March Matness 2016: #Jackknife

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The Jackknife exercise takes articulating through your spine to a whole new level!  This challenging exercise has you bring your legs over your head to roll up through your spine to your shoulders, and then you attempt to reach through the back of your legs to pike your legs toward the ceiling.  There are lots of benefits to this type of movement in your body but as you may have guessed this is no beginner exercise.

I’m guessing the fact that not a lot of people can do this exercise well without assistance is one of the reasons Joseph Pilates created the Long Spine exercise on his apparatus the Universal Reformer.  By putting your feet in straps connected to the moving carriage of the reformer, clients can create the movement of rolling through the spine from your tail up without having to strain and possibly hurt themselves.  The Reformer does some of the work of the exercise so that clients can build the whole body strength and flexibility needed to do this movement efficiently and safely.

March Matness 2016: Spine Twist

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Spine Twist is one of those Pilates exercises that took me years to really “get”.  I have to say though now that I get it…I really get it! It is a ton of work and also one of my favorite exercises as I love how I can really feel my oblique muscles engage and work to create my Twist! Here some tips to help you find the work and benefits of this exercise:

  • Sit upright on your pelvis.  If you have tightness in your back and backs of legs this may mean that you have to bend your knee some or even better sit on something that raise your hips slightly above your heels ( a Yoga brick or a foam roller can work great). After you find the feeling of sitting right on top of your sitting bones as tall and lengthened as you can stretch your arms out into a T shape.
  • Take a big, expansive chest expanding inhale before you move and then use your exhale to twist your rib cage to one side.  Try what I call a triple exhale which Joe describes in Return to Life as: “Twisting the body and turning the head to the side as far as possible, then with two further supreme mental and physical efforts, strive to better your original first attempt”.   ( I love his words, “With two further supreme mental and physical efforts!!!”)
  • Very much like our Pilates Saw exercise this exercise demands that your lower half of your body works to anchor your hips in place so that you can create an effective twist that comes from those core muscles.  When you twist you shouldn’t shift or even move in your hips or legs.
  • Joseph Pilates suggests 3 repetitions on each side in Return to Life.

March Matness 2016: Shoulder Bridge

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The Pilates Shoulder Bridge exercise is a great whole body strengthening exercise that teaches us how articulate through our spine and just plain feels good!  This is such a great exercise for any body.  As your practice advances you can challenge your strength and your ability to strengthen by holding in the bridge and then eventually adding a bent knee fold, and then adding a kick with 1 leg.  Here’s a few tips:

  • Start by tucking the pelvis and really initiate this movement from your tail end.  When you do this you will start to feel a stretching and lengthening of your low back.
  • Try to roll up from the mat one vertebrae at a time versus just lifting everything in one piece.
  • When coming back down to the mat, focus on leaving your hips lifted as you start to connect you very upper back to the mat and continue to sequence your back to the mat one vertebrae at a time.
  • Notice any spots in your back/spine that are a challenge to move through and connect into the mat.  In those places I like to focus on the front side of my body pulling in toward my spine to help me get more movement.
  • Inhale the entire time you are rolling up to your shoulders and then exhale the entire time you are rolling down
  • Work your way to the kick by first just practicing holding the bridge at the top.  Then progress to a 1 leg knee fold while maintaining your lifted bridge position.  Then you can progress to stretch the leg straight and trying some kicks as you hold the position.

March Matness 2016: #scissors and #bicycle

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The Pilates Scissors and Bicycle mat exercises are quite challenging in their fullest form and really require that you have first progressed through skills learned in many of the other mat exercises.  Even if you are not quite ready to lift the hips off the mat and support yourself to do the scissor and bicycle movements, there are plenty of great variations that can help you build the strength, flexibility and balance in your body to get there.  On of my favorite variations is utilizing the Pilates Spine Corrector Barrel as a prop under the hips.  The Spine Corrector Barrel allows you to still engage, work and strengthen the correct muscles without straining!

March Matness 2016: #neckpull

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An exercise called Neck Pull sounds kind of scary – right?  I agree but I can see where Joe thought the name fit the exercise.  The Neck Pull exercise really combines the Roll Up, the Spine Stretch,  and an added focus on lengthening(or pulling?) your neck.  I don’t especially love the “Pull” part of the name because it immediately makes me think of yanking or pulling on your neck which is not what we want.  Ideally the palms of the hands are putting just a slight pressure on the base of the skull that feels like you are creating length or tractioning the head away from the shoulders.  This lengthening of our neck really creates a sense of whole body work that engages us from the soles of our feet to the crown of our head.

Of course taking the hands behind the head like this also makes the exercise more challenging than just reaching arms in front of us like we do in Roll Up.  The Neck Pull exercise also challenges your core muscles by moving in a flat back spine for a portion of your getting your spine to the mat.

Tip:  If you find yourself jerking or trying to muscle through rolling up from the mat with your hands behind your head, use the arms reaching forward position during the roll up portion of the exercise.  You can place the hands behind the head before your roll up to your tall spine.  This will allow you to work on lengthening and strengthening the neck and core muscles on the first half of the exercise so you can eventually progress to keeping them behind your head the whole time.

March Matness 2016: #doublelegkick

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The Pilates Double Leg Kick is kind of like the One Leg Kick and Swan put together!  Just like in the One Leg Kick you are trying to stabilize your body and specifically your hips as you do 3 snap-kicks toward your buttocks.  Then lift into your swan with hands either clasped behind you or stretched long beside you.  When we look at the progression of the Pilates Mat exercises we can see how this exercise takes movements and concepts we’ve done previously and adds in coordination of those movements to make it a bit more challenging.

Here’s the basics of the exercise:

  • Set up for the exercise by laying on your chest with your head turned to one side.  Overlap the palms and slide them up your back letting your elbows drape toward the floor.
  • Stabilize your body by drawing your abdominals up and in and gently pressing your thighs and hips into the mat. (this should be some work!)
  • On an exhale, do three controlled snap-kicks toward your buttocks maintaining your hips stable
  • On your inhale you can either reach your arms beside your body or possibly grasp your hands together as you articulate away from the mat into a swan position.  If it feels OK on your low back you can lift the feet away from the floor (Otherwise you can just leave your feet on the mat)
  • Exhale as you go to the 3 snap-kicks stabilizing your upper body to the mat
  • Joseph Pilates suggests repeating 5 times in Return to Life.