Creative Beginner Reformer

Hey, everybody. It's Amy Haven here for a reformer workout with you. Beautiful afternoon here in Santa Barbara. Thank you for being with me. So this is a beginning level, creative kind of infusion class. And I love being creative.

Most of you know that, but I also base it on the work and the system of Pilates. Most everything that I do is based on the work here. Right? The work in the method and work in the system. So with this class, it's more of the same. So if kind of the basic eight mat exercises that I've done some work with before, I've taken a little bit of that idea and those elements, and then put them in exercises on the reformer that aren't in the traditional list, not in the traditional order, but they are inclusion of the of the mechanics of the spine, inflection extension rotation side bend. Okay? So have fun. Let's work enjoy and smile.

It's really fun. We're gonna start with a hip flexor stretch. We are. We're gonna start with a hip flexor stretch first. I've got one green spring on. Why not open up the hip first? Why not? Okay. So here we are.

It looks like we'd be getting ready for Eve's lunge. I've got my knee down. My hips are square to the wall. My fingertips are just easy on the foot bar. Just get centered there with your, shoulder girdle.

If you want to move the springs out in a little bit, this is the first movement. I'm not gonna go much. In terms of range of motion, I'm opening the hip joint. I wanna open and lengthen and inhale, exhale and bring the awareness into the abdominal area. Inhale my outside knee is bending a little, and come back in.

Small range of motion. It's a little bit of a warm up. If you feel ready to go bigger, you can. I'm gonna do one more here, everybody, breathing in this beautiful hip extension there, and come back in, and then we'll come to the other hip. Have you ever started a session with hip flexor stretch?

Why not? Okay. Outside knee, knee is down. Hopefully, your heel's pretty close, if not all the way back on the against the shoulder block. Again, you're squaring, you're getting centered. Sholders are easy and low. Let's take a breath in as we extend and stretch the hip and exhale and bring this brings in. Inhale, stretch and open.

And think of also coming up with your body as you come forward. Yes. I'm pulling my abdominals in, trying not to over arch the lower back. It is in some extension. Little bit. And one more time. I love opening up the hips before we get down on the reformer to do things like the 100, which is what we're gonna do next. So place your springs where you'd like them for the 100. I'm doing a red and a blue on this reformer.

But again, you have choices. You have options. You can go higher or lower. This is a fairly standard setup. So we're gonna roll on to our backs.

Place your hands in their straps or your handles whichever you're working with. Let's start with the knees up, thighs open heels touching. I want you to feel your, pull on to the springs a little bit and really feel your shoulders come down your back. Let's breathe right there. Bring your body up in one movement.

And today, Let's take our legs just straight up to the ceiling above our pelvis. Raise your arms a little higher than usual. Think of reaching forward rather than down. Ready? Let's go. In two, three, four, five, x two. Into, three, four, five, and x, two, three, four, five.

Really long arms, right? Strong energy, heels pulled together, abdominals in against that low back, Now, that widths about 50, come down, take a reset, inhale, ready to go back up again, lift, get stuck a little bit, and in two, three, four, five, x. 72, three, four, five, x. 80. Reaching your legs up, stomach down, down, down, last set, three, four, five. Two, three, four, five, and bring it in. Okay. So if in the basic eight, mat exercises, we would be doing a roll up next.

In this one, we're gonna be doing a roll back with a roll up. So I've taken off my red spring. I'm gonna keep my blue in there. Bring yourself to face the back of the reformer. Pick up your straps and everybody put fingers. If you have the option to place your fingers in those in a little d ring, I'm gonna place mine there.

And I'll start with straight legs. You have to have enough space behind you, about two or three hand widths to roll back to. Let's start with a breath in. And if we were in mat work, we'd, you know, we would be at the top finishing a roll up here. So create that c curve shape. Now I'm gonna pull my thumb again, easy with the arms, We're just gonna roll back onto our sacrum first, look straight ahead, energy through your legs, inhale, engage the abdominals in, in more lift up over your thighs and take another breath in.

Same exact pattern, exhale as we roll back, right onto the sacrum, long arms, shoulders are down, your stomach is deeply pulled back, take a breath, exhale, pull it back more, start to lift yourself up and over your thighs a little bit more. Okay. You can continue doing just that, or come a little bit farther back. I'm going to do that. Now I'm not gonna go all the way back to put my head down because that's too far. But I wanna get down as if I were in Mac class getting almost down to the mat before I would have to lift my arms up.

Right to make that frame. And then we come forward. It's a little more, demanding of your abs. Okay. Now if you're having a low back, a tight day, tight low back, Here's what you get to do.

