Class #76

Straightforward Reformer

40 min - Class
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Description

In this class, Kristi takes both herself and you through an intermediate workout. The workout begins with a short warm-up on the Reformer carriage, followed by a typical, though short, BASI Pilates® intermediate lesson utilizing the block system™. The class flows through the foot and leg work, The Hundred, Coordination, Hip Work series, Short Spine, Knee Stretches, Long Stretch, Kneeling Lunge, Side Overs on the Box, and Pulling Straps. All of our Reformer Classes are designed for our students with Reformers at home. A solid understanding of your equipment is critical for safety and ongoing training with a Pilates Professional is recommended.
What You'll Need: Reformer w/Box

About This Video

Feb 07, 2010
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Transcript

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We begin class with the reformer set on a light spring. Maybe I'm on a balanced body, so I'm going to use one red spring. Um, I'll get to that in just a moment. But for now, standing with your feet apart. As you look down at your feet, you want the outer edges of the feet parallel, feet slightly apart. This can be done in Pilati stance, but I'm doing it more for a check-in of the body. So that's why I have my feet just below the hips. Everything's stacked upon each other. Taking a deep breath in, exhaling to Jess, let go to find ease in the body so that we can move more efficiently and inhale in exhaling Deluca of the day.

Give yourself two more and we'll move. Inhale filling up and exhale, letting go. One more like that and actually I'm going to add a roll down onto the end of that inhale and on the exhale, let your head fall forward. Let your upper back fall forward. Holding that low body. Basically where it is. Just sort of taking inventory, head hangs arms, stay on your back. Inhale XLT, drop deep into the belly to start rolling yourself back up sequentially, placing the hips back over the knees that are ribs back over the hips, the shoulders over the ribs. Inhale and again, this is your place. This is where you decide, what do I need today?

I'll give you the workout, but you're going to decide sorta the energy you put into it, the personality you give to the exercises. Inhale and exhale that all that little stuff can be changed. The intentionality behind what you do can really affect the workout. So let's just go to the edge of the reformer. I affectionately call this the Kat, uh, standing. So again, one spring, pretty close to your reformers. Bend your knees just a little bit. Stack your spine. It's an inhale. We exhale too.

Roll down to find the carriage with our hands thing to place your hands a little wider than your shoulders. And from here, inhale as you reach the spine down into the springs, eventually lengthening the spine. So you're going to get that long spine with the tailbones reaching toward the ceiling. The head hangs, the ribs are still held in in that you're not just letting go there and then exhale to bring the carriage back by curving the spine. We'll leave the hands there, lets go again. As you inhale you start to stretch the spine down, eventually elongating it, trying to push the carriage with the spine, not the arms. And exhale, bring it back again. All in an attempt to make the spines more supple. Inhale, lengthen.

Okay, stretching it. Check your shoulders, keep them down. Exhale, initiate the return from the abdominals and the glutes and again, inhale, reaching down. You might notice you get a little further each time for you. Really flexible people. Don't just go for it. Keep it control and exhale, bring it back, giving ourselves two more. Inhale, let that inhale, facilitate the stretch and exhale brings it back and here it comes. Inhale, stretching it out and enjoy the stretch through the neck, the back of the legs. If it feels good to straighten these do just don't hyper extend them and exhale to come back.

Bringing the carriage all the way to the stopper deep into the belly so that you can easily just roll back up, standing tall. While we're here, let's just reach down and put on medium to heavyweight what you would do for foot and leg work. We're not quite there yet, but I have three red springs on, three full springs sitting at the edge right at the edge. Stretch your legs out over your foot. Bars, foot bars are down, toes, ankles, knees, bolted. Together I have them together. I'm giving myself that sense of wrap, that sense of glute contraction. Arms are reaching forward. Shoulders over hips. Inhale, we exhale to roll down, placing the spines into the mat, letting your heads go down. Arms just right up to the ceiling and inhale, bring the arms forward. Look forward. Exhale, imprinting or passing through the low back as you come forward.

