Full-Body Refined Strength

Hi. I'm Zola, and today we'll be doing a reformer workout that incorporates some classical elements. I'm on a balanced body reformer. I have two red springs, one green, and one blue spring on, and let's get started. So lie down on your reformer. Starting with footwork abs. So stack those palms, place them behind the head curling the chest up, knees are toward the chest, shoulder width apart, My toes are pointed, heels glued together.

I inhale to stretch the legs over the foot bar. I exhale to pull the thighs to the chest. Inhale stretch. Exhale bend. Inhale out. As you bend your knees, can you keep your tailbone heavy on that mat?

Three more here. Inhale. Keeping the chest lifted nice and high. Use those hands to pull your head away from the neck bend your knees, stay lifted, but close the inner thighs, flex the feet, curl the toes over footwork arches, inhale stretch, exhale pull. Pretend the foot bar is under those feet, And as you bend your knees to the chest, you're pushing the feet into that imaginary foot bar.

Three more here. Squeeze those inner thighs together, especially as the knees bend two more inhale. Exhale deep in the belly to pull one more time, stretch, and bend stay lifted, switch the cross of the palms and flex the foot, totally pulling the toes back to the shins, inhale lead with the heels out. Exhale bend curl up higher. Inhale. Exhale.

Inhale stretch. Pull the pinky toes back just as much as the big toes are pulling back. Good. Here we go two more out and pull it in one more out. And in point through your toes, heels together and toes apart, stretch the legs. We flex the feet, tend and stretch point the toes. And flex, and point, and flex.

Three more here, three, and point. Two heels are glued together one more time. Point the toes, bend the knees, and rest your head. Gonna lift my head rest up here going right into footwork toes with the toes on the foot bar. Press the legs out to straight and just peek at the feet, make sure you're centered on that bar and continue to bend and stretch, bringing the carriage all the way in and stretching all the way out.

Caller bones are wide. Arms are reaching long. The backs of your arms are heavy into the mat. Let's do three more here. Bend, and press two. And one press all the way out, come all the way in and seamlessly change to the arches.

So no fidgeting with the feet on the foot bar get right into the position for each transition. Press and pull. As you bend your knees, the heels are pressing down under that foot bar, lengthening the backs of the legs. Go two more here. Press and pull one more out. Pull it in, seamlessly change to those heels, flex the feet and continue.

Again, pinky toes are pulling back just as much as the big toes, work the front of the legs, the shins as you flex those feet nice and hard. Four more here, wide collar bones. Try to relax the neck. Two more, press it out. Pull it in one more stretch, and then going back to the toes for tendon stretch.

Stand tall in those legs. Feel that two way reach as the heels press down. I'm trying to reach the crown of my head to that wall behind me. Good. Lower the heels. Keep them pressing together as the heels go down, the arch is lift.

Good. Down, down, down, and up, up, up. Two more nice and slow like this. We'll lift the heels. Now we go a little bit faster adding pace. We go down and up. And down, and up three more, three.

And two. Last one, lift the heels, bring the carriage home. Take the feet onto the platform underneath the foot bar. We roll all the way up. To change our springs. So I'm changing to two red springs.

The same way we got up, we go down. So make sure you're forward on that carriage so you have space to roll yourself down fitting your shoulders right in front of the shoulder blocks. So from here, I'm grabbing my loops. I have short and long loops. I'm holding on to the short, making sure I'm not too close to the shoulder blocks. Lengthening the arms up to the sky, bringing the legs to tabletop.

Keep the arms long. Press those arms straight down. Inhale lift. And exhale press. As much as I'm reaching my palms down to the mat, I'm also reaching the backs of the arms down to the mat, keeping length.

One more like this. And if you choose on the next five, you can curl the chest up as you press the arms down, inhale lower, exhale curl, feel the reach of the arms through those handles. Three more here, three. And press and reach. Two.

And reach one more time. So lift the arms, rest the head down. Keep the head down, but press the arms down again widen those collar bones. Tri set press, bend the elbows, and stretch the arms. My inner thighs are squeezing together.

