Hip Strengthening Tower

Hi everybody. I'm Kara Reeser and I'm here to do a tower class with Jen and Laurel. And for this class you're going gonna need a hand towel and you're going to be using your full tower setup. So actually we're gonna start with the push shrew bar up with one spring with your regular push through bar spring. And, um, we're going to also start with this little towel. So you're going to take your hand towel, um, and you're gonna fold it the long way, and then you're going to make just like a little log out of it, you guys.

So we're just gonna make, um, a little log. The thicker the log, the heart of the balance you'll see as we go. And so then you're just gonna take that log and just, just leave it. You might want to go a little thicker there, Jen. I feel like, yeah, there you go. Okay. So this class is all about, um, focusing on, um, the connection between your hips, your knees and your feet, uh, creating balance so that we can control, uh, the external forces that come, uh, to our knees in daily life. So it's a lot of hip strengthening, a lot of feed awareness, um, lot of squats and lunges. So when we're doing that, we're going to be always thinking about that really solid alignment between the center of the hip, the center of the knee, and the center of the foot. Okay.

So we're going to start standing up and you're going to have your towel roll. Okay. So ladies, go ahead and put the towel roll. Actually this way, and we're going to start with just a little balancing. Okay. So ladies, so you're going to, you're going to stand on your towel, roll with your right foot, and you're not going to hold the bar. Cause right now we're going to be working on balancing. And what we're going to do here is just really work with how much movement you feel in your foot as you're bouncing here. So you're gonna pick up your left leg.

I want you to put your hands in the front of your hip creases and I want you to in front of your hip creases in your thighs, a Laurel right here in the front. And I want you to make sure that your hips are staying extended. You can let your leg be behind you. That's it. And just standing there, just noticing this is really just about the awareness of, of what we refer to as the twist and untwist of the foot, how much movement occurs there as you're working that balance. So this is there to help us really warm up that ankle and those uh, well really mostly the foot. Good, very nice.

And also we're thinking about our alignment and our hips are fatiguing, probably our hamstrings and other foot down. Good. If your log got a little too squished, we're switching sides. You might want to puff it up a little there until like Jen's giving herself too much of a flat log and we're going to go to the other side. Again, you're going to go ahead and flex your of the non standing leg and make sure the front of your hips are in extension. You're working with your alignment principles, right? And again, you're just really allowing yourself to experience the wobble, not falling into the supporting hip. So really a real sense of lifting up through the supporting hip and just feeling that you're sort of an ongoing extension at the front of the hip, which means our posts cheerier hips are active and they both can feel that good and rest. Great.

So now turn your towel around and just put it in the under the balls of your feet. Your arms are now going to be on the push through bard. Just really for balance and this position right now, right away you want to make sure that your foot is really parallel, hip distance apart. And what this is doing is sort of giving you a little bit of um, mobilization endorsee flection at the ankle, which is really important for our knees. So we're just gonna start there. Just use the bar for balance and let's just take a little bit of a knee bend and really look down and make sure that your knees are tracking directly over your feet and you don't actually want to go booty in the backyard right now. You want to go let your knees travel forward a little bit. Yeah, exactly. And then up you go. Good.

And let's do that against who you're bending. You're really just sending your shinbones forward, right? Exactly. Try not. Yeah, and you don't even need to pull that bar. Just let your elbows bend a little and then press back up. Hip Extension. Good breathing as you go. Let's go again.

So you, you really, what's important here is you let those shins travel over and you watch that. Your heels don't slide together there. Right? And back up. Okay. So now we're going to go into the standing foot. Work from the plebes repertoires. So we're going to go down just using this for balance and you're going to lift your heels. Good. And lower them.

Just that part five times a lift and lower right? And because you lift and lower and because you have that towel there, what's happening is you just getting a little bit more Dorsey flection the ankle, which is really gonna help us out as we go through some of this, uh, chain of events. Good. One more time. The lift and lower. And then again, straighten your legs, extend the front of your hips as your primary moment. Great. Let's go ahead and slide that towel out of the ways we bring him forward. Good. And we're going into squats. So here we go again.

