[musing music] For Pilates Sake Intro [Music] V: welcome back everybody, we are For Pilates Sake Matilda and Veronica and today we will be covering the saw. it is flexion of the spine as well as rotation with stabilization of the pelvis and the legs and of course mobilizing the spine and the arm bones. so Matilda's going to demo and I'm going to take her through it. her legs are as wide as this mat and everybody's got a different opinion on how far the legs go but we like it just a little wider than our hips her feet are in flexion so as long as her joints are in alignment ankle, knee and hip joint .we don't have this, you know, windshield wiper thing happening, or losing the flexion so that we can find some strength in the front of the shin as well as length through the achilles and the calves. so she's going to sit up nice and tall, just like in spine stretch, if we have to seat that person onto higher platform or bend their knees, of course you do what you got to do, because you want them in perfect alignment. so her arms are out to the side she's going to inhale rotate, whichever direction you want. she going to take that back arm drop it a little bit rotate it. and that back arm acts like a wheelbarrow arm to help push her forward. then she's going to inhale take her arms out to the side. nice chest expansion. rotate and then exhale flip that back palm up, pick it up, to bend you forward. so she's bending and she's rotating simultaneously. so often what we see, maybe you can show it Matilda. she you're going to inhale twist and then we just get people go "I got to touch my toe" so they just lean over, hinge at the joint and then they just over stretch one side of their spine. M: should I do it on this side too? V: yeah do it on that side too. so that yeah, so then you can see she just leaning and her bum ends up coming off. okay. so now I mean that's not really a twist. that is a lean. so let's do that again and actually to modify I want to show you something. you can either put your hands here or even behind your head and sometimes I get people to do this first cuz the arms just get too much. so she's going to inhale to rotate and then I'm going to say Matilda, on your exhale take your elbow towards your pubic bone. I mean you're not really going to get it there and then that then she's in her alignment here. she's around her central axis. we'll do the other side, inhale to rotate, exhale to flex and then if you wanted to now you can take your arms away and shoot one arm forward and one arm back and then she's got her ear in line with her pubic bone. and like I said before, she is twisting around her central axis. so I'm going to get you to face the camera . okay, and then you can really see what I'm talking about. so you go for it ,we're going to inhale to rotate on your exhale flip that back palm up have it help to push you forward and she's going to twist and bend and bend and twist until all that air is out so she can explode her lungs back up the tall. and maybe you caught that, she kind of lost a little bit of that stabilization of her legs. M: and it's different with the feet lower, it's wild . V: oh yeah ? V: little harder ? M: yeah okay, just different - feels different. V: so you're looking for equal weight on both butt cheeks so often as someone twists towards the toe and can I just say, you don't need to touch your toe it's just a direction that you're going towards and the only reason, I believe, your pinky is touching your toe is because you have twisted and bent and bent and twisted so much that you happen to get there, not because you have to touch it. so that's what I have to say on it do you have anything to add? M: I love it. M: there's about 30 or 40 ° angle that the arms come behind you before they affect your shoulder girdle and then your spine. so this is kind of it's leading to what's going to happen in saw. so what happens a lot is we hit here we're going to feel our triceps without losing the organization of the shoulder girdle. typically people if they want to come higher and they don't change the spine their shoulder lift and then they got the range but if you keep your shoulder girdle on your rib cage and you come back you'll feel it kind of stops. then it has to affect the spine so in order for you to get your arms up higher you have to start to create flexion in your spine so now it's triceps and spinal flexion that brings your arms up so here is your saw so if Veronica just took one arm in front of her that's what the back arm is doing and the other one is drawing back in and supporting the squareness of the shoulders. so that it becomes the spine that does the flexion and the rotation. but that's actually quite helpful. V: now I was going to say if you do that correctly, once, you're going to feel ,holy triceps. M: yeah , yup V: yeah right so the arms and the shoulder girdle are really much a passenger . they're part of it, but they are not the drivers. M: Yes. V: so that's where you see people really overreaching and now they're in their neck and now the spine really didn't get their true flexion or rotation we just overstretch the tissue of the upper back. M: and that's the reach your pinky to touch the toe. not being driven from the right place. V: right, from your center, your spine. okay. M: I think that's all. V: I think that's all we have to say about that. M: thanks for joining us. V: bye guys , see you next episode