Arm Circles Pilates Reformer Exercise

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is April Plank with Yoga Etc. Studio on behalf of Expert Village. In this clip, we will be working with the arm circles on the Pilates Reformer. So Helen is going to help me out today with this exercise. I am going to have her first start by just coming a little bit away from the shoulder rest. That will give her some room to work here. So go ahead and grab onto those hand straps and reach the arms straight up to the ceiling. She will engage the abdominals and lift the leg up into a tabletop making sure the legs stay glued together. Good. She will inhale to repair. On the exhale, the arms are going to come down towards the sides and she will open them out in a big circle reaching them out and around and back up to her starting position. We will do several times in this direction. It is real important that the shoulders stay down and back and the shoulder blades stay sliding together so it is called scapular attraction. The shoulder blades slide down the back and that will hep her stabilize a little bit better. Good. One more in this direction exhaling down, inhaling out and around. Now she will stop in the center and we will go ahead and reverse. So she is going to go out and around and really use those lap muscles to pull the arms down to the side, inhale back up. Great. Again, exhaling out, around, pulling and back up. Nice. We will do that one more time keeping those legs very active and pressing together. Good. Arms will come back up to the ceiling to finish and then you can release the feet to the foot bar and relax. Great job and that was the arm circles on the Pilates Reformer."