I’m coming by today to give you guys some helpful stretches that you can do while you’re watching TV, and work on improving your posture and reducing pain!
As all of us are stuck inside right now, and we are watching a lot more TV than we should be. But hey, I’m guilty too.
I’d like to emphasize as well that most of these stretches should be done for about a minute apiece, just to make sure that we’re getting all of the connective tissue, the fascia, as well as the muscle tissue to stretch, and that way you can make sure that you’re getting the most out of each stretch.
Otherwise, you can just count your breaths, maybe 15 to 20 breaths. And because we’re holding these stretches for such a long time we want to be careful to not over stretch as that can actually cause more tension in those muscles as they reconstrict, it’s a defense mechanism that your muscles have to help them prevent tearing, which sounds pretty extreme, but usually that can be prevented just by not stretching super deep into it every time.
So, we will get started here. So, the first stretch is for your upper neck and your traps. You’ll bring your arm across as far as you can. Or you can grab underneath your couch or if you’re sitting on the floor you can stick your hand under your leg. From there you’ll just tuck your chin, and then drop over to the opposite side to stretch your upper shoulders.
And we’ll just hold that stretch.
We will keep watching Tiger King because we’re not going to miss a single second of that.
That’s for sure.
You can try to bring your, the crown of your head back towards your back and shoulder., just a little bit to hit more of the front of those neck muscles too and that can feel great, especially if you are working from home and you’re at your computer a lot that can be a really good stretch.
Another great stretch is the butterfly stretch. So there’s a couple of things I’d like to point out about this stretch that a lot of people do in a way that’s not super safe. So, when you find your position and you have the soles of your feet together, sitting on the floor. Just hold the tops of your feet. There’s no need to press down with your elbows, which can be really bad for your hip joint. Okay. So instead what I want you to focus on as you’re pressing the soles of your feet together is really lengthening your back, squeezing your shoulder blades together, and maybe even getting a little bit of a bend in your elbows.
They’re all very subtle adjustments, but they’re going to help to put the stretch in the right place through your hip, and your thighs, so it just ensures that it’s a safe stretch and also ensures that you’re getting the most out of it.
This stretches more for your arms and your shoulders, really yummy one so you’ll bring your fingers together and you’ll interlace them and bring them out.
And then just stretch out really be mindful of where the shoulder position is here it’s really easy to let your shoulders come up towards your ears, and that can compromise the stretch, as well as encourage unhealthy postural patterns. So just make sure that your lats are engaged, down under your armpits, and your shoulders are down.
Another modification we can try here is bringing the arms up, interlacing your fingers, bending the elbows slightly and dropping over to one side.
Trying to keep everything in alignment. Engage your core, a little bit to protect your back.
This is a really great stretch to breathe into because then you’re stretching the muscles from the outside as well as from the inside.
And come back up to center.
And then come over to the other side, really trying to lengthen that top arm, as well as bringing your elbow towards your back, engaging your core a little bit to protect your low back.
Next is for your hips
So it’s particularly helpful if you’re working from home, if you’re sitting a lot.
God forbid, that’s all of us really. So, you will want to be lying on the floor on your back. You’ll bring your ankle to your knee. And then you’ll really gently hug your underside knee towards your body, making sure that your back is really straight here, even reaching your sternum a little bit towards the ceiling to get some length.
It might be tempting to press down on your top knee, but that’s also really bad for your hip joint. So, definitely avoid doing that, you’ll notice that you actually get more of a stretch, a healthier stretch, just from bringing your knee closer to your upper body.
As you let this one go. You can swing your leg out a little bit to re engage those muscles and extending come back down.
Another one of my favorite stretches that you can do without missing a single moment of tender King is for your calf. And all you’re gonna do is sit on your knees, with your toes extended underneath. And just sit right on top of your heels. If you need this to feel a little bit more intense.
You can scoot your feet back to intensify the stretch. This is mountain pose in yoga.
you can kind of rock side to side
to go a little deeper to stretch.
You can also kind of pull your heels back, and you’ll get a pretty decent stretch that way too that will definitely intensify it super intense for me. Wow.
If you’re working from home at all, or even when you’re not in the “Q”.
And you if you sit for long periods of time throughout the day, this is an amazing stretch to make sure that your hip flexor doesn’t start pulling on your low back, which can cause some pretty intense issues and your low back in your hips. So this is a hip flexor stretch or your psoas stretch. Start in a “runner’s lunge, one knee on the ground, and one knee up in front of you, bent.
And you’ll want to make sure that your back toes are extended and everything’s at a right angle.
So make sure that everything’s on is squaring off. And you’re not letting your low back disengage. So you’re not disengaging your core, you’re not pushing out your ribcage, everything is stacked.
Once you find that position, and even just finding that position might be enough to create a little bit of tension and stretch to play around with that and see what feels best for you and where you’re at.
So from here. What I like to do is tinker around with the position of my torso in relation to my leg this up. So I’ll actually put both of my hands on my knee.
And I will really gently start to have this like energetic pull. That’s almost diagonal, it’s like my hip bone is trying to make a connection with my knee that’s up and breathing really big here, having some really nice belly breaths, can be super powerful, and it could really help exaggerate the stretch as well.
This is a really easy stretch to overdo, so just be super mindful about it and take it super slow, and if it means going, less deep into the stretch, but holding it for longer. it’ll be more effective and you won’t set off that stretch reflex that will cause everything to tighten back up.
So, when you come back out of the stretch reengage that hip flexor by coming down just a little bit, and stretch it out.And try on the other side.
Enjoy this sequence while you’re bingeing your favorite show!