Let's just use the bar as a balancing. So we're going to go straight down into a squat and then I want you to tap your knees down. Great. Yeah. Sit back hard without a bar and up.

Good. End Again. Go down, right. Let your knees tap in. Good. Reverse it and up. One more time. Go down, right. And you're going to feel those quads working big time here, right?

You take it to the stretch, you bring it through and recover. We're going to roll down pushing the bar. We're going to do Kat going into extension as you come through, looking out. Beautiful. And then using those hand, that hamstring line to roll back up. So you really want to feel that the pelvis is coming back on the legs. Yeah.

Good. And let's squad again. Go down. Good knees down. Come through. Great. And up and roll down through your cat again. Great. And again, coming back. Now here's a place where you want to not shift your weight, but you want to feel your sits bones changing direction.

Moving down towards the back of your knee. Great. So one more time. We're going to go down into our squad again. You can let your elbows soften. We're not really taking the bar with us right now. And then Stephanie's down and just have a moment here where you feel that hip extension exactly come through. Use what you need from the bar to come through and press up. Good.

One more cat. We're going to go down in through standing, taking herself into full extension. Go ahead and look out stretching the neck. Yeah, beautiful. And then coming back again, really thinking about how those sitz bones have to travel down to bring your pelvis back up. Good. And then just ladies step back just a little bit. We're going to bring the right leg up into a standing piston without changing the pelvis. We're going to change the position going into a warrior three position with the leg standing. Very, very solid on that standing leg.

I want you to keep your hips down facing down. Asi Us. Good. And then let's just do, I'm going to just turn this down a little bit. Let's just do a little ab duction on that up leg. So you're just going to go out and in just really small, like you're dusting the wall with your foot, right? And just feel the demand in both hips here. Yeah.

And you're standing and you're working hip and back. Bring the leg back through to piston leg down and take one more squat and we'll go to the other side. So down you go and just let your elbows bend. It's just there to help you knees down. Keep your spring up. Yep, exactly. And then through the folds, great and up other leg we're gonna pissed in, right? You're saying on that supporting hip and then you're going to take that leg out into your warrior three position. You're going to keep your ssis pain. Yeah, exactly. Laurel grade, you can come down with your body Jenn, and lift your leg a little good. And then here we're going Ab duction just dusting that will one, two, three, four. Okay five and then bring that leg back through.

Good foot down. Super. Come on down ladies to a supine position for shoulder bridge on the push through bar. So you're going to come on down, right? You can kind of just, I'll just scoot these towels out of your way and you're going to put your feet on your push through bar. You're going to lay on back into a supine position. Good arms down by your side.

You want your Skakel a little bit snugged under cause we're going to be doing some bridging. Let's start with regular bridge. So you're going to bend your knees, you're going to bring the bar in, okay. You're going to straighten your legs and you're going to sequence up finding that full hip extension again. Yeah, great. And stay up there and let's do a kick with the right leg and down and a kick with the left leg and down. And you're trying to keep your pelvis even one more on each side. Good, nice and down and the other down and roll down.

Now stay with me. This is a sequence here. So now you're going to bend your knees. You're going to push that bar back through. You're going to reach your arms up over your head and you're going to do pilates. Roll up, feeling your feet on that bar. Chin to chest. Curl it up. You got it sister. Nice job. Good.

And take the bar in your hands. Now you're gonna do something we call sand tunnels here. You're just going to bend your knees and you're going to bring the bar in a little. Just pause at the back of your pelvis. Exhale, take it through. Inhale, bend it in. Just feel that closure of the hip, knee and ankle, and push it back through. And that will happen sometimes and that is just fine. And again, then done.

So it's just really working that hamstring stretch. And you could also really work with reaching those heels for that Dorsey flection as well. And now keep your leg straight. Make sure you have the bar. Lift your arms off and rural down. Okay, good. Beautiful. Great Laurel. Good. Take your arms up over, back around to your side. Shoulder bridge. Here we go.

