Class #1227

Energizing Prenatal Cadillac

45 min - Class
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Description

Leah Stewart teaches a Prenatal Cadillac workout designed to be comfortable for any stage of pregnancy. You will work on mobilizing, articulating, and moving your body so you feel energized when you are finished. Have fun flowing through the class with Leah!
What You'll Need: Cadillac, Reformer Box

About This Video

Sep 26, 2013
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Transcript

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Hi there. Welcome. I'm so excited here to be bringing you another prenatal Cadillac class here on [inaudible]. Anytime. I'm going to first show you kind of how I'd like you to set up your equipment before we get started because all my equipment is set up or all my springs so I can just keep the flow of the class going. So here's what I'd like you to do. So first you're going to need two long yellow springs or just you're a longer, if you're on a different piece of equipment, you're not a balanced body longer lighter leg springs. And then what I'd like you to do is take the foot strap from a reformer or if you have them for your Cadillac and hook it up there.

And we're going to use this for our abdominal series. You're going to load that up on the highest little notches that you have here on the Cadillac. Then I need you to have one heavier leg sprain set up in the center position and then down on the floor somewhere. I'd like you to get ready to short arm springs with your handles. So for our arm work that we're gonna be doing later. And last but not least, we're going to just need a long box nearby because we're going to sit on the lawn box for some of our arm work or you are more than welcome to use a smaller box or a cushion or anything that you have available to you.

So that is going to be how we're going to begin. Are you all set now? I'm going to say I am now just about 38 weeks pregnant. So moving a little bit more gingerly, a little bit slower. I ranges of motion are going to be a little bit smaller. So depending on where you are in your pregnancy, because this class is really designed to be comfortable for entire three trimesters, of course you're gonna move a little bit bigger than your range of motion and just kind of move what feels comfortable for you.

But we're going to keep the flow going really nice together. So I'd like you to start facing your push through bar and we're going to have no springs loaded on this and you're just going to hold onto that push to Barden. I want you to be in a kneeling position with your bottom right on your heels. With your knees open. If you'd like to slip a little small box or rolled up towel underneath your bottom here or in between your bottom and your heels to fill a little bit more comfortable, please do so.

So let's go ahead and start here to softly close your eyes, take some inhales and exhales and just kind of feel that calm come over your body as you breathe. Just kind of entering a state of mind. I have focus, awareness, movement, relaxation, and together we'll go through this class. Yeah, that will leave us feeling really good. So we're going to take our breath in. We're going to move now. We're going to lift the head, neck and chest up.

Just give me your high arch and then exhale it back. Inhale, reach energy out through the crown of the head. Let it radiate all the way through your sternum, up toward the ceiling and taking it back. I do want to do a lot of opening in this class and inhale just to kind of help open that chest. Open up the breath, open up the rib cage. Particularly if you are later in your pregnancy, you might have a little bit more difficult time feeling that full breath. Inhale and exhale. Now we're going to add a pelvic curl to or a pelvic tilt, so you're going to exhale, come into your pelvic tilt, you'll let the bar come back. Inhale, find the extension.

Exhale, come back to the pelvic tilt, and then inhale, just kind of roll yourself up to vertical Xcel. Back to the pelvic tilt. Inhale, extend. Let yourself hang on that bar. Exhale, start from the pelvic floor into the lower abdominals and inhale, roll yourself at again, don't worry about going into anterior tilt here so you can really allow your pelvis to move, particularly in this kneeling position. You want to just let it move and rotate naturally. Exhale and inhale up.

Let's do one more exhale back in healthy XL, back into the curl and inhale. Now from here we're going to do a little side the rest of our rib cage. You're going to go to the right with your rib cage and Xcel to the left, so I'll turn to face you. So you're going to go right and left. We just mobilizing very simple and right and left and allow your polishes to kind of roll over your heels left and I feel really nice little stretch way down into my waist and even into my pelvic floor as my pelvic bones, my initial tuberosities kind of pull and stretch across those heels and left. Exhale, give me one more set to the right exhale and to the left. Just mobilizing there in a holding on here, I want you to bring your hands toward the middle. You're going to inhale, reach on the day. Agonal feel that nice stretch. Then exhale, push the bar down. Keep your arms straight in.

Just reach to the other side in how reach on the diagonal. I did something a little bit like this, similar to this in my other Cadillac class. This is just a little different feeling. We're sitting in a different position in how reach and it just feels so good to open up that chest and exhale forward. Last one. Inhale, reach, look up at that hand, feel that extension and exhale for we.

Now here you'll feel that deep stretching your hips and in your pelvis. Roll yourself up, getting ready for the other side in how. Reach over to the left and exhale. Push through and over to the Reddit's in how reach. Just feeling yourself kind of swinging across your hips, trying to keep a sense of stable, cold contraction in your Torisel.

Remember the lordotic curve in the lower spine is of me a little bit more present as you are later in your pregnancy, but still trying to keep that nice and under control. Inhale and exhale, pushing through and one more. Inhale, reach and XL. Roll yourself up. Now the last part of this little sequence is you're just going to drop the arm, bend the left elbow and bring your arm in. Others. I drop bend and bring it in. So a little bit more free here as you drop, like give me a little bit of a different rotation on component here. Drop.

Keep your elbow in of the arm that's on the bar to bend and pull yourself up and drop. Just getting that nice twist in rotation drop and one more time to the left XL drop. Now holding onto the bar, you're going to exit are going to go into a pell that curl all the way up, feeling that beautiful hinge on that diagonal, stretching out those hip flexors, stretching out the quadriceps. Inhale. Then exhale, roll yourself down all the way to your neutral spine in neutral pelvis. Seated position XL, give me a deep curl keeping shoulders over the hips. Lead with the pubic bone up. Wonderful safe abdominal work filling the hip extension, the back extension, stretching out the quadriceps. Inhale. Then exhale rolling down, stretching up between the scapulas, stretching out the lumbar spine and at inhale two more exhale.

She feel really good on those type front of those hips because of that postural adaptation that you're experiencing during pregnancy. Exhale, rolling through and I've been, give me one more feel that closing of the pelvic floor, that tightening in the pelvic floor leading up through the lower abdominals. Then let it trickle up into that spinal activation, the hip extension activation and exhale rolled. Yeah, we're going to go up one more time. We're going to do a little bit of an arm sequence here. So Xcel rollout, find the position you do a little pull up here with your elbows out to the side. XL One. Inhale. So again, stabilization of the body, keeping the hip extension. Nice of safe abdominal work here.

As we're getting a little bit of upper body work, excel up that feels a little bit uncomfortable to keep your eyes up. Lower Your Chin a little bit so you're looking more forward rather than up the ceiling. Might be a little bit more comfortable for your neck. Let's go two more XL up. Yeah, and last one XL app. Hold here with an inhale and roll yourself all the way back. Kind of fun.

Now change your grips. You're doing an underhand grip here. Take your breath in. XL Roll up now. Elbows down to your sides as you do more pull ups here. XL Up. Inhale back. So moving yourself as one piece.

Yeah, nice and gentle. Flow your scapula glide in towards your spine as you pull your body up and those elbows back. So getting some lat work, some Ron Boyd. Work, a little bicep work and really focused on the Essenture control. As you extend your elbows, give me two more XL. Last one. Deep breathing. Hold their, fill the strength of your whole body and XL. Roll yourself all the way back. It feels pretty good.

Now let's take your hands forward. Now this time I want you to carefully come forward into a kneeling position and I'd like you to place your forearms on the push through bar and your forehead on your arms. So here we're going to come into a cat stretch. You're going to roll the palace underneath you and just let the bar come in naturally. Then inhale, extend and reach out. So the reason I have your arms in this position is that it's a little bit more friendly on the shoulders stabilization and inhale, reach out. Now. Again, I don't mind if you go a little bit past that straight line with your spine and kind of let yourself dip down and flip your pelvis up cause that's going to open up that pelvis even more than our neutral position. Just make sure that you're not collapsing down.

Keep that support and focus on not arching your lower back per se, but rather just lifting your sacrum up to open up those pelvic bones a little bit more. Exhale cause number. The goal is to really do as many exercises as we can to mobilize and open that pelvis whilst maintaining its stable is not stabilization, but it's control and strength because we need the best of both worlds. XL last one. Inhale, hold it. Now here I want you to inhale, lift the head, neck and chest into a little bit of a back extension. Push those arms down on that bar and exhale down.

Inhale, lift, head, neck and chest. Now this time I'm really trying to keep my lower spine as neutral as possible and focused on the upper back. Now by pressing your arms down here, you're going to feel a beautiful contraction of the serratus anterior, the Latissimus Dorsi as you work those spinal extensors, which should feel really good. Last two XL app, excuse me, in Hell app. Don't mean to change my breath on you and down with the next hill. And one more time. Inhale and exhale. Now Roll yourself up and we're going to change our grip.

We're going to place our hands on the bar. Now I've called this one walk like an Egyptian, I don't know if it looks like walk like gypsum, but it's kind of similar to an exercise I did one of my math classes, which I called lioness. So I want you to come up onto your hands now. Come into your pipe position. You're gonna walk your right knee forward and push the bar through and come up being, you know, sweep your body underneath you, slide your leg back and come up into a little pipe switching legs. Exhale, slide the left knee forward and push through in how Xcel slide everything back.

Everything should move in one beautiful synergistic piece and sliding forward with the right inhale and exhale, bring it back. She just filled this gorgeous kind of swinging. Exhale, slide it forward. Grabbed the inhale at the top. Then exhale, bring it back in. Help prepare. Let's do two more sets. Yeah, and then feel how you're just opening your body here. How you can grab more breath. You can grab more air.

Okay. Inhale at the top and you're mobilizing those hip joints, getting beautiful, safe abdominal work. I'm bringing it up. Last one with the left and just feel that flow and that strength through your shoulders and come all the way down and roll yourself up. We're gonna go ahead and be done with our little warmup.

It was a longer warmup and I want you to go ahead and stand up and we're going to do obviously lying supine and doing our traditional footwork here on the Cadillac is no longer an option for us. So we're going to go ahead and do a little play series, kind of standing on top of the Cadillac. Now if you have a half trap. I've also done this down at the other end of the half chop and just kind of held onto the front of the tower from there. But I'm going to go ahead and move down to this end for you today. I'm going to hold onto these side poles here at the top of the Cadillac.

So I want you to start in a small v position. I'm going to do a little plea, a sequence so you can take your inhale, bend your knees and deck sal up. Inhale, bend your knees and exhale up. Now what I'd like you to do is get as deep into that Demi, please, you can before you lift those heels that well. What happened is you fill a beautiful kind of lengthening through the back of your heels, so your Achilles and maybe even your calves, depending on how tight you feel there, Xcel up. Make sure you're engaging those abductors, engaging in the hip rotators as you squeeze your south up.

Inhale Xcel, and one more time and inhale and Xcel. So now we're going to go down for three. We're going to go one into a ground plane, two, three, inhale and come up. One, two, three. So a little bit more intense on the legs. One to fill the pelvis, open wife here, Xcel, one, two, three and fill those issial. Tuberocities getting wider and wider. Those sitz bones widening all the way down, the fill of narrowing as you come up. Three, two more.

Inhale, two, three, and two. Squeeze. Last one, keeping your body really vertical and steady as you just feel that wonderful movement through your pelvis. Now we're going to repeat in parallel. I want you to step a little bit closer towards your tower or the front of your Cadillac care and you're going to take a demi. Please inhale and Xcel up. Now be sure that you're tracking of your knees and your femur. Your thigh bones is correct, right about in the center of that middle and big toe.

You want to feel that gorgeous hinge at your hip as you take that nice deep Denny play, so you're filling the lengthening through the calves and that contraction through the front of the Shin. That was exactly what we need to do here during pregnancy to keep that lower lens nice and healthy and again in him and as you do your demi play, really feel it. You're drawing the energy of your sits bones down toward the mat and up one more. Down and up. This time I want you to come into that deep little dummy play. Hold it in, lift your heels up, exhale down. Exhale, keeping your center body in Nice and controlled.

Give me four more for keeping the calming or upper body two and one. Let's go ahead and give those quads a little right by finding the extension. Inhale, exhale, go back down for me and I want you to grab onto the side pulls here and reach your hips back so you're actually hanging on a diagonal and let your shoulder blades, your scapula glide up towards your ears. Xcel glide them down. We do a little scapula glide. Inhale, let come up so your body responds to the scapula moving XL, so filling the musculature, the lower trapezius in particular. As you pull yourself forward as the scapula come down and let them glide up.

[inaudible] inhaling, just keeping that body as long as you can, filling the weight to your pelvis, pull you back. That's stability of your spine. As you reach to more exhale. [inaudible]. Inhale, reach back. Last one. Exhale. Okay, inhale, reach. Draw your pelvis underneath.

You roll yourself all the way up and turn to the side. Holding on with a nice gentle grip on the side. You're going to come into wide v position. You can bring your other arm onto your hip if you'd like. Inhale, exhale up. Yes, you should feel like you're in ballet class a little bit. Inhale, XL lap. So now as you're doing this, I want you to feel that rotation in your femur so that you can really engage those hips as you come up. And not only that, but you can feel that opening through your hips and inhale.

Exhale. Now let's focus now here a little bit differently on the pelvis. As you go down, I want you to feel the pelvis widening. Take a little pause. Then I want you to feel it closing as you come up in hell. Widen and Xcel close as you come up. So now instead of thinking so much about your legs, you're drawing the energy into the pelvic floor. Inhale and exhale. One more time. Inhale and exhale. Bring it all the way up and hold it. Go ahead. Now I want you to hold them to the front if you have it.

If you don't have the front, you can turn your body simply to the side. To perform this exercise, I want you to have the support here. You're going to go down for three. One, two, deep on three XL, one, two, three. Inhale, one, two, hold it. Fill that opening. Fill that stretch of your pelvis. XL. One, two, three. Inhale, one to hold that stretch nice and wide.

Exhale, one, two, three. Let's do two more and now my ankle is cracking a lot this morning. XL, one, two, three. Last time. Inhale to hold it there, but just kind of swing your body back and forth. You guys have seen you do a lot in this prenatal series.

Just to open up those hips, open up the pelvis, come back to center. Inhale and exhale. One, two, three. So really nice little short sequence for the legs there. We're going to go ahead and move onto our abdominal sequence. So here, remember that you want your two longer lighter legs springs that you want to attach your foot shop most likely from your reformer onto it. So we'll do a fun little sequence. Actually learned this from a brilliant colleague of mine whose name is Don Marie hikes. So thank you Tom Marine for this inspiration, I want you to come underneath your strapped here and I want you to place the strap kind of midway or right below your scapula and I want you to push your feet into those sidebars or side poles rather, and you're going to feel that lift that support from the spring, which is really nice. So you would take your breath in. Exhale, you're going to give me a little pelvic tilt. Now you can hold on here to the sides.

You can keep your hands on your hips. I really want you to find the spot that feels comfortable for you and inhale up. So what I love about this support that you're getting from the strap and from the springs is that is less demand on your abdominals so you can focus more on just mobilizing, articulating, moving, feeling, which is really great for our pregnancy since we want to work those abdominals safely, but we certainly don't want to overload them or put too much stress on them, particularly if you're in the state of pregnancy, the diamond, which is very vaguely into pregnancy. Exhale, inhale up. Now we're going to do the same thing. I want you to hold a little higher on your straps and we're going to rotate your springs. You're going to rotate. Pull the left side down as you rotate to the left and bend the left elbow in her lap. Exhale, mobilizing that spine so you can see I'm only going as far back into my little pelvic tilt as I can really maintain that Poe, that abdominal control.

You're not seeing my abdominal wall, poof out or pooch up or lose control. If you see you go as far back into a space where you get a little ridge or you get a pop up like a ball pop up in your abdomen, you're going too far. That means your abdominals are no longer able to support that position that you're into. So you need to modify it by simply shortening your range of motion XL. Now remember also that the idea is to engage the pelvic floor, then the abdominal molds.

So you're creating that base of support with the pelvic floor before you go into the abdominal contraction. And we're just letting our pelvis rotate underneath us like a wheel [inaudible]. So let's continue. Now this time I want you to bring your legs together actually not together, but off the poles and on the mat. And as you roll back, you're going to draw your knees in. So you're rotating your legs in. As you come up, you're going to let your knees open and I want you to come into an anterior tilt. Xcel, rotate the flies in, the knees, come together and inhale, bring it up.

So now we're adding a little bit more hip mobility and you can feel a little bit more range of motion in your pelvis. So member where you are in pregnancy, don't go back as far into the posterior tilt XL. Okay. It feels so good on my pelvis, so good on my lower back. Yeah, especially having this support here from the spring, I can really just let my body move. Not that I'm giving up control by any stretch of the imagination.

I'm just taking advantage of the support that I have here. One more time and inhale, bring it up and hold it. Now, place your feet back in. This is the cherry on top for this sequence, so make sure you feel really nice and supported here. Bring your arms down, taking your breath in. You're going to give me a high arch over the strap and then exhale, bring your body in. Inhale over the strap and Xcel, bring it in. So feel like you're going to take your body up toward the ceiling. Then lie over the strap.

And then bring it back in and inhale. So again, make sure that you have enough support from that spring where you can move with a little bit more freedom here, that you're not afraid by any stretch of the imagination. I definitely know want you to feel like you're going to fall. I want you to feel that you can just enjoy it. Feel that freedom, that joy that comes with opening up that body. Okay, now I could do this for the rest of our time, but I should keep our full body work out here.

So I'll do one more and XL all the way up and that would be it. So slowly hold your springs and carefully bring yourself out of it. And now we're gonna move onto a little sideline hip work. So go ahead and take those springs down because we'll no longer need those. And you should have set up with those points.

You are one heavy leg spring. So I'm going to just going to lie on my side. You're more than welcome to put a cushion under your head if you need to, to fill a little bit more comfortable. So I want you to lie in aside and I want you to take your strap and put it up to your knee. Now if you're earlier in your pregnancy, you try this with the strap on your foot, but for later in pregnancy like I am, we're going to shorten the lever a little bit so we're a little bit more friendly on that lack of stability that we're not truly experiencing in our pelvis. We're just going to lift up into little abduction. Inhale and exhale down. So this is going to be a nice short and sweet inhale and we're focusing on mobilization. Exhale, down.

Inhale. Now the secret here is you can see I have my top hand on my pelvis when I'm keeping in check here is that I don't laterally tilt my hips or my pelvis as I lift that leg up, I want it to be nice and controlled. Inhale, exhale down. Inhale, Xcel down. Let's do one more time and inhale. Now bring it halfway down. Now bring little circles and exhale, exhale, and I just wanted it to be nice and fast. Think more mobilization. Now you're going to start to feel the work in the outer hip, which is good. We want that. We want that for posture control. We want that for good gates, but I just want you to feel like you're mobilizing that pelvis, deepen that hip joint, bringing that femur forward up and around, letting the head of the femur just melt and sink into the Acetabulum of the pelvis. So keep that rotation for me.

Give me two more exhale there. Let's go the other way. So again, don't worry if you're feeling the hip abductors work in here, a little bit of the glutes. That's what I want. That's good XL, and just find relaxation in your upper body as you keep it steady and calm as you move that top leg. Two more exhale and Xcel hold the here. Now I want you to bring your knee in towards your chest, extend that leg out and sweep that leg back. Then that knee in towards your chest. We're doing a little bicycle here now.

Again, depending on how big the belly is here, this is going to determine how far you can bring that leg in. So I want you to just go as far as you feel comfortable in him. Now again, we're keeping that maintenance of that control, that stability of the pelvis, the stability of the torso all becomes really important here. Bring it in and acts out back. Let's go the other way. Xcel, bend the knee and glide it back. You might need to put your hand forward for this one in particularly just the feel a little more stable in your body and bring it in and what's so nice about bringing that leg forward skit, a little hamstring stretch. Then as you bend the knee, all you get that little bit of that release in that lower back feels really good and XL that just as we repeat this kind of swinging motion is there's a sense of relaxation that kind of comes along with it too. It's really nice and rewarding. Let's do one more exhale as you pull it through.

Now come forward, close and ease there and like I said, just short and sweet. You should feel that hit really mobile so carefully and gracefully like I'm doing. Get yourself out of it and we'll turn to the other side. So lying right in the sun of your Cadillac, go ahead and place your foot in. Bring the strap all the way up over your knee onto your thigh. Bend your knees in at a 90 degree angle, or you can actually a little bit less than that because I'd like you to bring your heels in towards your bottom.