Stretching forward, hold. Inhale and exhale. We hug the mid line drawing energy right down the center of the body as we reach back. Lightly touch and inhale to curl up. Exhale, lift off the shoulder blades. Keep the arms on your back as you continue the energy forward with the abdominals pulling back. Inhale, exhaling down, no rushing, but there's a sense of continuous movement. Exhale to lift off [inaudible] and hold. Inhale, deepen your connections in the power house. Check in with how tense the arms and legs are. Minimize it an app to hitch inhale. Exhale, giving us a two breath pattern as a means for waking up for warming up.

I'm just going to scoot forward a little. You may need to on your carriage do and this'll be the last one to come down. Take the arms out to a tee position. Either leave them there, which is a pretty decent stretch, or if you've got the post behind you or the shoulder blocks if you prefer. Let's hold onto that. Bringing your knees to tabletop. Just getting a little bit more of a warm up here. We're going to the left.

Inhale. As you rotate, keeping those knees lined up. Start the exhale. Feel the obelisk engages you. Draw the legs back to center and to the back. Inhale, check out your knees. They shouldn't be sliding on each other there. Exactly side-by-side. Keep it going. Inhale. So if you're looking at the knees, they're going to stay stacked, one on top of other and exhale center and inhale up to go over.

It's a rotation at the waist and exhale, bring it back and inhale. It's really not about a maximal movement. It's more like keep the shoulders down and feel the length through the waist and back. Let's just do one more to each side. Inhale to the left and exhale to the right or back to center. Sorry, and then inhale to the right and back to center, right, but you feet done just for a moment, just in case you shouldn't be back into the shoulder rest, you're going to want a little space there to finish out the rest of the abs that I'm going to give you for now. Two legs to tabletop, hands on the knees. Find the rep and curl the head. Neck and shoulders up. Double check that your low back is released for double leg stretch. First we go, inhale, hold it there, stretch. And when I say stretch, don't tense the legs and arms to do it. Just lengthen out of the center line.

Exhale, bring it back. Let's do one more slow like that. Inhale, reach, gets your stretch. Get him back there and exhale. Pull it in a little faster and we go. Inhale to exhale and open to close. We get along, we stretch as far as we can, but we don't strain to do it. There's energy, just not straight.

And then there is a difference in that somewhere. And finding stillness. Three more [inaudible]. One more single leg stretch from here outside hand to the leg. Exhaling the other side and change. Want to heat up a little? I won't leave you here long. Keep it strong. Press checking the alignment of your feet, right?

You want those feet to line up as if you could set a little tray on the tops of your feet and it would be balanced. Last four passes a one and two and three and hold it for hands behind your head. Rotate into it. Okay. And I mean shoulder to hip. That's your direction of Paul. Change and change. [inaudible] oh yeah, a lot going on through the center now that's more like it, but don't forget the glutes. Keep them helping you out.

Reach and I'm just excelling each time. Right? Fair and there, uh, one more each way. One and two come back to center. Inhale and exhale. Everything comes down holding on behind the legs. Just rock yourself up. Swivel to the side and set your foot bars up. Um, I have the two step bar. I'm five, four on a good day and I'm putting the high bar up. What you're looking for is, again, we're on medium to heavy resistance. I think mediums usually plenty cause you're really going for more powerhouse than legs when you put the foot bar up. Keep it somewhere around.

So your legs are somewhere around 90 degrees. Give or take. Okay. I'm giving you five foot position, so enjoy, hopefully neutral part spine. Shoulders down. Here we go. Inhale, prepare, start the XL and lengthen off your feet. Take a second. It's always worth it. Find your position out here. Did you drive your low back into the mat? No. Are Your shoulders creeping up as your hair cut in the shoulder, wrist? What do you need? And figure it out now. And here we go. Inhale to come in, start the exhale and press out and inhale.

Allow yourself to go to full extension, right? You want the Co contraction on both sides of the legs so your legs still strong, they feel powerful and the energy can keep traveling up. The body doesn't get cut off at the knees and lets get far more. Reach one and pull in length and two and pull in letting tension go where possible. Come all the way back down. Keeping the connection through the body.

Just slide your feet down to the balls of the feet. So you're about four to six inches apart with the feet. Heels are slightly lifted. It's as if you're about to do a pelvic curl. But no, or off and running. Xcel press out full extension. Inhale and annex. And noticing the stillness in your trunk though it's working hard.

