Class #5548

Intermediate Reformer

55 min - Class
198 likes

Description

Join Amy Havens for a full-body Intermediate Reformer workout that will make you build a sweat! Experience a dynamic class where you focus on length and stability throughout your entire body, with Jump Board exercises to end the class on an energizing note. Get ready to enjoy moving your body through Amy's cues, accompanied by beautiful and thoughtful imagery, which take you deeper into the work.
What You'll Need: Reformer w/Box, Jump Board

About This Video

Transcript

Read Full Transcript

Hi, everybody. It's Amy havens here for a reformer flow. Full body workout. Save a little bit of stamina in your legs for some jump board near the end or at the end, have your long box ready, have your foot straps ready, your footwork for I'm gonna choose 3 red springs actually instead of 3 red and a blue because I'm saving it for some jumping at the end. So come on down. We're gonna get started, of course, with some spinal articulation.

Alright? So warming up our wonderful spine. Take your head rest down. And just enjoy a session. Just enjoy your movement. This week in my own practice, I've been saying to myself, less thinking, more feeling, more doing.

So just getting out of our head a little bit, if that's possible. So light, press back with your shoulders. Feel anchor on both sides of your pelvis and then the sacrum, which we know is in the between the pelvis. Pelvic cabs. We'll take two breasts to get ready. So is your chance to kinda collect your energy and your enthusiasm and your focus.

1 more inhale, exhale. Yeah. Ready. Let's move. So we're breathing in again. And it's a lower abdominal recruitment to pull that sacrum back. Feel every lumbar vertebra into your mat and roll yourself up.

It's nice to reach the knees forward. Adjust if you need to across your shoulders, breathing in at the top, and rolling down. Doing the best you can to feel every vertebra, but technically that may not happen on the first roll up or any of them. Right? That's our endeavor. To get that, sequential motion. So again, an inhale in lower abdominals, may help to feel the hips come toward the center line of you, right, to get the front narrow and the back wide, Reaching your knees forward.

Take a breath and rolling down. So it's the back of that sternum through the space between your shoulder blades, how the inner thighs are slightly active or a lot active to help hold your legs parallel. Let's do one more regular up and down the center. It's also nice time to check-in on your right side left side e equality or balance. Right? And some of us know we've got sometimes a little bias of additional weight on one side of the back or the other. So feel into that.

We wanna be as level and equally weighted as possible. Without any pads or pillows to level that out. Alright. Going up again, everybody. Just take yourself through. Okay? And what I just said was a little precursor for what's happening now.

I love warming up the side of the spine. So I'm rotating my right hip down now and my left ASIS a little higher to the ceiling. And now as we roll down the spine, we are biasing the right side. And I think you all can feel that take your time. There's that wonderful low back quadrant.

Can you get through there when you feel yourself on the all the way down, just scoot yourself into level with your hips. And then up the middle, reach your knees forward, Okay? Stay lifted and just to get a little rotation, right hip, higher, left hip lower. And as we roll down, We're still in the middle of the mat. In the lane of the mat is sometimes they'll say take your time. What does that side feel like?

Maybe harder to get through. Just take a note. It's okay. And then slide parallel. Let's do it again.

Rolling up the center. Reach the knees forward. Use it up behind the legs to get the hips up. Rotate right hip down. Left hip up. Take a deep breath.

This time as you come down, you know what it is gonna feel like. So maybe attend to more effort of reaching space between the joints. You have to really make those intervertebral muscles do something to allow that mobility to be more effective. Okay. Last one, center your pelvis. Roll up the middle.

Knees forward. Right hip up, left hip down, breathing in here. And again, tracking down the left side of the spine, Try to get as much intervertebral motion as you can. Yeah. How did that feel? I so it's one of my favorite ways to warm up the spine. After doing a regular pelvic curl.

Okay. Hey. Lift your knees up. Give yourself a little hug here. Hug onto those shins. Pull your knees in close. And if you're a person who likes your head rest up for footwork, go ahead and reach behind and pick that up. I'm gonna leave my and I'm just gonna have us place our feet in our pilates stance, arms long, and we'll do 8 regular full extensions of the legs.

Choose the breath that serves you best. I usually like inhale out, exhale, return. So spread your toes as wide on your bar as you can. Press your heels as strongly as you can. 7 and 8. And now come all the way down. Hey.

