Class #738

Reformer on the Mat

50 min - Class
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Description

Kristi brings out the TRIADBALL™ to assist you as she teaches a Reformer on the Mat class. In this class, you'll do many of the exercises you would expect from an intermediate BASI Pilates® Reformer workout as well as several traditional Mat exercises.
What You'll Need: Mat, Triadball

About This Video

Jun 14, 2012
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So I thought we'd pull out the triad balls today and do a little reformer on the mat. So that's what I was gonna do. Let's visualize your reformers. She's never been on a reformer. That's really cool. Face out the window. So you're sort of in the middle of your maths, but facing out the window, I think, uh, let's go just behind the maths for now. The balls, I'm sorry, I'm thinking this through. I'm going to start again. So let's, let's start class with the balls right in front of your feet so that you'll be able to get them in a moment. So it's a triad ball. Michael and Tony were here recently and I'm all inspired by him, but really what we're going to do is reformer on the mat, just using a little tool. So shifting your weight forward, shifting your weight back, find your center and let's just take a deep breath in and use the breath hopefully to release tension just by exhaling again. This time, shrug the shoulders up and exhale. Just come on, drop or fall.

It's nothing too specific. And again, last time, shrugging the shoulders up and down. I'm going to do one roll down. Inhale, exhale. Let your head come forward. Pull the ABS in and up. We're going to take the ball indoor hands and roll back up. Okay. And hopefully you got a little sense of where you are to start and we'll check back in. Place the ball there.

Probably too blown up to put between your knees for alignment. So I'm going to say go below your knees. Okay. In hopes that you can be about sitz bones. Distance apart. Okay. All right. From now I'm going to turn sideways just to give a different view.

And from here if you can imagine you're lying on the ground, so or up against a wall. However, the back of your head, the shoulder blades, sacrum, there's normal curves. Otherwise, let's sit back. Inhaling, just reaching your arms down for now. I'm going to go slow. I want you to be able to lift your toes here, right? Does it shift some of you back? That's it's good. You may need to hinge forward, you will need to hinge forward, but try not to round. That's going to be a big deal. Then as you come up, first of all, you can relax your toes, press back as if you're pushing into that floor or a wall, so it's you don't get behind yourself. It's down and feel the back of the arm. So let's go. Inhale, I'm lightly squeezing the ball and x and inhale and you keep the squeeze both directions, right?

What you can be noticing is how it changes. Is it harder to hold onto as you bend or straighten and start just paying attention to yourself and up listicle a little quicker. We're warming up. Inhale and exhale. Keeping your head in alignment so that means some of the time you're probably looking at the floor some of the time up. I'm going to go one more here, down and up, holding it there. You can either repeat that or slightly shift forward.

I don't want us really high, but you shifted your weight forward. You could slip a couple of credit under your heels. Let's go again. Inhale and exhale, a little more balance here. Still squeezing the ball. Try not to grip with the feed. This is pretty telling. This one I think we tend to find out whether you really roll forward or back, don't you on your feet or out in in is really what I mean there.

And reaching. Imagine pushing your arms forward, right? So you're getting the front of that shoulder like you're pushing through a thick solid push and pull and push and pull again. Last one up, hold it and then lower the heels from here. Take the ball out. Swivel so that your heels touch each other. Okay, and as far as turning the feed out, let's, let's bring it in a little bit. Maybe a pizza slice, a big sized pizza slice.

As far as the arms are concerned up front, we're not going to squeeze hard. The angle is the same as it has been. Heels are down, you're just doing a little play, a squat and then pull the ball in. So I'm kind of pushing it away and pulling it in. Notice whether or not your toes are really gripping now, which is going to check in every so often. It's push and become aware of the field looks good and then whatever you do, don't forget to straighten all the way up, right, so you have a sense of lengthening through the front of the hip out.

Let's do a few more little quicker. We'll say four oh one and pull in two and pull in three once more and there we go. Okay, roll down. We're going to leave the ball down for this one. Come right back up and then separate your feet wider. So if you have been on a foot bar, it's about how wide wider than your own hips in a bit of a turned out position. Toes are relaxed. I'm going to lean forward again. We don't have to, but that's how I want to do it. Focus a little more glitz. Here we go.

We reached down and come up in progress. Can you activate the upper back muscles particularly as you press back your glutes? Definitely getting stronger here at the top. All right, now let's go a little slower. Actually how low can you go? Yeah, you can lean forward a little more gym. Yup. And then up good and and right. You can dip a little lower, nice and wide. It doesn't feel good. You certainly don't have to. It's just an option to challenge that range.

And again, no ski jumpers, right? Finish it. One moral do and then our OER. Okay. Last one. You either repeat it if you're going to just keep the heels down. I want you to stay vertical with your body rather than hindering. If you want to challenge the balance, float the heels up a little, just tiny bit. Here we go down.

