Class #3536

Build A Better Backside

45 min - Class
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Description

We often forget about the backside of our bodies, so this Wunda Chair workout by Erika Quest is focused on working the posterior chain. She starts with a warm-up on a light spring setting and then amps it up with a heavier load. She also uses the Triadball to challenge your balance in many different positions.
What You'll Need: Wunda Chair, Wunda Chair Handles, Triadball

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Alright, you guys ready? I am. I am working out with you and we have this beautiful piece of equipment and a prop to work with. We're working on the chair here today. This is a combo chair so it has a split pedal. We'll be working on two springs settings. One's relatively light, will be there for the good majority of the first part of the session and then we're going to amp it up, make the weight heavier and then bring it back down to finish. This session is inspired of from me as something that I do on a regular basis.

I call it build a better backside and our backside is not just about the butt. That's all great and well and fine, but I don't know about you. I do not get up in the morning and think that I'm going to walk backwards today, so I oftentimes forget about what's going on back there unless I'm looking in the mirror, right? So we are going to work on our entire posterior chain. That's the theme. We'll get it all done with the chair and with the small ball.

We're going to start by lying down. If you need a mat, grab a mat, nobody's going to judge you. Be Comfortable. I'm going to stay without a mat. And so you know I have one spring, one heavy spring on the third run up on this Combo chair. So I would say it's relatively light for whatever chair that you happen to be working with. You'll need the small stability ball at some point in time, just not with the warmup. So go ahead and face your pedal, place your feet up onto the pedal and lie down. And here's the deal team. There might be micro adjustments that you need to make going through this.

And that's okay. Meaning you might need to feel like you need to Shimmy a little closer to the pedal. You might need to Shimmy yourself away. It's all contingent upon what your knees, what your ankles, and what your hips can handle as far as flection is concerned. So as you're on the floor right now, the first thing I want you to think about, because this is build a better backside, is what's happening on the back of your body. Notice the curvature of your spine. Notice how your chest feels.

Are Your shoulders open? Is your chest opening towards the ceiling and notice the heaviness of the arms on the floor. Take a deep drink of air in and on an exhale, begin to press the pedal down and this is going to be your test repetition. I can already tell that I need to move back a little bit so that I can get the pedal all the way down to the base of the chair. Give yourself a moment here to check in and put some pressure down through those feet and notice where you're at and then slowly allow that pedal to lift back up. I'm going to move out just a titch more.

Inhale here and try it again with me. Exhale as you press down, so just starting to engage with the backs of those legs, the hamstrings primarily. Inhale and exhale as you press. Don't let that core just hang out. It's still engaged, believe it or not, even though you're lying on the ground, you can get the stability core, all of those muscles that really support your spine fired up. Give me one more here. That'll get us to about five or six of these and you're going to keep that pedal down. So exhale as you press down, keep that pedal down.

Notice what's happening through your feet. Take a nice drink of air in, and then exhale. Tip the pubic bone in towards the navel. Roll your spine up into a mobility bridge or a pelvic curl. Hey, everybody's favorite. Inhale here at the top and exhale as you articulate that spine. Oh all the way down, and the tailbone goes heavy and you lift that pedal back up. Inhale. Let's do that again. Exhale, engage the hamstrings.

Connect with the back of the legs. Connect with the back of your spine with articulating, feeling each and every bone. Peel up off the floor to the best of your ability. No tension in the neck at the top as you exhale. Then roll the spine. Oh, all the way down. If you're getting some cramping in the backs of the legs, congratulations, and I'm sorry, all at the same time. Press down. Inhale here. Exhale again. Roll it up.

Just warming up that spine, feeling how your spine is moving today, right? Every day we wake up with something a little bit different going on in the body and that's okay. I see this all the time, but we're not made by Mattel, right? So none of us are dolls or barbies or GI joes. Our balance changes daily, minute to minute, moment to mote, moment to moment, depending on how much we slept the night before. So please don't judge yourself. Good. You're going to give me one more of these, so press that pedal down, rural yourself up. Woo.