Take one leg and stretch it forward over the bar. Let's do 5 or 6 single leg already with that turned out leg. I tricked you. Usually, we take single leg after all the double leg. It's never the same thing twice with me. We'll take 2 more, 56.

Good. So did that challenge your steadiness? I hope it did change legs. One leg is long. The other is a pressing leg. The straight leg out there is strong. It's long from the hip socket. Your pelvis is anchored on both sides.

And 2 more everybody out in and out and in and then just replace that foot down. Good. Let's close your prehensile. And the prehensile bird on a perch feet, you can choose, have a space between your legs, or together legs, knowing we are about to do a single leg at that point, I'm choosing to have a little space. So my legs are more in line with my hip joints, but we'll do eight regular long extensions, lengthen, and in Feel the breath. Fill your moving up. And 4.

We're just floating on top of our mat. It's floating. Last one, and then we'll just do that nice swift change for 6 repetitions. One leg is pushing. The other leg is reaching.

You're at your control point of that straight leg. It shouldn't be too low with an arched back. Bias a little higher if you feel like your back is arching. Okay. Last time and just change Feel free to check that it's in line with your hip joint. And 6. 5.

Anchor both sides of your pelvic calves, please as much as you can. 4. Same with the rib cage. 5. And 6 all the way in, place your feet. Now let's do heels parallel.

Same idea. I'm having a little space between 8 extensions. This is a place I try to pull my heels down on the bar so that my hamstrings wake up and and work as I extend the knees and flex the knees so that it's just not all quad driven. Okay. Last two for double leg. There we go. Choose a leg to stay and one pushes and 2. The pushing leg inner thigh is just hugging that midline, keeping that parallel orientation.

Last one on this leg. Just a nice quick change and pressing out. Rib cage evenly weighted left to right. Pelvis, heel pulling down on the bar, 5, and 6. Okay. Now, hey. Let's put her. The balls of our feet on the bar.

I'm not sure why I'm saying, hey. A lot today, I am. Heels high. Get your heels as high as you can without doing that spill off the ankle. Feel free to check.

Let's go ahead and do 8 regular extensions. And 2. 3. Try to maintain that lifted heel. Feel that work all the way back at the behind the leg up to the pelvis.

We'll do one more. And then the single leg with this one, everybody, take one leg forward. Let's start to do lift and lower with that leg. Something a little bit different. So we can lift and lower.

A little bit of coordination starting here. You can go past 90 degrees with this leg if you maintain a level pelvis. One more for 6 and then change sides. Here we go. Enjoying moving your body.

I like to think every time I push off the bar, my tail actually gets more anchored not less, but more, and one more for 6. Okay. Now let's make a change. We're not gonna go out wide right now. I want you to come back into both balls of feet on the bar still a little space. Doing a little bit of calf work progression.

So take both heels lower lift just one time. You've probably have all seen this one. And then we do it twice. So we're going up a ladder here 1 and 2. Next time was 3.

It starts to get a little sneaky, the challenge and the endurance in the calves. So another reason why I started with 3 springs rather than 4 Now for heel lifts, rise as high as you can without rolling on those toes and those ankles. Stay steady. My goal was to get through 6. Okay. So we've got 5 net 1.

Even pull up through the front line of you all the way up 3, and 4, and 5, How are you doing? Can we get through 6? We can. 1. Oh, it's nice and warm in my calves. 3. 4, 5, 6, and all the way in. Okay. Lift shake. Shake. Shake. Shake. Shake. Shake.

Get it really, really released. And then I wanna take us into walking in place right now, and we go down and up. Emphasize your up. I always, maybe it's the water reference out here, but I always imagine like a buoy on the water that that bouncing that buoyancy that happens with a buoy, that's us up and up and it can actually generate that through your, abdominals, the hips, the buoyancy of your spine. The stretch of the calf feels so good. But we wanna take this walking stride out into the real world and be a little more lifted in light as we walk, not so heavy on the heels, which would be like that.

And that that's lovely, but let's go in for 8, 7, nice and buoyant, 6, 5, more, and 3, It's different, isn't it? I think it is. Come on in. To have a little different emphasis there. Okay. Hug it out. Let's bring yourself up. And take some spring down.

