Hi everyone. I'm here for reformer workout and I have Sarah working out with me today. We're going to have fun. We're ready to work hard. Uh, put on your jump board. We're doing a lot with the junk board attachment and grab a physio ball. We'll be tossing that around a couple of times. Full body workout.
We're ready to kind of sweat and get working. So join us for some fun. So we are taking all the springs off. Please be careful as you do so move the carriage back about halfway between the front and back of the reformer and get situated right at the front of the carriage and settle down onto your Sitz bones and really feel the anchoring there are at about a 90 degree angle at the knees. Take a few deep breaths and just feel that nice long line of energy from your tailbone through the curves of your spine, which the lumbar curves in the thoracic curves back and the cervical curves in. Try Not to flatten those.
Just put space between all of the spaces and the joints there and your spine. And as we take a couple deep breaths, feeling the whole, uh, rib cage move. So we want the articulation of the ribs as we inhale and as we exhale, maintaining the height of the spine. Just put a little energy in the abdominal musculature and tone there.
The calm before activity. Okay. So take another breath in and this exhale. Let's go ahead and give the pelvic tilt, some viewing and some connections. So rolling those Sitz bones under trying to make the C-curve shape of our spine and then use the inhale to move the carriage back. I know little extra lift of this sternum will do about eight of these.
Gathering some strength and awareness into the front, opening the back. Feel a nice long stretch in the front of the abdominal wall. Let's take our last one here and then we're coming into and they seated extension and then we'll find right in the middle between the two. Kind of a neutral position. Again, rotate your torso. Either read a right or left. I'm going to put hand on knee and the other hand back on fingertips and settle into the sitz bones against. Often there'll be a little hike on one side, so just take a second to feel your sits evenly and then we'll just you for say movement, exhale and round your hand model. Those probably just going to adjust itself on the mat, not a big deal as we're just flexing and then extending all within that rotation.
On the spine and exhale says can be a little tricky on how the Sitz bones feel on the mat. Still work to be right in between the two. Might feel your coccyx, touch the mat a little more on this articulation. But of course we're sensing that nice diagonal connection in the oblique sling and exhale under. So that was four. That's enough. We're going to go for the other way. Just swing the arms around again. Take a second to settle into both Sitz bones evenly. Take a breath in, and then here we go.
Exhale and roll the carriage towards your calves by flexing the spine. Inhale and extension. So we're not doing the upper, upper, upper back extension on this any longer. You can if you want to. So it's really more about getting the motion in the Lumbo sacral area, connecting that abdominal muscles all around your center. And one more time, exhale and curve. And then find center. It's kind of hard to do.
And then just feel your fingers on the outside of the frame. A student, easy sitting side bend. So again, just lateral flection to one side. However far you feel like going in your upper body. But let's make sure that sits bones. Don't leave the surface and come back up and the other side, either breaths in or out, go so far that you even flex your cervical spine, the side to the lateral side so you get a neck stretch and lateral flection. Feel the opening from the hip up to the ribs.
One more here. Exhale more. Inhale your preference, feeling that nice opening and then sitting tall. Okay, let's carry on with some warm up guys, but still no spring but your hands on the carriage edge. Roll yourself back until you're all the way down. I want to move myself right back up against the shoulder walk, so I'm just going to wiggle back. And then before we do much, I focus on our feet and as we know the jump board, there's so much focus on the feet, but we can also focus and wake them up on the, so just take stock on how you're standing there. Hopefully not on the outside edge, too much inside edge, too much. Get your tripod and then imagine that your feet are stuck to the floor--imagine it--and you're trying to pick them up and you can't.
You're trying really hard to pick your feet up, but you can't. And you'll probably start to send some abdominal contraction and maybe some hamstring connection. So we're going to work with that. Start to move the carriage backward without making a LE lifting your feet. So the only objective on this, go as far as you can, but don't lift your feet off the floor. Okay, so I want you to go test it and see that you get as beautiful stretch in the front of you, from your knees up to your chest. Now flex your knees and pull yourself toward your knees.
However far feels comfortable. I'm going to go so far. I almost feel the spring has come right between my ankles there and then push back again. Feel how your feet are on the floor, they're helping push you back. And then using the foot connection on the floor and your hamstrings to pull yourself into knee flection. And again, let's take some breath with an inhale as we guide ourselves back and exhale, pull ourself forward. Get a little more in engagement in the stomach area. Inhale back and exhale forward, possibly feeling your body imprinting the mat a bit more. Let's try for more. Inhale, if this is uncomfortable on your back, you can try putting your arms up above you, which might give you a little extra weight to distribute down against your body on the mat.
