome. Okay. Walk your knees back a little bit. Let's do three thigh stretches.

So here we go. It's tempting to push down on these springs, but try to hold on to the handles and allow your body leaning back to open the springs. Go back as far as you can. And come back up. If you need more tension, just move your legs back. Right? Again, we lean back. There's no back bend in the thigh stretch. This is a tall back.

It's just your chest expansion leaning back, really. Let's do one more. Okay. Amazing. Now we're gonna turn around and do some long back arms. I like using the handles for long back arms if you have tight shoulders because you're not limited to the length of your bar. Right? Here we go. We're facing the other direction. Again, knees are apart, but they're hugging towards each other.

You pull the handles up towards your upper back, and then you just reach down your body, reach the arms back, lift the arms up, and pull it in. We'll go a little faster, Some people describe it as drawing a box, you're kind of just moving. More like a circle, really, but obviously, you can only go as high as you can go without your shoulders rounding forward or your body lean leaning forward, reverse. Reach it behind you, pull it down, up and back, and use the tension of the spring to get taller. Oh, let's do one more and see if we can get taller again.

Nice. Okay. So, you're gonna put your handles back on your arms springs because I've got a surprise for you. And I'm kind of giving it away, but I want you to be ready for it. Now, let's take our push through bar and hook up a spring from the top and place your feet in the poles. So we have push through. We're just gonna do about four of these and we get to see how far along have we come since our roll back exercise. A nice full check-in.

Pull your waist back, round back, reach forward, and then round back, and lift it up. Now, if your wrists or elbows bend, congratulations, You get to do it again better. The wrist and elbows have to stay straight because if the wrist or elbows are bending, then it means your spine isn't. So we pull the waist back and you do a little chest expansion with the arms. And then you round forward like you did on your rollback, and then you pull your waist back up. I said four, but I lied.

We're gonna do one more because it's so good. We tend to think it's easy because it's beginner, but it's It's cut so many layers. Awesome. Okay. Spin around. Lie on down. If you just kind of roll back, you should be in a good spot for teaser. You want the bar just under your neck and it's kind of interesting how if the body just lies down from push through its kind of in the right spot.

Squeeze the legs the other point, the toes, bend the elbows, shave back, and then bend the elbows and lift up. So it's easy to make this just like a choreography. Try that again. When you pull your elbows back, you should feel like you're doing that rowing we did earlier. And when you reach your arms overhead, it should feel like you're about to do leg springs again, and then pick it back up. Now let's do one more for our warm up, and then lift the arms up, and roll your head and chest up, toes in line with eyes. Sometimes I see people back here.

Get those toes in line with the eyes. It's harder. And then we shave. So we did shave seated earlier, now you get to do it balancing on your seat. Pull the bar three times. Lift the bar up really important reach the bar up up up up as you pull your waist back.

Lower the feet and the head at the same time reach the arms, and then bringing the arms back up, roll it up, and now lower and lift those legs. We did it in the amp series. Just feel a little bit more possible here. And then roll it back down and reach it back. Last one, lift it up, lower the legs as you bend the elbows. Now, it's easy to bend the elbows and pull yourself off your center.

So you've got to lift the crown of your head up as you bend your elbows roll it up and roll it down. Okay. Curl up a little bit to put that bar out of the way, and it should be totally fine where it is. If you have a low bar, you might wanna unhook it. You're gonna grab your arms springs.

Here's your surprise of your arms springs. And we're just gonna see. In fact, scoop back a little bit. It'll be easier or more possible, I should say. Alright. We're gonna reach for the floor.

And we're gonna roll up to a teaser. And then you're gonna see if you can hold on to it lower and lift the arms, just like on the reformer, can you balance, and then roll it back and lower it down. And do it again. And if you need to scoot back, scoot back, drag your fingers to the floor. So you're not doing a hug. Right? You're doing more like a reverse chest expansion here and draw those circles. And by the way, if you're like, oh my god, this is crazy.

You don't do this all the time. Versus circles. And then roll it down. Roll it back up. And then ready. Open and circle the legs like you did with your leg springs.

My teacher Jay would just say, you do it, like, when you just wanna kinda humble someone. And I'm just like, just see what's possible, and then roll it down. Look at you just did. You did that. Okay. I wanna do reverse push through to rinse that out.

If you have any shoulder stuff and you prefer doing the long back arms again, you can. So turn towards the push through bar to pull it down. That'll help that shoulder out. And then place the other hand on. The palms are facing down into the bar and towards me, pinky side of the hand is the most important thing on that bar. Pull your waist back like you just did in your teaser, and then pull your waist back and lift the arms up. So this reverse push through is so helpful for future rowing's.