Hands and straps. Today, I'm doing a red and a blue. You can choose what you would like. I'm also taking our foot bar out of the way. Once again, your headrest can stay up or down your choice.

Get all cozy. I would say, make sure you have a little bit of space between your shoulders and the shoulder block. Sometimes we get up there and get pulled up. So this, fine to have this, or even your hands touching this into the mat, most likely you'll slide up anyway. But if we start with some space, that would be preferred. Alright. The other thing, 2 more little checks.

I'm really into closing my hand these days. This is fine. For me, this feels stronger right now, and I'm also going to externally rotate my arms a tad. Knees can be tabletop or resting. Yep. They can rest. We don't have to hold such this.

Let your hip flexors relax. I'm still trying to send my tail long. I'm not lazy down there. I'm just less gripped in my hip flexors. Exhale.

So pinky finger side of hand. Close that connection in the strap and track it all the way up the side of your arm. The side of your shoulder blade down the side of your body, that lateral line, right, that keep that connected. We're gonna add chest lift with this now about 4 just plain chest lifts. We get to taper those ribs down toward our pelvis.

We'll stay up on this one. And I just want us to move our legs out to the hundred position and back in and out to the hundred position. And back in. Yep. Just really stretch.

Open those hip joints, everybody. Close them. 3 more. Let's keep reaching those hands forward. Close. As I bring my legs in, I'm not curling my tail up.

I'm stretching it out. Last one, and then keep the legs in, arms up head down. Good. Elba's bent. We are going to do coordination our traditional way. Let's take an inhale coming up, open closed legs, knees, I won't put our head down and stretch.

Feel like you the open close of the legs, right, you're you're swift. But there's muscle work in the side of the hip and the inner thigh. Move those legs from the muscles at the upper leg. One more time. There we go and lower.

Arms up, we are going to do a coordination variation. Okay? Up to that hundred shape. Here we go. Take your breath first. Hundred shape. Now open the legs. Hands lift and reach through the legs.

Close your hundred shape. Everything comes down. Again, lift and reach, lift and reach a little more, and down. Usually, 4 or 5 repetitions is sufficient. I'm feeling 5.

Stay with me, please, for the last one here. 4 and 5. Okay. Take a little moment. Next exercise, we have 5 repetitions. I've been calling it snow angel.

It could be starfish. I think it o abdominal openings, you know, you'll see. So bring your breath in up to the hundred position. Now stay up there. Externally rotate the legs and the arms.

We open our limbs. Can you see how it would be a snow fish or a snow fish? Sorry. Fish. I like snow fish. Angel in the snow. Close.

Snowfish. That's a new one. 3. Try to stay lifted for 2 more. Last one. And then we get to bring it all down and take a little moment of rest You could take your feet down, toggle the legs a little.

Good. Snowfish. I will Always. Now say that when I teach that exercise, arm circles everybody for normal each way. Simple. Come back to some fundamentals. Keep right reaching the tail out from underneath you.

Evenly weighted on your rib cage. Easy breezy. Let's reverse for 4. How you liking that pinky finger connection up the side of the arm? Stay with it. It helps us keep our arms on our back.

Less on the chest, less on the pecs, more on your back. That was your 4. You can put the feet down You can put your straps down and let's all come up off of her back turning around, but let's take the spring down to maybe just the blue. Alright? So for knees, knee pulls, some people call it reverse abdominals, Bring those knees right up against the shoulder rest, thumbs on the rail. And right now, so since we just did quite a bit of flexion movement in the spine, Let's keep ourself in neutral or long. Okay?

Get the shoulders where they need to be. There's the pinky finger connection. Lift the abdominals without cat. Ready on an exhale. Knees to blocks.

Spying doesn't change. I'm slowing it down because I don't really wanna cap my lower back. Right now. Really feeling also equal pressure each knee on the shoulder block, energy out the crown of the head, 2 more, please. Actually, I'm changing my mind.

I'd like to now do 2 more. And now one more. That was 6. And then as you take the, carriage back to the stopper, pause at the stopper. Now Move both knees to one shoulder rest.

I've just come to my left. Both hands on that same side. Okay. And then same thing, everybody. Let's approach this from more of a long spine rather than a flexion for the first 3, and then we'll do 3 inflection. Alright?

