Day 11: Finding Lift

All right, well welcome to class number 11 out of your 30 session challenge. I'm having a great time. I hope you're having a good time too. Some of these, especially the last two were really tough classes. The next two are going to be a lot lighter, a lot quicker, 25 minute classes about that. But I want you to still be able to get a really good workout and think more about using the springs to help you rather than fighting them. So we're going to use the roll down bar today on the Cadillac.

I have some leg springs as well to get some of our basics in there. And then I'm gonna give you a little break to do some tower and monkey. So make sure your push through bar is in place and you have your spring attached to the bottom for when we get to tower and monkey. And then after the Cadillac we're going to be doing some standing and with standing series. If you don't have a Cadillac, you can always do this entire workout with the half Cadillac or wall unit. So let's get started.

We're going to lie down with my head pretty close to the top edge. The further away you're going to have a heart, a stronger spring. So adjust it to where you want it to be. And I'm going to put my legs over the springs, so take both legs. Alright, and we're going to inhale, lift your head up and then exhale.

Squeeze the air out to start your hundred. Okay, here we go in with the air and exhale Andean with you and exhale so you can lower your legs if you can reach longer your arms. But I'm really trying to ground my back. That's 40 that's 60 turning those legs out, anchoring the shoulders. Two more. Last one and put it under your knees. All right. That was not easy. If it wasn't easy for you to just stick with this, you're going to get stronger and stronger each time.

So I'm going to sit up and switch my springs, actually stand up and to get rid of my roll down bar just for a little bit. Put it down over here and let's get some basics in with our legs. Springs a little bit different order than what we did last time, but almost the same thing when we did Cadillac a few sessions ago. So both legs and we're gonna start off with our legs circles. Yeah. And I'll put my hands here and come this straight arms.

Alright, you ready? Here we go. And tailbones down long and reaching out and circle one and two. Three more. Really working the back of the thighs, the inner thighs, but super strong in the powerhouse. Last one. And let's reverse reaching out the thigh out of your hip. Three, two, stomach.

Scooped in and bend the knees and give yourself a little break. Now we're going to do walking cans back and stretching out. Long and lean and eight counts. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and up to four, five, six, seven, three more. I'm really trying to think about stretching my hip flexor so that I don't activate it. Two more. I'm keeping my tailbone down and my head at least.

I hope it's staying down for your you guys. Two and two more. Really using the back of the fire where it connects to the seat. One more time, and my belly is pulling not just into the mat, but up against the resistance of the springs. Seven eight bend the knees in, rest your arms. Down. Next is beets with your bottom up in the air. Okay, so your legs are going to go forward and right before they extend completely, you will lift your seat up in the air. One set of 20 beats. Here we go.

Belly in and up, back of the thighs, stretching out, and then how the Yep. And one, two, three, four, six, stupid that belly. Try to find the inner thighs, pelvic floor, lower belly, five, four, three, two hold. Melt down your spine. Rest down your arms. We did that so we can go into airplane now and you really want to have a good awareness of lifting your seat.

This is also kind of like short spine massage. Your overhead on the reformer. Here we go. Using your powerhouse. We're gonna curl our pelvis over our shoulders, extend the legs up, and then reach out. Here we go, curling in, and then exhale in with the air and pushing into the straps. Rural. Rolling down. Draw those legs in on the mat curl. Amen.

Curling up. Extend and reach, pushing long with the arms. And one more in this direction. Curling in, extending up and law. We're going to reverse right on up. Bend the knees and stretch it down. Rolling. Lengthening heals. Go close to your seat.

Lengthen out long and lean. Lift your seat up. Little noisy there. Got to keep it quieter. Let's see how quiet I can keep it on. This last one, just gonna fix that Strat hills. Sliding out and up. Better Bend and rolling.

Push your thighs into your chest. Stretching out. All right, and we're going to take our straps off. Turn onto your belly for Flying Eagle. So turning over. Let's get your feet off the back edge. All right. In this exercise, you're going to focus on holding the straps just below the little hooks, and I want you to really stabilize your pelvis in our standing arm springs. You need to know where you are in space in this area. So we're going to use this Cadillac, this mat to help us find where our pelvis should be in space when we're standing.

So you're going to use the back of your thighs and sea to squeeze down into the mat. You're gonna use your, um, you're gonna squeeze your pubic bone down and you're gonna lift your powerhouse. And those whole time that we're doing are flying eagle. I'd like you to really think about lifting up into a back bend, not by just using your back muscles, but by using your navel, your belly button to lift up to your chest bone. Okay, here we go. All right, we're going to pull down those straps and lift up your body, lifting your sternum forward and circle back. And two more shoulders pulling down.

