Hip-Focused Cadillac Class

Sarah Berticelli here. I'm super excited about this class that I've developed. We are going to work with fundamental movements and advanced principles, hopefully, sparking longevity. So let's talk about what we're gonna use on this Cadillac. We have got the short yellow springs with handles.

I've got the long purple springs with the foot straps. I've got one blue spring and two red springs that will use bottom loaded. And I you notice that I'm not using the fluffies, and I don't plan to use the trapeze either. So we are gonna use a ball. Hopefully, you have one available. I'll put mine down for now.

And for the sake of not having them get in the way, we will remove the purple springs. And let's get started. So I'm facing the direction of my short yellow springs. And, you know, I didn't mention the height of my bar, and I I suppose I should do that. I've got mine set at, about head level for me. Okay.

So I'm going to be doing roll ups here. So make sure that that's set for you. Let's go ahead and lie down on your back and settle into your body. Let's place the ball between the legs. And what I'm liking these days is having the ball between my thighs where I can feel it a little bit on my lower leg as well.

And then feel that your feet are aligned. Perhaps you'll you'll begin with your feet together so you can feel the bones, and then you'll separate them a little bit wider than the ball. I'm interested in you squeezing the ball the entire time with a hint of internal rotation just to make sure we're not going into external rotation. With your arms by your side, breathe in through your nose. Breathe out through your mouth or nose, your choice. Can you feel that you're breathing back into those lungs, back into the ribs with your inhale. And then with your exhale, a little bit of pelvic floor, get all the air out.

Breathing in through the nose, expanding the lungs, And with your exhale, can you draw the belly inward and up and get all your air out? Feel that your arms are relaxed. Your head is relaxed. And explore a little bit here your pelvis position, while breathing, can you drop your tailbone down a little further than you thought? And can you use your abdominals to flatten your back a little bit and feel your tailbone lift?

Drop your tailbone all the way down, squeezing the ball a little, and move your low back into the mat. Just a little pelvis rock. One more time, just that movement, inhale, tailbone down, perhaps. Use the exhale to provoke the abdominals, flatten the low back, and now up we go. So we lift the pelvis through to the bridge position.

Inhale here at the top. And then roll down. I like to use an exhale. So you'll breathe when you wanna breathe. If you wanna follow my breath, you might inhale drop your tailbone down.

Use your exhale to curl up engaging the abs, squeezing the ball. And then take a breath, articulate through the backs of the ribs, through the low back. And finally, the pelvis comes home. So let's talk about some concepts here. So as we curl up, We wanna make sure we're landing in a place where the pelvis is the high point rather than the ribs lifting.

So you're really pushing the hip bones and the pubic bone up a little higher rather than flaring the rib cage and roll down. So once I've established the movement, feel free to keep moving, curling yourself up, try to follow the rhythm we've created, pressing the pelvis a little higher, but squeezing the ball inward, and then curl down. So we'll play with this a little bit. With your next one, we'll hold ourselves up there. So pressing up or curling up rather.

Hold that bridge position. Feel the outside of your heels and push a little bit through the outside of the heels to squeeze the ball a little bit better. Now, we're gonna use the push, start on the right side to move your pelvis over to the other direction. Push with your left heel to move your pelvis the other way. Now as you continue to do this, try to feel that your knees stay where they are. So it's like your pelvis is just swinging side to side, and it's endeavoring to stay level.

So try not to rotate or drop one side down. So just sense that. And one more time on each side. One more time over to the first side. There we go. Come back to center and lower down.

And if you feel some interesting things happening in your inner thighs or your hamstrings, you're not alone, Let's try it again. We're gonna curl ourselves up and find the height that suits you. If you wanna get a little more interested here, try lifting your right heel up. Do the same thing. You're gonna push with the right leg over to the other side. Come through center, foot flat. Other heel up, push over to the other side.

Come back to center, heel down. So I'm lifting my heel to push with my legs And I'm endeavoring to keep my knees kind of stable. However, when you do, the heel lift, you might find your knees wanna wobble a little bit, but try to keep them sort of where they are. So you're squeezing with both legs simultaneously. And just one more time here. Come back through to center two feet or flat and curl down. Now, I feel my inner thighs.

Let's go ahead and take that ball. I'm actually leave the ball where it was. I changed my mind. Reach your hands up to the ceiling, please. Keep the rib cage grounded as the arms go overhead.

I'm just gonna move down so that I don't hit the roll up bar back there. Or I'm sorry, the push through bar back there. So here we go. My arms go overhead, they lift up. When my arms lift up, I wanna be able to lift my legs, lift my chest, and make a little ball. So everything at once can go down, and back. And everything at once can float up. So let's just keep doing this movement a few times with breath when it makes sense.

Continuing with the movement, I'm interested in your rib cage staying grounded, especially when your arms go back. So a lot of us have a hard time with that. So key into the back of the low ribs and try to keep them grounded, and find the breath that suits you as you do just two more here. And moving at a pace that suits you as well. Beautiful. Let's go ahead and rest that hold the ball in your hands and just put it arrested on top of your chest and just sway your legs side to side.

So swaying the legs side to side, feel the opposition with the arms. What does that mean? My eyes stay up. My legs go one way. I'm rolling the ball over my chest and leaning my arms the other way. So let's continue to do that beautiful spiral there side to side a few times.

Just breathing. And I'm going just a little faster. Beautiful. Feel the support from the core, from the low ribs, low ribs meaning they are rolling across the mat like your ball. Yeah? Okay. Come to center. Lift the hips up.

Place the ball now underneath your pelvis. Now, I'm interested in this idea of you being able to fully relax your pelvis on the ball. I could lift my feet with no problem. I could lift my arms. My pelvis feels relaxed. So I'm not trying to keep it tucked and I'm not trying to push it down.

