Spine Exploration Tower

Hi, Melissa Logan. Welcome to this tower class. It's gonna focus on full body exercises, but especially the wonderful spine shapes that our bodies get to create in our pilates practice. The tower and Cadillac can provide such a wonderful supportive tool. So we're gonna revisit certain spine shapes from seated, lying down, kneeling, and into standing.

And I hope you have fun connecting all the dots with me. Of course, if any exercises do not feel good to your body, replace it with what you want to. It's totally fine. Alright. Go at your own pace. I believe it's brave and courageous to replace what you can't do yet with something that you can, and it's more fun that way anyway. So let's get started with our rollback bar.

Place your feet against the poles. And even though ideally the legs would start straight, If you're just starting your movement today, I like to bend my knees a little bit because it's more important that your heels are into the poles than your toes, and then we'll grab as wide as we can on our rollback bar. I want you to give it a nice pull apart so you can feel your shoulders get nice and wide. And then see how tall you can sit before you go back, then push into your feet and roll backwards. If your feet slip off the bar, I know it's really tempting to scooch in, but instead just make a mental note.

And roll back up, and then bend your knees a little bit more and scoot in, right? Cause you wanna make sure that you can actually push into your feet. Roll back again. Something I try to do is not straighten my knees to push into my feet. Because the knees, it's a weird magical thing that happens. They'll just straighten and bend as they need to. I know. It's I don't know how it happens.

Maybe someone can tell us, but if we really pull our waist back to go back, the knees will just find their space on the mat and we can articulate. So rolling back is a nice tall spine at the top, and then you do a round back to the mat. And then you land in this tall back. Right? So what we're gonna do here, as we stay down on this one is roll our shoulders into our ears, away from our ears, up and down, and just notice which part of this movement, the bar is trying to pull you off of the mat. Go ahead and reverse those shoulder rolls. Alright. Do your ribs feel like they want to pop off?

Can you control this bar in all directions? You might not yet. That's okay. We're still warming up. When you've gone both directions evenly, go ahead and lift your head and chest up and roll up. Bend your knees. To sit tall, and then we're gonna roll halfway back.

Or honestly, it could be one third of the way back. It really depends on where you tend to skip. So my lower back is skipping today, so I'm gonna get my lower back into the mat. And we're gonna do little pulses here. So I'm reaching my heels forward.

Into the poles, and I'm pulling my stomach back. So the spring is pulling my chest up, and I'm resisting that by pulling my stomach back into that sticky tight spot of my back. It's like a nice little stretch, little massage happening. Do three more. And it does feel like a crunch, and then you're gonna roll all the way up.

And now this time, we're gonna roll back and maybe you go to the same spot, or maybe you wanna go more towards a hundreds curl or your abs serious curl. So your low ribs are on the mat. And we're gonna bend our elbows wide to the side and do a row. So when we pull our elbows wide, we should feel like the bar is being pulled wide as well. Your shoulders are gonna wanna go to your ears to do this and or your chest is gonna wanna push forward. What I want you to do is Actually, just hold on to that round shape and see how much you can pull the bar to you from your upper back muscles. One more time, and then roll all the way up. Take your right hand at the center of the bar, left them around your waist, and you'll roll back and you're gonna stay down when you get there.

Pull your shoulder onto the mat, especially the one that is holding on to the bar. It's gonna wanna pull off. Right? You can see that there. So pull your shoulder onto the mat. Take your arm that's around your waist up overhead to the opposite side. And if you can grab the mat or the pole, if you're on a Cadillac, grab that.

Slide your leg over. So now we're in a side bent. So, our third spine shape for the day. You'll feel a nice stretch on the outside of your hip. Slide the leg back to the pole, arm around the waist, and then roll up and switch sides. Go down, reach find nice, lengthen the spine wide shoulders, arm overhead, grab the side of the mat, slide the leg over, It's tempting to get really excited to cross that leg over. So it'd be my right leg over my left.

I don't always do that because it tends to make me hang out of my hip socket roll up. I have that hypermobile ness. So it's like, oh, I could do more. Let's do one more time each side, but But more isn't always better. For me, just focusing on taking the leg over to meet this opposite leg and reaching the heel across so my left heel is reaching further than my right heel. Gets me more of a stretch.

And then take the leg back, arm around, roll up. Last one. So we're gonna revisit this side bend in a different way in just a moment. And I want you to notice the difference between a laying down side bend where it's easy to kind of sink into it because it is. It's tempting versus we're gonna turn to the side now. Hold on to your bar.