Pull the waist back. So we're not pushing the bar back with the arms as the waist, and then pull the waist back, and you control how high the bar goes. So my hypermobile bodies, I see you, It's not impressive how much the bark can pull on you, how much can you push on the bar. Come halfway back, carefully flip one palm at a time, and then round back. This version, I have to pull the bar apart a little bit to get more width across the front of my chest, and then lift the bar up, and reach it back, and lift it up, and reach it back.

And lift it up. Pull it halfway down. Turn the palm down, then take the other hand off. Turn towards the bar to lift it up. It's the best way for your shoulder.

And then we're gonna unhook this spring add our safety strap and do some tower. So always wanna put your safety strap on first, even if yours looks like a chain, you wanna do that. So hook that on, and then put your spring on from below. If you do it in the other order, you might forget one day I don't want you to do that. So hook it from below, and then let's lie underneath being mindful of the bar and your head.

And then you place yourself where your elbows are a little bit greater than 90 degrees. So your hands are above your elbows. It's about a hands distance from the edge of the mat for some tower. Push this bar up, bring your feet on the bar, and then take your legs straight up. So the feet are gonna be parallel and a hip distance apart. And the arms are reaching.

It's really easy to pull on them, but see if you can push into them. And then without doing it from your back. So go ahead and do a little flex and do a little point. So you can feel the weight of your spring here. On the next point, roll the hips up with your eyes on the ceiling. Keep them on the ceiling.

It's easy to look down, hold them on the ceiling, about to your shoulder girdle, then bend your knees and straighten your legs. Three of these. We're getting ready for some airplane. And so it's nice to have that closed chain version of that reach up and staying on our shoulders. Then pulling from your center down into the mat, push up into the spring.

Flex and point Flex, and point, and again, eyes up. I know you wanna look at your legs. I promise you they'll still be there when you get your tower up towards the ceiling, and then bend your knees three times. So we never go past the vertical poles And typically most of us don't even have that mobility in our upper back anyways to get close to them. So we tend to I tend to see people roll a little too high. You wanna stay on that strong shoulder, point and flex.

And then again, nice, wide upper back, roll the hips up, bend and straighten the legs three times, and then roll it all the way down. Okay. We're gonna do one single leg on each side. If you're like, no, that was enough. Feel free to repeat what we just did. So I'm gonna take my left foot off and it's just gonna hover in front of the of the bar.

I'm gonna roll up with my right foot, reach that left leg of the ceiling and pump three times. Again, it's always good to know which side. It's a little smarter than the other. Now this free leg is still reaching up, reaching up, reaching up as I roll down, and I place the foot back on flex and point, and one more time point the feet, take the right foot off, And very quickly you discover, you can hear to my voice, which leg has it, and which leg is like, really, you're gonna make me do this in front of everyone. Here we go, and roll it down.

Roll it down. Roll it down. Put both feet on. Flex some point, bend your knees, take your hands to the bar. Once your hands have the bar, take your feet off, close your spring. And then we're going to take the spring off first, and then your safety strap off.

Take your safety strap off, and then we're gonna set up your rollback bar for some rolling stomach massage. So you'll wanna use those rollback bar springs you were using earlier. And if, a rolling stomach massage isn't something you wanna do, leg springs repeated is a really awesome thing, or rolling like a ball. So with the rollback bar on, you wanna get yourself to an arms distance from the poles. So it's easy to set yourself up if your arms are already in the right place, then you reach up and grab the bar Then you bring your knees into your chest, see that little reverse running like a ball action to get the legs over the bar. Now, I keep my feet next to each other and just squeezing towards my seats.

You should feel that hamstring curl we did with the single leg springs. Tharms are gonna reach into the bars, and you're gonna promise me, I'm gonna promise you, my feet are gonna squeeze towards my seat the whole time. Right? So they're squeezing together, squeezing towards the seat, pull your knees into your chest, there's your tower, reach your knees up, and then there's your thigh stretch. And then roll it down. If you came down like a thud, you know, a little more butt. Here we go. Reach into the arms, not pull, pull the knees to your shoulders, knees to the ceiling over the hips, and then down to the mat.

One more time in this direction. Knees in, knees up, and knees away. Now, if that was hard, stay in that direction because this one isn't gonna be easier. Place the feet down, lift the hips up, and bring your knees over your shoulders, and then roll it down. Again, feet down hips up, then the body, then the knees. When the knees come to the shoulders, it's tempting to lower the butt.