Keep that pedal down by pushing into the feed. Hold here and take some hip dips. Drop one hip down and press it back up. Taking a bit of rotation here. Also giving some opportunity for one leg to take a little bit more through the back of that leg by losing connection on the other. Good. Down and up here and lifting and down and up.

You've got two more check in what's happening with your feet. I have an old right ankle sprain. I can feel some weird things going on there, but I'm going to get through it and rolling all the way down. Lifting the pedal up and giving the legs a little bit of a break. Put your heels up onto that pedal. Take your arms up to the ceiling, palms face towards one another. Let's do a little shoulder mobility here. As you inhale, try and touch the ceiling with the fingertips. Exhale, bring the shoulders back down. So we call this telescoping, right, so you're protracting the shoulders forward as you try and touch the ceiling and you're bringing and them back down to the floor.

Just seeing how that shoulder girdle feels and that floor, the firmness of the flora mat if you're on a mat, really gives you a nice sense of feedback. It's a great way to feel what's happening in the back of the body of one shoulder feels a little bit more crunchy or cracky than the other and come all the way down. You're going to give me two more of these as you lift and reach and return. And the last one here is you lift down, reach, touch that ceiling and bring yourself back down. Now keep the shoulders down against the floor as you inhale, open out to the tee with the arms just hovering the arms above the floor.

Exhale as you reach the hands back up to the ceiling. Make this feel really active. As you inhale, reach away through nice thick air and exhale. Press that nice thick air in between the palms of the hands. I want you to visualize that air is something very, very thick. You guys know I'm a foodie. If you take my classes, so can the air be marshmallow cream or can the air be mashed potatoes?

Inhale, are you a sweet or are you a savory? I'm a little bit of both. I'll have to admit and exhale back to the ceiling. Let's take one more of these. As you inhale, open. Exhale. As you come all the way back up. Great job.

Now take the arms back out to the tee and let the backs of the hands rest on the floor. Feel the openness of the chest. Feel the backs on the arms resting on the ground, leave the feet up on the foot bar. And all I want you to do is just tip the knees from side to side here, just taking a little bit of rotation through the spine. You don't need to make it too aggressive with your breath right now. Just breathe nice and easy and just get those joints and the spines to twit joint joints of the spines cause you have two of them. I'm kidding.

You only have one swine. Get the joints of your spine to move and mobilize in rotation. It's important to check in on all three planes of motion to the best of your ability in every session that you do. And also if you can accomplish a little bit of that in the warmup. That's awesome.

Give me one more here and then we're going to move on to some more spine mobility and some core integration with some lower body as well. So from here we're going to bring the ball into the equation. And as I mentioned, micro-adjustments here are going to have to happen. So this is small stability ball. We're working with about a 10 inch smallest ability stability ball here.

You can blow up it up as much as you'd like. It's really a personal preference is going to come into your spine and here's the deal. The lower down you are to the tailbone, the more cantilevered your spine is going to be back off of the ball and that may not be the greatest position for you. You're gonna risk a little bit of the lower back here and this is not a lower back exercise so I'm going to encourage you to move the ball up the spine closer to the middle back region. And again, micro adjustments here are fine. Place the heels up onto your foot, pedal about hip distance apart. Parallel the pedal is going to press again all the way down.

Maybe we'll go actually onto the balls of the feet. And if your floor is a little bit slippery here, you may want to use some grip, but give yourself a test and make sure that you can get that pedal all the way down to the base of the chair. And then all the way back up from here, we're going to add on a little shoulder mobility along with some spine mobility and some hamstrings. So from here you're going to inhale, take the arms back as you press the pedal to get down, negotiate their balance. Here you can see this is not easy and reach the arms back forward and lift the pedal back up. Good. Do it again. As you inhale, take the arms back, get the pedal down, reach, mobilize the spine, open the chest, and then come back forward. Remember, we are working on the backs of the legs right now. As you inhale while we're working on a whole lot of stuff, truth be told and exhale come forward. But the hamstrings are working here. We've retained one, a lighter spring here just for ease. That's four.