I hope. Give it a shot. And lengthening really initiating from the glutes and the hamstrings. So it's kind of a good idea. I think to touch, to feel, to explore, find out if it's really happening for you and long necks. Starting to feel the legs heating up. I hope a couple more and one more coming down. Now we hit the [inaudible] stance, so just swivel the heels to each other, make sure the tailbone or the base of the spine is still heavy and always double check the back of the ribs, right?

I think we think about the front of the ribs too much in Palladia sometimes and for the moment I'd like you just to think about heaviness through the back and here we go. Exhale the lift offense or at Chow and pull it back. Remind yourself that it's this part of the workout is never just a push and a release back home. Rather you lift off your ankles and pull yourself back. The feet are quite relaxed and pull yourself back lifting off and polling back or can all areas of the body some more than other. Granted one more after this one press and bring it back.

Giving you two more foot positions just from where you were. Move your feet wide. On the bar so they are wider than your hips and we're up on the heels in a little bit of uh, external rotation of the hip. It can be done a little more parallel. I'm going to encourage for now a little external rotation. All right, here we go. Inhale, prepare, exhale, press out long.

I often imagine sometimes even do put a magic circle at the inner thigh or the, you know, around the knee, and so you get the sense that you're not just pushing straightening, but you're also pressing inward as you're straightening, find more routes of resistance. Press and pull in and are hitching elongating across the front of that hip [inaudible]. If you focus on not pressing the feet into the foot bar, rather leave them stuck there and lift off them. You end up one more, you end up working much deeper and much higher and you actually don't probably need as much resistance. Slide your feet down to the balls of the feet. Otherwise it's the same position. Heel, slightly lifted. Inhale, prepare, exhale, we go reach out on and bullying him. It's like an infinity sign of resistance, right?

There's really no stopping and starting, although it might appear that way you reach out and just when I can no longer maximize the energy going that way I start bringing it back out to pull it [inaudible] one more time. All the way out. Bring it on back. Let's go back to the toes or I call it the toes. I really mean the ball of the feet. Um, where my toes can rest on the bar about sits bones. Distance apart. Yeah, press all the way out to straight again. Take a moment to get long in the waist and make sure you're not texting.

We're heading into the calf raises. So we emailed to reach the heels down under the bar. Exhale. Try and initiate from the hamstrings again to rise up and let's go tiny bit quicker. It's up and down and, and so I still think of that magic circle. It just made it a little smaller. So I'm still focusing inward. Even though I'm lifting and lowering, I'm also focusing inward with the contraction and and a full stretch reminding ourselves that always we're working both directions or in opposition.

So we're progressing up and we're reaching down. We're progressing, we're resisting down, giving ourselves about six more. Oh one and stretch. Do. Imagine stretching your waist to get the heels to go onto the bar. Three more. Okay. And one more time.

Stay up high on the double check that you haven't hyper extended the knees and that you've got the glutes working. Allow the right knee to bend pointed straight up to the ceiling. Do not let it come out to the side at all. Maximal flection of the heel without hyperextension so you should still feel glued on the left side. Take a moment, forget about the right side for a moment. Just leave that foot up high like that.

Push with the left until you get it as high as you can on the left foot. And that right leg just drops in your back to straight legs on both change. We'll do one more pass. Slow, not quite as slow. Feel the stretch. Wake that up. Press to lift the right heel until the other like naturally falls in line and switch. So I did that cause I want you to get all the way to straight or both feet fully plantar flex prior to switching. Here we go, it's up end chain up and change [inaudible] and you can even go a tiny bit faster. You don't have to write, just kind of make it feel good. But definitely under control.

Challenge the control by adding a little speed but nothing that throws the integrity and certainly feels a too uncomfortable given you for more here and on and up and two and up and three and four. We've been both knees. Come on down and just rock yourself up. Swivel taking off. I'm taking off at least one spring and I'm actually gonna take it down to one and a half. So for those of you with balance body, uh, reformers or start really even, it would be a full spring and a half spring on Stott and or what? Red and blue maybe on balanced body, some version of that and growths are or something like that. I would say two, two springs. That goes for peak two. Anyway, moving on.

We're going to do the a hundred so make sure you're a little bit away from the shoulder rest. I intentionally am going to start you with straight arms. If you prefer it with bent elbows, go ahead, but I'm just trying to challenge your shoulder stability and I'm leaving the bar up also on purpose cause I know where I'm going. Here we go. Everything. Ready. Inhale, exhale. Curleigh, head, neck and shoulders, reaching long. Set your position. Inhale and exhale, two, three, four, five and you nail Nice, calm bodies in. Exhale. You know what to do. Get deep.

Yeah. [inaudible] [inaudible] full inhale. It's not meant really to be Staccato. Exhale, two, three, four, five. Inhale for a one long inhale and exhale. One long inhale. When you hear us counting, that's just so we can keep track. [inaudible] it's not really meant to be pulse, pulse, pulse, unless you're consciously doing it. Procrastinate, breath, nice collar bones. Two more breath cycles. Inhale and out. Two, three, four, five. An inhale. You got to finish on inhales. I should've said two and a half. This is it.

On this exhale, draw the legs in and lower yourself down. Heading into coordination. The same way again can be done with bent elbows. I'm going to keep them straight. Inhale, prepare. Exhale the Corolla legs open, close. Inhale, bend the knees and then come down. Exhale to go up. Open-Close. Inhale, bend and reach to come down lightly. Touch the head up. You Go. Open, closed. Inhale, bend and down.

Never given up on those arms. You keep reaching those shoulder right toward the hips or foot bar. Open, close, Bend, press, pull, drag and two to go here or reaching up. When you bend the knees, curl a little higher right here. Reach into it. Don't strain too much though. Keep it in the ABS. Last one, open, close, bend and down we go. Right feed on the foot bar.

Push out to the straight. We're keeping the same resistance, but one foot end. Load that leg so that you can then press into it at the other food in there. You have it. Get them all nice and even situate yourself. Bring your legs into the frog position. Shins parallel. Double check. Your hips are down. Okay. Real tempting. You can bring the legs in closer. I don't have a problem with that. Rather, keep the hips down though.

Make it easy on yourself to keep the hips down and then collect through the powerhouse. Totally relax your feet. Promise. You'll get more out of it. Inhale, start the exhale. And as you reach your legs out, you deepen your sense of abdominals or try to inhale, pull them back in. Exhale, reach out and in helpful and exhale, reach and lengthen. Inhale, pool [inaudible]. And this is sense of opposition. The minute you start straining the feet, you're losing energy there. Try and keep the work from above the knee. Reach out and back and out and back.

One more just to take us out there, holding it there, staying in external rotation. If you're not there, checking out. Uh, from here we'll just continue going down. Let the feet come apart, around and up. This down, circles and down. So again, I am asking for neutral pelvis. If you know that your low back is tight, if there's another reason that you need to press your low back in by tucking, go ahead. Um, I think we should all be intending to press the abdominals into the spine, the spine, into the mat. Whether or not you're actually touching the mat, it's a different story. And for debt today or this class, I'd like you to try to leave it neutral so that you're not forcing it and [inaudible] if you'd like a breath pattern, this is the one I usually do is inhale around all the way up and together. Start the exhale, make sure the glutes are helping to pull down. Inhale around and up and exhale. Just one more, you know, and round. Finish that exhale. We change directions, pick up the legs, inhale separate and around.

So you have to watch in your body that you're not rocking around on the hips. If your hamstrings are a little tighter, you won't come up as high. If you know you hyper extend through the legs or you lose energy there, you have to watch it. Maybe also keep it a little smaller. It's all about self inventory when you're working out at home by yourself, right? It's, it's one thing for someone to tell you what to do. It's a whole nother thing for you to participate in the action beyond just, okay, rather look for what you can get out of it.

Maximizing it, not just an intensity all the time, but in quality two more. Still keeping the legs relatively low, provided you could keep the back of the ribs down. If that's tough, just bring the legs higher. Okay. From here, take the legs out just a quick second. Look at your feet. When you separate the feet, imagine there were on a a, I don't know, a shelf that you're separating the feet and they stay on the exact same level that they started. Right. Then the same is true when you come home, the temptation is going to be to raise them or lower them, but if you can imagine the shelf or even just watch the legs, they don't go down, they don't go up. They stay on that shelf and I'm pretty sure you'll feel that even on the first one. Go. Again, I hope I'm wide and minimize. How much strength do you put into the legs as a whole? And My quads are totally relaxed to close and reach out. Being mindful of the spine. Exhale. Oh, I think I might have pushed on that one.