Bend your knees. So we're back in it. Take it up. We're going to full hip extension, posterior leg, really strong here. Give me a right leg to the ceiling and pause. So just to the ceiling. Little circles go around very small, like you're drawing a circle on the ceiling and then reverse it. Yeah.

Right? So that's really hard to manage that supporting hip, your good and foot down. Let's do the other side. Left leg up to the ceiling and just little circles doesn't have to be big. Just whatever you can manage to the pelvis isn't swinging around other way. Perfect foot down and roll down through your bridge. Bend your knees, arms are going to go overhead.

You're going into another PyLadies roll up and up you go. Good. Now guys, be careful that you're not like gripping with your feet here, right? So it's better to have that bar in the center of the foot and roll back down. Yeah. And you'll get better at this. The more you take this classes. This takes a lot of practice to control this.

And now take your right leg up into a hamstring stretch, keeping the left leg on the bar. Good. Take a couple breaths. Circle the ankle and really indulge in that Dorsey flection moment of the ankle. Yeah. Again, that's a huge piece of how we, uh, manage our knees and our hips. Good. And then lower that leg to 45 degree. Lift your head and let's do Curie good.

All the way up. Good Bend and straighten your elbows. Take another hamstring stretch. That's great. So just tree from the mat, using that force of the push to bar and then walk it back down. Super. Yeah. So it's nice to help your friends. Yeah. It's not supposed to be perfect guys. It just supposed to be challenging and good. And then let's switch legs.

Take the other leg up for hamstring stretch. Yeah. And I like to really let my pelvis curl under here because what we're doing here is more of a split stretch. Yeah. So it's just fine circling the ankle as they're doing or reminding me of my cues. Good friends they are. And bring the leg down and then walk up for that tree. Yeah, it's great. Laurel, you got that thing? That's perfect. Yeah. And then bend and straighten those. Yeah. Great. Staying up tall.

Beautiful. And walking back down. Fantastic. You guys. Great. Put the leg down. One more bridge. Bend the knees in. Keep flowing. Keep breathing. Let's keep the smoothness of the practice even though it's challenging. Just one more kick on each leg. Right and left.

Gorgeous and left. And then roll it down. Good. Bring the bar all the way through. Do One more. Pull Audis, roll up. Go into one more little sand tunnel. Stretch at the hamstrings and we'll change directions. It's hard. Yeah. Good. So just bend your knees and straighten them.

Really let your head relax. Let your neck open up there. One more time. Okay, good. And all the way down. Okay, good. Great. You guys come on out of that. Okay, so now ladies, we're gonna come up to our knees for cat on the push who bar.

So you gotta be kneeling up and here we are again. Same thing going on. We got to use that postage for your leg to create full hip extension. We're going to roll on down. We're going to go into hip flection, into spine extension. Good. Exhale, roll it back. Try to keep your shins pressing down as a way to help you with the back of your legs and let's take that extension moment at the top. Press the bar down and up. You Go. Good. Back to center.

Two more times. Rolling down into extension all the way keeping those shins really planted down and rolling back up. Finding Center, which is hip extension. When you're kneeling, it's going to take an effort and then big backbend back to center. One more time. Take it down. Beautiful. There's your shins, Jen. Good. That's it. That's it. Laurel. Great Shins down again. We've got that sit bone to back. The need to get up and we've got that high arch extension.

Beautiful Center. Now we're ready to go into swan. Go ahead and push all the way through and lie on your belly. However you want to make that transition. It can be fancy or not. And then we're going to do straight arms swan. So one thing I want to remind you guys is that swan is starting gate is already hip extension.

So we might need to be doing something to assist gravity to have to have our hips open. You're going to bring your head to the level and you're going to come up into your swan eyes up in my world. Great. And we're going to go back down. Good. We'll do one more like that and then we'll add in. So you're going to go on up? Yeah. Try to keep your knees really straight. Your quads really engaged.

So you're getting more hip extension. Good. We're going to go up one more time. We're going to up the ante. So get ready. You're going to go all the way up. You're going to stay up and we're going to bend both of those knees. Try not to fall forward into your bar and really close that gap between your head. Ah Huh. And back down. Holy Hamstrings. Right? Here we go. Posterior hip. Ready? One more time.

