I am guessing that anyone reading this knows me, and if you know me you know that I am by no means petite, even though I am a dancer. I have taking Reformer Pilates for a while now, trying to get strong, and hopefully slimmer. It has made a lot of changes in my body, even if it hasn’t been really been moving the scale all that much. One of the moves that has been kicking my butt is bridge. I have done this move on the ground, and it’s hard but doable. On the reformer it is even tougher, since your feet are on a bar that is two feet above your ass. After getting up there at all, which took several weeks for me, you push the moving platform out and then bring it back in. This is killer. After two months, I finally was able to do it. I still don’t have it mastered,but I can do it.

Today, Sarah, my teacher had a special surprise—bridges on the chair. The chair has this big movable pedal, and to do the bridge you lie in front of it and place your feet on this moving pedal. Then you bridge up, without letting the petal move. After you get in bridge pose, you can move the pedal up and down slightly “for fun,” Sarah explains. I look at her and laugh, yeah sure that is never going to happen. But I tried, knowing I was going to fail. I got in position, sucking my navel in like there was no tomorrow, pulling down those shoulders and keeping my neck long. Then something amazing happened. I did it! My ass was in the air, the pedal was stable, it was text book. Hell, I even moved the pedal up and down “for fun.” I did it four more times before my legs were shaking too much to move. I am so in awe that I did that. Of course I may not be able to stand tomorrow, who knows.

I tried to find a picture of the move, and couldn’t find one on the chair, so here is the pose:

and here is the Chair: