Prenatal Exo Chair Flow

Hi everybody. My name is Amy Katie and welcome to Pele's any time today we're class today is going to be on prenatal plots on the XO chair. I chose the XO chair because it's a compact versatile piece of equipment and the exercises that I designed for this program are safe in general for all trimesters as well as all levels of polities. I'm so excited today because I got to bring models for you guys to follow. I'm Jill. If you can come over here in Victoria.

This is Jill and she is in her second trimester with her first baby and this is Victoria. She is in her third trimester with her third pregnancy and what we'll be doing is you'll follow if you're in your second trimester, please follow Jill if you're in your third trimester, follow Victoria will be demonstrating the first trimester because typically in your first trimester you're able to do all exercises. What happens in our second and third trimester is that things typically start to slow down and um, you have to add some modifications to it. I'm going to talk to you guys a little bit about the posture of our mommies. If you guys can just stand normally and relax like you normally would.

I'm in front of a line at a grocery store. So as you can see on both of them, very typical of our moms. They've got sort of this kyphotic curve tightness in their pectoral muscles. And then down the back, I'm going to turn you just a little bit this way so you can see a little bit of Kyphosis. Excuse me, Kyphosis here in a little bit of Lumbar Lordosis down here. And that's very typical of our pregnant moms because as our chest and stomachs get larger, typically everything pulls forward and gravity pulls it down and so they're sticking out. So what we're going to work on in this program is thoracic extension.

We're definitely gonna work on some Lumbar flection. We've got some lumbopelvic stability that we need to work on. Um, we're going to work on adductors and abductors and some pelvic floor integration. And so for this, you guys can relax now into town. So for this reason, these exercises are certainly going to help moms during their pregnancies and also through their delivery, but as the mommy's are feeling out of control with their bodies, which I'm sure you guys are feeling pobody's is going to provide control and support for their body. Before we get started doing these exercises, I just wanted to say that you need to get your physician's permission to do any of these exercises and also if you have never done pilates before, it is very important for you to get with a Polonius practitioner and learn these exercises to be safe. Okay ladies, we're going to start with our warm up. You can go ahead and push in the Stroup and make sure that you're, you're a springs or on a number two. Let's all look down and look.

The nice thing about the XO chairs that they have numbers, so we get to work with that. We're going to step forward. We are going to be hip with the part with our feet. We're going to start with some shoulder shrugs. We're going to inhale, lift the shoulders up, and then add the arms to the shoulders. Circle the arms big and open up into that thoracic extension. Circling around again in heel, shoulder.

Strike one and arms to circle of three. We're going to do this one more time in circle one and two arms. Come up and around and three circle around, and now we're going to start with the roll down. We're going to take the arms up to the ceiling, a slight arch in the back. Inhale, exhale, lead with the fingertips. Grab onto that, uh, to the bar and press down and then exhale, rolling all the way up through the Vertebra. Inhale, arch the back, and then exhale, fingertips lead and guide down towards the pedal and stretch.

We're going to do this just one more time. Inhale, go into that arch and exhale. Lead with the fingertips down. Grab onto that pedal and pushing down. Opening up those shoulders and slowly walk up the spine and take those arms up behind you. And now we're going to work on our piriformis stretch. We're going to take the right foot on the chair. You're going to extend the left leg behind you if that's comfortable. If not, you can certainly bend your knee.

We're going to start with the hands towards the pedal. Inhale. Exhale. Push that pedal down as far as you can. If I'm in my first trimester, I can go all the way down, but you can see the different levels of all three of us and then roll back up. Take those arms behind you and arch. Inhale and exhale. Press. Inhale enrolling up and take those arms behind there and open that chest. Okay, let's switch sides. We're going to step off of it. Switch, put that left than on.

Extend that right leg back behind you and the hands are going to reach towards that pedal. Inhale, exhale, pressing down. Beautiful and slowly rolling up and arch that back and notice that we're starting to do all this rhythmic rocking motion with these exercises. This definitely warms up the spine and gets those muscles going in. Our synovial fluid is going through the spine and joints warming everything up. Excellent. Okay, we're going to face the outside.

We're going to sit sideways on the chair. For Our side, Ben Mermaid. We're going to take our right hand, the pedal. Take the left arm up. Inhale, exhale. Looking down towards the pedal and exhale. Okay. We're going to actually stretch to the other side too. This feels really good. Lateral flection. Inhale and exhale. Press.

Yeah, lengthening up through the spine. Axially, [inaudible] and stretching over and coming back up. We're going to switch around to the other side. I'm going to come around and help you guys with this. You're going to take your left hand to the pedal. Inhale and exhale, stretching over. Okay, great. And coming back up and switching over to the other side.

