Spinal Articulation Tower

Hi everyone. Amy here for a tower workout. You can also do all of this on your Cadillac if you're choosing to do it that way. What you'll need are your rollback springs, but I have the handles hooked up instead of the rollback bar, you'll need a red or blue overhead spring and then your long, heavier purple leg springs. Okay, so get, let's get started. We're going to do quite a bit of spinal movement today. I'm feeling the need to move that spine and hope you'll enjoy what I have for us. So have a seat and grab a hold of your arm handles here and I want us to start far enough back away from the, the attachments that you feel like the springs are kind of pulling you forward, pulling us forward and that we have to pull away from the springs a little bit just to communicate that. So let's use this class, this workout.

Two two things. Well three things. Move our spinal watt, feel good about that. Um, but also allowing assistance from the springs. Sometimes when you think you may not need the assistance where you might be used to using the resistance. Let's use the assistance a little bit and really, um, work with how that, that communication loop is between us and the spring. Okay, so here we go. Let's just settle into her shoulders. They're down. I'm going to take a nice two or three breath cycles to get centered. I'm going to start to visualize how easy and free your spine can move.

And we always have this wonderful water around us to look at. So, you know, maybe bring that quality of fluidity into the way you want to move today. All right, so on the next exhale, we'll start moving back away. So taking that nice deep abdominal contraction and rolling yourself down. You can look at the, the middle attachment just for the eyeballing, the center of the apparatus there. Using your eyes, tracking the ceiling. It's nice and long. Now as you start to roll up, instead of just immediate chin to chest, unweight your skull and you'll know that your neck muscles engage right there.

We want that rotate your skull forward. It's like you're kind of spinning your ears forward, lift your chest a little bit, and then flex the thoracic spine. Okay, look straight ahead and then allow yourself to just be assisted up to the sitting position with the springs. Okay, so we'll move through that a few more times. A little less stopping. I just wanted to show you the details. So as you get down nice and long, lift your head, rotate the skull right on the access. You lift your chest, you flex your spine and you roll. And again, you're allowing the assist from the springs. We'll it twice more. Exhaling back.

Wow. You can lift, rotate, and feel that fluidity, that mobility. Ease. One more time. We're going to write down the center of the spine to begin. Okay. Nice. Open chest left, enjoying the motion of your body and all the way up.

Okay. Now tipping yourself back just to the the maybe three quarters of the way back onto your sake rum and you'll have flection in your spine, but we don't need to make it so excessive in the thoracic spine. So if anything, we'll make more movement in the lumbar. I'm working on that right there. Give me a second. And then from that point I want us to bend the elbows, pull those springs toward us, and then release this spring is ahead. Exhale as we pull. Try not to come out of that flection and that shape of your spine.

So we're on the sacrum more on the lumbar when I have the springs at the top attachment. Sorry guys I didn't tell you. You probably can tell. Okay. So this is challenging a couple more times to not lose that connection inside. Last one, pool and Lyft and let the springs assist you right back up to sitting tall and we'll come all the way lifted. Okay. Now from here you can take one side, either one, you can probably watch me and do it and allow your thoracic spine to rotate.

So this one side will shorten a little bit and then just guide that to the other side. So just once you right now to feel how you can turn through your chest, spine, Megan McGregor, you'll like that one. Your chest spine. Where your shoulder blades are and kind of get that mobilization going. Okay. And pause on this one. Now as you start to roll down the center of your spine, you've already got yourself in rotation. Okay? And then let that arm come forward and let the springs assist.

So maybe this next few times you don't have to bend your elbow. You're already in spinal rotation going back to the sacrum and they'll mar and allow us to let the springs assist us back up twice more. Here we can. Exhale. Legs are very long and extended from the pelvis and forward somebody. So bleak connection. Okay.

And rolling up. It feels so good. Other side. So come through center. Bend the elbow first. Okay, so you can get that sense. You're pulling the spring toward your core, your body roll yourself down on the way down. You can extend your arm. You got those two arms is hanging from the springs, you're in your central axis. And then exhale as you come all the way up. All right, now keeping your arms straight. So I've got one arm, palm face down, one palm face in. That's just what's working for me right now.