You're going to give me five, no tension in the neck. And one more inhale. As you reach back, mobilizing the shoulders, open the chest and reach towards the pedal reverse. Take those arms out to the tee, press the pedal down, get there, and then exhale. Lift the pedal as the arms come back forward and do it again. Inhale as you open the heart center, reach to the years, negotiate that balance. Balance is very important to train in multiple body positions and you are doing that right now. Believe it or not, using different biofeedback of the stability ball behind you.

So congratulations. This is a negotiation of where you are at in space or where your center of gravity is. You have one more. Please inhale as you press the pedal down, reach the arms around and exhale, come back forward. Let's change the movement pattern, shall we? The pedal will not be coming all the way down to the base of the chair.

Now it will be a smaller range of motion. You can negotiate the foot position that you like. Maybe you want to stay on the soles of the feet. Maybe you want to bring the heels up cause as I, um, as I said a moment ago, the pedal will not come all the way down. First things first, take an inhale, stretch back over the ball as much or as little as you'd like. On an exhale, engage those abs. Press the pedal down about four to five inches. Engaging the backs of those legs. Inhale, lift the pedal length and back. Not a big range of motion. Exhale, but there you specific into the backs of those legs and you're also working that superficial abdominal wall.

So you're getting some nice trunk or core integration here, keeping the head supported by the hands and the hands supported by the head. So I want you to really focus on as you're doing this, can you not pull the head forward with the hands, rather pull the head back into the hands to fire up the upper middle back. Give me two more of these. Please. Inhale and exhale, blow out and the lifts. And if you're drifting a little bit, that's okay. You can always adjust and exhale as you lift.

Let's take this into a bit of rotation and I'm going to slide back against my stability ball just a little bit. Inhale, same movement pattern. You're just going to exhale, lift and rotate over to the opposite hip. Inhale and exhale as you go to the other side. So we're activating the slings not only on the front, but on the back of the body, right? So we have those oblique slings. They're really important for activities of daily life for pretty much everything we do. But also anything sports specific. If you're an athlete, whether you're a tennis player, a golfer, a surfer, we're just picking up a child or a grand baby.

All of these muscles of our core or our trunk are increasingly important to keep strong. And last one here. Inhale, make it your best one. And exhale, lift and rotate. Fantastic job. The feet come off of that foot pedal. Bring yourself up to the seated position. You'll need this again, but not for a little while. So go ahead and place it right next to the chair. You're going to.

Don't let it roll away. Now sit in a nice wide stance facing the chair. The palms of the hands come onto the wider parts of the foot pedal. Again, this is build a better backside. So I want you to Dorsiflex the feet. Draw the toes to the knees. Can you straighten your knees if you can't? No judgment. You can go ahead and softly bend them.

Maybe you need to sit up on a box up to you. Take an inhale here on an exhale, we're gonna do a little bit of rolling back hollowing and scooping that belly and then finding pressure into the palms of the hands, firing up the lats and the back of the body. Inhale as you lift, engaging that deep layer of abdominals. Exhale the posterior wall as you press down and inhale, stack that spine up nice and tall and exhale as you progressed and inhale as you live. Give me two more of these and exhale and inhale up. Can you get taller each time? Exhale with your length of your spine. That sense of the axial elongation, that just means it's a fancy way for saying sitting up nice and tall. All right, so you did great here, but would you like to challenge yourself? If so, bring your feet up onto the center parts of the chair.

Notice that feedback that you get through the feet. Replace the hands where you had them before on the wide parts of the pedal. Squeeze those inner thighs together, straight. Mount the knees. Inhale and exhale. Take that same movement pattern and inhale here, and exhale, press it down again, engaging through the lats, the backs of those arms, and exhale, and that was three. So let's take it to five. So we'll get 10 total, five on the floor with the legs and five in the pike position. Good.