Yeah. Good. Watch those shoulders. Inhale. Exhale. Just to give you long, getting to stretch those legs long, stretch those arms and come all the way up to reach up towards the ceiling as high as you can before you reach over to the other side. Beautiful and come all the way back up and rest. We're going to slide around to the front of the chair. You're going to sit all the way to the edge. Your toes are on slightly.

We're going to start with the flying art. So we're gonna start with a seated roll down. So you're gonna take a breath in, go into Ford flection and try to reach your toes. Notice that I can probably reach all the way down Victoria's and not quite as much. And then we're going to take those arms back, open up the chest, and again, inhale, exhale, reaching forward. This time we're going to take the arms up overhead, reach the fingertips to the ceiling and arch all the way back. Beautiful. And then come up to a seated position. Now we're going to work on our arch curl.

We're actually going to start with our arms up in the air and then we're going to contract, rotate to the right, circling those arms, coming back up again, arch, stretch those pacs. And then exhale, contract. And again, inhale, arch. Reach. Open that chest and exhale. One more time. Inhale, lengthen and stretch and contract in that belly and rotate and rest. Beautiful. Okay, now we're going to move on to our legs. So we're going to need to change our springs to either two springs on a three or one spring on a two one spring on a three depending on your level of strength. We're going to sit to the front of the XO chair again. Do you have it?

Three and a three and then we're going to grab onto our strips. You might want to grab onto your strips before you sit down. We're going to do leg and foot work with arms. We're going to start with our heels on. Legs are together and we're going to start with arm raises as we press the pedal down. Take an inhale to prepare and exhale.

Push those heels down as you lift and lower. Exhale, lift and lower. Exhale, lift. We're going to do it one more time. Inhale and exhale lower. Hold it here for a second. I just want to talk a little bit about lumbopelvic stability.

Shoulder stabilization. You don't want to rock your hips back and forth and release. Let's do toes on parallel. Bicep curl, so their arms are going to be up. We're going to breathe in here and exhale, bicep curl. As you push that pedal down.

Inhale and exhale, lift, gorgeous, beautiful, long spine. Shoulders are down. I just want you to pull back a little bit into that. That's it. And last time. Great. Let's go into our v feet. First position. We're going to do our shoulder presses. Okay. Inhale. Exhale. Pressing up. Now in this position we typically tend to take it into our backs of ladies who remember to work our transversus abdominis muscle so that you've got support holding that baby in and supporting the pelvic floor and our lumbar area. One more time. Excellent.

Let's go out wide. Second position for arm circles. You're going to lift the arms up, circle the arms around to the right. Here we go. Exhale, press and exhale. Yeah, I think of elongating, pulling everything in, narrowing at the hips. One more time. Great. And rest.

We are going to now grab our balls. So ladies you can put those down. Okay, so now we're on our balls. We're going to do some seated arm and abdominal work sitting on the ball. Um, we have the handles now. Um, the strips are on the upper level here and you have choices. You can either hold onto the handles to do this exercise or you can grab up a little bit higher. Whatever works for you. Um, we're going to start with rock and roll. So ladies, we're going to take a deep breath in and sit really tall. Exhale, go into a deep round back and we're going to lift the arms straight up and then we're going to inhale. Exhale, reach forward and press the arms behind us. And a tricep press coming through, sitting tall. Exhale, round, back and lift. Yeah, and he'll sit tall and XL tricep.

Yes. Again, inhale up. Beautiful and exhale round for a tricep press back. Great. Let's come back to sitting up tall. We're going to cross the strips. You're going to grab up a little bit higher. Again, if that's more comfortable for you or you can still hold onto the handles.

We're going to go into round, back position on an inhale and then we're going to exhale, rotate to the right, pulling that shoulder behind us and release. Stay in that round back position. Exhale, rotate to the other side. Elbow leads. Good. Go back to the center and go back to the right and you notice that Victoria, now that's in her third trimester is not going to go back as far as in around back as this is our first trimester or our second trimester. One more time to the right. Make sure to lead with those obliques though. Obliques are going to move first and then the arms second. Exhale, rotate.

Beautiful and rest. Okay. Keeping the straps crossed. We're going to grab him and now we're going to do around the world. We're going to pull the strips in to our right side and Lee, excuse me, into the left side and lean over to the right. We're going to circle around and to the front. So again, we're doing rhythmic motion to really open up those tight spots in our lumbar area, our thoracic area, our hips, Piriformis, all of this is to work and open up the body. Let's reverse it, pull it in and circling around. Deep breathing. And again, Victoria is not as mobile as the rest of us and that's typical in our third trimester. Okay, and rest.