You don't rock on a squat as low on a little slower on this one. When the balance is involved, there's two. A tip is to keep the eyes somewhat focused. They don't have to stay in the same spot, but if you look around, chances are your body's going to follow it. [inaudible] again, it's like you're moving through a thick solid. You push a new Paul.

Can you do it without straining? There's lots of different ways you can kind of think of it. Let's do this last one here and heels down. Okay. Roll down. Grabbed the ball again. Keep the feet wide. Come back up and take the ball over head.

We're not squeezing the balls for placement. If it feels too close, you could put it back down. But otherwise we're going to lift the ribs. Pour out the ribs to the right. Big stretch there. Retreat, reach. Inhale, exhale, center. Take your time on this first one, we're reaching, checking the knees and not locked out. Good. And I'm gonna do one more. Our ball a lot more, but hold it here for a second. Try and feel whether or not you're rotating backwards or forwards.

It should feel a little bit more down the side of your body. And up we come. Looks pretty good, but sometimes you're the best judge. That sketch. All right. Tiny bit quicker. Here we go. We'll just do six. There's one animal lift up too. It's not so much how far down to the side you go. Rather think up on the diagonal and longer. Just two more.

Here's one. And up. Here's two. Alright. Bringing the ball down, feet closer together. Um, let's, yeah, keep them slightly apart, lightly holding onto the ball again and I am pushing into it. But when you do make sure you're not squeezing it so much that it rolls you in, in the chest or even forward with the shoulders, then anything you feel your lats, a tiny bit calf raises. Inhale, exhale. Try and collect the powerhouse slightly squeezed the ball and arise up and go higher this time. And then slowly lower down balls, only there to hold onto something, bring it up. But as you lightly squeeze into the ball, make that simulate what your abdominals and really the entire trunk and down and becoming aware of the back of your body and just like before the alignment matters, right? So we don't want to roll out on those feet and just to be sure, come down with the ball.

Place it between your ankles or just above your ankles and sh sort of mid shin where it feels like they can really hold on to it. Good. Alright. Sleep your arms down. Squeeze into the ball a little bit. Keep the knees pointed straight ahead and up we go. Oh, stretch your spine, stretch everything as you lower down, lightly touch, come up again, balance focus. And you can imagine as the spine and body goes up, the arms are reaching to the floor, like the arm bone somehow get heavier. Good. I like the alignment better like this and down once more here up and yeah. Cool. All right, let's put the ball aside. I'm going to do single leg.

I'll never farmer, theoretical reformer and so all we're doing here for now is letting the a right leg come up. Right heel up. And it's pretty similar to what you did a minute ago. I just don't want any props for this one. You're going to sit back, right? So I could, I could lift this other leg, right leg. I could lift the left toes and I could be hinge forward.

It depends on leg length. You don't want the knee to get beyond the toes. Right? So watch for that. If your knees aren't loving this year, I'll find you just hinge forward more and bend the knee less. So you still get the glute work, but you're not getting the neat part of it. All right. Then we just straighten up. Do that again. Kind of feel where your position is.

You may stay here or you might decide to lift the knee as you come up, right? So it's down. Either keep the toes down or lift up and hold reaching down and up. If the arms are just sort of hanging out, it Kinda, it's harder, right? So rather kind of push to that imaginary solid acting like you are working in conjunction with it. And in fact you are down to come up here.

You do something fancy with that free leg. If you want. I wouldn't, let's just stick to it. Let's get one more out of it and up. Step into the other one. It's a different leg. So it's worth sort of testing it out. And what we're trying to do is just lift the heel. It may come in front a little bit eventually, but let's start with it.

Right close. Find your position. Sit back, right. Everything feels good. We're gonna can you hinge forward? There you go. Didn't that feel kind of better and then up we go. Leaving the toe down for two and push forward and up. Only if you want to. This would be the time you start to pick up the leg and focus and down and it's easy. You can work it right there.

Keep the energy traveling pretty consistently through the body, giving you two more, once more. And Wallah. Okay, let's go ahead and go down to the map for the a hundred just have the ball nearby, but we're not using them for awhile. All right, line down onto your back. Hug the knees to the chest. Yeah, and then reach the arms all the way back over head. Feel the weight of the sacrum into the mat.

The weight of the back side of the rib cage, the arms floating off the mat. Let's go into the a hundred we inhale. Exhale, curling up, reaching the legs high initially. Inhale, prepare and exhale. Two, three, four, five. [inaudible]. If you want to go ahead and lower the legs. At this point, I haven't turned out tonight. I'm not quite sure why am I just didn't want that way, but it's hard.

Can we hear the breath? It's my only shot at keeping count and Oh, and in here, in and out. See about expanding the rib cage fully. So not just to the ceiling, but out. Why? Right? You get three more tries. [inaudible] inhaling, strong through the hips and finish this. Next inhale, draw the legs in. Reach the arms back. This next one's called coordination.