Last one here. As you exhale, press it down and inhale, lift back up. Great job. We're going to turn to the side, so I'm going to ask you to lie down onto your side. Again, micro-adjustments here, going to take your time, arm and place it on top of the pedal. Now you're going to notice my head's going to be down on the ground. If this feels weird to you, you can absolutely cradle the head in the hand, but I'm going to lift my head and just a moment along with my legs. So we're going to take a side lift with a bicep curl. So it looks like this. Come with me. Exhale, lift those legs up, find your balance on your side body and pull down and inhale as you lower the legs and lift that arm. Notice where your arm is at.

You don't want to have it too far back. You want to have it slightly in your peripheral vision. Exhale, you pull down. Again, it's not a big range of motion with the arms and are with the arm and that's okay. Inhale and exhale, engaging that lateral line of the body, the upper lateral line specifically, but be careful team because that bottom lateral line is going to want a slouch and we don't want that. We want to have engagement through that bottom lateral line. So that little curvature underneath your waist. On that bottom side is what I'm talking about. Lift and lower.

You have two more. As you exhale, if you're pulling yourself too close to the base of the chair, it's alright. Micro adjustments are okay and last one, and of course we have the other side to do, but before that, let's take some swan on the floor. So just go ahead and flip over to your belly and bring the heels of the hands up onto the wider parts of your foot bar. Yeah, the forehead is down. You're getting a beautiful stretch through the shoulders. You're connecting with the upper middle back here.

The legs can be out a little wider. They can be narrow. Whatever feels good for your lower back. From here, I'd like for you to engage your abdominals and to do that, please press your pubic bone slightly into the floor, but not so much that you grip your glutes. Just engage the low belly and on an exhale or on an inhale, you're going to begin to float the head and gauge the backs of the arms. Press that pedal down and come into a nice big beautiful back extension, lowering down and lifting the pedal back up nice and controlled and try it again and lifting up. Now, back extension is not my strong suit, but it's something that I really need to work on big time. Part of our postural muscles are deep longitudinal system of our core.

This is what keeps us standing upright as we age. This is what keeps us not bending over and hunching over our phones, which we always have those devices in our hands. So this is a really critical area of the body to keep strong and Miss Swan on the floor is one of the best ways for me to really find my thoracic or my upper middle back sensors and not use my lower back. Give me two more team and then we're going to turn to the other side. Think of lengthening out through the top of the crown of the head as if you had a turtleneck on and you're growing out of it and you're pressing down.

And last one here and exhale or inhale, just breathe, right? That's the whole point. And then lowering all the way down, I'm going to turn away from you, but we're doing the same thing that we did on the other side. So placing your top arm on the foot bar. Again, setting yourself up onto your hip, stacking those hips. Don't let the interior lateral line slouch. Reach the top hip away, engaging that top arm and lifting the legs up into a side bend. Inhale. So we got lateral flection, lateral line of the core are working right now.

BICEP engagement on that upper arm on the pedal a little bit. Yes. And inhale. And the temptation here for me is going to be to roll that top hip back. And so I want you to be really cautious that you don't do that. Exhale as you lift and inhale as you lower, you got three more lifting. My legs are getting shaky. My goodness.

This must be whole body integrated movement too. And we should be about even after this last one here. You did fantastic. So go ahead and turn over onto your back. We're gonna adjust the weight to a little bit of a heavier weight now and we're going to split the pedal. So for this weight, I'm going to drop it down to one heavy spring on the low rung and the other heavy spring on the low rung. This means I have two springs loaded and I can now take the doubt out.

So I have two pedals. Okay, the ball's going to come into play in just a moment, but I know what you're thinking because I'm a mind reader and you're like, Erica, when are we going to do planking work? It's coming right now. Okay, so the first thing I'd like for you to do is come on to all fours so you're down on your knees, your knees are relatively stacked above your hips, your heels of the hands are on the wider parts of your pedals, and you're going to press these pedals all the way down to the base of the chair. Now take a look at my wrists. My fingertips are translating, load through them, down towards the floor, and I'm slightly pressing down into my fingers and through the pinky finger primarily so that my risks are not really deeply flexed here. Now, if this is all you can do, I'd like for you to just start by lifting one pedal and lowering and lifting the other pedal and lowering. That's perfectly fine to stay right here. If you're willing and you want to and it's your day and you're ready for a moment, you're going to walk out into a plank position with me. You're going to be about hip distance apart to start with those feet. Then you're gonna make a pizza slice. So a little Palladio's V or a V position.

