Class #662

Short and Fun Wunda Chair

30 min - Class
126 likes

Description

Sarah Bertucelli is back with a short and fun Wunda Chair workout. In this quick-paced, yet effective workout. Sarah explores upper body variations with the Footwork, then plays with Full Pike, creative Hip Work, Side Stretch with rotation, and good back extension. Enjoy!
What You'll Need: Wunda Chair, Knee Pad

About This Video

Mar 21, 2012
(Log In to track)

Transcript

Read Full Transcript

Hi Lizanne are you ready to do some one to share today? Yay. So we're going to do a kind of short but sweet, powerful workout trying to flow from exercise to exercise. And um, I don't see any point why we don't get right started. All right. So I'd like you to stand just behind her in front of however you want to think about it, but about a three or four inches from the wood piece of your when to chair and settle into your feet for a moment. Feel the length through the crown of your head. And let's take three deep breaths here. I'm going to soften my eyes.

Inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth, feeling the length through the crown of your head, awaken your eyes and be present in the moment. And with the next inhale, allow your arms to lift as your knees bend, Your Body Stays Upright and exhale, we're going to stand tall, kind of opening the chest a little bit. And again, inhale, let the arms lift and as you exhale, we're opening through the chest. And just two more like that. Awakening your Pele's body today and one last time please. And standing tall. Let your arms reach toward the floor. Inhale, [inaudible]. Use An exhale to peel down one vertebra at a time. Allow the arms to float forward and catch the pedal.

Continue pushing down. Inhale here. Exhale to round up through your low back and inhale to push down and exhale to round and inhale to push down. So feel that your shoulders are staying attached to your back and your focus here is on rounding through the low back. Now it just dawned on me, I didn't give you a spring setting, so I'm going to tell you right now, I'm on one spring on number three, which means from the bottom we've counted up three rungs. Release the pedal on this last one and round up through your back.

I'll try to remember that for you. Diligence Leon, the next few. So Lizanne why don't you go ahead and change your springs for me. Go ahead and put it on one spring. A little camera nerves. I think I'm allowed to say that. Here we go. Inhale. Let's do another one. Exhale to peel forward one vertebra at a time.

Take the hands to the pedal again, push down. Now exhale, we're rounding up through that low back, keeping those upper back muscles alive and we inhale to lower down. And again we exhale to round up and inhale to lower down. So be aware that you've got plenty of weight on the balls of your feet. It doesn't mean all the weights on the balls of your feet, but it's important that you haven't shifted back to your heels last time round and roll all the way up. Now we're going to play with this move just a bit here. Inhale, exhale to peel forward. Again, catching the pedal as you do so we're going to continue pushing down to the point where you're close to the bottom but not touching the bottom.

Let's play with balance. Dig deep into the abdominals and now lift the heels away from the floor. Going up onto the balls of your feet and lower them down. Try to keep the pedal still. Exhale, lift the heels and lower down. Nice. Exhale to her around through the low back.

Lifting the heels and lower down. And how about just one more there. I like that. Lower those heels and roundup through your back. One Vertebra at a time. Nice. And we're going to go right into our foot and leg work today. So what I'd like you to do is arrange your uh, when chair.

So you've got two springs. I generally like to use two springs on the top, which is quite a challenging spring load, but you could also go uh, two on the third one as well. So we're going to go ahead and have a seat here and I want you to start with your hands kind of next to your hips and your sitting kind of far forward on that chair. Put your heels on the pedal and push all the way down. For a moment I'd like you to stand on that pedal for me. I'm rounding through my low back. I'm going to straighten my legs and then I'm going to have a seat again.

Take my arms behind me, touching the back edge of the reformer and we start the foot work here. We inhale and we exhale down. Now the more stable you are through your core, the more you're gonna feel your legs. It's an exhale down. More of a pumping action here. Chest is open and abdominals are active. Now one last time, hold the down for me. Lizanne release your hands.

Take them out in front of you. We're going to use our right arm to shoot a bow and arrow rotating to the right. Extend the arm out hold. Now we've got three pumps here and two and three. We hold there for a moment.