Two legs working as one. Three more like this. Tail bone again is nice and heavy on that mat. And then on the next five, if you choose, you can curl your chest up. As you stretch the arms, backs of the arms stay heavy.

Lower the chest. Stretch the arms and lift the chest. Inhale. Exhale to lift. Three more like that.

Two. One more time. This next one, we stay lifted. Stretch the arms. I'm lifting the arms off of the mat a couple of inches and stretching the legs up to the sky for the 100. Inhale two three four five and exhale two three four five. So I'm really trying to push the palms of my hands into these straps So I can keep the lift of the chest.

My heels are together, my toes are apart. And I'm trying to keep the carriage from bouncing too much. If you choose, you can start to lower your legs to your high diagonal. Inter thighs hugging, outer thighs wrapping, two more breaths inhale. One more breath inhale. And exhale two three four five.

Let's bend the knees, lift the arms and rest the head. Put your loops on the pecs. Let's get up and grab our long box. So Of course, make sure the box is centered on your reformer right up against those shoulder blocks. I'm changing to one red spring for swan.

So lie down with head towards the foot bar. I'm lining up my forehead with the foot bar, and I'm placing my hands right in front of the shoulders. My elbows are pointed at like a 45 degree angle, and I'm trying to squeeze those heels together with long legs. Let's just start to press the carriage out and in for a few reps here. Thinking of the tailbone lengthening down toward the heels, keeping a neutral pelvis here, but also pulling the abdominals away from that box, lots of things happening here.

As I press the arms to straight, keep the shoulders connected to the upper back. So it might feel like you're moving further. If you disconnect the shoulders, we don't want that. Keep the shoulders on and continue to bend and stretch. Let's do one more like this.

Bend the elbows and press out and hold. This time, keeping the arm straight, push down into the palms, pick up the low belly, and lift up into your swan, upper back extension. Keep the reach of the legs. Lower down. Keep the arms straight.

Inhale to lift. Create space. Find length and exhale to lower. Good couple more here. Schoulder stay connected to the upper back. Press down into the palms.

Keep the reach of the legs. Lift and lower. One more time, inhale, lift up, picking up the abdominals, and exhale lower. Bend your elbows carriage comes home, stack your palms on top of that foot bar, rest your forehead down. Now let's bend the knees 90 degrees. So for someone like me who's tight in the quads, tight in the hips, finding 90 degrees here is really hard. I'm keeping my legs hip width I'm flexing the feet, but I'm gluing my heels together so I have a diamond shape with my legs.

Now push the pelvis down into the mat, push the hip bones down into the mat, and we're just gonna do simple thigh raises. So gluing those heels together, can you lift your thighs off of the box? I barely can. Lots of glutes here. Lower the thigh bones down. So push down in the hips, lift up with the heels, lift up with the thighs, and lower down. My glutes are already burning and shaking here. My thigh bones don't lift a lot.

It's a lot of work for me. Use the energy of the heels pushing into each other to help you lift the heels up. Lift the thigh bones up. And down. Let's do eight more here. A little bit more pace up and down.

Seven and down shoulders down away from the ears. And five and down. Four lift for three. Keep those knees bent at 92. And the last one, lower down. Good. Let's step off of the box and have a seat on top of the box facing the back of the reformer.

Lower the head rest down, of course. So your feet can be flat on top of that headrest. From here, I'm reaching forward, grabbing the ropes, where the tape is above the silvers, and then my palms are facing each other. I have a tendency to sit forward make sure your shoulders are right over top of the hips. We do like a seated chest expansion, pressing those straight arms down and back widening the collar bones using the upper back, and then bring the arms forward.

So press the arms down and back and reach the arms forward. So this is just like you're pulling straps when you're lying down on your stomach, but we're just in a different orientation. And again, if you have the tendency like me to lean forward, try to sit right on top of those sits bones. Engage your glutes by pressing the outer hips inward. Do one more like this.

Now pause, let's reverse the breath. So take an inhale to press the arms back and hold. Hold your breath. Look right. Look left.

Look center. And exhale arms come forward. Again, inhale press. Hold your breath look left. Look right. Look center and exhale come forward.

Two more like that. Inhale, press long arms, long spine. Look right. Stretch the neck. Look left. Look center and exhale. Reach one more time. Inhale. Look left.

