How To Stretch If You Haven't Stretched Before

you probably know that you need a stretch right but you don't know where to start and you see things like this and go i can't do that well guess what you don't have to do stretches like this that are advanced or maybe way too difficult for your body instead you can start with these four simple stretches that any beginner can do [Music] hey there coach tyler here and we all know that one of the most important things in feeling good in our body especially as we age is maintaining our flexibility and there's a lot of different stretching routines out there yoga classes etc but the truth is you don't really need that many stretches to start feeling amazing in your body and loosening up all your muscles so today what i'm gonna do is show you four simple beginner stretches two for the lower body and two for the upper body that are gonna stretch most the muscles in your body you can literally do each one of these stretches for just one minute per day and in less than five minutes you'll feel significantly better so without further ado let's head on over to the first stretch oh before we go any further i should just mention that i'm not your doctor so make sure you get these things cleared by them first okay we're here to help you feel better in your body but be smart okay if you have tight shoulders or a tight upper back one of my favorite stretches to really open up the chest open up the shoulders and even open up the upper spine it's called the high chair down dog so what you'll need is a nice sturdy chair right in front of you and i'll show you how to do it right now so what you're going to do is you're going to put your hands on the chair and if you want to you can even turn your thumbs toward the sky when you turn your thumbs toward the sky that's going to force your shoulders into a position where you're going to get more and more stretched through the torso rather than through the shoulder joint itself so thumbs toward the sky walk your feet back and from there you're going to let your body come between your arms like this okay now slow and controlled if this still feels kind of hard for you you can always put your hands on something a little bit higher or even put your hands on the wall in front of you as you do the stretch from there you can soften your knees you don't have to keep your knees straight or anything and you're just going to take a big breath in as you kind of try to continuously drive your chest towards the ground like this so big breath in and then as you exhale try to just relax and bring that chest towards the ground and every single time you breathe in think about long spine think about long through the shoulders so don't scratch the shoulders up lock the elbows long through the shoulders and then bring your chest a little bit lower and if you hold this thing for 30 seconds to a minute oh my goodness you're going to feel a giant stretch coming all the way through the back sides of the arms into the armpits all the way through the lats even into the stomach and you'll also feel your hamstrings getting stretched at the same time one of my absolute favorite upper body stretches which will help you with your posture and loosening up all the muscles of the chest and the shoulder so make sure you give this one a shot as often as possible real quick before i get to the next movement i wanted to mention that if you like this video then you'll love the other videos that we release every single week on our channel so if you're interested in learning how to move your body better so you can feel better in your body make sure you hit that subscribe button and then click the little bell icon so you can get notified every time we release a new video just like this one okay back to the next movement out of all the people i've ever worked with one of the tightest muscles that i see on most people is the hamstrings which is the back side of the leg and they get really tight because we end up sitting all day long and they never end up getting stretched to their full potential so i'm going to show you my favorite hamstring stretch right now that you can do while lying in bed either before bed or first thing in the morning to loosen up those handles okay so you'll need a towel and all you need to do is lay down and grab that towel and you're gonna loop it over your foot like this just over the arch of your foot and you're going to extend your leg like this and then drop the other one towards the ground it doesn't matter where you start at if you're all the way down here and you feel the hamstring stretch that's totally fine or if you're up higher that's fine too the big things you want to do here are make sure that your hips are touching the ground so you want to make sure that this hip isn't up or opened up or anything like that you want to make sure that your shoulder blades are down and relaxed so you don't want to be shrunked up and tight on your face like this either okay and then from there tall to the top of your head take a big breath in and as you inhale you can you can try to drive a little force almost like you're trying to push your leg back towards the ground to activate the hamstring a little so big inhale activate the hamstring and then a big exhale and just let your elbows come towards the ground and try to stretch a little deeper big inhale big exhale come towards you a little bit more and you can just repeat this taking a big inhale where you're driving and activating that hamstring and then a big exhale trying to pull it closer to your body hold it for at least one minute on the left side and then like i like to do with every stretch let go and then sit up and compare how your body feels and what you'll feel is this entire side from your glute all the way down to your heel is going to feel a lot more relaxed a lot more loose significantly better compared to your other side so from there make sure you stretch the other side and then do this stretch every single day try to do it either first thing when you wake up or last thing before you go to bed and if you do that you're