I'm just relaxed. Okay? So now, ideally, we feel that comfortably so, we can push the ball into, push the pelvis into the ball. And when you do that, if you touch your core, you're gonna feel it working. Release, it may or may not be working. When you push, you're gonna feel it working.

So let's keep that amount of push that feels good to you with your arms for a moment by your side, soften the rib cage down if yours flared a little bit? Can you march one leg at a time? One leg at a time? So I'm just floating my leg up. I'm not trying to point my toe or bring my leg to a certain shape. I'm just marching. Now, can we lift both legs up here and hold? Now, can we lift the arms up but keep the shoulders anchored?

And can we march with the legs one at a time down. Okay. So try to keep your balance on the ball. Try to keep your pelvis stable. Keep the idea of pressing the pelvis into the ball as you do the marching. Yeah. And then you might feel as you lift a leg, that you sort of wanna lean a little bit into the opposition of your upper back.

So see if you can lean into that a little bit more. Another way to look at this is opposite arm as foot would be down. Opposite arm as foot would be down. If you have to think too much about it, your cross patterning might be a little off. And guess what? We're working on that in this class.

Fun fun. Last time here. Draw your two knees into your chest. Let your low back round. That should feel really nice, especially after waking up those back muscles. And then you can put one foot down for me, the other foot. Lift your hips up and roll the ball out of the way.

And take a breath feeling that lightness underneath your pelvis. But hopefully, you can also feel that it's just a little bit easier to keep the pelvis grounded rather than always tucking too much. And then sense the rib cage. Heavy so that we're supporting that low spine. Beautiful. Let's just put the ball between the legs to get it out of the way.

We're gonna hold on to the backs of the legs, lift the head and chest, lift the pelvis, so we're rounded. Now, the shape of the ball create stays the same. So I'm looking for a certain amount of tensegrity. Simply, I'm ideally not moving my legs as I get the rock and roll going. Meaning, I'm not pulling my legs forward and back, but the breath gets the body moving until you can sit up. Beautiful. Scooch back a bit so that you feel like you're in the right position for you to do a rollback We're gonna keep the ball here above the knee ideally unless your ball is really big.

In which case you can put it between the ankles, but a little above the knee is ideal. I'm gonna reach forward for my handles, and I'm actually gonna scooch back just a little bit. I'm kind of interested in this idea of the springs sort of pulling your arm just a little bit into a straight position. So, it's not gonna work for everybody, especially if you're tall. So I the first part of the move, I'm gonna have to keep my arms here. But what I would like when you begin the roll back is to feel that tug forward from the spring.

So your elbows stay straight, actively pull your shoulders back and then sit tall again. Okay. So the arms are straight. Look at them. You're gonna curl yourself back and just feel that very first part. Stay for a moment. So what I see a lot of times with people when we try to do the full roll up is too much activity in the legs. Meaning the quadriceps. So I'm shaking my feet right now, and I'm asking my quads to stay relaxed, and I'm trying to feel the footprint of my leg.

And as I continue to go down, I'm gonna roll my knees inward a little bit and keep the footprint of my leg, the leg print completely the same. If your quads lock up and you begin to move with different parts, you might find your thighs lift up. And I want you to stop instead where you feel your legs relaxed and then roll yourself back up. Sit tall at the end. So you might go all the way back, you might not.

That's the idea. So we're gonna hollow the belly in using the abdominals. We're gonna feel the shoulders plugged and begin our journey. As you roll back, feel the legs relaxed. Roll in slightly. If you can roll all the way down and keep the leg print the same, then please do. If not, don't.

Lift your head and chest and round and roll yourself up. Keep the legs relaxed. The top of the legs relax. The back of the leg is heavy. At the very top, let's sit tall.

Notice my feet are relaxed. I don't want you to point or flex. I just want them soft. We're gonna round through the low back and roll back. Feel the shoulders plugged.

Feel the legs relaxed. One vertebrae at a time. Nice and slow. Enjoy. Put your shoulders down. Put your head down.

Lift the head and chest and round and roll yourself up. And let's do one more like that. And if you've noticed you're a little bit close to the push through bar, you can scooch forward a little bit. I noticed I was a little close. So we roll ourselves back. Roll the legs in.

The ball makes noise as you roll back. There we go. And then we're gonna roll ourselves up nice and slow and methodical. Okay. Here's where it gets interesting. Are you ready? You're gonna hold both handles in your right hand. Okay? You're gonna bend your right knee and bring the leg close to the other other leg so that the ball just stays compressed there.

Okay? I'm going to now pull over toward my left. My hand hooks, but I'm holding with my other hand. My right hand's holding my other hand hooks. Now, I'm gonna do the same idea, keeping just the left leg relaxed, the left leg print the same as I roll myself back. Good morning, obliques. There's a point where my leg wants to roll outward and I'm asking my knee to roll in and to manage that with my inner legs. Also, my hip flexors are working differently.

Good. You may go all the way down. You may not. And roll up. Let's just do three of these. Just exploring the possibilities here, trying to focus on the nuance of keeping the leg nice and soft roll back. Deep work. So again, my right arm is doing the majority of the work.

My left arm's just staying hooked. Squeeze the ball a little bit. So squeezing the ball with the bent knee to the straight leg straight leg and lift up. Nice and slow and methodical. And one more time.

Rolling back. So you're using the breath. So just really ironing out that sticky spot that sometimes we have or that place where maybe your hip flexors take a little bit of a break, and I'm actually by squeezing the ball with both legs, I'm using my hips very differently, strengthening the hips, hopefully, in 360 degrees. Good. Change sides. So what do I mean by strengthening the hips in 360 degrees? I mean, we're gonna work the hips all around in this class. So I'm now holding the two straps in my left arm and I'm rotating toward my right, and then I'm gonna hook my other hand around.

