Class #2461

Wunda Chair Opposition

35 min - Class
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Explore the opposition of pushing and pulling in this Wunda Chair workout with Amy Havens. She guides Nicole through her first session on the Wunda Chair, making sure she has the fundamentals in her body before progressing her. She works her way through basic movements and then moves on to more challenging exercises like Pull Ups, Going Up Front, and others.
What You'll Need: Wunda Chair, Moon Box

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Hi Guys, we're here for terror workouts and we're using the growths cheer and I've got it set for leg pumps. One side is on the low and the other side is the second notch up play with whatever spring tension you'd like to use. Nicole, have a seat. So you're going to sit here, face that wall, and I'd like you to push the pedal all the way down and set yourself up on Pele's v positions of balls a feet on the pedal, heels together and lift your heels a little bit. So first thing I want to do is just make sure you're really centered on that pedal. So move your feet a little to the right. Okay. And we are wanting equal weight, big toe cross, the Pinky toe heels are squeezed and they're slightly elevated like that.

Okay? Now without me holding you, I want you to keep pushing that down and don't do anything else. Just push it down. So a lot of the exercises today, I want you to think about relationships of pushing but yet pulling. And there are certain emphasis of when you need to push, when you need to pull or any. So right now take a deep breath and I want you just to set your shoulders down, lift your gaze a little bit, and you're going to feel my hand right here on your back. Take a breath in. Then I want you to exhale slowly. Pull the pedal up, pull it up as high as you can and push it down all the way to the bottom and pull it up as you exhale.

Push it down as you inhale. Good. And push it. I'm sorry. Pull it up and push it down. So that's our general idea. Obviously the pedal comes up, the pedal goes down, but it's also arking toward us and away from us a little bit. Keep going. Pull it up and push it down. Narrow your knees a tiny bit. Pull it up.

[inaudible] push down. Okay, so you keep going. I'm going to sit next to her. All right. I want you to stay against me and I want to stay against you, especially right through here. That's it. Let me have your shoulders. Yeah, there we go. Okay. So I know I'm kind of causing a little bit of a distraction for her, but I want, instead of having her sit up against a wall, we can't do that really for filming purposes. And I want her to feel this. Okay, so keep going. Wow.

Keep your ribs against mine. Especially the low ones there you gonna call. What does that feel different to you? A little bit. She said yes you couldn't. Yeah, she said. Now when I, when I step away, she's going to keep all that going and she's going to be as stable as possible. She's going to keep going. Nice. So I want you to keep going and squeeze your hips more. That's right.

One more time. Pull it all the way up. Push it all the way down and keep it down and then close your knees together. Wrap your toes over the pedal. So we've got this little prehensile or bird on a perch and even the inside edge of your feet. So let's go here and all the way together. If I had a Zipper, I'd be like, zip you up. Okay. Now make your feet work in what? I mean there is, yeah, really clutch that pedal.

Pick up the pedal and push it down. So again, we have a polling up. We have a pressing down, we have a polling app, we have a pressing down. We've got a pulling up. We've got a pressing down. So you're getting, I want you to go just a little faster. Keep the control. I'm going to do this little trick again. Okay.

Now if we both squeezed and contracted around our hips and our stomach to kind of feel more stable. So think of wobbling less as you do the leg movement up and down. Nicole's new to the chair. So this is very common, this extra little dancing, dancing that's happening there. It really just happens. It takes a while to learn how not to do that. And it's practice. It's getting better already.

Different positions of the feet also will be easier to control and have less wobble. So let's go down one more time in a pause. Put your heels on there. Now. Same thing. Really parallel. Squeeze your knees. Squeeze your ankles, even squeezed your hips together. Ready. Good. And exhale up. Inhale down. Exhale up. Squeeze and press. It's getting better. So there's this space between rib cage, pelvis that we're trying to explore.

So you're feeling your back body. You see you're nodding. Yes. She's feeling that stomach working inner thighs. Probably hips. Try a few more, Nicole with your arms like this. Okay. And so the arms folded, you can feel the work in your side, back muscles coming down into your rib cage, into your abdominals and trying to kind of create a narrower, more narrowed body. Go a little faster, maybe four more. One lift to how high can you lift without losing balance? Three lift four, lift and push it all the way down. Okay, go to your favorite, whatever was your favorite. One of your feet. Okay, I'm just going to let her choose. Yeah. Cool. Okay, so you went to Paulie's v suite here again, go faster.

