Hello, I'm Julian Littleford and I own and operate JL Body Conditioning in Delmar, California.
A deal has been kind enough to be my demonstrator for today and we're going to take a couple
of classic exercises, as I've said before, to try to make them a little bit more intense.
Very often working with males, you end up having a client coming in that's coming from
a gym background, amounts is that he does a thousand sit-ups and amounts is that he
does 300 push-ups a day. So, in that case, let's try to emphasize the same sensation
in the muscles with the Pilates work. So, if we take a classic exercise, the leg pull
front, similar and I want the client to feel the same sensation as a push-up, we can change
it. So, Odile, if you would like to come down here for me with your right and left hand
there and your feet down. The classic version, as we know, stretching the legs out for me
behind you, squeeze your legs together, everything is zipped together, nothing changes and the
leg just lifts up and down. Nice stabilizing exercise, nice strong exercise and sit down
for me, nice strong exercise for you, challenging for one client. Now, we're coming with somebody
that as I said, that knows a little bit, has been working out of the gym for a while, we're
going to change one thing and all we're going to change is the arm position. If we take
that first position as we were, everything is locked in, she gently bends the elbows
and brings the elbows into the sides, right by that bottom rib. She squeezes everything,
the inner thighs, she draws the abdominals in, the shoulder blades are pulling together
and the weight drops back into the heels and she stays there. That's a big challenge.
She squeezes the inner thighs, draws the belly in and gently comes out of it and Benjane's
for me. And what I like to do is add a breath pattern to this. So, what will happen with
the client is once they get the classic version down, they drop the arms, they stay there
for one breath, they push out, they come down, they stay there for one breath, two breath,
they push out, they go up to five breaths and come back down to one. Now, what we're
going to do now is also put the leg to it. So, we're going to go back to that same position,
the start position, as we had, she comes out, she squeezes everything nice and tight, she
bends the elbows and drops down for me, she stays there, she lifts her right leg and down
and lifts her left leg and down and straightens. She now drops and lifts the legs twice, bending
down, lift one and down and the other and down, right leg again and down, left leg and
down and up, three sets, down you go, elbows at the sides, all the way down the deal, lower,
lower, there we go, I've got you. And two and two and two, last set. I'm just giving
it a little bit of support and gently up we go, good and kneeling down and obviously
males we carry a majority of our strength up in our upper torso and our shoulders. Women
of course have an extra challenge because your center of gravity is lower, it's good
for both. My clients at the studio, male and female, do this series. Adil, thank you so
much, thank you.
