[Music] welcome everybody today we're going to be looking at Footwork so Veronica is going to be laying down so just so you know in the classical method there are four Footworks there's the Pilates V, Bird-on-a-perch, Heels and Lower/ Lift. so we're going to start with the Pilates V so as you know Pilates V is approximately three fingers between not the toes but the big toe mounds so I'll kind of go in there and put my fingers in between people's big toe mounds and the other thing you want to look at is making sure that you're on your big toe mound not gripping with your toes if this is kind of an interesting thing that I'll say to my clients but sometimes I get them to imagine that the foot bar is not round but square and you want to be on your side of the square of the foot bar not on top of it the other thing you want to look at in a Pilates V is where the heels are so if you're too low right you're in too deep of an ankle flexion and when you push right you're not going to be pushing into the into your big toe mounds getting some contraction in the bottom of your foot and if you're too high well then now we go into hyper extension of the ankle joints and your shins are rising up and it's allowing your whole pelvis to almost feel like it's being suspended so the heels are at a place where if you gently pushed into the big toe mounds you get a little bit of contraction through the bottom of your foot okay the other thing you want to look at is that your pelvis is in a neutral and your head your ribs and your pelvis are settled onto the reformer bed from here you stand through your feet and take an inhale to stretch the springs open and then you exhale and you bring it in there we go so we're going to do 10 foot work is 10 of each position and as Veronica goes in and out if she were my client I'd be watching that the stability of the feet does not move this is her foundation this is where she is rooting from so I can just actually speak to her about saying you know energetically maybe her shins feel like they're standing down into her feet and the push allows the femur bones to actually lift up into her pelvic calves to help lift her spine up into the shoulder blocks yeah and then she's going to exhale gather and bring it in she's going to go two more she's going to stretch all the way through and just see here her shoulder blocks and the foot bar are her container she lengthens stretches up through with her spine through the shoulder blocks the last one you do the exhale brings you home and and then you're going to use the exhalation to contract lift the feet into Bird-on-a-Perch and place them back onto the foot bar from here she's going to inhale to stretch through what you're looking for in the foot here is that the calcaneus the heel of the foot is going to go under the foot bar and the metatarsals are going to go over the foot bar equally so from the side not sure if you can see it or not but if you were to look from the side the heels and the toes would wrap around the foot bar equally and they would maintain as best as you can - even as you return you'll notice and this happens well pretty much with everyone because it's challenging to get ankle flexion on the return if the heels rise up slightly and you kind of roll to the metatarsals more that's fine just as you push out get back on it feel the whole roundness of the foot bar and then you're going to go say one more on her next one again she used uses her exhale beautiful to contract to pick the legs up onto her heels she stretches all the way through on the heels you want to make sure you're in a parallel here so the whole the feet your ankles are flexed which allow the toes to pull back what you'll see a lot of people do here is not do much with the ankles and they'll just be all toe flexion. oh I see. all toe flexion and no ankle flexion so you really want to make sure that the ankles are flexing in order for you to move the reformer bed out so you push into the foot bar you pull the breath up into your lungs to lift the shoulder blocks right so we didn't speak breath a lot here I will speak it in this one now right we inhale out to decompress the spine as we stretch out as you inhale focus on the three-dimensional breathing because as we get into neutral here a lot of people will have a teeter-totter happening in their torso their rib cage might be suspended so you might want to pad that or really just allow them to focus on allowing the breath to expand those bottom two floating ribs so we get a nice three dimensional breath as well when you inhale pick your ribs up into the shoulder blocks let the shoulder blocks push back on you that what's what the springs are doing for you. yeah and just feel the whole body your whole torso is being compressed so that you can decompress and then bring it in on the last one you're going to again, yeah, use your flexors. pick the feet up now you're on the balls of your feet again but in parallel not Pilates V and you just Lower/ Lift so she's going to inhale she's going to use her breath push into the foot bar to breathe the ribs up into the shoulder blocks to open the springs and then she exhales to contract and now as you flex and lower this this does not mean that you get to drop your knees drop your shins and hang out in your achilles you want the ankle to be flexing not the achilles to be over stretched the one thing we didn't speak a lot of is the hyper extension of the knee joint because Veronica is doing such a beautiful job but in footwork a lot of the time that will happen right so here's her Lower/ Lift this is this is fantastic right and then she lowers and it's a three count so she would inhale inale two three and exhale lower two three and then last one she's going to rise up and then as she exhales she's going to bring herself all the way back in I'm just going to quickly speak to hyper extension of the knee joint so let's pick any foot position it's going to happen everywhere so let's go Pilates V? you want to go heels? whichever which? that's where I see it. well, I see it everywhere. okay so let's we're gonna just talk the hyper-extension of the knee joint just a little bit really watch for this this is a missing link that is a whole other workshop for us. right. see the slam down, right, so what happens is we lose the push of the heels is assisting the legs in stretching up through the pelvic halves to allow the carriage to open now as soon as the connection of the leg into the pelvis is lost maybe there's not enough strength there's multiple reasons. we keep going we drop the knees down I don't know if you can notice that or just start to pay attention with your clients or yourself as soon as the knees drop down the energy of the legs into the pelvis is now lost and the pelvis is kind of just being dragged down this way rather than soften the knees pull the legs up and you can feel energetically already the spine is moving right. away from the push of her heels. yep all right and then bring yourself in okay do you want to add anything to that? I think you said it all I mean we can talk forever about this. I know. we will be doing another video on the setup of the reformer as well and I didn't ,we didn't talk the springs either, right. so we're working on four springs right now with Veronica that is the springs that you want to try to use for most of your clients unless they're quite petite then perhaps three or three and a half it can sometimes be too much. but I want to actually mention too that a lot of times people will complain with for springs it hurts up into the trapezius and we will be looking at that again another video but how we just don't get enough breath up under the collar bones to support the shoulder girdle and then the blocks are sitting more on the humeral bone and not so much on the trapezius but I think we've said a lot so we'll leave it at that and see you in our next video. yeah thanks!