The Amazing Stickie and Swan 2

This week, the Amazing Stickie is building on what she did last week.  Swan 2 in the Pilates repertoire is an extension (pun intended!) of Swan 1.  (You can find the directions for Swan 1 in last week’s post!).

Stickie gets into the starting position by lying on her belly with her hands under her shoulders.  She extends her elbows and brings her gaze forward and up as if she is watching a little bug crawl away from her, ending up with arms straight and her back curved evenly between her cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine (a.k.a. her neck, torso, and lower back).

 

Now the fun starts.  Stickie bends her elbows slightly and then lifts her hands, allowing her body to rock forward and her legs to leave the floor.  In other words, she keeps the curved shape of her body and tilts the whole thing forward as if she were the rocker of a rocking horse.  Then she tilts back to the starting position, stabilizing with her hands.  She does this until she stops having fun or until she has completed five reps, whichever happens first.

The Amazing Stickie and Swan 1

Today the Amazing Stickie is working on spinal extension, so she’s doing Swan 1.  Yoga practitioners will know it as Cobra, but the Pilates process is a little different.

Stickie begins lying on her belly with her hands by her shoulders.  As she inhales, she begins to curl her spine up, beginning with her head. She imagines she is watching a ladybug crawling away from her and she follows its path with her head.  Her elbows gradually straighten and Stickie feels that her breastbone is pulling forward.  This keeps her from using her neck too much by helping her thoracic spine to do its fair share.

 

She exhales to reverse the process to come back down.  Three or four reps is about right.

The Amazing Stickie and Leg Pull Front

The Amazing Stickie loves exercises that are related to plank because of the way they help her build upper body strength and whole body stability.  Today she is doing the Pilates Leg Pull Front (still not a joke by Uncle Joe!).

She begins in plank position, hands directly under her shoulders, body a straight line from the top of her head to her heels.  She inhales and then, as she exhales, she lengthens one leg away from her body and up toward the ceiling, keeping her knee straight and maintaining the plank position.  Then she lowers the leg and repeats on the other side.  She usually does about ten reps.

The Amazing Stickie and Leg Pull

Today the Amazing Stickie wants a challenge for her shoulder flexibility, upper body strength, and core control, so she’s doing the Pilates Leg Pull.  (No, this does not mean that Uncle Joe is going to play a joke on her!)

As with many Pilates exercises, there are options for Stickie to choose.  The starting position is sitting on the floor, hands slightly behind the hips, legs extended in front of the body.  The position of the hands is where the choices come in:  Stickie can have her fingers pointing away from her body, out to the sides, or towards her body.  Different positions will feel differently for different people, but generally folks find it most challenging to have the fingers pointing toward the body and least challenging to have them pointing to the sides, but the best way to find out which way works best is to try all three!

 

Once Stickie has chosen a hand position, she lifts her pelvis toward the ceiling, pressing her feet into the floor.  Basically, she is doing an upside down plank.  The main part of the exercise starts now.  On an inhale, Stickie lengthens one leg and lifts it toward the ceiling.  She keeps her pelvis stable (i.e., she doesn’t let her butt sag down!) as she lifts.  Then she exhales as she lowers her leg back to the upside down plank position.  She alternates legs and does about ten reps on each side.

The Amazing Stickie and Mermaid

The Amazing Stickie knows that life does not always move straight ahead.  She prepares for this by doing exercises that work sideways and with twists, like the Pilates Mermaid.

Stickie has no knee problems, so the starting position is not a challenge for her.  Those of us who do have knee problems can modify by sitting crisscross applesauce or with our legs extended out in front of us.  Stickie has one leg bent in front of her so that her shin is parallel to her hips.  The other leg is bent so that her knee is next to her first foot and her other foot is tucked back by her hips.  Stickie, having an ideal body, has no trouble keeping both sit bones on the floor in this position while keeping her spine nice and straight.  Those of us who do struggle can prop up the side that does touch the ground to keep things even.

 

From this starting position, Stickie inhales and raises her arms to shoulder level, keeping her shoulders away from her ears.  As she exhales, she bends to the side away from her feet, one arm coming overhead and the other arm reaching toward the floor.  She does not twist her spine forward or back.  She moves as if she is pressed between two panes of glass.  As she inhales, she returns to the starting position.