So my left hand's on the center of the bar. And my bottom foot, my right foot is on the pole in front of me, my back foot, my left foot's on the the back pole behind me, and it's gonna go at hip height. And then I'm a slide out long. Leave your palm down. So my right palm is down.

You can just rest your head for a second. Fill your shoulder connect to your back because the springs don't wanna pull your shoulder off your back. Push into your feet and slide up. So easier to have the hand on the mat. Harder would be to flip the palm up and come up And if it's early in the morning, probably don't want to do that. But if you're more warmed up, you can. So here's our side bend on a hip as if we were like kind of sitting sort of. Right? Same exercise we just did, but a whole different feeling.

Go ahead and lie down. Slide in to bend your knees and switch sides. So the feet actually stay where the poles are. You're not gonna switch your feet. You're just gonna move the back foot high as high as your hip if you can, and then bottom arm is down.

Start with the palm down for a couple. Feel this out. And if you don't feel like you have enough spring tension, you can make sure that your rollback bar is as high on the hooks as it can go, flip the palm, or you can leave that hand down until we can work into those legs more to make this side bend more full body. Right? If the shoulder is pulling off your back, it's not gonna feel like you have enough resistance of the springs. Go ahead, finish that set when you're even, bend your knees and come up.

And we're going to switch to some leg springs. So have your leg springs. I'm using some heavier leg springs or purple, but use your leg springs that you like. You want it to be about the same height as your rollback bar is, or about 30 inches up. So you don't wanna be too high.

And then I'm gonna take my right spring on my left foot. My hands are gonna go on the poles higher than the elbows, and that's whether they're bent or straight. So if you want a little more tension, you can straighten your arms out. My right foot is not in the spring. It's gonna be on the mat with my knee bent pushing down to stabilize my hips, point your foot that's in the spring and then just push the leg straight out and bend it in.

So we've done our tall back sitting. Now we have to do our tall back lying down. So you have a lot of feedback here. So as you do three more of these, Just notice if your ribs want to come off the mat as the leg goes out or if your hip wants to hike. You can't see it. I know, but you can kind of feel if you get heavier light in your mat as your leg goes out and in.

Then push the leg out and push it down towards the mat with a straight leg and lift it back up. So this up down with the leg will also be the same movement we'll do when we're on our sides and then in the minute. Right? We do this a lot in Pilates. A straight leg goes forward and back or up and down. So we're using the spring to help us feel that come from the back of our leg, not just the front of our leg. So we can hopefully get our leg to our center.

Hold the leg down. Drag that foot along the mat. Until your knees meet. How do you know if they meet without looking? It's kinda funny how the body will do it, but you wanna feel yourself stand in that spring, right? So the back of the leg should feel like it's on, then you're gonna pick this shape up. It's kinda weird. You'll pick it up in that bent knee position, and then you'll push it back down, slide it along the mat, and lift it up. So we're going down, doing basically like a hamstring curl, picking that leg up into our center.

Pushing that leg back down and sliding it out and lifted it back up. Two more. It goes down. It drags in. It picks up and it pushes down. If you feel your hamstrings and glutes working on both sides, congratulations, This is a glute burner for me. And if you're like, I don't feel that probably the spring is pushing you around.

You might wanna change to a lighter spring. After you slide that leg out for this last one, lift the leg up, take your right leg out on the mat so now your leg is flat. We're gonna add our first twist. There's not a lot of twists on the Cadillac and tower, but we're gonna take this opportunity to do one if you can. You'll lift your hip up to take the leg across the body. So the left leg's going to the right. It's gonna circle down. My left hip is gonna be down.

My leg gets in line with it. And it goes out to the side and it comes back up. So we're literally drawing a circle, single leg circle, but we're gonna start with the hip lift. So if your leg goes and then the hip lifts, it's cheating, right? Like if I just take my leg over, then I lift my hip, it doesn't feel very good. Lift the hip to take the leg over.

It's like a TikTok, take the leg out to the side, and back up one more time in this direction. If you're like, I can't do it with the twist of my back today, you can do the same thing reverse with the hip down. No problem. Like goes out of the side. The hip lifts to take it across the body. So you would just do a circle with the hip down.

Just a normal way. Two more like this. And what I love about this is like you're like, what are we doing? This doesn't feel like a lot, and then all of a sudden, that outer hip Well, you feel it. It tells you it's there. Go ahead and take that spring off and switch legs. So my left foot is now gonna be on the mat with a bent knee.