gonna start your day great and you're gonna sleep significantly better if you have a tight groin meaning the muscles on the insides of your thighs then the seated straddle stretch is my favorite for helping loosen those muscles up so here's what you're going to do you're going to come into a seated position and you're going to bring your legs out as far as you can it literally doesn't matter if you're here or if your legs are all the way out sideways in the splits what's important is that you can sit upright in this position if for any reason when you're in this position you find yourself rounding your back like this as you're doing it what you can do is put a couple pillows underneath your butt and lift your butt off the ground and that should allow you to straighten your spine in this position from there what you're gonna do is just move forward and back trying to bring your belly button towards the ground and over time you can just go a little deeper and a little deeper and you could inhale as you come up exhale as you come down put your hands in front of you for support if you need inhale as you come up exhale as you come down again trying not to think about driving your head towards the ground and rounding your back like this but rather try to think about bringing your whole body your belly button towards the ground as you loosen up these muscles now at some point you might be nice and deep bent forward like this you can come back up and you know what you can do you can scoot your butt forward and drive your legs out even more and then start over again right just really loosening the hips up and i really like this stretch because you can do the stretch while watching tv while looking at your phone any time of day so start adopting doing more stretches throughout your day to loosen up your muscles and it's gonna pay dividends in the long run trust me so practice this for at least one minute but the groin can take a lot to loosen up so 90 seconds two minutes three minutes however long you feel like you'd like to sit in this stretch and it's gonna help loosen up all the muscles right here which when you bring your legs back together you're gonna notice my hips feel significantly better so practice that stretch daily and you won't regret it okay before i get to the last movement that i really think is going to make a big difference on how your body feels i wanted to mention that the best thing for you to do after this video is over is to click the link below or head on over to we wesshape.com that's because we've built a new quiz that creates a personalized follow-along workout for you based on your individual goals and your individual capabilities it's the best workout for beginners people who want to gain strength more flexibility so that you can feel better in your body oh and you can try it out for free so many of us sit for a living all day long and what it does to our posture is it makes our back go like this and what we really want to do is we want to open up the chest and make our body look more like this this stretch the shoulder stretch is one of my favorite movements to accomplish that so what you're going to do is start in a seated position you can do this on the ground you can do this in a chair even with your legs bent if that's a little bit easier you're going to turn your fingertips backwards behind you like this and the first thing you want to do is just lift your chest toward the sky so i'm going to pull my shoulder blades back i'm going to drive them down and lift my chest toward the sky and immediately you should feel a little bit of a stretch coming through your chest maybe even through your shoulders now if that's enough for you that's totally fine just doing this and opening up your chest once a day twice a day is gonna make a huge difference on how your upper back your chest your shoulders your whole upper body is going to feel way better if you do it but if you want to make it a little harder what you can do is start to scoot your body away from your shoulders so again don't round your shoulders forward like this keep them back and down as you do the stretch so you can start walking your body forward like this and eventually you'll find a position where you get an insane stretch coming all the way through the bicep the shoulder the chest all those at the same time and in this position you can just breathe and as you exhale try to think about lifting the chest more take a big breath in to the belly and then exhale lift the chest even more and once you find your chest is lifted as high as you can just do a little teeny bit more right now you can hold this stretch anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes and you can do it every single day and if you do it's going to improve your posture loosen the chest loosen the shoulders and make you feel so much better in your body and that's what it's all about right feeling better in your part so make sure you do the stretch every single day if you can all right there you have it four simple stretches that you can do anytime anywhere and like i said you could try each stretch for just one minute per day and within five minutes you're going to feel amazing your lower body and your upper body oh and if you like this and you want to do something else that's really productive and useful in helping you feel better in your body again then my next tip is to work on strengthening your core so i've got a video for you right here we're going to show you the two best beginner core exercises that you can start using right now along with your stretches to continue making steps towards feeling better in your body again because remember this that moving better is feeling better all right i'll see you in that video

Channel: WeShape

Views: 4,543,556

Keywords: weshape fitness, coach tyler1, walking, painful, painfree, stretching, stretching for beginners, beginners, everyday stretching, how to stretch if you havent stretched before, new to stretching, easy stretching, stretching for elders

Id: _6wPw9C4sX8

Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 09 2022