Why? Well, I'll show you. Are you going to take a tree pose? And as you rotate your tree pose, your pedals going to lift and you're going to take a thread the needle, and you're going to come back down into your tree pose, negotiating, and you slide that leg back out. Let's try the other side coming up. Rotate. Whew. Allow that pedal to lift. And that's the technical term. Woo. For a while, this side is really different than the other side. Remember we've got a strong side, we've got a smart side.

Our smart side is our negotiating side and it's been a little lazy, right? So we got a fire that smartsite up and say, come on, figure out where you are at in space and let's try it again. Here's my smart side right here. And reach thread. Come through church Ibos get it together, Erica and all the way out. Come on team. You got two more with me coming in and quality versus quantity and come out and sliding out one more and then we'll get off those wrists for a moment.

Come through, reaching back into tree pose, negotiate it and all the way down. Great job. Lower those knees down safely. Lift your pedals back up, give those wrists a little love and pick up your stability ball. We're going to move into her reverse position and this stability ball is coming back into the equation. Remember how we talked about balance in multiple? This is again a biofeedback tool. It's going to challenge your proprioception where you're at in space, so place it down onto the floor.

I suppose the best way to get into this is to really just pop up and sit relatively close to the base of the chair. I'm going to start here and we'll see if I'm correctly positioned. If not, we'll move a little bit. Place the hands onto those pedals and I can already say in my own body, I can feel that I need to move. Just a touch to the left. So a little micro adjustment here and that was maybe a quarter of an inch team. So do what you need to do to figure it out. Feet are pointed north, south, here, heels. The hands are up on those pedals back behind you.

You're sitting up nice and tall again. Remember, I want you to really focus on not squishing this ball, right? Can you lift up and float and just sit lightly on top of it as if it was a hard boiled egg. I told you I was a foodie. Here we go. TRICEP presses. Take it down. Push and pull it up. Inhale and exhale. Press. As you focus on the backs of the arms, can you also connect through those heels?

Can you also connect through that spine and live taller and feel that sense of your torso just lightly floating up on top of your waist as if your rib cage was a lampshade and your spinal column was the pole of that lamp. Good. Give me three more here, team and then we're going to start to change the contact points on the floor, meaning your legs last too good and you got one more one. Now from here, come back up and as you press down with one arm, you're going to lift the opposite leg up and then come back and switch your sides and notice, whoa, what's different from side to side, right? You have a sphere underneath you. You are challenging your cog, your center of gravity, your appropriate assumption, your balance, where you are at in space. All of this means something. Inhale and exhale as you negotiate where you're at. Inhale, good. Exhale as you press.

Let's do two more one on each side so that we're even and exhale and inhaling back up and exhale, great job. Come back up now safely let go of those hands and come down onto the floor with the ball. You are all done with this stability ball so you can go ahead and place it to the side. You won't need it anymore. But what we do need is to put the pedal back together and increase our weight because we're coming up to standing. All right, so we've come to standing and you need to increase your weight and make your pedal pedal again. So I have placed my dowel back into the split pedal and I have two springs on.

One is a heavy spring for the second cactus from the top and one is a heavy spring all the way at the top. Okay, so pretty heavy weight here. We're going to be doing some step ups, some pull ups, so you'll need heavier weight if you want to lighten it up for the challenge. That's completely up to you. I'm just trying to keep things easy as far as spring tension is concerned and changing things up. So from here you have your handles on because we might be doing some tricep presses.

I would like for you to safely press your pedal all the way down to the base of the chair safety-wise. Remember this is a lot of weight so you need to make sure that you're safe about loading into this. You're going to. Then once you get to the base of the chair, step your other foot up onto the chair. This is your stability leg. Your beginning with one leg up, one leg on that pedal heel is slightly elevated. Watch your alignment here. I'm on a shorter base of chair so my toes might want to be slightly forward of that back edge.

