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Workshop #3870

Cueing for Success

105 min - Workshop
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Description

Join Carrie Pages in her workshop where she shares tools to help you take control over your sessions so you can keep your clients engaged. She offers 5 key connections that you can use to look at the body in front of you and see what's really happening rather than repeating the same cues you always use. Learning this concept will keep you excited about your work so you can avoid boredom and burnout.

Objectives

- Learn tools to help you address tech neck, computer posture, and other common alignment issues

- Learn ways to get your client back on track if they start to get distracted during their session

- Use different exercises and pieces of apparatus to help your clients achieve the posture and alignment that is ideal for them

What You'll Need: Reformer w/Box, Mat, Wall, Pilates Pole, Foam Roller

About This Video

(Pace N/A)
Aug 30, 2019
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Transcript

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Chapter 1

Hi everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for this workshop today and for you lovely ladies for being here today as well. I'm really excited to share with you today this workshop that I call the five key connections. The workshop is not about burnout but it's a really excellent tool to use if you find yourself burned out or if you'd like to avoid that in the future. A lot of times when we teach, we get into the habit of saying the same thing over and over again and I'm a firm believer that, um, we have the responsibility to keep ourselves excited about our work.

It's not about do we have new exercises to teach and it's not about, you know, the form of buddies you teach. You just have to stay invested in teaching. The five connections that I'm going to introduce to you are really the, basically what they do is they help you take a step back away from the body and they help you to look at the body that's in front of you. And when you don't know what to say, you start at the top of the body. And you move down. And if you can't find something to say, once you've gone from head to toe, then you've got a really special client in front of me. Another thing that I find tends to become, maybe not even, well, it becomes more frustrating probably more than anything else, is when you have a client that you feel is a talker.

And sometimes when we have a client who's a talker, we become a talker too. Um, I find that sometimes when if you start your session with say footwork, you'd start talking about what you did last weekend and then when you're finishing with running, you're talking about what you're gonna do this coming weekend. I try to avoid that at all costs. And the way I do it is by taking control over the session, giving the clients things to think about and keeping them engaged so that they don't get distracted and start asking me questions. The concepts that I'm going to teach you today, you need to make sure that you take the time after taking this workshop to get them in your body. A lot of times, um, we tend to try to use cues with clients that we haven't fully explained. A really great example is when you tell your client to get their ribs down, you've been teaching for a really long time and that cue often is pretty easy.

It comes out of your mouth pretty easily. If you have a brand new client who's never worked with you and you say that cue, they usually don't know what that means. And often they're embarrassed and don't want to ask because they feel like they're stupid and they should know. So when you get excited about learning these concepts today, make sure that you, number one, get them in your body and also make sure that before you use it as just a term to refer back to, that you explain what the concept is and how to get the feeling. Being able to be a good communicator to your clients is not an accident.

It's intentional and you have to spend time, I don't believe trying to necessarily get the words out of your mouth that you have to get [inaudible] in your body. And people ask me all the time, how do I say excited about my work? And that's how I get down on the equipment and I feel I have an exercise. And I think what would this feel like? You know, if I had this client's body or if I had this clients, um, you know, injuries or issues. So I encourage you more than anything to keep [inaudible] in your body and hopefully these key connections will help you. The first key connection we're going to look at is the head and neck.

And there are to me are two really common, um, postures that happen with the head and the neck. And a lot of them have to do with our technology. So when I first started teaching 20 years ago, desktops were where we were. Everyone was sitting at their desks or their laptop or their keypads. We didn't have laptops. Then they key pads were really far in front.

And I'll turn to the side. So you can see this kind of thing started to happen. The way that we cue the head and neck today needs to be a little different than it was a while back because we have different gadgets that we use. Very few people use desktop computers anymore. We tend to sit on our sofas curled up into a ball on laptops and iPads. And then of course we have our phones. Um, the best way to think about the way that your posture tends to be when you're holding your phone is if you've ever turned your phone on while it's in Selfie mode and you look down and you see the reverse of your face and your Chin's pulled in and your neck is flat.

That's kind of how we're spending a majority of the part of our day. So we're not seeing the hyperextension of the neck that we saw years ago. We kind of need to get some extension back in our next to look at computer and neck. And the way that it kind of shows up in the studio. I'm going to ask you to come up for me please. And you're gonna lie down on your back on the mat right here.

Alright, I'm going to pull your hair to the sides. If you'll just sit up, we're going to do this, a little number here. There you go. And just bend your knees and place your feet flat to the Mat. So in this position, when she's lying on the mat with her head flat, a little bit of what we're seeing is that her shoulders are pulling forward. All right? And then we're also seeing just a little bit of some extra, I look for creases in people's pants and in their skin.

So I'm kind of seeing these extra little creases here in the sides of her neck. So to help her to try to especially let the shoulders drop back, I'm going to put a small head support underneath her neck. All right. So what we saw was that there was a little bit more of a soften and I'm seeing a little bit less of the creases in the side of the neck there. So this support is just a little bit thicker. Let's go for just a little bit thicker for you.

Okay. Place your head down. Oh. And I thought even more improvement there in her shoulders in the way they fell back. How does that feel for you? Yeah. Good, good. Yeah. Okay. We can't, you know, don't put the pressure on your client to answer that. Sometimes they have no idea. What we have to do when we try to address different things that we see is we really have to step back and look at them from afar. Me Staring, looking at her like this, I really can't see if I had a real adjustment in the positioning of her posture. So what she has now is a nice long position through the neck with her shoulders open, back and down.

I'm going to go ahead and have you come up to standing for me and you can go back to your box. And now I'm going to show a little bit about what tends to happen when we have the text neck pose position of the posture. So what happens is the chin, as you're holding your phone, your Chin comes down so you get really nice and flat through here. The lower back flattens out. And then with this length in the neck, the head displaces forward. So it's a little bit different than this type of posture.

It's a little bit more here. So it's a flat position of the spine with a displaced head forward. So for that posture, I'm going to just use myself for this one. Taking a cervical pillow and placing it behind the neck can help take PR, help give the neck a little bit more of that natural curve that goes away. So if I take this away from me, you can almost see on my body, my neck is almost flat on the mat. I don't use my cell phone ever.

So this is not at all the problem. This is the problem. So I need to have a little bit of support to restore that natural curve in my cervical spine. So what you can figure out is when you notice that your client needs that to just have it ready for them or to tell them, make sure you grab your pillow before you start your session and use it throughout the session. What I want you to remember about using a problem is that you want to take it away eventually. The goal with our work in the floodings work is to restore the natural curves of the spine. So if you're using this, hopefully eventually my body is going to learn to adapt and to appreciate that curve without having the prop there.

So I take it away and then this has gotten in my body. The next thing we're going to do is go to the wall and look at the way that the computer neck posture can be addressed with the foam roller along the length of your body with the foam roller against the wall. I like to use the foam roller is kind of a fake pedicle and the reason that it

Chapter 2

works so well is because we often have skin around our bodies. So if you were to take a student and have them stand with their back completely flat against the wall, they'd have a difficult time respecting the natural curves of their spine because their heiny might get in the way a little bit. It's going to force them into slight tuck. So when we get, when we use the pepole, which is awesome if you have one of those, um, but the foam roller gives a similar feeling.

You want to make sure that the foam roller is behind their head and down along the length of their spine. Now Walk your feet forward a few inches. For me, I'm walking the feet forward. Just gives her a little more room to get her spine more lined up. So we're not going for right now having your head all the way against the roller. I don't want your spine pressed and flattened into the roller. All I want you to do is just gather information about how you feel right now. Okay. So ideally, you know, we would have her head against the roller stacked over her shoulders, stacked over her pelvis. Um, but we're not really seeing that right now.

There's a little bit of space here between her head and the ruler. We're also seeing a slight rolling forward of the shoulders, although I actually think it looks a little better than when she was laying on the floor. The only thing about putting a cushion behind her head for this right now is that she has to keep it there. So I will give it back to you if you drop it by any chance. But I'm going to put this little filet right here.

So now what you'll do is without, with like a 10% effort just to allow your head to just barely push against the roller while letting your shoulders roll open back and down. I still want your feet farther forward. Go ahead and walk them forward. I'm going to have you do it one more inch please. Thank you. Very good. Okay, so see, sometimes you have to be Bossy, right? I did not have her where I want her. I wanted her. Did I annoy you and asked you to keep up?

Doesn't it feel like we're annoying them? It feels like we're annoying them and we keep saying no another inch, another inch, another inch. But I wasn't going to have her where I wanted her unless I bought her around. So that's part of making sure that you get what you want there. So in this position, I'm just going to have her stand what she's already done for probably a good 45 seconds to a minute.

We're now going to just work on creating some flexibility in your spine. I am going to get rid of the pillow for you. Okay. I'll just hold onto it and you're going to stand there and take a nice long breath in. As you exhale, draw your chin down into your chest, look down and articulate your spine away from your roller, and we're just going to go to there. Now. I want you to hold, allow your arms to hang and drip ragdoll arms complete release as you roll. Yeah, I like that too. She gave me a better release of her head and neck. That was really nice. You're going to start to come up for me, so start to very slowly imprint your spine into the roller and as you come up, I want you to try to get one more bone of that thoracic spine into the roller than you had before and then you linked it up. Good.

Let's soften through the shoulders a little. That was really lovely. Breathe in again. Chin draws into chest and you're rounding over. Think of the spine coming off of the roller one bone at a time and allow the arms to drip and hang. Very nice, trippy head, droopy head. Very nice. And you hang. Now let's engage in the core to come up this time. So as you breathe out, draw up an in through the front of the body and start to send the spine one bone at a time into the roller, trying to get one more bone of your spine in to the roller this time and the head comes back and the shoulders strip down.

It's improved so much that I'm going to ask you to do it one more time. Okay, so here we go. Draw the chin into the chest. Curl and die in towards yourself. That's it. Let the [inaudible] can I have you come back up? I'm going to be bossy because I believe in you. You can do this. Ready? Draw Your Chin into your neck. Bone by bone. So we're not going to shift. We're going to curl like a rolly Poli inside yourself. That's right.