And then I'm gonna give a little squeeze with the bent knee, and the other leg rolls in. We're rolling over the leg, keeping the leg print the same. There's a lot of obliques happening there. I feel pretty powerfully, my internal oblique showing up. It's really quite nice. Good. And I'm just finding the place where I'm comfortable. You don't have to roll all the way down if it doesn't work for you, but oh, that's deep.

Good. Breathing in, breathing out. Three nice and slow and methodical. Now tomorrow, When you practice this differently, you might wanna move a little faster, and that's okay. But you wanna also be aware, are you controlling this movement with the legs, or are you controlling the movement from the core? And then adding leg movement to whatever core movement we're doing. I prefer the ladder.

So one more time here, I'm keeping that leg nice and relaxed. So my upper quad, my quad is staying soft. The back of my leg is participating, but more importantly, my deep hip is participating. My hip flexors. So as an iliacus and round and roll up, bam. So remember, the left arm is the one that's doing most of the work when you're rotated in this direction.

Beautiful. I sure hope you feel that the same way I do. Let's go ahead and be finished with the ball, and we're gonna put these straps here out of the way. So the ball can just be stowed away wherever you'd like it to be. We're not gonna use it again unless you feel an overwhelming need. And if we can, we're gonna bring ourselves right back up to the, Cadillac here in a quadruped position.

So hands are underneath your shoulders, knees are underneath your hips. Okay. So we're gonna work push pull of arms. So what I see a lot when I get people in quadruped is as soon as we try to lift an arm or a leg, we shift back. And I'm really interested in you not shifting back into the legs. So let's have half of your weight or a little more than half of your weight in your arms. Actively push your arms straight and feel the back of your heart up. So you're spreading through those scapula up there. Now with that, when I ask for the poll, oftentimes I get in a wrist bend and people say they're wrist hurts. Well, I'm not looking for a wrist bend. We've got the up, that's the push. And then I'm going to pull with my shoulders, my muscles around my shoulders, my shoulders down, and the idea of my head forward, but I don't actually need to move forward.

I'm gonna stay right there. So I've got my push and my pull. And now I'm going to begin marching on my hands without lifting. Meaning, I'm just leaning into pushing and pulling more with one arm and the other. And what naturally happens is my knees move.

One knee lifts and the other knee lifts, but I'm not actually trying to move them. I'm keeping my core very, very active by pushing and pulling with the arms. Hopefully, you can feel that. Okay? Settle back on a neutral position, sit back in a stretch for a moment, give your wrist a little circle. The more we work the wrist, the stronger they are, the more agility they have to be standing on them. Let's come through to our quadruped again Same idea. You've got the push to straight arms.

Your head is back. Your chest is open. Oftentimes, people start looking at their legs here. Look a little forward about six inches in front of your hands to keep your gaze helping you with your head alignment. Feel the push, feel the pull. We're gonna keep the right arm strong.

We're gonna lift the left hand. Nothing should have changed, except your right knee just wants to float. Feel it. Put the hand down. Let's try the other side.

Push with the left arm. Pull. We're gonna lift the right hand and maybe touch your sternum. Notice the other leg just wants to move. Change again. Push pull touch. Push pull touch.

Really think about what the shoulder is doing to help you facilitate more core strength. One more time here, and that should make us even. From here, can you tuck your toes under? Can you sit back and stretch your toes? So anytime I ask you to do something, if your joints don't work, just modify or do it differently.

But if you're able to really tuck those toes under and get a nice foot stretch, this is useful. Now from here, we need to come to standing. Now, the goal would be that you can get up to a standing position without using your hands, but how does that look for you? Maybe you need to step forward. Maybe you can roll back onto your feet and stand up just to make sure you're paying attention to what's behind you. For now, I'm simply gonna step with one foot and stand up. However, you use your arms is just fine. So now, we're going to use this push through bar with the blue spring across And the only reason we're going across here is just so that the the bar starts a little higher.

I know that's not the customary way of using the blue spring. And then I I really like doing footwork up here because it is important to be able to kinda do a little exposure therapy for people who are uncomfortable being up uncomfortable being up high. So that's one of the reasons I like doing it here. You could actually do it standing on the ground too, but here we go. I'm going to begin with my arms straight a little bit lower than shoulder height. Right? So I'm just finding this sweet spot, and you'll adjust as needed.

You've got two straight elbows and active grip. Okay. Then I want you to feel actually just for a moment how far your shoulders can go forward and you can lean back. And you can lean forward. So just feel that for a moment. Feel how much wiggle room you have in your body just by moving your shoulders. So find the place where your shoulders feel plugged back and you have just like a slight downward pull from your your back muscles.

Now, here, we're gonna bend the knees just to the point where it feels easy to stay upright and you don't need to use the bar and stand tall. When you bend the knees, can you push out a little through your heels in your mind to spread your backside? And when you straighten your knees, can you pull a little with your inner thighs? Now, let's think about this a little more. Stop thinking about bending your knees as you do this movement.

Feel that you're bending your ankles, your shin bones are getting closer to your feet when you bend. Feel it. Don't look at it. Feel it. Now feel that you're bending your hips. As you bend your knees, your hip joint shortens, and then opens or your thigh bone comes closer to your pelvis and then goes away. So feel that. Now we go all the way down.

So what is all the way down for you? You're keeping your shoulders plugged. You might go to 90 degrees, equal weight front and back of feet, and stand tall. Let's do that again. Reaching down into a lane, range that suits you, maybe 90 degrees, and come up. And I'm just doing this little bounce down there just because it feels good to me.