Here we go. Exhaling and try to keep long spine. If we're used to doing this exercise only inflection, your coordination brain might be like, wait, wait a minute. Aren't I supposed to be flexed? You can do it neutral and flexed. We know that. Now we can Flex.

Might feel more familiar in your body. Lyft the tummy to roll the hips under. That's your third one. Quality over quantity. Move it to the other side. Right? So both knees in line with that block, hands on the same side, neutral spine to begin, put your shoulders on your back, breathe in first.

Sale M1. I am still trying to pull both knees evenly into that one little shoulder block. Wanna feel muscles around your waistline. And now 3 with flexion of your spine, Focus it more in your low back. Here we go.

Sequence. Lift the abdominals. Pull the legs. Again, that same phrase. Lift the abdominals. Pull the legs and release.

Okay. Wonderful. Let's keep the straps just here as they are. Here's your option. You can change your tension right now to a red where you can keep it the blue. I'm choosing the blue.

I want you to come up on your knees. Pick up your straps. Another option. Knees can stay right here. Or come on back.

I think most of you know me. I prefer this one. I think it's a nice challenge of awareness and balance. You don't have anything to lean on with your knees. Grab the straps. There's that pinky finger connection again.

I've got a little external rotation. Want you to press your femurs forward is really the hamstrings that go right on femur. FEMA comes forward. That's a nice natural line of pelvis. Here we go. I want you to inhale.

And exhale. 6 repetitions. Use your vocal. Connection your eyes. Look at something right ahead.

Yes. It's the arms, but it's the expansion of our chest wall. 2 more inhaled lungs. Last time, And then pull one more time, please, and hold the arms where you feel like you can control and keep them there. And then rotate your head to one shoulder, which we know traditionally is kinda what we do. Right? We just go to one shoulder and then the other, which is great.

Come through center. Return your arms. But this time as you pull and hold and rotate the head, I'm gonna ask us to turn and look down over the shoulder. Just notice what you might feel in your neck in a different place than our usual way. Turn and look down.

Keep that pelvis forward and then look forward everybody and bring your straps forward. Okay. Now we can walk back up. A little half kind of crouch in your hip joints. Let's just work some tricep extension here. Okay? Easy six times.

Maybe your focus is at the back at the long box, knowing that's coming soon, 3. And for long neck, low shoulders, and just one more fairly simple on that blue, and that's wonderful. Pick up your body. Put your straps down. Now I want you to come around And we're gonna now do a pushing movement that was pull.

This is a push. We do need more spring, so we'll have a red and a blue and a high bar. Come on to the mat and with your knees. Crouch down. I like to get pretty cozy to the front.

And resting on the tops of the feet. If that doesn't feel good to you, modify or change it, I should say not even modify, just change it for you to be here. Right? Or if it's not fun in the knees, you can also stuff a towel behind your knee and that bends you a little bit less. Nonetheless, here I go. Hands on the bar.

Lean down. Get flat in your spine. Pull the bar apart. Lower the shoulders. So you've got long neck, low shoulders, and we're going for 6 with both arms.

Keep pulling up our part. You don't have to settle so heavily on your heels. You could also lift a little bit of your body weight off the heels, and you'll feel your legs more. It's up to you. Okay? That was sick. We don't need that much weight for single arm.

Take off your blue. One hand goes behind your back. The other hand is the pusher hand. Now Single arm can get interesting. Sometimes the shoulder takes over.

If you see your elbow lift and weigh out, that's probably not your ideal place. Maybe tuck it this way. That's what I'll show today. I always think about this as preparing my Pilates push up. Or if I were in yoga class doing a chaturanga, right, those narrow elbows, I want the strength really chest muscles, but the back where that arm connects to my trunk.

I might have overcounted That's fine. Okay? Other arm, please change. Nice flat back. Don't forget to pull the stomach back. And one. Elbow somewhat low.

Keep trying to pull the hand over on the bar. This is a place you could have even weight on the shin bones. We have 2 more exhale in. Alright. That's plenty.

And then everybody rests for a moment. Great. We're gonna come in and do feed and strap now. So two springs, I'm preferring the red. I'm also going to take my bar down. And that was fun. A little roll onto my back keeping the head rest down or up for some hip work first.

Here's the deal. I want you to put instead of this one, yeah, instead of push lift, pull these straps, taut, lift your hips up. They're in there at the same time. Practice that again. It's kind of fun. It's not easy, but we wanna be able to get that also to start stretching that low back, preparing for rollovers.

Alright. And then moving some frogs. We're back to some basic fundamental connection. What do I mean there? Even weight on the sacrum and pelvis, even weight on either side of your back and your shoulders. Last two. I'm gonna do just a little bit of a combo. Nothing too crazy, but it's push and it's open and it's closed back to your frog.

I'm externally rotating at my hip joints, but not the maximum turnout. I don't wanna just ride on my ligaments and tendons. I wanna make sure the external rotation that we work with, you feel your hip muscles supporting that range. Right? The inner hips and the outer hips. It's very tempting to make really big big movements there. I I understand.

Keep it kind of modest. Alright? Now pause for a minute. Here's a new leg circle. Maybe pattern instead of just regulars, raise your legs up 90 degrees if we can, tailbone heavy.

You have to visualize snowman. Wow. I'm gonna just know again. I don't know if I'm in think of a snowman or a snowwoman, right, a small head of your snowman. Snow lady has a middle sized body, and then the base of the snowman is big. Right? So the objective here, from here, down to your control lower level, we have to have 3 circles consecutively getting bigger. Ready? Your brain likes these things.

Small little head. Yep. Medium circle for the body of the of the snow person, snowman. And then the larger head here or the bottom, and you're in your control point. You haven't gone so low that your back is arching. Alright. Come back up.

Go to the next neighbor, make a new snowman, middle size, large. Now my lakes are in parallel in these circles. So, again, I'm feeling these lateral hips working, inner hips working, stable joints of the pelvis. Little, medium, large. 2 more this direction. So it's a small circle.

Medium circle, a large circle. All my clients this week have gotten me's and they giggle. They love them because they have to think about it. Okay? Now start down at the bottom. Flip your snowperson and a snowman upside down. Small.

It's harder than you think. Middle. Large. You don't wanna be past 90 degrees. Slide down. Go to the next house. Make another one. And 2, 3, and down.

My brain is really seeing the size of my circles. Yeah. That's what I want us to feel is, like, let your brain see those sizes. Right? 2 and 3. You get 3 more chances now. Small. I told you not to overthink in this class. Sorry.

Small. Uh-oh. Medium. Large. One more. And 2, and 3, and then everyone come down to frog. Okay.

Just something slightly different. It's a little playful and fun. Time for some short spine. We'll do 3 quality over quantity. So slide down if you know you're gonna get stuck.

Or compress as breathe, parallel legs, go ahead and bring your carriage all the way to your stopper. Use that low abdominal connection. You rise up to that space between your shoulder blades. Look up at your toes. Bender knees and get your sit bones higher.

Lift your sit bones higher that stretches these QL muscles, more space in your back. Keep the feet here or bring them with you today. I'm bringing them with me. I'm doing a rolling like a ball. Somewhat movement from network and 2 more now.

A lot of energy in the tailbone toward the heels all the way, bend through the spine. Inhale, pull the heels to you, lift your sit bones up away. That's a breath in. Get wide here. Rolling down.

Keep your feet with you. Roll. Roll. So delicious. One more time. It is my favorite exercise in the system.

Breathing, and and it's always one I can come to if my back is really tight or I loosen it up. If it's feeling really warm, it's just delicious. Okay. That's enough. We could do more, but we're gonna move on and get our long box up. And we'll do some swan.

So before we get the box, let's change everything here first. Boy, with Swan, I'll let you choose out there red or blue. You don't need to know what I chose. I chose a blow. And as we bring our box up in our long box position, That same connection I had us work with with, when our kneeling shoulder push where you're pulling your hands out on the bar, play with that here too.

It's a pretty nice connection in the back. I think. Because we're all different lengths, tall, short, long, wasted, short, wasted, you know, make it comfortable where your chest is on your box. Your forehead will probably be just above your b your bar. Have your hands here pull out, low elbows a little, and engage the leg.

So we're just gonna start to easily push The legs are energized, but we're not lifting them. The abdominals are lifted underneath you. Everything is as long as it can be. Right? Okay. We're gonna start to add that, lift into Swan. So please do hear. When we swan, I like to do the first one slow so we can get the coordination of the shoulder blades gliding back, looking forward with your chin and your chest, coming up as high as you can.

