Hi everyone. It's Amy for another reformer class. And this class is a very appropriate for active aging population. As you know, I like to teach to that demographic. It's good for anyone though there won't be any flection. There's a lot of decompression, um, pretty hip specific arms specific, spiny longation as always, and some standing balance. So come on along.
You are going to need a few things for this class. I have a weighted dowel, but you don't need a way to del or you can use just a regular stick or Dell if you have that. A set of hand weights. And I'd like you to go up on the heavier side. So I'm using five pounds today. If you don't want to use five for a specific reason, you can always go lighter. But I wanted to build in a little bit more strength component with the hand weights. So that's what that's for. And uh, gone to Lapole for some balance work. Okay, so come on along. We're gonna set up a reformer on, I have got a blue here on the balanced body, but just on one spring for your, your home reformer or your other reformer.
Really allow your sit bones to open and stick back. Please don't be here right away with the Tuck. Okay, so we want to get that link and then let the carriage drag your arms forward. Let your scapula get elevated up your back rib wall. Do put some elongation of course in your spine, but muscularly support that with your abdominals. But I want you to write away, kind of liberate yourself to get stretched. Let the reformer help stretch you to spend some moments.
Start some lateral posterior breathing. You're creating a lot of space between your pelvis and your a rib cage right there. If you want to send some weight into your heels more than your toes, you can do that. I'd like you to think about not overflowing the rib cage in front, although it is going to feel a little open. Okay. Resist the urge to Tuck your tailbone. No, I'm feeling like it's allowed me to move more so you can kind of come along if you want. I'm going lower now.
I'm trying to zip up my abdominals and then feel the focus in your back muscles. Okay, so there we are. Now I'm going to change my hand position right now. They're right up on top. I'm just doing this flight change hands around the corners, thumb up on top, so that's put our upper arm in external rotation. That's a better environment to do some scapular work. All right, so let's begin with the shoulders in elevation and upward rotation.
My arms are straight. I'm letting this drag my arms forward. Then just to contrast that, let's do the scapula movement where we're gliding them down, depression and retraction. We're just going to go back and forth between those two. So it's that releasing the mid traps, arm elevation, scapular elevation, upward rotation, and then depression, retraction. Ms. Feel the glide between the two. You can say easily shoulder blades, up, shoulder blades back
Let it myself kind of just drag, get dragged forward. Okay. And just stretch now. Peak of look out over the bed of the reformer. Let's do some more elbow bending. But now I'm an appointment. Elbows more toward my hips. So it's just a little bit narrower angle.
So begin to lower your heels however far they go. Some of you are gonna be able to get them down and right away. Some of you won't. That's fine. And then rise back up. So let's just feel a little bit of the weight shift. You can inhale heels down.
Make sure to pick up those abdominals, put them inside. There we go. And then shift your hips back. You can kind of think this is a a downward dog stretch, if you like that. Queuing from the yoga world. This is just a nice stretch for the back of the legs.
My head is now right between my arms. I'm just gonna do one more reach of my sits bones back toward the risers. And then to come up guys, bend your knees, put your hands on the frame of the reformer. I'm trying to do this out without any real big flection in the spine as you know, as I introduced class with, okay, we're going to move on to foot footwork now. All right, so what I want to talk about with footwork just really quickly, not the high bar, set it down a little bit lower and I want that lower because we're going to go heavier weight. I'm going three red, one blue and want more hip extension to start this whole series off than hip flection. So when the bar is lower, takes you out of the hip flection angle, allows you to work a little more from the back and then with the weights heavier you can, you can get a little more push. Okay? So if that, and also if you've got a knee issue, the high bar can sometimes be a little icky on your knees if you've got that with that much weight. All right, so that's that weighted bar. Let's put it in our hands and it's going to go underneath you guys like this and I want you to really, really concentrate and discipline yourself.
I want you to try to resist curling your tail away from the dowel. Okay? It's a little weird cause it's right there on your skin, but sit toward it. Extend yourself toward it. It's much better for your spine in your sacred anyway. Okay, so then here we go. Lastly, I promise. Open up your collarbone. Grab that Bar and imagine that you're trying to pull it apart and I didn't want you to use the theraband. I want you to have something solid. Here we go.
