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Hi, I’m Misty Lynne Cauthen, welcome to Around the World. This is an exploration of levels on and around the exo chair. This class focuses on arm work and includes plenty of planks. We’re using the exo chair plus the short celastics a ball and a box if needed. To begin, we’re gonna sit on our knees and as you do that you have the choice to grab the ball.
The ball can help you both work on the inner thighs and the seat connection. It can also help keep the stress out of your knees. So if you choose to use the ball you’ll bring it back between your ankles and your heels ish. Make sure your legs are nice and parallel and bring your hands to the chair. Now I’m pretty close.
Your arm length will determine how close you are to the chair here and rotating my armpits forward. I’m also gonna press my pelvis forward just a little bit. You don’t wanna be here. You wanna think of your hips being right underneath your ribs and shoulders. Now to begin, I’m sitting down and you’ll hear my hands sliding on the pedal because I’m allowing that slide to happen.
It gives me space and allows me to focus on my plumb line rather than laying an egg by sticking my butt out. Not a good look. I’ll do three more like this, staying connected to my upper back, my ribcage and my under butt. Two more. And last one.
I’ll sit and hold. Now I’m not relaxing on the ball I’m still staying buoyant here and I’ll just do five arm pumps because why not three. Keeping my chest broad, keeping my neck long and I’ll come up with the pedal to release. You can keep the ball here if you’d like but we’re going to go into a side plank next, I’m placing my ball down and I’m starting with the pedal hand on the pedal, my other hand will be on the mat and I’m trying to balance myself in the center. Take the legs straight back behind you and you can choose parallel or turned out.
Which ever is most comfortable. Now we’re gonna push up with the inside hand five, just three more and ask yourself, how square are my hips? How square are my shoulders? Bring the pedal up, slide the knees in and release continuing around the world, changing levels, I’m coming up. One hand is coming to the center ish of the chair and I’m making sure that my shoulder is over my wrist.
My other hand is coming to the pedal and I’m turning that hand out. Once I get my hands established, I find my plank position. I’m gonna go a little bit wider here because it feels better on my wrists. My chair arm, the high hand is bending my pedal hand is staying straight and I’m not just coming up and down with the chair arm. I’m pulling up with my pedal hand.
One more hold and let’s continue. Now I have this box for safety and stability. You don’t need the box if you can balance or if you have long legs. I was not that gifted. So I’m gonna plant my feet here.
I’m going to find my pedal behind me and keep my spine long. I take a big breath in, but I’m not gonna press back. My spine is going to roll under and that’s what takes the pedal down and then starting from my breast bone I’m curling up and lengthening my spine at the top not finding a back bend, but a nice long spine angle. Four more of these, Scoop, scoop, scoop. And if you tend to bias to one side it becomes really obvious here.
So can you keep both feet planted as you’re rolling up and down? Can you keep your chest broad as you’re coming up? And inhale. Let’s do one more for good measure scoop and roll up and sit tall, but we’re not done. So I’m going to rotate to the back of the room take one hand to the pedal and reach the other arm away.
Working to keep my ribs rotating with me. I’m going to hinge and then I’m going to come back up. Ideally my spine will stay long here but I may get a little bit of thoracic extension if I’m not thinking about where my arm is on the bottom side. So my armpit is rotated forward and I’m maintaining the width of my chest. Come up.
No rest for the wicked going to the other side, finding the pedal. Same idea. Make sure the pedal hand is in line with the shoulder, not behind the shoulder. That’ll put too much stress on the shoulder. Three more and let your gaze correspond with your rotation.
Two more and just one more. Up, up, up. Still not done we’re going around the world. So I’m repeating what we did on the other side. So my chair hand is somewhere around the center of the top of the chair.
My pedal hand is on the pedal slightly turned out I’m stepping back and finding my plank position, and here we go bending my chair arm, keeping my pedal arm straight and trying to stay as square as I can, monitoring my range of motion with my form. One more down and up that last one’s a doozy. Woo. But I’m not done yet, so I’m coming down to the floor i secure the pedal first. I take my hands just slightly wider than my shoulders on both sides and I’m stepping back one and then two feet and I’m bringing the pedal up.
Five, three more and two and one. This time we’ll leave the pedal down come in and slowly release it. So from here you’ll grab your short celastic’s make sure the handles are attached and you’ll lay back. So I set up by finding what’s comfortable for my knees with my feet flat on the floor and then I step my feet up so they’re resting on the pedal here my thighs are parallel and for my next movements, I really want you to consider keeping your fists closed rather than doing it with an open hand. When we close the fist our rotator cuffs are better able to prepare for what’s to come. So from here we’ll just start with basic bicep curls, and as we’re curling, we’re pulling the pedal down five Just two more here.
Really resist so nothing clanks and makes noise and scares the pants off of you not appropriate. Now this time will curl and hold. Think of the elbows going up and elbows coming down. You’ll notice my range of motion is short and it’s because I don’t wanna compromise form for range of motion. This work is coming from my upper back and deepen my shoulder girdle.
It’s not coming from my hands. Release the pedal up and the arms down. Give your hands a moment if you were over gripping, allow your fingers the chance to breathe enough break. Breaking is boring. So here we go again.
This time we’ll go into our biceps curl position the feet are just resting here, and nod the chin of the chest curl up keeping the frame of the arms hollow the belly to roll back down wide clavicles four more and up and back down. Three more. No tension in the throat if you can avoid it two more. The celastics are working to bring me up but I have to really work against them to bring myself back down with grace and dignity and release here let’s sit up let’s roll up to sit up because we can so bring your feet down to the crossbar here nod the chin, your chest, and exhale, roll all the way up and now they’re not helping you. Can you still get up?
I wasn’t sure. Always put your celastic’s away so you don’t end up getting caught on them. Next we’re going to kneel. I’m standing here on my knees. My knees and my heels are in a straight line so no external or internal rotation.
try to keep it nice and parallel. My chair hand is going to reach for the pedal. I’ll take a little bit of a lean here and I’m wrapping my fingers in my thumb for safety. Shoulders open armpit is rotated forward and I grab the celastic bring it to my breastbone. My outside leg stretches forward and it is slightly in front of my standing knee.
So to begin, we’re gonna press over and you don’t get to let the pedal rest. You’re holding it up you’re staying engaged, everything is active and then we’re just going to reach up and pull it in, I like to add a head turn here but realize that that head turn affects your balance. So if you’re not super comfortable or feeling solid with the celastic, you’ll just keep your head center like this until you’re really sure of what the movement is. That’s it bring the pedal up, turn to face the chair grab your second celastic, take a step backward, take your arms a little bit farther than your shoulders wide. here we go from your upper back, we’re going to pull hold two one and let the arms come forward.
So as we’re opening the chest here, the thought is that you’ve tried to keep your hips over your knees notice as I adjusted that I had more trouble balancing but that’s because I wasn’t using my inner thighs, so I’m bringing them to the party and I’m having a much better time two more and reach and last one, pull and hold and reach so we’ll keep this celastic tuck other one back into its little house. Find the hand position take a little lean if you need to find the leg position hand to the breastbone and I’m pulling the pedal down, wrapping my fingers for stability and holding now I’m drawing my sword as I’m pressing away and then bringing it in four more stretch now it can be very challenging to keep the bottom elbow rotated, not chicken, winging out to the side but keeping it rotated inward. But try to do that for shoulder stability. Come back up, bring the leg in and tuck your Celtic back into its home. Hope you enjoyed this.
Thank you so much for joining me and Pilates anytime.