You don't have to bounce. I'm just kinda bouncing there. Just kinda feeling my glutes, and standing tall. That's the idea of the bounce for me. If you feel safe, let's see if you can go a little further. Maybe get to the point where your bottom touches your legs, come back to 90 degrees, and stand tall.

Keep your shoulders plugged. Good. And we'll go again. 90 degrees. Maybe further. And then stand tall. Good.

Hint of a smile across the cheeks. Remember, we're having a good time here. Can you pull your abdominals into play by sucking up a little bit. So not as much pulling in, but think of lifting up from your pelvic floor. One more time here, and standing nice and tall. Now, we're gonna just lift the heels up a little bit. Now, if you're uncomfortable keeping your feet like this, you could roll up a towel and put it underneath your feet, and you'd have some support for your heels. I'm gonna step back a smidge because I really want my elbows to be straight and my wrists to be straight.

So look at that for yourself too and your shoulders plugged upright. Now, we're gonna our goal is gonna be to go straight down. Oh, there's a slight backward lean and straight back up. Now, you're gonna stop at the range that suits you. So option one, you bend a smidge. Option two, we're at maybe 90 degrees. And if you can, you keep going. You use those strong legs and you stand all the way up.

Ideally, the heels remain the same amount lifted the entire time. Good. Feel both legs working equally and stand tall. If you are going all the way down to where you actually touch your bottom toward your legs, Make sure you're not fully resting there, but you're staying active in the legs the whole way through. That's the goal. One more time. Quite a lot of power in the legs.

Minor getting a little sore. I hope yours are too. Put your feet flat. So we'll go into a slightly wider position. I don't want you to think maximum.

I just want the toes to be turned out a little, and I want your feet to be open so that we can maybe go deeper. Okay? Now, here, play with this idea of pushing out through the heels. So I'm using the friction on the table to wake up my lateral glute pushing that way on the diagonal. Okay. And then where can we go? Can we bend? Sometimes when we bend, I see too much tail back here.

So I want you to keep your ribs tucked in, your spinal position the same, and see if you can keep those feet grounded, plug those shoulders and maybe come into a full deep squat, maybe not. And you'll stand yourself all the way back up. So you're stopping at your range and using the bar as much as you need, feel weight in the heels, feel the balls of the feet down too, but can you go deeper knowing you have this little bit of support? And stand tall. Good. And we'll just keep going with this a little while, breathing in, using your abdominals, using your eye gaze, using those glutes, but try not to squeeze them. Instead, the outward push through the heels, will help wake up the glute more holistically. A rounder peachy glute instead of a pruning glute. We need peachy glutes, my friends, peachy.

Stay up and stay here. We're gonna take the feet back to parallel alignment. Release the bar. I thought we were gonna do something else, but I changed my mind. I'm allowed to do that. So I'm gonna take the, push through bar down, and we're gonna use this crossbar up here. So you're gonna unhook your crossbar, and I'm gonna slide mine back about two feet maybe. Okay.

Just so I have enough space. And you need to tighten it up enough so it's secure. Don't tighten it up so much that you strip the screws, but tighten it up enough so it's secure. So I'm gonna use this as a holding mechanism. Now, if for any reason you're uncomfortable up here, you can do it down on the floor, but again, I like making you stand up on tall surfaces.

Hold with your two hands if you can inside of the eyelets. If you're wider through the shoulders and you need to, you could hold wider. But I like being just inside of the eyelets personally. I'm gonna walk my feet a little bit underneath, so my toes are a little bit forward of the bar, and I'm leaning back. So I'm using my hands to hold me here, and I'm getting just a little bit of traction in my arms. So what I'm looking for here is an opportunity to be able to see what's happening in the arms. Can you fully let your shoulders round.

And as they do, your your shoulders naturally will wanna spiral in. Let them happen. My shoulders are up by my ears. It's okay. And then can you with your shoulders pull yourself back to a plank and feel how naturally your shoulders, your humerus wants to rotate in the opposite direction. That's external rotation. As your shoulders round and elevate, they go to internal rotation, lean into it.

And notice I'm piking a little bit. And then I'm gonna pull with my two arms and find that active spiral with my humerus, ideally without bending the elbow at all. Okay. Let's do that one more time. Grip strength, super important for longevity, big stretch, and then I'm pulling with my shoulders, my body back with that rotation. Let's take just a little pause, give your hands a little break.

We're gonna do some single arm work here. Really beautiful work. K? Same position. Step into it.

Feel. Grip with those arms. Use your thumbs. Feel. Look at your left arm. We're gonna all do left arm together.

And try to feel that you can straighten the elbow completely. You can let go with the other hand. Gonna put your hand maybe on your bicep and keep that energy of the straight elbow, but simultaneously get the downward pull from the back. Now, we're gonna open ourselves up. Rotate back. Pull. Pull back. Press down straight elbow. Let the arms spiral in as you open.

Maybe you look all the way in the other direction. And then you come back through. It's the shoulder managing this. So you're spiraling externally, you hold that and then you're pulling yourself to square. So again, if you need to put your hand on the bicep to feel that rotation, let it happen, then you'll swing out.

Now, I'm gonna come back in. I'm unraveling my rotation of my body. I'm looking. I'm feeling the rotation of the arm. I'm squaring, keeping the elbow straight, the downward push. I'm getting tired. I have one more in me.

Before my hand feels like it wants to slip. And pull pull pull pull pull. We're gonna change sides. So the other arm is there. Now, a little thing I do here is I'll put my hand on the bicep to help feel the spiral of the humerus here. So if you wanna do that, you'll do that.

Elbow stays straight. That's hard to do. Shoulder pulls down without bending the elbow. Think about it. Watch it.

