Hi everyone it's Matilda and Veronica here.
we're For Pilate Sake. today we're going to be taking a look at prone arm press. we're going
to show you the full-out version first and then we're going to do a little modification that
I think is quite accessible to many people. the spring is typically a 2/2. now if you have
a smaller person that's definitely going to be too much for them, it's going to probably throw
them off. they're not going to be able to to to manage it and or maintain a plank so a 2/1
a 1/1 and honestly... like even down to a single four. I've had to put people to a four, so whatever works.
again, you don't want to be bullied the spring is there to help support you. so, you're getting on the chair
with your shoulders over your wrists. all right you don't want your shoulders to go beyond your wrist.
Because by the time the paddle moves back you're going to be hyper-extending at the wrist, way
too much. okay, so what you're looking for is a nice, basically a plank. so your head is in-line with
your rib cage, which is in-line with your pelvis. so I'm going to just ask Veronica to bring her ribs
down there a little bit lower and ask her to feel like, you know, from her head all the way through to
her sacrum, to her heels. she's got like her central axis and she's kind of feeling that ah she can
spin around that, in a sense. here you're going to take a big inhale, to maintain this place, to find
your length. and then she's going to exhale to allow the paddle to rise up through the rotation of her
arm in the shoulder joint and the flexion at the elbow. she's going to inhale the paddle goes
down, exhale to rise up. as the paddle lowers and the springs increase their tension you
actually want to feel like you're inviting the spring tension up through the palm into the
shoulder joint. you're not just pushing the spring away, it's being invited back into you and then
exhaling. now the hardest part, I believe, on the exhale, is maintaining organization through the
shoulder joint. now that's typically a problem because instead of rotating at the shoulder joint
people are just bending at the elbow and they're squeezing their shoulder blades together. so this
is quite a skill to learn. I want to say something on that. you guys can't see the angle of my
elbows, but I was taught to keep my elbows really close to my ribs. watch what happens to my shoulder
girdle here. there is a bio mechanical rhythm in the elbow joint and when I screw that up, I guess
you could say. it's going to start, you can see where Matilda's fingers are, I'm now starting to...
and this just get, yeah, de-stable. so think of the elbows as slightly in a Pilates V. they slightly
go outwards as they bend and you can see as I do, I look better? yeah, absolutely. and then inhale, they
can somewhat, as you straighten, come back in and they allow that little bit of Pilates V. and that
way you can keep the bio mechanics correct in the elbow joint. to stabilize the shoulder
girdle. that's awesome. the other thing I practice, sometimes on my own, as well is changing the
angle of the elbow. not closer to the torso, but a little bit further and further away. right so each
time you come up, you just allow the rotation of the humeral head. to kind of bring the elbow out
a little bit further, and you just kind of target different muscles. that, totally. it's kind of neat
and it allows for a different range of motion in the shoulder joint. allows for a different
strength and then I kind of fan the elbows out as as far as they can. and a little bit it reminds me
of the pole. you know when we do roll down and we do elbow bends. ya. you can bring your elbows all
the way out, kind of to the side, and then slowly start to bring your elbows towards your shoulders
again. I can feel that right in my sockets. so it's nice. elbows never pulled in, yeah that's an
old school thing. going to break this down. we are. you've got a real cool modification that you do.
a nice way to modify this for everybody, really, even for myself. is you slide yourself off, to
the back of the chair. so you want your hip joint at the back edge of the chair and you can just let
your knees bend and your feet kind of just be down on the floor. now your whole torso is resting on
the chair, so your ribs are on the chair and you can allow your shoulder girdle. yeah you want you
want to try and get your head in-line with your ribs, in-line with your pelvis. so you're actually
quite low and the arms are going to go to straight. now there we go. now from here you're just going to
take a big breath in and then as Veronica exhales she's going to resist the closing of the paddle
and allow the rotation of the arm in the shoulder joint to allow the paddle to come back. it's really
mindful, you got to, you know, you got to really experience and be internal with this. or else
the paddle, it's not about bringing the paddle up and down through the flexion and extension of
the elbow joint. right? as the paddle goes down the spring gets invited back in and you really
start to create a nice strong shoulder cuff muscle. there you go. nice burn back there too. and then
from here, which is a really mild way of starting to do extension. you can straighten the arms all
the way up and then you just allow your spine to just gently rise up. and then allow the weight of
your ribs to actually rest on the paddle. and then you lower it back down. again, so you can inhale,
use your breath, let the arms help pick you up, let the ribs feel heavy on the paddle. now when the
paddle goes back down again, it's because it's your spine that's lowering her back down into neutral
and not your arms pushing down. so she's going to inhale, the springs are going to push her arms up.
they're going to connect in to her shoulder girdle, which is going to connect into her rib cage,
which is going to create extension. and then as she exhales, it's the ribs and the spine, same-same, that bring the paddle all the way back down again. yeah. love it. okay and it's really, really
accessible for many, many people that way. they're not afraid that they're going to fall off the
front of the chair or get you know slung back. can be scary for people. I do have clients that are scared of
this, so that's fantastic. yeah, I love it and it feels really great. so thanks for joining us, if
you liked what you saw today, please do subscribe to the channel. give us a thumbs up-like and
thank you for joining us! see you next time! [Music]