Backstroke

Let's take a look at the back stroke. This is a wonderful exercise. It challenges lots of systems, and one of the systems it challenges is how to best get into it. So I'd like to make sure that you have clear understanding of how one can get in and out of this exercise, both safely and comfortably. So I'm currently set with my foot bar up. My long box is on, and I have one red spring on.

It could be a red spring on a hook, a button. It could be a blue spring. It could be a yellow spring. Less spring changes the dynamic a little bit, and more spring changes the dynamic a little bit. But I do like to feel the spring on this one personally. So One thing I will recommend is if you have a seat on your box and you go ahead and retrieve your straps, you wanna hold your straps in the appropriate hand.

And then you can kinda scooch forward on the box. And bring the springs with you, bring the hands with you. So I've used my feet on the foot platform out in front to get organized. I find especially, when there's a lot of people in the room, this is a really great way to feel like how can we find comfort in this position here to make sure that we can then go back. Depending on your body height, if you're taller, you might have to scoot forward a little bit more.

If you're smaller, then you can just be kinda comfortably on the box. But know that when you roll back, you want your back to be on the box. You don't want too much of your upper back hanging off. So here we are. We're gonna bring the arms out in front of us, walk the feet up to the foot bar and with control roll down onto the box. And do you feel like you're in a good position?

If not, make an adjustment? I'm gonna bring the carriage in a bit so that my hands are a soft fist above my eyes. In a chest lift position, and then I'll lift my legs to tabletop one at a time. Making sure you feel safe here. Maintaining abdominal curl, we lift two arms up, the carriage and two legs to straight. The carriage stays still.

Open the arms and legs out to the side. I'm in external rotation with my legs. So this is like a hundreds position. And then my legs come to parallel as I come into the start position, staying lifted with the body here. Soft fist above the eyes, knees are bent at about 90 degrees tabletop.

Arms and legs go up, open it out to the side and circle make a hundreds shape, and we come in. I would use an inhale up around, exhale, inhale in, up, and around finding a flow. Draw those legs in now. Getting out of this can be trippy. Trippy or tricky. Sometimes people will just drop the straps which you could do. But if you can find the footbar, you can use the footbar to essentially do a preparation for the teaser, which would be something you would do in the same position, rolling up to sitting, walk the feet back down to, the the wood part of the reformer, bring the carriage to rest, and then you can quietly stow your straps where they belong.

I would recommend, say, three to five repetitions and then perhaps doing another round if you feel comfortable there. That was the back stroke.