But I do want you to make sure that your hips and your shoulders and that nice straight line. So starting up and down. Inhale, inhale. And then again, you're keeping this hop side of the pelvis, really study. So you're just working on abducting and abducting that femur. You're not compensating by laterally tilting the pelvis. That way you really get that beautiful work and the outer aspect of the hip, which is exactly what we want.

And try not to keep tension in your neck at all. Just let your neck totally relax into your arm. If you're lying on a pillow, let it soften into that pillow, up and down. And last one, uh, and just bring it about halfway down small circles. Exhale XNL same thing. Keeping that stability of the pelvis as much as you can, that link through the top side of the waist and ensure that you're keeping the support of your abdominal wall just by simply drawing it in.

It's not a tight sensation, it's just a support sensation as if you had wrapped in big piece of fabric around your midsection. You tied it up in a knocked on top of your waist and you're feeling that support and exhale. Excellent. Is Sea Health Nice and free? My hip is moving here is exactly what I want other direction, so I'm just feeling that bone stirring inside my pelvis, like a big spoons during in a pot. There's that sense of freedom. I'm getting that work on the outer hip that I want, but I'm getting that mobilization, that lubrication deep in my hip joint and we need that lubrication.

We need that mobilization is essential, but we also need the strength and bring it back in up two more. Last one and we go into bicycle. Draw that knee in a little closer to the chest. Extend the leg in front of you and sweep it back. Inhale the knee in. Exhale, sweep it back.

Inhale, hinge and fold at that hip and drawback. So keeping that leg parallel is very important. Try not to let that side go into external rotation at all. Maintain the parallel position and draw back and let them motion be led from way up in the hip joints. Last one here, and then we'll reverse it. Bring it forward, bend the knee, feel that beautiful stretch across the hip and that lower back and pull it back with the extension. Sweep it forward and XL back.

So again, as we get into that hip extension, as the leg goes behind, you try to keep the support through the upper body so you don't lose it. You don't put too much pressure or compensation in that lower spine and draw it back. Let's go. Two more shoulders. Stay nice and soft and relaxed. Last one forward. Bring it all the way back and come in for me. Slowly lower your leg and slide the leg out of the strap.

Okay, there we go. And come on down so you should feel really nice and open and work in your hips. So here we're going to take our long box and you can go down on either end of your Cadillac and we're going to get our arms springs and we're going to do a little bit at an arm sequence here we're sitting on the box just to fill a little bit more supported, a little bit more comfortable, not so compressed in our body here. So as you're sitting on the box, you're probably going to have to adjust your cross bar here. I want it about the height of your shoulder, if not a little bit tiny bit higher. We're going to do a nice little arm sequence here that's going to challenge us to keep supportive our torso, keep that pelvic floor contraction, but work that upper body.

So we're going to start with our chest expansion arm sound by your sides. Give the box a little bit of a hug with your legs. Exhale back. Inhale. Now we'll say keep going. Keep doing your reps here. There's something about this exercise in particular. Keep moving with me. As you pull the arms back, there's a tendency for the abdominal wall to poop the pop out because of the support that's needed.

So look down at your center body if you're seeing the abdominal wall overwork and pop out in a way that we don't want to, we want to avoid that. Keep moving. So what I need you to do is just slide yourself forward and short your range of motion. I want you to get the tricep work, the lot work here, the posterior shoulder work, but I don't eat a sacrifice, the integrity of your abdominals to do so. Yeah, I feel like you're getting a little bit taller. Uh, one more time. Uh, now I want you to slide your bottom back on your box and then once you to exhange back for me. Well, actually probably have to slide your box back.

There we go. And I want you to hinge back and I want you to do a high row here. Yeah. So Hindi back, we're going to pretense the spring a little bit and I need you to feel like you're drawing your scapula toward your spine. Okay? Now the same time, don't give up your energy here as far as keeping the length through your spine.