Now, allow yourself to open and let the arm spiral in. Open your hand perhaps or keep it there. It doesn't matter. And then we're gonna pull around. We're feeling this movement is really being powered by your shoulder muscles without bending your elbow or lifting your shoulder down.

Open around. And then we're gonna come back in, feel the spiral. So we've got that external rotation, nice straight strong-arm, shoulder is plugged. And then spiral in. Good. Right about here. The arm starts to get a little tired.

The hand starts to get a little tired. We have one more. Nice straight arm. And open. So, certainly, if you feel your fingers slipping, you'll stop a little sooner. I don't want anyone slipping off here.

Good. Two hands. Hold on. We're gonna take a break from that. So let's move this crossbar out of the way. So we'll go back to where it was. Oops. Oops.

Sometimes a little tricky. So now we're going to move into using the push through bar bottom loaded. It is important always to have a safety strap on first, and safety strap always goes on before you put springs on and you're gonna find the height that suits you and makes it easy enough for you to get in and out. And then notice I've got a one to chair back here for a head extender. If you don't happen to have one of the shelves with a head extender, You can slide a one to chair in. Or if needed, you can turn around and face the other way.

We are going to use two springs here. I do like using two red springs. Bottom loaded. Now, we are going to be working with single legs. So if two red springs bottom loaded feels like too much, you'll adjust as needed.

But I like creating this path for it to feel as though you are working strength here, not only flexibility. Okay. So you'll slide yourself in. You can always use the bar. It's all secure to slide back in the position. And I like to be with my full head off.

And even sometimes just a little bit of my shoulders off, so it feels really easy. So what I'm interested in you feeling is this idea of when your feet are up on the bar that you can receive the spring, and I don't care where your feet are right away. You can receive the spring through your legs into a nice neutral pelvis, and that's not very hard to do here. If it's too hard, you need to move back, or you need to spin around. So you might have your head all the way at the back of whatever surface you have here. Important.

So settle into your neutral spine, feel your tailbone, feel your ribs. We're going to adjust the feet so that the bar is just above the heel at the bottom of the arch. That's where I like to be, but make sure your feet feel okay here. Feel nice straight legs, rooting your pelvis into the table, rib cage is grounded, neck is at ease. Ben and straighten the knees just two or three times here with both legs and check-in with the spring, make sure it feels good. If it doesn't feel good, change it.

Keep your legs straight for a moment. Let's shift to the left leg only. Received the spring with the left leg. Just check it out. Take the other foot away.

The knee is just bent. The knee is still up toward the ceiling. You'll bend your leg a couple of times. Watch the knee and try to keep the knee in alignment with your foot. Let's do one more here.

Just checking this out. Now, if you feel ready for it, you'll lengthen your leg on the mat. You wanna keep your leg nice and relaxed. Keep the pelvis grounded, and we'll do just a couple more nice and slow. And I like to try to use the friction of the bar to give a slight outward push to get that lateral glute to work a little bit. Think about that.

Let's change sides. So we'll go ahead and just shift to the other foot feel. Good. Ground. You'll bend the knee, the other knee. So I've taken my left leg away.

My right leg is holding me, and I just have my knees still up toward the ceiling. Just checking it out. Ben and straighten the leg a few times. Keep the pelvis grounded. Find your breath.

Keep the foot relaxed. I love teaching this to my clients because they can see where their knees and their toes are. It's kinda nice to know what tends to happen. Slide the other leg on the mat if it suits you, don't, if you don't. Keep your pelvis grounded. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Watch the knee of the leg that's moving and make sure it's not going out to the side. We're really trying to keep that neutral alignment, which for most of us means we have very limited range here. And I'm fine with that. Keep the legs straight, bring the feet up. Let's put the toes on the bar around the metatarsals and relax the heels up toward the ceiling. So you're receiving the bar through your feet, your knees are straight.

Good. This should feel like a good idea. If it's not the right spot, move your feet. Once again, we're gonna just check this out, bend both legs a little and straighten. Feel the tailbone grounded, bend both legs a little and straighten, think of widening your pelvis. Stay here. Take your right knee into that same bent position.

So you just take the foot away. Can you receive the spring through just the left leg? Bend and straighten a few times. As you press up, feel that you're reaching up through the heel, but grounding down through your pelvis. Up through the heel, the weight of the spring grounds the leg into the pelvis.

One more, just like that. And grounding into the pelvis, and then slide the other leg to straight, and we'll just do three more here. Just nice and calculated movements, trying to work the possibility of being more agile standing on one leg really is what we're doing here. So this translates to upright standing on one leg in a forward fold. Stay here. Let's change sides.

So we'll put the other foot on, feel that you're receiving the spring, nice straight knee. Bend the other leg, so my right leg is what's holding me up. My left leg is just here. And we're just gonna bend and straighten a few times, feel your pelvis position, receive the spring. Bend the knee, not too far. Reach through the heel, receive the spring.

One more time with the leg still lifted the other leg. And then if you choose to accept, slide that leg long on the mat, try to keep it nice and relaxed, and then bend three more times. Finding your breath. Beautiful. And again, finding that beautiful stretch receiving the spring.

And one more time here. Now, let's put both feet back on the bar in kind of a wide ish position near the heels that feels comfortable. It doesn't have to be super wide. We're just gonna use this as a stretch through the hips. We're gonna bend both legs. The knees will go just outside of the spring, ideally, maybe just inside of the spring depending on where you are. Actually inside of the spring feels better.