You bring the arm back where it came from and now we go the other way. So it's like you're shooting a bow and arrow. Finding a nice rotation. Oh Hi. And here we go. Three and two and one and gently unwind. Take the hands next to your hips. Press the pedal down, put your toes on the pedal, straighten your legs round through your low back for a moment.

Have a seat again, the heels are lifted. This time the arms are going to begin out in front of you. Straight out in front of you. Here we go. Exhale down and try to be aware that both legs are working equally for me. Now we open the arms to a second position. If you're a dancer, your arms are straight out to the side.

Elysium palms facing forward length through the crown of the head. Just for fun, we're going to lift the left up. Hold the pedal down. We're gonna rotate to the right for me and do three pumps here, Anil and two and three. Unwind. The arm goes down, you're lifting the right arm up, you're rotating to the left. Here we go. And pump three and two and why and gently unwind.

Place your hands on the pedal. I'm sorry. Next to your hips here. Draw the heels together. Straighten your legs round through your low back. Have a seat this time. Take the arms to that straight out position. Palms facing up. Really try to straighten the arms out to the side. Lizanne palms up. Here we go.

And we press down and keep those heels tightly together for me. And one more here. Hold down, take both arms up. Straight up, rotate to the right for me. Arms are like you're in a cylinder here. Three pumps or one, two and three on one twist the other way. And here we go. Elbows straight. One and two and three we unwind.

Place the hands next to your hips. We shift to the Open v position. I want you to stand up straight in those legs. Round through your low back. Have a seat. The ankles are flex. I'm sitting nice and tall. Arms Out, stretch. So out to the side. And here we are. Straight arms. Exhale we press down and am three and nice. Exhale four [inaudible] and last one. Hold here, take the arms up for me.

Straight up to the ceiling. You're going to press back with the arms. As you open your chest, the legs come up, wo exhale, press down and back at the same time. So legs down, arms back. And just a couple more here. Finding that upper back, I hope and last one. And we gently take a rest there. So press the pedal down one last time. Shift to the toes, stand on the pedal, round through your low back. Have a seat sitting nice and tall.

Take the arms straight up to the ceiling here for me. Feel those straight strong arms. And here we go, 10 and eight and seven. Good. Nice. Now on the next one, we rotate to the right. Come to center, rotate left, come to center, rotate, center, rotate. And last to each side. Here we go. My legs are a burn. I like it too. Lengthening through those arms and twist.

And we'll gently rest that stepping off of your one to chair. So for this next exercise, I'm going to keep the spring the same. We're going to want a little pad for your knee. Most of the chairs don't quite have enough padding here. And we're gonna do a nice little soleus press press here.

So you're going to put your ball of your foot right foot first on the pedal and you want to kind of lean into the pad a little bit right below the knee, open through your chest, drive that back heel down, and go ahead and float your arms up in alignment with your body. And we press the foot here. Now we're going to add a nice little change here. I would like one more. And then you rotate like a cylinder to the right. Keep pressing as you do. Good. Now you're going to take that opposite arm. It's my left arm.

And reach down and hold the edge of the one two chair to find a little more rotation. One more time. Press the foot down. Stay now rotate just a little more. Release your hand. Bam. Flex the foot and unwind. Let me switch sides. So you want to make sure your standing leg heel is well connected.

The placement of the other leg is just below the knee on the shin. Lengthen through your spine, feel your back muscles. Let the arms float up. And here we go. We press one and we start the rotation. Now we rotate. Wow in that cylinder. And take the arm down, rotating a little more, and then now hold the foot, rotate, rotate, rotate. Good. Release your hand. Ah, flex the foot and unwind.

And then Lizanne did a more intermediate version than me. I love it. So we can go ahead and take the pads. We're not going to need them anymore. So now we're going to move, move into the full pike here. So I'm gonna um, change my spring so that I am on two springs at three or a two and a three probably. Then make sure you have two hands on the pad when you step down onto the pedal because it's bearing quite a bit of spring. You want the sweet spot on your feet.

