Mini Deep Dive: Knee Stretch

Hi. I'm Lesa Logan, and I'm excited to talk to you about the knee stretches. This tutorial is gonna talk about what usually goes wrong, what we should be getting out of it. And the most important thing I think you should be focusing on when you're doing the knee stretches. So first of all, I like to think of the knee stretches as an advanced exercise you learn as a newbie because it takes our entire lifetime to really get the juice out of it. I also would like to explain that a lot of times people The setup isn't in a place that's gonna allow you to have a great knee stretches.

But even if you don't think you're doing knee stretches, quite well, even if you don't feel like you're advanced enough, doing them imperfectly is still great because it's going to give you a lot of good stuff. So the knee stretches have three exercises. I mean, if you wanna go through all the variations, you probably can get a few more out of there. But the three basic ones that everyone will do in some class or another in their practice are along two spine shapes. You have a round, and you have an arched. Okay.

So you'll wanna be on two springs. I like two heavy springs or, a heavy in a medium. You don't want it to be too light because you don't want it to be too easy to kick the carriage out. And so you want to focus on having springs that you can work with. So you have your round shape, and then you have your arch, and most people do arch.

And it's it's not that arch because well, mostly in pull eyes, we actually extend our upper back, or we extend our whole back. We're not doing the extension in the lower back. So what's fun about knee stretches is it teaches you when you go from round to arched to knees off, it's teaching you where to round from, and how to move your spine to transition you through other exercises. If you're wanting to do the big swan on the reformer or teaser on the reformer, learning your knee stretches early and focusing on where you're moving from is gonna help you with that. So this series is building you up for more exercises to come.

But what I tend to see go wrong is a focus on kicking the carriage out, not pulling the carriage in, being a little too high up over the foot bar, or pushing with the arms as well. So let's set things up correctly so we can get all the good stuff out of it. First, let's set up your wrist. You wanna have a straight wrist here. So you're not gonna be back here or over here. You're gonna be nice.

And long with those hands, so those wrists, and then wrap your fingers around allows you to good grip strength. And I like to pull this foot bar apart as long as it doesn't bend your elbows. The next thing is you gotta get these feet right. So as you can see, my heels are into the shoulder rest, and all of my toes are pulled forward. So I can get a nice stretch of the foot. That's gonna actually help prevent plantar fasciitis and do a lot of good things for your feet.

You gotta stretch our feet. If you have really tight ankles and you can't get that heel back there. I love to stick like a black pad or a pillow. So your heels have something to touch against just to get that kinesthetic feeling of reaching back. Then where do you put your hips? Well, you don't wanna be back here, see how I can sit on my heels.

We don't wanna be way over here. So you gotta kind of find that position. Think of when a swimmer is at the diving block or a, a track runner is at the blocks. Right? They're not too far back on their heels, but they're not too forward on their hands. So you kinda can feel that yourself by going back and forth and feeling like, okay. Now I feel my seat is on.

So when we gotta push this carriage out, we're gonna push with the back of our legs and in and what it's attempting to do is to pop your hips forward, but what if you just kept your hips right there and push the legs back and then pulled it in? Push it back and pull it in. So we're not twerking. Right? We don't get you I'm not even a good twerker. So but we're definitely not doing that.

And the distance you get to go out, guess what? It's the length of your shin because our hip extension is only 15 degrees, I think, or five degrees if we're lucky. It's not far. You're not gonna get to go far. So instead of emphasizing how far out can I push the carriage focus on only pushing out enough to pull it in? Right? So when you do round, you're pushing out to pull it in and in and in, and you get to pick your pace up and close your springs all the way. Then we arch.

And ideally, you go from round to arch without stopping, but the arch is that swan prep. It's that extension in the upper back. So your tailbone's not tucking, but it's also not sticking to the ceiling. And then you just do the exact same exercise. Can you move your legs?

Without disturbing tailbone to the crown of the head. And that's what Palises. Right? We have our center, and then we use our limbs to see can we get stronger in our center, even as the legs are going out in it. And then we have the lovely knees off. And this is where everyone goes, okay. I'm here, or they go one, two. So I love all those cheats, but knee stretches off is it it's hard.

Let's just be honest. It's really, really hard, and the goal is that you actually lift those knees off simultaneously and get right into the exercise. So you go from round to arch to round, lift those knees off. And then you push. And now I can get my legs further back because I have that space, but the emphasis is still on the in.

And so now for our most important part, why are we doing these knee stretches? Well, one, it sets us up for so many exercises that are gonna come. Right? If you're wanting to do the big swan on the reformer, if you're wanting to do some of these more advanced exercises, you do need to practice going from round to extension to round again. If you're wanting to have a more athletic practice, you do wanna get that rhythm. You can hear, even in just doing a few reps, it gets your heart rate up. The most important part of knee stretches is to close the spring.

It's actually close it. We're only opening up the spring, so we can close it. And what do we close it with? Our center. Right? The springs don't get to close themselves. We have to pull it in.

And so I love using all three of these exercises that teach us not just what's going to come up, but to teach us how do we use our center to close the spring. And then you can take all of that energy with things you like to do in your life. So hopefully this was helpful, and I can't wait to hear how it affects your knee stretches. Thank you so much for watching.