Look right. Look center. And exhale reach. Just like t pull, let's have the palms face the floor. My arms are at like a 45 degree angle, and then I circle the arms out and back.

And reach the arms forward with control. So I'm still on that red spring. This is a little bit heavy, but it's great work for the upper back, finding that palm to upper back connection. Good. Can you circle the arms back without splaying the front ribs open? And then maybe on the next two, you add a bit of a chest lift and upper back extension.

So can you circle the arms lift the chest. Nothing crazy. And then bring the arms forward. One more time, reach out and back. Lift the chest.

And bring the arms forward. Good. From here, let's go into some roll downs. So I'm placing my heels on the box, keeping my toes on the headrest, and this is giving my heels something to push into to keep the connection to my seat and the backs of the legs. Now from here, look down toward the abdominals. Working on moving from the pelvis first, keeping the reach of the arms. So curl the tailbone under, move the pelvis first. Like, I'm trying to get the waistband of my pants to touch that mat before anything, but I'm not going down that far.

Find the scoop of the belly Hold once you're halfway down. Now keep your pelvis here. Keep the wide collar bones. Dive your forehead toward your knees. Keep your tailbone pointing toward your knees. At the very last second, you sit tall at the top.

Good inhale here. Exhale curl the tailbone under, start to round yourself down. Long arms move from the pelvis first. And as you come up inhale, exhale. We keep the pelvis stable for as long as possible diving forehead to knees.

And at the very end, you sit up tall. Couple more of these curl the tailbone under. Rounded back, my inner thighs are hugging together like crazy. My heels are pressing into the box. Roll yourself up, pelvis stays stable, tailbone to knees here, and then sit up tall one more time. You inhale at the bottom, exhale to roll it up.

And then sit up tall at the top. Let's put our loops back on the pegs and do the app series of five. So scoot your hips forward to the front of your box, and then hug your knees to your chest, forehead to knees. Single like stretch first. Both hands go on top of the right shin, outer hand on the outer ankle, inner hand underneath the knee, stretch the left leg forward, and let's switch 10, switch nine.

Eight and seven feel that two way stretch. One knee pulling in, one leg stretching long, one each side, and then bend both knees, double leg stretch, inhale stretch the arms back legs forward, exhale circle the arms, pull the thighs to the chest. Use your breath, inhale. Exhale circle and pull. Two legs working as one, three more.

Two more. One more here. Single straight leg stretch, right, right, and left, left. Only pulsing the top leg, not the bottom, right, right, and left, left. Four four.

Two two. Last one, legs up to the sky, double straight leg stretch, stack the palms, lengthen the back of the neck heels together toes apart, inhale, lower the legs. Exhale. Pull them up. Keep the tailbone down. Inhale lower.

Squeeze the heels together. Exhale lift. Three more. Inhale down. Exhale lift. Inhale down.

Exhale up one more time. Lower the legs. Lift the legs crisscross right away. Twist 10. Lift to twist nine. Al elbows wide eight.

And seven. Chest stays lifted. They arm pit to opposite knee. Four more, four. Interfides hugging. Three.

Two. And last one, bend your knees and very carefully rock yourselves all the way up to seed it. Let's change to short box. So taking the short box, I'm keeping mine in front of the shoulder blocks. And I'm adding a red spring for stability.

Let's do short box round. So find your strap in front of your reformer, scoot yourself back, but make sure you have like a palms width of space between your seat and the edge of the box. Flex the feet, press the outer ankles into the strap nice and secure. And to avoid touching the platform here, I am pushing my caps back into the front edge of the carriage. So that also wakes up the back side of the legs nice. So stack your palms, lift up tall, think of the half rollbacks we did earlier with the handles, look down at your abdominals, move from your pelvis first.

So curl the tailbone under, waistband of my pants is reaching toward that headrest behind me, press into the strap and roll yourself up, pelvis moves at the very last second. Two more of those, curl the tailbone under, and round yourself back. And then roll yourself up. Keep the shoulders away from the ears. And then sit up tall one more time like that.