We're pressing out and use the back of those legs to press down against that Dow. We'll, we'll do 10 of them. Here's the second one. So the Dow was there for feedback. Use your hip extensors depressed down against the bar. And Five
Here's the ninth one and the 10th one is a posture posture posture, right? With this Dick Palase v let's go balls a feed. And then we'll also do a set from heel. So we have 10 remember you're trying to keep your tail in your sits bones on the dowel, not curly way. You want to feel the back of the legs, press down toward the dowel and the floor down.
Five more and press one press. We want strong legs. We want strong hips, strongly hip extensors turning out like this. Why you might feel a little different source. Deep, deep, deep underneath where that femur and hip socket lived together. Okay. Same thing in the toes up position. Make sure your heels aren't too beveled like mine are.
If you're burning up down there, it's good for you. We have one more than yes. We're going to take a little walk stride. Go right back out. Let's just do 20 changes. Brisk. Two, three. Make sure you're not hula or salsa in your hips. Sits bones to the dowel. Alright, 10 more. One, two. Let those total joints bend.
Remember we're building better posture as well. So keep your, your spine long. Three
This arm is going to open out to the side of the reformer. So get ready some coordination and lift on that hard, but it's hard enough. So the way out there, my arm might tempt your rib cage to skittle around and move. So we're working to keep that stable. We have five,
Open and up and open up.
And we need our triceps to be flexible and long a to help the shoulder move and the uh, arm move. Well, okay, tuck this one in here. You're going to take this foot on. You have to see your heel in line with the sit bone. What I'm not is toes to the front of the bar. Okay, we've done that before, but this is different. So this gives you a chance to really pause here for a minute, push this heel into the foot bar and really feel your effort of extending the hip opening this line. It might even feel like you're getting some abdominal stretch through here.
Okay. So then just take a moment in, reach this arm over your leg and just enjoy, in fact, we'll take this arm overhead and feel like we can get this side of our body even longer as well. And then bring this down. Okay, so for now, just keep it here. We're going into ankle flection of don't lift that heel. Really try not to take your heel off the bar yet. There's going to be another uh, exercise where you do get the heel lifted, but stay right there for a minute and drive your heel into the bar.
You're going to feel it here and use that to extend. Okay. Any other thing we want to monitor is that the ankle isn't deviating, getting naughty and going in now like that. So right in the center of your ankle and press your hip should be nicely stacked. A sense of LHI elongation, that axial lengths that we always talk about. Four and three. Palm is up here, two and one. Now when you push out, hold this time, stay, have a strong hip extension and raise your heel a little. Some of us can go a lot and that's not what we're after. Actually, this exercise, think about two inches. If I had my fist underneath your heel on the bar, it'd be about a fist height.
So now from the femur through the Nishan Ankle foot, we're going to externally rotate. Okay? And now continue bending and straightening the knee and lower lift. It feels really nice on a low bar. Can get that focus on your hip, not so much your knee and lengthen and bend and lengthen. Trying to keep the hip over hip, deep, external rotation three and two and one. You get the whole drill. Last time you guys were going to take it and hold it. Hold it.
All right, before we go, I'm going to take my arm over. I did do that extra stretch. I know on the first side cause I remember feeling so good. Okay, now we're ready. We'll pick it up. Eight more in this first round heel has to stay down. That's the amount of Dorsey flection you have in this exercise.
He can always increase it, but don't cheat it. Okay. Keep that heel down and really push you. Focus on the hip extensors again, deep. They're super important. Last two and then we will lift the heel, which is here now again, as you lift, not the highest lift, you can try to stabilize what you just felt and continue Ben and stretch and bend in. Stretch in the back of that hip and open the front line.
But do keep the collarbone expanded just about five of them. It's an interesting exploration and some core connection like obliques and an ABS, keeping your body steady carriage pretty steady. Okay, and then elbow ans we're going to go five elbow extension Z or just one
That's all with it's all we didn't need to do kneeling underneath, so everybody just put those straps down round your, uh, dough around your back. Okay. We're coming into something we were doing at the beginning in a way. Stepping inside, watch the ropes. We're going to add a little bit of abdominal work, single leg stretch in here. Uh, but from a front support position. So once again, hands on top.