So I'm coming to the point where my pelvis is still down, and then I wanna bring the spring in more. So I'm gonna let my pelvis round a little bit, so my back is rounded, so my spring comes all the way in. I'm gonna first push my pelvis with my core back to the mat, the carriage, or the the pedal moved, the bar moved, and then I'm gonna push my legs to straight. Okay? That's gonna again help us with a deep squat. So you'll stop whenever you need to stop. I'm bending my knees, keeping my pelvis down. And then I'm gonna continue bending, bending, bending, and my pelvis is responding. My low back is grounding.

My pelvis is moved. That's normal with a deep deep squat. Now, we're gonna use our core to feel the pelvis come back to the mat, the legs move, and then the legs press up. Let's do that two more times. Bending, feeling, feeling, feeling, and then let it come all the way in as far as you can go. Feels nice for most people.

Push the body back to where it came from, press the legs back up. One more time, please. Bend. Let it come all the way in. If it feels good, don't if it doesn't. And then push all the way up. I will say I really like the knees going inside of the spring there. So, hopefully, you've you've found that position.

Bring your feet just a little bit closer together, bend your two legs, reach up. Find the bar with your hands, take your feet down. Okay. And then here, you can use your hands to slide yourself out of there, and we'll dismantle this. Okay. So now we're going to dismantle the push through bar by first removing one red spring. Slide it back where it belongs, and then the other red spring.

Usually, when I'm teaching clients, I do a lot of the adjusting for them, so things can flow a little faster. But one of the challenges is you just have to make changing the equipment, part of your workout. So I'm taking my safety chain off or my safety strap off, and I like to just kinda stow it out of the way so it doesn't get in the way there. So we're good here. Let's come back to our quadruped position for just a moment here. And let's feel. Again, your arms are straight.

You're pushing. Yeah. You're gonna pull with the shoulders. Remember that. Yeah. And then we feel the power here of our upper back. Pushing through one arm at a time generates this desire to march through the legs.

So let's hold right arm down, pull forward, lift left hand up, touch opposite hip. Slide That leg out to straight hold. Lean the heel a little out to the side. Keep the power of that right arm as you look around and try to see your heel. Same arm as leg unwind. Do that again.

Look around. Use the power from the shoulder. Good. One more time. Look around. Stay. Hover the heel if you can. Five times we lift. One, two, three, four, and five.

Beautiful. Two hands, two knees down. Other side. Ground through that powerful left arm. Pull forward.

Feel how just very naturally that left leg wants to lift. We're not gonna do that yet. We're gonna lift the other hand and touch the pelvis. Feel it. We're touching the pelvis so the pelvis doesn't move. Slide the leg back and feel that the this remains where it is. So I'm touching my hip bone, keeping that. Then I'm gonna look around three times.

What I've discovered, my friends, is it's very hard for me to see my left foot. So I really have to work my side bend, both in my cervical, my neck, and my lower spine as well. So we're gonna stay now around, and then you're gonna lift that leg up five times. One, two, without moving your pelvis. Three, four, and five. Two knees, two hands down. Alright. So let's step off and we're going to move into some hip work. So for that, we are going to need our purple springs. That have the foot straps on them.

And I'm just going to take and put these yellow straps just in one because we're gonna use those at a moment. They're out of the way. And I want the purple ones to be I don't like it when things are wobbling around. I want the purple ones to be on the outside here, and I'm about head level, eye level, head level, a little higher, sometimes nice. So we're simply going to slide ourselves back on our back here. And settle in in a place where you feel you can actively have your elbows straight, without your ribs popping off. So shoulder flexibility is key.

So lower is a lot harder. But I suggest for most of you to be up a couple of inches just for being able to achieve what we're trying to achieve here. Take the purple straps, put them on your feet. You're gonna put them on your feet, not too close to the heel, but, you want to make sure they don't slide off as well. So I kind of like the middle of my foot, and then I'm going to reorganize my arm position, where my focus here is really keeping that strong elbow So that the spring will actually help plug my shoulders.

Feel the ribs down. Bring your knees together at about 90 degrees at your hip and make your big toes touch. I don't need your heels to touch, but I want your knees and your big toes to touch. Breathe in and breathe out here. Just being here should feel kind of challenging.

Okay. We're gonna keep the feet on the same plane. So I would like you to drive through the heels straight out. Toast might remain touching. Heels do not. Nees touch when you come in.

You can see me quivering like a leaf, trying to figure this out. So that eccentric control in neutral alignment, knees come in to 90 degrees, so you're keeping pressure on the strap the whole way. And trying to keep that quivery arrangement. I love letting you see me shake. Tail bone down, strong straight arms.

Good. So we're bending and straightening both legs. Driving this movement first with stability from the core related also to the pelvis, and then second with leg strength. Good. So let's go ahead and come into that first two knees bent position and pause for a moment. Right leg slides out to straight, and then change. So we're doing like single leg stretch legs, have the knees graze past one another. Since as you continue to change, just like you're doing a marching, you can move at whatever pace suits you since your big toes grazing past one another and your knees grazing past one another. Now, think about when the leg goes straight.

Whatever leg is straight, Can you drive more powerfully through that opposite arm? Right? So if it's my left leg, it's my right arm driving. If it's my other one, it's my other one. Right? So the straightening leg, you drive through that arm. Drive through that arm. And let's stay with left leg straight.

So that would mean right arm pressing. Now, you're gonna take that straight leg down to the mat and up. To about 45 degrees. As you go down, I'd like you to feel your toe angling in slightly, your heel angling out slightly. So many of us do too much internal rotation, and I feel like I'm an internal rotation, but I'll tell you what, you're gonna look at my leg and say, Sarah, you're not doing what you're saying, but that's what I'm trying to do. K?

One more time. Come up to that 45 degree, change the arrangement. So right leg is straight. Drive with the other arm. You're gonna feel those adductors working a little bit to roll in. And as you go down with that strong straight leg, feel your toes angling in ever so slightly, ever so slightly.

