Pilates Reformer - Warm Up

Tanya Merryman: Hi there! I'm Tanya Merryman, and today I'm showing you how to do a full body workout on Pilates Reformer Machine. I'm going to go into the warm-up with these exercises. Before I lay down, and do my warm up, I want to make sure I adjust the controls.

So I want to have all my resistant straps on. When I lay down the footbar, I'm going to enter the machine by laying my feet on the footbar, laying back onto the carriage and having the shoulder pads rest above my shoulders and just relaxing my hands by my side.

In Pilates, it's so important to focus on our breathing. As we do the breathing, it really heats up our body and allows us to be properly warmed up before we start our exercises. So as my feet are pressed up against the footbar, I'm going to place my hands on my ribcage, again, take a nice big inhale, feeling my ribs expand, exhale, making some noise, relaxing my jaw. Let's do a few more.

So I'm feeling my ribcage expand, as I exhale and contracting those ribs down, and they're sinking into the carriage. That's really important to create that stability in our body for all of our exercises. Again, inhaling, exhaling. Once I feel my ribcage and my breathing is under control, I want to make sure that I'm pressing my pelvis against the carriage, and I'm keeping my hipbones flat.

So I can press my hands against my hip bones, and I'm going to prepare to go into some leg presses. I inhale, relaxing my jaw, exhaling, lengthening, extending my legs out. Going nice and slow, making sure my hips are flat, exhaling out, feeling my ribcage engaged, making sure my alignment is good, so my neck and shoulders are relaxed on all of my movements as we're focusing the work on the core.

Now a lot of times, our neck and shoulder wants to create tension, and do some other work. But we want to make sure we keep the work through the core of our body. On this particular one, we're actually helping use our leg muscles as we extend and lengthen the body out. You'll be seeing this exercise again with some variations, in the lower body exercises, in the next clip.

Go three more. We like to work at a rep range about 12 repetitions in Pilates always focusing on our form. It's not how fast you go, it's the quality of the movement. As you figure body temperature heat up, your warm-up is complete.

Now that we're properly warmed up, and we've learned our breathing pattern, which we're going to be using in all of our Pilates reformer exercises, in the next clip, you'll see a lower body workout that I have planned for you. Some of those exercises will repeat again, but there'll be definitely some variations. So I'll see you in the next clip.