Hi, I'm Dane, and I'm doing podcasts for a balanced body.
We're at my studio in North Star Pilates in Buffalo, New York, and this is Nancy.
And Nancy's going to be demonstrating for us feet and straps, or sometimes the exercise
is also known as leg arcs, hamstring arcs, or leg circles.
So I'm going to have Nancy lay down on her back, and just pause right there for a minute.
So when you have your athlete lay on the reformer, getting into the reformer is kind of important.
We want to make sure they do it safely.
So I'm going to have Nancy just push with one of her legs.
It doesn't matter which one.
And then she's going to grab a strap and hook it around the free leg.
Good.
Then just holding that leg in place, she can take the opposite leg off the bar and hook
that foot into the strap as well.
Great.
So she's in one piece and everybody's safe.
So the exercise again is called feet and straps.
And sometimes again it's referred to as a leg arcs or a leg circles.
So I'm just going to have Nancy just start by inhaling as she brings her legs up to the
ceiling and then exhaling and pressing down.
So what we're looking for here again is to just create a little bit of hip mobility.
So if you have athletes who are pretty muscular and tend to be tight in the hips, this is
a great exercise just to help loosen up hips, loosen up hamstrings, and it's also a nice
one to kind of work on some lower extremity alignment, sort of the awareness of where
the knees and feet are in relation to the hips.
So what we're looking for here is a nice, smooth, steady movement and I just want to
make sure that the person is aware of their abdominals and core stability as well.
So as the legs press down, we want an exhale with a nice abdominal contraction to keep
the ribcage and pelvis connected and then inhale, folding at the hips to come back up.
So this is the basic exercise, flexion extension of the hip and we can go into different variations
as well.
So Nancy, why don't you just rotate your hips out into external rotation and press straight
up and down for me.
So again, just maintaining that same connection of inner thigh and core, we just externally
rotate the hips to create a little bit more openness through the hips.
So with athletes again, they need to have a combination of movements available to them
at their hips.
So sometimes flexion extension with rotation or flexion extension with rotation, external
or rotation internal.
So why don't you rotate into internal rotation for me now and press up and down for me here.
Good.
So we're just looking again for nice balanced movement, speed up and down and then making
sure that the abdominals stay stable and that head and neck and shoulders stay nice and
soft on the carriage.
So another variation to work on a little bit more hip mobility is why don't you come on
up to the top for me and we're going to go in circles.
So keep the feet in parallel the whole time and you're going to press down and circle
around to the top.
So this just again broadens the amount of range of motion you get at the hip and some
are more flexible than others so you can start off with a smaller circle and then work wider
as the athlete becomes more comfortable with their hip range of motion.
So Nancy, why don't you take a nice wide circle for me as wide as your hips feel comfortable
going.
Good.
And you can see you can go pretty wide depending on the range of motion of the individual you're
working with.
So this is a great exercise for gymnasts, great exercise for dancers as well if those are
the athletes that you're working with and just reverse direction for me.
And there are a multitude of variations you can do with this particular exercise.
Single leg variations you can go with increase spring, decrease spring tension depending
on what you're aiming for with the particular exercise.
Good.
Just bend both knees for me now and let's rotate hips, knees and toes out, heels stay
together.
Good.
So now we're just going with a slight diamond or frog position of the legs and we're just
going to exhale and reach the legs nice and long.
Good.
Keeping that turnout bend the knees and come back in.
So just a simple leg press in external rotation or frog press.
Just again working on hip range of motion, lower extremity alignment and core stability
all in the same exercise.
Let's do one more repetition there.
And press.
Good.
And pause there.
Now coming out of the reformer, same way.
So bend both knees for me and once you take your right leg out of the loop and just put
that foot on the bar, good.
And then just lower yourself on the bar.
There you go.
Just bend that knee and take that foot out of the loop and come on down, good.
And that's feet and straps, hamstring arcs on the reformer with some variations.
I hope you enjoyed and thanks for watching.
