The leg circles exercise is the next exercise to explore building up from fundamentals to the full exercise.
Good warm-ups for leg circles include knee sides, heel slides, and heel slide knee side combinations which become knee circles. So you could do 5 repetitions of all three options.
The knee circles are done in both directions (always circle inwardly towards centerline first when doing leg circling movement in pilates mat), or you can choose to do just one or two of the warm-ups.
In the warm-ups, focus on keeping the hips still by land marking the peace fingers on the hip bones to feel that the hips don’t move and cue to use/engage/activate the ‘powerhouse’ or second press point (transverses abdominus and multifidus muscles that stabilize the pelvis) to achieve this.
Then you can do the modified basic level of leg circles with the leg in table top to focus on the femur ball rolling in the hip socket of the pelvis. Then you do leg circles, focusing on really straightening the leg with the ankle extended (point foot with toes relaxed) and really emphasize elongating the leg so that the knee if fully stretched and it feels like someone is pulling it to maximize quadriceps strengthening and psoas eccentric firing.
The size of the circle ranges between the size of an orange to the size of a hula hoop depending on one’s ability to keep the pelvis still. Encourage students to press the palms and back arms into the floor to stabilize the upper body and keep the ribs knitted and down or 4th press point engaged I usually do 8 leg circles in each direction with a knee to chest stretch in between sides as I find 5, the traditional number of repetitions for this exercise, is not quite enough with all the cueing required so I give a few extra to get the exercise going and to change sides.
The opposite leg can be bent or stretched; if it is bent, I remind students to keep the knee still and if the knee is moving to decrease the size of the circle so that stability of the pelvis can be maintained as the leg circles around. If it is stretched, then I focus on elongating the leg and stretching the knee fully just like the circling leg.