And what I mean by that is your feet might not, might have to be back a little bit more than you think. Take your arms or your hands to the front corners. Shift your weight into your arms first round through your back. Second, shifting into the arms. Hover the pedal away from the floor. From here we exhale to pull up, rounding through the low back and inhale to lower down and exhale, rounding them. The focus here should be chest toward thighs, thighs towards chest. We're our best to keep our shoulders directly over the risks here on the next one. Please hold the up position. Stay here, float the right leg off. Draw the knee to the nose. Give it a shot.

Round a little more. Place the foot down. Left leg floats off around a little more, point that foot and gently lower down. Hold here for a moment I'm down, but I want you to drop your one heel at a time. It doesn't matter, right or left yet. So one heel goes down for a nice calf stretch.

You can make this a little more of a stretch by putting your elbows down, your forearms down, and really aiming out through your tailbone. Nice stretch switch sides. So flattening the back here. It gives you a nice hamstring stretch as well as a nice calf stretch. And just one more time. Each side. Good. We press high up and we're gently going to shift here.

So now that we're done with the full pipe, we're going to move into some nice abdominal work and hip work here. So I'm going to take one of my springs off and I now have one spring on three. You could go a little lighter or heavier, but I think that the three setting is pretty darn good. I'm gonna Start with my feet about two inches from the edge of the one to chair here. And I'm just going to round down catch the pedal. I'm only using this for a little bit of leverage as I bend my knees.

I'm going to have a nice seat to the floor and gently release the pedal. Stretch my legs out in front of me now so that your spacing is good. My feet are just over the pole in the one to chair or close to the wood piece back there. The arms are outstretched. Take a breath and we're just going to roll down one time here. Move my microphone out of the way and then we'll continue on.

So one roll down here, reach the arms to the ceiling and make any adjustment needed so that you can put your heels just over the pedal here. So it's like you want to be able to pull down with the backs of the heels. Now take the arms out to the side and make a nice tee shape to begin with. So we're just gonna do a little hamstring pull here, drawing the heels toward the bottom with the exhale and gently control up. So not quite all the way down. About halfway down dry, about halfway in and come up. And one more time.

We draw about halfway in. We hold here, reached the arms behind you overhead. Take a breath, exhale to lift the head and chest. Whoo. Holding that hamstring curl and gently lower down arms all the way back. Exhale to lift the head and chest. Keep the hamstring strong and lower down.

And one last time, lifting the head and chest. We hold here. I want you to take your hands behind your legs. Lift just a little higher. Oh, that feels nice. Place your hands now behind your head. We're going to rotate to the right. Ooh, back to neutral. Rotate to the left, back to neutral. As you rotate, right, draw in on that right hamstring more. And as you go left dry in on that left hamstring, all I need is bear a little more weight into that leg.

And one last time. Finding neutral alignment. Lower your head and shoulders down. Allow the pedal to come to rest. Placing your arms right by your side here. You want to make sure that again, your feet are in the right position for you to be able to peel up here. So I'm going to draw my abdominals active, tuck my pelvis and do a pelvic curl to a nice lifted position. Feeling the backs of the legs working here. Inhale, and as you exhale, we lower down one vertebra at a time.

So there's a sweet spot again where you can push diagonally into the pedal in order to maintain the pedal still, if you push down too much or pull down and we lower down again, if you pull down, then the pedal will fall. And one last time we're going to exhale to peel up and hold here. So now we're going to keep the hips high. Bend the knees just three times a little bit. One and two and three.

Whoa. And gently lower down. Now we're going to do the same exercise from the balls of the feet, placed the balls of the feet on the pedal. And I like to have my toes not really touching anything in the beginning so that they will touch when I get up there. Exhale for the same pelvic curl, finding the backs of the legs, pressing the pelvis high, and we do three little pulses or one little more hamstring here, two and three and gently lower down. And we'll do that one again. Inhale and exhale to peel up. And we pull down three.