Inhale is this version. We're doing XL, Corolla, reach, arms forward. Extend the legs, legs, open, close. Then Ben. So it's one, two, Ben. Three reach back to to your head. Arms. Never make it to the ground. Exhale, shoot up into the 101 open. Close bed. One, two, three. That's the rhythm. There you go. Gym and down. Inhale, exhale and inhale. And a big exhale takes you up. Legs Open, close. Start Bending in. Inhaling, and let's keep [inaudible]. Exhaling. One, two, inhale 30 and still inhaling to go down. Long. Exhale.

One, two, three. Good. Can we make it sharper? So it means you get up. And now the three are kind of boom, boom, boom, and your body doesn't move until it's time after those three, one, two, three, yes, we can do two more progressive. One, boom, boom, boom. Good. One more here. Reach La, la, La, and down where you go. All right. Take your arms back by your side. Turn the feet out. Actually roll yourself up. Or if your ball is right next to you, I could have just said grab your ball, but oh well, one little extra added work. I'm placing the ball, holding onto it.

My feet kind of on the inner edges of the arch so that I can go into a full extension and still hold on to it. But it's not what the souls of my feet, right? So it's just, it's about how we had it before, but not quite at the ankles. All right, heads are down, arms are down. Turn the knees out a bit at in relationship to the ball. Squeeze the glutes and for the first couple go high, extending the legs. Squeeze the ball, but do it from the upper inner thigh and bend. Exhale and squeeze and bend and exhale and schoolies.

Ben, last time. Exhale, squeeze and Ben. Now hands behind your head. Curlier head, neck and shoulders up to look right through the diamond shape of the legs. And it's the same exercise. Taking the ball out on the diagonal, press out all one and drag it back in. [inaudible] to the low back is firmly into the mat. Heads oppressing backwards. Three, finding opposition. We're doing five, four and Paul.

One more time and bring it in. Reach forward. Grab the ball, place it to your side. Heads go down, extend the legs up. And from here making let's uh hm. Let's turn the legs out. Make it a small circle. The arms are by your side. You press down a little bit. Don't go so far. Your back starts to come up open and bring it around. Okay, two of those and around. Reverse it. Open and around. Bring it back up and around.

Now Curl your head and controllers up again. You can support your head again and now reach the legs down. Separate up and around. One out of five, same direction, two and three and four. Body doesn't move. There's five rubber sit open. Exhale down. Oh one pick it up. Exhale. Two.

Inhale up three up four. It tension your body. Here's five and bend the knees. Hug your knees to your chest. Yeah. Is it warm tonight or is that just me from there? No one's talking to me like straight up. If you can, you can do the best you can to have them straight. If it's really difficult, you could set probably not the ball but either a towel or your hands underneath, so it's not such a severe angle for your hip flexors or hamstrings. From there, we turn the legs out as much as you can separate them so they separate as far as you can without arching your back or moving your pelvis and bring it back up.

Okay. Another option to do this is to pick your head up. It sometimes makes it a little easier, but still good work and up good. And I've said, Jim, I'm going to have you put your hands under your hips just so that you don't get quite so much hip flexor work. Yup. Yup. And good. Looks good, Helen. Yep. You want a little more? Firm it out and then selects and bring it up out at flex and bring it up.

Just one more out and flex and bring it up and bend your knees. All right. You all know the rollover. Yeah. Um, let's take the ball. We're going to do shorts, fine with it, but we'll start it with this. You take the ball and place it under your sacrum and then pick up the knees, keeping your arms close to you so that the ball you, you kind of have an awareness of the ball. You're not really hugging it, but you're there. You're near it. The exercise is like the roll over, but not quite. So what are you going to do with that frog? You're going to reach the legs out on a diagonal and let's just do a few of these similar to what we did before and bend it back. When you push out.

Imagine pushing your abs into the ball. Hey, there's your anchor. Here's where it changes. You're going to press out on the diagonal. Point the toes, draw the legs overhead. Take your time. Take your time. You still on the ball, you're still on the ball. How close can you bring the legs to you?

Press the back of your arms into the mat and your hands. You're going to peel off the ball, so keep your wrists near it so it doesn't roll away from you. Peel up on the diagonal to your shoulder. Yeah, from there. Don't look around. Just bend your knees towards your shoulders like a frog, so the knees open. You're going to slowly roll down and find the ball. Yeah.

When you find it, just bring the frog shape back over. Flexing the feet again. Did you make it all right? Here we go. Pressing out on the diagonal point the toes. Inhale to fold the legs over and there's no swing and you push into the ball to lift off the ball, to roll up on the diagonal. It's not a rollover position. You're in a high diagonal. Bend the knees to frog. You might adjust the ball.

Now if you think it rolled away, roll boom by bone. Find the ball and bring it back. Happy we go. Press it all one point the chest, bring it over. Taking your time. Here's an exhale to rise up off the ball. Inhale, bend a frog. Exhale, roll down. Keep that shapes. That's real tight. Little Ball.