 

After doing several reps, Stickie performs the counter stretch, in which she side bends toward her feet.  Then she repeats the whole thing with her legs set up the other way.

Balance

As a follow up to yesterday’s post about how we are whole bodies, I’d like to point out that one of the implications of this is that we need whole body strength and whole body mobility for good function.

Because we move as whole bodies and not as disembodied legs or backs or arms or heads, all of our parts need to coordinate with each other.  If one of our knees doesn’t bend particularly well, the motion has to come from somewhere else (i.e., the ankle or hip, as the joints on either side of the knee).  When one of our muscle groups is significantly weaker than another, the rest of the muscles need to take up the slack for us and we end up trying to do everything with our neck muscles (the codepence champs of the Muscle Olympics!).  In the short term, this is all fine.  We want our body parts to cooperate with each other.

 

In the long term, though, we set ourselves up for imbalances, inefficiencies, and injuries when we let some parts slack off and other parts do more than their share.  This is where corrective exercise, flexibility training, and Pilates come in.  They help us restore the balance so we can move with grace and efficiency our whole lives (in our whole bodies!).

The Amazing Stickie and Scarecrow

The Amazing Stickie loves to work on spinal extensions while keeping her shoulders healthy and mobile, so today she is doing Scarecrow.  This exercise has a lot of parts, but Stickie has found it worthwhile to master them.

She begins lying on her belly on the floor with her arms in a cactus position (upper arms out at shoulder level, forearms extended alongside the head).  Stickie’s nose is hovering just off the floor.

 

As Stickie inhales, she extends her spine (spinal extension = backbend) keeping her arms in line with her head.  The curve of her spine comes not from her lower back and not from her neck, but from the segment of spine between the two (thoracic spine).  She keeps her body in this curved position and straightens her arms out so that they reach over her head, still in line with her ears as she exhales.  She inhales and brings her arms back to the cactus position, but maintains the spinal extension.  Finally, she exhales and lowers her torso back to the mat.  Phew.  That was a lot.

 

While it is helpful to breathe in the way Stickie does, it is all right if the breathing doesn’t match up with the movements as described.  It might work better for some of us to learn the movements and then add the breathing once we know what we’re doing.

 

Stickie usually finds that three to five repetitions of this exercise are enough.

The Amazing Stickie and Spine Stretch

The Amazing Stickie wants to have supple hamstrings and a flexible back.  One way she works toward this is by doing Spine Stretch in Pilates.

Spine Stretch is the Pilates version of the forward bend we all know from stretching or yoga, but with its own special Pilates flavor.  The goal of this exercise, as Stickie knows, is not to touch the nose to the knee, but to hinge forward from the hips, minimizing the rounding of the spine.

 

She begins sitting on the floor with her legs out in front of her, feet flexed.  Of course, she has excellent posture with her ears directly over her shoulders, which are directly over her hips.  She holds her arms out in front of her at shoulder level (zombie arms!).  She inhales and elongates her spine even more, then exhales and hinges forward from her hips.  Since she does not want to curve her back unnecessarily, Stickie often thinks of this movement as taking her breastbone toward her toes.  Then she inhales and returns to her starting position.

 

Stickie usually does five to ten reps.

The Amazing Stickie and Book Opening

The Amazing Stickie enjoys twists, and not just in plots!  Today she is working on Pilates by doing book opening (see what I did there?).

She begins lying on her side with her arms stretched in front of her at shoulder level and her knees bent.  As she inhales, she lifts the top arm and arcs it over her body until it is resting on the ground.  Her lower body, however, stays still.  The end position looks like her top half is lying on her back and her bottom half is lying on her side.  Then she exhales and brings herself back to the starting position.  She usually does four or five repetitions on each side.

 

A variation of this exercise is called Around the World.  From the starting position, Stickie circles her upper arm up over her head along the floor, through the end position of the basic exercise and then down toward her feet before coming back to the start position.  As she moves her arm, she moves her head to keep her hand in view, which entails raising it off the floor as she gets to the part where her arm moves toward her feet.  The whole time, her knees stay pressed together and still.  She does two to four reps on a side.