That was too easy and open and exhale. Almost relaxing the legs, sliding the legs on that plane. It's a bit deceiving. You think you're not doing it sometimes because it looks almost level. If you pull down [inaudible] keep it where it started and you'll be surprised. Maybe, I don't know. Maybe you always do it that way.

I only discovered that a few years ago after doing it forever. Now it's like the hardest thing I do. Let's give us one more check. Your knees don't lose tension. They're heavy. Tailbones heavy ribs Wallah. Okay. Can I do she going to do shorts? Bine a this version of it. If you've not seen Bessie's version. And actually I think a lot of people do it this way, at least in prep if not all the time. But uh, maybe watch the first one and then rewind it and come back. Uh, so it's going to go starting from frog. You know, the drill. Exhale to reach the legs out. Same Springs. By the way.

Inhaling, I'm an external rotation, folding the legs over until we reached the stopper so I did not come off. Uh, right away keeping the carriage. Absolutely still did. We put our head rest down. Okay. Exhale. Peel up right here. You should feel a little hamstring, a little glute as you roll up to that ending position. Nice and high, nice and supported through the middle. Inhale, do not change your back at all. As you bend the knees, aim them toward the shoulder. Rest on your exhale.

Start to press the spine into the mat. Primary. The ball basically keeps its shape as you roll down as much as you can. When you can go no further, allow the a in your hips are still up. Maybe as high as minor. Allow the hips to drop with more. That means my leg stretched out a little, not a lot.

I don't want straight legs pulling from here. From this point, we flex our feet and then continue pressing the base of the spine down. As you draw the legs over Walla, you're back to the beginning. Shouldn't have had to change much there. Okay? If you're not sure, watch again. We definitely don't want you turning your head while in the midst of doing it, okay? So make sure you're relatively comfortable with the idea of it. Uh, if it's different from how you normally do it, all right, here we go. Exhale, pressing district. Keep the hamstrings involved even though they're stretching here. Inhale, as we come all the way over weight to feel and hear that carriage.

Do not come off the carriage at all. As you exhale to peel up, hamstrings are are working here. Inhale, pull the knees toward the shoulder. Rest. Xcel. Start Rolling the ball down the shape down when you can no longer do it without pulling on the carriage. Allow the hips to go a little bit more or the knees to come open just a bit. Flex the feet, pull the whole position over. Knees don't change. Not even a little bit, and you're back where you started. All right. Exhale, press out. Inhale, folding over.

Exhale to reach out to climb up. No moving the carriage on this part. Inhale, bend to frog. Exhale, start imprinting the back into the mat as much as possible. Flex the feet. Inhale, press the sacred men. Draw the legs over in that position. One more time. Exhale, press out. Inhale to fold over. Exhale to peel up. Take your time. If I always forget, I'm probably shorter than a lot people doing this on my timing and exhaling to take it down. Flex the feet.

Sacrum is the next thing to come down and you're back to the beginning. All right. Taking uh, one leg both legs out to straight. Then Ben, one leg. Take the free strap off as you've been the leg that's still in the strap. You should be able to reach for your foot bar. Take it off and place them back on your pigs.

All right, coming on up. Nice and smooth. Taking it down. Uh, you could leave it on one and a half, but I'm going to encourage you to, uh, at this level, go down to one spring. Yep. One spring or one. And if you have a light, real light spring, you could use that as well. I'll also of course depends on how many times you've done it in size. So basically if I had to say you want it to be, um, medium, medium, or medium to light, actually resistance. So we'll do just a little round back, flat back.

That's my feet are at the shoulder rest, sitting back on the heels, shoulders down, scoop the belly to tuck under looking down and we go inhale, press and making that hinge coming from around or above the waist, not the hip joint and [inaudible] stillness everywhere else. Let's go in and in one more time in and hold. Then release the tailbone so that you are back into a neutral spine. Avoid over extending, rather hold the abs flat back. Here we go. Inhale and, and eyes up a bit. Shoulders down, hands. Pretty relaxed.

