
Upper body Pilates workout
Workout to strengthen and tone muscles throughout the upper body
- Difficulty: Moderate
- Length: 30 minutes
This class focuses on strengthening through the upper body and uses 0.5-1kg hand weights to challenge the muscles throughout the movements. If you don’t have hand weights then raid the kitchen cupboard for a tin that you can hold in your hand! However, you can also opt not to use hand weights and still give you upper body a good workout! The class begins in standing and then continues down onto our backs on the mat. This class includes:
- Standing chest openings
- Combined bicep curls and squat
- Side plie with spine twist
- roll downs with pendular circles
- arm scissors
- bridging with arm scissors
- one leg stretch with bicep curl
- clam with arm lift
- arm openings
- glute and hamstring stretches
- sitting upper body stretches
We start the class in standing using small weights in our hands we begin to work our upper body with some chests openings. We then start to combine some upper body and leg movements with movements including squats and bicep curls and side plie with a spine twist. Onot our mats with the continue to challenge our upper body and core control with some arm scissors, progressing to combine bridging with this movement. We then work our co-ordination a little more adding some bicep curls to a one leg stretch movement.
Onto our sides we work on strengthening our glutes with a clam exercise adding some arm lifts into the movement to continue to challenge our upper body.
We then cool down with some glute and hamstring stretches and finish the class in sitting with some gentle upper body stretches.