It's really where you can feel the most support and connection to your shoulder girdle on your back. Using that exhale, rolling down, exhaling to curl back up last to dow and then in a moment we'll take this all the way around the world, which I've done before and just seems like a really nice sequence to add in. So when you come all the way up guys find center and then you choose what side to go to. I'm going to just take it toward us. You can see and I'll do a slight elbow bend down through the center and a little bit up to the other side. Same direction. Remember we're looking for mobility fluidity. You let the spring assist move away one more and yeah, your obliques are probably working, so yeah, that's good for the other way.

Let's keep your breath connected. [inaudible] very buoyant like quality last two and last time. Okay. From the center we roll all the way down again. Okay. Now we'll get a little more muscular with this one. Ben both of your knees, put your heels on line with your sits bones or a little wider is fine.

And take just a second and touch your legs with your, um, maybe your thumbs or your knuckles. Okay. And just hold that for a moment. Feel your feet, press into the mat and let's do a pelvic tilt and a curl up to a bridge position. And just hold here. All right. And just pause. Take an inhale and unroll keeping your hands touching your legs, your spine, reaching toward your feet, all the way to neutral. So two more times mobilizing. Use your hips and press those hips up. You're going to see some magician today.

So this is a nice kind of warm up for how high we're gonna want the hips. Maybe we should do it twice, Margaret. Poor. Okay. So right now the springs are pulling our arms. Four. You're probably getting some stretch in your forearms. We know in magician there's a push with the arms, but this is a nice stretch.

First, the last time, pressing those hips up. Now let's add, move your arms a little away. Those four rowing movements again, pull. So also besides the um, spinal work in this class, you're going to feel some good shoulder work. And of course in hamstrings, full body. Last one, two year legs. Everybody roll the way down. You can extend your legs in front of you. Use Your Chin to chest or your skull, lift in your head movement and roll all the way up. Okay? From this position, sit yourself tall.

Open your legs. If you're on the Cadillac, you won't have your feet touching the floor unless you're really long legged, but I doubt you'll be there. So you'll just want to hug into the table. If we're on the tower mounts like this, you'll probably get your feet down, but establish first. Oh, nice sitting vertical position. Okay. And then press your springs down a tiny bit. Bending the elbows again. But as we pull on this springs think that elbows are not going behind us, but rather elbow to the side and elbow to the side of the room. So it's a little more of an expansion than a row we'll do four times total.

So here's two. So there's a down and an out I'm doing with the springs at down and an out and all the while sitting really tall, down and out. Okay. You can stay there if you'd like, but it's a little more fun where I've got us going, so we're going to scoot back a tiny bit, so I'm aiming for halfway back my knees on the opposite side of the split of the Mat. Same thing. It's harder of course, because we've got those springs. We have to pull more and remember the word assist. We're going to let them assist us in just a second, but right now we're working with the resistance leave feeling of scapular muscles. Last one.

You can stay with that or try to go back a little further, but we won't do too, too much bending of the elbows. We're going to let them assist us into a slightly standing up position. Dig Your heels down and then just sit right back. Dig Your heels down, let them help you keep your turnout with your hips. I'm going to do eight of these. You guys. Here's three and now press your heels. Hinge forward slightly for okay.

You don't have to hinge. You could also just work on going straight up, straight down, straight up without your shoulders. Protracted and straight up. Straight down. Me. Take it one more time and you're going to stay up there. Okay. Palms facing each other. Let's try to road now you're pretty far away. Row with rotation in your thoracic spine and center.

Exhale, this is too much. Could be a lot of strength work. You can step towards the springs, turn and center and turn and center for more center and hern. It's actually not as hard in your quads. Could be on the reformer. Last one. Good. And then have a seat. Walk forward and bring your legs up and then let's just go ahead and release the strap through just a sec. Shake your hands.

