I love working out on the Pilates Wunda Chair. It has strong springs that can feel intimidating at first because they really challenge your muscles – but that’s exactly why I love the work! A Pilates Wunda Chair is a compact piece of Pilates equipment with a padded seat on top and one or two spring-loaded pedals underneath, designed for full-body strength, balance and control work.
As Pilates instructors, every session is adjusted to the client we are working with, so the chair stays safe and effective for all levels. It is incredibly versatile (far more than it even looks), and strength work can easily be layered in that progresses from Beginner to intermediate to advanced work, without losing good form.
This sequence is one of my favorites; you’ll see beginner, intermediate, and advanced options all on the same exercise, demonstrated by yours truly. Save this for your next Chair lesson and let me know which level you tried!
Beginner Wunda Chair – Swan
In the beginning, trunk stabilization is taught. Start by draping yourself over the chair. Focus on lengthening and extending the back while stretching the front of the torso.
Intermediate Wunda Chair – Swan Dive
To progress, lift up, and really challenge yourself to extend up.
Advanced Wunda Chair – Low Chair Twist II
Add twisting and rotation to the exercise. Whenever you are rotating, it’s advancing the exercise as it is the transverse plane. Because it makes the movement more advanced it challenges your muscles in a new way on this plane of motion. Twisting recruits more of the obliques and deep spinal rotators, improving core stability and control around the spine and hips. Multi-planar movements (like adding rotation) improve functional strength, balance and joint integrity, which can reduce injury risk and carry over better to real-life tasks and activities.
The main thing is that you want to make sure you can internalize by keeping your belly button drawn into the spine and lengthen through the crown of your head.
Teaser and Table on the Wunda Chair
Here are two more of my favorite workouts. The Pilates Teaser can be a hard exercise to perform even on the Pilates Mat, but I like to challenge my clients even more by having them perform it on the Wunda Chair.
Start by extending the legs by keeping your palms on the pedal. The springs will provide resistance.
To progress, remove your arms and perform a teaser lift but reaching up!
The Table on the Wunda starts with your chest open and lifted, pumping without moving your hips, and ending by gracefully sitting it down and stretching it forward. Let’s see the Table in this short video:
As you can see the Pilates Wunda Chair not only trains core strength and trunk stability, it builds leg and glute strength and upper- body strength as well. Additionally, it will challenge balance, coordination, and control in standing, seated, side-lying and prone positions on a very small base of support. The smaller the foundation, the greater the physical challenge.
Do you want to give these a try? Book an appointment for yourself today. Calendly.com/lowcountrypowerpilates, email Lowcountrypowerpilates@gmail.com or DM 843-901-9476.
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