PRO | Creative Supine with Dowel

Okay. For this next series, you want the resistance to be pretty heavy. So I'm gonna keep my blue spring on and add two reds. So I have three springs on. It's gonna be heavy. Grab your setup, see if you can keep it all connected, lying down onto your back.

And we'll use both loops. So placing the loops over the dowel, I'm looking for it to be about shoulder width apart. My feet are gonna go to the inside. And I'm in my footwork Pilates v alignment. So find this. I'm gonna give you a second, adjust it on your foot, wiggle around, figure it out.

And then when you're there, pelvis stays stable, knees bend in, push out. This, honestly, for me, is so much fun to do. It's I prefer this to footwork. It is more challenging as far as stability goes, less about power and strength, more about symmetry, precision, control, awareness. I just love it.

As I bend my knees in, I'm trying to stop the bend before it changes the shape of my spine. So for me, it's not about coming knees as close to the chest as possible. It's this disassociation of the lower body with the torso. Last two, and one, straightening the legs all the way. Now you are gonna have to kinda use those intrinsic muscles of the feet here.

So as the legs go up, you can see I'm adjusting the position of my feet, so I can keep connection into that bar. Lift, lift, lift, hips stay down, exhale lower. Definitely heavy. I'm feeling my hamstrings for sure, pressing down. Now as a practitioner as a platte's teacher, it's really interesting to watch the clients because you can see right away if there's a dominance in one side because the pole loses its horizontal nature.

It becomes wobbly and tilted. So take a look. And notice what you're seeing. Let's put those two moves together, so I bend in, reach up, push down, bend in, reach up here. It doesn't move when I go up, push down. Heels stay connected. Lots of inner thighs, one more this direction, and check it out in reverse.

So at first, carriage stays pretty stable as I bend, push through the heels. Up, bend, push, lift, control, push, one more time, lift, bend, and press out. Nice. Bend the knees in. You gotta kind of stabilize and walk it down. And it can be a little clunky in the beginning.

That's alright. Okay. I'm moving down away from the shoulder block. This is a heavy tension. So stay with me. I'll bring the bar right over my chest, legs come to table.

Two things happen at once. I push the bar towards my thighs as I extend the legs and come in. If you like your head rest up, go ahead and pop that baby up. Inhale here, exhale here, inhale here, exhale. The next time the arms and legs are straight, keep them that way. And then just the elbows.

Push. Push. This is a lot of work. Push. Five. Ben just 90. Push straight out for three, two, and one. Bring it in. Okay. This next one is super fun. If you have a hard time with inversions like short spine, this can really help you.

So we're gonna thread our legs over the dowel like this. And this is sort of a a Cadillac exercise called airplane, and it really is gonna help you get that lift. So what I don't want you to do is straighten your legs and lose the dowel. So you gotta kinda hold it there. On an inhale, bend your knees into your chest and start to find that curl just like we do a short spine.

Then using your abdominals, you can use your arms to help, find lift. Now rolling one bone at a time, All that resistance and support is gonna really help you here. And then get the tailbone down and repeat the move. So it's that really intentional scoop that I want you to work on. Press down to lift up.

And then upper middle, lower, touchdown. X, hill up. Roll it. Control it. Have fun. Two more, exhale out. Cara just closed here, and one more time, exhale out. And roll it down. Okay. This is a tough one.

So you're gonna slide the dowel down so it's close to your butt. And then everyone's gonna say the same thing. They're like, I can't push up because my arms aren't long enough, but that isn't the truth. In order to get the dowel to push away from your butt like that, you gotta curl up really high. So you don't want those shoulder blocks to be in your way. Push the hands into the dowel, get some space. So it's not touching your booty anymore.

Option to extend the legs, and we 100. Inhale and exhale. Inhale. I'm really trying to curl and push into the nose, out through the mouth, pushing down through my pinky fingers. This will tell you if you're curled up as high as you need to be for the 100. Last two. Last one. Hold everything.

Can you scoop a little higher? Push it away and rest. I love this prop because it is a truth teller. Alrighty. From here, hook up your loops. Let's do some reformer roll ups. Reach it to the sky.

Take a big breath in, legs relaxed. All the way up you go. All the way down. And all the way up you go. And all the way down.

Whenever you use a prop, could be the pole, could be the ball, anything. You wanna use it purposefully. So I'm not just kind of holding on to the dowel. I'm stretching my elbows, and I'm doing this orientation, pushing my pinky fingers down, like I'm gonna break this pole in half. Three. That's gonna fire into my back. Two and on the next one, we're staying up.

Roll halfway back, pull lifts and lowers. Same sensation of activation through the arms. Four, three, two, and take it down. We're gonna come up into another variation. All the way up first, over the thighs, halfway back, wind meal with a reach.

If you do this on the short box, it's your cast to spell. You realize that that little bit that that dowel weighs. It adds up as you reach it away from the torso, the length of the lever, challenging the obliques, one more each side. And take it all the way down. Okay. This is another one that's gonna make you angry, but the more you do it, the easier it'll get, promise, and it'll make you so much better at your abdominal series. So you're gonna hug the shins in, squeeze that dowel, curl up nice and high.

Here's the easy part. Reach, double leg stretch. Here's the hard part. You have to curl high enough to get your legs to go over that dowel. Yes, I'm flexing my feet. I don't think that's cheating.

Pearl high enough. So as I get tired, it gets harder last two, and one more. Rest. Did you do it? Okay. All the way up, you go and come off to one side. Let's give this pull a break.