Much better. Just let your arm strip, let your head hang and let's hold right there. All right. Take it a little slower than the time before. Once you to really visualize and feel the bones of the spine coming into the roller, pause there, please draw your low belly entitled. Get that lowest Bonin lowest, lowest, and then it continues. Yes, and we move up the spine. Let's pause here. Relax your arms. Rip Your head now. Continue coming slowly to the roller.

Very good. Now that you're standing there, take a moment just to draw your chin down. Lengthen up through the top of the head. Very nice. Got a little closer to that foam roller with your head, didn't you? Good. Yeah, I think so too. So this is a great example of, I needed this for the first repetition. She was very far away from the roller with her head, but at this point, lower your chin, just a little. Move your head forward. A quarter of an inch. Just, we really just don't even need it there at this point.

She's improved that length in her spine so much. So I have to keep an eye out for that and not just throw it back there because on the very first repetition she needed it. Now we're going to look at the position of having the text neck posture on this foam roller. So I'll hold your roller. You can step away. All right. And you can just have a seat on your box. All right, Meredith, come up here for this next one. Um, we're going to do the same exercise with her, so make sure that the roller is all the way behind your head and behind your lower back there. All right, very good. All right, so you know Meredith really is perfect, but um, maybe does have that little bit of a flat spot in the back of the neck. Yeah.

And she's giving me a good exaggeration of that. So from here, Meredith, what I'm going to do is just for one second, put this behind you. It's going to be a little too big initially, but I just want you to let it y'all, I'll let you pull it down real tight. Yes. So just let it give you the feeling of having the natural curve of the cervical spine. Okay. So just giving her a moment to feel that behind the neck. And now I'm going to take it away. All right, so as you stand tall there, yeah, you're just, she's got a little bit more of a curve there. See if you can leave that little tiny bit of a curve and just draw the chin down just a little right there. Right? So for you, it almost feels like you're pushing the back of the neck forward to your throat just a little bit. Good.

Now we're still gonna do the articulation down and up one time. So nice and helps you prepare. The exhale draws the chin, you round into it and you articulate down when she's articulating, she's going to lose the curve cause she's coming down and she's going into that flection and we'll pause there. Now find a long breath. Then use the front of the body to bring yourself up the roller. And as you come up to standing, you're going to go right back to having that little bit of space between the back of the neck when there's a lot of um, a displacement of the head for people on this. Sometimes it starts to make the muscles of the back of the neck exercise a little bit so we don't want pain or strain.

But to feel some exercise in the back of the neck isn't necessarily a bad thing and don't leave them there for a very long time in that position. But to feel that little bit of exercise with a part of the body that's kind of gotten a little less definition or less muscle, it can be good. We're now going to move on to the reformer.

Chapter 3

The exercise we'll look at on the reformer is short spine. So Mary will you come up and lie down for me and place your feet in your straps for short spine.

You can get in them however you like. [inaudible] I could be a good friend and hope you placing your arms down beside you. We're just going to go right into the exercise. Inhale, extend the legs out on a diagonal. With your exhale, begin to bring your feet back. Once they're over the hips, you'll roll over to your shoulders. Weight's going to be positioned on the shoulders, not the neck. Bend the knees down, breathing in.

And for today we're just going to keep the shape of the ball and roll that ball down. Taking the heels with the seat. Very good. All right, so I want to do it one more time and she's not gonna be smart. She's just gonna ignore me and I want you to look at the position of her head and neck and really try to like not listen to what I just said. So inhale, extend the legs out. Exhale the legs. Go over and just feel it as normally as you would. Okay, gorgeous. Then Denise and roll it down. [inaudible] when she goes over this time, extend your legs out. Breathe in as you exhale, roll over to your shoulders. Once you're up there, hold for me.

All right, so she didn't do it as much on this one. But typically what happens is we all take our gaze, drop our chin, and we tend to look forward towards our thighs. I think is usually where most of us look. The way that I look at the exercise now is I want to try to restore that natural curve. So I'm gonna encourage her to look up to the ceiling directly above her, which like looks like probably her heels. Now Meredith, without even moving your neck, I want you to lift your gaze back towards your toes. So just moving where her eyes are looking is going to help to give a little definition and muscle activity in the back of the neck.

Bend your knees if you're there long enough, exhale, roll down good and take it out again. Let the breath in. Exhale, the legs come back, you roll over and you keep the gaze kind of back on the toes here. Thinking of that curve and the s of the a cushion against your neck. Bend your knees, breathing in and breathing out. You're going to roll down bone by bone through the back and restore those natural curves. When the tail comes down. Hey, let's look at how that looks on another body so you can take your feet out. All right. And I'll have you come up for me.

All right. And you can just place your feet in your straps. There you go, right? So with the arms reaching down, long beside you knees wider about shoulder width apart. Extend your legs out. Good. Now begin to move your feet back. Roll up and over to your shoulders. And just like I said, just like Meredith, just do it one time. Don't think too much about it. That's beautiful. Bend your knees and roll down. Nicely done.

All right, we're going to do it again. Extend the legs out. Good. Take it over. And this is the one we're going to hold for just a second. Good. All right, let your shoulders roll open just a little bit more. Good. You're going to keep your chin slightly pulled down for me, Ben. The knees for me. Bump stays up high. Beautiful. And now roll your back down, pulling your natal to your spine and now your heels to your seat. Good.

All right, so we have two different scenarios here. Um, when she goes over, if the Chin lifts too much, she's going to get a hyperextension in the cervical spine. So as we saw on the foam roller, she needed to keep her head a little more back against a surface. Do it one more time. Think about the pillow being behind your head. We're not going to put one there because she's going over on her shoulders. She's, you're just going to think, press the back of the head down into the cushion. Extend the legs out. Inhale, exhale the feet go over. Let the shoulders stay open in the back of the head.

Presses gently down. Then the knees keep the back of the head pressing. Jump down. And as you rolled down, almost feeling more that top that's, that's a chin. And just a little though, there you go. And you roll it through and rest. So one size doesn't fit all. Again, this is where you have to step back and get away from your client to be able to give them. So you can see how I could teach short span the same way every day, every day. Give the exact same cues all the time, but the same, same cues don't apply to all of the same bodies. Okay? So this is how you stay alive with your teaching. All right?

You can take your feet out of there and we're going to move on to looking at the mat. Swan, why don't you come up for me for this one today.

Chapter 4

So lie down on your tummy, head on the scent. So if you don't mind your head fully on the mat, that'd be great. Yeah, let's get this, these curls on the way now girl. All right? And I'm actually gonna ask you, police you, we're gonna go hands under the shoulders layer and then you just let your forehead relax completely. So the point I want to make here with her head relaxed on the mat is that we all have different and most perfect body shapes, but we all have skin that goes around our bones, okay?

Depending on where our skin is, it can affect the way that, uh, uh, um, uh, your body begins the exercise. So for Michelle, she has some skin in the front of her chest. So what that does is it makes her neck kind of our hair ahead, rather dropped forward and off her spine. So there's this diagonal here. Um, what can be really nice is to give her a small cushion to go directly underneath her forehead and to work around this hair girl. All right, so forehead goes down, usually make sure yet it's positioned where you want it. Like it's gotta be positioned just right, but I don't want it under the nose. I want it right underneath her forehead.

So we're in a better position here. Um, and I can't totally see. So I'm going to just step around and step back and join everyone at home at looking at her. All right, so there is still just a slight displacement of the forehead, which is really gonna be okay, because we're just going to fix it by asking her to just retract the chin into your neck a little bit for me. Returned back to your chin being slightly lifted. I'm gonna place my hand right here. Pretend that I'm a pillow. Push your head back into the pillow. That's a girl. That's what I want. So now we've got her head more in alignment with her spine or the level of her spine. Okay. To move through the spine for Swan.

She first is going to start with cervical extension, so begin to bring your gaze out for me, Michelle. No Upper Body Swan. Okay, now she's going to continue up and it's going to move down the back. Getting the nice little art trek to the Bra meets the back. She goes to wherever her swan is today. I think that's beautiful. She's going to come all the way back down.

Allow your forehead to completely rest on the pillow. Very good. All right, so let's keep the bosom heavy on the mat. Nay. Pull the head back towards the imaginary pillow behind your head. Come this way there. Now float your chin out. We get the cervical extension, so go ahead and float it out. There you go. Wow.

These are great little props and continue coming up. Beautiful. Good. Give me a little shoulders down the back. There you go. Now go ahead and continue down. All right, Michelle, I want you to be brave. I believe in you. You can come up higher. You want, you think, okay, here we go. So ready, pushed back into your pillow first. There you go. Your heads now with your spine. Now from there, Koch, go back down a little. There you go. Cervical extension. Lift the chin, gaze out. Don't be afraid to let the back of the neck exercise. That's keep coming up. Now just use your arms for me. Press with your arms.

There you go. Think up more than backwards. Up. Lift your heart up and out. Now when you go down and start to move down the opposite of the way you came up. So you keep your gaze out. Yes. Yessing you move through your spine. That's right. Beautiful. And then the last thing, bosom. Heavy. Bosom heavy. And now the head and the shoulders come down. Beautiful job.

You can push up to your hands and knees and sit back on your heels. Very nicely done, Michelle. That was beautiful. Thank you. You could go ahead and have a seat again. And the next connection that we'll talk about is the connection between your back ribs and your scapula. And the thing that becomes important with this is that when we don't have a connection and some type of posture, that muscles that hold that posture, well then there's a lot of room for error and a lot of the exercises that we do to find the muscles that will help us get this connection.

I'm going to have Michelle come right back up for me and we're going to do Serita's pushups. So go into your hands and knees and the straightest anterior muscle is between the shoulder blades and the backwards and we are just going to create some nice strength through that, but we're really first just going to find it. So to find that we'll go to two extremes. First, allow your shoulder blades to draw together and your chest to like hang down towards the floor. So we're going for a really extreme winging position here. Okay, so now you're going to do the opposite of that. Push down into the floor. Think pull your sternum up into your spine and you can let your head release a little if you want.