My right foot is gonna have the left spring. And I'm gonna take my bent knee align my foot with that knee. So the spring is pulling across the body, and so your foot aiming in line with its knee and hip is while your outer hip is having to work so hard. And then you go out and in. Now, as we do five of these, something you wanna pay attention to, is how the leg goes out and in. You've again, you can't see yourself doing it, but it's one of those things that it's worth filming.

Does your leg go out and in on the same trajectory, or does it go up on the way out? That's not really working so hard or down on the way out? That's kind of falling. You want to just go straight out and pull it back into the back of the leg turns on. Go straight out and hold it there. Push the leg down. Lift the leg up. How high can you lift it up? As high as you can push into the spring. Right. So I have had people who can take this leg all the way to the top close the spring and keep going because they can push into it. Hello, my dancers.

Or some of us mere mortals are just gonna stay with the spring alive as we go up and down. And then we'll hold it down and here comes our fancy bicycle. We drag it in. We pick that shape up. We push the shape down. We slide it out.

And I love this because it really does help you learn how to pull your knee into your chest for, a short spine on the reformer or rolling stomach massage here on the tower. Or how do we do that from our center and not just like folding our knees into our chest? So drag it along the mat, pull it in, push it down in that shape and slide it out last time. Once you slide it out to a straight leg, to the high diagonal, slide your left leg out and then you get to repeat either hip down or hip up circles, get our twist on if we lift our hip up. So it's a really tricky one. We have to lift the hip to take the leg over, and then as the leg pulls in line with the hip, the hip is down, and then you have to hold on to that hip as your leg goes out of the side.

So if this is your first time doing this and you feel uncoordinated, I I understand completely and that's completely normal, reverse. Take the leg out to the side. The hip is down. The leg goes in line with the hip. It's low and now you lift your hip to take the leg across the body. With practice, it gets better.

And you can do this on your mat single leg circles as well. So it's another place to practice it. What's because the spring does make this a little hard because you have to control the spring and your hip. Right? Alright. Now let's take this off gonna sit up and spin around and move our rollback bar to our leg spring setting. So it's a little weird. I know, but I promise you it's gonna work. So you can use a leg spring setting or if you're using lighter springs like I am, these short yellows, You can play with hooking it one up.

Just have a little bit more resistance, but just pay attention if you can control the spring. So we're doing our 100. You'll have your feet facing, towards where your roll back bar was. And the springs and you're gonna lie back sort of like we were for the roll back earlier. Right? So now we need to repeat the same shape, but with the spring in a different spot. So it's a little easier to be here.

We have our help of the spring so we shouldn't feel anything on our neck and we get to pump our arms for a 100. So we're taking everything that we've done so far and applying it here. So as you breathe in for five and out for five, you're pumping your arms from your back that you actually did those rows from. And our legs are not resting. They're reaching into those imaginary springs. They should feel nice and on fire, and maybe you can even lift your legs up as you pump and come into that nice long round shape here.

If you're like, whoa, that took me out and I arched my back, put them down. It's totally fine. Alright. We're gonna inhale a few more exhale. Hold your shoulders as wide as you can. And just ask yourself for a second reflect is on this last one. It's a little easier to be in this round shape now than it was like ten minutes ago.

Right. How does it feel? And then roll all the way up? Alright. Leave your roll back bar on the setting that it's on, but spin around. Now, I will be honest. I did warm your hamstrings and glutes up so we could do this exercise, but if doing this fires up your hip flexors, you can do the same thing we're doing kneeling. Alright. So we're gonna do it again later, but this is a seated long back arm. So your hands are gonna go as wide as they can on the poles behind you with your legs out. If you're if you're able to do it sitting, but you just feel like your quads are doing too much, turn your legs out and see if you can squeeze your seat.

And then what you'll do is sitting nice and tall. Pull the bar down towards the mat, in towards your hips, my palm, your palms are facing you, up your back, and reach it behind you. So you're drawing a long round circle or a long round box. Right, with your arms, but you're doing it in a way that you're feeling out what your springs and shoulders can do. Reverse. If this is not feeling good on your shoulders for some reason, what I will say is if your dial is short like mine, you may want to hit the hardware for a longer one and do this without a spring.

You could just take a, the length of a yardstick behind you and do it or a PVC pipe and work on this action behind your back with that with a wider stance. Once you've done three to four in each direction, go ahead and close your springs and let on let that go. We're gonna spin back to face our springs. If you wanna get that bar out of the way you can, or you might need to use the springs for this next part. We're gonna do some rowing. So I have my arm spring set up with my handles, legs will be long and together, and we're just gonna repeat some of the shapes we've already done.