All the way up. Good. And Bend your knees and go for it. Yeah, you can always give your friends a little help. Good and down. Good and Rask. Good ladies, you're gonna just make a transition into a t into the position for teaser on the roll down bar on the push bar. So lie down in your back. Get the arms actually straight up towards the ceiling right now. Right underneath your shoulders where you want that push shoe bar.

Bend your knees for me for this beginning. Good. Here we go. You're going to bend your elbows and narrow. You're going to push that bar through. Oh, crash on the forehead. Yeah. Low hanging bar. And then come back through and up. Let's start again. So you're going to go bending your elbows.

You're going to push the bar, right? And let's go ahead and straighten your legs out now. Okay, so again, a series to stay with me. You're going to bend your elbows narrow. You're going to spring your birth through. You're going to lift your head. You're going to start to roll up and you're going to draw your heels to your sits. Yeah. Nice. Tight ball. Good. Now you're going to take your right leg up and keep it there.

Left leg up. Nice. Don't fall back. Good. And roll down. Bending your knees in, heels down, slide your feet out. So we're kind of moving from hip extension, hip flection, lots of control of the leg. And again, bring it through Sli. That's right. Slide the heels to the Sitz. This time bring both knees in, George, your chest, right. Stretch the legs up. Keep the position absolutely beautiful and then take the whole thing down.

Rolling down. Good. Take the bar back is excellent. Ladies, we're now we're going to do full regular teaser, which will probably feel easier actually. Vendor elbows come into your full regular teaser. Good. Stay up and take a little ab duction of the right leg out and in, out and in, out and in other side and out and, and and again, controlling, right. It's all about changing the environment. Roll down and seeing if we still can manage control.

Absolutely gorgeous all the way through. Keep the bar back behind you. Bend your knees. Ah, little break crossovers. Take your right leg over your left. This is a Kathy grant protocol. These ladies know her work so they're know what they're doing. But what we're gonna all do together is take the supine twist, the outside of the supporting foot, breathing in and acts hill coming home.

And I really love this with the pushy bar there cause I can kind of get just a little bit more side stretch there so it just feels really good. Inhaling right? They're really breathing, exhaling coming back. Great. Good. Laurel, go ahead and bring that foot in a little bit more. Yeah, one more time to juice your twist. If your foot is closer to your sit bone and back in good. Lets change sites. Good.

We're just having a little reprieve here and then we're going to go back into the rigors. So just enjoy it. Inhaling over good acts healing makes sure that spine comes back to the mat on your way back so you don't want to get into too much extension as you twist. Good. Laura, let that top leg relax. Yeah. Let it just hang. So your bottom leg is the driver here. Good. That's it Jen. One more time. Inhale. Take it over. Good.

And exhale home. Beautiful. And you're going to come on out of that and we're going to set up our roll down bar ladies. Okay. Okay, so now he got the roll down bar up and we're going to start with cat.

So we keep coming back to these themes, these seams that allow us to work to length in the front of the quads, extend the hip. In my world, we're arm length weight. Ladies, back up a little bit. Yeah, you want a little bit of a resistance and we're gonna bring that bar under the shoulders. Gonna roll down. You're going to go into extension and push. That part is slightly forward and back in again. Now see, Jen's got her shins down. She knows what time it is cause she's got to get these sitz bones down towards the back of her knees. Good breathing. Inhale, good easy shoulder girdle. Everybody acts. Hail, right? Sometimes that go ahead and go into your extension. Good. And inhale, coming through. Sometimes our scapula get too pulled forward here. So you want to try to manage that one more time. Good.

Good. I like a tight fist around my dial rod on this all the way through. Good scapular control. Yes, Laurel. That's it. Good job. She already knew what I meant. That was great. And arrests good. Pull back a little for thigh stretch. Okay, so the antes up, we are already in hip, hip extension. Now we're going to demand the quad to go on the stretch.

So we're going to tip back. You got a nice long spine. You're going for knee flection. Only acts hell coming back up. Beautiful. Manage your scapula. Don't let it get pulled forward by the spring back again. Good. We're going to add in and up.