And then back to the frog or last one. Press it out in Hilton. Fold the legs over, peel it up, up, up, bend to frog and roll down so the heels never come apart on that. All right, you can set the feet down. Keep the ball where it is. Knees are pointed straight ahead and parallel arms are long. Inhale, as you exhale, peel up off the ball into a nice long slant board position so your hips actually leave the ball or maybe they don't actually, but there you've taken pressure off. Inhale, exhale. The chest comes down, roll down into the ball, and if it's positioned at the Sacrum, you might even get a little bit of a tiny bit of an arch, but supported at the bottom. Let's just do one more exhale, peel up, inhale and exhaling down. That was kinda good. All right. Just roll up once more so you can move the ball.

Take it out from underneath you. You're in a slant board and roll down from there. Okay. Adjust it so that you can put your feet on the ball. Now, Helen, you got a little skinny ball down there so you guys to be, you're getting, you can do in the advanced diversion down there and I'm not worried. I'm actually, I'm not worried at all. Okay, so your feet are on the ball. Knees are pretty close together. This time we're going to peel up. Now if you put a ton of pressure on the ball, especially, it's going to be squirrely. Okay? It's going to be squirrely anyway, but here we go. That's one of your tips.

Put the weight in the abdominals. You're peeling up. There's a pretty high cramp factor on this one. So no need to suffer through that. You can come down. Yeah. And then roll down, upper back, middle back. Don't forget to round through the low back.

You can always do this without a ball. Of course, right and up we go. Not quite the same during one leg. So that doesn't really help you. Good. Little less energy in the legs. I know you're going to work there. And down. Next one we'll add a little variation or you just keep with that. Exhale. Roll Up. Bottom. Lift right from here.

Push the ball away a couple inches. Bring it back. Push it away. Tiny. Bring it back. Keep the hips up, marina. Keep those hips up. Kianna's thank you. Bring it back in. Roll down, roll down, roll down. Keep the left leg on the ball. Hug the right knee to your chest. And really we need to hamstring stretch, don't we? So start to straighten it out. I'd be careful. I'm keeping mine bent for a second cause I'm not quite ready. But when I am, I'm gonna allow it to lengthen in the right leg.

And then those of you who want it, you're gonna press on the ball to stretch it out, preparing for something coming, so enjoy the stretch and then dragged the ball back in by bending the left leg. We'll just switch. Put the right foot on, hug the left knee to your chest, extended up. Take your time if it feels real short, breathe in with it. Gradually elongating it and feeling that sense of length by gently pressing the base of the spine downwards and that thinking about the heel going upwards. If you need more or want to just fully stretch out, press into the right likes of the ball lengthens away from you. Drawing the left leg closer to you.

Yeah. Good. All right. From here, we're just gonna rock ourselves up and turn ourselves around onto our hands and knees and we don't really need the balls for a little while so you can get rid of those. All right, little knee stretch for us. The first way I want to do this is to have you sit back on your knees a little bit. By the way. Some of you may like this with a a modification of having the ball there.

It's up to you. Actually, it's this kind of good. Might want to try it. Me, sorry. I would normally use it just as a modification, but yeah, my knees are just a little bit apart there about, yeah, thank you. Okay, so then from there, bring your hands as close to your knees. Every, I can't say an IX specific place, but they're pretty close to your knees. Kind of feels crowded, right? Then from there, I like your position, Marina. We're going to copy you. You're going to scoop the belly, so if you look at the front of your hips, you're opening up that space. You're taking the crease out and opening it by rounding your low back. Then MRT, gently press. What do I want and let your chest come down just a little.

Yeah, that's nice. All right, from here, all you're going to do gang, is you're going to exhale so deeply in that low belly that your knees are going to float off the mat just like two inches. Inhale, think shoulders to hips. Exhale, float in that position. No more crease in the hips and down. Okay. Might need to move your hands closer. Exhale, shoulders down. Scoop and pick it up and, and again. Yeah, Dan. One more time and down. Now we're going to strengthen the front of the quad.

So if you don't have knee issues, you're going to take the ball away. If you do, you're going to do two more of those four. More of those. I mean, otherwise, get rid of the ball. We're going to do the exact same thing. I'm gonna pick up one leg and move it twice. How do you decide? So we scooped the belly. Pretend that ball's there. Float the nice. Pick up the right foot. Inhale, stretch the leg out. Nothing else changes. Exhale, pull that knee to your nose. Do it again. Same side to your nose.

Change legs, shoulders are down, which is the other like out and pull in out and pull in. Foot goes down, knees go down. Relaxed. The tops of the feet to the ground. Yeah. So now you've got those feet relaxed. Walk your hands forward. Just quite a bit. Actually not much else has changed yet. You're going to roll through.