We're going to just like ignore that for a second and feel like you're pulling your shoulder blades as far apart as you can. Broaden out from the tips of each one. Very good. So now go back to the exaggerated winging the shoulder blades. Draw back. Good. Now really think about as you go to push the floor away, the muscles that are activating to make it happen. So press down into the hands. Good and broadened the shoulder blades apart. Open them wide apart.

Very good. Bringing awareness to the area, right where like the sides of your Bra. Meet your back. Do it once again. As you come back, those muscles relax. Good. And then as you push down into the floor, you broaden out the shoulder blades. You puff up into the back right here and create a feeling of using your muscles here. So now we're going to find the neutral position. Find right in between those two extremes.

And I always think that the idea that works for me is to think of sucking my scapula against my backwards, like creating this feeling. Okay. So for her right now, she has like the teensiest little bit of winging. So I'm just going to ask you to stay like you are and breathe. Then just slightly pull your sternum up into your back ribs. A little bit more broad and out. Good.

Now stay there just barely without overdoing it. Send your shoulders away from your ears right there and you're just going to hold. Do you feel these muscles working, Michelle? Yes. Okay. Just to really make sure you've got them. Extend one leg back to a one leg plank, but that was beautiful. Oh, there you go. You're right on the edge there sister, so don't fall.

All right, ready to take the other foot back. Meet it. Okay, good. And just stay there. Now you've got to re fix the, uh, Redo the feeling. Uh Hum. Broaden out. Broaden out. All right, let's put the knees down. Good. Now that you know what to expect, let's repeat it. All right. Walk forward just a little bit with your hands and knees. There you go.

I mean you might as well be safe. Alright, one time. Shoulderblades wing and they pulled towards each other. So like you're starting to hang to the floor. Yup. Extremes. There you go. Really Sag into it. All right, now breathe in. And as you push the floor away and you broaden out completely, so no neutral yet, go to the extreme of pushing up. There you go. Push up.

Feel the muscles right through here. Exercising your hair shaking. So now find the middle ground. Send the shoulders away from the ears. Hold. All right, this stays stable. One leg goes back. Now pause before you pick the other leg up. You've got to be ready for it. That's a girl. Ready? Push the foot back and hold it. Three, hold it to sternum to spine one. Put your knees down in rest.

Okay. And you can sit back on your heels and take a moment there. All right, so a little bit harder than it looks to really try to keep the shoulder blade stable. Yeah. Okay, good. Michelle, we're going to take that feeling to the foam roller next and try to get that feeling standing. Michelle, come up here and join me for this exercise.

Chapter 5

So the nice thing about having the foam roller behind your back for this exercise is that you can kind of feel your shoulder blades moving against the roller. And ultimately what I'm going to be going for on this is that she has the feedback of not letting her shoulder blades shift around and move a whole lot. So I find it's easier to feel strong and stable in your shoulders with your arms in front of you. So we're mimicking hug a tree from the reformer work. So inhale in that position and as you exhale, open your arms and try to keep the shoulder blade stable just like you did on those Serratus pushups that we just did on the mat. The arms will come forward.

Let the breath in as you do so. And as you exhale and open the arms, just see where can you go without moving the shoulder bones, which maybe not very far. And then you looked and beautiful, so close again, inhale that you can feel the feedback. So it's nice cause you can feel the shoulder blades kind of wiggling around around the roller. And for this purpose right now, we're trying to keep you stable. Good. All right, let's do it one more time. Open. Stay nice and stable through the shoulders. Good. And now let's bring it together. All right. Want you to do it again and create a little more movement in the shoulder blades. So we're going to let them almost wrap a little and then open. So get that feeling. Okay.

Now she liked how that felt. So now you're going to hold the shoulder blades where they are and just move the arm. Eventually they'll start to move a little bit, but you're just trying to create more of a movement through the shoulder blades on this one. So open. Good. Great. Yeah, so it's kind of like when we were doing the straightest, straightest pushups in the shoulder, blades were pushing back out of the body. It's that feeling and then come forward. Okay. And just do it one more time.

Let the shoulder blades for app as you. Okay, Ben. Good. Have we done? Oh, so now what we're going to do is we're going to create really strong, stable wings. Okay. So the muscles that you just use to wrap the shoulder blades around, can you turn them on but not move your shoulder blades. So just kind of make that wake up and then open the arms and try to keep them stable, but keep the muscles that moved them up alive. Yes.

All right. And now close the arms again. You're getting tired, aren't you? Yeah, it's, it's pretty funny how, you know, hug a tree usually have some form of resistance in the hands. Doing it like this can be just as exhausting if not more good. And you can relax the arms down very nicely. Done. Good. So that's a great example of an exercise where you know, we're giving her the feeling and then as we get into the workout with doing hug a tree, wherever you would teach it, you're going to refer back to remember how we did that on the foam roller. That's how I want you to work here. Now let's look at this concept standing.

Chapter 6

I'm going to demonstrate on my body the way that the reason why it can be important to take up the shoulders in the proper placement. So to take the Scapula and have that date idea of sucking it up against the back ribs. If I'm standing here, and again if you're looking at me from the front and you encouraged me to get my shoulders down, this type of thing can happen. So you kind of get this little slope of the shoulders and from the front you might see that and think, oh that's good, she's got her shoulders down. But let's look at what that looks like from the back. So I'm going to turn around from the back.

When I pull my shoulders down and forward like that, I get that little bit of a winging and I'm very pulled forward here. So the way I like to think of it is to get the shoulders, the Sh, the scapula against the back ribs. I take first my shoulders to a pretty extreme up, I draw them back. And then I find that serratus anterior muscle that we just found on the hands and knees. And that gives me more of a angle here where my shoulders are right on top of my hips. So the reason that this can become really important, especially if you're going to do an exercise, something like a plank or a one arm exercise pulling against the spring, um, if that shoulder's dropped forward and in, we're going to see more of a room for error for making, having an injury in the shoulder.

Whereas if you're already back and you have that strength that you're pulling from, so it's not just pulling out of the joint, you're strong, then you're going to have less likely, um, have a chance to find an injury there. But you're also going to feel stronger and like, you can really pull on the spring. Ladies, stand up and let's get this feeling in your bodies. So just stand facing me and you can just stand with your legs comfortably. However, together or apart you'd like them. And first just allow your shoulders to kind of drop forward in a way that doesn't feel like you're doing polities. Okay.

And now you're going to take your shoulders, creep them up pretty high to your ears, broaden shoulders out. And then without overly forcing the shoulders down, just let the shoulders go right to where you feel, almost a broad feeling or an angle here at the shoulder and neck. Drop them forward again. Let them hang forward. The a slouch. Now the shoulders come up and down and take a second. See if you can find those muscles that we found in that, um, that kneeling push up, that's Rita's push up and set the shoulders down. Good.

So you should feel a decent amount of exercise and strength across your shoulders right through here. Good. That was a nice little extra job. Beautiful. Good. All right, so we'll take this concept to the reformer now and look at some exercises that we commonly teach on the reformer where they can really be helpful. Let's look at the exercise, the long stretch on the reformer.

Chapter 7

So can you want to come up for me? All right. So go ahead and just step up.

I'm gonna ask you to take your left hand and put it here, followed by your right foot. Place that here first. And so I find this kind of obnoxious approach to the reformer actually really important because in this position she can already think about that left side and getting that feeling on the supporting arm. All right, so get me ready for it. This hand goes and then you'll pop the other foot up. Gorgeous. And you're gonna hold right there. All right, let's take your head and bring it up in alignment with the spine. Very nicely done. Send your heel. Don't roll the carriage. Just lower your heels and tiny inch there. Good. All right, let's bring the head up a little bit more again. All right, so we're seeing a little bit of a protraction like her shoulder blades are pulling apart. Come down, knees onto the mat for a second. Good.

So when you come up this time, just step in front of you here. You're going to let your shoulder blades pulled back just a little more without letting your head drop off the imaginary foam roller. Right? You remember that? So you have the foam roller behind your head. Okay? But you're going to let your shoulder blades wrap around a little. Okay. All right.

I'm going to ask you to pick your bum up like six inches right there. Now send your shoulders down to your hips. Yes. Pause there. Big Breath in. I'm going to place my hand right here. I want you to breathe out and pull off my hand. Pull your sternum in towards your shoulders a little. There you go. Right there.

Chain head on the Foam Roller Chin and just a little yes. Place your knees down and relax. Yeah. Yeah. So that was a lie. That was a lot of queuing for, I'm a gorgeous woman who was able to take all of those cues. Um, this is a great example of where you can't just beat it into the ground. Sometimes we need to just let them move, but we got you there. Yeah. Eventually we did stand on the floor.

I want you to step up one more time taking everything you just kind of felt and trying to apply it again just because now you know what to expect. So I'll just do a little repeat there. Alright, so why don't you stand straight? Yeah, and just like do plots first. Yeah, just stand there. You don't have to do an exercise to do plottings and that's beautiful. Just stay there for like the rest of the day. Okay. Okay, so now let's apply the way you're standing to the exercise. Beautiful.

I'm going to stabilize the carriage for you step. Go ahead now take your time. It's going to take you a second. Try to apply all of those things. Take your thumbs to the same side as your fingers please. Very nice. All right. I'm going to let go. You're in control of the equipment. I'm going to step closer to her. It's better.

Big Breath in. I am going to ask for a little more right here while still pulling the shoulders. Let me see a beautiful neck length and Chin in a little link that way. Good. Now the foam rollers behind your head and then you're going to have it chin and a little yes. Hold one. Hold two, hold three, knees down and rest. Very nice. Beautiful.

So let's look at the same exercise on another body. Michelle, will you come up please? So a great way for me to kind of tie some cues together can be, we did this rate as pushup. So we know we want that feeling. I'll say, I want you to think about the way we held your head on Swan. Okay? Yeah. Yes. So that same like kind of pulling back, bringing the head with the spine. Okay. So you're already doing plays, aren't you? Yes. Okay, lovely. So as you step down and put your left hand intentionally down on the bar, I'll hold it stable. You put your other hand gorgeous. And you just hold there.

Okay, I'm letting go. You're the boss. So the equipment, well you don't have to do the exercise yet. Come forward. It was awesome. I know you're always ready to go. All right, so go ahead. Yes. Lengthen out. Good. Pull up. All right, now let's stay there. And think about those muscles between your shoulder blades and your backwards. Good. Pull them up and in and we hold.