We're going to release these straps and we're going to face the front. We're going to do seated arm work. I'm going to run through at one time and then we'll do it together. We're going to start with sideband mermaid. Now this is all gonna alternate hands into our, uh, draw a sword. We're going to punch, we're going to do a lateral press.

Then we're going to do a deltoid press, and then we're going to do our rotator a row. Okay ladies, we'll do it two times through and then we'll switch to the other side. Here we go. Inhale and Exhale, Side Bend Mermaid drawing a sword, hunting lateral press, deltoid, press and ro. One more time. Draw a sword and punch. Make sure to rotate. Beautiful. Lateral press, deltoid, press, and we'll do our rotator ro and rest. Okay. Turn around to the other side.

Alright, grabbing onto that top strap. We're going to start with our sideband mermaid. Here we go. Exhale side Bend, Mermaid. Good. And then draw a sword. Okay punching and lateral press. Good. Deltoid, press and rotator row. Let's do it again. Both of you are really sitting in that arched position. I know it feels really good, but I wanted to really, when she lift up on that trans versus abdominous yes, here we go.

Lateral flection over and uh, draw, draw a sword. Good punching, rotate from the waist. Excellent. Lateral press, deltoid, press and ro. Good work you guys. Okay, let's put those straps down. We can take those balls away now and we'll sit behind the chair and we'll grab some extra apparatus. Okay, so for our next series of exercises, you'll want a couple of these pieces of equipment. If you have some weighted balls or some hand waves, preferably two or three pounds. Um, if you have a magic circle, be great. And then, um, we also have a pole, a dao, but you may need, do not necessarily need to use this. And I'll demonstrate that.

So let's change our springs. We're gonna do one spring on a three and just take off the other spring and we're going to walk around to the front. We're going to do some standing leg work with some arms. We're going to grab on to our bottom straps. That's right.

We're going to stand back a little bit from the XO chair. We're going to put our toes on, so we're working single leg into a bicep curl. We're going to press the pedal down and go into our bicep. And here you want to think about stability. You're going to, pelvic floor is engaged, you're narrowing at your hips and you're elongating in the spine. And let's switch legs. Where to put our left like on, and we're going to, this time we're going to do a tricep press. Inhale and exhale, press back release, and again, just watch that here. Beautiful.

Really press that heel into the floor as you push that pedal down for stability and support. Great. Rest. Let's flip around and face the other direction. We're going to do our wide second position. Arms still grabbing onto the strap. I don't think I haven't done. Straps go into that second position. We're going to start with a scoop. We're going to inhale and exhale left. Good. Keep going. One more.

So I'm just going to have to shift down just a little bit there. Good. Now we're going to add hug a tree. Pull those arms together, or I did the wrong straps. That's okay. Inhale, exhale, pull. Think of gathering everything together and full. Beautiful. One more time. Shoulders are relaxed. Now let's punch to the right. We're going to rotate to the right and to the left.

[inaudible] beautiful. Keep those hips really still and try to reach for me. [inaudible] one more to the right. Okay, one more to the left. All right, and release those straps. Now we're going to walk over to the back. We're going to use the props that I talked about earlier.

The first thing we're going to grab onto is our weighted balls. Remember, you can also use weights if you don't have our balls. We're going to sit on the edge of our chair. We're going to stick our feet underneath this red stroop. We're going to take our arms palm spacing up. Say Hi on those sitz bones. Lower abs are pulled in. Inhale, go into a deep round back position and we'll bicep curl for four and three okay.

And two and one come up and sit tall. Think of this lengthening in the spine. Palms are going to face down. Take a breath in. Round back position. Arm Raises for four beautiful and three and two. I don't have to fix much on you guys. You look great. One come up and sit tall working those back muscles to linkedin and then the palms are going to face towards the ceiling up.

We're going to go into our deltoid as we roll back. Exhale and up. Good. Think of those shoulder blades colliding into the back three and four and come all the way back up. Let's put those balls down to this side. We are going to grab our circles, our magic circles. We're going to do some rotation with a flat back. Our feet are still underneath. We're going to take a breath in, rotate to the right, squeeze the surface. Cool.

Back to the center, rotate to the left and again to the right and the left. Come back to the center. We're going to come up and sit tall. Now we're going to add around the world. Exhale, go into that round back position. With that circle, we're going to rotate over to the right and then we're going to stay in that round back position as we take the arms above the head. Rove over to the left side. Squeeze this circle up and around to the right.