So you have your thumbs towards each other. You're in that rowing shape with your arms we did at the beginning of class, and we're gonna round back towards our hundreds curl. So hopefully, it's a little easier, but it might feel a little harder. Right? We're gonna open the arms up wide, push the arms back behind us. So we just did that long back arm stretch to get our arms to be nice and happy back here. Lift the arms up and circle them around and then roll back up.

So again, sitting tall in towards your hundreds, curl. Open your arms, push them back behind you, find that long back arm sitting. We just did, lift them up as high as you can and reach them as wide as you can. One more. Round back. Open, push with the pinky side of the hand, into the handle, round forward, lift the arms up, up, up, up, up, and circle them around.

Whoo. It's a little spicy. You can always do this with one pound weights if the springs are too heavy for you. Lift your elbows up, so palms face you, pinky side of the hand into the handles for the 90 degree rowing. Now we're gonna take the tall back we've practiced, both sitting and lying back, and we're gonna hinge back So, stay see how tall you can be here. We're not arching anything at all.

And then you're gonna go back as far as you can without those elbows dropping, sit tall, reach the arms forward, flip the palms, push them behind you. Try to touch your thumbs if you can and circle the arms around. So again, taking our tall back to a hinge, lifting up, reaching forward, press the hands back. Now you're in that long round shape. So tempting to see how much you can round forward, but see how much you can use the springs to lift your ribs off your thighs.

Then circle the arms around. Let's do one more. Work those legs into the mat just like you worked them into the springs. And then lift up and reach and press it back and circle around. Okay.

Let's take this to our next set of rowings. We have our rowing three and four. We'll take the leg straight out. Again, if this is bothering your hips to sit in this position, you can do this kneeling. You'll have to change where your hooks are. We're gonna squeeze the legs together.

Really try to squeeze the outer hips. They're nice and warmed up for our single leg springs on purpose. And then reach your arms forward. So it's like a reverse rowing we did from the rollback bar. Push your arms down, like you did from a 100, lift them up, and then open out to the sides in your peripheral vision. So it's tempting to let the springs Open your arms up too wide. Reach forward.

Push the arms down. Lift the arms up and then open out to the side. And if your legs are shaking, great. My inner thighs are definitely feeling this. Sometimes I feel like my legs wanna take flight, but I gotta push my heels into the mat.

And then just when you're like, okay, no more. It's over. We're moving on. Flexy ankles, hands by the hips, round over your legs, and then slide the hands along the mat. Reach, reach, reach, reach, reach. Now, right here, try to get your tailbone to reach further down into the mat so it's a long round shape, and then sit up nice and tall, and then open your arms. So it feels like the springs pulled you back. They did. Round forward reach, feel those springs turn your stomach on, and then lift your arms up, and then open.

One more time, reach, reach, reach, reach, reach, lift it up and open. So we've done a lot of tall to round, round to tall. And that's because those are a lot of things we have to do in our life. Right? Sit crisscross applesauce if you can. Push your feet down. And then the hands go behind your head index finger and thumb touch for shape, reach the arms up and bend the elbows. So it's tempting to go forward with the hands, but I actually want you to just try to go straight up and if you're like, that feels too easy.

You can make it harder. You're gonna push your feet down and see if you can get taller. Yes. And see if your elbows can stay nice and wide. So you feel this in your upper back, not in your triceps. One more time.

On the next up, switch the cross of your legs. Open your arms out to the side for the hug. Look at your hands and double check your hands are facing each other, that they're not facing the ceiling, that handles vertical to the floor. And then reach the arms toward each other, open up wide. So push the feet down and push the arms open. Reach your arms from your back and open one more time.

Alright. That felt really nice. So the next thing we're gonna do is let go of those. We're going to add our spring from the top for our push through bar. And we're gonna move on to a new spine shape for ourselves. So we're going to go into our swan, and I like to use a good attention of a spring, so I've got a red spring here.

And for my height, I like it to be on that higher hook. And then we're going to be very, very careful with this bar because we are spring loaded. We're gonna take our hands around the bar. Some wraps on the other side of our fingers. We have a good grip.

Push the bar down and then lie on to your stomach. So I did take one hand off to help me get on there, but please be mindful of what you're doing. And then we're gonna lie on our stomach with our arm straight double check your bar does not go past the vertical poles. Drop your head down so we start in a nice tall back and then we shave. So we just did that sitting.

So it should feel really nice to do it here, and you're trying to find that same shave muscle muscle group we just used. So it's tempting to let bring push your arms back my hypermobile friends, but we're actually gonna make sure that we're pulling the bar towards us and then reaching it away. Pulling it towards us. Reach it away. Now, you can stick with that or reach your tailbone towards the mat, press your feet down. With straight arms, lift your heart up.