Now I'm gonna ask you to go back on this one. So I'm going to go ahead and move Michelle. Hold for a moment. It's a little easier to get your shoulder blades where you want them when you're back. Go forward. And sometimes we tend to lose it because it's our body weight gets more forward, we lose the strength, go back again and really enjoy that. When you're back there, you can feel a little stronger. Take a second, send us their strong here and go up and over hips up a little and rest.

Good. So when you're thinking of all of the things you get very, very tired. Okay, that was good. All right. I was right on top of her so I really couldn't totally feel or see rather exactly what I needed. I'm gonna ask you to do it one more time if you'll do that silly approach where you stand on the floor. This is again me taking control of the situation. I can let her start with the knees down.

But my experience of teaching over all these years is it's a lot harder to find the right position when she comes from the knees down and tries to pop up, coming up and over, makes her a little stronger, a little easier. So as you step up, do no, I'm not there. Stabilizing your carriage. I'm just going to step back a little. All right, good. All right, big breath in for me. And as you exhale, hold, give me a greater connection. Their Linkedin, a little up than there. Now go back for me. Breathing. Beautiful. Pause. Don't move stronger here.

Now pull yourself up and oh over. Do it one more time. Take it back. [inaudible] beautiful. Pause. Intentionally. Send yourself over the bar. Pause right here. We've lost it. Pull ribs up and in. Yes, hold it. Two, three knees come down and you rest. Good. So that was a really good example there where it's harder.

She had it when she was back, but she came forward. She's tired. So that's an issue. Um, but it is a lot is the body weight gets more and more into the arm. So I encourage you when you're playing with that exercise, even if you're just doing a plank on the floor, open the shape a little bit and try to find those muscles. It's a little easier there. Nice job. All right. Okay. So the next exercise we'll look at is draw the sword.

I'm going to ask Meredith to come up for me to do this when kneeling facing the camera for me. Oh right. She's going to hold the start. Alright. So the first thing we're going to do here is try to get the feeling of that shoulder blade being pulled in and up against the back ribs. So take your arm Meredith and push it forward. Actually a little, just a little there. We're not necessarily going to start from there.

Take a moment. Breathe in. I'm going to come here with you as you breathe out. Grow a little taller and feel the muscle right here. Exercise. Okay. That was really nice. That gave you a little more strength before you, um, necessary. Before you move the elbow, I want you to ask these muscles here to press the upper arm over. Now begin to extend it, the elbow working through here. The arm work is a bonus to the side back bend, reluctantly, reluctantly bringing it back to the start position. Good.

Now take a moment that I could like, I could grab that shoulder blade. Yeah, that's okay. That's okay. It's not a big deal. Let's get a connection here and grow a little taller for you. Very nice. Now start pulling with this. Good. And now unfold. Good. And then reluctantly come back using the muscles here. All right.

Take a break for a moment. Could you enjoy this exercise more if it was a little lighter? Yes. Okay, so let's make it lighter. All right, so I'm taking her down. Yeah. And we all have our difficult shoulder. We all have the one that's just a little crankier than the other. Um, so yeah, I really liked to teach this exercise a little lighter than the client thinks they want it. Um, because if you do it this way, you need a lighter spring. You, you lose a little, little bit of strength there.

All right, so let's see. [inaudible] there you go. Alright, pull. I'm sorry. Go back to the stopper. Give me a little up there. All right, pull the shoulder blade for a little. All right, now try to pull from this first good and now unfold at the elbow. Good. So here's a great example too. When her arm and street, she's there.

Now begin to bend it and try to stabilize the shoulder blade as best you can. There is going to be movement. We're just going for the best amount of strength from here that she can get. Start again, unfold good. And then extend at the elbow.

Good hold. Can you make your arm longer now? Begin to bend at the elbow. Stabilize through that good. And then let it come across. Beautiful. All right and relax. So this can really apply to a lot of our exercises. Um, we played with this. Hug a tree on the foam roller. We can take hug a tree here on the reformer and do it here as well.

So I encourage you just to see where you can apply this exercise where it really will matter in your body. That's how you're going to be able to communicate it the best. But then think about your clients as well and where they could use it. So again, you don't just send up saying straighten and bend. That's a great one where you're just staring at your client's face usually. And conversation starts going, okay, step around, look at them from the side, get a different perspective so that you stay engaged in the session and they can't tell you about their weekend. Moving on.

Now we'll go to the mat and we're gonna play with open like rocker for this with this concept. An exercise from the mat work that I find applies very well to this concept is

Chapter 8

everyone's favorite, the open leg rocker. What I find is even though people don't like the, well, mainly the people don't like the exercise because it's really hard to be successful doing it. So I'm hoping that as I share with you guys this concept, it will help you feel more successful on your open leg. Rucker, I'm going to demonstrate on my body very quickly for you the start position for open leg rocker is going to be here and we're going to make this an exercise. So I'm going to sabotage myself for this exercise. If I hang in my shoulders, okay? If I pull him back too much, I'm gonna end up in this straight back kind of very much.

You're never going to roll like anything if you're straight. So you have to have a rounded shape through the lower back with this upper body side, back feeling. When we take the one leg out, we may or may not get straight. It doesn't matter if the knees a little bit bent. All I want is for you to be able just to try to find this position. We're using the pressure of the leg to the hand in the hand against the, to maintain that strength. Again, if I go out to this and my only goal is to straighten my legs, yet I ended up here, I'm never gonna rock back up.

You've completely sabotaged yourself with that. So ladies, move your boxes out of the way and let's watch you. A lot of times open like rocker is just finding the position. You don't even have to actually add the rocking in. So isn't that nice to know? You don't have to rock like a rocker. You can just be a rocking chair.

You probably want to sit pretty close to the front of the Mat. You're probably, yeah, come forward a little bit more. Yeah, you just need some mat to roll back onto. And then if you remember my start position, I had my arms on the outside of the leg and so the whole arm is going to go to the outside. So wrap around there. Good. We've got a whole crew of long legged ladies here. We all know that makes a difference too, right? Y'All all are very familiar with the fact that that makes it hard.

Girls in front, take your heels much lower. Can you put your heels down on my hand? They're very nicely done. Yeah, that looks great. Yeah, you are. You're always just ready to get, make this position and exercise. All right, so think about those muscles. Let send the shoulders against the back ribs, but pull the rib cage and the waistline in so we have the rounded shape of the back. Begin helps you prepare. Decide which leg is your left and as you exhale, extend your left leg upward. Now, once you're there, press your leg against your hand and your pull your hand back against your leg to create this energy through the body. Then the knee down again, a rather the other leg please. Right like goes out. Good. Don't worry about the leg being high. I actually recommend you keep the like straight Michelle all she's tipping and bend it down. Okay, let's give that another shot. Left light goes out.

Think more forward with the leg. That's right. Plus push the foot towards the hand. We'll bend the knee down. Alright, other one again, more focus on the way that shoulder is working and bend the knee down. Let's see if we can find both legs. Let left. Leg goes. Beautiful. Bend them down. Okay, take a second. You're still doing bloodies shoulders, active and strong. Inhale, prepare.

The exhale is going to send the legs out. Press, feet, ankles to hands, enhanced two ankles. Then the knees down. Ladies, take a rest for just a moment before we actually add that rocking. I will demonstrate something really quickly. When we add the rocking. You want to start with this pressure of the hands to the legs. You'll rock back. A little release is sometimes really helpful because if you keep doing that pressing as you're going back, you'll keep pulling yourself over.

When you come up, regroup the press of the foot or the ankle into the hand and let that guide you up. Okay? It might take a second. It might just take a second to get the feeling in your body. The let's give it a shot. Okay, so you gotta. You can't just throw the feet up there. Let's all get into the start position. Set your body up for success did. That was so beautiful.

Now you're back into the faulty studio. Take a deep breath. Stay with another exhale. Just kind of get there. All right, let's do the left leg first. Lift it with an inhale. Do all of those things we just did. Take ownership of your own body. Inhale, prepare. Keep that leg straight. Take the other leg up. Exhale, take another breath in and another breath out. Just to press the legs to the hands and the hands to the legs. Ladies, breathe in, rocket back and then press into the hands to rocket up.

That's alright. There it is. Ready? Think about it. Go. Inhale, take it back and then progress and exhale. Bring it up. Beautiful. One more time. Inhale, take it back. You've got it. Stay with it. Strong through the whole body. And ladies just bend your knees into your chest. I would say anytime you pull off one open leg rocker, you're killing it.

And like I said, just finding that position is the exercise in itself. You know, the rolling is just the icing on the cake, but you can feel the exercise just holding it. Okay, that was beautiful. Thank you. Now we're going to look at our third key connection, which is connecting the front ribs to the pelvis or the pelvic bone specifically. So to Asi s um, ladies, we want to do this because again, we're trying to restore the natural curves of our spine. Now, as we've discussed with pretty much everything is there's two extremes of all of these things. Okay. So like we had two different kind of things that happened with the neck and with the shoulders, with this rib thing, um, there can be two things commonly. There's lots of things that can happen. The front ribs tend to displace. Okay.

So we will see kind of this arch in the back. But then with some of our postures that happen now, we're losing this natural curve. So we're seeing this kind of slumping posture here. And I really noticed this when it comes to like our technology here as well. So because we're not sitting at the desktop where this kind of thing used to happen, we're sitting on our sofas, um, curled up in a ball, looking at our gadgets or even having the laptops in our laps.

So it can, again, it just tends to bring this out and causes us to have some back pain at times. Um, so in the spirit of restoring the natural curves of the spine, let's look at just breathing on the mat. All right, so ladies, if you'll lie down for me please. All right, so as your in this position, just before we begin, think about the way that we stood with the roller against the back. Jean, will you scoot down this way more so we have your head fully supported on your map and think about if the roller was behind your head, behind your shoulders. This is a great example though of when we have some skin that sometimes that adjusts the way it feels, but you're going to try to find that link through the body.

