Monday, June 8, 2009

The Whole Intermediate System

This morning was my regular pilates appointment with Nicole. When I got there she gave me a sneaky grin and announced that she thought we should go through the entire intermediate system on the reformer. Before starting I thought that maybe I wasn't crazy about that idea, but it turns out that it was actually a really good workout and it was fun to learn some of the new exercises.

I think my favorite new exercise is the side split. I wish that I was super flexible and could get down really far into splits, but standing up on the reformer and going into splits was fun. We also did front splits, which weren't quite as fun, although I still was curious to see how far I could go.

I also wonder where some of these exercises get their names. Like Elephant, for instance. This requires that you hold on with your hands to the foot bar and put your feet against the headrests (describing this in words sounds a lot more backwards than it really is) and then push the carriage backwards with your legs, keeping your arms still. When would an elephant ever make that sort of movement, I wonder? The better question is probably would an elephant ever stand on rollers and move its back legs while keeping its front legs still? My guess is probably not. And I'm 100% sure that if an elephant did that, they wouldn't keep their abdominals tucked in and up the whole time.

Regardless of the names of the exercises, today's workout was definitely a challenge for a lot of exercises. I have found that doing them the first time can be a little awkward, so I'm hoping that the next time I won't be quite as uncoordinated.

1 comment:

  1. Your pilates descriptions have really piqued my interest! I'm very curious to learn more. Wish I had the time to take a class...maybe in the fall.

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