It's a long extension, lower back down. So if you push your stomach down to lift your chest up, I'm gonna ask you to try something with me. Reach your tailbone towards the mat. The hip bones in the front, your little frontal hip points. I want them to feel light on your mat.

And I want them to stay light as you lift your chest, and then come back down. So it's easy to make this happen in the armpits of the shoulder, so you can get your thoracic spine to do the extension. We're gonna need this practice where we're going. So this is not our only extension, and we get to really practice it here with the help of the spring to give us feedback on what we wanna do with our center. And then you can add on.

You can do a shave, and you can lift the bar up into a swan. And then you shave and come back down. So the timing means a lot. Press the feet down. Bend the elbows wide.

Lift the heart forward and up as you lift the bar up. As I bend my elbows, my head drops down so the bar can clear my head. Two more. Push it up, and I'm saying push for a reason. I do not want the bar to pull you up.

I want you to reach in two directions to find a nice big lift, and then reach the bar down. Take one hand to the mat, bend your knees. As you've closed the spring, you can sit back for a counter stretch. And then we'll go into some push through. So, sweep your feet forward.

And now we get to take our Our body threw the roll back but with the push through bar. So you get to revisit the shape. So this is another tall back exercise. I know a lot of people wanna go into extension here, but find a nice tall back reach through your feet and then pull the waist back and push the bar forward. So when we go forward, we're gonna stop before the bar goes past the vertical poles on our tower. We don't need to show off how flexible our hamstrings are. Instead, push into the bar to lift or waist up, and then round back and lift the bar up.

And again, round back with straight wrists and elbows push the bar forward, and then round back, create space to lift the bar up one more time, reach. And feel how much easier it is to do this now that we are much more warmed up than we were a few moments ago, a long few moments ago. After this next one, if you want to move forward, what we're gonna do is take our right arm around our waist. So now we're doing one arm push through. If you know your shoulders need both arms, please stick with both arms. We're gonna round back and push the bar forward, round back and lift it up.

So this allows us to see which side of our body is smart, which side of our body needs more attention, and also do we tend to twist once we only have one side. One more time on this side, rounding back, pushing through and rounding back and lifting up, switch hands at the top, arm goes around the waist, round back, and reach. So hopefully after all of that rowing, it's a little easier to find the shoulder on the back. So that as you do this, it's not coming from the arm. It's coming from your center. When I say your center, I mean the muscles of your waist all the way around your back up to your shoulders and down through your hips.

So the whole body isn't on this. After three, we're gonna spin around and lie down. Grab the bar. For teaser, you want the bar to be kind of above your neck, and then we're gonna lie back legs together. So we'll bend our elbows.

They'll do a shave just like we did when we did this one a moment ago, and then they'll reach over our head. Then we'll bend the elbows and lift the bar up. And again, bend your elbows reach and lift. Do two more and notice what your ribs like to do. The back ones at the very bottom. Do they arch up off the mat when your arms go overhead? Or can you keep them down? You might not be able to go as far or do your shoulders come in your ears? On this next one, lift the bar up and simultaneously lift your toes and your eyes at the same time reach this bar up. You might even close the spring more than it already is to get to your full teaser and then roll everything down and bend the elbows.

So we're taking that roll back exercise from the beginning and we're elevating it up to a teaser. Do you feel that? And then hold at the top and now we're gonna add that shave we've been doing. Now, if you shave and you pulled yourself back, I just did that, right? It is cheating. So only pull back as much as you can keep everything still and then hold it up and roll it down. Bend the elbows reach.

Bend the elbows and lift. Hold it this time, push the legs down and lift it up. We did this with single leg springs up and down. Now, we're doing two legs, no springs. So see if you can feel the leg springs here. And then lift the bar up hold.

Roll the spine down, bend the elbows, lift it back up. This time, we're gonna stay up with both arms and legs, and we're gonna lower the arms and legs together. Can we do this up pulling ourselves out of our long round shape? Can you feel the shave we've been doing? And the 100 in our in our center, all that stuff to hold on to those legs, and then roll it down.

Okay. That was spicy. So take the bar close the spring as you sit up and we're gonna spin back around. I know a lot of spinning, but it's more fun that way anyways. So you'll take your bar. I need to be very mindful of this. I need to be very careful.

We're gonna put our feet on this bar. We're new shoulder roll down. Okay? Some people call it parakeet, but that's a different variation in my mind. So when we put our feet on this bar, some of you will do it lying down, putting your feet on there. It depends on how tall you are. If you can control the bar and your legs, you'll put your feet on the bar.

