Over the past year or so I began video documenting myself performing various Pilates exercises. The purpose of this is 3-fold: 1) to document exercise ideas, 2) to serve as a visual tool in finessing these exercise ideas, and 3) to critique my own form during certain exercises. I returned to teaching from maternity leave recently and found myself visiting some of these videos for inspiration. While reviewing these videos I thought why not share these with the world? They offer an interesting peek at the exercise creation process, plus show off some of the fun exercises that Bodytonic Pilates clients perform.
My video debut features advanced Teaser variations. I start with the Teaser simply because it is a classic. I created this particular video more so to critique my own form as the variations seen in this video have long been in my advanced client's repertoire. The video starts out with me performing a few basic teasers, then I gradually move through a few advanced variations. I never intended for anyone to watch these videos aside from myself, so please forgive funny hairdos and faces. :)
My main critique to myself:
Slow down. :) (something I frequently ask of my clients)
Be more mindful of harnessing iliopsoas with regards to hip versus lumbar flexion.
Now for a little anatomy geek-out. Iliopsoas is a group of muscles: iliacus, psoas major, and psoas minor. Iliacus flexes the hip, rotates the pelvis anteriorly, rotates the hip externally, and creates transverse pelvic rotation contralaterally when the ipsilateral femur is stabilized. Psoas major and minor does all the iliacus does, plus flexes the lumbar spine, laterally flexes the spine, and rotates the pelvis laterally to the contralateral side. During this teaser I needed to tease out lumbar flexion from spine flexion to create more lumbar stability. Pun intended. Hardy-har-har!
Comments