You're a knee bender. Okay? Nothing wrong with that. I'm gonna show you what that looks like. And it does allow your low back to be a little bit more in support on the carriage bed. But if you're with the straight legs, let's all go one more time. Take a breath and contract.

Again, this may help you perform or do practice your roll up and roll down on the mat with a little bit more efficiency because we have the support of the reformer up and over your legs. Now, I just like to do certain things up and sitting tall. Because that feels strong. I'm gonna make a fist around my strap and in fact, move my hands back just a little bit, shoulders down, and then start to pull your arms out toward the side walls. And this is a ribcage stabilization exercise just as much as its shoulder strengthening.

So we don't wanna disturb the stable torso here. Delt toys, which are shoulders. Right now, we're working the lateral, which is the side, and the back mainly. Okay. We're gonna do two patterns together. Take a breath round forward.

Don't worry about your hands where they are. Roll back to your place that you wanna roll to, you'll pause to take a breath, exhale roll back up. And this time, we're gonna merge right into sitting tall with that deltoid pull and just make it a little bit more of a fluid sequential movement pattern, rounding, and coming up, and up to sitting tall, It felt so good. I'm gonna add one more. Okay. I said two, but I'm gonna do one more. Yeah.

So if you're thinking ahead, what comes next in matt after roll up? Single leg circle. What we're gonna do a little bit of creative version of it here on the reformer. So go ahead and place your straps down. You can come around, place your get your head rest up or down. It's your choice.

I am gonna change to a red spring now, and take the blue one off. So all the way down. Single leg circles, so take one leg, I'm placing my right foot in the loop, Starting with my arms by my sides, and both legs up in a ninety ninety, the left leg is gonna stay there, and that's gonna help the pelvis, hopefully, stay in a nice level position. I'd like you to do three knee extensions with your right leg. Engage from your seat to extend your leg.

Let's say that was one. Here's two. And the third will stay out there straight. Alright. Now, give it a little external rotation and take your leg up and down three times, right up above your hip socket. How to move the leg down? It's from the back of the thigh, not the knee.

Even more, like, jushy up from your glutes here. Okay. Right where your glutes meet your hamstrings. Three times. And lift. That's just to kinda get a feel for the tension, but also to give your hamstrings a stretch.

Now, single leg circle from mat. You're crossing to the inner thigh. See how they're touching. That leg gets to come down. Now, little different than mad, of course, because you're working with resistance underneath you, and this rope on your foot, and this strap on your leg, I do want you to concentrate deeply on your pelvis being stable.

Okay. Here's four. Your circle might need to bet get smaller to be more stable. That is completely fine. If you're feeling good, you can make a bigger circle. Let's go the other way.

Feels kinda nice to have the support from this long loop, like a thera band almost. Deep into the abdominals. So if you're feeling this behind your knee, soften your knee a little bit and work the muscles up here higher. Give it a contraction. Here's number five.

Now, just for fun, bring both legs together. I want you to scissor your legs. So give it a good scissor. Now, scissors and mat, we haven't covered that in this, the basic eight, but it's we're just gonna put it here. Give your legs some scissors. It's a nice stretch here.

Challenges your pelvic control. And it's fun. I think it's fun. Last one, we could go on and on, couldn't we, but we're giving this a swap. You may wanna put your foot down and change it out. Great, everybody. So left it in.

We started with tabletop legs just to feel steady. Three, knee extensions from the back of the hip, one. You can relax your other foot. Two, and three, we stayed out there, externally rotate your leg up and down for three. Again, be mindful of this sensation behind your knee If it you you'll know if it doesn't feel right, you can either bend it a little bit or and make the muscles work more around your buttocks and your back of your thigh. You have to contract them. That wist three, we're coming up, and cross the midline, take that circle down. Don't go too far out to the side, and in.

I do like to follow the breath pattern of mat inhale to exhale. And we really wanna maintain that pelvic stability. This is tricky. And fun and cross around and center. Let's reverse it. So out. No wider than your reformer bed.

Whoo time, I'm feeling like try to, like, bring those thigh bones into their sockets, and the back of the socket's really heavy on the mat. There's four and five. Okay. Some scissors. So just give it a good scissor split, and it feels good to stretch and strengthen, and switch. Still working pelvic control. Now again, I'm going pretty big here I know my ranges.

You don't have to go this big. If your back is arching a lot, I would recommend very small, very small. If you're feeling okay, keep working your center, keeping your back down, and let's go ahead and close that exercise there. Good. Okay. So next in Matt would be the rolling like a ball. Right? But we're gonna wait on that one. I'm gonna change the order just a little bit.