Great. And again, we're going to go back and this time you're going to pause, pause at the back. And then I want you to sit down until your body is upright. So come Aha right now without pulling that spring. Poke those hips through. Boom. Yes. And come up. Good. And again, that's great.

And Down and upright to hip flection. Upright spine. Beautiful. Now poke the hips through. Yeah, that is a lot of booty you guys all the way and rest. Gorgeous. Very, very nice. You're going to take yourself onto your back. You're going to take your knees over the roll down bar. Perfect. Great.

Back to bridging. So we're staying in the theme. Back to the legs. Hip Strength. Good. So here we go. Up into your bridge. Yeah, right. And see this is that warm up we did for Dorsey flection. So when you come up, you want increased Dorsey flection right here. Yeah. Increased Dorsey flection and roll down. So all of your shoulder bridges.

One fat. Good again, coming up into that bridge there, Jen. Right. That's really so important for that. Good. A knee alignment and back down. Good. They're going to take their hands behind their head. Yup. You thought we weren't doing abs. Oh, well, here we go. You're going to come up.

Head, neck and shoulders. Good hip flection. Pull that bar in. Nice and tight. Nice and tight. Hold it tight. Everything goes back. Head and feet again. Coming up. Inhale. Good. Reach that Scapula with you. Exhale. See if you can actually touch your knees and your elbows.

So you go on a really deep fluxion of the lumbar spine as well. Gorgeous. You guys. Exhale. One more time. Good and out. Arms down by your side. Come into another bridge. Great.

And Roll it down. Good. Scoot in for rollover. Everybody's favorite. I'm going to come in and assist. Assist my friend Laurel. We're going to hold onto the bar. You're going to take your leg straight up, right? And as you go over the bar is going to be pulled down. So you're going to go over and I'm not really, I think staying just parallel to the mat is fine.

And then rolling down that Barb will start to come back up. And if you keep your elbows straight, you've got super happy tricep land, right? So here we go. Over super and back down. Beautiful. One more time going over. Yeah, it's, forgive me that low spine warmed up.

We're headed to water wheel and rest. Good. Find your way out of that. And let's kind of apex this moment with water wheel. So we're cutting to arm distance away. Again, little tension on the spring. Nice tight fist for this. Right. So we're going to go down like we did for cat and now we're going to head on back like we did for thigh stretch.

Bend the elbows full extension of the spine and hip. Straighten the arms, keep the head back as you come up. Yeah, and again, so I'm v I think it's really important here as you take this extension to allow yourself straighten the arms to control the extension of the neck on the way up and not just tuck that Chin right in. One more time in that direction. Good, nice, tight fis. Everybody. You don't want to lose that bar. Yeah, great. Yeah, it's just a timing thing. Good and reverse. Take it back, bend, roll through, and there's that moment sits bones to heels or [inaudible] back to the knee. Go back. Good. They're bending their arms right away, which is fine. You could also go back with a straight arm. So let's just try that once.

Ladies who go back with the straight arm, then bend. Yeah, that's just another option. Roll through. Watch your Scapula and breast. Fantastic. Okay. We're going to finish off with a really great leg spring series. So we're going to lie on the front of our system using the front spring.

So a little different than the classic plot is leg springs. These are Kathy grant style leg springs. You're going to put that on and you're going to be really at the very edge. So it's going to be a little bit of a balancing act. Yeah. And we're going to take the leg straight out.

Now you could imagine that you have a floor or a box or something here. And we're going to start with just some, you know Laurel, I think you're gonna want one hand in the front just for Balance Sake. Yeah. So you could have your elbow softly bent, you could have it straight, you'll sort it out. So you're gonna pick that leg up and let's just do some little circles for a second. Just really small in both directions. That's it.

And then stop the circles and do what we call key whole leg here. Just find your external and your internal rotation. Yeah. And so you kind of know what you have available. That's really important. Good. And then keeping the leg in parallel, you're going to kick the leg forward, right? And try to keep that knee facing front. And then hold on Laura, we're going to go right up into our half. Ron, jump up and pull down.