Now let's go up and down and up and down like 10 times fast. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Go to one more position. Toes or heels. Same thing to try to wobble as absolutely none to three four, squeeze your bum by six, seven, eight, nine, 10 rest good. Okay, step off. So eventually the more cheer work you do, there'll be less of that kind of movement back and forth, but it was fine. That's usually what happens. The first go around. Next one is washer woman. I want you to stand right here and maybe about one of your own foot lengths away from the chair. I want to keep this heavy for you. Okay, so I'm not changing the springs yet. Bring your arms up, legs closer together and for a moment feel that that energy that you just felt in the leg pumps like your legs together really tight.

Squeeze your tummy in and take a nice rounding forward shape flection of your spine. Put Your hands on the black pedal and then don't go anywhere there. Okay, so the whole hand on there and feel this relationship for a second of your arm, from your shoulder and into your wrist. Now I'm going to be a little bit of a bully, a nice one. Apparently I'm an ice bullying. You know, don't step forward, but I'm going to have you shift your weight forward there so that your hips are more right above you. Feel that above your ankles. Now a great cue I got from Gary called around a long time ago.

He put his hand right throughout my sacrum and kept it pointed down because I had a tendency to point it back the other way, which would arch me here. We want to keep this continuous curve and then the other arm I'm going to put right underneath here. Okay, now take a breath. Let it out. Now inhale, push the pedal down. So I'm kind of fighting her a little bit. I don't want her to push her tummy onto my arm.

She's going to pull the pedal up. Say Grim down. Yes, good and pedal down. Try not to push onto my arm. If you can help at Nice Nicole, and then pull the pedal up, right and then down again, push and pull just like you had in a footwork. So there's a moment of hushing down using your arms, but it comes from your back, which actually relates to your stomach. Push down. Good form, Kiddo, and pull up, up, up, up, up, up. Keep going.

Dive your head and when we say pull up, we meet. We're meeting a lot of things. You keep moving. The pedal goes up. Yes. Energy comes from the floor up into the core. This way. Sorry. Right. The stomach kind of comes up under the ribs. You hear us cue that a lot of the time. Keep this down and do it two more times.

She's got a pretty Dang good position I'd say for not having done much with this last one. Push and pull. Now let your hands leave the pedal. Just arms by your sides. Roll up to standing tall. Open up your shoulders and we're ready for Swat. How'd that feel? Good. Good. Okay. Come around the back this way.

Now I want to keep it heavy ish for you, but not this heavy. The low bring off keeping the other side on the second one. That's actually not very heavy at all. We can change it. If we need to lie on your stomach belly button about there, we'll see. Legs up, hands on the pedal and push it down. It's actually fairly light, isn't it? That's okay. We'll leave it like this. All right. I want to keep her moving. So before we do anything, Nicole, feel your stomach pulled up into your spine a little bit. Good.

And we're looking for this nice straight line from your end. You're going to feel it from your shoulders down to your wrists. Make your hands a little wider on that pedal. Good. Okay, so if I didn't let you move your hips and you know Swan, I want you to look forward on the floor of your eyes, then your nose and your Chin and start to arch your spine up. Can you go higher? You could if I let you move your hips like that. Right? But keep your hips down. Let's do it again to go all the way down.

There you go. That's better. And then bring it down now. Last thing, you keep moving. Okay. I don't want your neck to Ben so much. That's a better position. Hold for a moment. Squeeze your legs together there and then down. Slide your shoulders into your roots. Eyes, nose, Chin, beautiful and down. So I want you to focus on this. Keep moving. Pull the spring closed by pulling your shoulders down to your hips.

Open this springs. Lengthen your spine again. Pull the springs closed by bringing your shoulders to your hips. Close the spring clothes. This spring. Clothes lists spring clothes this spring. Two more to go. Closing the spring. Nice. Nicole stomach. Good. And one more time.