Good. And try to feel that you're touching more the inside of the heel. Good. Driving through left arm, while right leg goes down and up, pelvis stays stable, breathing. Last one here. Oh, good. Two bent knees. Just take a pause.

Let your elbows relax. Feel a nice little stretch for your low back. If you feel some work in your back, it's okay because you're actually working your back muscles with your core, your front muscles here. But if it feels like tension or too much, you might need to take a longer break or try something else. Adding on, resume that first position.

So the knees are bent, and together, the toes are touching, the heels are not. Okay? We're going to slide right leg to straight, drive through left arm, you stay. You're gonna take the other leg and thread the foot underneath the spring of the right side. So I've gone into external rotation, and it's gonna stay like that. Okay? Now I'm gonna squeeze like a pair of scissors.

My legs toward one another. Rather than going down, I'm going across with a slight diagonal. Across with a slight diagonal. My main moving leg is my right leg. My left arm is driving.

I'm squeezing my inner thighs a lot from both legs, two more. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. I am stretching the spring a little bit, but I'm really trying to go across more than down. Let's change the arrangement. Two straight legs this time. Keep them straight, is your tailbone down.

Take your right knee, bend it in, thread the foot underneath the other spring, and keep it like that. So you're actually in a little stretch for your hip flex or for your outer hip possibly. So now you're gonna squeeze your thigh bones toward one another push through your right arm, right arm left leg primary drivers, squeeze both inner thighs, feel the leg going down and across a little bit, down a little bit cross as much as you can with both legs. Good. And both legs. Boy, do I feel a lot of inner thighs?

This is my last one here. Beautiful. Press two legs to straight bend to knees in. Give yourself a little hug, sway side to side, carefully remove feet from straps. And let's just roll actually, let's not roll ourselves to the side, let's rock and roll the body. What a great idea.

Hold on to the backs of the legs, lift your head and chest, and let's just kinda rock and roll for a moment on the back of the spine. Good. Rock and roll. So we did this at the very beginning. I'm hoping that you feel that you can keep the shape of the back and try to get yourself to roll back onto the upper back a little bit more. And then sit. So we're gonna play with a squat sit, which would be two bent knees, feet as close to you as you comfortably can, rolling back, coming back to this.

So arms float in front of you. I don't care where they go. You're gonna create the shape. You're gonna roll back and sit. You can say woo if you want to.

I'm not organizing this on purpose. I don't want you to feel like your head and neck are stopping you from the movement. But it is actually okay if your head goes down as long as you've got strength still in the front of your body. Let's do a couple more like that. And one more time.

And we're gonna go ahead and rest that. So sitting with your legs out in front of you and learning how to use the legs or practicing using the legs without the arms is awesome. So you're gonna roll back, cross your legs, roll forward. Roll back, uncross, roll forward. The idea here is that I can move my body around. I don't care what your feet are doing. They don't have to point or flex.

I don't even care what your arms are doing. If you feel comfortable with that, someday you would be able to roll over your knees and come to quadruped. That would be an ideal. Now, two legs out in front of you. Getting yourself to work the inner, the internal rotation of the hip is really a cool thing to be able to do.

And on the Cadillac, it's really a useful tool. Let's take that left leg and you're going to bring it around, try to bend the knee. Okay? And bring it back. Right leg, you're gonna bring it around, bend the knee so it's behind you. So we do the shape in the mermaid in Pilates. But it's also nice to work this, keep doing this, left and right.

Good. Now, if you can well, I actually like it with the straight leg. I was gonna change the leg arrangement. But ideally, you can do this without the hands. Whoa. Don't fall off your Cadillac. And ideally because the Cadillac is elevated, you you have just a little more space than you would have on the floor to achieve this move.

Just do one more for me. Sliding around. It's a nice little hip exercise. Beautiful. And let's move on to some arm work. So if you're able to, you're gonna cross your legs.

If you're able to, you're gonna roll to your hands and knees, and you're gonna bring yourself upright to be able to make a change over here. So we'll take our two yellow springs, and we're gonna put them up here on the top. Okay. So up here on the top, it may be a little tricky if you have short arms to actually be able to grab this. So you might have to go down with them, but we'll see what happens. Okay.

So When you lie on your back, you might have to just reach up and grab them and then shimmy yourself down a little bit. So I'm looking that you're not at the very edge of the, the, this is not the one to chair right here. This is your Cadillac. But that you're not too far down either. Okay. So we're gonna work some pulling here.

So the arms ideally are being pulled up slightly. I'm gonna go a little further down. So my my shoulders are being pulled up. So I have to actively work to pull my shoulders to the mat. That's part one. Part two is to pull from the back and the upper arm, not the elbow, but to pull from the back all the way down and then up again.

Let's do that a few more times, all the way down and up again. Now, as you do that, please sense your low ribs. Your low ribs must remain on the map for me. And ideally, you have a nice neutral pelvis. That would mean your tailbone is down.

That takes some effort. So lift and stay here. We're gonna lift one leg up. How about the right one? If right leg is lifted, you're gonna pull more with your right arm. Let the other arm straighten.

Now, we're gonna change the arms and the legs simultaneously go, warm, warm, warm, whatever foot is down, the opposite arm is down, marching with the legs. Now, can you focus more on the core than what the arms and legs are doing? Can you feel those low ribs staying grounded the entire time as you move and pull and enjoy this exercise. Good. We'll do one more on each side. And take a short pause. Now, with your two feet down, let's take those elbows nice and straight.