Rotate that pelvis back. Press into the straps with your feet, and then bring yourself back up. Good. Keep the stack of the palms. Just transfer the hands to the back of the head. And again, use this connection to push the head into the hands, hands into the head, and lift the head away from the shoulders.

Flat back here. Keep your spine long, hinge yourself from your pelvis. Your pelvis is your hinge point, and then come right back up. Again, lift out of your seat, hinge yourself back, push into the straps, and then come all the way back up. One more time like that. Find your length hinge back from the pelvis.

Let your pelvis bring you back up And then let's switch the cross of the palms. Keep the length of the spine, shoulders over top of the hips, just twist your ribs to the right, making sure the twist happens from your center and not from your shoulders, not from just your head and neck, and then your ribs bring you back to the center. Keep the nice lift. Twist your ribs to the left. Don't move your hips.

And then come back to center. One more each direction just like this, keep shoulders over the hips like a spiral. And then bring it back center. One more like that. I'm narrowing my sits bones in to keep my glutes working.

Come back to center, adding a hinge to that twist so we twist, and we reach. Bring it all the way up and come center. Again, find the length first, then twist. Let your pelvis make you hinge back. Come all the way up. And center.

Twist and reach. Both of your sits bones are heavy as the body hinges back. So twist. Don't let the right sit bone get loose or light As you hinge back, bring yourself back up and then come center around the world. Again, we twist to the right. You hinge, but hold the hinge. Come back center from here.

Twist your ribs to the left. No movement in the hips. Come all the way back up, and then come center. We go the other way. Lift into its left.

Hinge yourself back. Center. Twist right. Come all the way up and center. Rest your arms. Let's step off to the left side of the reformer so we can work the right leg for scooter.

So I'm changing the spring to one blue. So a nice light spring here. Hands are on the foot bar. I'm placing my right heel or right foot up against this, box. Now my right arm is underneath the right shoulder. I'm taking the left hand behind the back.

My left knee is bent, and I'm hinging at the hips to press the carriage out and pull it in. So I have a long spine from tailbone to crown of head. My right shoulder is away from the ear. So if you're feeling good here, you do not need to hold on to this foot bar. So if you want, you can either place both hands behind the back or reach both arms up on a high diagonal.

Let's do five more here. Press out for five. And really make sure you're pushing into the heel so you have that heel to seat connection, and your left knee is bent nice and low. Both sides are working. One more time here, out, pull the carriage in very carefully sit right back on top of that box.

Now reach back. Grab your short loops again and place your hands by your hips. I'm sitting up tall. My feet are flat. Hip width apart, shoulders over top of the hips, and we just serve a platter. Nice and simple to start.

The spring is pretty light, but I'm more worried about alignment and posture here. As you serve your platter, can you keep your wide collar bones? Can you keep your wide upper back. One more time reach out and hold. We just lower the arms down, the back of the hands, tap the mat, and lift right back up. Go to lower and lift. Three more like this.

Maybe the arms come a little bit higher on the lift. Two. Lift, let's lift one more time. If you're lifting the arms higher than shoulder height, bring the arms back to shoulder height and right away, open the arms to the sides. Start by just going to the corners, keeping the arms in the peripheral vision.

But if you feel like you're well connected, if you're feeling strong, maybe the arms go a little bit wider than that, but nothing else in your spine should change the ribs shouldn't pop open. The shoulder shouldn't start to shrug into the ears. Try two more like this. See how wide you can go, keeping the same control. One more time. Open.

And close. Now open just to the corners this time. We do little pulses up and down. Up and down. Push those palms into the handles. Two more like this. One more time. And we do small circles around five.

And four. Three. Two. Other way, circle for five. And four.

Three, two. One more. Pause. Bring the arms forward first then bend the elbows and put those loops back onto your pegs. Let's climb the heels up the box. So you're really able to push the heels back, reach forward carefully find the foot bar.

In one piece, you're lifting the hips off of the box and pressing the legs out to straight like a plank. Think long stretch here. So So widen your collar bones, make sure your upper back isn't too rounded, and make sure your tailbone is lengthening down toward that box. Now from here, without changing the spine, without changing the hips, you bend your knees, pull the carriage and scoop the belly and press the carriage out. I'm only pulling in as far as my upper body can stay stable, bend it in, and press it up. Two more here. He bend.