That can sometimes help or just wait for us and we'll get some spring on in a moment and start moving. Let's take one more. Sarah. Inhale as we stretch. Really go for a little more length this time. How far can we go without the feet coming up? Explore that extension and then flex all the way forward and then once you get yourself in, peel your toes up, give yourself a little hug. We still don't have spring on if you're head up, stretch that part of your spine. Good. Okay.
Now we have to come up and attack some spring, so we'll start with some regular leg presses on three red springs. That should do it. And this is just meant to give us a little warmup in our legs before we jump. Okay, so I think I'd like to start with our heels pretty high up the board. Our balls decided to roll away. Let's totally fine.
Okay, so heels are pretty hot. The board, we're actually at a 90 degree angle here. There are knees again just like we were on the floor and use the sense before we push that the heels are sliding down the jump board even though they're not sort of like, like you're dragging down. Hopefully that gets you some connection in your hamstring. So let's just go with eight presses, same breathing. Inhale and exhale and press.
If the heels are dragging down the jump board, taking some of the focus off the quad, a little more focused on the hamstring and adductors and we've got our shoulders rolled back nicely. No unnecessary tension in the neck. Last two, last one. So just a set of eight and let's go ahead and do v with the heels at the top. Inhale was repress. Paying attention to that concept again of your PR, your heels somewhat dragging down the jump board, even pressed through both legs. So the both doing the same amount of work.
If your heels right now aren't touching your jump board, um, no that, that's a goal we want. I really want to be able to have you get to that place where your feet are totally flat here. If they're not and you're this person, you're kind of back here, that's okay. Your goal right is to get more ankle bend actually and suppleness and length in your calf muscles and tissues there to get there. But here we go. We're going to press out. Stay here. Everybody lift your heels now and lower your heels, so just not a very high movement, but Relevate air lift and lower, so we're engaging our calf muscles to pull our heels up, lift and lower. Let's do four more just to tap it quicker, up and down.
Press and lower press and lower. Press this last time up. Bend both knees and come just halfway into the g to the stop or just stay there and just feel your feet for a minute. Again, the balls of the feet you're spreading and then pulses just a couple inches back and forth. Just puts a little focus of course on your quadriceps. See if he can get some attention to the muscles behind your legs. For me, it's that same ideas as if I'm pulling my feet down the board, but I'm not really pulling them down.
Just have to kind of zone in on the the Tush. All right, we're going to go all the way out now, lower the heels and then walk toes out, heels out, toes out, and you walk your toes. You might have to look up and put your toes right in the top corners of the jump board and we'll just come in and out eight times. Yeah, so with this one, it's a little different connection as if you're trying to pull your feet together on the jump board. So hopefully that gets you connected here. Open and close and press and ban. Let's take two more. As long as you can feel through your spine and in, and as long as you can feel in your spine and in. Okay. Bring your feet together. I think I want us to come up now.
That's all I wanted to do. Kind of warming up and now everybody take away one of the springs and we're going to leave ourselves a two red springs. We need our ball now. That's okay. Yeah, just get your ball and come on down. All right. All right. So I, what I would have pled is anytime first started, some of my first classes were on jump board and I use the ball a lot and there were so fun and I haven't done one for awhile so I was kind of reminded of what they were. Um, and they're, they're just fun and they give you some coordination challenge. So here you are, you've got your arms straight, your ball is above your chest. Let's just start this way. We're going to bend our knees, do one jump and land and then try to stick the landing.
Awesome. And then straighten the knees like that again. So bend the knees, jump off of land, stick the land and get the heels down. Straighten your knees. A few more like that. Bend, stretch, land, hold and stretch your body long and bend. Push off and land and stretch your body long. Let's say two more, I promise we're trying to focus on that landing toe ball arch heel and press back one more time. Okay. But now we'll add a little ball toss. So bend the elbows, put the ball near your chest. So we'll toss the ball when we do the jump.
So we have to bend, jump and catch it land and then stretch, bend, jump, the catch and stretch. Bend, jump, catch and land and stretch and bend. Yeah. Four more here guys. So however, how you toss it, you've got a time and hopefully that you can land and catch the ball at the same time and still try to stick the heels. Still Roll through the feet one more. You're doing very well, Sara. Synchronize. Synchronized. Okay. Now do the same thing in our Pilates V not the jumps yet.
So we'll just do the kind of previous, our arms are long, we do a little ple a or bend a little jump stick the landing and then we straightened our legs. So it's a bend. Push through the toes, land on the heels and straighten. But you have to land, toe ball, arch, heel, articulating through the feet before the heels touch. And again, so a bend, jump, roll, hold it and stretch. So that hold is essential. Try to get those heels down. Your ankle will have to bend more. Flex, more bend. Okay. One more preparatory and then we'll add the toss.
