Upper Body Home Pilates Workout

1. Sternum Drops: Repeat 12 times

• Start with your wrists stacked under your shoulders
• Keeping a flat back, allow the sternum to lower towards the ground - gliding your shoulder blades together.
• Imagine pushing your thoracic spine to the sky, broadening and gliding shoulder blades away from each other. Try to push the ground away.
• Move between these motions.

Tip: Imagine your torso is an elevator moving between your arms.

2. Bird Dog: Repeat 12 times

• Start with your wrists stacked under your shoulders. Knees stacked under hips.
• Lengthen your opposite arm to leg long and in line with the spine. Alternate arm and leg.

Tip: Focus on keeping your hips facing the ground. The height of the leg and arm are going to be different for everyone. Don’t force them up - avoid arching through the back and dipping your belly to the ground! The goal is stability.

3. Tricep Circles: Repeat 8 times

• Start with your wrists stacked under your shoulders. Knees stacked under hips.
• Bend your elbows towards the waist.
• Shifting your weight so that your shoulders are over your fingers, push back up into the starting position. Repeat.

Tip: Repeat in reverse for an extra challenge!

4. Tricep Press: Repeat 5 times per extended leg

• Extend 1 leg behind you.
• Bending through your elbows, keeping tight to your waist. Lower your body to tap chin to ground.
• Make sure you keep a long line from head to toe as you tricep press.
• Switch legs.

Tip: Imagine you’re a tippy bird.

5. Swimmers: 20 alterations

• Laying on your belly, reach your arms and legs long.
• Slightly push your pubic bone into the floor, engage and lift through the core. Avoid pressing your belly into the floor. Activate your quads.
• Squeezing through your glute and shoulder blades, lift into a dish shape.
• Flutter your arms and legs as if you’re swimming.

Tip: As long as you feel like you’ve lifted; how much you lift doesn’t matter, your range will increase over time.

6. Plank To Pike: Repeat 10 times

• Find a high plank position. Wrists stacked under shoulders, keeping your hips down.
• Lift your hips up towards the sky, pushing back towards your feet, creating an A shape with the body.
• Lower back into a plank. Repeat.

Tip: Depending on your hamstring flexibility you may find it nicer to have a soft bend in your knees when up in pike, your heels don’t need to touch the ground.
Want a challenge? Hover one leg off the ground, as you pike lift your leg to the sky in line with the spine.

7. Pilates Inchworm with push up: Repeat 5 times

• Start standing on the short edge of your mat.
• Sweep your arms up overhead. Dive forward curving and rolling through the spine to reach your hands to the floor.
• Walk out into a plank position and take a wide push up. Elbows pointing at a 45 degree angle from your body.
• Walk hands back to feet into a forward fold. Ripple through the spine to sweep hands back over head. Repeat.

Tip: Imagine that you’re trying to curl up into a ball. Let the spine curve, don’t hinge at the hips to roll down. Drop to knees for the push up.