With the spring down, but you wanna make sure that the bar never goes past the vertical pole. So curl up and a 100 curl take a look at it. Make sure that your balls of your feet are on the bar, not your toes, and then you bend your knees and you straighten. So we did this with leg springs. Now we get to do it here, right with those single leg springs out and in.

So if you feel cramps in your feet, it is a sign, you are not using your seat. So if you needed one, your feet are telling you. Now, bend your knees if you wanna move forward, further forward. And lift the bar up. Once the spring is closed, lift your hips up. Okay. Hold it here. I know you wanna look at your feet.

You gotta look at your gorgeous ceiling. Push your arms down and push so much into your left foot. Your right leg lifts up. Bring the right foot down. Push so much into your right foot. Your left leg lifts off.

And bring it down and listen up. We're just gonna do it one more time and you're gonna roll down. I know you're uneven. I know. That's how it goes. Roll down. Remember which leg went first. Bend your knees, once your hips are down, push the bar away, bend your knees, lift the bar up, and now we push so much into the right leg, the left leg lifts first. See, don't worry. I got you.

I know as a fly instructor, I don't count very well, but I got my lefts and right. And then after you, left, right, left, roll down, bend your knees and reach the bar away. Guess what we get to do. Another set on both sides. I want you to feel the leg springs we did a moment to go. So we did that up and down.

You're doing it here without a spring, lift the bar up, roll the hips up, push so much into the right leg, the left leg can reach up into that imaginary spring and come down, and then opposite. And so Notice that I'm not showing off the full split I can do because it's not that impressive if I drop my hips, roll down. We have one more. You got this and roll up and then lift and right, and you're feeling the back of your body turn on left, and you're gonna roll it down. Once your hips are down, if you can keep your spring close, you can actually just take your feet off.

If you need to bring your bar down and do a roll up, please be mindful. Alright. How you dismount? Okay. Last thing with our push through bar here, we're gonna come an eeling. And I wanna get you another side bend. Okay. So you have the bar thumb around hands on.

You can get a fist here if you want. If your push through bar causes your arm to be higher than your shoulder, you can just clasp your spring at a lower setting or add a clip here. So your shoulder's not in your ear. Right? Other, I'm out to the side. We're just gonna push the arms down and up. Didn't we do this with our rowing? We did.

So here, where we're visiting it, it should feel like you've got springs in both arms. And then we're gonna come back to our side bend, and we're gonna lift up and over. And then come back down. Alright. Again, I'm not pushing the bar down to go into the side bend. I have my arms connected to my back, and then my center side bends, and it comes back up.

And we just do one more. Up and over, and back up, and you'll spin around. So you want your feet can be together knees apart or your feet and knees can be together that is harder. I like to have a little bit of space there. But you're going back to your rowing on both arms go down and up, find that connection.

And then you have to get out of the mindset that, like, bigger is better in Pilates. How can I make this side bin longer? So we did that with our side sit up. Two more. We did that with our beginning roll back side stretch. And now you get to do it kneeling, feeling how long your body can get.

And you come back up. Awesome. Okay. Let's put this bar away. We're gonna lie on our left side for our side leg springs, and you wanna take the spring that is in line with where your body is on the mat. So if I'm lying down on my left side, the spring that is right in line with my hand is gonna go, is gonna go on my foot. So I like to grab it, place my hand on the bar, and then my head down.

And then I'm gonna rest my head on my bicep. My feet will come to the front of the mat. And then I bend my right knee into the chest, put the spring on, and then slide it out. Okay. So here we go. We're gonna go to the front and to the back.

It's not as big as you think it is. It's gonna go back to what we did when we're lying on our back. And we did our shoulder roll down. How far forward can it go from our center. Right? And how far back can it go without us arching? This is a tall back exercise.

And then hold it back and draw little circles back here. These are fast. They're not very big and they're swift and then reverse it. And it kind of shows like, can we control this? And we did bigger circles when we were lying down. So these are a chance to find little circles with strength. Squeeze the legs together.

And then slide that knee in to take that spring off, and then we'll take ourselves to the other side. So repeating actions that we've done lying down with springs without springs and now balancing on our side. Here we go, foot into the spring, slide the leg out, go to the front, and then to the back. And so it is different when you change the plane, but what can you take from an earlier version that might have been more supportive and bring it to one that's a little bit has more balance challenge. How much do you have to work your bottom side to balance here?