If it feels too strong, you can put your hand inside the handle and see if that helps you any. Yeah, and we're going to do the reverse. I'm going to go back, even though it's hard, I like the support it gives me to lift my stomach. Reversing. Here we go. Immediately lift. Okay. Pull as far back behind you and come down two more.

I'm using my spring. So lift my belly and one more [inaudible] and round your back. Sit on your heels. So all these exercises today, they're not the easiest, but let's just keep going. Let's have that. We'll we're going to grab our roll down bar and put away our legs. Springs. Try to keep on plugging away because all these exercises are so good for you. They're so good for the body and we get caught up in whether we do them perfectly or not. And uh, we just want to make sure we don't lose them in our repertoire.

So we're going to sit down and put your feet against the Poles. And this is not the normal roll back position, but we're just gonna start our short box like this where we're going to round our back and I want you to lift off of the back, the thighs and seat scoop into your seat curve, drawing your inner thighs and pelvic flooring. Get your press just lightly shoulder with a part onto the bar to connect. And here you go. We're going to roll back our lower back first in with the air and exhale.

Now we're pulling our belly against this spring one bone at a time. It's offering not too much help in how. Look at your belly. Exhale, squeeze the air out. I'm gonna make my bottom work a little bit more. This is really good for me coming back from that tailbone injury of really working this area and lengthening away to more in with the year and exhaling.

You really do want to keep your feet there. So I'm trying to link them my lower back right now. That was a little better than the first time and in with the are looking and exhaling. One more time. Let's enjoy it a little bit. Okay.

And inhale and exhale. All right, great. Now we're going to actually do the round back. So I want you to hug the bar into your navel and roll back. Okay? So I'm gonna hold it with my two hands together and I'm going to pull it into my belly and I'm going to round over it and I'm gonna roll back with it attached to my navel down in with deer and exhale, pulling it into me like the hug and release again. Okay.

And with the air index hill one more. And with the air boy, my lower back. Really wanted to be stiff there. Okay. Stretch if you'd like. Let's do flat back holding it shoulder with a part. You're gonna lift it up overhead. Here we go. Off the seat scooping in and up.

Arms lift and you're going to have to hold onto it. Nice and firm and from your waist. We're going to pull this back tall and straight. Here we go. And forward. It feels so good. Lift your navel up to your spine, I mean up to your sternum. Okay, and exhale. One more. Lift off that seat.

Belly and up and rest. Great job. Next we're going to do side to side. We're going to hinge back a little like we just did and then do side to side. Rather than being forward like we normally are on short box. All right, so holding it shoulder with the part, we're going to lift it up so see if this gives you any more insight to your reformer work scooping in, pulling back a little and to the right, Eh, center. Pulling back a little to the left and center. One more set. Yeah, I said that wrong. I want two more sets. Here we go. Last one. [inaudible] and pulling back. Little scooping into your back.

It's a lot of work, but boys that feel like a good stretch and now we're going to do the twist, but we're going to do it with a little around the world. So we'll do one to the right all the way to the left come center and then reverse. Okay, here we go. So we're going to pull up, just give it all. You got to pull that spring out as far as you can. Lifting up, we're going to twist to the right. Reach out as far as you can, twisting all the way to the left and come up and pulling back. A little bit. Twist to the left. Reach out, twist, joys, and up. One more set. Here we go. Most important part is to really try to pull from your powerhouse rolling around and to the left. Don't have a big sway in your back. Twist sitting to the left around to the right and back. Back Up.

Great job. Okay, next is side sit ups. We're going to put your, get on your right hip. You can do this with straight legs. Go get them. I'm going to do it with bent knees. The bottom foot goes against this pole, the top one hooks behind it and you're gonna try to get right up on your hips. All right, you're going to hold your hands just a little bit apart. Enough to get your head in there. The front hand goes, the right hand is going to go on right in front of your head.

Get the bar on your head, hips stacked. And here we go. We're going to go straight out reaching your waist long in a squeeze. My bottom. Scooping in, reaching out. Nice and long and up. And two more reaching. And, and last one trying to keep my shoulders in joint and alright, other side. So we're going to bring the bar down, flip over our hips. Left foot is on the bottom so it's going to go against right?