Good. And again, breathing forward and up and down. And what happens here is we'll fall back and the booties you all at home could imagine that I'm sitting, standing right behind you like I am a fluoro. Keeping your pelvis still and back down. And one more time. Good. Keep that extra rotation there. Yeah, super big. Lateral hip. Reverse the gesture. Please go up. This is hard to control.

You're going to have to feel like you have to turn your leg out right up as it's coming forward because it'll want to roll in there. Yeah. Beautiful. One more time and breathing and forward. Right to there and down. Good. You're going to flip over onto your back. Ladies. We're going to do single leg circles opposite spring, right? So here we go. Crossover. Inhale, exhale around. Good.

Now at this point in this class, you probably have a lot, have built up a lot of of awareness in your pelvis so you can really get your circles organized and rest other way and out around, up, out, around, up. Nice. One more out or let's do two more. Square that off. Out and up. Good. We're switching sides. So again, you're going to the very side of your mat and you're putting the spring on your foot and we're using a hand in the front. Good. Both legs out, straight as a board.

You're doing small circles to start, right? And you're looking for a real true movement and just the hip and other way. So you don't really want to have a lot of hip hiking there on the pelvis. Good. And then keep the legs still and do external internal rotation. Right?

So here you're looking for how that leg glides in the socket for external and internal rotation. Good. And then keeping the leg parallel, we're going to go forward. We've got our half [inaudible], we're going to go up, we're going to go down, breathing forward. Nice you guys up and down. Standing foot active. Really Nice. Up and down. One more in that direction. Yeah, that looks great. And reverse it.

So the reverse is actually a little harder because you have to add, yeah, you feel how it kind of plummets down, right? You have to add a little bit of axe Turnell rotation as you descend. That's going to be a really important control factor here. One more time. Great. So good. Come onto your back after you finish the next one.

For single leg circles opposite spring. Good. So we're gonna go a cross out and around. Good. And again, we're trying to keep our pelvis relatively stable in the plane of hip hiking. It's definitely going to be rotating, but not really.

A lot of hip hiking or lateral flexion of the spine and other way here go out and up and around and up and around and up. One more. Good and arrest. Good. Let's put both springs on. We'll finish with just just some really yummy big range of motion. Double leg springs. Good. Let's do frogs with circles.

Let's start with our knees bent and let's see if we can go really low. All the way along the Mat. So here we go. Out, we're in turnout, up and in. Bend the knees in and go out and open and in good an ounce and open. And in one more go. Inhale. Good. You guys, stop at the top. Straight, legs up.

Take a deep breath in. Pause. Open your legs and zip them together. Go into your frog. Nice and controlled and up. Nice, Jen. Beautiful you guys out. Zip and in and up. Zip and in last one.

Good and rest good. Just take your a self into a happy babies pose and just let that stretch you out a little bit. Just breathing, not always the pose you want on camera, but it feels really good on the inside so you can close your eyes if you don't want to. Good. And then just, yeah, exactly. Big Straddle. Stretch is nice. And then just come on up for a second or come on up actually all the way and come and stand on the floor for a minute. Facing as if you are facing right. We'll do like a little circle time. Good. So let's go back to sort of where we started to finish.

So we're looking down and we're seeing that alignment between our center of our hip center of our knee. Center of the fundamental arch. Yeah. Genuine. You guys both step away a little bit. We're going to just roll down to finish. So you just want to step away from your system. Yeah. And you're just going to drop your head and just let your spine roll down. We're just unwinding. Good. Just let your head fall.

Good. Just hang down there. Take a couple deep breaths. Yeah, let your neck tension. Go and roll yourself up again. That's that same moment there sits bones, the back of the knee. Good. And then just take a little, oops. Hi Spider.

Don't step on this fighter. Take a little bend to the knees and just, just feel that that mobilization your ankles. That's better. Actually, it's great. And just stretch up. Good. Last time. Rolling down. I have to go with them because it just feels so good. Just have a moment hanging down, letting go, breathing and then rolling back up.

Hi. Thank you guys. Thank you everybody.