It's kind of like how we work that bent knee in the beginning. Hold the leg back and draw those swift little circles. And the up is easy, so work the down and the back and then reverse. And then when you're even squeeze the legs together, slide that leg in, take the spring off. And then we're gonna set up for our standing arm springs and leg springs. So you'll wanna have both of those.

Alright. Let's do some standing arm springs and leg springs, but I'm gonna use mostly arm springs for this, and I'll tell you why. If you wanna stand on the other side of your tower because the hooks work for you. It's totally fine. Watch your balance, please. Watch your balance. Okay? You're on top of a tower. For me, I'm too tall for that.

So the springs I need at my shoulder height are just above are gonna be over on this side. And we're gonna start with our roll back bar first, so I have my roll back bar springs on. What you'll do is actually start with your back to this. So we did this sitting, unless you did it kneeling, and while we're doing it standing, I think you'll kind of like it because it allows those hip flexors to be nice and open. So the palms are facing you.

And you get to be as far away from the springs as you want to be to pull it into your body up and back and down in. And if you're like, this is not very hard, you can step further away and you'll be surprised how further away all of a sudden becomes more difficult pretty quickly. So we're challenging our stomach to go back as we pull the spring in because what it wants to do is we want our our lower back kind of wants to lean forward and then you'll reverse it, reach it back and up. So if kneeling never bothers your knees, know that there's a standing version, if sitting never bothers your hips, there's a standing version, and you go in both directions. Just a nice open up the arms and the shoulders.

I'm gonna get to compare ourselves to a moment ago. Right? Go ahead and close the springs and then remove your arms and then stand inside. So we're gonna do a little bit of our rowing three, but with the rollback bar. Heels together toes apart. And again, this gets spicy really fast.

You'll lean into the action. Pull, push the arms forward from your back here, and then you'll lift the arms up You'll lower the arms down, you'll bend them back in. So just like we did with the handles earlier, reach forward, lift it up, pull it down, bend, and reach. And you can feel how the spring's gonna wanna push you around. If you have a mobile spine like me. There's these moments where they just wanna hang out like a hammock.

That's on us. We gotta work into our feet, work into our center, and find that tall back. We've had practice with lying down with the feedback of the mat one more time, and pull it down and bend it in. Alright. The next thing we're gonna do is give our arms a little bit of a moment. You can use your leg springs for this. I'm actually going to use my arm springs for this.

And the reason is, is that sometimes the leg spring tension's just a little too heavy, for how hypermobile my joints can be. So you'll take your handle off. You'll grab your loop and you want to use the hook as low to the floor as you can make it. So if you're working with someone that has a slider bar, You can slide that bar all the way down to about two inches off of your mat. Again, be mindful if you're on top of a mat. It does this is a balance challenge. So you'll put your if I'm facing the tower, I'm putting my left leg into the spring.

Into the strap. So when I turn to face it, my left hip is in line with the spring. Okay. So I'm gonna hold it here. I stand on my right foot and my knee is slightly bent. I take my left foot and I slide it out, and I bring it back in. And you're just doing this and if anyone's watching, they're like, what are they doing?

Did this turn into a bar class? No, we're doing what we did with our side leg springs. Right. Here we go. And we're doing what we did with our laying down single leg springs. And then this is the fun part. Ready? It's a fabulous little transition. You're gonna look at the spring, you're gonna turn, and that loop is just gonna go over your foot.

And then if you did it like me and it came off, that's okay. Guess what? We get to just fix it with our other foot and start again. And now we go across our body. So you should feel this more in the standing leg than the spring leg, and a lot of people wanna do it in the in the spring leg. They'll try to sickle their foot, but you're actually just feeling the standing inner thigh work really hard. Let's do one more.

And then we turn and we face our bars, our poles, and so now our hip is in line with the spring. And then this one, good luck. Turn your foot down. Yes. We're gonna ruin the pedicure. We're gonna slide the top of the foot along the mat and bring it back in. It helps if you have socks on a slippery floor like this. And so you're gonna slide and bolt back.

So it's those circles we did to the back. It's working those same muscles, but you can't let your pelvis go with you. You have to hold the pelvis still and reach the leg back, and then you bend the knee like you're a flamingo, and you push the leg back. And remember when we did this? With our single leg springs.

Now you could do it standing, and it feels well, it's hard. Small through it. One more rest. Alright. Take that spring, move it to the other side. And We now go on the right side.

So put it on your foot, and we'll go we'll start across the body first on this one. Don't worry. You'll be even slide it across and bring it in. Slide it across and bring it in. We have three more. So again, now you can feel that standing inner thigh working.

