This exercise, Helicopter, from the Upper Body Series on the Pulley Tower, has a lot to wrap your head around.. There’s the 3×3 pattern that’s broken up by extension and flexion of the elbows. Then there’s the 4 part breathing pattern that lays on top of that. And that’s before we even put you on your feet.
Doing exercises on your feet is essential training for basic life. Most activities of daily living involve being on your feet. What this GYROTONIC® Wingmaster exercise adds to the standing position is a hip hinge, which is one of the 7 primal movements. Primal movements are the building blocks of how we learn to move naturally as we develop when we’re infants and toddlers.
When you do a hip hinge while standing, you change your center of gravity. Learning to keep your balance while also doing purposeful controlled motion, in this case, spiraling from one side to the other, trains you to help keep you from falling while doing every day activities like laundry, pulling things our of your car trunk and playing with your kids. Gyrotonic exercises aren’t for looking like a dancer, they’re functional.
I named this group of exercises “tai chi” because if you take the Wingmaster away and visualize the movement it kind of looks like a movement you’d see in actual tai chi. It’s not an actual tai chi movement, but bicycles or dolphin from the Hamstring Series aren’t actually how to ride a bicycle or how a dolphin moves either. It’s metaphors, man.This version is “reverse tai chi” because you’re spiraling away from your gaze. There is, obviously, a forward version as well.