Take a nice long breath in for me and as you let your breasts out, just try to relax for a moment. Don't do too any, don't do anything too exciting yet. And again, ladies filled the body up with air and as you exhale this time, allow your sternum to soften down and your front ribs to slide down underneath your skin as if you're going to take the very tips of your rib cage and put them down on your pelvic bones. Find another breath. Inhale. And as you exhale, just slide the sternum down. Soften the ribs down. Don't try too hard because we don't want to like to do it. We want to Ha to do it or cough. You take another nice long breath in and this exhale is going to last for six, five, four, three, two, and one. Okay, now that we have your rib cage area where we want it, I want you to bring awareness to your pelvis and drop into a more neutral position.

Okay, now go beyond that neutral, so actually stick your butt out, tailbone down, create space between your back and the mat. Now just relax and kind of fall back into wherever you fall back into. Okay? Do it again. Go into the arched position where your bottom is down, but your low back is lifted and then exhale and relax down into it. All right? Find your neutral where the pelvic bones and the pubic bone are on the same plane.

Now we're going to add Curlin into this position and helps you prepare. First thing is going to be drawing the chin down into the neck. You're going to curl. Look forward to your thighs, lifting your head on your shoulders, off the mat. Look down at your pelvis. See if your pubic bone is pushing up between your thigh bones.

Take your tail, drop it down into that exaggerated arch. Just the little bit more. Ladies, stay there with an inhale now, heavy your sternum and send your rib cage to your pelvis, not your pelvis to your ribs, your ribs to your pelvis. Rest down and relax. Okay, so as we mentioned earlier, Meredith, perfect. Did you to notice though, as you looked at your pelvis, did you see show that tailbone was poke poke right up? So one of the tools I use when I teach is looking for creases in my students clothing. Okay, I talked about that a little bit earlier, but when the knees are bent in, the feet are flat.

I want to see little wrinkles right where their body meets their legs. Okay, so let's practice it again. Take a nice long breath in for me. Just lay here with your first exhale. Your back against the roller. You're softening through the ribs. No, not a lot of force. Just let it fall ladies free. Then again, fill the body up with hair. We'll draw the chin downward, lift the head in the shoulders, reach forward and already look at the pelvis.

All right, I've got two Tuckie butts in the room. Drop the tailbone down almost to the point that you feel annoyed with me. Like you're thinking I'm arching my back and I don't like it. Stick your butt out. Stick it out right there. Breathe in. Watch your thighs and your butt. Don't let them move.

Curl higher by sliding your rib cage closer to your pelvis and then release down. So it tends to happen often. Is that when we curl, okay, we get people, get the tucky button and I call it talking about, because clients don't know what posterior tilt means. So I just say Tucky, but um, I'll just show when I curl, the tendency here is for that button bottom to lift. So all the creases in the front of my pants kind of went away. As I encourage my students to drop their tailbone down, they get a little annoyed because they freak and they're like, I'm arching my back and I don't like it. The way we fix that is not by going boom, but by going.

So when I get this connection that fills in that space between my back and the mat, that freaks me out. I'm more connected here, but my pelvis is actually neutral. My lumbar spine is actually neutral so that then I'm feeling less of that flattening of the back into the net and I am restoring the natural curves of the spine just like we're trying to do with all of these connections. Ladies, do you like, would you like to try it again? Okay, one more time. Just think about it already. What if you already arched your back a little more than you want and then just like a little bit more and Michelle A. Little bit more. Thank you. Are you looking a little bit annoyed? Okay, good.

That's where I want you. Okay. Nice. Long breath and as you exhale, curl chin to chest, reach the arms, watch for it. Pause. It's okay. You feel it though. You're gathering information, right? Hold. Let's all lower the tail of wee bit more and then slide the rib cage and get closer to the pelvis. My goodness. That is beautiful and release all the way down.

Okay. That was very, very nicely done. Ladies, why don't you hug your knees into your test for just a moment. We're going to look at the exercise bridge next and place your feet flat on the Mat and let spring. Will both of you walk your feet closer to your seat? Not too much, but yeah, more. Yeah. Perfect. Alright. As you're laying there, you [inaudible] okay, you're on your roller again. Give me a little pressure of your hands into the mat that just helps you to activate the back of the body a little bit. Take a long breath in as we breathe out today.

Come up into a f a bridge with a flat back. So non articulating. Just just push right up. Okay. Can you do the same thing we just did with your bottom down here? Find an inhale and as you exhale, send your rib cage to your pelvis without necessarily changing your pelvis.

Pick your bum up another inch. Undo your tuck. I know it makes you so mad. Hold their, breathe in. And as you exhale, sternum heavies and these ribs slide down and you just keep your bum up without so much talk. Let's articulate down. Because if I don't let Michelle articulate, she's gonna get really mad at me. So it's hard. We all have these different postures. Couple of things tend to happen on this. If you're a super tuckie, but person, you get up here and you get stuck, you can't actually get up to your Highbridge because you're not allowing this natural curve to happen here. So for Michelle, for you, that is really gonna feel. It feels like you're going to do this. Yes. Okay. I promise you're not like, I mean, I really promise you're not.

I dare you to do that. How's that? So once you're up there, look at how this, this changes. So when I've got more of a neutral, I've got pubic bone and pelvic bones, they're on the same plane, but that plains on a diagonal, right? So I've got this little thing happened in here. Ah, without forcing it, without freaking out over it. I'm just sending my rib cage this way, which immediately fires up that heiny in a whole different way. Okay. Are you going to take me up on my dare? Okay, cool. All right. Can we do it one more time? Nice and helped you prepare. Exhale, flat back lift.

We're not going to articulate today. We're just coming right up to it. Very good. So inhale there. Your perfect pelvis and thighs are perfect. Exhale, heavy. The sternum. Breathe out. You've got a brief. There you go. And breathe out. Good. All right, we're going to breathe again. Inhale. I'm not even looking at you. You just let the breath out. Me. There you go, girl. There you go. Now we got more movement like for everyone to stay.

I've got to get back away from her so I can really see. I'm really happy. Exhale. Once again, give me a heavier start on slide the rib cage to the pelvis. Keep breathing, keep breathing out. Keep breathing out. Keep breathing out. Keep breathing out. Roll all the way down. That was beautiful. Good. How'd you do over here? Okay, good, good. All right. That's a really nice place to play with that. I used to always teach articulating shoulder bridges because everybody's posture 20 years ago was so forced like this that looked like a dinosaur. So forced like this, but I'm seeing a lot less of that hyper extended lumbar spine seems so much more flection and just kind of this hanging in the bat.

So I play around a little bit more with doing flat back bridging up and down rather than articulating all of the time. Okay. All right, so again, you've got to look at the body that's in front of you and apply the information to them, but again, this is how you stay excited about your work. I hope as you're watching this you're even thinking, oh my gosh, that's what I need to do for that client and aren't you excited to go to work and do it? Nicely done ladies, you can hug your knees into your test for just a moment. The next exercise we'll do is the mermaid, and this is a great example of an exercise where you need to look at the body from all the angles. So sit up for me and I'm going to demonstrate with my body here and I'm just going to do this version of the mermaid today. Um, so if I'm here and you're looking at me from the front, I look pretty perfect, don't I? Okay. You can't really see you see that I've got good bending from side to side, but you can't really see how the body is looking from the side view.

I'm going to turn my position so that you can see me and I'm going to show you exactly what I was doing. I was here and moving and coming up. Okay. Rib Cage completely displaced from my body here moving forward. So in this position, I'm not going to go into this huge tuck and fix it thing. I'm just going to take my popel this, leave it pretty much where it is and pull my sternum back and set that rib cage over the pelvis a little bit more. All right. As I go over, I try to maintain that.

If I get stuck, I don't get to lose it and just flop over to the side. I figured out where that range can be and maintain it. All right, so ladies, go ahead and send your legs over to follow Meredith's lead. Sorry. Go that way. Okay. And just bring your hand down onto your son. We'll just do this version and this arm can go up. So anytime the arm goes up over the head, that's especially going to put you in the position where you may lose it.

So breathe in right there. And as you exhale, start to side bend over. Very good. Good. And come up again. Inhale. I must've done such a fantastic demonstration that you all already have it. Exhale. Take it over. Yeah, you're slightly displaced for it.

So just in the air you get. Now, what if you look straight out instead of downward, and you kept your head on the foam roller and you come up, let the breath in. Yeah. And go over once again. I'm gonna draw your Chin in just a little. There you go. I'm gonna pull on your hair now. There you go. Lean that out. There you go. Now come up. Nice. Inhale. Good ladies. Spin your legs the other way.

Let's see if it feels a little different on the other side. It may or may not. All right, arm floats up nicely. Inhale. Good. Now just think about it. The information you just gathered from the first side and the feedback I gave you from the first side. Take ownership of your position here. Good. Give me a nice long inhale and begin to bend with your exhale. Very good. Inhale, come up.

Let's make sure beautiful that the head is on the roller and go again. Exhale. So if I were just looking at Michelle from the front, she is someone I love to talk to. I would be very likely to ask her what she did last night, but instead I'm going to give her her money's worth, right? People pay a lot of money to come see us. You'll do one more. So you get your money's worth. So bend over. Um, you know, so you just, you have to give them, even when our clients become really close, friends come up and relax.

You just have to make sure to take ownership of the work or to take ownership of your teaching and to make sure that they're getting what they're coming to see you. Okay? Now we're going to go to the reformer and look at a couple of exercises where this connection applies as well.

Chapter 9

We're going to look at footwork for this connection here of getting the pelvis where it needs to be and possibly compensating for the arch of the back that make, that makes people grumpy. Um, so Michelle, come up for me. Um, this is a footwork, especially if we take someone and load up those springs and get it really heavy is very difficult to get some of our students to drop out of that huge Tucky butt position. So this is a little trick that I've learned. Okay.

How does your head, neck and shoulders look? They're good. That's it. Let that main fall. All right, so I'm not going to look at her. You Deploy These v with your feet. Okay. And you're just gonna go do like three of them here. Good. And again, um, let's, let's pause for a second. Let me pull this gear in.

Hug your knees into your chest. All right. Try that for me. Alright. Yeah, so we've got our knees a little closer to being over her hips here. Then we had them. All right. Now do like three and just normal kind of movement out and in and out and do one more and hold at the top for me. Right? So in this position, as I stepped away, I was seeing that there was a little bit of Tuck here.

