Strengthen Abs with Pilates Double Leg Stretch Exercise - Women's Fitness

Strengthen Abs with Pilates Double 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 Double Leg Stretch. This is a great Pilates exercise, great for strengthening the abdominal muscles because we're increasing the lever. We have the arms and legs moving, so Kimberly is going to go ahead and get in the starting position. We're going to have her laying on her back. And as always you always want to go get into the exercises safely. So she's going to make a nice strong connection between her ribs and her hips. So she's really puling her abdominals in. Its like she's trying to drive her abdominals to the floor underneath her. Hip bones move close to the ribs. From here inhale lifting one leg into table top position, exhale, lifting the other leg making sure that this connection is nice and strong. That is what's going to protect your lower back. Once this connection starts to move, the lower back is in a little bit of a vulnerable position, so you want to make sure you don't do that. So from here you she'll inhale and lengthen the back of her neck, and, exhale, she's going to curl up and reach her hands right outside her knees. So now she's in her starting position. Now there's a lot of debate on the breath. We're going to do the original breath first and then tell you why you might just want to modify it. So she's going to inhale, reach her arms overhead and stretch her legs nice and long, create a long lever. And exhale swing her arms around and scoop up even higher. Inhale, reaching away. So, now the lever length, we're holding up the arms and exhale around. You can keep going. Because we're increasing the length of the lever, it's much more work on the abdominal muscles. 2 more like this, inhale, exhale scoop around. 1 more time, inhale and exhale. Now some people find it, pause for a second, find it hard to recruit the abdominal muscles when you're inhaling. So you can also exhale here and inhale scoop around. Exhale, you might find it easier to tap into the abdominal muscles. 1 more, and scoop around. And then she's going to lower her head and neck first, and then bring one leg down, and then the other leg down. And that is the Double Leg Stretch.