Hi, I'm Valentine from Pilates Body by Valentine and I'm here in Danville, California at a
fitness club called the studio.
I've invited my client, Kevin, to come and demonstrate some of the home program that
I've provided him with.
Here we have, we're going to start with the bridge.
So when Kevin lies down, he tries to set his body in a neutral state.
So he's going to inhale here and as he exhales, he shimmies his shoulders down, trying to
lengthen the sides of his neck.
In addition, he checks to see if he has the neutral spine, so he's a little tiny bit of
air underneath his waistband.
From here, he's going to check to see if his heels are firmly planted on the floor.
I'm going to use a ball, please note that it's red, and I'm putting it between his knees
to activate his inner thigh.
Now he's going to take a simple inhale and as he exhales, he diminishes the air underneath
his waistband.
He firmly plants his feet and curls, pelvic curls, and lifts up all the way, sending his
knees way far away.
Long neck.
He's going to inhale here first and he's going to reverse the process, bringing his upper
spine, then the waistband, and then he goes to neutral.
Again, he's going to inhale and lengthen through the sides, pull the tummy down, curl his pelvis
up, and send his knees.
He's going to inhale and exactly reverse the process, upper torso first, lower waistband,
and down.
Now when he does this, his thought process is lengthening, not hiking his hips up to
the ceiling.
Let's try it again, inhale, and he just makes this one round continuous motion all the way
up, lengthening, lengthening, lengthening, excellent, exhale, roll down.
His challenge will be to be on his toes.
Good luck.
Let's place your toes where your heels were, give yourself a good fighting chance here.
Inhale, and as you exhale, shimmy down, stomach in and lift, sending away, away, away.
Inhale here, exhale, roll down, loose neck, very good.
And again, inhale, exhale, shimmy down.
Under normal circumstances, I'd have him do this about eight times.
Inhale, exhale, roll down.
Now another challenge he can do, put your both feet down, is he's going to go ahead
and bridge legs together now, and he's going to have a single leg.
So inhale here, exhale, shimmy down, lengthen through the sides of the neck, dominoes held,
hips up, send the knees away.
Now he stays here, a small inhale, and as he exhales, he's going to take his leg up,
up, up, and out.
Now he's going to hope that both hips are level.
Inhale here, exhale, put it down on the floor, and roll.
Let's try that with the other leg.
Inhale one, exhale, exhale, bring it up, send the knees away.
I saw that.
And leg up, that's good.
And put it back where it belongs, without losing height, and bring it down, roll down.
Now we're going to keep it up on the next one, alright?
So inhale here, exhale the same process.
He's always thinking, am I lengthening, and am I going to push those knees out?
Now he's going to lift that leg all the way up, up, up, up.
Now he's going to lower the leg to the best of his ability without losing height.
Lower your leg, come back up, keep your knees straight, and go.
Reach away with that straight leg, and come up, and put it down, and roll.
Again we're going to try.
Now take note, maybe it's because of a tight IT band, the legs tend to gap open.
They use everything that they can to keep that suspension up.
His legs need to be in that railroad track.
They always need to be in line.
We're going to try it again.
Give it with this leg.
Inhale to set.
Exhale to lengthen.
Same business.
Now we're going to lift up this leg.
Two lowers.
Reach away.
One.
Inhale.
Reach away.
Two.
Inhale, put the foot down, and bring it home.
I would have him do this about four times on each leg.
How do you feel?
Okay?
Great.
Great.
Alright, well let's try it on another challenge.
We're going to use the wall next, okay?
Alright, let's do that.
Kevin now is going to be doing part two of this exercise.
He has his feet placed equidistant from each other on the floor.
And he is not really at 90 degrees, simply because it's too difficult to bridge up.
Okay?
So he's going to inhale here.
Exhale, he's going to shimmy his shoulders down, lengthen the sides of his neck, and
he's going to curl up.
As he curls up, he firmly presses his feet into the floor.
It's a very different workout than what he had before.
Definitely more hamstrings.
Inhale to set, exhale, and roll down.
Take note how easily he can go up.
He can get a good bridge.
Inhale to set, exhale, slide the shoulders, and send the knees.
Now take note, right there, he stops at 180 degrees.
This is great.
Inhale to set, exhale down.
Another thing that he has to think about is when he goes up, inhale, exhale, and roll.
He wants to check to see if both legs are in the train track.
Alignment is very important.
Inhale to set, exhale, roll down.
For negative practice, show him how the legs gap open.
See?
If they go out like that, that's not right, okay?
And you'll see some people do that just to get up and roll down.
So let's do it one more time, right?
And here we go, exhale, and roll and pick up, send, look for 180, and roll down.
Great.
And let's go on to part three.
We now have part three of the exercise where Kevin is placing his heels firmly on the chair.
Please note that the chair is against the wall to avoid any kind of mishap.
We're going to inhale here.
And as you exhale, you're going to do the same curl and peel up.
Now roll down, roll, roll, roll, roll, roll down.
Option here.
He doesn't have to roll.
He can just keep the neutral spine and just raise up in one motion.
Inhale here, exhale, just lift without rolling.
Perfect.
Exhale down in one motion.
So he folds and unfolds.
He's folded, inhale, as he exhale, he unfolds, sending his knees.
It's a lovely option.
And down.
This is a great option for those who have osteoporosis.
Inhale to set and one bridge lift, perfect.
And down.
Here's his challenge.
He's going to lift up his leg directly to the ceiling.
All right.
Now from here, he can curl or he can hoist up in neutral spine.
I'm going to have him curl.
Inhale to set and blow and lift up, up, up.
Take note how his leg doesn't go this way.
It goes directly to the ceiling.
He takes a sip of air and he rolls underneath, underneath.
Very nice.
Very nice.
One more time.
Inhale, exhale, and roll up, beautiful.
Inhale to set, exhale, roll down.
I would have my client, if you were doing a single leg like this, I'd have him do about
six on each side.
Bring your legs down.
Thank you very much for watching this podcast and home program.
Bye.