Yeah. Stillness through the body. And, and one more. And in from here, just roundup. Shift your weight forward, coming up to up stretch one, what we often call the pyramid. So you our heels up partway, not super high. Finding the long line of your back, lining up the arms, right with your ears, rib cages in and long, and just a small movement for now. Inhale, push back.

Exhale, bring it in and back to bring it in. Just one more. Keeping your feet here. Press out until you come into a plank. And let me say that differently. You're in a pyramid now. As you push the feet, also adjust the upper body so that you come into a pushup position in your chest is aimed toward the bar. You did not glide back from there. We're just going to travel forward in the long stretch, trying to come all the way to the stop or it's going to feel different if you're used to doing it, the headrest and then exhale, depressed back.

Let's inhale. It's as if the shoulder blades are being reaching down your back and exhale as you push out. Yep. And inhale and exhale. Being mindful of that shoulder girdle, no collapsing and [inaudible] and okay, last one here. Bring it all the way to the stopper. Lift yourself back up into the f stretch and let's go into just a few of elephants. So we've lowered the heels, reached through the heels so that you could lift the toes.

You don't have to leave it like that, but you could hug the midlines. So there's a sense of squeezing through the inner thighs and of course the back is long. Again, in reality there is a bit of curve in the lumbar spine. Um, I've, we've deliberately taken out some of the Chi, um, thoracic flection that you, you probably used to doing. So enjoy the stretch to the shoulders and let's focus on length. Here we go. Inhale, press back. Exhale. I often do this.

Um, Meredith and I work out and we think about how could we do this if we had no springs or how could we do elephant without the reformer? And the idea being that you pull up so deep into the abdominals that the spring really does all the work in a way. Yeah. One more and good down we can. Let's come back down to kneeling. Lower the foot bar. If you have it up high and with one foot at the shoulder, wrist still place the other foot up on the bar and come into a hip flexor stretch where the attempt is to stretch in the front of your body by bringing the pubic bone with the sternum as it rises.

Inhaling and just exhaling. But again, like we've always say, everything is reaching forward and up. You've got to have opposition to that as well. So there's a sense of reaching almost down and back with the knee or the foot or the Femur, whatever, however you want to look at it. From here. Inhale on your exhale, you can straighten up front leg, just reaching out, keeping the flat back or coming to a flat back. Even if you don't straighten the leg all the way, right, it's not going to be any better to be here cause that doesn't do anything.

Rather allow the knee to be bent if it needs to be in order to get a flat back and then play with whether or not you can straighten it and pray one more time and then bring it all the way back in and we changed sides. Doing what you can to find your hips level. Take a moment while on the stopper and attempt to almost bring I almost tuck really. It won't appear that way, but that's a sensation. Once you're held in to the stopper and you've got your position, you can keep the body pretty much forward as you press the leg back. Now again, depending on how tall you are, you may have had to start with the leg or the carriage off the stopper.

That's fine. Point being that you don't want to sink into your low back lifted, taking the deep breath and then as you start to head into the hamstring on the forward leg, look for the flat back. I'm going to be a little more gentle on this side for reasons I will not go into, but it was not pretty length in your back lifting your chest. Oh, there we go. I'm nice. Check in you next. Taking that deep breath and bring it in. Okay. It's time. Go find your sh your box. Yeah.

Let's go ahead and put the show a foot bars down actually and then go find the box. We're going to start with um, side overs on the box. For most of most people, I'd say any taller than five, four and really depends on leg length and so on. But lot of people are gonna feel more comfortable with the short box covering the shoulder rest. I am not one of them, so I'm going in front of the shoulder rest because it suits me better. Now we're um, doing side over so we don't need to have the carriage move, so let's just lock it down with most or all of your springs kicking up your foot strap place to fit underneath it and sitting on the side of your hip.

So I think set up is everything. If you've taken any of my classes, you know that I spend a lot of time talking about it. So put your hand on your head rest and then shoot energy out the crown of your head. So you're almost pressing into this headrest. Also reach through the foot. So you're really going both ways. Look down your body and make sure that you are in fact in a straight line in your hips are stacked from that point with energy going at both ends. You should be able to, and I'm going to actually do it now.