You might have to lift off the kneecaps to get past them into a down stretch like position. Okay, so here, be careful not to sink on your back. It's like you're trying to get away from the floor. The glutes are tight. Take a big inhale, look to the ceiling. Assuming you can do that with taking your chest with you. Exhale, pull the chest back, look down, round your back and go, oh, almost all the way back. Like you're going to sit on that ball. Very lightweight on the hands. We tuck the pelvis, we lift the hips, we roll forward. You can even push the tops of the feet into the ground here.

Keep the knees down and extending the upper back. Good Marina. Push up away from the floor is little. Yeah, exactly. And uh, Xcel to come back. Take a breath in there. Let's do it again. Make it a little more flowing. Now we even how we lift, we transfer some way to the arms, but we pull the shoulders down and exhale to come away. Take away. Out of the arms as soon as possible. Last one up and back from here. Once again, curl the toes under, come up to an upstretched position or pyramid lake and just take the stretch there. Okay. If your heels don't go to the floor, that's okay.

What we're a little more concerned with at the moment is do reach the tailbone up, but links in the whole spine so your ears are kind of lined up with your upper arms. There's a sense of going forward into the floor with the crown of your head rather than just getting away from it. Breathing. All right, we're going to transfer this into a plank position, so just lift up on the toes. First are the heels are high. Roll through to plank. Hopefully we don't have to adjust much there, so you're nice with your body. Okay. Now, so we've done that adjustment. We'll leave that from here. Point the toes to go forward.

Travel a little flex to go back. Point to go forward. That's too much on your wrist. Don't do the flexing point. Only one more. Then lift back up into your hip stretch position. Reach the heels to the floor. No I didn't. No, no. So I'm going to give you another chance to cause we all, we've all adjusted a little on the first one. So let's do it again. Lift the heels. I mean if you have to Jim, you can of course.

But we tried to set up so we don't have to knowing what's coming now. So now we come back to the plank. So ideally we land kind of. Yeah, that's great. If your wrists are up for it, you can point to go forward. Flex to go back twice more forward and back. Imagine doing that from the waist more than the feet. And on that last one, we remain in the flex. We lift the hips to go back, heels down. Freeing tension. All right, let's step the right foot forward.

Let the back knee go to the floor and now you'll adjust all you need to with your hands. And so on. Going for a little hip flexor stretch. So let's, we're, we're encouraging the left hip open. Finally the hands down. If you have a ball and you've got long legs and you want to use that, you can, I think sometimes it's really helpful, you know, to just think, okay, well she just said hip flexor in front of the hip and it just think about where do you feel it. If you only feel it, you know, if you feel in some place, strange, let's talk about it. Um, but sometimes it's just bringing your awareness to something that, oh, rather than what I, Q not going to get too into it, but if you want to go into a little more intensity, you could come up, right. Hands to knees, just make sure it doesn't turn into a low back situation.

It's more of a, the front of the body and the back of the body are stretching. You've got equal weight almost on the front foot as you do the back knee. All right. I'm gonna transition you out of that. I'll get hamstrings later. So just lift up enough to help yourself change legs in a way that feels nice. Okay.

Things I try not to do is that turned out to be right on top of the kneecap of the leg in the back or get myself just in front of it. And then again trying to open this front side. Even if I never come up on it, meaning take my hands off the floor. This is another one too that I think sometimes people know this stretch and they hang out. That's fine, but if you just thought about my knee, your knee is in the ground and and reaching, it's not going to do anything cause the thought of taking the muscles that way. As you then take the pelvis forward and up to find the other end.

Go ahead and take your hands to your knees if you want to come up on it. If it feels okay to you and we'll come out of it carefully. Having a seat so your feet are back to the center with the balls behind your back. Do a little short box here. You don't need the ball for this one for any of them really do. But I was playing with that. I think it's kind of fun.

So I've done knees and feet together. My feet in an imaginary strap anchored down. So instead of having a strap on top, you're thinking to push your heels into the ground. Okay. [inaudible] there we go. I'm trying not to comment on your yawning. It's good. It's just one. I know. Here we go. We need Oxford's.

Good yawning. Mary Bowen says it's great to yawn. I love yawning. Okay, so here we are in round back. Yeah. Let's come back up. I'll give you another idea. Handover or forearm or perform. Press into the ball with your abs. Now you can stop here if you want or you can lengthen your back out. I'm not arching over and I'm going to level.

Then I press the upper ribs down into the ball to re round my body to come up and straighten all the way. Inhale, exhale. You can even push the heels into the ground a little there. That's all right. I think it's a good thing to have the hamstrings kick in a bit. If you end up rolling over the ball, that's a whole different story. Arch or not arch tobacco. Lay back a little. Don't let those ribs go.

Not on this one and round two, come back up. Moving on. Take the arms behind your head and this one makes sure the ball didn't get away from you. Okay. If it did, you're up. You're going to hinge back. No arching whatsoever. No rounding whatsoever. You'll be able to go pretty far cause there's a ball there, right? Chin down, a little gym. It's real good. There you go. Now without arching or rounding, you've deepened your contract, contracted. Get Taller.