One more, up and to the left. Now we're going to add an arch to it, so come up with that circle x, extend the back and then exhale, contract to the right side. Inhale, arch up and contract. You ladies, keep going. Inhale and contract. One more time. [inaudible] the shoulders and contract and rest. Okay. Let's put those circles down. We are now going to do our own oblique work, so we are going to face outside here.

You're going to have one foot draped or one leg over. You can either have the other leg under the a stroop for support or if you have long legs like me, you're going to want to have them on the outside. We are going to grab onto our bottom. Stroop. We're going to take the right hand to the pedal. We're going to take a breath in.

You're going to push that pedal down and just open the arms out and release. Come back up and exhale. Now we're going to add a little bit of opening. This is called open clothes for rest down. Open up that chest, reach up towards the ceiling, impress that pedal down, and then back to the center. Lift that pedal up and heel. Exhale and open and reach and release.

Okay ladies, let's swing around to the other side. I'm going to come give you some corrections if needed. We're going to take that left hand to the pedal. We've grabbed onto the bottom stroop [inaudible]. We're going to take a breath in, push that pedal down and reach that arm up.

So this is a beautiful long extension and relax that neck. Take the head with you as you go over as if you were laying your head on a pillow. It beautiful, and now we're going to add the open-close. Inhale, open out and any time you would like to hold a position because it feels so yummy, feel free to do that and release and exhale, open up wide, opening up that chest, stretching out those pecks. Beautiful and release and rest. Okay. Put those straps down. You all can grab onto your P, your poles.

We're going to do the hip opener. We're going to face the front again. The spring setting is great. I'm actually, I'm going to demonstrate it without a pole just in case you do not have a poll, you don't necessarily need one. Otherwise the ladies are going to slide the polls through. Again, we're working with the lower stroop ladies. You're going to hold those the hands out wide on the Poles. We're gonna have our toes on the pedal as we press the pedal down.

The arms are gonna lift. Yeah, and inhale and why? Yes, we'll do it one more time. The reason why I like the polls. As you can see on me, my hands are a little bit less than shoulder with you guys are going to rotate and I like the girls to have a little bit more of an opening in their shoulders. One more time. Rotation. Okay, and we're also working at duction lateral function.

Inhale. Exhale. Long Spine. Shoulders are relaxed and joy and release. Let's switch to the other side with our poles. I'm going to help you with that actually. If you don't mind, go ahead and get in your setup. Okay. Arms out a little bit wider than shoulder width.

Arms are out straight. Push that pedal down and the arms are gonna lift. Beautiful and lower and left. You guys are almost too perfect for me. Just think of working at transversus abdominis. You're working inner thighs. One more time.

[inaudible] now we're going to add rotation against the leg. Beautiful. Make sure you rotate from the waist first that it's just not an arm movement. One more time. Yes. Beautiful. Now we're going to go into our lateral flection and left.

Think of really elongating. And Ben, do you know if we're good and come back and press okay. One more time. Leaning into that gorgeous and rust. Okay, we can take those off now. Now we're going to grab our Max and our C shapers and move on to the next exercise. Okay, so now we've brought in our and our c shapers and now we have long strips with handles. Our, excuse me, with our straps instead of our handles. Um, I've only got the second and my third trimester women out here and our first trimester. You can do all of these exercises laying on your back. So we're going to go ahead and get started with 'em. You guys laying down on your sea shapers and we'll get going. All right, so now we have our mats and our C shapers.

We're getting ready to do some legs with arms. What we've done is gotten our long strips with our straps in instead of the handles so that this is for ease of, um, flow for us. So actually since they're a little bit longer, we're going to grab a little bit higher on the strips right around the yellow part. The first thing we're gonna do is put our heels on the pedal. We're going to take our hands by our side as we press the pedal down. We're going to lift the arms up into an arm res. That's it. Release, inhale, and exhale, lift and release.

Let's do it two more times. Okay. The reason why we have the sea shaper in this section is because right around our second and third trimester, we don't want to lay supine, which is on our backs. It tends to cut off the blood flow and oxygen to the baby. And one more time. I know I said four, but we're gonna do a little bit more.

That's fine. Okay. Flip the pumps up for bicep curls. Same foot position. Here we go. Press the pedal down and Bicep curl. Good. And release. And it's so comfortable, isn't it ladies? Yes. We'll do it two more times. Okay, and last one? Yeah. Okay.

