How to Do Pilates Hundred Exercise – part of the women’s fitness video series by GeoBeats.

Hi, we’re Kimberly and Katherine Corp. We own Pilates on Fifth here in Manhattan, and today we would like to show you the Hundred, which is a, an original Pilates exercise, great for strengthening the abdominal muscles and great for abdominal endurance. So Katherine will go ahead and lay on her back, and we’ll start with her legs bent in a nice comfortable position. Now right now she’s in neutral, which means your hip bone and your pubic bone, that triangle, are the same horizontal plane, like you can balance a cup of soup here. What we’ll do first is we’ll use the abdominal muscles to roll to the imprinted or supported position where the lower back comes close to the mat, and the hip bones and the ribs come closer together. So you want to think of shortening this distance so that you protect the lower back. From here we inhale. Pick one leg up into the table top position. See a little table, and then exhale. The other leg comes up to the table top position. Now throughout the Hundred, you may keep the legs here in table top position, but we’ll show it with the legs extended. So first we will inhale and tilt chin slightly. On the exhale, curl the head and shoulders off the mat gazing at the knees. Now from here she’ll straighten her legs as well, and then we’ll pump the arms just an inch up and inch down and here we go. We inhale 2, 3, 4, 5, and exhale. Keep squeezing the inner thighs together, 2. Inhale, 3, 4, 5 and exhale. Pull the belly button down, good and then 3, inhale and exhale. Keep the collar bone nice and wide, and 4, inhale. And exhale. Keep energy reaching through the legs. 5, inhale and exhale. Notice how she’s keeping her abs flat, good. And 6 inhale, and exhale. Inner thighs stay engaged. This is 7, inhale and exhale. Good, and 8 inhale, and exhale. 2 more sets, 9 inhale and exhale. Last set 2, 3, 4, 5, exhale 2, 3, 4, 5. To finish, inhale. Bend the knees, and scoop up higher. Exhale. First put the head and shoulders down and then put the legs down one at a time. That keeps the lower back nice and protected. And then you are finished with the Hundred.