One's going to hook behind k almost like a mermaid position. Yeah, and you're going to really work that left hip, right hands in front, left hands behind. Here we go. Pulling in and stretch out and pull it back with control and squeezing those legs together and squeezing the right hip on top to really work home. Last one. Don't let the spring pull you up. You control it with your waist. Woo. Good job. All right, let's hook this up cause he's in a second.

I want to do rolling in and out. So I'm going to change it and I'm also going to come over here and I'm going to attach, get you a want to get off your knees. If you have bad knees, I'm going to attach my safety strap for my tower and monkey. You might have, if you have a garage, you'll have a little safety chain instead of a strap. This is a balanced body, but I use my grot springs, which is maybe why it's killing me. Alright, so now I'm going to attach my tower spring. Everything's safe and working. So here we go. This is our little break. Since we didn't get to do tree, this is our kind of tree where we get to do the rolling down as well as the a hamstring stretch. So push up, put your feet and also can't be all work and no, no fun.

So let's press down your tailbone, get that pelvis nice and square. Keep everything down. Let's just pull your toes back. Flex point. This is going to be a Walton, a second flex point. One more. Really pressing down that pelvis. And now keep the pelvis down. Draw the knees in as far onto your chest as you can without lifting your tail on. Straighten two more and straight and last one. And now squeeze those hips and you're going to curl up overhead like you did for airplane. Pushing up the bar from your hips.

Draw the knees in, extend up back in the thighs and we're going to exhale. Squeeze in, near out, lengthening our spine, rolling down through the upper back, middle. Next bone. Next tail bone gets down, Bendon straightened up. We go. Then in extend and lengthen down. Really keeping it fluid.

Super important in politeness and one more bending, straightening up and lengthen up with your powerhouse and exhale, squishing the year out of your lungs. Colin's in your body. All right, we're ready for monkey. We're going to bend a little bit. See if you can keep your feet on the bars. Lift your head and slide your way back until your shoulders are completely off the back edge and the bar is chopping off your tailbone. Okay. Palladia stance on this one. Try to come all the way up. [inaudible] and flex him. Point as you flex. Lift up, up, up.

Better the lower back. One more. Lift up, up, up, and bending down. Two more. Good. Pulling up to those toes. One more. Don't show rink and one more set of three. Here we go. Pulling up stretch one more and yeah.

Okay. I'm going to take my foot feet off. I'm going to undo the spring and carefully lower it down behind me and I'm gonna push this bar up as I roll up and we're done with our push through bar. So I'm going to unhook it and I'm going to get ready for my rolling in and out here that I mentioned. Make sure your spring is nice and attached. So this is kind of a combination of 'em by stretch with some good work.

Alright, here we go. We're gonna do squats in a moment. Standing squats off that edge, so we're warming up for it. All right, I want you to get your back of your thighs and glutes. We just did chest expansion and I had told you that I love to envision Roxanne or rocky doing this and you want to have that long line, okay? When we're doing this, here we go. Keeping the bars close to the strap, to the bar poles as you can roll off an imaginary wall. So you're going to engage the shoulders, lifting in your powerhouse as you will. Push down the bar, pull it into you, and then slowly skim your body as you go into a back bend and come up and to more pressing down. Lifting in your belly though I can't talk. And Zay do that.

Zane dives a pres down the bar. Lift your powerhouse. Okay, cool. Do you spend the elbows as you shave off your body back bend and up. One more in this direction. We'll do the reverse. Okay.

And we're going to reverse lead with the head. Pull to your chest, curl over it, lift your seat over your knees, releasing the Bar, rolling up with control. Backbend pull to your chest, slide down your thighs to your knees. This helps you a lot if you're trying to get the crab back into your repertoire. One more [inaudible] notice I used my breath to really squeeze out that air and help me. Okay.

I'm going to bring this bar back down to here for my standing series because sadly that's about as tall as I am on the floor. So make sure it's just a couple inches or about shoulder height when you adjust your bar for our standing series. And I'm going to also get rid of my legs. Springs. Just going to kind of slide them under so they're a little out of sight out of mind. Okay, we're going to start off with our chest expansion. So you want to be about an arms distance away and you're going to hold shoulder with apart before you even grab onto the bar.

Let's find ourselves in space. So we, my tendency would be to really shorten my lower back, so I'm gonna make sure that I've had my tailbone pointing down. I want to draw a line from one hip to the other and make sure my belly is pulling behind that line. Maybe I can keep that while rising up onto the ball of my foot, bending my knees, right? Pushing down the heels and you're gonna use all everything you can to come up and your plot is work. So when I'm in this position right now and in all of my standing positions, I should feel like a big wind could come and I will not knock me over.