Now she's learned a lot today, so she wasn't in an extreme pluck. But when we have that big lift at the bottom, this is a great tool. You don't have to hit them with it. You just spring it right underneath. She's going to place it directly under her fingertips, so not under your hand. So I want that bar to be originally where her thighs aren't touching.

Now, long inhale, keep your knees straight and place your thigh bones on the bar. Oh yeah. Don't lose your feet. There you go. Your heels will probably lower a little though. Okay. Does it tell you that it's touching? Okay, it's touching. Do you feel grumpy because your back is arching? Yes.

How are we going to fix that? I don't know. I'm the teacher, aren't I? So what's going to happen is we're going to breathe it and you are going to keep pushing these thighs onto this stick. Push on. Push on. Good. All right. How about another breath? N. All right. Let your sternum softened down and don't work too hard. Just relax. I know. I hate it when people tell me not to work too hard. Inhale again.

Good. And exhale and keep pressing. Aha. Do you feel like you filled in some of the space between the back ribs? Just a little bit. All right. Do again. Nice long inhale. And as you let that breath out, keep the stick under the legs. All right, now bend your knees, Michelle. And as you bend your knees, your thighs are going to come off the stick, but I want you to pretend that you're keeping them down so you bend. Good. Okay. Does this, that funny? Straighten again?

Where's that stick there? Oh, just feel how much you came out of it. Yeah. So when she came in, she went full right up into that big tucky button. When you bend your knees this time, try again and think, I know the thighs have to come off the bar, but Ben did the knee creases here and just think about nothing other than bending your knees. Just bend your knees. Good. Stay right there. I'm going to give you a push.

You're going to let the thigh bones drop into your hip. Yes. We stay like this for the rest of the day. Don't giggle and talk. All right. Ready? Do you feel it there? Yes. Okay. Big Inhale, prepare. Exhale. Go ahead and take it to the top thigh bones to stick. Thigh bones to stick. Hmm. Oh Dang it. Where is it there?

Bend your knees. She hadn't thinking about anything other than Palladia is right now. We are not as best friends going to talk about what she did last night. We are talking about Polonius. Right, and we can't do, I cannot help her restore the natural curves of her spine without having this. Okay. That is one tool that can work.

We're going to try one more take. I'll take the stick for you. This is, feels so much like breaking the rules. I can't even tell you. So don't tell anyone I told you to do this. Okay. This is going behind her lower back. Oh, I'm gonna let you put it there and I want it to make you a little grumpy and it, and what I like about it is even though it's in that big shape, once her body weight goes onto it, it flattens out a little bit. So it's not as exaggerated as the pill. It makes it look. So think Beyonce. Okay, I want you to, that's what, okay, now stay there. Keep your Beyonce, but, but exhale your ribs down. Yes.

So those visualizations are sometimes good. That made sense. That clicked and she went and that's what I want initially. But now we're going to straighten the legs and you're going to keep it. Keep your butt on this side of the cushion. Keep it on this side. Keep it on this side.

Hold then to come in and keep your butt on this side. Oh my gosh. That was so fantastic. Do it again. It's Beyonce footwork. Straighten your legs. So stay on this side of the cushion. Yep. See we got giggly and we lost it so we got to come back to it. Ready then the knees. Yes. Girl, you got it.

I'm going to ask you just to do two more cause I'm too excited to stop. Good. Straighten. Okay. The pillow support is actually probably working a lot better for her too than the stick. I highly encourage you to try that though. The pillow support for her is also filling in that space a little bit better.

That can make someone feel grumpy when you're trying to get them there. I'm so excited about that. Go back and watch the reformer class that relates to this exercise. You will see your eye is going to see the difference that I was going for. We worked really hard in the reformer. You're shaking, relaxing.

I go to your mat or actually stay right here. I'm gonna use you for something else cause she can sit up or, I mean just don't do [inaudible]. Okay. Yeah. Don't just play. But anyways, I was really excited to help her and we had these little moments where we got it, but she was having a hard time retaining it. That's what I needed to do. So it just, you got to play, you've got to figure out things. And again, that's what's so exciting is just trying, figuring out what you're gonna do that's gonna help them be successful. Okay, let's look at hug a tree now. So come up, I'll take that back. But you're going to pretend it's there forever for the rest of your life. You're all, you're against the foam roller with this behind your back.

I'm going to have you do this kneeling today. Kneeling shows a more exaggerated form of this. And really that's what I'm going for. I just want for you to feel it and for the viewer to be able to see it as well. So we are going to go, let's do this blue.

Okay, I got it. All right, I'll hold you stable while you do that. And will you turn and face this direction and put your feet against the shoulder rest for hug a tree. Come on up onto your knees and just bring your arms forward. Just like we were on the foam roller case. So we're doing the same. Yeah, let's do that fingers together. So we're on the foam roller again. You're getting that same serratus anterior feeling.

This is working out really cool. You're like doing all these things that work well together. All right. Did you say the spring felt light? Yes. Isn't that fun? It's not going to feel light for long, but what I love is it's a little lighter than she thinks it should be.

She wants it heavier because she likes to work hard. I'm reeling her in and we're going to figure out how she can work her whole body and not just make it an arm exercise. Okay. Can you be on say your back for me? Yes. Okay. I know that was uncomfortable, but will you just hold there and breathe in? Keep this and just send your ribs down and your heart forward. All right. Lean a little more into it now. Take your elbows, straighten them a little more and send them that way. Hands this way. I'm sorry.

Not Elbows. Hands. All right, ready? Now we're going to open the arms. Stable shoulders. Pause. Will exhale to close the arms today. So breathe out. Keep your pelvis. Yes. All right. I know it's very uncomfortable. Open your arms. She's going to start to feel some exercise here in her back.

Close your arms with an exhale, Michelle. And that's okay. She needs to develop some strength back here. Open the arms. Inhale. Good. Now I'm right up on top of her. So after she closes her arms, I'm going to walk around. Just look at her a little bit away. Alright. Stick your heinie out a little bit more. Yes. Now breathe from the sternum in the ribs. Send that down. Keep this butt out.

Yes. And Open. It's so much to fix. Why don't you relax and I'll take these. There you go. All right. And you can actually get off of there. Yeah. Um, yeah. So just stand there. Stand up straight. Good. Turn and face me. Yep. Alright. Just stand right there. Alright, let's do the arms down. Shoulders up, back and down. Take that pelvis, tailbone back. Now, big breath in and heavy here and here instead of this stay still.

That goes down. Beautiful. I'm happy. Are you happy? Hello. That was beautiful. Okay, we're going to look at one more arm exercise. I want to demonstrate with my body here. This is an exercise that, again, we often look out from the front. I'm going to show you my arm up and over here. Actually let me walk my knees a little bit. Okay, so I've got to do my serratus pushup thing. So shoulder doesn't start up here.

I'm gonna pull it down and because this arm is bent, I can do it here. So I should be able to do it here, right? I don't need to do that. So I get over. Let's start here. Then I go up and bend. So from the front I don't look like I'm losing anything but from the side this way I was here. Okay. So again, it's just making sure that you change that perspective of where you are.

We just showed it beautifully from the side with Michelle taking the rib cage and bringing it back without letting the pelvis shift around or maintaining neutral rather. So keep that in mind for any of these side arm exercises, mermaid, all of those things really makes a difference to look at it from the side and make sure people are where you want them. It's now time to move on to our fourth key connection, which is going to be figuring out how to engage the external rotators, the inner thighs, and the hamstrings without overly grabbing through your glutes.

Chapter 10

The fourth key connection that we're going to look at is inner thighs, external rotators, and the hamstrings. Try not to overly grip and grab it through the glutes, which is what can tend to happen when we cue that this area. So one of the reasons that this is important is so that the whole leg gets exercise and we're not just firing from the quads, particularly in exercises like footwork.

And we're actually gonna start by getting the feeling by standing up and just doing a very simple, um, I know this is a polities. Um, fundamental. You're gonna stand in your polities viz stance with your feet and you can just rest your arms down beside you. Michelle, I'm gonna ask you to narrow your polities be a little bit, all right? Yeah, that's okay. I Know Ballerina Habits die hard on thing. So in this position, bring awareness to your whole body actually. So just kind of look out. Think about the way that your toes, ankles, and feet are positioned, and be aware of whether you're gripping and grabbing in your glutes or if your inner thighs are overly working or not working at all. Now think of lifting up through your arches just a little bit and drawing your heels together. But as you press your heels together, place a little more weight on the outside edges of your heels rather than the inside edges. Feel the arches lift up in there.

It goes right up into the inner thighs. Now without moving your feet at all, think of turning your legs out. So think of the muscles that would turn you into Ballerina turnout, but you're moving your feet. Okay? And now we're going to just bend the knees like one inch. Okay? So as a reminder, we're still pulling up through the arches.

We're still thinking Ballerina turnout without moving our feet. Ask Your calves to draw up towards your bum. So think of the muscles of the calves going and pulling all the way up. We're using that to get our hamstrings to wake up now. Just straight in your legs. Put all of it together. Okay, so this is the feeling that I'm going to ask you to return to for a few exercises that we're going to do on the reformer. All right, so you guys sit down, Janie, you come over here to me.

Just lie down on your back for me. Feet up on the foot bar. So this is um, similar to what I had Michelle do for footwork, but we're going to look at the heel, lower lift portion of footwork. As you are standing on your feet in this position, try to create all of the feelings that we had standing. So I know your heels aren't on a surface, but what if you kind of pushed into the outside edge of the heel, a little lifted up through the arch.

And then think of attracting the inner thighs slightly more. Almost like you have a magic circle between your knees. Okay? To find the external rotators, kind of the sides of the hips. Keep your magic circle between your knees. Now pretend you have one coming across here and you're pushing out against the circle if your legs were through it.

So you gotta do all the things and that's a lot to do, but aren't you? You feel like you're doing floods right now, don't you? Yeah. And you're just standing there. All right. So now go ahead and straighten your legs and use all of that to get you to the top. Alright, beautifully done. Stay in this position. Now that your legs are straight, I'm just going to cue your little toe instead of the outside edge of your foot, outside edge of your heel, just because you're on the balls of the feet.