Okay, so changes just a little bit. We start with the ball over our chest so we go bend, jump land and slowly stretch. Then toss land slowly stretch. We did eight of them.
So we're going to do one more round with the toes wide at the top. Same Story. Here we go. Bend, jump, land, stretch those legs. Ben, push off and land and stretch slowly so that little two counts are. So to straight the legs. One to focus on imagining pulling your feet toward one another on the jump board. So the inner thighs are connected, the abdominals are connected. Last two and then we'll toss and Ben hen jump and land and the ball starts on the chest. Here we go.
Ben and Tox and land n one and two and Ben and Tufts and two and then toxin. Huh? Huh? Me Too. I'm getting a little more adventurous is what Sarah said. Yeah. How Fun. It's just, you know, definitely cannot take ourselves too seriously. Try this in a group class and we'll have everybody giggling and then toss. I Dunno what counter. I think it feels like two more.
That'll be a route. Right? Saw Us and last one Ben, jump and in. Okay. And then the straighten your knees. Cool. Okay. Walk your toes together. Let's hold the ball up just for a minute and just do some regular consecutively, little or legs or in parallel. Just easy. Now I'm going to have us start swiveling or kind of landing in a, I call it a skier. So knees and toes face one direction when they faced the other way and you're really allowing your hips to soften your glutes to stretch.
Okay. Now as your knees bend. So do with the elbows and I'm going to let my elbows go to the side and the ball go to kind of a side, a rotation toes one way ball the other way? Yeah.
You're jump a little bit bigger.
Take one foot up to the tabletop and the other knee is, excuse me, would like straight unless you go back to the slow jump thing for a minute. Okay, so just bend that knee jumping land and try to stick the heel and then straighten that leg and bend and land and press. So we're in parallel. Single leg jump. We're still on to red. If it's feeling too heavy for anybody, go ahead and come up and drop one off of those, the reds off and put your blue on and I think you'll be fine. Okay, let's just do two more of this pattern before we switch legs. Ben, jump land.
Alternating legs of the ball will just be above our chest here. And so just changing from one foot to the other, you're going to add that upper body movement. So it will be opposite of the leg. I'm sorry. The ball will go on the outside of the knee that bends. It's hard to do the talking sometimes. Yeah. So the ball on the outside of the knee, that bends make a bigger arc with your arms.
One leg is straight up to the ceiling and the other foot is parallel on the jump board. And let's go ahead and just right away, jump off and switch legs in the air. Now it's lighter spring. You have to organize your core body, your center body a little bit more intelligently here. No arching of the spine. In other words.
And as you bend your elbows, bend them wide. Almost like you're trying to stretch your elbows to each wall of your room, providing your upper back work and opening your chest. Okay, so in a second we're going to have to change. Hold the ball up this time so that we're just doing that pattern the opposite way to the chest, to the ceiling. Gotcha. Do the chest through the ceiling. Do the chest and ceiling. So we're on a lighter spring.
I'm going to take us back to that little skier pattern. We don't need to review it. We already noted as put both feet on the jump board and start your skier. Feet on the diagonal. Knees on the diagonal. I like to do bend the elbows when I'm coming toward the board and then straighten up to the ceiling so the elbows and knees bend and then they straighten.
Feeling a little flow. So we are jumping for quite a while. You guys know it's my favorite thing, but all sound current counting down 10, nine, eight and four. Three, two, one land in the middle and okay, let's put the ball down. I'd like to have us come up and don't worry about the springs. We're going to add a little plank in between some of our stuff today. So crawl up on your knees. Everybody put your hands out on your frame.
You could also do this on the floor if you'd like to do that. Instead. We're just going to stand back toes on the mat and find a little plank.
Three more breaths.
I'd like us to pull the arms all the way down to the mat with yeah, we can touch, fingertips can touch into just a moment to make sure your shoulders have some space above them so they're not bunched up into the blocks. And then we'll do another pattern. Sarah lows pattern. So in dance there was this little arm, a little a movement called the chassé. The arms did an alternating movement. So little do it now. One arm comes up, the other arm goes out to the side and then they go back down by the hips. Alternate that to the other side. Everybody one arm up. When I'm down, just keep that going. Side to side, I'm going to have us do eight of them. So that was four.
Try to keep your rib cage relatively centered and not wiggling. That's going to be obliques and abs of course. Last one on each one. And we all know the supine arm circles. So take both arms straight up to this guy out to the t and down, one more that way. And then just to the other way.