That's fine for a gauge as well as safety to just get yourself started with this. This is a really nice way to do step ups. Place your hands onto the inside or the forward part of your handles if you will. I want you to drive down, press down through that heel that's on the top of the chair. Get the glute engaged and inhaled. Decelerate down, hovering that pedal. Exhale as you lift up and inhale as you lower and I need to show me my toes back a little bit. Exhale, press and inhale, lower down and exhale and inhale lower. We're going to do 368 of these. I'm kidding.

Last two and exhale as you drive and inhale as you lower last one here and then come all the way but not touching the base hovering if you will, keeping the back of this leg engaged as you bend and straighten five times and for good and three chest stays lifted and two and you've got one more and one and lower down. Great job. You should really feel it on the back of that leg. Maybe even a little bit on the quad, but our muscle focus is really the posterior, the back of that leg. Switch your feet safely, so bring that other foot up again, try and look at your alignment as you set yourself up for success. That's the main thing and every exercise is to get your set up right so that the biomechanics or the movement pattern is well nice and tall. Take an inhale, exhale, drive down through that.

You remember we talked a moment ago about the strong side and the smart side, which is why it's great that we're doing some unilateral work here. Lots of things can be happening. So watch that you're not spilling over and dumping over onto the hip of the leg that's on the chair. Give me three more, not 362 and two good and all one and as you come down and you're going to have or that pedal as we did and bend and straighten. Now for a challenge, you can always take your arms off of these handles, right? Totally up to you. I just find this is a really nice way to get lower body strength and power work in while being safe and coming down and give it a rest.

Now from here I want you to go ahead and bring both feet down. We're going to just do a few tricep dips here facing the chair. If you can, try and avoid the real leaning forward here, right? You should have enough weight to where you can push down and lift that pedal up. I don't care what your elbow bend is here. It could be two inches. Give me five down.

Press up for five good and four watch those shoulders. Keep the last slid down the back, two more. Last one here, and you're going to stay up and step up onto the top of the chair and turn and face one of your handles. So we are now in an externally rotated position. You may have your hands on the handle, you may have one hand on the handle, both arms off if you'd like to really challenge yourself.

But now you're going to come down and you're going to come back up driving again through that heel, feeling the inner thighs here a bit more. Lightening up onto the grip on the handle if you can, and again, we're going to go, how many? 362 I'm kidding. Let's do two more and then we'll take a set of tricep dips facing the other way before we take it to the other side and all the way up. And go ahead and stand up onto the chair. Face your foot pedal and hold onto the handles as you place your toes down onto that foot pedal. Again, this is an elbow bend.

Go as deep or as shallow as you can, and exhale as you lift and inhale and exhale, press just for 5:00 AM there's three and last to build a better backside people getting those arms fired up and one per press and step back up onto the chair. You've got five more, but I'll give you a little mini break. I'm going to turn and face the other direction while we do the other side. So remember slight external rotation here. You're going to take your other set of toes down onto that pedal.

Arm comes out. Inhale as you take it down. Whoa. Different side. Gosh, I gotta change that. Set up different ankle flexibility for me. Inhale as you take it down and exhale as you come up. Tighter calf on my left side. Clearly I'm a runner, so that side is my push side. Remember, strong side, smart side.

This is my strong side. Everyone. Which side is your strong side, which I side is your smart side. Don't judge it. Last one and come all the way up and step up on top of the chair. Turn again. Face your foot pedal. Bring the toes down. You have five more tricep dips. Try and make them even better than the last time. Shoulders out of the ears.

Push into the handles. Grow tall through the top of the crown of the head. Inhale as you bend. Exhale, press four more and three, stay focused, but smile. Last too. Joy of movement even when it's challenging. And last one and all the way up. Step up onto the chair for just a moment.

Let your wrists take a little bit of a break. We're going to move back down onto the floor safely. Use the pedal as a ride to come down. As a reminder, you have a lot of weight on this pedal. You need it. We're going to turn around and pivot facing the other direction.