And stretch, really push into the heels as the legs press out. Now hold it here. Bring your right knee to your chest. Now you can do a little round of the upper back. From here, as the carriage comes in, shoot the right leg over the foot bar, alright, over the box, and then bring the knees back to the chest. Keep going four.

And stretch. Three. Still going for hip stability here. Both hip bones pointing down to the floor. One more time. Once the carriage is back, place that foot back down, left knee to the chest, five times on this side, five.

And press four Keep the heel pressing into the box. Three, wake up the back of that leg. Two more. One more. Carriage back. Heel comes down. Bend both knees and carefully sit your hips down onto the box. And let go of the foot bar.

Doing the other side for our scooter. So now step off the right side. Left heel or left bottom of foot on that box. Left arm under the shoulder. Hinge your hips and press out and in.

Out and in. Finding stability on the standing leg, hinging the hips spine as long. If you want to challenge yourself without using that foot bar, give it a go. Three more here, press 3. And pull, press 2. One more out. Let the carriage come all the way in and carefully take your foot down.

So let's take the box back. I'm keeping my blue spring on going to another set of planks facing the other way. So hands go on top of the carriage right on the outsides of the shoulder blocks, and I find a four point kneel, and then I take my right toes on the footbar right behind the hip. And then stretch that leg to straight. Now make sure the wrists stay right underneath the shoulders. That right leg is long and strong, and then I take my left toes on the foot bar seamlessly. Now tailbone to heels, hug the front ribs and the back ribs, but also keep the collar bones wide.

I saw the arms forward and back. Forward and back. Now I'm only going as far forward as I can keep the shoulders down, and I'm only taking the wrist back under the shoulders. One more time here. Forward. And back now from here, don't think Pike.

I'm thinking of a roll. So I'm curling the tailbone under, and I'm only lifting my hips as high as my tailbone can reach to the heels. And then I roll myself back out to a plank. I'm thinking more snake here less pike. So rolling the hips up, lots of little belly here, and then rolling the hips down.

Let's try three more of those really hard, lifting the hips rolling, tailbone to heels, and then rolling back up. Shoulders stay down. One more. Actually, two more. Now we can do one more.

Now, find your plank. Let's hold an isometric hold for three. For two. And one, I place one knee down. I bend the knee. Let the carriage come in with control.

Going into feet and straps. So two red springs here. I'm lowering the foot bar down one notch for an exercise that comes later. Lie down on your back. If you like your head rest up, go ahead and put it up.

And then place the long loops this time on your feet. Can you get those loops on your feet without using the foot bar? Bring your feet to the straps. Make sure they're even, arms long, and then hamstring curl the heels to the seat. And then just try to find center here, a heavy tailbone, wide collar bones. I'm gonna point through my toes, stretch the legs out.

Much easier to feel the heaviness of the tailbone here. So we're going to lean into that, inhale, lift the legs up, but don't let the tailbone change on the mat. Exhale, press down. Inhale come up. Either all the way to 90 or just shy of 90, definitely not more than that.

And exhale, press down maybe 45 degrees. I would say no more than that. Keep going. Tik talking the legs up and down. From here, I can see what my legs are doing.

I'm trying to keep them as centered as possible. I'm trying to press equally into my heels. Now let's continue with leg circles. So lower the legs. Open them shoulder width.

Lift them up. Squeeze them in. We go down and around. Smooth out those circles. They don't have to be too slow. Make sure you squeeze before they come down.

One more this direction. Good reverse the circles out, down, and around. And again, the whole time we're keeping stability in the pelvis, the tailbone isn't curling off the mat, two more this direction, two. And one, going to frogs, a fine forty five first, bend your knees to your chest, and then push up. Inhale, bend, exhale press. Keep going. Three.

And reach two. And one, stretch out and hold. Lower your head rest if it was up. Lift your legs up to the sky. So now try to push the bottoms of the feet into the strap so much that you can just peel your hips off of that mat and then roll them right back down.

