Pilates Stretch Band Exercises: Standing Stretches

Video Transcript

"This is a series of standing leg stretches. The first one that we are going to do is going to be stretching the inner thigh. Go ahead and bring your legs a little bit farther than hip distance apart, bend over so that your back is flat, your hands can be hanging and they can be on the side of your legs, head in line with the spine and just rock one hip over feeling the stretch all along that inner thigh. Inhale here, and exhale rock to the other side, generally every stretch should be held for 30 seconds but for demonstration purposes, I won't be doing that. The next stretch I'm going to turn to my side so that you can see the stretch but you don't need to. We are going to go ahead and we'll be down like this. We are going to lower our hands and lower our head and just hang there. Go ahead and bring your hands to the back of your leg wherever your level of flexibility allows and just give it a gentle tug, trying to fold the torso in half. From here bring the hands down or let them hand depending on your flexibility, take a nice inhale and exhale, bend one knee, keeping the other leg entirely straight and just sink into that stretch. Hold it for 30 seconds and then inhale, straighten that knee and exhale bend into the other side and you'll feel that stretch all along the leg up into the lower back. After 30 seconds, inhale and exhale straighten, inhale one more time and exhale engage the abs and curl up one vertebra at a time."