We're going to turn around the other way for a moment or two. Roll all the way back. Size yourself up. I'm going to have you bring your head pretty close to the top of the frame, maybe a couple of inches down. Reach up, grab those handles again. You should be able to get those. And bring both your knees up, tabletop, pull your arms forward so you feel the tension. Okay, hold on for just a second. Extend both legs up. Let's flex and point our ankles. Inhale, articulate the toes and articulate.

So I've got a little bit of downward pull on the springs, but let it assist. More sense of stretch in your whole back and in the line, out your tail and out the top of your head. But just holding those springs, you can absolutely feel the work in your, your whole entire core body. One more time. Okay. Now, no, we will not do the a hundred completely, but let's try to pulse a little bit in two, three, four, five x sale n legs a little lower. Yeah, a little lower legs. Be Mindful of your back. Exhale n back to tabletop. One more. Set three, four, five and just relax for just a second. Okay.

Re engage your arms. Pull those arm bones down and hold your arms down. And let's just take some taps and tap. So I want you to keep your back muscles strong, your ribs in stomach and engaged and the breath flowing. Take your feet a little further forward.

Eight seven you're long in your spine. Four three, two n one both legs backup to tabletop and extend to the ceiling. Now straight arms for a moment. Pull on the springs just a little to find. Feel the connection in your mid body bicycle.

One leg goes all the way down by sickle, straight back up second leg. So holding on to the springs can assist your in dominal connection for stabilizing your back cause the single leg bicycle is hard, not too hard. So you can probably guess where we're headed next. We're going to try two legs after this one here. Okay, so you have to really be mindful of what your back can do. But I'm going to go for it. I'm going to pull my legs all the way down and bicycle all the way up.

So in the moment you need help. Use the springs, pull on them to assist you to lift your legs up. That's what they're there for. Three more down. Pull on him to help you lift [inaudible] last time. Okay, and rest. Okay, let's let go of those. Come up off. Two off your back and we're going to turn ourselves around for a little a reverse monkey. Okay, so reverse monkey for this one today. Let's not put any spring on it and set your feet on there and we may have to gauge where we are toward the spring or toward the frame.

But for just a moment, balls or feet you're holding on, you can flex your ankles for a second. Then joy, that calf stretch and that hamstring stretch. But then I do want you to re extend. Bend your knees. Shoulders are low. Pull your knees toward your cheekbones and control how you stretch forward. Really go for stretch. Now breathe in. You've got to go backward. Exhale, knees in towards your head and pull the bar up. Let's get a little more flat back now and return. Bend the knees, knees toward the cheekbones. You've got to put your body weight over those legs.

Stretch. No, they'll return is a little more challenging. Knees up toward cheekbones and lift. Three more times and round. Let it flow. Yeah. Okay.

Remember we're like water, right? It's strong, but it's also very fluid. Here's our last one. Oh, nice over and then just simply bring yourself up. Okay. Hope that felt for everybody like it did. I'm going to have us take the yellow springs off to the side. I believe we're done for a while with those. Okay, and now we're going to take our overhead or push through, spring off, either to the right or left. That's really your preference on matter.

We'll hook it up and let's take a look at some additional shoulder work. Okay? So I want you to sit and everyone is different with this, this work, so you, you do what you can do. I'm going to start a sitting tall like this. Make sure that you've got a very solid connection with your rib cage to your pelvis. Reach for that bar and extend your arms up. Okay?

Some of you are very mobile in your shoulder joint wherein you can move pretty far forward with your arm above your head without it displacement of your rib cage. If you, if you have that, you're that person. I'm not that person. I want to make sure that I'm doing good Polonius in connection with my shoulder on my ribs, which are on my body in connection with my core. That's the place. Okay, now from here, let's take the bar down, but pull the stomach in and you're rounding yourself. You've already been in this shape already, so we're going to go past this flection and work into spinal extension. So this is unsupported. You're going over the edge.

