Top three stretches before a workout

Stretches to perform to loosen up your muscles before a workout in preparation for your next exercises.

“Stretch. Perform. Master”

Exercise 1:

Cat-Cow (30 Seconds)

This is especially helpful in the morning after we’ve been laying in bed for several hours.

Get onto all fours with your knees under your hips and hands under your shoulders

From here, round your back up towards the ceiling in a gentle motion. Imagine as if someone was pulling your mid-back with a rope. As you do this, take a deep breath in while tucking your head down.

Then, exhale as you reverse this motion by now curving your back the opposite way while lifting your head up

Based on the lab research of back pain expert, Dr. Stuart McGill, he found that just seven to eight cycles of this are what’s needed for the most benefit.

When done slowly and controlled, this should take you about a minute to do.

Have trouble nailing down this motion? Try placing a band around your mid-back. This will help pull your spine into the bottom position. And it will then give you the resistance and sensory feedback you may need to learn how to properly round your spine upwards.

Exercise 2:

World's Greatest Stretch (30 Seconds Per Side)

The next stretch exercise, called the “World’s Greatest Stretch”, will be the most effective way to hit all the key problem areas at once.

This stretch has 3 parts to it:

Lunge

Drop

Reach

The first part focuses on your hips and ankles:

Get into a plank position with your hands under your shoulders and feet together

From here, lunge forward by bringing your right foot up as high as you can (ideally next to where your right hand is). You should feel a deep stretch in the groin muscles of your front leg and the hip flexors of your back leg as you do this.

Next, take your right hand and place it on your knee

Push your knee out and back - and then forward and back a few times to loosen up the hips and ankles

Then, we'll deepen the stretch even more in the second part of the stretch. You can do so by dropping your right elbow as far toward the ground as you can while rotating your upper body down towards the ground.

As you do this, try to keep your right knee pushed out rather than letting it collapse inwards.

Then, for part three, we're going to really open up the mid and upper back. To do so, rotate your entire upper body up and to the right and reach your right arm as far overhead as you can. If you can, try to keep your back leg as straight as possible as you do so. Then, reach back down and repeat this for 5 reps or about 30 seconds in total before switching to the next side.

How To Regress The Exercise

Now, this is quite a difficult stretch exercise.

To make it easier, you can keep your leg bent or your knee on the ground and work towards straightening it more and more over time.

Don’t be discouraged if you can only reach so far here and there in the beginning. Just stay consistent with it and it’ll improve very quickly.

Exercise 3:

Asian Squat (30 Seconds Hold, 30 Seconds Rock Side To Side)

Next, we’re going to do what I’ll just call the Asian squat. But with a few modifications to really open up the hips and ankles:

First, get a rolled-up towel and place your heels on it

From here, using a squat stance that's typically just outside shoulder-width, squat down into however deep is comfortable for you. Keep your chest up and try to keep your heels down. If your heels do come up, you can roll up the towel to make it even thicker. Otherwise, it's fine if you have to keep your heels up.

From here, place your arms on the inside of your legs. Use your elbows to push your knees out.

Sit in this position for 30 seconds. You should feel a deep stretch in your groin and in the muscles around your ankles.

In a rush to get to work? Don't worry. You can have breakfast while you’re at it.

And then, for the next 30 seconds, move side to side to stretch out each ankle one at a time.

As you do this, avoid collapsing your knees in and avoid pointing your feet too far outwards. That's because doing these takes the stretch away from the ankles.

Instead, try to keep your feet angled out at max about 30-45 degrees out. Keep each knee in line with the outside of your toes.

How To Progress The Exercise

Now, there are a couple of ways to progress this stretch exercise.

In the beginning, if you struggle with ankle mobility, you may need quite a bit of heel elevation to comfortably get down into a deep squat. Over time, try to use less and less heel elevation. See if you can eventually get to using no elevation at all.

Then, at the bottom position, to open up the hips, even more, you’ll first just push your knees out with your arms straight ahead. Once that gets easy, try to place your hands together into a prayer position. Once that gets easy, place your hands together into fists. Each progression will open up your hips more and more by spreading out the distance between your elbows.