I'm going to ask you to be about hip distance apart. Parallel while you're hanging here with me and getting set and dropped the heels down towards the floor. Get a nice length through the back of those calves you're going to come forward. Place the hands onto the back of the chair, pushing into the back of the chair. Shoulder girdle is nice and stable here.

Now you're going to feel like you need more toes on the pedal. Then you really do so inch those toes back for me and rise up onto them ever so slightly. Create a sense of a flat back position here so you're not rounding. You're in a flat back position has. If you have a string at the top of the crown of the head and the tailbone and they'll, they're pulling you in opposition from here. Exhale as you lift that pedal up and then inhale, take it into the hover and exhale as you lift and inhale to the hover.

Two more. We'll take it to four here and then we're going to add in a little bit of spine mobility and knee bend and there's four. So from here, come halfway down. Inhale, bend the knees around the spine. Exhale, back to flat back. I hope I'm there. Let's do four here. We'll get to eight total go. Woo. Two more. Inhale, exhale, unfold.

And last one. Oh yeah, and unfold. Lower down. Give yourself a moment to rest. Take one hand, bring it to the back center. Take the other hand, bring it forward. So you now just changed the trajectory of the body by way of the arms of whenever you do this, you're going to feel something different. So you're gonna feel this more on the side body. More on the obliques.

Every single principle that we just talked about in the previous exercise still applies. Same exercise, different upper body position. So here we go. Set that flack back position. Exhale you lift for for again micro-adjustments of the feet. Totally acceptable. Two more coming up. Allow that weight, yes to help you a little bit, but don't let it throw you.

You control it. Hold here. Inhale, bending. Exhale, unfolding. This is subtle, but it means something. You should be feeling this on the side of the body and those old obliques, those ab muscles on one side a little bit more and exhale and lower back down. Born four. I believe I nailed it. I hope I did. Let's switch. So one, him hand comes to the back center, the other hand comes forward on the front of that chair. Lengthen out flat back for four coming up for inhale.

Stay in it to win it and you've committed to this wave. Yes. Two more. When you drop into a wave, it's apropos because the ocean is behind me. You have to stay committed and we're there. We're going to be in it to win it together. Four of these, as we inhale, bend, exhale, press three. Notice from side to side, the difference and two and one all the way back down. Great job safely.

Come off of that pedal. Place one foot down on the ground. Remember, it's a lot of Wade. Take your time letting that pedal come all the way up to the top. Super. We're going to come on over to the side of your chair. We're done with the foot pedal. Now we're going to do some standing balance work. I apologize.

We have one more exercise with the foot pedal. That's the Swan. We'll go there in a moment. And in fact, let's set your weight now to prepare for that, all I'm going to do is take one of my heavies, the one that's at the very top rung off. So you have one heavy spring on the third rung up from the top. I say this in all of my classes. Balance is really important to train in multiple body positions.

So we want to do, do some simple standing balance work here. So you get to transfer weight to one leg. You have these handles here, which is great for those that need handles or even the top of the chair. And I'd like for you to take just some single leg dead lifts. So you're going to come down, touch the ground and bring yourself back home and see what's happening on this stability side. Touch and lift, whew. And touch. And don't judge yourself if you have to touch down with that other leg.

It's the whole point of balance training. It's not about being perfect, right? It's about progress. And know that you feel different from moment to moment, minute to minute. And second to second, you have one more here and all the way back up. Turn and face your chair. Nice. Wide stance. Yes, we're going to the other side but let's just take some squats in between. Use those handles if you need to add a little little slight external rotation for me feels good cause you can get some hip opening going on and press through those heels for more down. Drive up and three and up last two times.

Good. Had One more inhale and exhale up. I'm gonna turn and face away from you so we can take those deadlifts on the other side. So lifting that leg that's on the outside of the chair base, taking it down, touching the ground and bringing yourself back home and touch and come back up and again handles here. Top of the chairs here. Notice what's happening. Whoa. I thought this was going to be my better side, but clearly I'm not transferring the learning very well. Good. Last three. Again, we're really still focusing on the back of the leg here, which is bringing some of the movements that we did earlier into gravity and standing without that chair pedal. Last one. Go ahead and turn and face the base of the chairs. Again, we're going to finish with a bit of swan here, so again, incorporating that swan, that upper thoracic back extension again in a prone position, but the legs are now elevated off the ground and the pedal is slightly hovering above the chair. Now watch the hyperextension of the elbows.