Instead of quit talking about it, you should be able to pick up your hand. No problem and nothing else move. So that's our hope from here. We inhale as we go down. Exhale as you come up and Linkedin, finding the straight lines on both sides. Don't come up this far. You don't need that rest. Stop there where it's nice and hard. Inhale out. Start the exhale. You want to feel that top side and reach and Ho.

Yeah. [inaudible] use your breath. [inaudible] [inaudible] one more. And of course we exit gracefully. I'm going to help ourselves up. Oh, I know you want to do that stretch, but we got things to do. Switch sides. So you're sitting again on the side of your hip. It'd be tempting to sit up right on top of it, but it won't be as efficient in terms of targeting that oblique muscles to sit on the side and on the headrest. I'm gonna switch this around.

All right. And then reach the hips. So it's as if the waist is reaching through the strap and the ribs in up or reaching long. Everything connected in the middle, so much so that you should be able to take your hands off and nothing else moves. We go inhaling down, exhaling up and, and remember it never really stops though. It appears to. I am still trying to get longer and inhale one more please exit gracefully and come on. Okay. Taking your boxes and turning them to a long box for pulling straps. So you're going to adjust your springs back down to a lighter spring.

One full spring is plenty. Another one I often do with little to no springs, just for fun, just to see how much I can make it work without a lot of resistance. But resistance is good too. So again, I have one red spring on the line at the boxwoods length-wise on this side of the shoulder rest and even on your carriage. And then my face down, placing your chest basically right at the edge, not right at the edge, right over a little bit over. Okay. Taking hold of your straps. If you have a leather straps, you're not going to need to do what I'm going to do, which is wrap. It's plenty to grip onto. Um, if you have ropes, I think it is an easier time on the hands.

Therefore you're paying attention to them less. If you rap, grab up a little bit higher, keeping me handles outside of the frame and then go through that set up that you know you need to do. Starting with shoulders down while you're kinda holding the frame. So you can do that without resistance. Then once you've done that, of course, draw the abdominals in to lengthen your back. Legs are energized, right? You need those hamstrings and glutes to help you on just about everything and probably everything. All right. Palms are facing each other. Shoulders draw down and we continue. The motion. Exhaling, drawing the arms right up alongside the back and inhale as your arms go forward.

We can let the chest lower a little. Keep the shoulders on your back. Don't have to recommit to that. And exhale. Minimize the tension in the hands as much as you can. Continue reaching. Get those arms close to you and checkout. Once you start getting high, do you turn the hand? I hope not. They should still be facing each other the whole time.

Super important. Let's work the rotator cuff in a meaningful way. Yeah, recommitted the abdominals. Couple more here. Pull, pull, pull, hugging and close. Shoulderblades first reaching through the back of the head, neck, upper back. And two more. Sending that sternum. Bard. And one more time opening up these collarbones. The sense of almost gonna. Clap those hands behind you. Almost being the operative word. And down.

We unwrap the hands. Replace them on your strap. I mean on your posts. Stepping off the side of your reformer. And let's finish like we started recollecting. Inhale feet together or apart. I'm going to starting the same way we did, which was apart. Exhale, we round down and this is where you go. All right. Hi Chapter. Checked in with the body, ready to go. Inhale, exhale, rolling up. If there's more you need, and there may be, add it in.

Take a moment while you're here and just let go. Does that mean you're going to be super relaxed? But sometimes if there's built up tension and we let it go, we can move more efficiently outside of our studios. Inhale and exhale. And as you stand tall, take one deep breath, reaching out, bring back some energy. Or if you don't want any energy, just make it nice and easy so you can stay calm and let it go and you are done. Thank you.

Comments

This was a real solid class! Thank you!
I really enjoyed your class this morning. Thanks! Great cueing on intentions and quality. It's easy to forget at home.
I love the purity of the movement!
Thank you!
1 person likes this.
More and more Kristi fan! I will try this class with my intermediate students this week! Thanks for sharing! :)
Thank you Frederico! I hope your class went well too!
1 person likes this.
Great class as always-thank you!
Kathy S
One of my favorite classes. I’m doing reformer at home alone. Great cues pace and challenge!
Tracey R
Love this class and starting with some ab focus before footwork really changed how much energy I put into the work. Thank you so much Kristi!

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