If you get to the stopper, wonderful. Bring your body down, stretch your stomach, and then re bend it come in. A little more fluid with an inhale. Exhale. Pull yourself forward.

Inhale. Stretch away and exhaling in. Just a couple more. Light spring, you have to work your back more. I have to really work it to pull myself in If I chose my red spring, the spring would have helped me just a bit. That's why I decided to do a lighter spring.

So I have to do more. To work my own body. Pull pull pull. Oh, it really feels good. Alright. Everybody come on in. That's enough of that one.

Easy. We're gonna turn the box now sideways, little short box. Couple things here. Keep on moving. Keep breathing. So we'll take our bar down all the way. You can flip it in.

If you have this style every former, we'll get our strap. Mount more springs to keep the carriage still. Keep breathing. Sit on up. We're taking some short box now.

And, again, every box is different. Height wise, how about we start this way if you can? Your near the front of your box knees probably bent you might have more of a ninety degree in your knee, it really is gonna depend on your height and where you've put your box. I have put mine over. Okay? So I wanna take a nice deep breath, wrap my hands around my waistline. And the objective is to roll on to our sacrum, right, where I pull my shirt up there and rolling back.

I like to allow my legs to open here. Like I'm doing a rollback in math class. Breathe in, and then pull the stomach in away from the arms. Round yourself over your length. Roll yourself up.

We'll do 4. You could either even put your hands stacked right on your tummy, this lower rectus abdominis stay there, pull this in first, That's what pulls us forward. End up. Change the hand position twice more. Keep moving.

Roll off the sitting bones, long legs. The power is right in here and in your hips, of course, and round forward pull up off that pubic boat. Round yourself. Up we go. Breathe and contract. And you don't have to go as far as I'm going either.

You can just get onto the back of your tailbone there. And, now we'll do four flat back. Hands in front today. I want you to be able to keep those rib cages slid down beautifully in the front of your body that they don't push in rock forward. Inhale as we hinge keeping that connection and exhale return.

Long neck, low shoulders, and a long torso. You don't have to go far to feel the work, the vibration, the energy in your trunk muscles. One more time. Inhaling, leaning. Oh, that feels so good.

Exceiling here. Take one hand to the side of the box. The other hand can stay on the top of the forehead. Side vending. This arm is sliding down, but it's really the other side that I'm focusing on, opening those ribs, and then using that lateral body to pull myself up. So we stretch the open side and then use those muscles to pull up. Technically, you don't need to hand on the outside. You could put both hands again by your forehead.

I just like that other arm out there. It feels nice to direct my stretch that direction. Read. Other side. Lifting tall side bend, really open the windows here in your rib cage.

Each little space is like a window. You can open and then close. The low shoulders long neck. We don't have to do such a big range of movement to let things feel connected. Sometimes the smaller movements are where the magic is. I think one more time.

Okay. Now let's take our hands here. Rotation of our trunk and just open. We'll do one each side then we'll add to that. That's pretty basic for y'all.

Twist and reach. Good. Center now. We're gonna twist again and reach. This outside hand is gonna lean back bring it back up and come center. Other side, I twist.

Open the arms. It's that back arm. It's like it's reaching for something reaching for something didn't quite get there. We'll get a chance again. And it's pretty functional if you have your hand pull down. Like, if you literally are getting reaching for something, you'd wanna be able to pick it up, right, and you could pick that up there. If you have good solid trunk mechanics and strength, You shouldn't really get yourself hurt.

When you reach back, pick it up. One more east side, and then we have some sideovers. Reach a little further center. Last time everybody twist. Open reach. Oh, I got it. Okay.

And then round 4, we'll just give your back a little stretch, and then we'll take one foot out taking that right foot. I'm just gonna anchor my leg right up on the box. I really think there's value in this moment right here. Getting that foot hooked in the strap. Place your hand down.

Sideovers are tricky for some. You can't see yourself. A lot of times the trunk wants to the pelvis especially wants to roll backward and you try to do a side sit up and it's not fun, comfortable. Get yourself here just in the side plank, basically. Right? You wouldn't have to do much more than this.

