Hamstring Curls at Pilates

It felt great to be back in the pilates studio in the new year. I have slacked off a little on stretches, but kept with the HIIT and barre work via Aaptiv. To be honest, I have no inclination to join a gym and be tied to a monthly payment for a year. Heh. I haven't found any gym that offers a model of a shorter commitment in the form of a 5 or 10-classes payment scheme that I'm comfortable with.  

Once back in the studio, the instructor made quick work of killing reminding my muscles how under-used they had been although I've been doing squats, burpees, press-ups, planks and lunges. For all these HIIT I've been doing, somehow, these weren’t sufficiently working the adductors or obliques! Oh dear. 😱

Not enough effort in this one, apparently.

I really dislike hamstring curls on the Reformer. It takes so much effort just to move the carriage a few inches. Those tiny movements and a limited range totally isolate the hamstrings to make them work. The exercise is really effective though. Hamstring curls work the lazy glutes too. Gotta keep the hamstrings supple instead of have them coiled tight. A hamstring pull is no fun. 

When the instructor added a chest extension to the exercise, I wasn't allowed to compensate with the spine. I was supposed to initiate the movement with the hamstrings, till the last bit, then the spine could extend and have the chest rise up a tad more. Ugh. That was tough. The glutes and hamstrings were screaming. They were lazy and didn't want to put in any effort.

Luckily I didn't fix any exercise session for the next day. I had a busy schedule of back-to-back calls. I ached all of the next day, and I took many of those calls standing up or stretched out flat on the floor. 😂 But the aches dissipated overnight and on that following day, I had no more aches. Ready to go again. Hahahah.

Ideal angles. Although the hamstrings could curl up more. Higher.