Keeping the hips on the chair seat. Lift as high as you can. This is my gosh. Hold your neck a little bit longer. Strong. Nice job. Okay, come on down. I got him super impressed. Don't mean to sound so surprised, but okay. Let's just take one second. We're going to move the chair a little bit this way.

I've just moved the chair a tiny bit this way just for our filming purposes. You don't have to move your chair. Okay. So I want you to come down on your uh, sitting position here on the box. Face away from the chair. Okay, so your back, it's going to face. Okay, now in the position here, I'm going to push the pedal down to you. Put your hands behind you. Okay. And then why don't you turn your hands the other way there. [inaudible] and pause. You can just stay there and just push it down just like we've been working on. So there's some push there, some pull.

Now I am a kind of an advocate here of not locking those elbows. So yeah, give a little bit of tiny bit of that as your start position. And what I'd rather you do is just checking on how you're sitting on your sit bones. So yeah, you saw how she adjusted. So even a little more adjustment to the front edge of your sit bones and [inaudible] keep doing that. That's actually going to be better start position. Okay.

I'm a fixer. I'm a fixer. Sometimes these sessions get a little fixy, but that's okay. It's my teacher in me now without changing this Benji, elbows back and bring the pedal down. So what I want you to feel is when you're doing it, the bend and stretch of your elbows is that you don't lift up in your shoulders. Now, if you had a mirror in front of you, it'd be easier. You could see your reflection and you'd probably be able to learn.

When did they go up? My hands are going to be the mirror in a way, and I would have been getting to know about you is you're, you have flex, more flexible shoulders than ideal. So you can probably bend more than I do before you elevate. Yeah, she's doing a good job here. Keep going. Now I can encourage you to think, can your elbows get closer together behind you? Think a little small ball between your elbows. That's it. And push it down.

Eyes Up. See how that changes her posture quite a bit. It's lovely. Now I'm going to let go of you. Do four more in [inaudible], hail and exhale. So we're trying to increase, uh, posture, improved posture across those shoulders and the neck and the upper back there. Two more. Sorry. No, you're fine. Last one. That's a great, oh, hold on to that again. Yeah. Oops. That was an elevation there. Now they're study.

Okay. And push down. Perfect. Relatively perfect kidding. Okay. Come off. Come off the box. I've got the pedal. Nothing's ever perfect. I probably shouldn't say that. So now I'd like you to lie on your back. You are perfect though. And put your feet on top arches. Okay, now we, I had this position with you earlier in the seated pumps, but I want you to, I'm going to let go now. You keep that pedal down. Good.

So it's the prehensile and you see you've seen this position on the reformer, um, chair. Now it's, we do it on the Cadillac. Anytime we're holding, you can activate the arch of the foot and just really clutch the bar. Now I'm going to hold my hand right here by your thighs and I want you just to lift the pedal without moving your thighs towards you and bring it down. Back up a little bit there. That's fine. And [inaudible]. That's it. There we go.

So a lot of this has to kind of depend on how close that you put yourself to the chair. But I want you to think this, your, your shins are down, your shins are up or your, she's agreeing with this is great. Shins down, shins up. The femurs don't have to move, which are your thigh bones. So that's why I'm kind of holding onto them. Meaning I don't want them to move toward you. Do. Does that make sense? Yeah. Now push it down and hold it down. Hold there. Lift one Shin Up. Think teaser. You've seen teasers before. Tada. Straight knee.

Beautiful. I said it. Okay. And do the pedal up and down. Now we've incurred, yeah, you can go a little faster. It's fine. Oh good. Pull it down. Two more poll. Hold it there. Change legs. Okay. Strong knees are together. We did six of those by the way. Up and down and pull one. You're going to start working here. Pull.

That's right. The calf and hamstring. Three knees together. Four. Try not to move that Shin. You're fine. Or The femur? Four and five and six. Okay. Both feet on. Now I'm going to throw something in here and uh, you can turn your knees open, let them drop open soles of feet together, and the outside edge of the foot on top of the pedal. And I want, I'm going to put my hand right in the top of the, like the Bunyon joint area and hold that down. Okay? So what this is going to do probably yes, is allow you to externally rotate your femurs more so you're okay to stay here.