So nothing too complicated or hard things we already know. Just patterning. Okay, now the chassé movements, but we have to start down just four times to the side. Pull down one up, one out, pull down. Once again, each side
Open and down. Out, open and down chassés again. Sometimes you hear people call it cheerleader arm. Same kind of pattern,
And just hold that for a moment so your upper arms are beautifully externally rotated. And then you're using those triceps, press your elbows, straight palms toward your thighs and just out again. Yeah, and press just four times total. So here's three. Four gets a little more exciting because we'll add a little circle with it. So press the arms in, forearms come up and out. So a little bit of a circular movement.
You can make a fist on your strap or open hand. One more that direction. Well, let's reverse it. Now we have the other set of 50 pumps. I know you didn't forget keeping the shoulders down off the shoulder blocks as much as possible. Here's the last one, all the way around with those forearms and then the second set and in four or five exhale, three, four, five, two.
Long chest is up in a nice high position and our last one to five, exhale, three, four, five folded in and come all the way down. We deserve some short spine now, so we'll take our head rest down. Yeah. And then pulling the straps towards your feet and stepping in. It's not the prettiest entry, but good. Okay. Stretch your legs.
I would love for us all to take the our time on the first couple. We've just don't know that impact and that jumping is kind of Nice to take. Change the tempo of how your body moves. So go to where you feel good in your hamstring. Stretch my say Grumman hips are starting to come up. They're going to anyway.
It's fine. I'm going to dock that carriage and continue to roll up. Whoa. Oh, that was the take one. And then as a flexing my knees trying to pull my knees down to the shoulder, blocks my hips up a little higher to the heels. Deeply breath breathing in. And you know what I'm trying to say and exhale, we roll it down.
Inhale as flex, hips high, pulling the stomach in, trying to feel wide across the back of the kidneys.
And then our leg circles today will also be a little bit different timing and pattern. So let's everybody roll down, get your sacred flat on the Mat and I like my head rest up today. Any it feels good. And then take the legs vertical straight up to the ceiling. Keeping a neutral pelvis here. So guys, let's do a small leg circle. There'll be three circles on the way down with their first one's going to be, I don't know the size of a pretty big pumpkin. Next one.
I don't know the size of the physio ball that we were just playing with. And then the next circle of really big physio ball and we're all the way down and then keep the legs together as you come up in line. Okay. Or make a snowman. There's a head, it's body, this no man's fun. And then the big base and Valentine teaches that she does her snowman circles. So we have a little head, medium sized body and a big body base and all the way up and it's kind of Nice to just keep the legs moving, but change the size of the circle.
Your brain has to work a little differently. We're going to go one more, one, two and now hold to the bottom. Let's reverse it. So the small one is there, it's an upside down snowman, small, medium, much bigger all the way to the top. Pull stray down with two legs. So the head at the bottom, middle middle-sized body, big base at the top, all the way down, small, medium, large, all the way down last to small, medium, large, all the way down. And they're consecutive. You going higher and higher and higher, and then pull the legs all the way down. Again, flex your feet everybody, and stretch your calves. So just take a moment to stand in your foot straps.
You don't have an arch in your spine. You've got a beautiful long body. Turn your thighs out. Extend your toes and ankles. Now let's just do an easy open close four times as why to get a really good stretch in those legs and then pull the legs together. Nothing too complicated, but should feel pretty nice. And last too.
All right and roll up. We're going to jump on our hands now guy. So take your springs down just to one blue so we don't need that red. Okay, so I like to do this. Me needs a little bit apart. Get pretty low. Place your hands on the jump board, fingertips facing in a little bit and as you're doing fingertips face in a little bit, make sure the shoulders are set nice and low on your back. And let's just start some easy jumps from the hands.
Hopefully you can keep your chest relatively low. For now I have to actually put some squeeze on my glutes to keep my hips down and my chest down. When you land, make your shoulder blades are low on your back. They don't stay high near your ears. It's okay to use your eyes and peek forward if you need to.
So what we're adding next is once we jump off, we're going to pull our hips up into a little hip. It's quite a big hip extension. And then we'll have to land with our, our hands down. So I'll just show one quick. So we'll jump lift, woo. And then land. Okay, so it has to be pretty quick. Lift and land because otherwise crash 10 times to see what we've got. Here we go. Oh right. Take your breath. I'm going. Ready and up. Good.
And my hips. So almost exaggerate. Squeezing your butt forward. Press. And I liked that we were pulling both for arms back. It kind of helps. Here we go. Press good. Five more up and look right out the window.
