hello, beautiful people, welcome back! Veronica and Matilda here and we are For Pilates Sake today we're going to be looking at Low Frog. right, two leg and one leg and Veronica's going to be teaching me. right, the spring she has it on a three but again "you do you" what works, works for you Matilda's going to lay herself down and I'm going to show you a couple of variations. because we have those that can really turn out. which is fine, but we just don't want them hanging in the end range of their hip. why? we're not building any strength. but let's pretend that she's got very little turnout. I have her in what we call a prayer foot. and if she didn't have the leg length, what happens sometimes, is it gets pulled towards her. I might draw the paddle down a little bit so she can stand her outer arches on the paddle. and she can kind of feel this already in her hips, generally the knees want to be the mover. we can ask them to be sort of second in command. what I'm going to ask her to do is, on your inhale, think of sort of rotating those thighs like little barber shop poles, to pull the paddle towards your center. not so much to the ground and we're looking for a stable pelvis. right, so the spine doesn't move about, this still is full body. where she's expanding her, to expand the spring. and then again as she's allowing that paddle to come down, she's trying to find as much rotation in the hip to get a lovely stretch in the inner thigh and find her deep six. when the paddle returns do not try to maintain that turnout. it will cause a lot of gripping in the joint and that's not the way biomechanically the femur actually moves. it does start to subtly rotate back to I'm not going to say parallel but towards that direction. okay so that's one way of doing it. now what I see a lot happening is people pull it and then they shove the paddle down. that's just to me a knee joint, you've kinda of missed the boat. right. we're not, now, in the hip. now we're making the foot be too much of the driver and then the knee gets kind of cranked on. there you might even see some instability in the spine if they don't have the mobility in their hip socket. somewhere along the chain something's going to move, we don't want that. okay, another way to do it is, this is the way I teach it. come right together with your legs so you're kind of bird-on-a-perch. and now you're going to maintain that bird-on-a-perch. so, Matilda, how much can you rotate your thigh bones, without losing a bit of that bird-on-a-perch? now it doesn't get to flop out. which she doesn't actually do. but I do work with a lot of dancers, that do, "do that". and now she's just in a lesser rotation. now we're going to get a little bit more hamstring. on her inhale she's going to pull the paddle sort of towards your booty. and if you, if they, feel too squished or they don't have the knee flexion available they might have to back up a little bit more. that's too, yeah right, I'm thinking that she feels a little bit too squashed. so now she can actually activate a little bit more of her lateral hamstring; a little bit more of that bicep femoris. and not to push on the paddle - all to push the paddle all the way to the ground. that's not going to hurt you to do, but then she's not staying in control of the movement or the equipment or the spring. what do you think about that spring tension? I love it! okay, then that's two-legged. this is the funny part, you know we think the legs are moving equally and then we go, "oh, wow, I'm doing this with one leg, obviously, my one leg was being the driver and the other one was being a passenger." let's see if we can find a little more balance in that. we can maintain the same position, you can lift one leg up. now you can just have it, even here, you can have it above your hip so there's no hip tension. her knee can be bent I don't care, but if she wants a little bit of a hamstring stretch, I'm fine with that. and then she's going to find that little rotation to help draw that paddle down or thinking of pulling it towards her hips. she's going to resist the straightening of the knee. so again the work is more in the upper hamstrings. or I shouldn't say that, cuz sometimes you can feel it a little lower too. just depending on the angle of where you're on this chair. right and we would do three to five something like that. she can change legs, and like I said, where we have her set up, that's not the law. we could again pull her further out which would hit different fibers of the hamstrings. yeah and it goes to show which leg likes to work a little harder and which one is a little lazier. let's do that in the first position, the more turned-out frog position. okay. okay and again be sure foot is, you know, I didn't say this, but make sure that your feet are in the center of the paddle. so maybe get that person to look up; make sure that their heel and their pubic bone, sternum are in-line. and then she can pick up whatever leg she wants, kind of get it out of the way. you can just bring it right there. right, and now as she's moving that leg I'm looking that she has equal weight between both hips. too often I see people rocking towards the side that they're pulling on, but she wants the heaviness, even here, of that femur in the hip. and you can go as big as you want or as small as you want. yeah, as long as it's the leg moving in the hip. as soon as that stops I would say you're kind of at your end. big inhale. so another thing we can look at is the organization of her shoulder girdle. this is just getting really fussy. so if someone has a hard time keeping their arms nice and planted or their collar bones broad, you might have to pad their head up. have a look at that as well, so that we're starting to build strength. and this is only like a level one beginner exercise. just that exercise in the upper body might be a bit of a challenge for those people. then last, but not least, I'll sometimes ask. you have your hand straight down there? to think of like drawing the vinyl or the mat up to get those arms to engage the back of the sockets. to also get a little bit more decompression of the spine. which will happen with breath. those are the two versions I teach. do you have anything else you do differently? that's perfect. that's it? yeah, that was great. okay, that's it, please like and subscribe and if you have any questions, we love them! so we'll put them in our next video!! bye, you guys! bye! thank you!