The Amazing Stickie and Dart

Today the Amazing Stickie is working on Pilates by doing dart.  This is a spinal extension exercise, so it makes her feel good.

She begins by lying on her belly with her arms down by her side.  She inhales and peels her upper body up off the floor segment by segment while lifting her arms behind her as if she were trying to touch her toes.  Then she exhales back to the starting position.  After a couple of reps like that, she inhales to the top position and then pumps her hands up and down with her arms straight a few times before lowering back to start.

 

She does as many reps as feel good.

The Amazing Stickie and Prone Press

The Amazing Stickie loves spinal extension exercises for many reasons.  Maybe the biggest reason is that spinal extension helps her inhale deeply, which makes her feel happier.  The Pilates prone press is a simple spinal extension.

 

Stickie begins lying on her belly with her hands under her shoulders.  She had to experiment with a couple of positions to find the right place for her hands.  Some people find it works better with the hands a little lower.  Then, as she inhales, Stickie begins to tilt her head up as if she were watching a ladybug crawling away from her.  The rest of her spine keeps following her head as her arms extend.  She goes only as high as is comfortable in her body.  Some people only straighten their arms a little bit.  Others go all the way up to straight arms.  She tries to ensure that each segment of her spine is moving.  She, like a lot of people, often does most of the work with her neck and neglects the part of her spine between her shoulder blades.  Perhaps because of this tendency, Stickie has had an uncharacteristic lapse in form in the second picture; she has overcompensated for her tendency to do most of the work with her neck by looking down.  At the top of the movement, she should be looking forward.

 

Stickie exhales to come down to the starting position.

 

Stickie usually does three or four repetitions, but sometimes she feels like only one and other times she does five or six.  Her spine lets her know when she’s done enough. 

Uncle Joe, Noted Efficiency Expert

Somehow, efficiency has gotten a bad rap.  I mean, who doesn’t want to get the work stuff done quickly and then get on to the fun stuff?  (Hint:  it’s our broken system in which finishing tasks quickly wins us… more tasks.  But I digress.)

In fitness, there are two kinds of efficiency we want to pay attention to, because they do in fact make the work get done better so we can do fun stuff.  The first one is structural efficiency.  Structural efficiency is kind of an elaborate description of alignment.  If we begin our motion from an aligned place, everything goes better.  Specifically, we want our basic standing position to have our ears aligned over our shoulders, which should be aligned over our hips, which should be aligned over our knees, which should be aligned over our feet.  Nothing should be twisty or tilted.

 

Functional efficiency is the efficiency of movement.  It is recruiting the right muscles at the right time with the right degree of force for the task at hand.  We don’t want to waste energy swatting a fly with the kind of effort we’d use to hit a home run.  Nor do we want to struggle to move the couch because we can’t get our legs to cooperate.

 

There are many ways to build our structural and functional efficiencies.  One of the best and most fun ways is through Pilates.  Uncle Joe has lots of tricks to teach us about aligning ourselves and portioning out our power in appropriate doses.

 

Want to try?  Hit me up!

The Amazing Stickie and Arm Arcs

The Amazing Stickie likes to ensure that her shoulders function like they should.  She does arm arcs to assist her in keeping them both stable and mobile.

She begins by lying on her back with her knees bent and feet flat on the floor.  (It would also be all right for her to extend her legs long, but it’s usually more comfortable to work with the knees bent.)  She has her arms down by her sides.  For the full length of her inhale, she raises her arms until they are over her head.  Then, for the full length of her exhale, she lowers them back to the starting position.  At first, this seemed like a very slow pace, but now Stickie enjoys it.  She does a set of ten.  Then, to make things more interesting, she puts one arm overhead and one down by her hips to start.  Then she swaps their positions.  Even though her arms are moving in opposite directions, Stickie maintains her shoulder blades in a neutral position on both sides.

 

Sometimes for fun, Stickie does the same exercise lying on a foam roller (roller along her spine) or on an Oov.  It feels extra good and adds more challenge.

The Amazing Stickie and Side to Side

The Amazing Stickie is enjoying Side to Side today at Pilates.