It's going to be hard coming off that ball without rounding. Right? Here we go again. Heels into the ground. Take it back, chins down. It gets tempting to look up at the ceiling too much here. Then press into the ball without rounding. Here's the levitation part. All to come off you trembling like I am.

One more time gently pressing your heads back into your hands. Chin down slightly. Debra. Inhale, if you haven't exhale to come on, get tall, are coming off that ball. Excellent. It's the twist. Now skipping one, right? You're going to rotate towards the front. Lean back just like you did a moment ago. Come on, come on. And then X. Well, the liftoff heels into the ground to help keep your back straight and center. Go to the back in your right marina. Come up straight, straight, straight, right on south. One more, more, more.

You can move your legs away so you get there. You Go. Now hanging back. As you rotate that good up, we come and center one more each direction. So you're tall, so it's okay if you're not touching the ball y'all, you know where it is. Inching back. No arching eyes. They're somewhat forward. They're up and center and finishing it and they have flexors get too in the way. You could turn the knees out into a diamond. It's not sure it's a lot easier, but it might help. Okay, good. Get rid of the ball.

Stretch out your left leg. Hold on to your right and hugging as close as you can. That doesn't force around so bad. Maybe a good way is to start really upright and then pick up the foot. You may have to lean back a little to keep your back straight and now it's just hugging three pulses. One to think about your back.

Getting longer though to three, hold the back straight. Try for a straight leg, whether or not you get it, it's okay. Rather keep the back straight. Lovely. Little more. Just bend the knee a little. That's better. It's a lot better. You'll get more work that way. Bring the leg back as close to 90 as you can without falling over. Walked down the leg. Here's the tip.

Bottom leg pushes into the ground and I'm pushing into my hand here, right? That's how I'm doing this. And eventually when you get used to it, you can lighten up on the hands and then you don't have to do that. I stopped with the shoulder blades. No I don't. I'm going to go all the way down. Touch your head. Just bring your arms back over the top. Look here like find the leg low or high.

However you see it close to your hips and walk up. Remember what we said, you're pushing into it. There's the hard part. And then you get to good, and then we go on to three. Stretch it up. Inhale, bring it as close to 90 as you can. Then walk down one, two, reach the like through the ceiling. Reach back, touch your head. Exhale, they'll climb up. Three counts. One, try to lead the leg in place. Two, three, big stretch. You get one more. Hug it in. Two, three. Stretch it up this time. Try not to roll back yet. Bring your leg right up to you. Now walk down. One, two 30 and arms back. Dutch. Bring it right back up. One, two got a little easier. No, no, no, not at all.

Christie, flex the foot. Careful heat by hold over. Gripping, right. That won't feel good. Flex. Look flecked come on. Get you back straighter. Lean forward. Come on. Gorgeous. Really good gym. Okay, Bandon, straight. Other side. I'm getting close. Set up is kind of important here. It always is. You're upright. You have pick up the foot, get as close as you comfortably can and then think my back is longer. My back is longer. I'm going to hold it like that. Stretch the leg up.

Don't worry if it doesn't go to straight. We don't want a straight leg and around back. Bring the leg closer to you. You can roll back a little on this one. Start focusing on your opposition and walk down. One, two. You can really use the leg to help you down. Reach back, touch your head, come back up, find the leg, push the leg into the hands.

If you're having trouble getting up through that first part and then you'll gradually lighten it up straight your back. Bring your leg a little closer without leaning back if you can. Then we walked down. One, two, three, reach back. There's your inhale. Exhale, come back up. One, shoulders back and down. Two, three, bring it in. We'd get one more. Don't we pull full pool and I didn't do my beats in the middle, did I?

That's all right. Let's go one, two, three and reach back and if we come more abs, less arms, more abs, less arms, climb to the top. Can you bring the leg any closer? Flex it. Food. Oh, Mary. Making me jealous. You could grab the foot if you want or can, I'm happy release the foot, but bring the light closer to you as you lean forward a bit if you can and let it go. All right, good. Um, come just down onto your side all the way. Yeah, to follow them. Thanks. All right, so we're all lined up. Ideally toes, hips and so on. Shoulders reach the legs long. You're going to lift from the waist.

So go ahead and feel here to lift the legs up. Okay. And then check out the quads are going to have some tension in it, but there should be relatively loose reach down and up again up to you to balance or not. You could leave this top arm on the ground. It's a real good place to kind of recollect the breath, focusing on the middle. Just do two more. Then from here, take the top leg, reach it a little longer still and lifted one out of eight tooth kind of small because we're reaching longer. Three, four and five.