This time we're going to take the palms facing them in the arms. Are going to go out wide. As we press that pedal down, you want to squeeze those hamstrings. Here we go and press inner thighs are working and exhale, pull back working on those shoulders and again, beautiful. One more time. Great. Last thing and we're going to do is just a little bit of arm circles to keep those shoulders mobilized. Here we go. Press that pedal down and left and too, and three still having to work on the low abs. One more time for squeeze that pelvic floor, release and rest.

We're going to let a little bit of a variation on this. We're going to take our right leg off the bar, take it up to a tabletop position. We're going to pull down the pedal and as we pull down the pedal, we're gonna lift our arms up for three. Here we go and lift for three and four. Two same arm variation.

Just do single legs, switching legs. Now we're going to do bicep curl. Here we go. Palms that pull that peddle down and bicep curl for and for two and you guys can probably really feel that in your hamstrings. And three good. Switching legs for our press. Here we go. Pull those arms back and pull that pedal down for one good and two gorgeous.

Keeping that nice and tight and three and the last one. Switch and circles for three Oh one stabilizing in the shoulder. Vertel and two and three and rest. Okay, we're going to come off of those sea shapers. We're going to turn them around to do some arm work and some leg work. We're going to take the bottom straps and we're going to hook it to the top.

So ladies, if you could help me with that, I will turn your see shapers around. The handles will stay the same. Oops, sorry. All right. I need to make a note that when these strips are are on top on that top, I vote. You need to pay close, close attention that the client does not pull this too far.

Otherwise the chair will topple forward. Alright, here's your straps in Victoria. I will get yours. We're going to start with our tricep press. You're going to roll down, get super comfortable in that. See Shafer high. You might be too close. I don't know. Take those arms up. Reach and forward slightly. Bend those elbows and press yes, and if you want to, yes, grab higher on those strips and press and three. And for good. Hold those arms out. Palms are gonna face each other for hug a tree.

Pull those arms together for one and two. Beautiful. And three. And now we're going to do straight arms up in a v position. For our angel presses, you're going to press down all underneath that armpit so to speak. Press down using those lat muscles and back muscles and three, kick it all the way down.

Let's do it one more time and press and rest. Now we're going to put our feet in the straps and we're going to do a little bit of Legwork to finish up. We're going to take those legs straight up and slowly lower down, not too far down. Again, you don't want the chair to tumble forward and lift up. Really linked in those legs. Reach out towards me. Beautiful. And again, inhale up and lower.

One more time and left. You guys look so comfortable and lower. Hold the legs there. I'm Jill. You'll take your down just a little bit more. We're going to turn out slightly. We're going to laterally rotate. Open to a small V and squeeze those inner thighs to close. Open up and squeeze again.

Open and schoolies. One more open and squeeze. Hold those heels there. Bend the knees slightly into a long diamond shape. You're going to extend those legs. Press them out long into a straight leg. Bend those knees into that long diamond shape.

Still working those inner thighs and extend again. Inhale, bend. Exhale, really reach long. ABS are tight. One more bend and straightened. Let's take the legs back up to parallel. We're going to do a quick running. We're going to lower the right left, right, left. Here we go. Inhale and up. Two, three, four and down. Two, three, four and two. Three. One more. She breathing and pull those legs in to our butterfly stretch.

Grab onto those strips and give yourself a gentle pull. We're almost done. We're going to just do a quick cool down ladies. So if you want to step off of or take off the straps and we're going to walk around, we're going to take up the seat, take out this c shapers, and you're going to stand in front. Yeah. All right. We're going to start with a quick hip flexor stretch.

So you're going to put your right foot here, put your hands on the back of that chair and give yourself a little bit of a stretch. Bring this foot forward. Both of you bring your feet forward. I know it's a little bit harder when you're pregnant. That's it. Beautiful. And then you're gonna. When you're ready, you're going to straighten that front leg as best you can. Beautiful. And let's switch. Take the other foot up, stretching out those hip flexors. Really important.

We really get super tight as our pelvis starts to expand in our bodies change, everything is shifting. We really want to keep everything stable and then stretch out that hamstring as you get into that, that Lumbar, uh, pit position, the lordotic position, our hamstrings tighten. So this is a really good stretch for those hamstrings. Okay, so now take that foot down. You're going to stand right in front of the chair. We're going to do one quick roll down and one quick shoulder shrug. Take those arms up, stretch it out. Lead with the fingertips, Chin towards the chest, reach for that pedal. Press down as far as you can.

One last hamstring stretch. Opening those shoulders, walking back up and open those arms out. Circle the arms around one last shoulder shrug. Here we go. One and two. Reach it all the way up three and we are finished.