So I'd like you to put your high bar up now. And we'd come back back down if we were in the mat for single leg stretch. I'm gonna take us into scooter Alright. So the leg does the out and in, out and in, like it would in mat, we're just gonna add a little bit more accentuation for strengthening the back of the leg. A lot of times in mat, when we take those legs out, out, out, there's not enough going on here. So perhaps this can enhance that connection.

Okay? Hands on the corner. I want you to have your thighs side by side. We're in some lumbar flexion, not complete spinal flexion. I want your upper back pretty elongated and your lower back in a curve. Right? And then push the springs, not all the way straight, and control back in, contract your abs.

Push from the back of your thigh, and then come back in. We're gonna do five like this. Here's three With this slightly curved low back, four, and five. But in regular mat work, we do wanna fully straighten the leg. So now change your spine to neutral. And you'll notice you have a full range to potentially extend power from your glutes, extend the leg from your hip. Last two.

And last one and in, and we're gonna walk around and change legs. So five with a little bias toward round, and then five with some extension. Okay? And again, I'm not agreeing that you could do a red I wouldn't go too light. The eyes are side by side.

Hands in the corner. You could also come up on fingertips. Take a moment and round your lumbar. Try to keep your uprightness of your upper back. Ready push.

Contract. So in mat class, that's leg going away from us. This is when the leg comes toward the chest. Three. I'm gonna keep my shoulders and hips square to the bar. One more with the round.

Ready. We're gonna change this fine. There's more of that neutral bias and then extension. Press from your hip to your heel. Three, four, single leg stretch, five, and in and everyone rest. How you doing? Okay.

You have a choice right now. We're going up for, I look at baby elephant and a little single leg baby elephant, which might be another animal, like, stork or something. You can change your tension. I'm gonna keep it on a green. I might regret that.

I might wanna go up on red, but we're gonna find out So baby elephant walking your toes pretty close to the front edge. Hands on your bar. Bring your collarbone over your bar. We don't wanna be behind it. Bring your collarbone over. Push your arms down, lift the center of your body way up high, way up high, especially the base of those ribs, and then add a little extra effort of rounding your low back. Ready? And push pull.

Those are the legs going away from center. Think double leg stretch when the legs go away from center, right? They go away. They come in. They go away and in, two or three more away and in, away and in. Now, pick up one leg. I'm gonna think heel toward knee.

And I'm gonna do three or four reps on single leg. They're not gonna be big. I really wanna think where's the power coming from to move the leg? The back of the leg and the buttocks, extension of the hip. Extension of the hip, let's change legs.

Phew. Kind of regretting the green spring right through here. Here we go. Press. I'm kidding. It feels good. Two, work the muscles.

One more, work those muscles for and in, and then just step down safely. How are we doing everybody? I'm good? Okay. Now we're gonna put on the box. So I want you to bring your bar down out of your way. Get your box up.

So in mat class, we do then, spine stretch forward. We're gonna do a little look at that here. Make sure you're even. And we don't have to worry about the springs right now. So you can bring your strap with you.

Have a seat. We have all that space behind us to do some rolling back to, take a breath, flex forward, think spine stretch forward in the mat, But now we're gonna roll ourselves back. Get on to that sacrum. Now we're gonna challenge ourself here and raise the arms. Lower the arms two more.

Stay on your sacrum. Lift lower. This is tough. Lift, lower, breathe, exhale, breathe, bore, and then lift up and stretch yourself forward. One more time. Breathe into sit tall.

Exale roll the pelvis underneath you. Pull out with your ankles. Get on to that sacrum. And now three times more up. The objective is to keep the rib cage in Stay balanced on your sacrum.

That's gonna be really helpful later when we do open leg rocker. Today, we're not doing that. We're doing this. You know, exhale up. And over. Okay? Now just one time flat back.

I just want you to place your hands on your shoulders. Okay? And hinge back and hinge forward. We'll do a total of four. Sometimes in spine stretch forward, there's a little extra flat back, addition where it's more this direction. Today, we're going this direction.

In a moment, you'll feel more work in your back right now. That's what we're doing here. Okay. Good. Okay. Moving on. We'll be placing our hands in the straps, but we need a spring change. So everyone come on down. Take your foot strap away.

Put the blue spring on. I want it to be a little light. Oh, we're gonna keep the box. And I want you to place your hands, gotta get this wrapped. So I have a seat like a horseback style. Okay.

Yeah. And how much room behind you, you've got about a hand width again. I want you to place your feet up on the carriage. Now, if you can, challenge yourself to walk your feet back a little farther with your heels flat. We didn't do any footwork at the beginning. And, you know, so much of that at the beginning, we get that deep ankle flexion, we can do it here. If that just really feels awful here, you can take it here. But let's make some effort change in the body.