Okay? I'm going to crawl through for a sec. Here's this push down on my hand. No, you're fine. Push down. Now if I could replicate myself and do that and this side I would, but I'm just going to cue this side. You keep pressing that one down. Yeah. Stay there. No, there's a little too much arch in your back for me. So get your belly down. Yep. Okay. How are you doing?

[inaudible] all right, now move the pedal up and down to a little, up and down. Let's go up to a slower up, down. So I want you to keep pressing your knees toward the floor even when the pedal goes up. What do you feel? Um, right there by the inner thighs. Excellent. And for press. Think that that is not the feet doing the pressing.

It's the hip opening that's pulling the pedal down. Open the hips to pull the pedal. Last too. Last one. Now hold it there. This is going to be super fun. Take your hands behind your head. Okay. This usually means there's the chest lift coming.

So if I stopped pulling her feet and she's going to have to keep that down, take your breath through your nose, exhale and bring your head and your chest up, but the pedal stays down. Inhale, take it down. Good. Exhale, chest comes up, pedal stays down. Press against me over here. Press against that knee to the floor. Good and lower down. I got a little wink, Cromer and Corolla. So lots going on here. Keep the pedal down.

Good and take your chest down. And again, if I do this, can you curl higher? And I know we're on wood floors. I probably should have put a mat down. There you go and down with your chest. Two more to go. God, Nicole and lower one last time. Keeping the pedal down. Down, down. Press it, press it, press it, press it and tress down. Close your knees. I have the pedal. You can hug your knees. Super Duper. Okay, interesting. Yeah. Now sitting up, you can take your feet, your legs, kind of a little like a straddle on either side and just set your hands up top.

Okay. I'm going to sit here for various reasons. The chair might slide on the wood floor, but also I just want to see how you're organized in your alignment. So bringing the pedal down by just kind of, yeah, and down again, lift and lower. Good. Do it this way, so I'm going to have her do a different change of arm position. She's going to bend now. I want you to, yeah. As you press it down, think of that growing up version, that t, that's the idea. It's your posture change and then left and inhale.

Pedal down and exhale, paddle up. I think you might be fine without scooching keep going. There go. So now I am the artificial wall. There she goes. So we're trying to keep the back, the secret a little bit and head against the wall.

Two more. Grow Taller up the wall. Nice. Nicole, and one more. So I, what I'm getting is it's getting really giving you some good work in your back muscles, which I think is good for you. Yeah. Awesome. Okay, let's move on to another one so you can stand up. I'm just gonna slide the chair towards you a little tiny bit and I'm going to adjust the springs. Now we're going into the pull up the front pull up or pike or hamstring three. You want to name it that?

Okay. One foot one. Stand on that with your feet and put your hands on the side of the chair. All right, so washer woman we did a few minutes ago. He's been in this shape already before, so I want you to drop your head. Here's the lift again.

Stomach up away from floor sacrum angled under and see it. I mean, she's so good. Keep going. No. Awesome. Push your arms down. Okay. This is a carer research queue that I took to heart. Push the arms.

Pull the hips. Thank you, Kara. All right, now keep on going. I'm just going to fine tune a few things so that you don't get in a bad habit of locking out your elbows. You're going to love me. Oh, pull, pull, pull. Nice Nicole, and press it down. Try this. Put your hands here. She's a little taller. So moving your arms a little more forced. So before you go, let's get a good sense of flection.

Now the pushing arms is what's really nice on you is, is keeping your shoulder blades flat on your ribs here, which says to me they're stable. If your shoulder blade started slipping this way, I wouldn't want you to bear weight on that because it's not a stable structure. So the push allows you then to find some pull, pull your hips up, come on, pull, pull, pull, yes, and lower. Okay. Now with me standing in front of you, it's difficult because I know you'd rather launch yourself out this way, right? Yeah. So No, you're not gonna do that. You can drop your head down.

Go push the arms. Pull the hips. Yeah. Oh go. This is really like strength stuff. Go Bull Bull. Bull came one more without me. Let's see what happens. She's better without me there. Awesome. Okay. Push down and hold. Now let's turn sideways and try it.

So why don't you turn to the of the room. Your hands are going to change. So you'll put right hand left hand. And for me you can just pivot your feet. I like to have the outside foot, the behind foot. Oh yeah. And you can kind of be up on a little tippy toe maybe. And one foot in front of the other. Right.

