So, let's face it, you don't have all day to work out, and I get it. However, are you just
working out and forgetting to do maybe some of the other things that are going to make your body feel
better, namely stretching? Well, today I'm going to show you five stretches that you're forgetting
to do completely, and your body's paying the price for it. I'm going to show you not only what to do,
but when the best time to do them is let's start breaking them down one by one.
All right, so in order to help you out, I'm going to need you to do two things for me. First thing
is, pull up a chair and then take a seat. And not only are we going to sit here and actually learn
what we need to do to fix these muscle tightness, but we're actually going to do the first stretch.
And the first muscle that I want you to target that you're forgetting right now is called the
peroneal muscles. And it's a muscle group actually on the outside of our lower leg. And probably
if you just run your hand up and over this area here, you might feel that it gets kind of painful.
Oftentimes, this muscle can get tight, people with flat feet, because as their arches collapsed down,
this muscle becomes shorter and shorter. So how do we target this? All you got to do
from the sitting position is take the soles of your feet and put them flat together,
which is going to require you to roll them out. And from this position here, we've got a good
stretch because those muscles wrap under the foot. Now I want to use our hands on the seat
and just try to stand up as much as we can, bring our knees together. You're going to be limited by
the tightness in this muscle and you'll feel it here. And that's what you want that good stretch
for about a minute to a minute and a half. Now, you can do this at any time of the day. You can do
it at night, as I recommend most static stretches, or you can simply do it during the day because
it's going to make you feel better. Just make sure you stop forgetting this muscle altogether.
The second muscle you're forgetting all about, I really can't blame you because
you can't even see it. It's not only one of those out of sight, out of my muscles, but it's actually
one you can't even touch. And we're talking about the subscapularis because it's actually underneath
this shoulder blade. You can see it's the one that runs right up under here and you can't
even palpate it even if you wanted to. But it doesn't mean that it's not doing its damage by
becoming tight and we need to do something about it. And how do we do that? With one of these,
just a regular broom, a mop or anything, a PVC pipe that you could use as a dowel.
And all you have to do is just throw it over your shoulder like this, as if you're carrying
a jacket. You line it up with the middle of your bicep, and then you reach in front and grab the
broomstick from the front side. And then you open your chest up nice and wide and start to pull
up on that stick. And what this is doing is you can see it's getting external rotation
at the shoulder. That subscapularis muscle is ironically one of the rotator cuff muscles,
but it's the only one that internally rotates the shoulder of the four.
You obviously have a lot more inter rotation going on with other muscles too, so you want
to make sure you're doing your best to increase your range of motion into external rotation. This
stretch is one that you can do any time during the day. Hold it for 45 to 60 seconds. Make sure
you work both sides, and I promise the shoulder of yours is going to feel a hell of a lot better.
I think we all can agree that we've become pretty imbalanced people, at least pastorally. We lost
the war against gravity a long time ago because we've let those anterior chain muscles pull us
down and forward without doing enough work for those posterior chain muscles to create that
balance so that we need. However, it's actually one of those anterior chain muscles that we never
even focus our attention on that's doing a lot of the damage. And the easiest way to fix that
is with one of these. Yes, there's actually still a use for a physio ball. And the muscle
we're talking about is the rectus abdominals, the abs. The function of which is to pull your
ribcage closer to your pelvis. It also tends to round out the upper back contributing
to this poor posture that we have. But we can stretch it with this physio ball
simply by allowing ourselves to contour over the ball. And you do that first by dropping your hips
down, allowing them to drop over the front side of the ball and pull those arms up over your
head. And what this is doing is creating that separation that we're looking for between the
lower ribs here and your pelvis. That's going to place a really nice stretch on the abs, 45 to 60
seconds at a time, 2 to 3 times a day, especially if you're demonstrating either that rounded
shoulder posture or if you just sit a lot. The fourth muscle you're forgetting all about
is another one of those out of sight, out of mind, or actually out of touch muscles,
because this one is really, really deep and we're talking about the QL or the Quadratus lumborum.
You can see that it's the muscle that attaches here to your pelvis and then to the vertebrae
in your lumbar spine. And what it does is it hikes the hip up from one side or the other.
We oftentimes don't even sit right, right. We're doing too much sitting as it is, but we don't even
sit properly because we usually choose one cheek over the other. And what happens there is when you
do it, you get that lateral shift and then that hip will get higher and shorten this muscle. So,
what are we supposed to do about it? Well, we've got to stretch it. And the best way to do this
is what we call a QL slide, you get to this all fours position, you're going to slide one leg
back just like that, allow it to drop down to the ground so that the outside of your hip hits the
ground. And you can see that muscle is actually being targeted nicely here, stretching from the
top of that pelvis and through that lumbar spine, getting some of the lateral flexion that drops the
hip down, but also allowing you to post off of this arm over here to intensify the stretch.
And again, we hold this for about a minute or a minute and a half, making sure we do both sides.
Not only will you start to feel looser in this area, but for those of you that have a lot of
back pain that's unexplainable, this is oftentimes the cause. Start working this in and I promise you
you're going to feel a lot better. And that brings us to muscle group number five and maybe it's
actually one you even try to stretch and we're talking about the lats. And if this is what you're
doing to stretch it, can I ask you to consider something different? I actually made an entire
video on how to stretch the last and it's actually going to help you to stretch that QL at the same
time, you can watch that right here. And if you haven't done so, guys,
make sure your click Subscribe to turn on your Notifications, so you never miss a
video when we put one out. If you're looking for a complete step-by-step program, we have
them all available over at Athleanx.com. All right, guys, I'll see you soon.