This is a joint that's really important. So is this one? So is that one? So try to give some effort here. Okay. Serving. First is serving. Everyone's the tall.

Wrap your shoulders down and we're really just going straight out straight in, scapular stable, deliver your serving tray forward, bring it back in, refill the serving tray. And So we're trying to sit tall first. Can you press your heels down into your mat? That's kind of fun to feel the effort of pushing the heels down. Okay. We're gonna keep the arms moving like that, add spinal flexion inhale return to tall.

Push the heels down, add some spinal flexion. We're trying to get a little bit of lumbar and some thoracic c curve and cervical. Take two more there. Focus lower. Think lower in your lower back. Now belly button to the lowest part of your low back.

One more to go. Does anyone know what's coming? We're primed and ready for it. Okay. So this is tough. This is a tricky number.

Try to I'm gonna have you take your legs out. If you have never done this before, have fun, flex your ankles called horseback. It's a version of horseback. Okay? The arms do what they've been doing. The spine does the curve. What happens now with these legs, they are gonna press down and squeeze in on the box.

Here we go. Down and squeeze in, and I like to look down at the springs. That's what helps me stay like where am I looking? Where am I looking? Right down there. And then you return sitting down.

The feet go through a point. Extend your arms. You're serving. You're rounding the low back. I'm pressing my legs down and squeezing in and guess what happened.

My bum has come out of my saddle. And I sit back down, and I return tall. Point did I surprise you? Horse back is tricky. If you're not getting your bum out of the saddle, don't worry.

This is a tricky little exercise for balance, and strength, and inner thigh, all of the good stuff. One more to go. But see, we build it with those skills and elements right from their very basic level. Say with me. If anyone wants to try some little arm circles, we didn't doom at the beginning. Three is enough. You can do the other way for three.

Pull your stomach back. Pull that stomach back. Pull that stomach back and reset down. Howdy. Okay. Come on down. So we're gonna place our straps back on their posts.

We're taking our box away. We're gonna come and do some bridging and then a short spine. Okay? So headrest down for sure. Springs, What do I want you to feel? I did two red in a blue. You could go lighter If you want your hamstrings to start singing opera or something. So two and a blue is pretty good. Alright.

Heels on the bar. Flex your ankles, pelvic curl. Now, you don't have to go much higher than this, the halfway up your back. I want you to engage the back of your hips, drive your heels into the bar, and move the springs. Let's go five times.

Carriage out and in. Can you stabilize this c curve? If I were to push too far, I would probably go out of it. Right? That's prob that's usually what happened. So don't go too far. Two more.

Yes. One more. Okay? And then everybody roll back down. Now to try on the next flavor of that, let's roll up higher on your back if you want to. Let's see what that feels like. The higher we go, there's a little more or a lot more depending on how you are in your body, more work in your back muscles.

Now, when you go out, you probably can get your knees straighter but I don't want it to feel like too much, sensation in your back. Right? And we wouldn't wanna over bow the back like that. So the idea is this beautiful plank line across the front of the torso, One more for today, and then pause and roll yourself down. Okay. Everybody hug your knees.

Bring him in tight. And waiting to come up and drop off one of your springs, I'm gonna drop off my blue spring, so I still have two red springs. Roll down onto your back please and place your feet and your straps. But we're gonna place the feet and the straps at the same time because it's keeping your spine symmetrical and your hips symmetrical. Take a frog position, make sure you're not bunched against your shoulder rests.

And short spine. Take your legs out. Pike your legs towards you. Gonna roll the carajen. Keep looking up at your feet and roll up.

Frog position. Take a breath. Lift your hips higher, exhale, keep the whole ball in shape. Remember, we didn't do ball earlier. We're doing it now, and we're stretching out. Inhale. Exhale.

All the way up. Inhale flex. There's your rolling like a ball position and curl it down. Use your stomach. Don't just rely on those spring. Three more to go.

Having fun, lift, lift, lift, lift, lift, flex, flex, flex, flex, flex, flex, roll. Last two. Peel up. Flex your knees and hips. Feel that really beautiful curve of your back and stretch it down. One more. What I like to do sometimes is do like a beginner mat, basicate, and come and do this kind of basicate, and it has a little more resistance to it.

And it's just so fun because we get most of those spinal mechanics, and we didn't get lateral flexion, but that's fine. And everybody come all the way up to sitting and just stand for a second, actually. Stand, stand, stand. And just see how you feel. And you see how you feel. So thank you. I love that, and I want you to tell me how it felt for you, and I will see you next time for another iteration of this and more.

Thanks a lot.