You're actually doing the work in your core, but for adding purposes, we'll take this arm out and overhead a bit, take the bottom arm and do the same kind of shape with it. There it is. That you don't have to do much more. With this hand down, we'll do it three more times. We'll breathe in first. Pull this in first, guys.

Arm and lower and 2 more times. Abdominals, lose that foot in the strap, hook yourself up, and lower Last one and ready, breathe. Good. And rotate, be it beautiful stretch. Again, depending on the height of your box and the length of your torso, The goal would be to get your chest facing square to the floor with length, reach the hip, to the foot strap, right, and the crown of the head toward the other end of your reformer.

Lift your abdominals and see if you can spiral into this just about 2% more. I think it worked. And then you can unwind yourself for the other side. Okay? So change those feet. Turn it around.

You've got that knee bend up on the edge of the box, kind of a figure 4. Remember, Take time. Measure this. Feel that. Get connected. You're safe. That strap is there. Connects you to hear.

This hand is over. Get yourself ready with this arm above your head with that long neck, low shoulder. Breathing in. Nothing changes. Except this other arm, but a lot changes on the inside of the body and you lower.

Breathe abdominos first, hook the leg into that strap, low shoulders, lower that arm, We have 2 more breathing in. Small movement. Big strength build. And hand. One more. Check that top arm shoulder, dropping down.

Are you smiling, everybody? Yep. Can you tell I was? My voice changed. I was smiling. Turn yourself. You have to try to have some fun with the tuffy's.

Okay. So, again, before just yanking and torquing yourself into twist, We're not looking for cracks of the pack. We want length and tissue and muscles and joints. Right? So reach this hip down to the foot strap, lift your abdominals up and your head toward the other end of the reformer, and that usually squares things around. And, again, it did for me there. On wine and come all the way up.

We have one weight bearing series. Let's take a look at some long stretch, and then we'll get our jump board on. Okay? Head rest up. Feet will go there. What springs would you like to work with?

We're doing long stretch, down stretch, up stretch, and elephant. I have 2 red. Here we go. Foot hand hand. What? Quality over quantity.

We're doing 3 of each. That's it. Make them count. Ready. Grieve in. Breathe out.

Read in. Breathe out. One more. Carriage stays in, set the knees down, separate the feet, the knees, grip the bar with meaning with your finger pads, hips forward. Today, I'm not gonna over arch the back. I wanna use my legs, connect the inner thighs, and press.

I'm going to say looking straightforward today, chest forward. Breathe in. Forward. One more. That's all we get.

Now round a little bit. Walk your toes forward. You know what's happening. We wanna be able to come up into upstretch. The inverted v without that carriage making any noise.

Take a moment to get really long in your body. 3 of the full up stretch pressing out. Hips come down. I learned it by trying to take a little thoracic collection. Pelvis in flexion, lumbar inflection is weird, and then you come up. It's not weird. It's just challenging.

Flex the thoracic through the lumbar pull the carrot. Keep the hips high. One more time, my hands are sweating and back. Pull. Pull.

And in. Okay. Everybody set your heels flat. Now round yourself. Head in. Abdominals up.

Shoulders low. Toes up. Just 3. 2. It can still mean a lot. You don't have to do all 10 and then come down to knees.

3 round back. Knee stretch. Move right into extension of the spine. For 3. 2.

And, yes, we'll do knees off. Why, Amy? Well, because we can. 1, 2, 3, you'll lower your knees quietly. Alright. You're ready for jump port. Let's put it on. So undo from this reform and that thing is gonna come in here. It will.

And then we'll get our jump board. This is the jumpest, Maximus. So lucky. If you don't have the jump as maximus, I'll show you why it's maximus is rather large this way. It's completely fine if you have the traditional one. Okay. So we come around.

If you're not as used to doing the you gotta make sure your, screws are open. I'm going to move that here. Slide this down. Titan. We're not gonna be on here long, but enough, Okay. Tight and tighten tighten so that that's nice and secure here.

Alright. That's how I'm gonna work it. I also like my head rest down. Roll on back. We're still in 2 red springs. Remember that buoyancy we talked about at the beginning? The buoy on the water with the calf work.