Just pull the knees to the shoulders and then roll the spine down. Last one, hips up. Woo. And then roll it down. Okay. You're gonna carefully grab the bar, take your legs off.

And then we're gonna take our lovely leg springs you're already set up. Your body's already in place, so you're gonna put your straps on each foot. The arms are already in that straight position heels together toes apart. So now we're just gonna take that rolling some massage to the next level airplane. Pull the knees into the chest, lift the hips. Lift the legs, stretch your legs across the room and land with your feet and your seat at the same time.

My seat one. So we're not here to be perfect. It's pretty hard because you can't see what's going on. You have to feel it, right? So bring the knees into the chest. Reach to the ceiling, stretch it out, the springs will catch you, trust that, and then pull everything down together. One more time in this direction.

If you're like, are you kidding, Leslie, go back to your leg springs. That will repeat that and you'll get stronger. Repeat it with straighter arms. Right? We're in reverse. So the feet come down just like they did in that big frog. They slide out just like on the big frog, but now your whole body lifts up in one piece and you pull it in. And the springs will pretty much only pull you 98% of the way.

The last 2%, you have to use your stomach to pull your feet over your face. One more. Whoo roll it down. Alright, love. Here's the deal. We started with arms. We're ending with arms.

Let's move to our arms springs. Alright. So to set ourselves up, let's grab our arm springs, and then we're gonna hook them. At the hook that's at shoulder level, or maybe one above, you don't wanna go too high because it's gonna pull it's already hard. You don't wanna be pulled in the wrong direction. So I'm a little bit lower than my shoulders, but the next one up is a little higher than I'd like to be. You wanna stand heels together toes apart and just remember, the further are you away, the harder the springs are.

So what I like to do is have my heels together toes apart and just reach my arms straight. And if I can lean into that action without getting pushed back, then I don't want a good spot. So here we go. Rachel's arms to straight. Stand tall in your feet and in your center, and then pull one arm back and start to box.

And we're gonna pick up the pace. Because it's the ending. It's the grand finale. So you're boxing. We would never box like right? We got a box, Joe as a boxer. So, find that boxer in you. Sometimes I like to sing the Rocky song in my head for the last three.

Two, one, both arms straight, come back. Whoo. Hands behind the head for shave. You might wanna lose move a little forward for this, but index finger and thumb together, raise those hands behind your head if you can, and then reach them up on the high diagonal and then back in. So again, if the springs are pushing you around as you open them, you've gone a little too far. It's okay to start with the spring slack.

Two more. Should feel yourself getting taller and even longer in the center, the more the arms go up feel yourself hanging in your center, we need more stomach. Right? And then reach the arms up, open the arms out of the side, hug. So we did it seated. Now you get to compare yourself to yourself standing. It's easy to obsess with the fingers touching, I promise that's not important, important.

Right? Reach those arms wide from your back. Last one. Okay. One of my favorite ways to end my standing arm springs. It doesn't really have a name. My teacher Jay called the Proud Mary because made him think of that song, if you know it, then you know. So you're gonna stand with your feet parallel and you want your hips over your heels.

So it's easy to stick your booty out. We don't wanna do that. You're gonna lower your back till it's a nice tall back. So not round. Not arch, try to get tall with those hips over those feet. You're gonna draw big circles, right, big wheels, and then pull the arms back.

So you go down to the floor, past your hips up to the sky, and then pick up the pace. Let's do five in this direction. If you're singing Proud Mary with me in your head, that's fun too. I'm not singing for you because I am tone deaf. After you reversed five in the other direction, reach into the spring and stand up. Alright.

We're gonna finish with a little spread eagle. You wanna come up to your poles and grab as low as you can with straight arms, and then start with the balls of your feet on the poles, you know, you're in a good spot. Turn the feet to the floor first and lift up for a swan. This is where you're like those figure skaters that somehow can lean out with their feet as turn out as much as possible, and then feet to the poles. And now we're an elephant.

Pull the waist back. Stretch your lower back out and then turn the feet down, find us one. It's easy to do this with the arms. We just did the arm spring, so now we're gonna finish using the legs. Push into your feet to pull your waist back. And then pull the feet wide and lift the heart up.

Last one. Thank you for doing some tower with me. I will be nice and sweaty. If you have any questions, I love to answer them below, but just give yourself some props of high fives because the tower is a great place to learn so many exercises that we tend to struggle with on our mat and reformer. It's like the nice side dish to the bread and butter that is our mat and reformer practice, have an amazing day.