What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
I want to show you today four stretches that you should do every morning.
I know a lot of us don’t stretch because A: we don’t know what to do; and B: we’re
not really sure how we’re supposed to do it.
So, I want to cover both of those here in one shot.
I talk about doing it in the morning.
Why?
Because a lot of time what we do overnight when were resting is actually reinforcing
tightness that we’ve developed from the day before.
If we worked out the day before we tend to heal and shorten overnight.
Then we wake up stiff.
It doesn’t have to be that way because there are some things you can do right off the bat.
What are some of the problems when you sleep?
Well, we know if, let’s say you’re a side sleeper.
When you look at your position of your arm under the pillow, if it’s propped up like
this, you’re going to get some internal rotation tightness in your shoulder.
We want to make sure we address that.
Also, in this position a lot of times you’re laying on your side and you’ll pull your
knees up.
Your legs are squeezed together.
You’re going to get hip flexor tightness.
You’re going to get adductor tightness.
We want to fix that.
Maybe you’re a stomach sleeper.
There again, your arms are up underneath your head like this.
Internal rotation of the shoulders.
You’ll want to do something about that.
And of course, you can go down to your heels or calves.
If you’re laying on your stomach your feet are going to be pointed downward, which is
going to tighten up your calves.
The same thing happens even if you’re on your back.
Your ankles are getting pulled down by the sheets, you have your head propped up, your
thoracic spine get stretched out.
You need to be able to extend through that.
So, all these things are things we can address here right off the bat.
So, it starts off right away with a dynamic exercise.
Five reps of this is all it takes because we don’t want to overstretch the hamstrings,
but we know the hamstrings can be chronically tight in a lot of people, but we also know
– as I covered in my anterior pelvic tilt video – overstretching your hamstrings is
not a good idea.
But they can still feel stiff.
So, what you do is reinforce two good things at once.
Number one: get through the hamstrings.
Number two: learn the hip hinge.
We don’t hip hinge enough.
Whenever we try to bend down, we often bend from the knees.
What we want to learn how to do is bend from the hips.
Hinge from the hips.
It’s one of the most critical movement patterns we can do.
So, what you want to do first thing is get into an anterior pelvic tilt.
Try to tilt your pelvis forward, arch your low back, and then slide down with your hands
down your knees, and come back up.
Hinge, hinge, hinge from knees, back from the hips here, and come up.
Hinge, you’ll feel a good stretch on your hamstrings if you do this right.
It’s much different than doing this.
I could do this.
I can’t do that from that position because I’ve taken that slack out of the hamstrings
by being in that anterior pelvic tilt.
But that is how you want to do it.
So, there’s your first move.
Your second move it more of a stretch.
What we do is come down from that position, straight down to the ground, right in through
here.
You’re going to go with your palms down, fingers backward.
Down, drive your elbows into your legs, and then from here you’re going to push your
thighs into the back of your elbows.
So, what is that doing?
It’s stretching out my forearms here, which tend to get tight if you’re typing a lot
throughout the day.
Stretching out my upper arms and, of course, I’m getting that groin stretch here.
A deep groin stretches and deep hip flexors just by being in this position here.
So, my elbows are acting to drive my legs out and down.
I try to keep my chest up, thoracic extension, and heels down.
So, we work on that calf tightness, too.
So, I’m in here about 30 seconds.
Then I come up.
I’m already feeling pretty damn loose.
The next thing I do, the third stretch.
Grab some kind of stick.
A Swiffer stick.
Anything.
Anything you can use.
What you do is drop down, one leg back, and the other hand up here on the stick.
We drop in to get a good hip flexor stretch right here on the back leg.
What I’m trying to do is open this area up.
Don’t stay in here.
Open that area up.
But we can make this even more intense by getting rotation in this direction and leaning
in this direction.
So, if we take the other arm up and then lean in that direction it opens up so much.
Right there.
You’ve even got this lat that tends to get tight and you have that back-hip flexor.
Again, you have thoracic extension through the back here.
Opening this up.
Not rounding.
Anything you can do to get long and tall is good.
Of course, you do that on both sides really quickly.
30 seconds.
Then my favorite I saved for last here.
Think about a golf swing.
This is how you perform this.
What you do is throw the dowel over your shoulder here and you let it dissect your bicep here.
Then you reach across like this, and then you sink in, and let that hook on your leg.
So, I took it from here, I get it out in front, it’s hooked over here.
It’s right down the middle of my bicep.
My arm is about 90 degrees here.
What’s going on here, as I move my thigh forward, I’m getting external rotation here
of the arm.
Just like that.
External rotation of the shoulder.
Then I take the other side, I reach across, and hook my pinky – if I can – one finger,
onto this pinky.
So, I get the backside over here.
Posterior delt, backside over there.
Then I rotate.
I rotate and I’ve got rotation and backward leaning.
So, I have this extension through the thoracic spine once again.
This just feels horrible, but amazing at the same time.
In like that, and rest, and then in.
30 second on this side, and then 30 seconds on the other side.
Again, the components are all there.
I’ve got external rotation, I’ve got thoracic extension, I’ve loosened up my hips.
I’ve got my hip flexors to be more loose.
When I was down in this position here, I was stretching out the adductors in the groin.
You’re going to feel great.
You should be stretching every day, guys.
But don’t make it take a whole hell of a lot of time.
Follow the advice I’m showing you here.
Implement these.
Do it in two to three minutes and I promise you’re going to feel better for the rest
of the day.
Realize that you are doing good things to your body when you train in the gym, but that
can sometimes lead to tightness if you don’t address it when you wake up in the morning.
Even if you address some stretches at night.
Try those out, guys.
I promise you’re going to like them.
In the meantime, if you’ve found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up
below.
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All right, I’ll see you soon.