Hmm. And we gently lowered it. So making another shift of the foot position. I'd like you to open your legs and let the outside of your foot rest on the pedal. So this feels quite nice. If you relax it completely, which you only get to do for about a moment. I'd like you to feel again, the outside of by in between the middle, in the middle of my foot really is resting on the pedal. I want you to draw the abdominals active and hold on with those hip rotators so that the legs aren't completely open, relaxed, but there is some energy in how here as you exhale, that same pelvic curl, keeping the legs from dropping down too much and then peel down. I want to clarify that cue of keeping the legs from dropping down. If we're not, we just let the legs drop as we go up and I want you to really use the glutes, stabilize this and bring the whole piece up if that makes any sense.

And lower down. I hope it does. One last time we exhale to appeal up. We hold that lifted position. Really Tuck the pelvis here using those abdominals. It's a very small movement. Now I want the legs to open in your mind as the pedal goes down and slightly up and just a small movement and keeping the hips nice and high.

And one more time. Lower your spine. We did a couple extra. Let's do it one more time through. Exhale to peel up. Nice hip opening here. Exhaling. Two, press down, five and four and three and two. Last one. The pedal comes up and Jim in lower down. Beautiful. So bring the feet together on the pedal and you want, once again the backs of the heels there, reach the arms up to the ceiling for me and then open the arms wide.

Just rotate to the right with the lower half of the body and feel a nice little spine stretch there. Return to neutral, rotate to the left. Notice the outside of my ankle or foot rests on the pedal and return to neutral and we'll do this one more time before we add on. This is just an opportunity to stretch the spine. I've got my ankles flexed and my feet and knees pretty glued together here, so I'm going to the right with my legs. I'm in a nice spine twist. We're going to hold that. Now I need to lift my right arm up to the ceiling, so I'm making kind of an l shape here. Okay.

Now I'd like you to continue lifting your arm up to the ceiling and you're sort of opening through the scapula. You're actually abducting the scapula here. I just felt my oblique kick in. What about utilization? Good, right? Because I reached further with my arm. Now I want you to push down with the other arm into the floor as if you're trying to open your chest. Got a little more there. Right now I want to keep that energy through my B, uh, with my two arms and I want to use my rotation to try to draw the pedal down a little bit. Three. Oh yeah.

And two and one. And we get to rest that and switch sides. So the arm goes down, we rotate the other direction. That's the left. You lift the left arm arm up here. Now stay for a moment and just get to know this position for at least a moment. Reach that left arm up even higher. So you're abducting the scapula.

Beautiful Oblique kick in there. Now the other arm, that's the one that's out to the side, you push it down into the floor and feel how much activation there is. Now we pull that pedal down, 30 small movement and two and one. And we get to unwind that ice. Draw one leg to your chest, followed by the other. Give the legs a quick hug release there. Take the hands to the backs of the legs, lift the head and chest. And let's just get a little rock and roll. Hopefully you have enough room here.

Ooh, I don't know if I do. So let's actually change that and just draw yourself up to a sitting position here. All right, so for this next, um, exercise, actually we're going to add a spring cause we wanna work our arms a little bit and I'm going to go heavy, which is gonna feel quite hard to stabilize with the ads. I've got two springs on three right now. You certainly could go a little lower than that if needed. So we're going to put the pelvis basically in the center of the table there. Oh, that might've been a little more than I want, but I like the challenge people.

All right, so I'm, I have to work to push the pedal down. Right now I'm going to energize my legs. So they're lifted. I'm opening through my chest and I'm stabilizing this plank position. Now the movement is for the triceps. So we bend the elbows and we straight and we inhale and we exhale.

So the scapulas staying utterly still here. Well basically still I'll say that. Utterly not sure. Drawing those abdominals active the entire time. One more time. Push down and hold. Turn the hands so that the fingers are facing inward for a new hand position, a little internal rotation. Nice strong legs.