You're gonna spread your collar bones and your shoulder blades and pull your arms toward the table. Now, I'm pretty strong, and my arms do not get all the way down. That's okay. We're trying to work spreading east west and a little bit of that rear deltoid, lots of things going on, not a little bit. Keep a good grip try not to curl the wrist too much, so you're gonna keep the wrist in alignment with the arm if you can. And I'm squeezing and holding. We'll do three more. Bam, hold, spread, feel it.

Freedom in your neck. Back body connection, my friends, so important. Good. And we'll do one more here, please. Pull.

Good. Now, carefully, you'll walk yourself back and you can let those straps go, lift your head and chest, lift your legs. Let's rock and roll on the spine again. Good. Now, you're gonna decide how to transition to face the other direction.

You might cross your legs and walk over your knees, you might get there a different way. Okay? So if you can, I'd like you to sit on your feet here to do this next piece. But if you need to modify and sit on a block or sit differently, please do you. Okay? We're gonna reach and hold on to the bar. There is no spring attached to it.

With my hands on the bar, we're gonna revisit that straight arm shoulder plugged position and work on it in our back extension. Okay? So feel your two arms. Okay? Elbows are straight. Hands are working, shoulders, I'm pushing down into the bar to get my shoulder to be strong here. Okay? Now, I'm gonna see where I can go. Where can I go before my arm wants to roll in? I really don't want the arm to roll in. So where's my flexibility?

I'll tell you a little secret. My left side is not as easy for me to feel as my right. It's one of the reasons I do this. And this is where I wanna be. I'm going to focus on my left side for you first, and my shoulder is a little elevated and my arm is a little rolled in.

So I'm gonna put my hand, my right hand. On my bicep. And I am trying to lean into my arm a little bit here. Right? Rather than sitting only back in my legs, I'm leaning into it. I'm gonna use my hand to help rotate externally so I can straighten my elbow completely.

So I can feel the power from the back of my shoulder, and I'm gonna keep that strong. As I move a little forward and I move a little back. Many of us are gonna wanna do that with our scapula rising and falling, and I want the scapula to stay down as you stretch and in and stretch. There's actually a lot of work for this stretch and stretch and one more time. Just breathe.

Stretch. So feel that feeling, can you keep that? I have to come back a little to be able to keep it. That's where I can do it. Other side. So look at your arm. It's straight.

Pull your shoulder down. Put your other hand on your bicep just so you can feel it. And decide where can you go without elevating the shoulder? There is an upward rotation, but that's different than elevation. We can talk about that a different day. Keep the elbows straight as you reach.

Beautiful. I'm not even thinking about my abs right now. I'm just letting my shoulder be my focus and my arm. One more time. What's crazy is how much work I actually feel in my tricep here.

And also I'm learning to work my lat a little bit better. It's quite lovely. Alright. Our final hurrah is going to be some fantastic back extensions. So here we go. We lie on our bellies first. However, you get there is fine with me. Just check-in and make sure that you would be able to reach the bar pretty comfortably when we get there.

And then rest yourself down. If you need a towel, you can put a towel underneath your forehead, but what I'd like is for you to be hovering your face just above the mat. And then stretch your shoulders east west. Your arms are hanging over. Tuck your toes under.

Push into the pads of your feet. So your hips are in a little bit of an open feeling across the front. Feel your hip bones and your pubic bone, your ASIS and your pubic symphysis down. Sholders are relaxed away from the ears, but not with a lot of effort. So feel yourself spreading east west, hover the arms off the table, just to hover, And in this range, straighten your elbows a few times, just feel that.

Straighten your elbows and straighten your elbows. So my abdominals are supporting me here a little bit, but I'm not overthinking about them. I'm really thinking about my scapula. My neck is having to work to be held up here, but it shouldn't have tension. It's elongated.

Now, keeping the arms just like this, we're gonna do a little external rotation. The goal posts, that means my thumbs go up toward the sky. And then I go back to where I was. My hands are dangling. My thumbs go up toward the sky, and my arms are dangling. One more time. My thumbs are up toward the sky.

Now I'm gonna press a little bit into the table with my arms. To create a little more external rotation, undo that. Do it again. Press root to rise a little and feel that hopefully in your around your upper middle of your upper back. Now stay here. We're gonna keep this arrangement, and we're gonna stretch the arms to straight, and hopefully you find your bar. Come back to where you came from.

You're gonna stretch your arms to straight. Hopefully you find your bar. One more time. My arms are not even fully going to straight. Now I found my bar. I'm gonna hold my bar. I'm gonna try to remember what we've learned.

So I've got my hands gripping. Okay. I'm going to pull my shoulders away from my ears and feel that external rotation, ideally with a straight, strong elbow. Then I lift up to back extension. So let's practice one arm at a time. Place your right hand down to support yourself.

Look at your left arm. Plug the shoulder, find that external rotation, see if you can fully straighten the elbow and sustain this position, and then press and hold yourself with that power from the arm from the shoulder in this shape. As well as the upper back, but you gotta have the arm strength first. Let's try the other side. Elbow goes down.

Left arm goes down. I'm gonna straighten my arms, so I tend to wanna go into internal rotation and elevation. So I'm gonna plug my shoulder back. I'm gonna keep that nice position, press through the hand, straighten the elbow, feel that I can support myself with that arm, put both arms into position and lower down. Let's do two more lifts like that. So shoulders draw back.

Feel the external rotation, use the arms, see where you can go and lower down. Do you prefer to untuck your toes, untuck your toes? I'm not asking for a big lift. So it's not necessary unless you want to. And one more time, please. Beautiful back extension work. Bring your hands underneath your shoulders.

Push yourselves to your hands and knees. And sit back in a rest pose or a child's pose for three breaths. Perhaps your forehead is resting on the mat, breathing in, and breathing out. And then slowly make your way up to a position that suits you. And I thank you so very much for playing.