You may need to inch back or inch forward a little bit so that the arms are relatively stacked above the wrists. I'm going to encourage you to put some pressure out through the pinky fingers and from here grow tall through the top of the crown of the head. Begin to think about getting out of that turtleneck first and then lifting the pedal up and gazing forward and then lowering all the way down. What you learned by using the floor with swan on the floor earlier should now be applied or applicable to doing it here on the chair with the hands on the pedal and the legs elevated and the pelvis on the base of the chair just as same movement pattern, different body position and lifting up and lowering down. Give me two more of these please. Coming all the way up.

Make them your best and lowering. And last one, and lifting and lowering down. And from here you're going to lift that puddle. Place your hand at the base of the chair. Toes come down, come off of the base of the chair, grab your handles, sit back, give yourself a little bit of a round back, hang off the chair, and just enjoy that. Taking the spine in the opposite direction. Lifting yourself all the way back up. And let's finish with the roll down.

So again, take a look at the feet. We didn't start in standing here. We started on the ground. So this is your opportunity to really focus now on what's happening in your feet in gravity. So think about your big toes, your little toes, your heels, that sense of your tripod, the reaching down of the feet into the floor with the opposition of the crown of the head, lifting up towards the ceiling. Allow your arms to float because your spine is so long that they just automatically go up and then exhale as you roll yourself up and over a big beach ball and just ragdoll meaning just let it all go here. Take an inhale and exhale.

Bring the navel into the spine. Rebuild yourself bone by bone, by bone finishing as I always do, allowing the arms to come up, gathering that beautiful energy, flexing your wrist, opening your heart center, drawing your arms down by your side. And thank you so much you guys. Great workout. I'll see you next time.

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Comments

Super Fun and very creative. Thanks for sharing.
1 person likes this.
Loved it! The side lying was awesome
2 people like this.
Yay! Been waiting for this! Love the backside work. I don’t have handles but I just modified. I really enjoy your classes
Lori
1 person likes this.
This was a great class. I loved the balance work involved, as always with your classes! I also loved the side lying work.

Two questions:

1. I could barely budge the spring on the oblique pike work on my left side. Can you recommend a “starter” exercise to build up the strength on that side?

2. For the side standing work on top of the chair (inner thigh work), I know generally that I shouldn’t bend the knee beyond toe area, so is it ok for my foot to be hanging over the side a bit to avoid this?

Thanks so much for yet another wonderful class. I am getting so much out of your teaching.

Erika Quest
1 person likes this.
WOOHOO David Lori Mel W Margaret THANKS for taking class with me! Always fun when a new session releases on PA. I was itching to add another chair class, so I'm stoked you're enjoying it too. Much love, Erika
Erika Quest
1 person likes this.
Lori on your questions, I would try first by always starting with the side which is "working" for your obliques and see if you can transfer the learning to the other side when you switch. If this is not helping, I would definitely take this to a more stable surface (the floor) and practice the same movement pattern, but without the pedal. IE: Pike position on the floor with oblique knee bends to get started. On #2, you are absolutely correct to adjust your foot placement on the top of the chair for knee and ankle safety and biomechanics! Much love, Erika
Michele M
1 person likes this.
Wow sooo much fun!! I love your energy and enthusiasm! I found the balancing and unilateral exercises to be super helpful too. Thanks you for sharing Erika!!:)
Erika Quest
1 person likes this.
Sweet Michele !!! That's awesome and so fun to workout with you! Much love, Erika
1 person likes this.
Thank you! Great class, great ideas with stability ball. I can’t remember when was the last time I could sit as straight without tail bone pain (old injury), it acted as a perfect cushion and challenge at the same time.
2 people like this.
Perfect, super idea, the ball, I also have clients with tail bone problems
wonderful chair work out. Thanks.
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