You're focusing on each repetition, but you're maintaining that energy, dealing with the fatigue that sets in. Uh, and if you can get into that practice using your breath and your endurance that guides you through it, then you're also preparing yourself for labor. Now come forward and let's rotate the palms facing in. We're gonna do a little rotation with the little low row. So bring the elbow back and rotate and inhale.

I did the left arm first, but you can do whatever one you want first and rotate. So I love this because as my arm goes down and back, I feel like I'm spiraling up and out forward. Let's go again to the right [inaudible] and forward and to the left and last one here. [inaudible] come all the way and hold it. So you feel that just that nice, gentle upper body work. Now. Hopefully I don't have to move my box, but I haven't been filling. I will. Yeah, I'm going to. So I want you to slide your box a little bit closer back towards your tower and I want you to turn around and squeeze the box gently with your legs.

Bring your arms out to the side and hinge your body forward and give me a nice hug. A tree XL. Now what I love about this also, this hinge in forward position, is it gets your pelvis in that open position that I want. You should feel a little bit of weight forward on your pubic bone, but you should also feel like your two sits bones are kind of keep continuing to repetitions, kind of open out behind you. So you really feel that with on the underside of your pelvis, but you're also helping keep that control with your spinal extensors. That abdominal contraction, that energy reaching out through the crown of the head, the groundedness through your feet, that gentle squeeze of the legs against the box. Last one.

Yeah, palm space down. Bring your right arm back for punching and switch. [inaudible]. So feeling strong, fingertips straight forward, elbows out to the side and the heel of the hand, or just right in line with your chest, with each side of your chest as you've reached forward forward. Now we're going to add a little rotation. So you rotate toward the bent arm toward the bedtime.

Just give me a little bit of rotation. We'll move a little bit slower because see how nice and strong my back is. Seeing how steady my pelvis is, there's no shift in the knees. So I need you to just think of spiraling your rib cage around the spine and just letting the arms push. You should feel triceps should feel anterior shoulders. And exhale. One more time. Exhale, bring those arms forward.

Bring them all the way up and circle down. And that's I little arm sequence. So we remove our box and we have two more exercises to go here. So I'd like you to load up one spring top loaded. Now I call this sidelining spider. If you have any other names, suggestions, I'm open to them.

This is what we've come up with. So I want you to lie on your side with your shoulder underneath your rest. And again, line that pip and languish shoulders, bottom arm, totally extended out. So this one looks a little funny, but it's kind of fun. It's what you're gonna do is you're gonna Bend your elbow and you're going to keep pushing down in that bottom arm. So you get that Latin gaze and you're going to bring your knee to your elbow.

Little funny looking right? Then inhale, you're going to extend and go all the way down and Xcel. So there's your spider kind of moment. And inhale. Now this time I want you to bring your hip up to your rib cage as much as humanly possible and in how, reach it out. Feel that knife, east centric length XL at [inaudible] and in how, reach it, how long energy and Xcel out, uh, and in house one more time. And Xcel filling that waist, working beautiful oblique work and all the way down and massage the other side. So slowly lift yourself up. Go ahead and turn yourself.

Yeah. So we'll start with both knees, bent shoulder underneath that risks all your body in the correct alignment here. So x up push down in that bottom arm. So you get the Latin gauge, pull the top elbow to the top knee. So you're really kind of curving yourself into this huge shape. Then inhale, lengthen and reach. Exhale and inhale. Now if you're like me at the end of the day and pretty much first thing in the morning, particularly this late into my pregnancy, I'm walking around like just so gingerly in the at the night, in the morning, and I just feel that exhaustion from the whole day and that weight bearing down on my pelvis. But I will say as soon as I'd start to do Palladio's and I really activate myself in that movement, that beautiful balance of mobilization and stabilization.

Not only do I get the energy from that breath, but there's something about that quality of plotting is again, that mobilization, that stabilization. So the last one that really helps my body just kind of get back in tune with itself and I lose that pressure. I lose that. Um, that sense that everything's going to fall out. And that's somebody who does plays all the time, but it's still the demands of daily life on that pregnant bodies. So bodies is just such a fantastic tool to kind of keep that sensation at bay and we can get rid of it for the time being.