So it's really a position of strengths. Make sure you're in that before you attempt any of these standing exercises. All right, so I'm almost pretending I'm lying on my belly, on the mat, pressing my pelvis into the mat, squeezing my bottom forward, pulling my belly up from the mat. And let's do chest expansion. We're going to inhale, look right, left and look forward. Here we go. Look right, left forward and exhale again.

Starting looking left this time. [inaudible] good smile as if I enjoy this and I really do cold make it the neck move freely. It shouldn't hold tension. And one more time. Squeeze in the bottom four, pulling the belly in, open the shoulders if you can have your belly in. And that's enough of chest expansion. The next exercise we're gonna do is a little bicep curl.

Let's go ahead and switch this to the bottom hooks. If you have a garage, they're also down there too on the metal frame. Standing right where you are. I was careful not to really move my left foot. We're gonna do some solid bicep curls, gluing your elbows. Here we go. And pulling it up and release four more comma. And three more importantly for me is getting my powerhouse in and moving my arms for where they start instead of how big I can make them. Two more. Yeah. Last one that felt best.

I'm going to unhook it and we're going to go into some side arms, putting them backward. It was, so I'm going to turn my right side to the Cadillac. Stand right in the middle, and I'm going to put my right hand right in the middle, my left hand on my hip. You could also have it by your side, whatever you want. And we're going to keep the shoulder in joint and we're gonna soften the elbow and pull the bar to our hip. Okay, here we go. Squeezing everything again, like a headwinds coming at us and pulling it release. Eh, pool. Really important is that you're not moving your body. One way to pull the bar. Okay, so simplicity holding your posture is a lot harder than you think.

One more. Yeah. All right, let's go the other side. So I'm going to stand right in the middle with my back to you. Okay. And my hand on my head.

I'm going to put my hand down here since I have my mic pack on that side. Okay. Right centered, maybe a tiny bit back squeeze and everything forward. I use my belly a little more on this one and soften the elbow. That release felt like I pulled towards the Cadillac. That's better. Two more shoulder does not roll forward and last one.

And now we're going to turn our back and we're going to do shaving. It's Kinda tricky. You've got to find just the right spot because the springs not going to be tense the entire time, but otherwise it will also get too tense, too strong for you. So find where that is and we're gonna press into the spring and now the goal is to keep, I want this really long line. Keep my body there and it's going to come behind my ears and press [inaudible].

Keep my body there behind your ears and press [inaudible] bend those elbows behind my ears. Two more. Okay, so all of these you can do with your leg springs, which will work up to one more, but we're doing it with the rollback springs to get our strength back up into that. Okay. Last exercise, the big finale, we're going to do our squats, so it's almost like rolling in and out. You're going to be an arms distance away. Nice and centered. Non Armed Systems. Actually. You've got to find kind of where it is because again, the further out you go, the more help it'll help you get back up.

But right when you start the exercise, that'll be really tough. So I kind of am about maybe the distance of my box away. Alright. Holding shoulder width apart. We're gonna stand as if we have strong wind coming at us, right? I'm trying to get all those parts into account and now I'm gonna reach forward rolling off an imaginary wall.

Always in healing as I look at my chest. Exhaling to squeeze out the air. Yes, I'm going to go into almost a tabletop with my hips over my ankles. Push down to the floor, pull into my body, and then release. Here we go. Pull into my body release, roll up my spine. Switch your grip to a right angle.

Let's go ahead and sit right behind your tailbone. Keep lifting your powerhouse. Come on up and switch your grip again. Let's do three more. Rolling off an imaginary wall. Art goes down. Pull towards you. Release, roll up.

Okay. Switch your grip, right angle powerhouse. Next time we do this with our legs springs, we'll add the one legged. All right, and here we go. Lifting up. Exhale, press down, pull in, release, rolling it up. Change your grip. Just checking my springs. Here we go. Really lift your chest bone, your stomach, all the way up to your chest bone. Last one. Change the grip. Exhaling down. Make it your best ones. Grand Finale. Pull all the way into you.

Release and roll it up in our thighs. Lifting arches, lifting, pelvic floor lifting. Everything's lifting, writing, Google. Sitting right behind your heels. Up, you go, and now you should feel lifted and worked and ready to go see you next class.