I'm actually thinking more about pulling the Ri the shoulder blocks off the reformer to keep more connection into the stability of the scapula and the upper body. Okay. Where to focus. Look right at the foot bar with your eyes stand strong in your arms and your feet. Okay, I'm going to take my outside leg, the one that's closest to you up first. You can really see as I bring my knee toward my chest, try not to move the pelvis side to side. It can curl under and you can add a little lumbar flection if you need to pull your stomach deeply in and as you stretch the leg back, hopefully your hips don't go side to side. Other ones slowly stare at that foot bar. Your standing leg is very strong. It's not going to turn out. You're going to keep it parallel.
Let's breathe in and 10 times.
They're supposed to work right. Lift one more. So it's a stretch engaged to pick it up.
Now start to bend the knee and however far you pull the carriage towards you is how far you pull it in. But I've got my other hand pulling down on the dowel like I could stab it through the dirt to allow me to go taller up this arm. Maybe it feels good to the side. Pull and pull. My knee cap goes straight up. Yeah, I'm going to add a little coordination so you could keep going with that. Or as you bend this, the working knee, we're going to make this also working me and bend it and straighten it. I need a hot backward and bend it and straighten it.
I'm sure half of you did last time. I'd come up and hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Okay. This tubular challenge. Look someplace else in the room. Turn and look. It's going to be fun. They're in luck. Let me turn and look at the ocean. What's it doing now?
All right, other side. So switch hands. That leg is the working leg because it's going to bend and straighten standing legs. Also you're working like, because you're using it to balance upon this hands pulling down the stick. Here we go. And we did 10 strength and length three. So this, these all these exercises, they're good for everybody. Bone loading people. Men, your active aging. That's including everybody who are all aging and we're all active.
You've got it. One more vision change and then lower your heel and rest. Okay, we did it. Awesome. I'm going to turn toward you guys and keep using your dowel. Lower your head rest. You're just going to put your foot here. We're still working on a Dorsey, our plants, our flection of your feet, your calves. Okay. Maybe this is better. This foot's up. You did all that turnout for this, so here you are.
That's why I want to keep holding this stick. Five more. Really Nice for your sense of where are you over your standing leg in your body. Last one. I'm going to hold it. I'm going to open. I did pretty good. I started veering a little bit not bad and then down. Okay. That's all other side turn around. Foot up.
Relatively natural turnout. I've backed myself up against the frame. There we are. Dowel is at my ready. I'm using it. Push this foot down, rise up the other heel or lift up the other heel. Okay. You can't tell if I'm cheating. My eyes are open or closed. They're still, cause we did a set with eyes open. I really feel the push off strength of your ankle down there in your foot.
Still doing the work.
Okay. Keep playing with that stuff is really fun and add different challenges in that when you feel ready and when you feel like your client's ready to start moving a little bit or move this with your heels, you guys will get creative and it's all for purpose of challenging that standing balance. Okay. I'm not quite done with that. So last little series we're going to do here, standing up on the reformer for some leg lied. So guys go into a red spring. Now head rest up. We want that foot barn down and I'll face you for the first round. Of course, pretty standard so they may or may not need the Dowel, but I'm going to use that and then just stand, organize your clothes. It makes a difference. Okay, so here we are foot real close to the edges and I want you to slide your carriage out and then once you're there, hold it, hold it, don't go anywhere. We're used to moving in and out. Just hold.
Dorsey flection we did prepares us for things like this. There's four and five. Okay, so in both legs, step down behind that moving leg, carriage goes first. Carriage. What goes first? Walk yourself around. Stable side. Mobile side can, once again, the devil is just right in front of you. Pretty much in the center of your body. Light, hands lifted elbows. Press yourself out. Hold it there.
We get to go back into that well area for a quad stretch step in again, headrest down, and I'm doing this instead of Eve's lunge, just to get a different opportunity for some quad lengthening. Hold the risers, put a foot up toes right on the edge. You can hop your forward leg there, Ben, both knees. Now you can see I'm a little bit in my lordosis feels homey there. Then nothing wrong with this, but I'm not getting the quad stretch so you know what we've got to do. I'm going to take these two hip bones.
Let's Tuck those toes going can start off in your normal. That's fine, but then let's change it. Hips up, hips back in, puts in a little more posterior tilt of this bothers your knee. Abort. You don't need to do the exercise. Find the other way to start your quad and then just be, take a few breaths.
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