You curl the tailbone under, peel the hips up. And then roll it down. Try to look straight up to the ceiling. Don't look at your legs in this position so you can keep the front of the neck relaxed. Two more up.

And down one more time. Try to keep the carriage as stable as possible. I'm like I was doing the last few sets and roll it down. Bend your knees to your chest, take your loops off, put them back on the pegs, and let's step off for side splits. So I'm changing my spring to a blue, which is pretty light. You can try that. If you don't feel like you want as much of an inner thigh workout, you can do a heavier spring.

So the lighter the spring, the harder this is. Start by stepping onto the platform safety first and then step your foot onto the carriage. Now you go as wide as you want it to be hard. The wider the foot on the carriage the harder. I'm going about center. I'm placing one hand on my belly, one hand on my low back, and this just gives me a reminder to make sure the tailbone is lengthening down to the floor. I tend to arch in my low back.

So this is just my reminder here. Now from here, slowly press the carriage out and hold it out. Try to keep equal weight in both of the legs. Enter thighs hug to pull the carriage in, find the stopper and squeeze into the star for hold for three. Hold for two. Tail them down. Hold for one. And again, slide the carriage out.

Keep that long spine. Hold for three. Hold two. Hold one and pull the carriage in equally pressing into both of those legs. Hold the carriage into the stopper for three for two. For one. One more time, glide the carriage out as far as your spine can stay long.

Hold it there. And from here, we do little pulses. Little out. Little in. Little out. Little in. It's very tempting to not put as much weight on the foot that's on the carriage, but try to keep it as equal as possible.

Let's do one more out. Hub the carriage all the way in. Now squeeze into the stopper and hold. And then from there, again, pulse the carriage a little out. Squeeze into the stopper. Little out.

Squeeze into the stopper. Three more here. Out and squeeze. Lots of inner thighs here. I'm shaking. One more time. Glad a little out.

Little in, one more time. Hold it for three. Hold it for two. Hold it for one from here. I'm going to step all the way down to the floor for safety.

And I'm walking around to the other side. One foot on the platform, one foot on the carriage. Good. From here, one hand forward, one hand back, find length in the tailbone. I'm gonna wiggle my foot out a little bit for a little bit more challenge. Equal weight in both legs, and then a glide the carriage out.

Hold it for three, hold it for two, hold it for one, inner thighs hug to pull that carriage into the stopper. Find the stopper and hug the stopper for three. For two. For one, again, glide the carriage out. Out.

Out hole for three. Hold two. Hold one, inner thighs squeeze pull the carriage in. Find that stopper. Hold for three. For two.

For one, glide it out again. Hold it here, lengthen the tailbone down, little pulses out, and squeeze out. And squeeze three more out and squeeze for two. And one. Carriage comes all the way in and in, feel the shakes, find that stopper, hold it there, and then little pulses from there out.

Find the stopper out and squeeze for three. Gotta put more weight in my left leg here too. And one, squeeze the stopper. Hold it for three. Hold it for two. Hold it for one.

Very carefully step down, and then walk to the front of your former. A nice little cat cow to stretch stretch to finish. So my thigh bones are almost touching the foot bar. I'm very close. My legs are hip width in parallel, and I stretch my arms up to the sky. From here, take a big inhale, exhale dive yourself forward curling chin to chest.

Don't shift the weight back. Try to keep the hips right over top of the heels. Your hands find the front of the carriage, shoulders wrap onto the back. From here, press the carriage out, and then lengthen the tailbone up to the sky, sits bones up to the sky. Chest is open. Chin is lifted.

Feel that stretch in the backs of the legs, but don't lean forward. And then from here, curl chin to chest, curl the tailbone under. Let your abdominals pull the carriage in with control. And again, press the carriage out. Find your flat back, open the chest, lift the chin, let it feel nice.

And then curl the tail, release the head, pull the carriage in. One more time. Press it out. Hips stay over top of the ankles. Get that stretch, open it up, a nice treat after your session, and then roll it in. Good find your abdominal connection.

Keep your arms by your ears like the roll up. Reach the arms long and roll yourself all the way up. Circle the arms all the way down, and you are finished. Thank you so much for joining me. I will see you next time.