Six still focusing on center. Seven only eight. Here's eight. Then lower leg, lower leg concept. So Julian, everybody bring your top leg down to about hip height. I guess mine was a little high too. There we go. And now bring the top like uphold and down. Try to make ankle bones, touch each other. Doesn't work for everyone, but it's sort of a good marker. Good. Three more.

And hold three. Can you reach any longer? Not from the legs so much, but where the waist feels longer. What almost feels like it's gonna lift on the bottom. Flex the feet. The feet are not that straining and point kicking the balls flex or together and point. That's good too. Those, all right, come up Ben. No, just switch to the other side. All the way down. Line yourselves up. Remind yourself it's not a leg exercise.

Lift both legs we come up for, and this is another one of those exercises. So every so often. Well I think, I think it's a good one to say where am I feeling it kind of get calm and, and is it in your back? I mean I've heard but we don't want there. We want it more to the side or even the front. So adjust your position by rolling back most likely, or maybe just bring the feet forward if you feel it in your back. Okay. Five or six. Anyone? Six right there. Thank you. We're doing two more. Thank you. Wow.

And on the next one, hold. Reach the top like a little bit longer. Everything's still working. Anywhere you touch, you know you're involved in the front and lift one and long to the center. Out in up three, huh. Okay. The top leg is at the height of your hip, which is not that high and bottom leg up. Squeeze. Hold. And now squeeze up. Hold on. [inaudible].

[inaudible] one more time. Squeeze in a hold. Check the tension of your legs. Kind of relax as much as you possibly can and keep the legs up as the real goal. If you use only what you have to do this, flex your feet, um, point and flex longer. Waist and point. And down we go. All right. Okay. Turning over.

Find your ball and place it around the chest. And I say around the chest because the balls are all slightly different in terms of their height, but I'm using it for the moment as a support. A little bit of support for single leg kick. Elbows are either right below your shoulders, that sort of traditional, if that feels too high, move them forward. If the ball is too big, you can also move it forward more toward the collarbones. Okay, what? What's most of chocolate?

Oh it does. Here we go. So and then this set up first slide your legs down the Mat. Now you may not see it, but there's that. That's your intention. Okay, so the hipbones are kind of flat across the the Mat, all of them. Then I do want the hip bones on the ground. Thank you. So that might mean you need to move the ball forward or even get rid of it.

I do want the hip bones on the ground. Okay. From there, press the ball forward from your chest. So it's just a back extension. It's not necessarily pulling the shoulder blades together, although that might be how it feels. Hover both legs and then take pressure out of the ball by putting it by pushing down into the ground. With your forums, you're going to kick just the right leg kick, kick, straighten, kick, kick, straighten, hold, squeeze the knees together. Chain. If you can change legs, kick, kick, straighten, hold, switch, kick, kick, straighten and kick, kick straight. Keep yourself whole lifted off that ball so you're not moving it around anymore. Boom, dog out and boom, boom out.

Trying to keep those knees as close together. Imagine the sense of having to hold something right between him. Last one and there you go. From here, take the ball and move it slightly more forward. Nice. Yeah, and you, your elbow is going to now widen out a little bit. So essentially you're going to be a little more where you could drape yourself over the ball a little bit. Okay. It's, yeah, it's kind of goalposts, but not that much. So different. Move them down a little bit more.

It's not that far of, Jim's got a real good position going right there. So it's almost where you were then to make this one happen. You've kind of draped over, you're going to push the ball forward literally. Then keeping your elbows on the ground is very similar to that exercise. Deborah, lift your hands and forearms. Excellent.

Push your hands down and round back over the ball. [inaudible] really kinda hanging. Now if it goes to your low back to him and you've go to move the ball forward, that's all. Here we go. Push the ball forward. Just G. It's like your elbows are dragging backwards. Your chest is pushing it forward. You look forward a little bit. Legs are gone the other way. However, the arms up or elbow. Stay on the ground though.

Try to bring a thumbs and hands up by your ears. I'm say forward though. That's the rule. Good, and they're down and you round back over the ball. Good. Nice. Aaron. Here we go again. Press the ball first. It's not about lifting off the ball. You're rolling it forward. As you pull the shoulders down, then you can kind of have, not hover but lift a little more hands.

Can I'm up. Then hover the elbows so the elbows are now floating. Reach the arms up by your ears, stretch them out to straight. They're going up, up, up. You might, if you can't get that and beyond your ears, drop your body down. So there you go. Rebend touch the elbows down and then the hands down. All right, hands by your shoulders, lift up and press back.

[inaudible] coming back down. Let's move the ball out of the way. And we're doing breaststroke, but we're doing it in reverse so it does something. So this one, your hands are like, so you're lying face down, foreheads on the mat that could hover. I suppose your foreheads could hover. Then um, you know what guys? Let's make the balls completely out of the way. Like I won't use them again. You can just push them. You're okay Mary, just so that you, our arms don't hit them when they go straight. Okay. So from where you are, your setup ads are, and you're going to, as best you can, try to keep your elbows on the ground and it's not gonna work for most of us. You're going to slide your hands on the floor down by your hips.