We bend the elbows and we press and we, so you want to really start to feel those triceps and if you have enough spring you'll be able to [inaudible]. And last two here. Lizanne beautiful. And one more time. Find your way to control off of that one to chair. Now I'm going to adjust us to just one spring. I like one spring on the third rung who are going to have a seat on the side here. Stretching that top leg, the right leg straight.

I want to make sure I'm sort of wrapping my leg around the chair here. Who looks pretty, let's start with the arm. The other, the right arm out stretch. And then my hand is gonna go down just behind center in preparation for the next piece here. So I'm going to inhale and reach over and exhale to lift up and inhale big reach over, trying to keep the opposite foot down and lift up. And hopefully we're looking as though we're between two panes of glass here.

Now pause. We're gonna rotate around putting both hands on the pedal, open through the chest here, draw those abdominals active. Let's go right for the Gusto here. Lizanne float that back leg up and find the glutes. Lots of glute work here. Now exhale, we push down, rounding through the back and we inhale to extend at the very high point we exhale to push it down and extend at the height and pushing down and extend. And one last time down and IX and we'll rest.

So switching sides, when I kind of wrap that leg around, reach the other toe out. So it's pointed hand is going to be just back of the center line and it's an exhale up and over. Big Strap and inhale out to the side. Exhale, reaching over. So here's, see if you can feel the stretch through the waist, but also through the ribs, through the lat. Going just a little deeper. We have two more [inaudible] and one more here. Now hold, rotate around, putting both hands on the pedal. Adjust if needed.

Take that back leg lifted up, fine the glute and we round to reach down and we inhale to extend. Make sure that black back glute stays active. We round down and we inhale to extend. We exhale to round down and inhale, extend last time and we ran and extend an liffe. Gently release [inaudible].

Then we'll finish it off with some clean back extension the pelvis. Once again on the center of the pad here and here, I like to often allow the pedal to go all the way down so we can get situated, extend those legs. Hopefully the legs are together, lift the pedal away from the bottom and then that's where it's going to stay. It's never totally going to go down. Again, inhale, feel that shift in your upper back to extend first the upper back and then go to that beautiful grand back extension and gently lower down. Exhale and inhale, extending the upper back first and then find that wonderful full back extension. Good and lower. Yeah. Down and inhale dude.

Stand just as open and lower. Dad and last time please. Keeping those abdominals alive throughout the movement and we gently release. Find your way. Easing off of the, I was about to call it a reformer. It's not a reformer, it's a one to share. Stand just to the side somewhere and we'll finish like we started here.

Soften the knees, allow the arms to float up. Hey, can we relax? And again, softening the knees. And one last time here and let's finish with one roll down. Take a breath, exhale to peel forward one vertebrae at a time. Allow the arms to hang. Let the shoulders relax for me. Use The abdominals.

Draw the shoulders back where they belong and round and roll up. I'd like to do one more of those, lengthening through the crown of the head. Inhale and exhale to appeal forward. [inaudible] so allow the shoulder blades to relax. And when I say back where they belong, I just mean put them in their place here and then round and rollout. [inaudible] thank you so much for playing. You have a great day.

Comments

4 people like this.
loved the inventive rotation work and very clear instructions
1 person likes this.
I agree, love the variety of rotation work! Thank you!
1 person likes this.
Loved the cues and the rotations. Look forward to more.
2 people like this.
loved the variety
Thanks ladies. We had a good time filming this class. There is another mat class coming soon. If you have request, just ask.
1 person likes this.
Sarah, you are a wonderful and innovative teacher! I thoroughly enjoyed this workout and found it fantastically challenging for a half hour! I'm looking forward to more classes taught by you!
2 people like this.
loved the variations... very creative!

feels like being back at the SBAC studio! you'll have to bring Kaita next time ;)
Nice teacher, like your energy. Thank you
Thanks Lizanne, Julia and Tracy! Glad you enjoyed the workout.
2 people like this.
Love the variation on double leg pumps!!
1-10 of 23

You need to be a subscriber to post a comment.

Please Log In or Create an Account to start your free trial.

Footer Pilates Anytime Logo

Move With Us

Experience Pilates. Experience life.

Let's Begin