How to Do Pilates One Leg Stretch Exercise - Women's Fitness

How to Do Pilates One Leg Stretch Exercise - part of the women's fitness video series by GeoBeats. Hello, we're Katherine and Kimberly Corp. We own Pilates on Fifth in New York City, and we would like to show you the Pilates exercise, One Leg Stretch. Kimberly's going to lie on her back. This is sometimes also called Single Leg Stretch, depending on the program that you are with. First creating a nice strong connection with the abdominal muscles, moving her lower spine towards the floor. It doesn't have to touch, but you just want to create that nice strong connection between the hip bones and the rib cage, obviously metaphorical connection. Now she's going to lift one leg at a table-top position and then the other leg into table-top position without that connection changing. Now she'll inhale, nod the chin slightly, exhale curling up so her head and shoulders are off that the nice and long neck. You don't want to jam your chin into your chest, go ahead and jam it, ya, we don't want those muscles to jam out here. And then she's going to place her hands by her knees and here we go. So exhale stretch one leg away and inhale to switch, exhale and inhale to switch. Now this is a slower version just to get the movement right. Now some programs have you pulling the knee all the way into the chest, which is a nice variation as well, both are correct. You feel a little bit more of hip flexes stretch but you get a little bit more abdominal work if you stop the knee about a 90 degrees. But we can also pick up the pace here. So she can do inhale-inhale and exhale-exhale. So when you move the pace up a little bit faster so you're challenging a little bit more of the stability. You don't want to be wiggling or rocking back and forth. We'll just do 2 more, and inhale-inhale, last time exhale-exhale. To finish bring both knees together, curl up a little bit higher, and then exhale the head and shoulders come down first, and then one foot down, and then the other foot down. And that is the Pilates, One Leg Stretch.