Rowing Front

Let's take a look at rowing Front. Again, this is a really wonderful exercise speaking the language of Pilates. It requires strength and control in the entire body. Although it's often done as an arm exercise because the hands are holding the straps, it does really require a lot of pieces to be in place in order to be done successfully. So set up here. I've got my footbar down.

You could do it with it up but having it down and out of the way is useful for me. I'm on one spring. I'm on one full spring. So a red spring. It could be on the hook or the button. You could also do a lighter spring or a heavier spring.

The spring choice is going to dictate a little bit what your focus is. Here, if the spring is heavier, you have to work your arms against your core a little bit more, where if the spring is lighter, it might give you a little bit more ease of range. So you'll you'll side there on your own. Another thing that's interesting here when we do the front rowing is the hand placement in the strap. You're gonna actually hook your thumb into the strap rather than hooking your whole hand into the strap. And that is a really important component for being able to get full range of motion, and you'll see that in just a moment.

So setting up for the exercise, I'll sit all the way up against the shoulder rest, but then try to make sure that you're not resting against the shoulder rest. So you have to use your your core body to sit up nice and tall here. If you have a hard time keeping your legs straight, just bend them a little bit. But if you can keep your legs straight and your body straight, that would be the ideal starting position. So we'll retrieve the straps and remember this idea of hooking the thumbs in and set your hands just in front of your chest. Basically, notice the straps are underneath my arms.

I'm not gripping them in real tight. Some people do like to do that. But I'm keeping a little bit of space so that my straps just fit underneath my, underarms, really. So position number one sitting up nice and tall. Position number two, you stretch the arms to straight on the diagonal a bit. Then you're gonna tap the hands down to the mat.

Now here, I'll come up shoulder height. And as I go beyond shoulder height, be aware of not having your hands too narrow and perhaps internally rotating a little bit the hands in order to make sure you can make this straight up and down shape with the arms. This will make sure that the straps don't get stuck on your body. From here, keeping the carriage still, we take the arms down and around and we might touch the edge of the reformer and then bring the arms back to the starting position. So here, pressing the arms to straight, we go down, and then there's this energy up all the way up in alignment with the body here. Maybe it feels a little like you're behind your body, circle around trying to keep the carriage still and back to starting position.

Now exercise number two, option number two, requires you to use your, body a little bit more. So, well, you're using your body in the first one, but here we're gonna move the body. So we start with spine stretch. Same starting position for your hands. We round and roll forward. So my body is rounded.

Now I'm going to straighten my arms and extend my spine and find that slight bit of internal rotation. So all in one fell swoop, I should be on one fell swoop, not sloop. We should be on a straight diagonal line here, slightly internally rotated with the arms, then come up to straight up and down, feel those arms strong and powerful, and we circle around. Elbows come in. Press the arms out exhale down and up and around and in.

Now number two, round forward, inhale extend, lift tall, around and back in. And then gently place your straps back where they came from. And that was rowing front.