How about move your right foot forward, left foot behind like uh, uh, yeah, no worries. Perfect. Okay, now dive your head down. Oh, I'm going to be a bully so I don't want to get bumped off the chair. Okay. So have you lean too far this way? You're going to bump me off. I'll fall over. So dive your head, push your arms, pull your hips up. Nice job. Do you see what I mean by this?

Because if I wasn't here, what would you be? Just happy to lean over this way a lot more so nope, not going let ya. And then me as the teacher, you would, if you're watching as teachers, you can use this hand and help them empower them. One more drop ahead. We want success here. I'll pop up, up, up, push and pull. Push and pull. Push and ball. Okay, let's face the window.

Do you hear that? Whoa. She got a little workout. Okay, so I'm coming up. I won't stay here for all of it. Well, I probably should push the arms. Pull the hips. Well, but she's pushing me off. It's okay. Unlock that elbow there. Why I'm doing this also is that you don't to two or three things, so you don't develop a bad habit of going too far over your center. We want to lift the center straight up. Okay.

And the hips relatively staying over the feet. Here we go. Push and pull. Nice and lower. Change feet. Put this on the back foot. Okay. Yeah. Three more in, yeah, ready? Breathe. In. Exhale, pull up and down. She's got two more [inaudible]. Prepare, push, pull. Nice to go. That's okay. Come back and try it again. That happens. You're okay, Huh? Yeah. Okay. She's fine. Alright. Be Up on tippy toes. Well, let's see what I did as I brought you out of your comfort zone too.

That's where we learned. Ready and push. Pull. Papa. Papa, you're good. Pause. Turn to face the chair. I'm going to get out of your way. Step to the floor with one foot and then up with the other foot. Easy Breezy. Okay, good. Shake it out. You're fine. Oh, sorry. Okay. No, no worries at all. Uh, it happens. Yeah. Next one is going up front, so I'm not going to be easy on you because this is the chairs, kind of a, it's a strong piece of equipment. Uh, you don't have any injuries, so you gotta try it. So step on your pedal with one foot parallel. Push it all the way down. You can put your hands here and where I want you to be on that foot is ball of foot. All of foot. Yeah.

Okay. Now put the other foot here all the way toes here. So here's what I want to do before we do the big climbing the mountain. Um, hold my hands. Just kind of good sweat going. This is awesome. No Man, I love it. Okay, so if you were climbing a hill, wouldn't you have to lean forward a little bit? Nice. And I want you to press down on me. Let's do this. It might be a better spotting. Nice. Okay, so there's the press.

Now what has to pull the spring pools closed. But I want you to think about pulling your pelvis up. Pull your pelvis up. Nice. Nicole, press down. She's never done this before. I'm just going to give you, I mean girl, you doing fantastic. Press pull. Trust me. Yes. Good. And Yeah, later we talk about we're going to get all your, you know, hips squared out and all that stuff. Press pull your hips up.

That's it. Can you do one more? Okay. Ready? Press Pole. And you go all the way down to transition to the other side. Your feet, your hands are going to go down on the mat. All right, Nicole, put your other foot up. Alright. And then hands against me now before we do the second set, you did four, I believe. Four Reps. I think we did four. Um, so all these relationships you're pressing down what's opposite of pressing? Pulling. So the opposites show up in Poitiers a lot.

Energetically I'm cuing. Pull the hips up. That seems a little bit weird. You're, you're loading your leg. Definitely loading this leg and those muscles in your thigh. But I don't want your knee to hurt. So I'm thinking what's the bigger bony structure? Are Your hips the pelvis.

So press hold the pelvis up to the ceiling. Good. And press down. Okay. I gotcha. Better why I put my knee there is that, that's better. I didn't want your knees so dropped in. So we've got a little alignment thing and we'll talk about, we want that knee more toward yet. Oh out over your second toe. Press down.

Pull up one more. You got it. [inaudible] that was the best one. There was a little more surge of strength. Can you do one more for me then? Cause I think this leg needs one more. Awesome sister. Good. Yay. Okay, now stepped down carefully. Mindfully with controlled to the floor. Super Pedal goes up. Let's, I'm going to wrap it up with a stretch. I don't think you need to do much more than that. Do you know? I know. Okay.