It's okay. It's a wonderful stretch to open up those chest muscles though guys. We've got to lift the head. It's a head lift. You already did it. You rotate this goal, you lift the chest, you flex your spine and you're coming forward. This time, all the way up, all the way. Push your knuckles into the air. Shoulders should be low, okay? But lumbar should not be inflection. So I can feel right now that I have a little more linked to explore.

There we go. Take a breath and curling down. Remember, we're fluid and strong. It can happen both things. Oh, the way. Oh, we'll take it one more time. Rotate down, pull the springs down, move your spine, move. That's fine. Ooh, that's fine.

And then head lift. Rotate the skull. Lift the chest. Flex. Now this time, take one hand off the bar. As you come up, put that hand behind your head. We're going to rotate to the side. You just let go up. So you push the bar up and you turn return to the bar. Repeat only to your lumbar spine. Okay.

Not all the way over the table. And then release. That hand's going to come behind your head. Stay in your central vertical axis. As you go up, you take the RASSIC and spinal rotation. Okay, let's do it again. So rotate down to reflection. Let go hand behind head all the way up. Lift and turn your chest one more each to the other side.

Down we go. Letting go. That was behind your head. Always in good unilateral opportunity. Hello? Good. Okay. Little bit more now. Here we are from this position. Let's start back bending the upper back. So I'm going to slowly, this first one, lifting my skull, pulling my shoulders down, my back.

Of course, letting the arch happen. I'm holding on firmly with the bar. It's not going to go anywhere. If I could take my hair out of my ponytail and drop it down, drop it down. Now from here, back into that position when you're in a little while ago, rounding forward says pretty extreme spinal work, guys, all the way up. Let's keep it flowing. We'll do it twice more. Use your back to hold you up. I could let go for a second, and my back is holding me up.

We all have strong backs. Most of us. We're going to get stronger with all of this work, so get onto that back of that sacred curl forward. We go. Ready for one more? Lift into the arch. Lift. Lift, lift. That's a better one. Air. We go round and all the way up.

Okay. Okay. Enough of that. So let's unhook. Yes, we will. UNHOOK this red spring. Let's get into some little rollover first. Have my sequencing going. Okay, so as we come down, there's no spring. Now reach for the bar. Bring it right above your shoulders. Bicycle, both of your legs right back up.

Let's take a look at rollover. Okay, so everybody bringing the bar down as it goes overhead, we're going to roll ourselves over our shoulders. Just like our mat exercise. We'll flex and open and as we unroll, probably more in the mid back touches the mat. We can start bringing the bar with this by bending the elbows. Legs come to the ceiling again, bending as the bar goes overhead and we go overhead. This feels really good. Flex, open. Breathe.

When we're about halfway down your back, bend your elbows. Control that tension. Now we're ready to take our legs lower. We're gonna need those lower legs from magician in a minute. So here we go. 90 inhale, exhale, and over. Lex Open.

Halfway down, sir, we're bringing the bar with you. Lower your legs. Swing. We'll take it twice more. Okay, last time. Okay. Wow. Oh, okay. Now, now we're ready. Okay.

I just wanted to get a little bit of spinal movement in there from the on our back. So grab your leg springs, you guys stepped your feet in. And as I do like to teach it with the distance that we are a full arm push away from the attachment end. So take a minute and size yourself up. Make sure you're right in there. Underneath that eye bolt here. We're completely as centered as possible and let's go ahead and push with the arms and start some circles first. So just a good basic leg circles. We'll dig six each way.

Okay. Whatever breadth you've learned is fine. As far as rhythm goes, feel the work in your legs. Four [inaudible] five and six will take six the other way. Nice. Wide Open positions. Why does he feel ready to go pull pretty low with your legs? Parallels come up the mid line so you can turn out of the open parallel to come up. Push with the arms, pull with the legs.

Three more. [inaudible] [inaudible] that was better. And last time. Okay. So I want you to go right into something basic, which is frog to just get some basic frog movement, but in the heels lower to the table if you can and we don't have to get the knees to totally straight. Those of us who tend to be knee lockers, maybe we can actually just pause right before we think our knee is straight. So you stay in muscle, you stay in your hamstrings, you stay in your lower, uh, inner thigh or quad two more times press. And we're going to take that frog movement and make a circle with it. Some up.