Look, last two up and up and hold. Okay, how'd that go? Good. Yeah. Oh, how funny. We're going for another set of 10. Here we go. Power that lift with your butt. I think you've probably all felt that we're still on one blue. Here we go. And push lift.
So think of your chest expansion with your arms. I'm going to make some fist this time. Pull the arms back.
Powerful. Good. Okay, let's do some sideline thera. So we're going on our side either side, Ben, both news first into not well like how you set up for clamshell so he owes her more in line with the sit bones. You can have your, I can see that we're in slightly different positions and it's good to take note. So I've got my, my shoulder on this side of the shoulder rest. Sara's got hers between like that and that's fine either way today I just set up like that often. I do it the other way, but it's good to have options.
Take your top foot right up in the corner of the jump board and I want you to jump. Yeah. And we will lift this leg to the ceiling. Okay. It's on a blue. So we have plenty of time. I don't know what I see with my, but plenty of time to organize the movement of the leg. And the landing, you can kind of go through a bend and stretch like a flick of the leg.
So I'm really trying to keep my hips pressed forward and not let my hips go flexing back and my butt's sticking out.
Okay. So as we do parallel, same thing is kicked the leg forward and we'll keep, make sure we have our waist lifted up here. So jumping off kick in front kick in front, same connection. Can you feel your foot on that jump board like it wasn't the floor at the very beginning and that worked from the backside to jump with count down from eight one
Before we flip to the other side, let's roll onto our back everybody and give a figure four stretch to the leg that we just jumped to us. So that one will be the one on top crossed for a second. But if you bring your legs towards you, you're going to get stretched on both sides. I'm gonna take a few moments to breathe there. Some of you might want to be crossing knee over knee. That's fine.
You might get a more, a deeper stretch in that outer hip. Okay. Then we have the other side of, there were about 16 jumps in each position. So let's flip ourself around and while we're doing so everyone's getting settled. I'm good. Moving my pack to my other side. Perfect. And then there we go. Yeah, only getting set up and then as if you're in line with your clam here.
So heels online with sit bones. No, I'm going to Tuck my bottom elbow and shoulder under. I realize I'm not quite in position yet. Okay, so foot up at the top corner. Here we go. We're jumping off and we're going to flick that leg up. Land on the board so it might not feel like the most graceful movement, but I want you to is to feel like what it is is trying to keep the pelvis pressed forward and using the muscles of hip extension. Although we know we're using some hip flexors of course, but try to keep your pelvis forward.
We have eight more jumps here in this turnout too.
This is a tricky one. Not to hike the hip. It's going to keep that hip as level as we can with the other hip.
Okay. We have eight more gems pushed from the the glute, right? When you jump off. It's the glutes, not so much the quad landing gently through the ankle. Toe Ball, arch, knee,
Okay. Eight breath cycles. Nice and strong. Hopefully each round of this plank is feeling a little bit better. Shoulders pulling away from the shoulder risers. Chest forward, stomach away from floor legs. Strong body strong.
Last two breath cycles.
We can have our knees right up against the shoulder rests. Press the pelvis forward yet again like we were earlier. Pressing that forward and then we'll just move the arms alongside. One No head turn today. Let's just feel the glider, the arms back and forth with a press of the pelvis forward toward the risers and how nice and long the neck is up away from those shoulders because they're nice and low and two more poles, one and to, okay, we didn't do a lot of rotation or side bending today. It's fine. Not every workout has to have it all the time, but let's do one last little bit and no stretch. So let's pull the red on, take away our blue, stand on the outside of the frame and let's do what we can first to not put our hands down. What if we put our hands behind us like her speeds gators here, and then hover our knee up off a carriage and just stand for a minute. We're going to go with some lumbar flection and her sacrum mutated under, and then just push as far as you can without losing that shape.
It's not going to be far and you all know that. So we're inflection. We'll move this into extension shortly. You'll that relationship of the stomach to the hamstrings. To the hip.
So you've got a hands press down in our chest. Lifting is, if we could just go backward and backward. Oh my God, heaven. There's heaven on earth. Okay. Eh, another side there is, yeah. Care. Last round trip guys. So we're starting first with no hands on hands. Maybe behind the pelvis you've got the lumbar curve.
Just that one more connection of the stomach, hip to leg, and your balance. That's my strength
At least once a week. I would say some kind of jumping. Good for your diaphragm muscle, good for your lungs. Impact Stamina. Okay, we have to end our session. So we're going to do a really slow, Beautiful Swan Ish type of movement, dragging ourself in, lifting our chest, keeping those glutes contracting, lifting the chest to the sky is if we could go backward.
Thanks everybody for playing with us and we'll see you next time.
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