She begins by lying on her back with her legs in tabletop position.  She inhales and drops both knees to one side of her body, keeping her shoulders down on the floor.  She exhales to return to the starting position.  On her next inhale, she drops her knees toward the other side of her body.  She continues until she has done a set of ten.

 

When she desires to challenge her body more, she extends the leg that is going to be on top as she drops her knees toward the floor.  In other words, when she drops her legs to the left, she straightens her right knee.  The knee bends again as she returns to the start position.  Then she extends the left knee as she drops her legs to the right.

 

For even more challenge, she does the whole exercise with straight legs.  She begins lying on her back with her legs straight up toward the ceiling.  Both legs drop from side to side, staying straight the whole time.  If she feels any strain in her lower back doing this, she stops right away and goes back to one of the less challenging options.

Why is the answer never "build a blanket fort?"

Risk is inherent in life.  We may not live like Wile E. Coyote, liable to have a safe or a piano dropped on us on a regular basis with only a small pink umbrella to protect us, but the world is sometimes a dangerous place.

The answer, sadly enough, is not that we need to build a blanket fort and hide in it all day reading murder mysteries and eating popcorn (although if anybody wants a play date, let me know!).  It’s preparation.

 

I’m not talking about having an earthquake kit or a first aid kit (even though it’s a good plan).  I’m talking about working on balance.

 

What we need for the routine dangers of our lives is balance.  We need to learn how to react when we unexpectedly step off a curb.  We need our bodies to adjust, automatically, when our toddler grandchild crashes into our legs or when the dog we are walking suddenly tries to chase a squirrel up a tree.

 

Balance comes from, among other things, knowing where our bodies are in space to begin with and from having the strength to adjust to sudden changes.  We can work on improving our balance in lots of ways.  One of the easiest is to practice standing on one foot, maybe while we’re standing at the sink anyway brushing our teeth or when we’re stuck in line at the grocery store.

 

If we want to get more intense about learning balance, we can cart ourselves over to yoga class or the Pilates studio.  It’s just being a good scout:  prepared.

The Amazing Stickie and Bent Knee Opening

Today in Pilates the Amazing Stickie is working on bent knee opening.  This is a great exercise for all the stabilizing muscles of the core.

She begins lying on her back with her legs in tabletop position (thighs perpendicular to the floor, shins parallel to it, feet flexed).  As she inhales, she holds one leg still and opens the other leg to the side.  Then she exhales and returns the leg to the starting position.  The entire time, she keeps her weight even on both sides of her pelvis.  This is more difficult than it sounds.  She does five reps on one side and then five on the other.

 

When she wants additional challenge, she begins by alternating sides (i.e., opening the right leg to the side, returning to center, and then opening the left leg.).

Might take more than one session

Recently I listened to a webinar about Pilates and self-esteem.  I do these things so no one else needs to.  The presenter was very… sincere.  She spent an hour talking very earnestly and here’s what we need to know:  Pilates can improve our self-esteem when we approach the exercises with a sense of curiosity, ready to explore what our bodies can do, rather than with an ego-driven need to succeed (whatever that means) at Pilates.

Simple enough, right?  Sure.  Park all that achievement-minded programming we’ve been receiving at the studio door.  Ignore all those messages about our bodies and what they’re supposed to look like and feel like that have been bombarding us our entire lives.  Defeat the dominant paradigm, and hey, presto!  self-esteem!

 

Well, defeating the dominant paradigm might take more than one session, but we begin with the breath.  Focusing on our breath, coming into our bodies, sensing what we actually feel:  these are the first subversive steps.  They help us let go of all those voices, those distorting mirrors.  We move.  We think about how we move.  We move some more.  And as we keep going, we do get curious.

 

It's a little bit like being a kid.  We’re stuck waiting for the school bus at some random corner of the sidewalk.  At first, we’re bored.  There’s just concrete.  But then we notice the dandelions pushing up through the cracks and the line of ants and the ladybug.  We find a cool stick.  We use the stick to poke around in the pile of last year’s leaves and find a bottle cap and a nickel.  By the time the bus comes, we’re squatted down, fascinated by the trickle of water into a storm drain, totally engaged.