I'm coming down and pushing forward like a circle unicycle. Two more this way. Push with those arms. There are six, reverse it for reach forward down in and up. Four down in and out. One more and pause with your legs up just for a moment in parallel. Okay.

From parallel legs as well as do some magician you guys. So legs down to about 45 if you can hold your legs strong, that's PE. Allow ourself up. You're in your Nice, beautiful, strong plank line. Take a breath and roll down. Try to hold those springs white right where they are. It's a challenge we're working toward that.

Get all the way to neutral level and then legs can come back in. How about two more times? Okay, so pull, try your best to keep the leg springs right there. We roll up toward them is the idea we unroll away from them is another idea. Uh, the neutral level level, pelvis and legs up. Let's add a little extra at the top. Peel up. Okay. Externally, rotate some real quick little heel beats. Two, three, four.

Exhale, three, four and exhale three, four in exhale, three, four, last set. Exhale, three, four, back to parallel. Unroll, hard to talk in. You all met at the same time. One more round, but this time we're going to add a little froggy circle. He deal with that. Okay, so let's see what shows up today. Press down, peel up. Why don't you to externally rotate? Start some of that frog lift.

They can be small. I'm going to try to aim my toes down, brush that mat up and wait. Press. So there is a little more back bending going on. I already warmed up for that. You don't have to come extreme like this. If you don't want my reverse it four or five times pull in. Can you get the Mat, brush your toes forward, law up. You got to use your butt, keep your hips up, squeeze, stretch.

Ah Rich. Got One more. Come with me. Come do it. Reach, stretch and parallel and unroll. So lots of hamstring, lots of inner fi. We'll balance it out in a minute with some quad. But for right now, just stretch yourself here. Ah, that's come up off our back and we are going to attach our, push the bar again for some, a reverse pushed you. Okay, so again, extend your legs. Well you might have to size yourself up here. Take yourself palms face down as seated up as you can round over your legs and hopefully you're in a fairly good position where it's relatively easy ish to allow that bar to swing through.

Let it assist. Again, the word lifting your shoulders, your arm bones, your spine, your stomach scoop. Now coming out of that, we've got to bend over the legs more using your arms roll up just sitting tall. Okay? You could do that all over again, which would be just going forward first, but let's do the real one where you take yourself back. We've already been here a few times. You're back on your sacrum. Your legs are extended. Take a breath, die forward. There's a lot too much pressure down on your arms. There's not a lot. Allow that spring up there to help lift your arms.

It's easy. Remember, we're fluid and strong coming down. Rolling up. Okay, one more time with me here and rolling down. Look straight ahead everybody. Deep breath. Rounding forward. Allow that spring. Tell it to do it. Lift your arms, lift your spine, bring your stomach up more and more, more, almost as if your butt gets really light on the table down and after sitting vertical. Oh, okay. Now let's turn to face each other. Release one hand, but it's come cross legged. Okay, and bring your bar down for a moment and then just feel this.

I'm going to have you put your hand on your knee to press this knee down. Sometimes it does a little dance there. So let's just press that down and take easy spinal side bending. Nothing too fancy right there. Okay. And just up a couple of times, we've moved our spine a lot in the forward and backward plane and twist, but haven't done a lot of um, side bending. So just one more inside bend, adding more rotation.

I'm going to aim with this shoulder blade first, moving it around my back, but as this one comes around, we get a little circle and back out to the knee. Okay. And shoulder, little arms circle and back to the knee. Feel it nice upper back stretch and that's all. And then we'll take the other side. Okay. So I'm just gonna leave you turn right around.

Make the other knee is in front hand on that knee. Bring your bar down and three easy side Benz one and uh, [inaudible] two and up and three staying near on three. The arm can release off your knee on your exhale. You're turning yourself toward that push through bar. The outside arm is just kind of making a circle right in front of you and open two more am Sir.