How about you sit here, face the front and you'll have your left knee bent over the edge. Your right leg, long and street out to the side. Okay, so what I want to do is have a flat, have you have a flat foot? Exactly. And what if I were the wall? Okay. Again, so there's a like a ground force that you're going to stand against. Take your right arm right up against your ear and lengthen everything up as tall as you can and then just melt that shoulder down. Good. Take a deep breath. Now as you exhale, lean over to the left [inaudible] and put your hand on the pedal and lean that pedal down.

Now for me, when I learned this, this felt like heaven. Did you hear? She Go, Oh, is that heaven? Heaven sounds like, oh, this is he. Yeah. Push your heel on the ground. Don't let it lift. Push it. That's like a ground force and we stretch away from the ground. Beautiful. Try it again. I want to see up before over next time.

Or She's gonna do it again. Show me the up. The up is so generous. It becomes an oh four stay there. I want to feel your heel. Nice. Nicole. Look at that stretch and bring it all the way up. So if you're watching it at home, if you have a chair at home, you're doing it in your studio. Get near a wall. This feels fantastic.

I think you're a real wall or without one. But push down. Lift up and side bend over. [inaudible] no, I like to do this thread and stretch you. I've gotten my hips kind of pressing her back forward so that she's not flexed in her spine. I'm not pulling her arm off. I'm just stretching. She's taken a deep breath. I'm going to lessen my grip and she comes up and we then face the ocean for three more. Okay, good. So you see we haven't done that many exercises, but what I've given you is kind of, there's some, you know, strong pieces here.

There cheeks are good and rosy. So she's going to take her left arm up, up, up. The shoulder melts down, and we're going to show the up. That becomes the over. Yeah. And I haven't really had to do too much queuing with you on keeping your hips square like you're not, you're not kind of biasing into a twist of your hips. This is pretty nice. Okay. Is that heel on the floor as much as it could be.

There you go. You feel how you, your hip kind of anchored. Okay. And then bring it up. Yeah. And again, so even not, I don't even have to look at her. I can feel her heal didn't stay grounded. Grounded more there. I can just feel it through my leg. Yeah.

Long stretch. And then this goes way over a big stretch come all the way up. One more ago. Big Lift up so much up that it just droops to the side stretches into the side over here. Come. So I'm going to bring my one arm underneath, kind of by her Scapula, the other hand on her hip, and I'm gonna try to stretch in both directions. She's really doing a good job of standing on the heel. She's taking a deep breath and she's going to come up and I want you to to stand, and you can face the chair maybe around that, on the backend of it. Just take an easy standing roll down, maybe back far enough that you can roll down without hitting it just to even out your spine. Okay? Deep breath. Nice work, girl.

Keeping your weight centered over the arches of your feet. Drop that head. One more lesson for you is that same idea that your stomach is being pulled up away from the floor, and as you round yourself up to standing center in your feet, center your shoulders. Yay. Nice job. You're welcome.

Comments

3 people like this.
Thanks, Amy! Love that you're a "fixer"!
1 person likes this.
Oi Amy, adorei essa aula, a sua orientação, o toque para guiar o movimento e o uso da voz. Obrigada por compartilhar seus conhecimentos.
1 person likes this.
Thank you Amy, love YOUR physical interventions, the seat on the chair, the hands on, just lovely!
1 person likes this.
Thanks Gals!! :)
great one! and Nicole! pretty fierce! well done!
1 person likes this.
Thank you Heidi....yes, Nicole did a great job, didn't she?!!!
1 person likes this.
Simple but effective. I like that I can do this by myself in a little more than 20 minutes for a complete full body workout. One thing, when switching to front puil-up/pike, it would be nice to know what the spring load was changed to.
Hi Sandra....glad you enjoyed this class. As far as spring change for the Pull Up/Pike....I added more spring to give Nicole more assistance. I usually state what I'm changing.....must have missed that one. Thanks for pointing that out!
Great to see a beginner go into advanced exercises with ease.
Thank you Lisa...yes, she did a fantastic job with that, didn't she?!!
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