[Music] okay so we're going to do Elephant today. Matilda's
going to demo it. the bar is at the top. two springs, generally, if you want to make it more
difficult you could do one but the general rule is two springs. so Matilda you're going to step on
to the reformer you're going to put your hands on the bar with the thumbs with fingers. now if the person,
it depends on their height, but generally you try to get their their feet right to the back of the
shoulder blocks and then you're looking for this sort of 50/50 weight between the arms and the
legs. in this exercise, I mean I think of it as an upside down sort of abdominal exercise
because they can find the nice support of their shoulder girdle on their rib cage or the rib
cage onto the shoulder girdle nice hangy heads you get this stretch through the back of the neck. her
heels are down. now I didn't say it or maybe I did but when I was doing the short box series
my shins were burning so that same sort of toe lift and sort of you can do that here. so they
get this sort of connection from the front of the foot into the shin and why is that ?because so
often people will slam back here because they don't have the ankle flexion they don't have the
achilles stretch so this is sort of where we were working the flexion of the ankles in footstrap or rollups we want that here because the movement's going to come from her hip versus the
back of her knees so on her inhale she's in this nice curved position she's going to inhale
move her femurs back she's going to exhale draw her belly up to pull her legs home inhale /exhale
and I sometimes will cue imagine that you have a spike pushing through your heels so that we don't
get this rocking. so often I see people rocking from foot to heel and that's not the goal the
goal is, yeah exactly right. is to see how far they can go back to get this beautiful ankle flexion
without it happening from the knees and now she's teaching very or she's learning very subtly some
hip extension and that she's learning to move the femur in the hip okay now the breath of course is
360° on the inhale and then the exhale she draws her tummy in to push the air out to let her legs
come home so yeah right and the belly pull right don't pull with your feet so much but drag your
heels down and forward more and then I didn't talk about the pace but the pace is usually a little
quicker so inhale exhale inhale and you don't go back very far now what is what are the things
that we generally run into people will like... yes, thank you , they'll push back they'll lift
their shoulders up around their ears and you're like okay well now this is a flat back yeah really
it does teach you on this level one or beginner exercise how to get access to your psoas because
if I put her upside down she's doing double leg lower and lift in a way right so if you're on
your back and you put your hands here so now we can teach that what I see a lot of is people will
push their backs down to push the legs out and I see this dropping there should be no dropping if
I had a rope sort of tethering her to the roof without over stretching this there she's going
to keep that tailbone curled towards her nose and again we're just moving femurs and hips here
you go you barely get back inhale/ exhale inhale/ exhale right you feel a bit of belly there yeah
there you go okay so got this nice even pressure from on hands and feet there you go that will
warm me up okay have you got anything else to add ? I think, I think that was awesome I think
we just need to maybe talk a little bit on the modifications due to people's body sizes and any
tightness is that we might see happening exactly okay, so come back up because she did such a great
job. I really didn't have a lot to say but a couple things because of her height she's got kind
of this perfect height I do want her heels back now why is that because bring your legs forward
a little bit people want to go here because now if they have tightness through the back of their
ankle they don't have to try to open that up or stretch it so if they're Matilda's height then
yes I want those ankles back I want this stretch and a stretch to the back contraction
through the front but having said that if I got a little tiny person then they're going to
be like already way out there and now they don't get enough kickback to pull the carriage back
in. So if you were a teenier person let's just say close up would bring your feet in a
little bit more because we don't want their hips already to be extended. the idea is that they do
find a subtle hip extension to move the carriage back right and then right otherwise they're
just staying in extension too much through the exercise they don't get enough of that psoas
contraction, that we need. yeah, yeah. okay I think that's great now one other thing I think that's
important that you were talking about earlier was the positioning of the leg and the hip because
there's a lot of people who live in that tucked position here. right. and I think that's really... do
you want to get hop up ? yeah. I will and I think this is an important piece is the lordotic versus
the tucked person so a lot of people who live in a tuck their lumbar yeah is over flexed and
their legs kind of live in the front of the hip joint so they're kind of like their bums dropping
off of them I guess you can kind of say they're pelvis so with them you just want to make sure if
their legs go far enough back or what you can cue is just stick your butt out lengthen the hamstrings and then once this is lengthened ask them to keep their legs back here and then create
some flexion through their lumbar once without losing the leg positioning without doing that
kind of without doing that so there's not an over stretch in the thoracic so looking for it's kind
of like the pelvis is being held up from the leg so the pelvis has somewhere to sit comfortably the
other option would be a lordotic person who lives with yeah too much flat too much extension in
their low back now they've got the pelvis we're looking for but this is a tough place for them
so if we brought their legs in a little bit more they that would allow for their pelvis to be able
to rotate to allow the lumbar to open up a little bit more and then they could do it from here so
really just looking at the body in front of you because really we're just trying to bring that
body back to health right and then one other thing a lot of times because people have so much
tightness through here when you ask them to give you a tail curl or the dropping of the sacrum
we'll see this right and they really think that they're opening their lower back but you got to
keep the rib cage settled onto the shoulder girdle and then you have to find that tail curl as small
as it is I promise you, you'll find some tummy and the cool thing, thank you for bringing that in,
because I you know what this is called Elephant and it's kind of neat and you know how elephants
have kind of like that crinkly skin you want people's backs to almost feel like it's almost
like tha,t where it's just soft and gentle and kind of wrinkling instead of over stretched and
taut that's how you know you're losing your limbs and over stretching the back flexing the back from
the back line rather than the front line the front line being the flexors that it's creating this
flexion for you. totally yeah! yep. all right thanks, guys! Thanks! [Music] [Music]