Exercise of the month: Knee Stretch prep with rotations
Merrithew® Lead Instructor Trainer, Bianca Bolissian takes us through a STOTT PILATES® Reformer repertoire from Merrithew Host Training Center, PM Pilates.
This challenging yet effective exercise on the V2 Max™ Reformer is perfect for people who love playing sports as a hobby or even professional athletes wanting to improve their performance.
How does this exercise help improve your game?
For someone who enjoys playing sports or is a professional athlete, this exercise is great to help reduce stiffness in the knees while strengthening the muscles around them. With the perfect mix of rotation and a balance challenge, this workout will help target the knees and ankles, control the movement of the torso, and work on spinal mobility.
These Knee Stretches variations with rotation are a great way to mobilize hips and knees as well as work on hip and knee extensors with control. Due to its unilateral form, this exercise also targets the oblique and multifidus.
This exercise also involves spinal rotations that allow you to work on strengthening the obliques while challenging your balance and control, making it a great exercise to improve activities like golfing.
Check out the upcoming workshops at PM Pilates here.
Transcript:
Hello everyone. I’m Bianca, lead instructor trainer from Merrithew, and today we have Blair here, an intensive student at PM Pilates, one of our hosting centers here in Ontario. So she’s going to be helping me celebrate February 22nd is National Recreational Fitness Day. So today we’re gonna grab a Pilates exercise on the reformer and make it a little bit more sporty right? Adding rotation and a balance challenge. So what we’re gonna do is have Blair stand up and she’s gonna have her hands on the footbar the thighs are going to be, so one leg is on the floor with a knee bent and the thighs are gonna be in line with each other roughly, and the other knee is resting on the carriage.
We have Claire standing on a platform just to help level out the pelvis so just judge accordingly to see if your clients need that too. And then we’re gonna hover this knee off and we have three corridor springs and Blair’s gonna start pushing out and then coming back in. So this is the knee stretcher prep from your reformer certification course manual, and we’re working through the quads, the hip sensor.
And the meanwhile really stabilizing the torso, um, up to the cervical and the head in a nice neutral line, Exxon. So then we’re going to pull it in and stay. And we’re gonna take one hand on the forehead, hover the knee again, and then push it out. So we could easily be doing this on one spring cuz Blair’s super strong and even with one arm, she couldn’t pull this off.
But we are doing three quarters just to make the transition a little bit smoother today. How you doing Blair good. Yes, there. So it started getting harder because now we’re fighting against rotation. Excellent. And then on the next one, you’re gonna rest Blair. We’re gonna hop over to the other side and Blair’s gonna be doing the other leg now, and we’re gonna create some progressions now.
So come on uh, same position, nice length, and open the chest. Good. And now take both hands on the forehead and when you’re ready just go over it and push away and come back. How about we take that quarter spring off there just Yes
So still work on that rotational control with your oblique she’s working really hard but beautifully. And then come back in. Now this is the surprise rotation. We’re going to push the carriage and rotate towards the front bent leg. So rotate and reach, feel breath into rotating on the axis of the spine in the opposition of the head.
Reaching one way and the leg. The other one last one. Clear. Good measure. Excellent. And then come back in and stay. Beautiful. There you can Come on down. Awesome. Thank you so much. So it’s very cool to know, be able to grab an exercise. So used to doing and things are so controlled in that neutral and then throwing in some balance and then some rotation, and that way it’s gonna be more functional because it mimics a walking gate, running type situation.
And then also very applicable to any sports that we need a lot of rotations. So Blair thank you so much for being here with me at PM Pilates, thank you for being our hosting center, and we’ll see you the next time. Bye.
Source: https://www.merrithew.com/blog/post/2023-02-27/exercise-of-the-month-knee-stretch-prep-with-rotations