So think send your little toe down. Lift up through the arch. You could straighten your knees just a little more beautiful right there. Alright. Thank ballerinas are out from your thighs. Good. Alright, now we're going to breathe in and as you breathe out, send your heels downward. Only as far as you can go with out letting those heels jam together and raise up. I use the wrong word and that without her ankle bones jammy together where you do it again and you go down. So as you get down, I have my finger tips right between her ankle bones.

So instead of them collapsing in, she's pulling up and it's limiting the range a little bit. Heels go down. Yes. And you're lifting and that's probably it. And rise up. You stay there. You're going to pretend that the stick is underneath your thighs. Can you push into that stick? There's her hamstrings.

Now go down. Keep the ankle bones apart. Push your stick. You're not on it anymore. Now rise up. Good. Okay. Yeah. All right. This is kind of fun because once I got all of this, we got all of this, but it's a great example. So this is where like I'm thinking as I come to work, I've got to work with her again today. She never listens well. She's not listening cause I'm not telling her to do anything. All right, so here's what's gonna happen. Keep this, send it up through here.

All you'll do is take a nice long inhale. Don't change anything, just soften. Ah, give me another breath. And once again, just let all the breath out. That's it. Make a noise. Let it out, let the start the hair. It goes, there it goes. Now breathe. And again, this exhale is going to send the heels under the bar. Try to do all those things and Po incen the rib cage to the pelvis. Yes. Rise up. Breathe in. And we're just going to do it one more time. Good.

So she's still doing all of this, but this was a great moment just to catch this little thing. Separate your heels, bend your knees, come all the way in and relax. Felt the whole body there. Didn't, yeah. Yeah. That was really good in how I eat. I mean, we'll look at running next with this too. It's very, very similar. Um, so it's two exercises that tend to be kind of throwaways in my opinion, the heel, lower lift and running. Running's a great example of an exercise where we talk about our weekend. Okay, so your Carol l now can you do all of the things you did in plays veto?

So the, the idea is there's a magic circle here. You gotta to push against that. Good. I'm going to put my fist between her knees. She's got a magic circle between her knees. Hug me. Yeah. All right. Ready? Active artist ankles and feet. Straighten your legs. Press to the top. All right, you're going to bend one knee.

The other heel is going down just to beneath the black bar right there. That's it. Ready? Pick the heels up. This heel goes down just a little and come up and want it even smaller press as if it's an exercise lift as if it's an exercise. That's it. Good. Both heels up for me. Pause five bones to the stick. Okay.

Now the big question is can you run and keep your [inaudible] one of the thigh bones on the stick. So go. Yeah, let's give it a go. And you go. Good. Try to work a little on that high. You've got it now. Good. Let that breath out. Exhale for like four of them. Breathe in and exhale for eight of them. Breathe. Breathe. So breaking the rules is a good idea. Sometimes both heals up. Bend your knees, come in and relax. Good girl. It was beautiful. Very well done. Thank you.

We'll look at leg circles here now. So we need to get your feet in the straps. Awful noise. Okay. Oh, sorry sweetie. Here it is. All right. There you go. Hold strong in that leg. Other foot comes on. All right, so it gets a little more complicated here. Extend the legs out to me. Try to regroup the [inaudible] position. All right, so yet again, it's my experience that this is another exercise that once your client really knows that it's like circles and you're probably going to do five to eight, something like that, we lose some of the focus to prepare for the exercise.

She's already doing the things cause things are shaking. So go ahead and bring your feet up over your hips. Pause there, lower your legs down. Okay, so that's going to be our range. Repeat it. The legs come up and you're going to keep all of that external rotators, inner thighs and hamstrings. Push down into your stops. Now is your feet come up this time. Think, push your feet into the streps feet, into the straps, feet into the straps to keep the energy and then obviously push your feet into the straps to go down. So you're resisting this job.

You're resisting the straps, but just telling some someone to resist the straps doesn't always make sense. We need to tell them how to resist the straps. How often do we say use resistance, but we've never taught them what that means, right? And they're too embarrassed to say, I don't know how to do that. You are working so hard, it's amazing. But can you like chill through all of that? Yes.

Let's take this into a circle now. So, oh, vanilla eggs. All right, let's keep it within the width of the or for the equipment or the, yeah, just for today. So press your feet down, your legs come together and for me today, we're going to hold for a minute. Get all the stuff in case you lost it. Start to lift your feet, feed into straps, feed into straps, feed into straps open, and then press the feet into the straps and bring it together. Okay, for the reverse, we'll bring the feet up over the hips. First pause there. Just in case you lost anything, take a moment, regroup. Anything you may have lost you doing okay? Okay. To reverse. We'll go down through the middle. Hold. Thoughtfully.

Open your feet as your feet come back. You've got to think. Feed into straps. Feed into straps. Feed into straps. Feed into straps together. Hold. Make all the connections. One more time. Press down. You're doing great. Open. Let this go. If you can and think feed into straps. Feed into straps, feet come together, bend your knees and you can relax. Good girl. Very nice.

You may take your feet out of there. Very good work. Yes, feet up nice and high. Your bar is always a little higher than you think it's going to be. Good girl, I'll take these for you. So it's another one of those examples where once you teach the connection, I got her there in the beginning doing something pretty simple. And then as we moved into an exercise doing the leg circles that still had to cue it. But as silly as it sounds, and you may have different words, you can just say do all those things and then you just don't have to keep using all of the words. Not everyone likes people to talk as much as I do, so you can kind of reel it in a little bit. I'm definitely a teacher that gives a lot of cues, but it could always be simplified with just a simple do those things or get your connection. Okay, Jane, you can go ahead and stand up and get back to your mat.

Meredith, I'm going to bring you up for the next exercise. Another great exercise to really drive this point home and to help people find this connection are just hamstring curls on the box here. So lie down for me and just bend your knees a little bit. Please. Second place these on your feet. All right, so you can cross your hands in front of you and your preference right now for how you hold your upper body. If you feel like you need to release and hang your shoulders and head, you're welcome to do that. Bend your knees for me to where you catch the tension.

Can you scoot forward a couple more inches? Yeah, it does that to feel like you're flying off the box here. Okay. All right. I'm just going to shorten them a little bit more. Great. How are we doing? Is it about even, okay. Do you [inaudible] be stance with your feet for the first one?

So this is mimicking a little bit more of that standing like alignment where we were in Palladia Zvi same concept here that I gave Jane. It's like you've got the magic circle on the outside. You've got some form of magic circle on the inside. The heels are thinking of pulling up the calves up all the way to the Heinie. So she's, are you already doing an exercise? Okay, cool.

So now she's going to pull her heels. Then Dean at the knee, drawing the heels towards the bottom pause and then just slowly move the feet away. Good. And then she'll do it again. Keep working the heels together and then move the feet away. So again, we're just trying to create a really strong connection so that even when we did an egg, if we did an exercise like footwork, she would be able to locate the muscles of the back of the leg, even though something like foot work feels like it's the front of the leg and move it away. I'm going to give her one more variation on this. She's going to do it parallel heels apart, but you don't have to squeeze your knees together. Okay, so yeah, Lake a pretty much like that as she pushes her feet. Yeah, she's, she's got it. And pull the good. She's doing a great job of not grabbing and her toes. Usually we see the toes want to work [inaudible] and she pulls.

So this one's kind of fun. This gets a little more, we lose some of the external rotation or rotators, but you're going to try to keep them, keep the inner thighs, which is a little bit easier here. Good. And take it one more time, Meredith, pull and move it away and you can relax. Let your feet slide out. Nicely done. So that's a really nice exaggerated way to get those hamstrings to fire up. That was beautifully done. You can come off of there. The final key connection is ankles, knees and feet.

Chapter 11

And the reason that this is important is again, it can help people get a little bit more, more work through the whole leg.

So in some ways we addressed it by talking about the heels a moment ago in the hamstring, external rotators and inner thigh connection. The other thing that this does though is it helps people to actually exercise their ankles and feet. I'm really passionate about this connection because our ankles and feet tend to lose a lot of their strength, especially as we're growing up. So to illustrate kind of these exercises, we're going to use the box and set it up. Kind of like you're doing stomach massage in a way. Um, Michelle, will you come up here for me? I'm only using two sprays.

I don't want this to be super, super heavy. I'm, all she's going to do is sit with her back against the box. Yeah. And then your feet are, Ooh, I need to bring that bar down a little bit. Yeah, he just went from really tall to really short. Okay. Let's try that setting. What I like about this though is it gives you the opportunity to see what your feet would be doing in footwork. So sometimes it's just nice to be able to look. Um, yeah. All we're going to do is straighten the legs and then once you're back, they're so just straighten them. Didn't get comfortable. Yeah, there you go.

Yeah. I'm going to give this little push cause it lifted just a bit. Okay. So, oh, I love that we're doing this with you because as no, you have no problems. You have no problems. But I do remember from our reformer workout that your feet like to do things. So we're going to zip your heels together, lift up through the artist. Just like I was encouraging Jane to do when she lowered her heels.

I want you to try not to let these little ankle bones pop together, which may mean your range of small. Go ahead and lower your heels down. Think lift up through here. Yes. Think of the back of the heel coming together. The backs of yes. So now you've got your little butt. Yeah, you got that. Okay. Go ahead and continue going down maybe towards me. All right.

I believe in you. I think you can separate that part of your feet. Yes. Now lift them up. All right, so as you go down it's like there's a little string pulling up through your arches as you lower back of my legs are. Oh, awesome. Raise the heels. All right, so we're, look, we looked at how the footwork, I mean the plot is v position of footwork with look, let's look at the bird feet position. So go to parallel and we won't do like wrap the toes over the bar today. I'll, we'll ask you to bring your feet a little closer together though. Welcome in. All right, so now you watch your ankles press down and just notice.

Yeah, so she's already learned a lot and raise the heels up. So it was the heels go down on this one. The tendency is for those ankle bones to drop in really closely together. This is also another one that's nice to look out for running. It's that same lift and pull up from the inside of the leg.