So pick your heads up just for a second. Sorry. It's going this way. So if you're down, it's going like that. And again, don't hurt yourself cause the elbows will probably have to lift it at about that point. All the way down. Calms. Remain facing down. From there you start to lift your head, your upper back, your arms are floating, and take them overhead. Circle them all around to the overhead and then bend them. Bring them back to where they were and set everything down. Okay, so you're going to inhale, slide the hands down the mat until there by your legs. Lift your head, neck and shoulders.

Take those straight arms and circle them around as you lifted all up and then bend them and then you go down. Inhale, reach the arms back. They can flow. However, now that you get the point, lift your head, chest, circle the arms round and bring it back. One more time. Take the arms around. Okay. If the hands come off the ground a little there, don't overdo that. Let's just have her head chest, take the arms over and bring them back by your side. To push up and round back. Let's see. All right, finishing up. Let's come back.

Take the balls in your hands. Have a seat. Oh, I said I wouldn't use me and we don't need them. Hey, I forgot we don't need them. Yeah. [inaudible] can't say that to you when I started late stretch like that. Ben, are you in that sweet spot where you can do, you don't have to go to straight legs, but wherever you do go, you're not moving your body. Okay? I'm going to start us with an open leg rocker so you can stick with that.

If you don't want to do the teaser, let's go back up. Grab Higher, separate the feet about a little wider than hips, and again, you could hang out here. Oh, we're not. Let's roll back and up. Here we go. Inhale back and up and up. Whoa. Over did it. Let's do it again. Rolling back. Exhales up and just keep going. It's okay, right? Let's say we work with it. We don't overstrain. If it starts to feel like you're having a yank or you're really unsure about it today, let's roll a few of them. Get a sense of your mat, get a sense of what surface you're on. Good. And whatever you do, find ease. We're winding down here so I mean not quite, but close.

Find ease in the movement. If you want to do a teaser now, it'd be a good time to think about it. Bring the legs together. Either keep doing OpenLink rocker or roll down. Leave the legs there, touch back with your head. Come back up like there so you can't jerk it like that. You have to either go back to open, like rocker or promise yourself.

You're not going to jerk it like that cause you're more talented. That right. Maybe you don't go all the way down. That's kind of a good way to do it. Or even bend the knees and hold and then when you know you get past that spot, right. That's a good way to do. Your legs are really high. You can lower them a little too. That's, that's part of it. And our last one for everyone. We'll come back up, take your time.

Much better, much better. And then just bend the knees. Let's separate the feet and round four. Hey, good job guys. It's taken a couple of deep breaths here. I know in a position hopefully where you're supported so your hands are resting or your arms are resting on your shins and see if you can feel the inhale all the way down into your low back. Let your body kind of rest for a moment. Yeah, expanding yourself and exhale, letting yourself become just a little more weighted or heavy.

And then let's help ourselves up when you feel ready involving the middle of body. Again, just a little sit comfortably, however that is. If the feet closer or however, and then just just do two long breaths together and then you're on your own. Take a deep breath in. It doesn't have to even huge. It just [inaudible] long, easy where it doesn't feel rushed for you. And again, and with this one, let's just let go whatever we can and feel where we are now. Good. Thanks. Okay. Till next time. Nice to have you guys back.

Comments

Kristi enjoyed the class with the triadball - I do a ball class using different brand of ball - and I find that utilizing the ball brings a different level of challenge to the workout - a sense of more depth. Thanks! always your teaching style.
1 person likes this.
Another great class! Thanks so much Kristi, I love the way you teach......
Thank you Mary and Petra! Making my day over here
Nice session... Will Ton & Michael be leading a session? In this one, I esp loved shortspine, short box series, and reverse breaststroke. Thank you. I absolutely LOVE P.A. Never ever disappoints....rock on!
Yes Jennifer! They will! They came at the end of April and we loved them so much we're already trying to get them back. We will have one of their classes up very soon. I tried to wait to let them debut the Triadball on PA... but I couldn't!
I'm glad you liked what I did. I saved all the really good stuff they did for them to show.
PS Jennifer: Thank you very much for your love of PA... With that kind of encouragement we will do our best to continue to ... "rock on!"
Gotta ask ted to create a "rock on" emo!
1 person likes this.
This was my first class using my new Triadball. I bought it after taking Ton and Michael's class. I love it! It's bigger than my other overball. I think it really made a difference. Great class Kristi:)
So glad to hear it Anne-Marie. Michael and Ton are returning next week and on the "list of things to do" is a Power Triadball class and a Triadball fusion class which will include more stretching etc... I personally can't wait. They are so much fun to be around!
1 person likes this.
Fun class , I enjoyed it, lots of hip stretches for my tight flexors thanks .
Great class- love the triad ball. Thanks Kristi! You rock!
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