That was a little foreshadowing for the the jump board. So I really like to feel light. So 2 red springs. I want you to parallel legs and really just start to move in and out. We are trying to have the feet stay flat. If you're a body that that's not working for you, when you come in due to short Achilles tendon, tight calves, ankle mobility, Please try to keep the heels down and know that practice, it will get you there, especially on the impact with landing.

Right? So I'm gonna start these little hops now. I'm gonna jump and land hold that. Right? Because once we start consecutively jumping, If your heels popping, popping, popping, I don't know if that feels so good here. So I would say if that is you, here's what you get to do. You get to practice that.

Right? And you'll get better. You'll get it'll change. Those of us who wanna just go right to it, here I go. Up. We're buoyant We're light. We're light.

We do emphasize how we land by articulating through the toe ball arch heel concept of the foot, but land quiet. Quietly. No heavy landing. And, see, when you focus on quiet, what does your brain do? Even I said, don't think too much. We're in parallel.

Couple more. Okay. Pause at the bottom. If you want to, I'm gonna take my foot straps down because they were making noise of my ears. I don't wanna have any noise of my ears. Change it to Pilates V.

Here we go. Quiet. If you can keep your heels touching in the air, great. If they could pull apart, oh, well, try to keep them together. It's landing quiet. Right? Energy in the air up your body from the ground up.

You probably don't need to emphasize your leg energy to make it feel like more is going on. Boyant, lift. Lift. Lift. I'm talking about here.

Lift away from the floor. 3. 2 in 1. Land and hold. Feet wide. Take advantage for the jumpus max in the corners or on the corners wherever you have a little turnout ready. Just a couple little bends.

Sometimes the heels do get flat here if they weren't before. Kind of fun how the legs and muscles and joints work. Here we go. For those of us that are gonna go full consecutive jumps, if you need to do the soft landing and the pause landing. Take that. No. Of course, I do want energy in your leg.

Of course, I do and your feet. So do some, but it's more about the buoyancy. We can do both, though. So I've got my legs charged up, my feet charged up. I'm landing light.

4, 3, 2, pause at the bottom. Legs's in. Everybody come back. Take one leg off the jump board. It can be tabletop. It can be a little soft.

Let's do four on one leg. They're probably gonna be smaller. Next time, Lynn on the other foot. Here's 4, 3, 2, We'll repeat that 4. Here we go. Land on the other foot.

1. 2. Other foot, 4. 2 Red Springs is enough, isn't it? Yeah. Land 3 times. Here we go. 3, 2, one other foot three times. 1, 2, 3. Let's repeat the threes. Take any time you need to.

Pause if you need. 3, 2, You know what I'm doing? Don't you counting down two times 2? Of course, you do. And to repeat the two's. And then we do 8 single.

Here we go. And one buoyant Quiet, soft, and strong can be in the same thing. 5. 7, 8. Everybody's land together feet. Put your legs up top.

Take a few breaths. And to me, that feels like a really nice full body workout. Maybe a little leg focus, but we got everything in there. We had our arms. We had our back. We got our tummy. I hope you feel just as sweaty and good as I can do everybody.

I'll see you next time for another reformer and jump ward workouts.

Comments

Goncagül Ö
The details are very impressive.Thank you.
Elena S
Thank you Amy, great start of my day today! X
Tamara Gilliland
Thanks Amy, great class.  So fun to jump at the end!!
Thank you Amy!! Always great cues, challenging and fun to end with the jump board. My legs are shaking (a good shake)!
Fun class Amy! It’s currently dumping snow here in Denver so very fitting for the snowmen/women cues ⛄️ ❄️ 😁
Great intermediate flow!! Fuuuun sequence, especially the opening footwork -- and those small, medium, and large circles. Thanks Amy!
Thank you dear Amy for a fun and creative class. It's always something new to learn from you. Today it is the fact that a 5 or 6 minutes on the jump board at the end of the class, can be very effective for intermediate level too and additionally, I loved  the spinal articulations in the beginning very much. Feels great! Thanks again!
Josiane P
Such a fun class! 
Thank you Amy. Another wonderful class each and every time. Always learning from you and such a fun class. 🩷🙏
Candace
hey! ahhh! great class .. loved the snow fish and snowman circles..
1-10 of 20

You need to be a subscriber to post a comment.

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

Footer Pilates Anytime Logo

Move With Us

Experience Pilates. Experience life.

Let's Begin