The foot stays on the floor. I know you wanna lift it up. I know your foot wants to do it. Your knee wants to do it. Do it in that standing leg.

And then twirl. There we go. That was a fancier transition and slide the foot out to the side. And slide. So my outer hip of my standing leg feels us more than my spring loaded leg, as long as you're not stuck in your knee. And you're just comparing yourself and how you're so ready for this from all the work that we did. See how the Pilates exercise is ready as for the harder ones.

And then we turn to face our tower, top foot under and slide it back. And reach. So if you're doing this right, when you're pushing your leg out and in from your single leg springs, I wanted you to feel these muscles turn on because these ones are gonna help you with those teasers and the shoulder roll downs that are out there. And then bend the knee and make your full mingo shape and push it back. Joe always wanted us to end standing up and doing some things that we could do well. So we're gonna compare ourselves to ourselves a little bit. Gonna do something a little challenging, and we're in with something fun.

So now you're gonna take that off, get that out of the way. And now let's get your arm springs going. You won't want the roll back bar. So you'll probably want to get that out of the way, or just switch for your handles. Right? And we're going to do some shave and hug, which we've done already sitting.

So you get to compare yourself to that. And then we're going to do some squats. I know. Don't hate me. Don't turn the softest yet. Don't do it. Here we go.

Turn with your back to the springs, index finger and thumb together, lean into the action, and now hands behind your head and push up. And so how does this feel in your upper back? All the way through your feet. Hopefully, a little easier than when you were sitting, and then reach up and open, and now reach the arms wide and forward from your back. So you're not impressing me that your fingertips can touch. And we're trying to look like nothing is bothering us from heels to the crown of our head.

And then you're gonna open your arms, and we're gonna go into that butterfly. And so that butterfly is a twist. It's our last twist of the day. We get to compare it to the beginning. So we're gonna take one arm up and one arm down, and you're gonna reach up into your top spring so much your bottom spring can reach behind you three times, and you're gonna lift up.

And you're gonna go up and over and reach. I know everyone wants this to be a side bend. It is a twist. It's the upper half that's twisting. So stand firmly in your feet. And lift up last time.

So just two each side. Alright. So my teacher Jay said that when you're in Joe's studio, one of the first things you would learn in your standing arm springs was this little combo. So here we go. The combo goes. He'll see other toes apart, press the arms back like a chest expansion, and then lift the elbows up and lean.

And we did that with our rowing too, right? Chest expansion and lean. Just one more. Chest expansion. And the hard part is can you keep your center engaged when the springs are closed? That's the biggest challenge of all Pilali springs. Now separate your feet, right? So they're parallel.

I just move my heels apart. Round forward reach for your toes, lift up, elbows up lean. And reach, and lift up. Now, this time instead of leaning, squat down, lift up. And lean, if you're like, are you crazy? Then keep the lean action going.

And again, squat down. Lift up and reach. Okay. You ready? We did all those leg springs. It wasn't for nothing. Take I like to take my heels together a little bit, give myself some more surface area.

Take one leg forward squat down. Oh, hello. And then sweep the leg back. Reach into your imaginary spring back there around. Lift up. And again, squat. Hello. Can you go? Not very low today.

And reach. And lift it up, plant the foot, and then the other leg goes squat down. Oh, this is a new side. Hello. Reach. If you try to use your springs for balance, I hate to break it to you. It doesn't work. You have to use your center.

So here we go. Let's try that again. Squat down. And reach and lift. And then the feet start together. Now separate your feet. Last thing, this is it.

We're an in on a grand finale. It's my favorite little ending. It's I called it rolling in and out. It doesn't have a name. Jay said it might remind him of Proud Mary, the song.

Look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about. Bend your knees. Hips over your feet. So you're not going to lean back on this one. Hips over the feet.

And we're going to take all that long back arm work, all the work we've been doing, into a tall back here. So not around. Get nice and tall. Reach the arms to your feet, pull it back to your hips and forward. So you're making big circles. Right? Like big wheels, if you know the song, and then reverse and reach and reach.

And now that you know what we're doing, let's do three more in the first direction and try to go a little faster. Get your heart rate up. Come on and then reverse. We're ending on a high note. Okay.

That gets your heart rate up. And that's the thing. We wanna end on these high notes. We wanna end feeling good about ourselves and what we did. And so if you can see how your body compares from lying down to sitting up to being on its side, to standing, and notice that you do get stronger, you do get taller, you feel a lot better. Then you can walk out of a studio and have your head held high. And smelling your face.

Thank you so much for working out with me. If you have any questions about it, let me know. You are amazing, even if you did a part of this, and have an awesome day.