This 5-minute daily stretching routine includes specific stretches targeting different muscle groups, promoting a balanced range of motion without the need to strive for extreme flexibility. Embrace your body’s uniqueness and discover the joy of a daily stretching habit…especially if you aren’t inherently or genetically flexible (yes, not all humans have the same capabilities for stretching…and that’s totally okay!).
Join David now and begin to unlock the benefits of a consistent daily stretching routine!
Video Source: Bodyworks DW Youtube Channel
Author & Host: David Weintraub LMT
DW: Hi I’m David Weintraub, the owner of Bodyworks DW!
I wanted this to be a really easy program that was simple, fast and easy to do. And just enough to cover the whole body.
A lot of our lives are spent sitting, typing, looking at screens…and getting more and more crunched. Then lifting our backs and trying to fight that. And eventually everything just gets like really crunched in and tight.
You basically want to take one ankle over knee. And you’re going to think about folding at the hip sockets here. Not curling, but actually folding in. And the first thing you’ll notice as I start doing this stretch is I’m not holding it.
I’m doing a style of stretching called activated isolated stretching, where you only hold the stretch for about a second, and then release it. And you’ll do sets of about 10 on each side.
There’s a really good reason for this!
Our bodies have something called the stretch reflex proprioceptor, which is designed to tell your brain whether or not your muscle is in danger of being torn. So anytime that you hold a stretch and it triggers that, and it’s actually a lot easier to do than you think, it sends a signal to your brain. That signal says oh, this is a little dangerous, this muscle might tear, and your brain says oh…that’s not a good idea. Then it sends a signal back to tighten the muscle and protect it.
So anything that you do holding a stretch for longer than 2 seconds (without really conscious breathing and relaxing over 30-40 seconds) is likely to trigger that and basically leave you without much benefit past that two seconds.
Notice I’m not hard bouncing. I’m very lightly going in and then letting it go.
So, imagine you’re between two panes of glass. You’re just going to curl sideways.
On the last one we wanted to do a fold as if you’re folding a joint at an angle. On this one we want to do a curl.
So you’re going to curl your body sideways, and that allows you to get the stretch all along the curl and not just at one point.
You’ll see that concept come up in many stretches…it’s either going to be a focused point that you’re trying to create an angle with or it’s going to be a curl along a whole edge of your body.
Your rotator cuff is a set of four muscles that does this.
To start this variation you’re just going to wrap your arms around. So you put one elbow on top of the other and then wrap your hands like that (like eagle arms in yoga). What you’re gonna do is try to pull your arms apart and you’re gonna use your arms to keep yourself from doing that. And the engagement of pulling like that is gonna stretch the muscle.
I’m sort of pulling and pulsing one second each and not just holding it.
I know it doesn’t look like I’m doing that much because nothing’s really changing (on the screen) but I am just sort of doing that.
So your pecs are the big muscle that we think of from doing push-ups.
Basically I’m going to roll my shoulders back and down, clasp my fingers and just lift my arms.
Alright I’m starting to build up a little heat because this is an active style stretching, so I’m actually going to take off this sweater 🙂
So the quad is this muscle at the front of the thigh. This gets super tight from sitting!
Basically I’m going to push my foot through my hand. This is a PNF style (stretch) where I’m firing the muscle that I’m stretching.
I’m going to push this into my hand for the pulse and I’m going to pulse one second each 10 times.
These are the inner thigh muscles.
We’re going to spread wide but not super duper duper wide (not as wide as possible). Lock our knees back and fold at the hips.
That gets more of the backside.
To do this, you’re going to fold sideways.
This is your greater trochanter and on this one I want you to think about folding at an angle, not curling. And you should feel that up on the upper inner thigh.
So we did the back, sort of back in the inner line, and then we did the middle right along the pants seam, and now we’re going to do the inner diagonal.
We can (stretch the) upper inner diagonal…and can turn like that…and turn…turn…and you’re just getting the very top adductors on the inside. Be very light with this one we don’t want to overdo it.
Just getting some blood flow to those muscles that hardly ever move.
We did back, middle, front (adductors)…and we did the front and the quads already.
You can cross one leg over the other. The one that’s in back is the side that you’re stretching.
You want to think about again creating a fulcrum not a curl right here. And you’re going to push that out to the side.
Depending on which angle you pick you might get a little more forward on the stretch or backwards.
And if you don’t feel it that much, think about flattening the back foot into the floor. That’s going to increase it and target right there.
We are about halfway through this 5-minute daily stretching routine!
The lats attach to the sacrum and all the way up here, and then float up in a giant sheet. And then come across and attach right there.
And if you think about that sheet pulling on this attachment and pulling down it’s going to bring your arm bone down with it.
So when you hear about lat pull downs right, it’s taking this bone, the humerus, and pulling it down in space.
And that happens all the way down here. So that’s a big part of low back pain.
So it’s a good thing we can stretch these!
You’re going to fold at the hips, bring the arms, as far above you as you’re comfortable with.
And again using that PNF style where I’m pulsing and tightening the muscle that I’m stretching. I’m actually going to try and push my arm through the chair like that, keeping the elbows locked.
Pushing down…and that is going to fire right in there. Then I can use my body to just pull backwards and away from the chair a little tiny bit.
Using something low like a chair, or a couch (a couch is a really good thing to use for this) starting with the knee bent and squaring the hips.
Basically what you can do is try to pull the chair towards us with the heel.
I’m going to fire the muscle to do that, but while I’m doing that I’m going to use my body to pull the knee straight.
Sounds complicated doesn’t have to be 🙂
That part I can kind of just do nice and easy. I don’t have to even straighten all the way and I’m going to feel that down here.
That was hamstring back here…so now we’ve gotten basically the whole leg all the way around the bone.
Which is very deep underneath all the abs.
It’s basically a hip flexor and a postural muscle.
And again because it’s a hip flexor, it gets super tight sitting all day.
Start one knee up, one knee down, as square as possible.
And I want you to tuck your tailbone really hard. The stretch is going to happen on the side that’s down.
Leaving your leg where it is you’re going to pull forward with your body, using the other leg. But you really want to make sure that you’re not pulling forward and leaving your tailbone out there because that’s just not going to stretch at all.
So this stays tucked and moving forward on the other knee. Again, tucking. This presses down as my whole body tries to use my front leg to shift forward while keeping my hips square. Not floating out.
We’ve got two more in the series. We are almost all the way through this 5-minute daily stretching routine!
Normally I would do this with a yoga block.
I’m going to use these books because not everybody has a yoga block. I can use those to give a little bit of height.
For me that means I can step forward. If I had a yoga block I might be more back here.
Keeping my knee locked I’m just going to lean in and try to fold at the ankle. You won’t see much change there on some of you.
Some of you are very flexible…I’m not in the ankle.
Good!
Super important and it’s going to feel really good.
I want you to think about taking your hands and pressing them lightly down on your sternum and your chest. That’s just to keep those muscles and shoulders from rising up when you lift your head.
This is pulling down while that goes up. That’s straight up the middle.
Now we’re going to turn 45 degrees and do the same thing.
And then the other way.
And lastly side to side!