 

Breathe through the boredom.  Find the little bits of interest.  Follow them.

The Amazing Stickie and Bridge

The Amazing Stickie loves Pilates.  Today she is working on bridging, which is an excellent exercise for strengthening glutes and hamstrings, working on spinal mobility, and synchronizing breathing with movement.

She begins lying on her back with her arms at her sides and her knees bent so that her feet are flat on the floor.  She ensures that her feet are hip-distance apart.  Stickie inhales deeply.  As she begins to exhale, she tilts her pelvis toward her belly button.  She continues this curling motion until her behind lifts up into the air and she is a straight line from her shoulders to her knees.  Some of us find that our hamstrings don’t enjoy this process.  Stickie used to have this problem, too, until she learned to imagine pulling her knees out away from her pelvis.

 

Stickie inhales at the top of the motion.  Then, as she exhales, she pulls her hips away from her shoulders and rolls herself down, one vertebra at a time, back to the starting position.

 

Safety note:  Because Stickie doesn’t actually have bones, she is not ever going to get osteopenia or osteoporosis.  Anyone who does have either of those conditions should not roll the spine up or down.  Instead of tilting the pelvis and rolling up, those folks should keep the spine a straight line, lifting the hips straight up toward the ceiling and lowering the same way.

 

Stickie likes to do four or five bridges during her Pilates workout.

The Amazing Stickie and Pelvic Clock

Today the Amazing Stickie is working on her Pilates exercises.  One of her favorites is one of the simplest because it increases her proprioception, helps her maintain a neutral spine in her daily life, and releases any tension she has from prolonged sitting.  She’s demonstrating the pelvic clock.

She begins by lying down on her back, arms at her sides, knees bent so that her feet are flat on the floor.  It is hard to see in the picture, but her spine is maintaining its natural curve in the starting position.  That means that there is a little bit of space between her lower back and the floor, enough for a ladybug to crawl through like a tunnel, but not enough for a badger.  (No, I don’t know why ladybugs or badgers would want to crawl under Stickie’s back.)

 

Stickie is going to do three variations of this exercise, but there are certainly more out there and she encourages everyone to experiment.

 

First, she is going to rock her pelvis up and down her body.  As Stickie exhales, she uses her abdominals to tilt her pelvis back toward her belly button.  (This presses her lower back into the floor and would squish our ladybug friend.)  Then she inhales and tilts her pelvis forward toward her pubic bone.  Working with the breath on this exercise is very useful.  She keeps the movement small to minimize the engagement of her powerful thigh muscles.

 

After several reps, Stickie shifts her attention to moving her pelvis from side to side.  When she does this, she tries to maintain the distance between her ribcage and her pelvis.  She knows that many of us, when we shift our weight from one side of our pelvis to the other, tend to hike our hip up toward our ribcage.  This might look slightly sexier, but does not help.  We want to be using our obliques to practice keeping our pelvis level even as we press one hip bone and then the other into the ground.

 

Then Stickie combines both movements.  She makes pelvic circles by pressing first her belly button, then one hip, then her pubic bone, then the other hip toward the floor.  Some people do this by envisioning a clock lying on their pelvises and pressing down the various numbers (thus the name of the exercise).  Alternatively, Stickie can imagine that she has a shallow bowl of water on her belly and she is swirling the water around.  Of course, she makes circles in both directions.

 

After she is done, her lower back often feels much nicer.

The Amazing Stickie and Roll-Up

Today the Amazing Stickie is working on her spinal articulation.  People who have osteopenia and osteoporosis should not do this exercise; Stickie has no actual bones, so this is not a problem for her.

She begins lying on her back with her arms at her sides (beginning with arms overhead is also all right).  She takes a big inhale.  As she exhales, she curls herself up until she is in a sitting position with her back straight and her arms extended in front of her in what she and I like to call Zombie Position.  She takes a big breath in and then as she exhales she curls back down to the starting position.

 

For those of us who find this too difficult, Stickie is also demonstrating the assisted version of the exercise, which begins with the legs in tabletop position.  The extra leverage from the weight of the legs helps us get our spines off the floor.

 

No matter which option we choose, three to five repetitions are enough.