Cool and open and last one and circle and open and center one forward push through just to even that out. Hands on your bar. Pull that bar down. Forward bend so that magician may have gotten your hamstrings really overactivated and maybe down in your calves. Some of you have mentioned that before. So give yourself a moment here just to stretch. Pull yourself back so you're really on your sit bones. Slowly come up, bend your elbows please and bring the bar in front of you.

Okay, let's take this spring down. We've got a few more exercises to round out this class, so we'll just unclip this to everybody. Move that pushed through bar the spring to the center or just off to the side. We no longer need it. Take the arms springs that we were working with at the beginning and put those right at the corner. The eyebolts in the top. Okay. Play time.

So I told you beginning to inch your quads were a little more arm and leg work to add to this class. So what I'd like you to do, size it up. I'm going to step right about halfway back. I know where I can do this and this is about where I can do this. You may have to play with distance. Pull on this, brings a little, lift your heels a little and we're not in a real big dancer turnout. We're kind of a small Pilati. Zvi Lift your heels. Okay.

So what I want us to do, try your best to keep even tension on the springs and play a ever however far you can. Just go maybe halfway and left. That's a lot of work. Or if you want to go for it, come lower. Come all the way up. Keep pulling on the springs, they're going to assist you, but they're also going to try to trick you and trying to make you turn right or left. So you're holding integrity. Oh, sides of your body. I'm going three more time. [inaudible] I've got my heels up because I liked that you don't have to lift your heels.

You could also do that with your feet flat. I just like the added challenge of being up like that. Okay, now lower the heels. Pivot to parallel. Turn your arms. Face that. Make some biceps squat down. Stand back up, drive your heels down. Try to lift the springs up a little bit, five times total. And we pulled down and we press up.

Okay. And we squat down, hand up and down. We're going to combine it three times. We'll see what we've got. This is our last one. Okay, so we're going to go back to that little PA. Ready, please. Oh, I saved it. Lift. Keep the springs moving. Keep your body moving. Keep yourself connected to more down and up.

And only one more. And then there's a really yummy final stretch to class that we deserve. And left. Oh yeah, yeah, they're down. Okay, good guys, if you're going to attach our push through safety strap, but no spring one, two or three hooks up, it's up to you. We're doing tower with no spring. Okay.

Same sizing up that you would do for magician. So full arms straight. Now this feels a little odd if you've never done this before, there's now no assist or no resist. It's you with this in this thing called gravity and more spinal mobility. Okay, so enjoy this. It's a beautiful way to do tower. No compression. Here we go. We'll do three guys. Bend your knees.

A little peel from that tail through your Lumbar, right on up over your shoulders. I've got to walk my shoulders underneath me. Okay, now, three times legs come straight up, legs come down. Try to flex more in your low back spine. Last one, the legs will stay straight. You can see your alignment of your feet. So do good with those alignments. Okay? Make sure you're really in line. Take your time.

Let the polarities happen. Let it happen. There's a slight press with the hymns. I'm trying to Elongate all those tissues in my body. Long. Place that sacrum down. Get a little more stretched. [inaudible] twice more. Bend your knees.

You're not going to get a lot of Ben because there's no spring to help you. You've got to do it on your own. Three times. Beautiful, strong, long leg. Flex the spine. Last one. Keep them strong and low. Roll down. Take your time pressed with the arms. Oh, try to get yourself even a quarter of an inch more on the table, on your mat.

Stretch. You've got to go for you. Got to reach. Seek for more extensions. Seek, seek, seek. There we go. We have one more round. Everybody heal yourself up and stretch. Bend, stretch, bend. Ready for the last one. Deep breath. Take a few breaths along the way. Hold that posterior tilt. Okay. Uh, ah.

It's recognize how amazing Palladia makes your body feel. It's just such a beautiful movement form and give yourself credit for taking class with me. You never know what I'm going to give you, so I appreciate that, that you're all patient with me and I can't wait to hear from you. I'll see you next time. Bye.