A good stretching routine is vital to a healthy lifestyle and injury prevention. If you are sick of feeling tight and stiff, this info is for you! All you need is five minutes for this stretching routine, consisting of 5 different stretches. If you want the best results, employ this routine every single day. Each stretch you do for about a minute. Watch the video below to see this stretching routine in real-time.
The first stretch is a lateral neck stretching exercise. You start off by putting your hand on top of your head and pulling it to one side. When you do that. you’re going to feel the tension on the opposite side of the neck. You can rotate your head up and down, varying the angle, so that you can feel the stretch in different places. You’re going to do both sides for about 30 seconds each side. That’s a great first stretch to start the day.
Next is the cat-cow stretch. Start off on your hands and knees, with your hands directly below your shoulders and knees below your hips. The first step what we call neutral – with your back and neck straight and your head looking forward. Next, touch your chin to your chest and when you do that, you arch your mid-back, try and push your mid-back to the ceiling and get a good stretch. Hold that for about five to ten seconds and then return to neutral. Back and forth, back and forth for about 10 seconds.
The third stretch is on your back. What we’re going to do now is a posterior chain or a hamstring stretch. For this stretch, you will need a towel or exercise band. Wrap the towel or band around the bottom of the foot. Next, keeping the leg straight and your opposite leg on the ground, pull the leg upright until you feel a pull and a stretch in your hamstrings. You’re going to do both sides, 30 seconds each side.
From here, we’re going to move to a calf stretch. In this stretch, we want to work the back part of the lower leg. Bring the leg all the way down onto the floor (compared to the hamstring stretch) and you can keep the towel exactly where it is around the foot. And now just pull the towel, stretching the foot towards you, and you’re going to feel the pull in the back of the calf.
For the very last stretch, we need to be in a half-kneeling position, resting on one knee. This is a psoas stretch or anterior hip stretch. Maintain a straight, upright spine. We start to shift our weight forward, keeping the back nice and straight until you feel the stretch and the pull in the front of the hip. That’s the psoas stretch. You can come on back up and switch legs to do the opposite side.
This is a perfect five-minute stretching routine that you can do every single day. If you have any questions send them our way and if you experience a significant amount of pain during any of these stretches, give our office a call so we can get you moving and feeling better!