Then we go through our daily life and you have to do it again, you know, to keep ourselves nice and healthy. But I really hope that you feel that same thing. So now I'd like you to come back and stand on the other side of your Cadillac until one spring top loaded this way, elbows are going to be up out to the sides. Simply push your bar down. You're going to roll through, okay. And find your extension.

So I want you to give me a little bend in your knees, cause I don't want you to hyperextend your knees, particularly as you're getting late into your pregnancy and all that relaxing is making all your ligaments nice and loose. I don't want you to pop back into your knees, so feel that beautiful extension ground yourself. Feel your feet getting heavy into your floor. You're gonna Inhale, lift the head, neck and chest. Essentially what we're mimicking here is prone one from our Cadillac work. Lift up with an inhale. Feel that energy, that sternum, just coming right over the top of that push through bar.

Then reach out. Inhale, grounding yourself through your feet. Just feel that beautiful sense of opening and take it down. Feel how gorgeous your body feels here. You feel strong shoulders, strong spine, strong hips. You feel that energy, that vibration, just pulsing through your body that invigoration that energy. That vibration is exactly what you'll feel during and after you give birth. I don't know if you've talked to your girlfriends, if you've experienced it yourself, if you're a second time or third time mom, but you often will kind of shake and tremble after you give birth and that's just a physiological reaction that's happening.

But there's also that energy that's just pulsating through your body and you can feel a little sense of that when you do a nice, good Pilati session as your whole nervous system in your whole muscular system. Everything is just responding to that movement and reach forward. Take your breath and exhale, roll yourself at, take your time. All the way, feeling strong. Bend your elbows at Bloomington, me and grazing this over the front of your body and rest and take that down.

Now that completes our little Cadillac class here and I'm again, I know I just talked about it. I just feel so much better in my body, feel like I own it much more and just feel really, really strong. And that's at 38 weeks pregnant. So I just, this is just such a great, great formula for us. So thank you so much for joining me. I hope that you feel good in actually what I would really love is to hear your feedback in the comments below. You know, you're watching the video here, so tell me kind of how you feel, how this session has made your body feel more energized or more open or any sort of feedback that should have. So we can kind of just share our thoughts with each other as far as how this prenatal works. So thank you so much for joining me today, and of course I'll see you next time.

Comments

1 person likes this.
Thank you Leah, wonderful session and lots of inspiration for my sessions with my pregnant clients. That goes for all your recent prenatal workouts.
Greetings from Nairobi / Kenya
Karina.
Great class Leah! I love the consistency of movement and creative assembly of your work-out. I'll definitely use many ideas with my pregnant clients.
Thank you,
LarisaLarisa Makuch
Karina and Larisa,

So happy you enjoyed. I'd love to hear how your client enjoy the movement
Thank you Leah, superbe session . I try myself even if i'm not pregnant and feel the work. You gave me many ideas for my pregnant clients. So thank you
Grettings from Switzerland
Great ideas, thanks so much Leah. I am looking forward to sharing them with my pregnant clients and really wish that my pregnant body five years ago could've benefitted from these fabulous moves.
This gotta be my favourite until now!
The only series I wasn't able to do was the side lying hip series, as my pubis symphisis and sacroiliac joint are very tender so unilateral work is unconfortable at the moment. I complete 40 weeks in 4days, if baby doesn't come before i'll definetly be doing this workout again! :)
Well done Leah, awesome workout!
What a beautiful class, thank you Leah! your classes are always great but this one is magic. I will do it myself and will teach to my pregnant clients.
All the best to you and your family!
What a great workout. I have been doing your videos on Pilates Anytime for my last two births. Now that I have three other children to love and care for your workouts have become so very important for me with this fourth baby. I always feel so open and flexible in my spine and my mind feels extremely clear. I love the leg work in both of your Cadillac classes such a good endurance challenge.
Awesome! Can't wait to use this for my pregnant client!
1 person likes this.
Wow, everybody! Thank you for the beautiful feedback and comments. During this whole series, I felt like I was going out on a limb, by exploring Pilates-inspired movement for pre-natal women that wasn't always strict Pilates. It felt good and right for my own pregnant body and for the bodies of the pregnant women I was working with at the time. I am inspired and motivated by this awesome feedback to get exploring more wonderful prenatal movement. Thank you, thank you!
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