Go ahead and press it down again. Good. And then raise the heels up. All right, we'll move on to putting your heels on the bar. So this is one that I really get excited about because yeah, do what you're doing. So look at this gorgeous movement of her toes, ankles, but it is not her ankles. So there are no creases where her foot meets her leg. So I can tell you that you're going to want to walk your heels up a little higher. Okay. Just a little. Okay.

So now pull back. This is where we are losing a lot of our strength as we grow up. And so if you think you can relax for a second while I do my, Oh, does it? Great. Um, so if you think about like maybe your aunt or your grandmother or maybe even your mother, as they go to step up on the curb, as they get older, they tend to trip over their toes. Okay. So we all have someone in our life that's done that often.

It's because they're losing that ability to pull their toes up, the strength through the ankles and the front of the Shin. So I'm really, really passionate about making sure that people are really moving these toes backs. And now the really fun part is bend your knees, come to me and keep pulling back and keep the creases. Then when you go back, Michelle, take them with you right away. So it makes people pretty grumpy because there's shins really start to burn. But one of the things that's nice about that is that means that they're getting stronger, their press back, they're creating some strength and you're going to be less likely to trip when you step up on the curb in 60 years. Not that far. You can relax. That was really good. Okay, so in the spirit of looking at the ankles, knees and feet, I want to look at an exercise that's a little more athletic where the feet and ankles start to get a little fancy. So stand up on the floor.

You can come off of there. And Meredith, why don't you come up for this for me, we're doing the long stretch, step up onto the reformer step the same way that Michelle did. One Hand, one foot, and then you're already there doing the connections through the shoulders, through the pelvis that we already talked about. The ankles and the feet are going to work just like they are pressed back and you're going to try to stabilize these ankles just where they are, letting the breaths in and then let the breath out and come forward. Very good. So Meredith is doing this quite perfectly. As she's pressing back her ankles and heels are not moving at all. Sometimes what happens if you'll show it, Meredith, push with the balls of the feet as you go back.

Because what happens is when we do that, it sends the body forward just a little bit and it helps people feel like they're creating a greater range of motion. And then usually they fix it at the front. So push with the feet again, Meredith. Yep. And then come forward and she fixes it. This is a much more challenging way to work through the ankles and the feet, but to also challenged the whole body and come on forward. Go ahead and bring your knees down and you can rest. We're going to look at the ankles, knees and feet.

And one other way doing side splits. So you can go ahead and go to your mat and Jane, come on up for me and I'm going to grab a little sticky pad for her feet. I'm just going to put her about in the, maybe a little greater than the middle. Um, and alright, I'll stabilize your carriage for you as you step up to the inside of the pad there. Perfect. Right foot over to the side and then left foot right there.

Alright, so for the exercise, why don't you just do hands to hips so we don't have to think about them too much. Um, and I'm going to let go. You're in control of the springs. Go ahead and press the carriage out. And when it gets out there, we're going to do a three second hold. One hold two, hold three. Go ahead and bring it in. Good. Do it again. That's okay. That's okay. Slide it out. Good. Good. And you hold one. Hold to hold three and bring it in. Alright, so now let's look at the ankles, knees, and feet.

First thing we'll do is lift up a little bit through the arches. Keep the arches slightly lifted and push down into your big toe there. So we don't necessarily want to sag into the arches, but we need to have a little bit of energy into the outside edge of the foot. But the big toes going to heavy down as well and you're doing that on both legs. Next, next, bend your knees about two inches. Very good. Look out straight.

Good. Do all of the connections from head down. Beautiful. I'm going to get out of the way here and press the carriage out. Keep that little bit of weight into the big toe here because of the heavy springs, we tend to want to roll out to the outside edge of the feet. Common for me. Hold there and now roll it out. Another three second. Hold one.

Hold to hold three and bring it in. All right. We've got all of this. Yeah, I know. Yeah, a little side. Heiny so we've got all of this, but it's really fun. Especially here because we're at the end of the whole key connections workout to look at the body from the top down. Yes. Okay. That is not where your head was when I looked at that way.

So we're back on your foam roller. All right. Why don't you take your arms out to the side? I changed my mind because it was really Jack and her shoulders up, so she's just going to, yeah, let's turn the palms up for today first. Okay. Now the other thing that's happened here is we're getting that little bit of displacement of the rib cage. Yeah, so why don't you breathe in and just breathe out and think about being on the roller and send the sternum down and heavy the ribs. God, I want you to keep your eyes open as you look straight out. That's going to help your balance a little. One more exhale. That's it.

Let the sternum heavy and the ribs heavy. Okay. That is gorgeous. I'm moving out of your way. Roll the carriage out. Three inches. Hold what? Drop your tail under. Pull your rib cage to your pelvis and now bring it in.

Good. Alright. This time you're going to smile. You're like really lady. I'm like, do you know how hard this is? All right, ready? So we put it all together again. I want to just make the setup and exercise the heads on the roller. We're sending the rib cage down towards the pelvis. Let's breathe out to get that. All right.

Take it out and keep that connection of the ribcage to the pelvis. Think lean to the camera. Just a little hold one, drop your tail under slightly to hold three and bring it in. Okay. I'm gonna ask you to do one more thing he had. Do you need a break? Are you okay? Okay, so we're gonna lighten the spring up again. I had two red springs before on the balanced body reformers.

I'm going to take it down to one red now I like for the spring to be lighter, but I don't want to kill her on this, so okay. There. All right, so I'll hold it stable for her and she is going to get on her foam roller. All right, so that start position is lovely. Make sure you're thinking about your ankles, knees, and feet. So not locking back just the teensiest. TNCs yes. Perfect. Now I'll take my foot away. Hold it still because it's light.

It's going to want to slip out from underneath you. Yes. Now go ahead and slide it. Carriage rolls to me. Let the breath in. Perfect. Right there. Exhale, bring it in and think, lift up with your arches. Come in like you're going to your little toes towards each other with your arches lifted. Isn't that weird? Go out again. Inhale. Good. Exhale. So the arches lift, that's it.

It's like the little toes are gonna pull up an under and you find the stopper. Now hold there. Keep your eyes open for me as you look out. That's okay. That's okay. And now do it once again and do all of the things on the foam. Roller ribs. Slide down. Yes. Now come in.

Yes, find the stopper. Pull closer. One, two, three. And you can relax. I'll take your hand. Step over to me and down to the floor. Good girl. All right, so it's really fun to pull all of the concepts back together, especially at the end of the workout so that it just helps the whole workout come around full circle. Now that you've gone through all of these key connections with me, I really encourage you to go back and watch my private session with Michelle where you can see me teach a session that applies these connections. But makes it happen a little more, not so chopped up. The other thing I really want to encourage you to do is to at even as you're sitting at home and maybe thinking about your teaching tomorrow, think about the bodies in front of you. Even if it's a group class.

How nice would it be to try to get everyone to quit talking to each other about what they're doing, you know, over the weekend or what they did last night. Ask them to get really focused. A lot of times, a way that I tried to get away with that is I just say very honestly, I'm going to be really bossy right now, so let me get everyone's attention and then we can say something in a little bit or you can have a little conversation in a moment. Sometimes if you start that way, it can carry out longer in the workout, so I just try to be really honest about I'm going to be bossy and tell you what to do so that it kind of clears up that I'm taking control over the session. If you have any questions or want to ask any questions about the session in the workshop or my session with Michelle, please you can email me or make comments in the comment section. Thank you so much for joining us today. We'll see you next time.

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Comments

2 people like this.
Very smart & useful workshop! I would love more workshops from you, Carrie!
1 person likes this.
Thanks so much, Jodi!  I'm so glad you found it helpful!
Thank you so much for putting this together! It was really helpful to see what you were talking about on the four different bodies. I now have some new tools for working with my clients. I was looking for some new ways to give feedback during my ongoing group classes (3 people). The challenge I always find is keeping the class moving while giving meaningful feedback for each individual. Thank you for the insight -- I will sprinkle it in as much as I can!
Jen U
Hi Carrie!  Thanks for a great workshop.  I learned some new ways to cue and think about things.  I have some observations I was wondering if you could address.  Michelle seemed to have a lot of hyperextension in her knees throughout some of the moves.  It especially noticed it around 1:30ish when she is seated up against the box and is doing the ankle work.  I know the emphasis here was maintaining flexion in her ankles but how might you cue to correct the hyperextension here?  I felt this was also the case with her when you had the stick under her legs for footwork earlier on.  I often use a "pull the kneecaps" up cue for straightening the legs and avoiding hyperextension. It's really hard for people who naturally hyperextend.  Thanks for keeping things fresh.  You have a wonderful energy in your teaching and I hope to meet you in person one day!
Sandra B
Loved, loved this workshop! I'm a bossy talker, and it made me feel soo good to hear a veteran instructor say it is ok.
I love your attention to details! Will definitely use some of what I learned here. 
More like this, please!
Rebound Pilates
I was uncomfortable watching her with demonstrating the Swan with Michelle.  Jodi all of a sudden called her "girl" and referred to her hair as a "fun prop." Not cool
Rebound Pilates ~ Thank you for your feedback. We're sorry that your experience was uncomfortable during this section. I can assure you that Carrie and Mychele are friends and she was interacting with her in a way that they typically do. Also, Carrie is from North Carolina, and phrases like "girl" are very common in the south, especially when talking to friends. We never want to make anyone feel uncomfortable or unwelcome and we are always striving to make sure we are doing our best in this area.
Rebound Pilates
Still doesn't make it right. Thank you for responding.
Kelly S
I really enoy making use of the foam roller as well!  One question for the wall exercise with the roller:
Do I want them to have the curve of the lumbar on when they ar just preparing?  My instinctive answer is no, I would like it to be like the cervical-slightly off- but like "rolling like a ball", it would be flattening until the client rolls BACK to "neutral" on the roller.  Is that correct?
1 person likes this.
Kelly S Hi Kelly!  If you're referring to the exercise with the Foam Roller on the wall along the length of the body, the yes.  I would prep or start the exercise trying to attain neutral of the cervical and lumbar spine.  As the client begins to move through those areas they would eventually make contact with the roller.  I hope this helps!
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